This & That

Take Your Parents to Work Day

The morning of the next day, my eldest son had to run into work for just a bit and invited us to come along with him. I may have mentioned that the reason he and his family are living in Tornado Alley right now is that they are in the last leg of some extended schooling. So we piled in the car and headed down to where he's working.

 I noticed these on the lamp posts in the area.

My son left his dad and I in an area where he and his collegues can study. There's a long line of study cubbies down both sides of the room and each desk has a name plate on it. I have to tell you I was just a little taken aback when I saw his, for a couple of reasons. You know how your kid is always your kid, and sometimes it's just a little strange to realize that they may be something other than the kid you tucked in, cleaned up  and fed, and had to nag and remind about everything....that they have really grown up and accomplished something. It was just a bit of a startling realization, and then a Mommy Moment. And really the thing I loved the most was seeing the decorated bow tie one of the boys had made him dangling from the name plate. 

And I found this basket of "goodies" (?) in there as well. Slightly odd medical humor.

He showed us around the clinic and then, because all of us have northern European eyes that tend to get inflamed oil glands, we all took a turn having that looked at.

And that was a bit of a Mommy Moment, too, as I watched the whole "like father, like son" thing happen. Holy cow.

It was fun to see where he spends his days, and he drove us by the capitol building which is just down the street. I thought that dandy green sign was very helpful in identifying things. 

Butterfly Time

I am seeing butterflies at the cabin. They don't appear until mid-summer and by the middle of September, nighttime temperatures are below freezing, so their time is very short there.

During our last walk, before the Cow, The Girl had one land on her hand. It just sat there, sunning itself for a bit while we looked and talked about how delicate it was.

It flew away suddenly, not caring about our desire to look longer, landing on a nearby grassy something for a bit and then flying away completely, despite The Girl's efforts to run after it and catch it again.

It made me think of changes and short times....the changes I see coming down the road in my family, especially with The Girl being a junior this year. I thought how she, and my other children have kind of been like that little butterfly. Their time with me has been relatively short in the big picture scheme of things, just like the butterfly time at the cabin. They all have, or will shortly, flutter off into the big world, not really thinking about my desire to hang onto them, or run behind them and catch them to me just one more time....my little ones.

You'll have to forgive me. With PB leaving, I'm struggling a little with my emotions and seem to be in a reflective state of mind. A little melancholy about not taking advantage of every moment.  I probably need to go scrub a toilet or something, preferably a really messy boy toilet. That will probably snap me out of it.

Telling Stories

There are some stories that just need to be told.

And this was one of them. Missed this kid. Still miss him and all his brothers off on their various grown up endeavors. It's OK. I understand the growth and changes that are a part of life, and I get the bonus of DDIL' s and grandbabies. But every so often, I miss the chaos that used to take place at the end of the school day....backpacks flying, races to the cupboards or fridge to forage for sustenance, 6 conversations going at once about homework, events from the day and "oh by the way, I need....."

But every so often, I'll get a phone call. One of the boys will be on the other end asking a "mom" question. Sometimes it's about a recipe or a grandbaby's diaper rash. Yesterday GS Boy called saying, "Moooooooom, I'm sick." The nurse in me told him to drink lots of fluids, get as much sleep as he could and eat healthy food. The mom in me wanted to hug him and tell him he'd be better in a couple of days.

Then this morning, early, SD Boy called. He just wanted to tell me he'd gotten an A on his first Chem test. It was the best moment of my day, that he wanted to call and tell me that first thing. It made my heart happy for the whole day. And it made me want to hug him. But it will have to wait for the next trip home.

Other People's Cameras

While we are in the woods, the day just isn't complete for the men unless they complete some kind of ourdoorsy, wilderness activity.

I don't often go on these activities and there are a couple of good reasons why. 

#1--I would slow them down. I do not have mountain goat genes and the prospect of getting someone who trips over sticks across something like this just isn't worth it. What takes them a couple of hours on a hike would take me 3 days of crawling.

 

#2--They don't pack Valium on their hikes. And honestly, if I saw my children standing on a snow tunnel over a raging ocean....river....OK a really big and fast moving stream, I would be screaming... screaming at my DH who let them get there, screaming at them to get OFF the thing.

By comparison shots of 2 of my precious children balance precariously on a rock that could possibly give way at any moment and sent them tumbling down the mountain seem relatively tame.

And this one is just plain peaceful.

So no, I don't go on the wilderness adventures much. I rely on the pictures in other people's cameras. It's safer.

