Shopping battles, missing ribs, and toy invasions.

Life has become mere endurance. At 32 weeks pregnant, I’m miserable beyond words. I. Hurt. Everywhere. But, baby kicks and rolls and from all appearances is doing fabulously. I was warned by my midwife to expect this one to be bigger than all my others, since he/she is already larger than most. My heaviest was 9 lbs. 2 oz. so I’m rather expecting to birth a three month old at this point. The constant question is whether I’m positive I’m not carrying twins, how sure I am of my due date, and if I’m done. Oh, and one particularly fun comment about being like one of those prize pumpkins that never stops growing. I hold onto the knowledge that I won’t be pregnant forever.

I bought new fabric for pillows. We might, by the end of tomorrow (because I need another pillow form, so that’s been added to today’s grocery list) have matching pillows on our not completely mismatched couches for the first time in history. I’m rather excited about this. No, it’s not nesting. I purchased the fabric the day after Christmas. Christmas sewing and dread for getting on the floor to cut out fabric had me putting off the sewing until now. But if my living room could be more intentional, that would be fun. Of course, the Lincoln Logs, the train set, the car basket, the Legos… it’s a toss up on whether I can win this battle.

Pierce got a handful of Tonka toys for his birthday last year. Sterling has had a dump truck since he was about two, so when I found a bunch of them on Craigslist, Pierce got them for his birthday. He loves them. They had, however, been used in the sandbox and lived outside or in the shed. Sterling begged to bring them in for Pierce when it got cold, willingly put them in the tub and scrubbed them until no sandbox remnant remained, and made his brother one very happy boy. My living room/school room now looks like this on a continual basis:

 

I’ve decided Sterling is just trying to balance out the boy toy/girl toy ratio. Or kill me, tripping on large wheeled toys in the night. Take your pick.

I told the kids to get ready for the day. The day consists of school and grocery shopping. Sterling feels like he’s headed into battle, apparently. This is what he came up with.

Last night I made barbecued pork ribs and baked potatoes and our own canned green beans for supper. I got all the kids’ plates dished up, and Ruby went to the garage fridge for more milk. She plopped the brand new gallon of milk down… on the edge of Sterling’s plate. Just like that, potato, beans, and pork rib went flying, catapulted toward nearby Pierce and the floor. Some of it landed on the table, some landed on the floor, but that rib simply disappeared. Brady (the dog) was not so very far away, and the fear that she’d snatched the meat was voiced. Even if she had, a pig rib vs. an eight pound dog seemed like an unlikely match. Surely something would be left. She can’t eat a bone that big that fast. And so the search continued. Everyone’s plates were checked for the extra portion, but no one found it.

It struck me as awfully funny. Eight people, searching floor, plates, counters, and curtains for one catapulted rib.

Finally, I spotted a bit of the sauce on the back of Pierce’s chair, and his chair became the focal point of the search. The rib was behind Pierce, on his chair. Supper was saved, Brady was innocent, and the idea of catapults was discussed.

Pretty sure I’m not going to forget the food flying through the air, plate and all, anytime soon though. Supper around here is never dull… but that was a new one, even for around here.

To the mothers vacationing without their husbands or children in Florida.

"What's a daycare?"

One of my children posed the question. Pausing, I tried to come up with a suitable answer. In the world of my children, they don't know anything like it. Momma stays home with them.

Explaining it's a place that cares for children, rather like a babysitter, while parents work, my children looked even more confused.

"Oh, like if the dad dies."

Didn't see that coming. Yes, I suppose that could be one scenario. I added that perhaps both parents work. I got trampled in the trains that were my children's imaginations.

"Or if the mom dies."

Yes, I suppose that's another possibility.

Then Ruby dropped the bomb.

"Or if the mom goes on a trip, like to Florida."

Florida? Florida? Who's going to Florida? And why wasn't I invited?! What is Florida anyhow?

She looked at me like I was SO ignorant.

"It's a state, Momma."

Glad we got that cleared up. What I want to know is this: who taught her this stuff?!

Non-conformity.

I didn't set out to have a lot of children. I never sat down with my husband and talked about exceeding the world's boundaries for what's normal in the world of having a family. I never dreamed of the perfect number... but it certainly didn't exceed societal norms of maybe three, perhaps four children. Responsibility dictates you stop when you aren't ridiculously outnumbered, before chaos reigns, before the chances of getting in a minivan become nil.

Now, it's funny to write that. I knew all of those things... perhaps even embraced them, before I'd given birth to even one of my children. Before I knew the joy of holding my child for the first time. Before I'd taught anyone how to hold a spoon, use a glass, pet a dog, figure out what addition and subtraction meant. Before I'd held my frightened child as they realized it was just a dream, taught them to read, taught them why Jesus had to die.

It was all before.

Then, I had my first child. Loving her more than life itself and forgetting the horrors of pregnancy and labor, I longed for another. Two sent me reeling, and I started to understand why two is plenty for many. But time passed, and again I longed to meet another child, a part of my husband and I, a blessing from God. We had a third, a fourth, a fifth. I started seeing how the world reacts to non-conformity. It's not always pleasant. Surely these children weren't ALL mine. Surely I didn't CHOOSE this. Our sixth quickly followed the fifth, we officially outgrew our normal sized minivan with our normal sized gas bill, and the questions began in earnest. Are you done NOW? Are you happy now that you got two boys in the mix? (Of course, that's why I chose this.) The lovely intrusion, don't you know what causes that? And the most awkward, are you supermom? Or my least favorite tactic... start asking my children any of the above questions.

