My life in movies

I would love to sit and tell you that I don't watch t.v., that instead we all sit at night and read by firelight. I would love to say that I have never, ever rushed the kiddos to bed to assure that I see the first 5 minutes of a given show, so that I know just who it was that had some horrible thing happen to them. I must admit, sadly that I have, and most of the time I spend the first 5 minuted of said show thinking about the fact that it was terrible that I just threw my kids into bed and traded them for television.
I have found that when I write these little bits, I tend, at some times to sound a bit overly romantic. My sweet children who I am in awe of daily and my husband who was made just for me. It is all true. I do love my family. I am blessed to be a mom and wife. I have parents that I adore and who are always there for all of us. I am a lucky, lucky, blessed girl, and I know it. The problem is that I don't want any of you to think that I'm full of it. I am not.
Life can be as tragic as it is wonderful, and while it seems sometimes to be a hearty strong thing, it can just as easily be broken down. Like a dam that needs constant tending so that when the flood does come, it doesn't wash away the whole town, life and love need constant attention.
As my daughter, who is now home from her cross country romp, and I sat watching "Ya ya Sisterhood" the other night, I began thinking just how life can mimic the movies, or at least how movies certainly do mirror life. There is a scene where the character Vivi runs to her sick child only to find that all of her children have come down with the flu. She is holding one child who gets sick on her, while the others all cry, and well, she loses complete control. I believe that the movie goer is supposed to think that she completely lost her marbles. What a crazy lady, right? Well maybe, but there was a winter night in our house that went down just like that, and well(again) I almost almost completely lost control. I had been almost three nights without sleep as Middle Little was up with a stomach flu. Just as he was recovering Lady and Littlest became sick at exactly the same moment. There I was trying to direct littlest body so as to not get the sheets any dirtier than they were, and stepping in things on the floor that I shall not mention here, while Lady, across the house was calling for me. It was almost just like the movie. I began to cry(sob), and my husband began to look at me as if I had grown two or four heads, because who cries over vomit?(me obviously). But I didn't run off for three days of sleep in a hotel room, as Vivi does (although I really, really wanted to), instead I cleaned up the mess, started the washer, loaded a couple of unsalvageable things into a trash bag and carried it outside, set my foot on a fresh patch of ice, landed on the icy pavement and just sat and cried.
See, it isn't always marvelous here in the cove, but I am sure you all suspected that. We have days where bedtime is more like a scene from "Night at the Museum" . The directions say to lock the lions up before they eat you, you know. While we do have fairy tale days where everything goes according to plan, we also have days where there is enough tension to blow the roof off at any moment as in some action flick. There are moments when the boys throw down like a scene from "Fight Club". I have times when I can't keep up, days where I feel like both sides of Cinderella, the one who cleans and the one who runs off with her prince. If I am going to be completely honest, which is really the whole point here, I have days where I want to have a knock down, drag out, "War of the Roses" fight with my husband and I'm sure he has days where he wants to "Throw Mama from the Train". That's just life. Good and bad, pretty, ugly, and down right disgusting, happy, sad, and amazingly hysterical. But no matter how it is at any given moment I do know this, it is a gift, and it is up to all of us to make the best of the bad times and relish the good and maybe even hope for better. I loved the movie "Little Miss Sunshine". It is the perfect example of a family trying to do the best for their little girl while everything is going wrong. The teenage boy is tells his uncle how he wishes he could just skip the teenage years and the uncle replies that they are necessary because if you didn't have hard times how would you know how wonderful the good times are. That might be one of the most simple and wonderful things to take away. Life can be all of the things I said before, and so I can focus on the bad side of life, the hard times that everyone in their own way is dealing with, or I can focus on the good side, the raw beauty, and that is what I choose to do here, if not to tell you about it, maybe just to remind myself. Life is short we all know that, and have learned the lesson the hard way even though we are told. I want to be the parent who, when my children have a bad day, no matter how old they get, come to me for advice or assistance like I do with my parents. I want to be the kind of wife who my husband wants to come home to at the end of a stressful day, because I help him find peace. It is easy to let myself believe that to be that person for my family I have to be perfect, all smiles and no tears. I know, though, that is not the case at all, I just have to be real. In bad times, I don't need the candy coating, although a bag of MnM's does help in some situations. I need the ones who say,"Yeah, I've been there and it really sucks."
Life is all about the highs and lows and even the sideways. It is truly the the lessons learned in the hard times that help us appreciate the good. So, while the things I write here are true and very real, I also have things in my life that are not so rosy, like the day I shared about falling through the heat vent.
I will leave you with this, in "Sex and the City" , the girls are having a conversation about whether they are happy or not. They ask Charlotte how often she is happy and she says ,"Every day". The other women look at her like she is lying and her response is something like this,"I'm not saying that I'm happy all day every day, but yes, at some point every day, I am happy."
I think that pretty much sums it up, don't you?

