The day that peed on me...

I don't usually say things like "Damn it" but I found that muttering it under my breath somehow made things better. Gold star for me.

I also don't USUALLY find Doodle splashing gleefully in a puddle left by her big brother on the floor, but that's the reality of this day of days.

It started out pretty good. My nieces were over for a couple of hours. The kids were getting a band together. Things were hectic but good. My sister in law stayed a little while and we chatted and discussed the creative differences of the band. We were mediating if you will. We were trying to keep the band together. My BFF called, during a particularly heated debate about how lame my Kazoo is, and I missed the call. At one point the boy came out from under the piano a little too fast and *whammo* hit the back of his head on his way up. Big horizontal goose egg of doom. I comforted him as best I could and went to the kitchen to get the ice pack and a pillow. I turn around and the boy is standing in a puddle of pee. This is particularly impressive because he has the trainer pants on, you know the super absorbent undies. I don't usually get puddles with these. OK, but he hit his head, he was confused and delirious. Obviously the band breaking up was hard on him. So we go change him. He lays on a pillow with an ice pack under it for about 12 seconds and he is back to playing. Someone mysteriously throws up chocolate milk, it stinks in here. It's one of the nieces. Hooray bodily fluids!

I am not exactly sure when it was that the second pee puddle made an appearance. Again, super absorbent underoos, and yet the world stopped as I watched my grumpy daughter splash and play with a song in her heart and joy on her face. Big puddle folks. real big. The problem is, the boy is really hard to discipline. He just doesn't take you seriously and it doesn't really matter what you do how you say it or anything. He doesn't care. Lake big pee and a ner could care attitude from the boy is just not a winning combination. Cleaning ensues. Muttering ensues.

I suppose it doesn't help that Mr. loud mouth Mgee and the up all night band were having a wailing good time last night, I was also tired. As a side note, I am waiting for the day that E buddy in all of his loudness and glory actually has a serious crisis and I, being the gold star mother that I am, ignore it because I think it's a lost pacifier. He's the boy that cried, I would say wolf, but he's really just the boy who cried loudly, very loudly.  I'd call it a blood curdling scream.

Anyway, somewhere lunch happened and grumpy happened and nap time happened, glorious, wondrous nap time.  Or so I thought, The boy pooped his pants, oh and peed some more. Added bonus he broke the side rail right off of his bed so that it is splintered and shattered and broken and dangerous and must be fixed right now. *toss of confetti* *insert muttering here* Here's the thing about potty trainees, they pee or poop in their pants, they still want to go sit on the potty for like 15, 20 minutes. See, it's not nap time in the bathroom. Cleaned everything up, found an Allen wrench, duct tape the bed back together. There. That looks niiiiiiiiiiiiice. So much for selling that in the future. This is why we can't have nice things. Get the boy to bed, in a diaper. I am done with bodily fluids at this point in my day.

On any given afternoon you could very well see me out in my backyard with the power hose spraying poo out of pirate underwear. This afternoon was no different.

Then there was the part where I had the audacity to step on a scale. Why did I step on that scale? Take this day and gently fold in self loathing. There, that should be good.

Remember that diaper? Yeah, that backfired, I tried really hard to rectify what my impatience and frustration had done. I knew, I shouldn't have put him in a diaper. This morning I accidentally tried to put a diaper on him and he looked so offended, "I a big boy mama, I a big boy, no diaper!" Now he was running through the house exclaiming triumphantly " I A BABY! I A BABY! I A BABY!!!"

At this point my BFF called, she felt that I was going to have a taxing day. It was, she's very clairvoyant. I told her that if I had been able to talk to her this morning, I wouldn't know what she was talking about. Phone calls from BFF's are good. Husbands coming home from work so I can lock myself in the back bedroom and talk to my BFF, they are great to have around.

And that's it. The day that peed on me. It ended with me mopping the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, giving my stinky children a bath, Eskimo kisses,butterfly kisses, snuggles and really, that made all the crazy of this day kind of melt away. We will just skip over the part where I sat in the dark corner of the hall with the potty reward bowl. After all, tomorrow IS the first day of the rest of my life. And maybe, just maybe, we will get some pee in the potty tomorrow. Here's hoping.

