Strawberries

We've been clearing out our strawberry patch. The poor berry plants are nearly strangled by grass invading their cozy, little bed. I've been digging the near-sod up and then gently separating the twisted grass roots from the remaining strawberry plants. It's fairly delicate surgery for some of the berries. Their roots are nearly rotten - brown, dried, dying - choked.  The grass has invaded and is trying to choke the life out of those roots.

It's my Grandma's birthday today. We called the nursing home where she lives and got ourselves transferred back to her special care unit. The nurse put her on the portable phone that gets shared when residents get phone calls. The girls got the cue and sang their little hearts out. Grandma perked up a bit when I told her it was me and repeated my name with a hint of happy emotion in her voice. A hint. Emotion is one of those areas, I think, that has been attacked by disease. She asked where I was and just said nothing when I told her I was at home in town here. I could tell that it didn't make sense that I was somewhere other than my farm home. I'm a little girl again, the girl she remembers from so many years ago. Laura and I are "the little girls" and will probably remain that now. 

The strawberry roots reminded me of her mind, how the grass wrapped around those roots just like dementia has wrapped around her mind, her memories. It sounds sinister, and, in my mind, it is. I'm convinced that Satan loves it. He laughs at our tears, smiles with glee at her confusion and struggles. Not because of anything my Grandma did or did not do - no sin of hers - but just our fallen humanity. I think about my Grandma's life; it has not been easy. From watching an infant sister die, to losing a younger brother years later, beginning marriage in a grainery, and then losing the home she and Grandpa thought they had finally built to retire in to a failure of a governmental project, very little of her life was easy. I'm humbled to know Laura and I have been bright spots in there. All of her children have been - caring for others, though not always perfectly, I suppose, has been her life.

Each year these weeks are solemn ones for me, in my mind anyway.  In the weeks between Mothers' Day weekend and the anniversary of Hope's birth and death, I'm struck this year by all the problems I cannot fix. Sometimes the sadness of it is overwhelming; I sit rocking my sleeping, teething son, wondering, wondering, wondering about all that I cannot fix.

Alzheimers. Dementia. Cancer. Veins in a baby's heart. Parkinson's. 

So much that none of us can completely, really, totally fix.

And so, and Mike reminds me, we cling to the One who has fixed it all.  Who, regardless of the outcomes down here of diseases and disasters, has fixed us a place free of all of this - f.o.r.e.v.e.r.  The One who, as Satan salivates over our pain, walks with us through all of it, holding our hands, holding us up, walking straight through death with us as the best friend we could ever imagine. The One who gently untangles all those choking, nasty grass roots from around our tender, bruised selves, dusts us off, and replants us where we really belong, in the spot He's been preparing for us from the beginning.

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

Rub-a-dub-dub, who's this in a tub?

And where is he bathing?

He's on the front driveway, and ssssssshhhh....he thinks he's in a kiddie pool.

We just had to get out and celebrate this second over-ninety-degree day, so the girls dug out their play swimming suits (as opposed to their nice ones that will be worn in public). We slathered on sunscreen, and I watched the girls wiggle in the excitement of getting back out in the sprinkler again after a long winter.

Then Miss Mouse asked the obvious question: How are we going to play in the sprinkler since our hose burned up?

Hmmm....You've got a point there, my dear.

Thank goodness for our wonderful neighbors! We're currently borrowing their hose.

I also realized a problem with putting Mighty Mouse in a kiddie pool while the girls ran through the sprinkler: the kiddie pool hit the dumpster last week, too.

You can see, I solved the problem with ingenuity. Or maybe I just solved the problem. Or maybe I created more of a problem. I don't know, but we had fun.  I put out Mighty's baby pool, filled it with water, heated it up on the hot pavement, and when he woke from his nap yesterday afternoon, it was perfectly heated for him to take a dip.