A brothers love

We are in the final countdown until Lady Little's wheels touch down a little closer to home. It has been a month since we saw her last. A long, testosterone filled month. I am in serious need of some good old fashioned girl talk and most definitely a mani/pedi day with my firstborn. Last night as we all settled in for the night I mentioned this need to the hubs. He just didn't get it, and actually looked quite offended that my boys were not enough to make me happy. Of course it's not that at all. I have enjoyed my boy time tremendously. I have loved watching Middle Little ride his bike over his new ramp as Littlest rolled his dump truck down the hill to see what it crashed into. It's just that life with all boys in the house is a bit more rough around the edges than it is when there is a girl in the mix. Plus, my boys just don't understand a bad hair day that can't be fixed with a baseball cap and in their world there is no reason to put on makeup before a trip to the flea market. She gets those things, and I am, as we all are, ready for her to come home.
The truth is though that while the sensitivity level of our household has gone down quite a bit since she left, I am happy to say that it has not been lost all together. A testament to that was my sweet Middle's actions yesterday. Littlest had his 3 year checkup with our family doctor. With the Hubs at work I had prepared myself to take both boys. Now, I can handle heading out with both boys most days, but when a doctors office waiting room, and possibility of shots is thrown in, I tend to have anxiety over it.
The morning did not begin as I had hoped. It was filled with bickering and all sorts of disagreeing. When we arrived and I began to fill out the paperwork, Littlest began acting like one of those kids. You know the ones that you look at in the store and think, or even maybe say out loud,"Boy, if that were my child...". It wasn't pretty. His actions mixed with the fact that Middle would really rather have been anywhere else at that moment and was not too timid to tell me so, prompted me to text my sweet hardworking husband to say that the next appointment was all his. After weighing and measuring we were put into our little room. Ahhh, a controllable environment with no senior citizens to horrify. All was going well. Middle was enjoying the company of our doctor and her nurse, who he may just have the tiniest crush on. Dr. I decided that we should check Littlest's iron level. "No problem", I said way too soon. "He does really well with the finger prick".
No such luck, as the lab they use requires a blood draw. Of course they don't require that you come into the lab, they know better.
Up on the table he went and the doctor sweetly explained to him just what would happen and while it didn't really sound anything like this, this is what I heard.
"You will hold your strong willed 3 year old down while we do our utmost to get the blood before he screams."
Now remember that an exasperated Middle was in the room with us, making a mental list of all of the places he would rather be than in this tiny room with his stinky brother and his grumpier by the minute Mom. While the doctor explained what was about to happen, this is what he must have heard."NOW we're going to set your sweet little brother on this table, see, and your Mom is going to hold him down, see, and laugh at his pain while we take this huge needle and fill this bucket up with his blood. Muahahahah!"
As the procedure began it looked like it might all go off without too much drama. Littlest was being very agreeable and held his squeezy truck while they tapped his chubby arm looking for a vein. I tenderly draped myself over him and brushed the hair from his forehead as they began. He watched in awe. What male of the species wouldn't love three women talking sweetly and focusing on just them, right? And then it happened. A scream that surely shocked the elderly patients in the other rooms ripped through the examining room. I tried my best to hold him still, but to no avail as the needle popped out of his arm.
"Well, we'll have to try the other arm", the nurse explained. We all did a swticharoo, but quickly decided that the other arm was best so again we traded places. As I looked over to check on Middle I saw that he had covered his ears to block out his little brothers cries. I did my best to assure him while also doing my utmost to keep Littlest from jumping off the table.
More determined than ever we began again. Holding tightly to his legs and making way more promises than I will ever be able to keep, I tried to explain the need to hold still so that these sweet ladies didn't need a stiff drink when the shift was over.
In a whirlwind of screams and tears we finally had success. As the three of us had a short celebration of victory and told Littlest what a big boy he had been, all of our eyes fell on my sweet Middle Little. He was curled up in a ball in the chair, covering his ears and his face. Before I could reach him, our sweet physician patted his back and told him it was all done. As he sat up we all saw it. The tears that were streaming down his face were every bit as big and real as his baby brother's. It was if he had felt the same fear and pain that his brother had. He came to my side and buried his face. I reassured both of my boys, and remembered back to a few days after we brought Littlest home. The hospital called to say that I had left something. As I hung up Middle looked at me with huge eyes and asked if we had to take his little brother back. All was well as we left the appointment. The stickers and lollipops that filled both of their hands must have wiped away the trauma. I didn't need stickers, the fact that we were on our way home was enough for me.
I'm sure that we will have more bicker filled days. Middle will surely have days where he wishes he was an only child, as all children do at one time or another. But no matter what, they are siblings, and while it may be fine in their own minds to torment eachother, everyone else had better watch out. Had the ones torturing his brother been a pack of bullies and not a sweet doctor nurse duo the outcome most likely would have been very different.

5 years

We've had good times and bad, health and sickness, we've been richer and we've been poorer, we've kept our vows to love, comfort, and cherish...
In some ways the past 5 years have sped by like a lightening flash, yet at the very same time I find it hard to realize that it has only been 5 years. It has been five years of living our vows, not because we promised each other, or God, or our friends and family, but rather because we want to. I know that we will have times of want, and there may be days when it is harder to keep those vows we made. But for now, we realize how lucky we were to find each other. Not everyone finds their soul mate. We realize the blessings of friends and family, and children running amok. We are thankful for our home and our cozy beds. We are thankful for laughter that we share and comfort we give each other. And to this day and hopefully for many many more years to come, no matter what is to come, he will be by my side and I by his and out littles all around. Because I now know more than ever that I would rather live in a tin can with him, than a mansion on a hill with someone else.


I love you baby, now more than ever.