Cleaning With Children Is Like...

There is a meme going around Facebook that says, “Cleaning while there are children present is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos.” I find this to be a generally true statement but sometimes it is compounded which makes cleaning with children present more like trying to brush your teeth with your mouth chuck full of Oreos, and marshmallows, and mint chocolate chip ice cream, and...crap, now I’m hungry.

Anyway, I have an incredibly busy week this week, like every moment is planned. Birthdays, cakes, baby showers, Republican women’s dinner, yeah, just nuts. Normally on weeks like this I ignore my house. Let’s face it, I’m good but not quite good enough to maintain a perfect house, do all the crap that’s required of me, and be a halfway decent wife and mother so I just pretend that I don’t live in a pigsty, get through my week and then spend the next week yelling about how we live in filth. But this week I have Bible Study at my house plus company coming on Saturday. I figured that I should at least make a decent path through my house so that people can walk and maybe sit. Things started out pretty good this morning despite the fact that William has not let me put him down without screaming for the last 48 hours. I got dishes washed before story time at the Library (go me!) and got my house vacuumed by 3:00pm. I know that doesn’t sound good but seriously, sometimes it takes me 2 days to vacuum my house. But then it happened, I made the mistake of going to the bathroom. I had just sat down when Asher came in with a cookie in his hands. I believe they hide food for this very type of occasion. Right before my very eyes he began to crumble it and then he walked out of the room to spread his cookie throughout the house. And I was helpless; stuck on the toilet until my business had been thoroughly conducted. Thankfully, this was a small mishap thanks to my handy dandy Dust Buster which still works despite Asher throwing it into the full bathtub. Crisis averted.

By this time the baby was crying after waking up from his 2 minute nap. I picked him up and carried him to the living room to nurse him. There is a rule of motherhood which states that one should always look before sitting. I forgot this rule and plopped down. Apparently now we store our kool-aid in our non-sippy cups right in the middle of couch cushions. I’ll end this part of the story here. You can imagine where it went.

Somewhere amidst all the chaos that is my day I managed to make dinner, do more dishes, clean the bathroom, Windex some windows, watch some extra kids, do a load of laundry, and some other stuff. Matt arrived home and we ate dinner and then I abandoned him…I mean left momentarily for the grocery store. The plan was that while I was at the store he was going to assemble the fabulous new cabinet he bought for the kids’ coloring stuff. I was gone about an hour in which time the children decided that they must get paper out and cut it into a million tiny pieces. No big deal. I can handle that. Then they decided to get a few decks of cards out and throw them about. Again, no big deal, I can handle that. Then they decided…wait for it…that the STYROFOAM that protected my fabulous new cabinet looked fun. As I sit here typing it looks as if there has been a snow storm in my house. I can’t handle that.

I have decided that I’m done. People can just kick their way through the crap for Bible Study tomorrow. I’m going to eat a hoho now.

William's Birth

For every one of my children I have written down their birth experience for them to read when they're older. Since I have this blog I thought I'd share. Warning...if you don't want to know birth details don't read this.

 Oh son, your birth was quite the experience. You would have thought that with you being the 5^th child I would have had the whole birth thing figured out but you wanted to make your appearance a little differently. The week before your due date I made an appointment with the Dr. to come in the Wednesday after you were due. I assured them that I wouldn’t be in as I’d never had a kid arrive late. Then when I was in the office that Wednesday and made an appointment for the following Monday I again assured them that I wouldn’t be in. Then that following Friday I had 9 hours of contractions that just decided to stop. By the time I walked in the office on Monday, February 25^th, I was very frustrated and just a bit cranky. They did a non-stress test and of course you decided to sleep. I finally moved in the chair and drank enough so that my bladder was invading your space and you began your assault on my innards.

Dr. Owen told me that she doesn’t let people go past 41 weeks so we arranged a time for induction at 4pm the next day. My labors tend to be long involved processes anyway so I really wanted to avoid Pitocin. We talked, I cried, and then we left with her telling me to go get you to come out. So, that’s just what I did. I came home and walked two miles. I’m sure anyone peeking in my windows would have wondered why this giantly huge pregnant woman was “Walking Away the Pounds” with a DVD. Daddy had to go to his trustee meeting and I put your brother and sisters to bed and decided to get out the breast pump to start contractions….and it did. By the time Dad got home I was contracting fairly regularly. Dad had influenza and he decided to go to bed. I tried to but the contractions didn’t let me sleep. Unfortunately, they didn’t let Daddy sleep much either. At about 2 am I decided that we should go to the hospital. I called Dr. Owen because I sure was in a fair amount of pain but I was afraid contractions would stop again. I have a history of on and off contractions. Dr. Owen told me to come in and they would at least start my antibiotic that I needed before I could deliver.

