Donuts

We got a most delicious surprise in the mail the other day. Donuts arrived from Auntie Laura! What a treat to have donuts in our mailbox!

These weren't just any donuts. These were made by my sister with the same recipe we grew up eating.

Emma's donuts these were, and the minute I opened the bag, I could smell Papa's house.

The coffee smell was missing. I contemplated brewing some just to get the full effect, but considering I am not sure where the coffee-maker was put four years ago when we moved here nor am I sure that there are even coffee grounds existing in this house....I savored the donut smell itself with tears in my eyes.

Obviously someone else was savoring the flavor fairly quickly, but I ate mine slowly, my mind drifting back to the near-overabundance of Emma's donuts in my childhood, an overabundance that, back then, seemed as if it would always be around.

Then another little someone woke up from her nap and inquired what the fuss was about.


Maybe it was that her sister was running in circles saying "Donut! Donuts! I love donuts!" and telling her how "They smell just like Papa's house!"....Whatever the case, Sunny dove right into her own donut.

I think hers disappeared the quickest.

My childhood donut days are long since gone, only existing as memories of days where Laura and I looked like the faces seen here, days where we consumed the donuts, and Emma, and possibly Great Aunt Myrtle, as well, supplied them...hence, the tears with these donuts.

I tell these Mice about their great-grandpas; I told them that day about the smell of donuts and coffee, about a time and place where people had an afternoon "lunch" and actually took time to stop in and visit each other, to sit around enjoying coffee and a donut. But I can't show them. They can't actually smell that time and see it and taste it and live it. So we do the best we can, and we eat Emma's Donuts By Laura; we take an afternoon snack break; and we sit and visit.

Sunny Days & Little Ladies

We've had some sunny days here. Actually, warm, truly warm, sunny days these have been. It's been glorious to go outside without my breath being taken away by a biting wind. Spring may come here after all! Oddly enough this winter hasn't seemed terribly long to me yet. Note to Mother Nature - that does not mean that a fierce late-winter blizzard is needed. It's just that we were able to play in our shirtsleeves throughout October, and despite being cooped up now for five months, despite basically roaming sleeplessly from one cold/cough to another throughout those five months, I am not yet at the point of despondence when I look at the snow in the yard. Today it sounded for all the world like it was raining outside.....that amount of melting was happening. It was wonderful, and I would love if we can make it to springtime now without a blizzard blast or terrible flood fight.

Anyway, we've been in good spirits around here with all the sunshine, especially now that it lasts later in the day.
*As we all played in the yard today, Sunny Mouse began shaking her little behind, bobbing up and down, bending her knees. She explained "I dancing. I show Hubet (the "r" is intentionally omitted for linguistic accuracy). I dance." Hubert was impressed for sure.
*Next, Sunny decided "Hubet" needed to notice the moon. "Look! Hubet, there moon, Hubet!" For the most part, he did try to look where she was pointing.
*Sunny: "Hubet! I make snowman! (more like a snowball) Hubet, see snowman?" Obediently, he did turn and look. He even seemed to make an effort to show doggy-interest.
*No doubt, Sunny appreciated this "doggy interest" since she herself had been dubbed "Whoofy the Dog" for the day. She is fairly volatile when it comes to following directions that Miss Mouse gives, but today she decided to happily be Whoofy Dog. I had to explain that "Whoofy" had stayed in the car at the pharmacy, and the "Little Girl" was coming in with us. Together they decided she would be "Little Girl Whoofy Dog". Hmm...I don't think they quite got my point...

Miss Mouse has been loving our afternoon reading of Little House in the Big Woods. In fact, we finished it yesterday. I did censor some chunks - particularly where Laura did not want to hear the pig squeal when it was being butchered and where Laura was concerned that their calf would be butchered to use its stomach for cheese-making. Laura was fine with the arrangement when she found out it was her grandparents' calf, but I wasn't sure Miss Mouse would be, although I know she would have stoicly bitten her lip and asked a few questions at the time....and then had a crying outburst later in the day about something completely ridiculous. And so I do something I swore I would never do, and I censor.....at some point, I'll stop, but right now...well, she's only four....

She has been enthralled with anything "grown up" lately. The other day, while she was doing the dishes of her own volition, she said to me, "Mommy, I can't wait to be a grown-up. I feel so grown-up when I do the dishes!". She's actually really good at it, too!