While he dipped, the girls and I polished off an entire carton of strawberries. Normally I am pretty cheap with the fresh berries and ration them carefully. This time, though, they had been on a really good sale, and they were really good berries that demanded to be eaten. I figured three of us gorging on strawberries for $2.00 or so wasn't really all that expensive of a treat! Each little berry was a pop of summer. Yum!

The not-so-perfect part of this was all the pine needles. You can see them in the photos. With the strong wind we had, and really with any hint of a breeze these days, the needles were blowing from our poor, now-deceased evergreen tree in the back and raining down all over the yard, perhaps our neighbors' yards, as well. Ick. I had to take Mighty Mouse out so that he wouldn't eat them. I even had to dig one out of his mouth. Youch. So, Mighty Mouse's first "pool" experience was in a tub filled with evergreen needles. Very masculine of him, yes?

Oh, we have so much fun with this little guy. The most fun thing, though, for me is seeing how much fun everyone else in the household has with him. My heart gets all warm and melty and mushy when I see how much they love each other. Notice in this picture where I had stood up to get a better view of Mighty, Sunny can't keep her hands off him? She didn't want me even that far from her brother while he was in water - our little rebel middle child is a rule-follower when it comes to some things (though with some of the ideas she comes up with I still can't say I'd trust her any farther than I could throw a stick....). But she was definitely determined to keep him safe - and touched - at all times. He's so sweet and squishy, I didn't really mind having to take him out and wrap him in a giant beach towel and then snuggle him while the girls finished up in the sprinkler. It's hard to be too upset about a snuggly boy with bare feet begging to be rubbed on your lap. Though the evergreen-needles-in-the-pink-swim-diaper-because-that's-what-we-had-on-hand were sort of sad.

Welcome back, Summer!

Sewing for Idiots

Despite my Auntie Linda's patience and impressive teaching abilities, I cannot read a pattern to save my life. If she could be here to hold my hand the entire time I sew, I'm sure I could use patterns and understand them even. Seeing as how she lives 400 miles away, I had to come up with a different plan.

What I found is that I can follow instructions (even though I typically will not read them for appliances until I've royally messed up the whole setup first), and that a "pattern" makes sense to me if it is presented as a set of instructions.

So, here it is. My first matching-girl project. They are square-shaped circle skirts (think square-shaped poodle skirt pattern) made from knit fabric (teehee...I didn't even finish the bottom edges; they're just raw, though at some point I may try my hand at finishing them off with a fancy little scalloped edge - for now I'm sitting on my laurels a bit before jumping into deeper water).

The girls were ecstatic to see them on the table when they came out for breakfast on Wednesday. So fun! The met with approval from both girls, which was exciting. What you can't see in the picture is the super-soft, 1.5 inch bright pink elastic waistbands. I ordered them online, and they are so fun and cute! Over the summer the girls will be able to wear their shirts out or tucked in and look equally adorable either way.

See how well they twirl? Yep, I did that on purpose, too. Apparently there is this great secret to making the fabric waist a bit bigger than the elastic and then pulling the elastic as you sew and, hence, creating sort of little "puckers" (Linda and Kathy would have better words for that) that create "spinn-a-bility". And I did it? Shocking, I tell you! Shocking! 

Seriously, the girls have seen my 8th grade home ec projects.....I don't think they really expected these skirts to turn out.

It's a bit windy in these pictures, so you can't really see how the uneven hem of the skirt hangs.  We had just returned from a field trip to a local stringed instrument store. Miss Mouse has now added the cello to her long list of instruments she wants to play. I would love that. She tried a 1/2 size out at the store, and it sounded nothing like a beginner on the violin (teehee!). She also tried out a violin/fiddle, and Sunny plucked a bass. It would be impossible for me to pick our favorite field trip because they've all been awesome, and this one definitely continued that trend. They even got to listen to a luthier (sp?) explain how he repairs violins and other strings. I don't know how much they picked up on that, but they stood there and paid attention. So I know they gained something from even that more detailed presentation.

And Mighty Mouse? 