How Did This Happen?

I'm not exactly sure how, but somehow in the blink of an eye, we went from this:

To this:

The Girl turns 15 today. It's scary to me. Because I know that in an even shorter blink, she'll be ready to leave the nest, and I don't even want to think about that. When I send pictures of her with San Diego Boy's emails, I get responses like, "When did she start wearing make up??" and "I don't like these pictures that look all grown up." Yeah, it's a little hard for me, too.

She loves:

• Baked Potatoes
• BBQ chicken pizza
• Any sweet baked goods as long as they don't have raisins or nuts
• Gummy anything...bears, fish, worms.
• The colors green, orange and pink, especially when they are all together
• Her ipod
• The soundtracks to "Wicked" and "Hairspray"
• Her niece and nephews
• Her brothers....usually
• Clothes
• Clothes
• And did I mention clothes?

She hates:

• Anything like tights or nylons on her blindingly white legs
• Tomato soup
• Mexican food
• Being teased about her clothing fetish
• Bad hair days
• Having to hurry and get ready
• Her mother with a camera in her hand (unless she happens to be holding a niece or nephew)

Happy Birthday, Sweetie! Love you! And no, you can't take Driver's Training yet.

Battles to Give Away

I like being in control.  It's reassuring to me to have all my ducks in a row and to make decisions that I feel will make life easier not just for me, but for my family as well.  When I was blessed with a DH who doesn't prioritize the same way I do and 6 really great kids, five of whom are boys, I had to put a good share of my control issues in a box, out in the storage loft, in the very back corner....so I wouldn't turn into a raving lunatic and make life totally miserable for everyone. 
Occasionally, however, they sneak in from the loft and rear their ugly little heads. This morning, Preemie Boy came downstairs dressed in a toga. Seriously. Now remember, he's reading Antigone in his English class and for a project, he has to do some role-playing.  We've spent the last few days accumulating things for him to dress up as the blind prophet.  He went to the costume box and found a scraggly old fake beard, we found a length of white PVC pipe for a white cane, he had DH bring home some of those lovely dilated eye sunglasses from the office and I found an old sheet that we fashioned into a toga.  He looked like a great blind Teiresias...wearing Old Navy clothes underneath.  Now, I should take an aside here and explain that because of all the physical problems Preemie Boy has had to deal with, I tend to be very "Mother Bear" when it comes to him.  Sometimes kids tease him about his clumsiness, not knowing about his vision problems and it makes me ache for him, because kids can be really mean.
So when he came downstairs dressed in full Greek regalia, I started in saying, "You can't wear that all day to school....you need to put it in a bag and put it on in your English class."  And we proceed to have a little set-to about it with him saying he doesn't have time to put it on later and it won't all fit in his locker and other kids wore their stuff to school on and on we go and I'm getting more and more worked up about it which leads to run-on sentences.  And I finally realize that it's not really him and the toga I'm worried about....it's that other kids will hurt his feelings by teasing him.  And I decided that if it didn't bother him to wear a toga, it shouldn't bother me.  And I put my control issues back in the loft and drove him to school.
Today's LOAD shows life with reduced OCD and was done with an older Scrap Addict kit and a Becky Fleck sketch.

Christmas Cheer & Changing

I'm at the stage of life where everything seems to be in constant flux.  Like my baby girl, I seem to have entered a "tween" stage.....half my kids home and half gone.  Traditions that I thought would be carved in stone, seem to ebb and flow at a whim.  OK, so there ARE still things carved in stone, but they seem to be fewer and far between.  The post-Thanksgiving Christmas jigsaw puzzle sits in poor, pathetic disarray....neglected.....a casualty of busy schedules.  The Christmas music that usually floods the house is absent because of a tempermental stereo.  Technology as the double-edged sword I'm thinking as I type a BLOG of all things.  Yet as the evenings wind down, my kids start asking when we're going to read the nightly Christmas story, and Eric will rush to research a Christmas carol online, so he can give a little report when we gather.  Love that.  An extra something to increase the Christmas spirit.  But I was talking of "tweens".  This morning I brushed out Elise's hair and put it into the requested style and when we got ready to head out to do the final grocery trip for the week (I hope!) I looked at her and she had added an ornament to her hair style....all on her own.  Something like 27 big bobby pins holding in this poinsettia that had adorned a fruit basket.  I'm seeing this more often...these glimpses of independence and maturity.  Admittedly, I have mixed feelings about it as I do about traditions coming and going.  The realization is that I can't stop it, so I'll enjoy it.