E buddy...

Sometimes I feel like E buddy doesn't get the love from the camera he deserves. It's not that I don't take pictures of him it's just that he's busy.
When he's not super involved in his in depth study of pine cones.

 He's super involved in his in depth study of the camera...

Or he's on the move and blurry, or he's conducting a study of whatever is around and he won't look up at me.

He's a mover and a shaker and I love him. I am going to try to do a serious study of getting more pictures of the little go getter.

The problem with boots....

I do this as a public service.  I wish I had pictures of my son's feet. Here's the thing, boys, and probably little girls love boots. They can put them on by themselves, the are cool.  If your kid happens to fancy himself a pirate, they are a necessity. 

But folks, they stink.  Plastic boots sink heaps and heaps worth of stinky units.  We can smell where the boy has been, like a little skunk,  and that's with the boots off. He wore them on the wrong feet without socks and his feet look burned.  He had horrible blisters, does this deter him? Not at all. 

So now, being the good mother I am, I am forced to hide the stinky pirate boots under my bed so his feet can heal.  I am in for a boat load of tears and searching, but his feet cannot go on in this condition.  I am also going to be smelling him in my dreams.

He loves them so. Maybe they should hide under dad's side of the bed?  Thank you brain. :)

Heavy things, Heavy Heart...

Last Wednesday we took our little family to the temple grounds for Family Home Evening. We figured we had better take advantage of the nice weather while we had the chance. We took a blanket and our dinner and talked to our 2 year old about the day we took him to the temple to be sealed to us. We talked about getting married in that temple and how grateful we were to be a forever family. We watched brides and grooms getting their pictures taken, a group of young people descended upon some of the flower beds to do a service project and Sam ran through the puddles the sprinklers left on the sidewalk.

Over the last few weeks my heart has been very heavy. I have been following the trial of Dr. Gosnell. He is an abortion doctor who is charged with murder. Not only of babies born alive and then killed but also for at least one woman dying in his dirty disgusting office. I can't read a full article without getting sick to my stomach. The fix? The political powers that be are pushing for fewer regulations. I have cried myself to sleep at night. I wish I could unread some of what I have read. It's effected me deeply. Some of the babies that survived the abortion and then were killed were further along than my twins were when they were born. I was told this was one nut job, but it's not only the methods he used which were appalling, it's the fact that babies this far along are considered a mass of tissue, nothing but a fetus. Completely and utterly devalued. Not that, that excuses abortion in any stage, but after a four month stay in the NICU with my own preemies, my heart hurts for these babies. Babies surviving an abortion being left in a shoe box for twenty minutes before they are finished off. Painful and slow methods before they are born. Talk about an attack on the family. My heart ached for the choices those millions of babies would never have the opportunity to make. My heart ached for the women who felt they had no other option. But mostly, I couldn't believe my own apathy on the issue. I have always known I was against abortion, but I am not doing anything about it. How could we have let it get this far? The new push is going to be for after birth abortions because the risk of the mother being impaled by bone fragments or having complications due to the doctor having a hard time removing all of the baby, something called free floating head. Seriously? What have we become?

As we walked the grounds and looked at the towering hollyhocks we came to the front of the visitor's center. The boy shreiked with joy, he had spotted the large statue of Christ, arms outstretched welcoming all who would come in. "Sheshus" he said and pointed, "I excited!" We strolled our giant stroller through the doors and were greeted by the sister missionaries. There is a room off to the side, usually when we go it's Christmas time and it is full of nativity scenes from all over the world, all different. This time it was art work depicting the life of Christ or the artists' views of how Christ is in our lives now. One piece just struck me to the bone. I am not even sure if I can explain just why. Maybe the only way to explain it was that it was full of truth to me, and it reminded me of who is in charge. I felt a warm rush of peace. I know my options are limited at this time, but I can't sit idly by. If any of you have been inactively against abortion, as I have been, I invite you to get active. We can find a way to try to help.What's the quote, The best way for evil to win is for good men to do nothing? Or something like that? Or this...We may not be able to do much, but we can do something.

The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing

It says:

I am NOT the experience nor actions of my parents

It matters not how I became,

but that I AM.