Well, he did his pre-field-trip event of having a blown-out diaper (he does this before each and every field trip we go on - this time I at least was able to get his diaper changed before we left - the previous times he's been on the floor of the minivan - these times are, interestingly, mainly the only times he has blow-outs....), and then he hung out contentedly in his front pack until just before the presentation was over when he got a little too tired to hear much more about the sound pins in violins. He's such a sweet little trooper.

I look like Mommy's family.

I look like Daddy's family.

I look like myself mostly, though!

Anyway, I already have more fabric and thread ready to go for more instruction-based sewing projects, and I can't wait! Thank goodness for all those hours I spent at Linda's and 4-H learning - who knew it was all in preparation for being able to follow tutorials from other people's blogs?!

*The tutorial I followed can be found at www.makeit-loveit.com 

Belated Easter Pictures

On Easter we had three handsome sweatervested young men in our house. They posed admirably for pictures.

Notice Grandpa Bob and his mini-me are both shocked by what Matthias is telling them.

Matthias, now contemplative, and Grandpa Bob and Mini-Bob continue to mirror each other.

The mirroring by Grandpa Bob and Mini-Bob continues while Matthias wonders how long this photo shoot will last. Wasn't there some mention of ham?

I could have posted about ten pictures of Grandpa Bob and Mighty Mouse with the same expression. Mike and I were going through them tonight, and it really is hilarious. They aren't always flattering expressions, though, for either party, so I chose to leave them off even though they are treasures (and will be included in scrapbooks for sure!).

Grandpa with his hands full.

Grandpa Bob's got things under control. Notice Mighty Mouse has his sleeves rolled up? Yeah, that's because his sleeves were too short on him. The cute outfit from my friend's little guys barely buttoned in the back, but I was determined it was his Easter outfit (it was 9-12 months, and he was only 6...). He wore it that day; I washed it and packed it away, but it was a great sweatervested day!

Matthias is ready for ham. Or squash baby food with oatmeal. Whichever.

 

Auntie Laura and her boys.

The girls and our boys.

*I did get some pictures of the girlies, but the boys won't be part of the Daddy-Daughter-Dance post. So I figured they would be happy to get their own post. There's also a post titled something like "Even Idiots Can Sew" coming soon showcasing some little skirts I sewed that actually turned out!

Cherry Milk

We had some serious yummyness around here this afternoon. After a run on which both girls ran for 30 minutes (Miss Mouse) and 20 minutes (Sunny), we needed some refreshing! Both girls took frequent water breaks along with a few "kiss Mighty Mouse" breaks (Sunny) or "check on Mighty to see that he is comfortable" breaks (Miss Mouse), but still, that was a long run for the young critters!  I'm pretty sure I looked a little idiotic running along behind Sunny, next to Miss Mouse, with the double jogger (Sunny started in there but joined us after a few blocks), smiling from ear to ear. Hopefully no one thought I was out being some sort of task-master and making them run!! Uff da. I was the one yawning at seven o'clock tonight!

Anyway, as a refreshment this afternoon, I came up with this and don't want to forget it. I also thought it might be something someone else might be interested in trying - or maybe not. Either way, I want it preserved for my own memory!

1 cup frozen cherries (we got ours at Sam's Club - otherwise, I'm waaaay too cheap to spring for them!)
12 ounces milk (we used rice, but I realize most "normal" families will likely have a different preference - I don't think type matters)
1/2 tsp almond extract (vanilla would probably be fine, too)
--Dump it all in a blender, while checking on young women drawing with chalk and young man trapped in his play pen outside, puree it until smooth and deliver it to previously mentioned children who might just say, in Sunny's words, "Wow!!! This tastes like cookies!!!".
--How many this serves depends on your serving size ideal. We split it three ways; the girls each got about 6 ounces, and I got around 4. I will probably double the recipe next time!

The House on Pooh Corner

It's been almost two years now that this little blonde and I have been playing cards. I took these pictures in October of 2011. Miss Mouse was four.