So now, realizing I'm thoroughly enjoying mothering these children, that I love being there to see them learn new things, that I hate pregnancy but find the babies entirely worth my agony, and we've completely tipped the scales into not normal anyhow, we chose to have a seventh. I'm in the bitter end of another pregnancy, counting the weeks until I get to meet this little person. I don't know if we'll be done after that. I do know I'm so, so thankful I didn't stop at two or three, that I didn't conform to some unwritten rule about what's considered normal, that I didn't see my children as anything but blessings. Sinful children, in need of teaching and training and of a Savior, but such blessings, every one of them.

Pierce and the snarling tiger

Pierce found the latest zoo magazine, and kept looking at the photo of the tiger on the front. He pretended it bit him, and was having fun pretending many scenarios with the photo. The boy has a vivid imagination. I pulled up tiger photos on a computer search to show him more tigers, and we were having a great time going through all the photos we'd found. Then, I found this photo:

 

from here:  Snarling Tiger

and I started asking Pierce what THAT tiger was saying.

Pierce didn't miss a beat.

"Num nummy."

All in a day: my Monday.

We made snow ice cream yesterday. Ruby decided we should never buy regular ice cream again. I reminded her of the abundance of snow in July. Liberty thinks we ought to fill up the freezer with snow to solve the problem. I’m skeptical. Charlotte loved the ice cream, but asked if I could get her something to warm up her tongue. Pierce shook and shook from the cold and finally gave up. The problem with snow ice cream: snowy weather and ice cream just don’t go together.

Liberty proclaimed she’s going to pour a can of sweetened condensed milk and a bag of chocolate chips together in a bowl and eat it when she’s a grown up. High ambitions.

Sterling walked past me rubbing his mouth, muttering, “My lips still hurt!” I questioned him about it… and laughed. “I zipped up my mouth in my coat zipper.” Well then.

Sterling’s new to Spelling in school this year. He’s doing quite well, and has grown accustomed to his 100% tests. I test on Thursday, and a 100% earns no test on Friday. Any wrong means another test on Friday. Sterling got two wrong on his last test: learn and pearl. Frustrated, he wrote the words a bunch of times. And then rewrote learn because he’d written it wrong all those times. As he numbered his paper for his Friday test that was moved to Monday due to our short school week last week, he muttered “ea… ea… ea” over and over. Then, he came up with a request. “Can you give me learn and pearl first so I can write them down before I forget how to spell them?” Umm… no. How does that prove you’ve learned anything?! He got 100% on the test, in spite of those words coming towards the end of his test.

I’m a big fan of letting my kids make mistakes – and then figure out how to fix them, hopefully learning something in the process. I set one dear daughter to making syrup for our pancakes. “Put two cups of water and four cups of sugar in a pan. Bring them to a boil.” This particular child struggles with following through, so I opted to put the maple flavoring in myself, later, to keep my instructions ultra simple. She came back moments later, wanting me to repeat instructions. I refused, knowing a lesson might actually be learned in this. You know, that lesson about paying attention. A few minutes later, she returned, announcing there were four cups of water and two of sugar in the pan. Um… no. Too much water, not enough sugar. Now we have to compensate, and instead of making a double batch, we’ve got the makings of a quadruple batch. She figured it out, we have three quarts of syrup in the fridge… and yesterday, we ran out of sugar. Something about putting eight cups into the syrup might have something to do with that. I’m not certain any lessons were learned – but we have syrup made up for a month or two.

I made deer stew last night for supper. Charlotte protested, saying she likes deer on her plate but not in her bowl. I’m assuming this means she liked the breaded/fried deer I made this summer… but not so much the stew I’ve been making lately. She fought me on eating it, but in the end, ate enough to satisfy me. When I went to scrape her bowl, I found all veggies and no meat. Turns out, the deer in her bowl isn’t the problem. It’s the broth and vegetables that come with it.

Today was the due date for the baby I lost shortly before conceiving the one I now carry. Strange moments. If that baby had lived, the baby I now feel kicking inside of me wouldn’t have been.

I would never have chosen to endure a loss like that.

So glad that His ways are higher than ours, and it’s not up to us. God’s purpose is far greater than we can see. I mourn one child, rejoice over another, and look forward to meeting the babies I lost someday when we worship at Christ’s feet together.

That would have been embarrassing… but now it’s just funny.

My new Kindle has Swype. I’ve had fun playing with this “draw the line from one letter to the next for the word you want” technology.

Sometimes, however, technology fails.

I was Swyping away trying to send an email to a friend, and when I Swyped her husband’s name, it automatically corrected it to “Sexy.” Of course, I was busy Swyping and not looking at what was in the email and as my finger hovered over send, the word jumped out to me like it was on fire. Hello, mortification. I jerked my hand back with amazing speed and edited my email… and proofread the rest. And then I laughed. And my kids tried to figure out what was so funny. How do you explain that?!

Proofreading. Proofreading is important.

It snowed again. The high temp for one day next week is hovering just above 0 degrees F. It’s starting to feel like home… but really, I didn’t miss the ridiculously low temps. Wood heat is a wonderful thing. I think we’ll hibernate.

Up for today: Wrapping up our short school week, making some orange cranberry bread, folding and putting away the five loads of laundry I washed and dried but didn’t fold yet, and putting Pierce’s car seat back together after having washed it. It was overdue… but have you tried to take one of those things apart lately?! Awful, I tell you. Putting it back together will likely be worse. I lose skin over these things.