78 Pounds

No, that's not how much Miss Mouse weighs. I think it's around the weight she needs prior to getting out of a car seat or booster for good, but that feat may not be attained until high school at the rate these little Mice grow.

Instead, 78 pounds is the amount of food the Mice collected for the food pantry in town via their birthday celebration. We hauled it all in and weighed it on a super-scale. Miss Mouse was incredibly impressed with the entire operation. The towering skyscrapers of food crates stacked as far as her little eyes could roam; the massive semis parked unloading and loading in the freight garages; the small forklift driving the food crates around the building, arranging them for easy shipping; I thought it might be a bit overwhelming for her since she was clinging tightly to my hand, but she seemed to drink it all in and be quite interested, too. She's talked about it now for several days, so I know the experience is solidifying in her developing little brain.

For me, when we dropped off our 78 pounds, although I was very impressed at that poundage, I also felt a bit insignificant when we looked at our small stack of bags on the giant scale and then turned to look at the stacks upon stacks upon stacks of non-perishable food items waiting to be shipped around the area. I wondered for a moment if our measly little 78 pounds made any difference at all, if it mattered in any way, and if Miss Mouse would feel the same discouragement and insignificance.

Then I looked down at my gap-jawed four-year-old standing in awe and looking so proud as she shook the hand of the man who took down our donation.....and I realized that our 78 pounds do matter. Someone will eat the food we donated, someone who wouldn't have had much food in their house otherwise. Likely that someone will be a child. Miss Mouse knows this. She knows she brought the food there to give to "people who don't have food". She was impressed by the amount of food in the warehouse, but that did not dimish her offering in her eyes. This is just one baby step, but we're on the road to teaching these Mice how we respond to the blessings God has given us. We're on the road to helping them understand the great responsibility that comes with great a privilege such as knowing that we don't have to go to bed hungry for lack of food.

I sent off our bags with 78 pounds of food in them with the hope that God will multiply the 78 pounds from these two little ones as He multiplied another child's loaves and fish to feed thousands of people and with the knowledge that some of that multiplication, some of that blessing, will be felt in our own home as we strive to raise children who appreciate what we have and who give as cheerfully as they play.

The Eyes That Watch Me

These are my little valentines.

These are the eyes that watch me....day after day after day.....


Day in and day out....watching and learning from everything we do....or don't do....


And as sweet as that fact is.....it is equally frightening.....

....and equally humbling....

...and equally motivating....

When I look back into their eyes, when I look at these pictures, I'm led, pulled, to live in these precious moments, to be the mother I want them to have, to influence them in the most positive ways I can because this is the only chance I have to be Miss Mouse's Mom for her 4-year-old-year and Sunny's Mom for her 2-year-old year....there are no repeats, no do-overs, no way to take back comments should not have been said and sometimes no way to revisit conversations that should have been but weren't...and so I pray...and pray...and pray...for the patience and the wisdom and the strength and the wit and the energy and focus to be what they deserve, what they need....because these little eyes are growing up so fast.

Toilet Time

To be fair, I thought I should update a bit on Sunny's toilet progress....I remember updating on Miss Mouse's, er, "habits" once or twice. I thought it only fair to equally humiliate my children. Sunny Mouse has been trained in one way since August (18 months). It is certainly the "way" which I prefer she be trained, as I rarely change a dirty diaper anymore. For wet diapers, though, she is only starting to be interested. Miss Mouse was pretty fully-trained by this point, but since that was so incredibly early, I haven't been concerned at all.

The other day, though, she decided that yes, she wanted to wear "pretty training pants". She made it all day without an accident. Unfortunately, I'm not positive that she had enough to drink that day.....which makes me wonder if Miss Mouse trained herself by restricting her liquids without my noticing....which makes me sad. At that point, I have to look at the next picture to cheer up.

We gave up on the pretty training pants last week when we had two days of constant accidents. As in, we never once made it to the toilet, and Sunny was very disappointed each time. I'm not into shaming or discouraging her into training herself, so we'll just wait for a time she has more focus and control. And I'll keep enjoying the lack of dirty diapers and the look on her face (see above) when she is successful.

Sweets

In preparation for Valentine's Day, Miss Mouse's birthday, Sunny's birthday, and Daddy's birthday, Miss Mouse and I embarked on a baking project. This wasn't just any baking project. We were not only baking the cut-out sugar cookies, with sprinkles, we were also planning to frost them and squish them into sandwiches.