Those eyelashes - from her Dad's side. The concentrating-tongue-out look - from mine. The wispy, blonde curls - from both.

She reminded me that day of pink cotton candy. Fluffy. Sweet. I wanted to eat up every minute.

She doesn't wear that hair bow anymore. She's more likely now to put her hair in a ponytail herself or to clip it loosely in one of those magic clip thingies. She does a very decent job, for a six-year old, too.

She knows that I'm right in using "too" in that sentence back there, too. Also. She picked that up right away a few weeks ago. Perhaps she's her Mommy's and Auntie Linda's grammar-girl. We know she's a rule-follower, so phonics and reading have been right up her alley.

But how....where....Where did those years go? She's a real card player now. She tries really hard to teach her little sister who, during these pictures, was still down for a nap. Well, technically, she was here:

Napping under the bed.

Lately I've thought about this day whenever the Mice and I have brought out the card deck. We're just as likely now to play dominoes, and the feeling I get is the same.

I had called my Grandma when Miss Mouse began to play cards. She was the first person I thought of as I explained the rules of Go Fish to this little girl, and I wanted to share this with her - this...future. 

I played Snap/SlapJack with Papa. But I've never been able to share his great grandchildren with him.

And now I can't call my Grandma and tell her that Sunny is picking up Go Fish, too - that we're going to have enough people in our house during the day for a really great Whist game someday - that Grandpa Don would have thought that was pretty great - but that we probably won't play it as seriously as he and his siblings did. 

It's not something I want to complain about exactly. It's great that I can still tell my Grandma that the girls play cards - or write to her - she's still "with us" unlike my grandpas. I'm thankful for so many things in regard to my Grandma, but lately I've been so sad about so many things, as well.  It's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that so many years have passed since I was the little girl learning Rummy. Riding on the shuttle bus at the state fair. Driving around Williston to get a Dairy Queen treat that she knew I wouldn't eat more than three bites of before getting full. Picking up coins at Penny Hill/Indian Hill and not realizing until too old that she was the one dropping them for me in the first place.

So, what comes from all those great memories is that they start to twist in my mind and become fear. Fear of time and how it flies. Fear that I'm going to wake up tomorrow with a bunch of "should-have-dones", three little launched birdies, and an empty nest. It honestly terrifies me how fast life moves. I just celebrated the ninth birthday of a baby girl who I thought I just watched be discharged from the hospital last month. How can it have been nine years since her mommy and I sat together and waited for her to get to come home? I even remember what both of us we wearing.  Then there's the eight birthday that should be coming up and that will be celebrated again by two younger sisters and their older-sister-honoring-fruit-pizza. Where has all this time gone?

As I read a blog post by one of my favorite "major bloggers" (i.e., she's published books, etc. - check out Ann Voskamp at www.aholyexperience.com ), her words struck a chord: "Don't grieve that it's gone. Wonder that it was....Inhale that it happened". And I smile at that and breathe a little lighter even through some tears. It's not just time with my Grandma and my Grandpa Don and Papa - floating around in my memory box (thank you, Barney-the-purple-dinosaur and a hilarious 300 mile trip with "Barney's Memory Box") are so many, many good memories - sewing with my Auntie Linda until we could hardly see straight, trekking with her around New York City back when the skyline included the World Trade Center towers and life was a little bit less scary, the smell of my Uncle Bill and Auntie Karen's saddlery store and always being a little afraid that I'd get lost in it if I went too far from my Mom, holiday meals, driving in circles around hay bales with my Dad and my Uncle Howard until they were nearly (so they said) as sick as a fourteen-year-old driver could possibly make them, candlelight Christmas Eve dinner at Papa's, reading Trixie Belden with my Mom, playing train in the kitchen with the chairs as she washed the floors, eating supper after supper after supper in the field, sticking to the vinyl seats of the pickups in warm harvesting. 