I AM courage

I AM compassion

I AM hope

I AM strong...I AM here

You cannot define me as I CHOOSE who I become.

I AM THE FUTURE.

- Christina Rankin

I am so grateful that the boy's birth mother didn't abort him. I stayed with her at the hospital for three days and watched her agonize over her decision, I watched her heart break over and over again. Mine broke with hers while it rejoiced at the opportunity I was given. He is truly such a joy. I am so grateful for the staff at TMC and at Graham county regional for taking care of my 28 week preemies. I am so grateful they survived and bring me so much joy to this day. And mostly I am grateful for the knowledge I have that families go on. That those babies are safe and happy even if they were not given the opportunities of life that so many of us are afforded. I am thankful for my savior and the plan that he has for us. I am thankful that he can lighten my heavy heart. Don't take anything for granted, live your life with joy for all of those who never had the opportunity to, I know I am going to try to. Value your children, love them with reckless abandon. The darker the shadow, the brighter the light. Let's be that light. 
See more photography by Helen Thomas Robson here


 Arizona Right to Life

 An article that is good and will not give you nightmares:
http://www.lifenews.com/2013/02/04/why-my-support-for-abortion-was-based-on-love-and-lies/
"I realized in that moment that perfectly good, well-meaning people—people like me—can support gravely evil things through the power of lies. From my own experience, I knew how the Greeks, the Romans, and people in every other society could put themselves into a mental state that they could leave a newborn child to die: The very real pressures of life—“We can’t afford another baby,” “There’s no dowry for another girl,” “This disability would overwhelm us”—left them susceptible to that oldest of temptations: To dehumanize other human beings. Though the circumstances were different, it was the same process that had happened with me, with the concurring Supreme Court justices in Stenberg v. Carhart, the abortion doctors, the entire pro-choice movement, and anyone else who’s ever been tempted to dehumanize inconvenient people."

*PS, this is my heart and soul please don't start some lame political argument. That would be my luck, the one post that gets comments and it's haters...

The dichotomy of my life...

Infomercial

Reverse psychology...

Once upon a time, many many years ago, we are talking Jr. High here, there lived a girl. This girl, like many others her age began to wear makeup. This girl made a vow, a staunch and firm and unshakeable vow, that none would see her without that makeup ever again. She had arrived. She was of age and by George, she was going to look her best ALWAYS. She was always careful not to touch her eyes, she dabbed at them when she cried. She took care to look her best. This girl also used to sleep on sponge rollers every night to combat her flat hair. She obsessed about her pasty white skin. She tried to combat "it all" with dignity and grace.
And then she had children...

Now, if she wears mascara it's all over her face because she forgot and rubbed her eyes vigorously. That's IF she wears mascara at all. Then she sees the whiskers and just whimpers...

I think in some ways I have come to a place of acceptance, at least, I hope I have. I will never accept the whiskers. I must fight them to the death! Do you ever get tired of hating on yourself? I think about my body and cringe, and yet, in my heart I know what a divine gift of freaking amazing glory it is. It really is. So, I have decided that I need to take care of it. Not because I hate it or wish it to change, although, when I take better care of it chances are I will like it better, but because it's a gift, and I don't want to be ungrateful. In all of it's lumpy, pasty, whiskery glory, it truly is a gift. I have to admit, in the darkest of my childless days, it got way too easy to hate it. Maybe it's time to, once again, accept and forgive and love.

I also want my little peanut posse to learn to love themselves too. I don't want to teach them to hate on something so wonderfully spectacular. They will learn to do that without me helping them right along that path of despair. So, I got to thinking, what if I tried my best to teach them a different path? A path of happiness and health and acceptance. I am not sure what that looks like. I am not even sure I can do it. I feel like hating on ourselves is what we do, but does it have to be? It's such a time sucking and joy sucking, soul sucking, and really just a generally unhelpful activity. Satan is a jerk.

I do this for them, and for me, but mostly for them. Wish me luck. I hope I can stay the course. I am now accepting encouragement and prayers that project get healthy is a success. I start officially on Monday. I am hoping to change my whole thought process and be victorious. *rocker pose*