Nope, there was no way that was all happening in one day.

"Fancy Nancy" would love this sprinkled cookie. This was the first one Miss Mouse did by herself, and, despite her protests, I helped with the others.....not because I can't appreciate the beauty of an overly-sparkly-cookie, but because I didn't think our sprinkles would hold out if they all looked like that one!

Our more evenly-sprinkled masterpieces. Miss Mouse loved helping bake the sweets; I loved the help of my sweet.

A Biscuit & An Egg

Last week, two little, tiny, usually-insignificant objects ruled our household for 24 hours, and I'm not talking about my Mice. They are little, tiny, but extraordinarily significant. I'm talking about a biscuit and an egg. My biscuit recipe calls for one egg. One. For an entire recipe of biscuit dough, it takes one egg.

It was past Mouse-feeding-time, so when the dough was mixed - Sunny had "dumped" the ingredients; Miss Mouse was the "stirring expert" - I allowed both of them to sample it. I indulged myself, as well, congratulating myself on supposedly sneaking more than they realized I had eaten. I'm guessing they saw through my sneakiness....they're perceptive little creatures.

The hotdish created with the biscuit dough was less than savory. Neither Mouse would touch it. Thank goodness. I had an extra helping for them, but I didn't finish the "extra" of the second helping. Something just wasn't sitting right.

I gave us all some chewable papaya to help our stomachs after supper. Usually that helps all of us, if I have the right brand of the stuff on hand.

Around about midnight, I was still prowling the house, anxious as a housecat near a sprinkler. I just did not feel right, well, healthy. And at 12:45, my body let me know that it was indeed not healthy, happy, or proud of my raw-egg-biscuit-dough-indulgence. And it let me know again. And again. And again.

At one point, the world got all dark and sparkly, and I passed out. My Knight in Shining Armor arrived just in time...almost. The poor guy spent his night comforting Sunny Baby Mouse, who wanted only her momma. As soon as he would get her back to sleep, he would run to check on me since I was spending the night on the bathroom floor for convenience's sake. By that time, Sunny would usually be awake again screaming for me, so back to her he would run. It was quite a night, and he earned years' worth of brownie points.

By 6 a.m., Sunny and Mr. T were both asleep. My 5 a.m. experiment with keeping water down had failed spectacularly by that point, so it was with dismay, though not surprise, that I heard Miss Mouse shout her need for assistance. Her body did not appreciate the egg, either, apparently.

Sunny Baby Mouse lasted until around 10 a.m. before she started ridding herself of the previous night's "treat".

Mr. T had called in to take work off - perhaps for the first time in years, at least for a reason like this - to take care of us. He was stocking up brownie points at a shocking speed.

What is amazing about this whole, disgusting, stinky story is how thankful I was in the midst of it.

You see, we were puking on Thursday. The previous Thursday our washing machine had quit. I had called an appliance store, failed at talking to the computerized system, and been transferred to a call center somewhere to schedule an appointment for it to be fixed. We were scheduled for Saturday, but on Saturday, the call center let me know that the repairman was too busy to come. He would be out on Thursday, meaning it would have been an entire week before we could even know what to do with our washing machine. Needless to say, I checked around and found someone else who could come on Tuesday. He showed up as scheduled on Tuesday and told us the poor machine was beyond repair. Desperate for clean clothes, the Mice and I trekked to a local appliance store (and by "local", I mean actually owned and operated locally - no call centers involved) and purchased a washing machine on Wednesday afternoon; we were put on the schedule for delivery of our new machine for Thursday morning at 9 a.m.

By Thursday morning, I had several loads of food poisoning casualties to go into the newly-installed machine. I am thankful beyond words that we were not back at the point of diagnosing the old machine that morning rather than getting the new one installed! What better way to break in the new machine than to get food poisoning??

Miss Mouse has been 'instructing' her younger sibling about eating raw eggs this week. After mixing up cookies yesterday, Sunny Baby Mouse thought we should sample the dough, as we have in the past. I silently lamented with her over not sampling the fresh, almond-scented mound in front of me. But, keeping us both in line was Miss Mouse who explained, "No, Sunny, we don't want to eat raw eggs because we would get poison again". This explanation led Sunny to nod her head and say "Noooo. Puke. No."

Apparently we have all learned our lessons. And we are all four of us very thankful for that beautiful new washing machine.