It's really been eating away at me, this sadness that these experiences are all just memories, that they're gone now, that the little girl who lived them is gone, too, in many ways. In a large way, she disappeared overnight in the late spring of 2005.....she's returned, though, lately, in the past two years or so but with a lot of sadness for what is not. I can't imagine enjoying what is any more than I do, but from here on out rather than letting thoughts of "how will I make it when this is not what life is like anymore" and "it's going so fast; this is just going to be gone in an instant" sneak in, I think I'm going to take the advice found in this post and celebrate that my childhood was, that it existed in such a pleasant form as it did, that I loved the people I loved and was and am loved by them, and that I now have the incredible, awesome, unbelievable blessing to be part of the childhood of three other little people. I think I'll still cross my fingers, though, and pray that time doesn't move toooooo quickly. I'm not ready to leave the House on Pooh Corner yet, "there's so much to be done"*.

*"House on Pooh Corner" - song written by, as best I can find, Kenny Loggins   

Mighty Mouse the Mobile

Mighty Mouse has been mobile for a couple weeks now. We were definitely, certainly, entirely unprepared for a mobile seven-month-old. The girls were early crawlers at 7.75 and 8 months, respectively, but 7 months and 3 days? I guess I had just counted on a few more weeks to the whole family back in the habit of putting things out of reach of baby. That said, his development is a blessing to watch and soak up and enjoy whether it happens when we are prepared for it or when we're a bit off-guard!

The girls love it when he carries things around in his mouth. They say he is "being a puppy". I suppose that is sort of a convenient coincidental timing considering our real puppy (dog) may be on a permanent vacation-with-visitation from us!!

He's a bit like a wind-up toy. Move him back across the floor, run to the other side of the kitchen with a toy, and watch him move toward you. Fun for the whole family.

Sporting a cute onesie from Auntie Steph and a not-so-cute bruise on the bridge of his nose. This happened the day that he also came down with bronchitis. Poor little Mighty Dude has had a rough week; the week before that he broke through the last three teeth in the initial set of eight (four top, four bottom - eight, right? I'm running frighteningly little sleep). We're hoping he's rounded the corner now, though, because he inhaled five or six containers of baby food today, much more like his normal self than the 1/2 carton-baby he had become this past week.

Congratulations, Mighty Mouse! There's so much to explore and so many loving people to chase!

Sick Times Three

For my first five years of life, I was an only child. An only child who prayed every night for a younger sibling to love, who wished on every single first star every single night for that sibling. But, I spent those first five years being the only one my parents needed to take care of.  That's not a good or a bad thing; it's just how it was, and it isn't like that here now for my own children.

Somedays I feel pretty guilty about that. Maybe every mom does.

Especially these past few days, I've been left feeling so sad for our kiddos. Before Mighty Mouse, we had gotten into the "mommy-can-handle-two-children-these-ages" stage. Even when they were sick, I pretty much had things under control. It helped to have Mike around, but it wasn't a physical necessity most of the time. No one was really neglected or lying sadly alone on the couch waiting for their turn to cuddle because two children of those ages could cuddle their mommy together. We were a functional unit of our very own.

It's been hard to let that go. Because letting our "functional unit" go has meant leaning on Mike far more than I have - ever. It's meant letting the dishes in the sink go too long and choosing to rock the most needy child instead. It's meant triaging the illnesses, the injuries, and making the hard choice to attend to the one with the highest degree of need first.....which necessarily means others are made to wait. They're not ignored, but they're made to wait and let their more-needy sibling go ahead of them.  The kids don't seem to have had any problem with this, but it has, at times, nearly ripped my heart out.

Last night was a circus around here. I slept with Mighty Mouse because he's been choking all week on his post-nasal drip (let's just call it "snot" from here on out, but I wanted to prove I know the correct term...), and I'm terrified that in the middle of the night he will puke and choke on it, and I'll find him at 7 a.m., three hours too late. Ugh.  So, he was to be propped on blankets with pillows fencing him in bed with me; he settled in his crib, and I intended to get ready for bed and then move him into his spot next to me. Shortly after we got them to bed (we, because Mike stayed home from working out to help me get the critters settled), though, I heard the old, familiar cough from Sunny. With tears in my eyes I went and got the nebulizer out, knowing that we needed to start with her treatments for the first time in 15 months. By the time I got it all set up, her coughing was already worse. Ugh, again. In the meantime, Mighty had choked, so I sent Sunny with Mike and checked on Mighty Mouse who must have settled himself. Back to the nebulizer, and then the night really got wild. At some point, we settled Sunny, moved Mighty in with me, and then realized Miss Mouse was ready to puke. And puke she did. I'm hoping and praying she's got the same bug the littler ones do so that we aren't on the verge of mass-puking like last October, but whatever is the case, Mike was up with her three times to clean up puke and settle her back into bed. We had a quiet day today, watching way too many Barney episodes on my computer, and had a nice supper, which was great until we reviewed it via puke all over the living room again. Poor Miss Mouse. So, as Mike went out the door to his Stephen Ministry meeting, I had Sunny just getting out of the bathtub, Mighty Mouse confined to his crib because we were not going to let him crawl all over the puke-infested living room, and Miss Mouse lying on the couch feeling terrible that "I just couldn't make it to the bathroom, Mama". *Sigh*.

And there I was wishing I could hold all three of them, stroke their hair, rock them to sleep, sing to them, make sure they feel loved when they feel so physically sick. Instead, I hugged Miss Mouse and settled her into bed with some water and a garbage can and kleenex box close by; then nursed Mighty Mouse, helped him settled from his next round of choking on snot, and rocked him to sleep; and then went and retrieved Sunny from her bed where she was flopping about and rocked her to sleep. She's often the one who is left on her own - she's big enough that Mighty often wins out in the needy-department, but she's small enough that Miss Mouse often needs more help with schoolwork. It's tough in the middle, I think. She snuggled right in, my little "touchy" one, and fell asleep in five minutes.

As I thought about it, the guilt that was threatening to move in and take over wilted away a bit. As much as I think "I could be everything they needed if there were just one of them", I know in my heart that my being everything they need really isn't being that at all. My job isn't to be their world, their everything; my job is to make sure they will be there for each other and know how to love each other and to know that we loved them when we are no longer able to be there for them. My parents' job when during my first five years was not to jump to my every beck-and-call, and they didn't. It was to make sure I felt loved, and they did. So, the "you aren't enough for more than one" feeling is a lie, but it's a powerful one sometimes.

I thought back to an incident the other day. It had been a long day - Mighty Mouse broke through three teeth in one week - and the lie that "you are not enough for three children" was sneaking in. When I walked into the girls' bedroom, they were giggling. They told me that there would be a surprise for me that I wouldn't find out until the morning. Giggle. Giggle. Somehow I figured out that they were planning to move into the "box" in the area under their bed for the night after I left the room. They were pretty disappointed that I'd figured it out, but I made a deal with them that they could have breakfast there if they slept in their own beds. As they digested that idea, they both agreed that they really don't sleep well in "the box" because, in Sunny's words, "We just talk and talk and talk and laugh and talk and talk!" and, in Miss Mouse's words, "Then we start coming up with tongue twisters to play, and then we just laugh more and can't get to sleep."

There was also the incident at Christmas when my sister told the girls that they were sleeping in what had been their Mommy's room at the farm and that Mighty Mouse was sleeping in what had been Auntie Laura's room. Apparently they looked at her a little confused and said, "So you had separate rooms?" She answered in the affirmative, and they both said, "Why?".

And so.....I am not enough for three children. I'm not even enough for one when it comes right down to it. I don't think I could ever live up to the expectations that I, and pinterest, place on myself. Even non-depressed me will often leave dishes undone in the sink, dust on the furniture, and laundry unfolded. But when I see how these kiddos love each other, how they will give for each other, how even they wish there were two more in the house.....it's such a great reminder of what raising them is about, and it's such a relief that it isn't really about me and my expectations and fears in the first place!