We arrived at the emergency room at 2:30am on Tuesday, February 26^th, and I scared the registration woman half to death. She was sure that with this being my 5^th child you would just fall out. When I stood up to have a contraction she told me to sit back down because “the baby wouldn’t come out if I was sitting.” I assured her that my children have never just fallen out! I should be so lucky.

 We got to room 182 in the birthing unit and the fun began. It took nearly 3 hours for them to get me hooked up to the monitors, get my IV in, and get all their questions answered. As I write this I still have bruises from the new nurses trying to get my IV in. You would have been proud of me though, I didn’t yell at anyone, although more than once I was tempted to tell your Dad to get over to my bed and do it himself. It probably would have been much quicker. Anyway, 3 hours in bed did exactly what I feared it would do and slowed my contractions way down. I went from contracting every 2-5 minutes to contracting every 6-10 minutes. At this point the resident checked me and I was 4-5cm dilated. Not too bad a start. I sat on the birthing ball for a while and then rested some in bed as I was very tired from being up all night. At 7 one of my favorite OB nurses named Ann came in and told me that they wanted me to rest because they thought that they were going to have to try cervidil and still do the induction at 4. At that point I sort of freaked out. Here I was thinking that I’d been up laboring all night and then I was going to have to do it all again the next night. Thankfully, Ann talked me down and then got me some breakfast because I was starving. Dad and I alternated between walking the halls and resting until about 3pm when a resident came in and checked me again. At that point I was 6 and I told them to break my water. Shortly after they did Jane came in. As soon as they broke my water I told them I wanted the squat bar and the squat stool. Things really took off from there. As soon as my water was broken the contractions went to 2 minutes apart. At some point I asked for Nubain and that made me happy…well, happier. By this time your dad knows how to help me manage my contractions and we worked as a team. Jane also helped and they asked me questions while I was contracting to keep my mind off of how bad it hurt. At one point they asked me where I wanted to go on vacation. I told them I wanted to go on a cruise. Dad asked if I would go on a cruise to Alaska with him and I told him yes. Jane then asked what I would pack. I remember responding that I was going to pack a shotgun and have someone shoot me. I think that was probably at the worst part of the contraction. Finally, I knew you were close to arriving. I got out of bed and stood at the squat bar and remember thinking that this wasn’t going to stop until you were out and I just started pushing. I pushed squatting until you crowned and then they let me climb into bed and push on my hands and knees. It wasn’t long and you were out. You had been posterior for several weeks and you never did flip around, you came out posterior. I figure this means you’re going to be ornery…time will tell. You have a giant barrel chest that was bigger than your head and very broad shoulders and yes, I felt them come out.

I was so excited to see you. At some point I turned around and they put you on my chest. You were my perfect sweet boy and you were here! I was so excited. You were born at 6:45pm on Tuesday, February 26^th and you weighed 8lbs 10oz and were 20inches long! Wowza!

We brought you home the next day and your sisters and brother all ended up with influenza but you thankfully came through it all ok. When I took you to the Dr. at one week old you were 9lbs and 11oz. You will be two weeks old tomorrow and you are such a big boy. I love you lots and am so glad you joined our family.

Random rantings of a pregnant woman

It’s been a bit of a rough day and since I am forgoing my iPod this week for a church fast I have had a lot of time to think, so read at your own peril. These are the random rantings of a cranky pregnant woman.

My first thought came to me while cleaning the bathroom. Lots of deep thinking takes place in the bathroom you know. It was about bleach. Bleach gets such a bad rap. I get tired of bleach being slammed so much. Bleach is bad for you, bad for the environment, blah, blah, blah. Everyone sings the praises of Lysol wipes and their special green cleaners. But have you ever read the back of those cleaners? In order to sterilize anything it has to sit wet for 10 minutes. Have you ever tried to wet something enough with a Lysol wipe to get it to stay wet for 10 minutes? I’m pretty sure it’s next to impossible. Can you imagine the poor helpless saps that spend their time trying to wring out a Lysol wipe so that the surface gets wet enough to remain that way for 10 minutes. Let me save you some time; it ain’t gonna happen.

The same thing goes for those green cleaners. They have to stay wet for 10 minutes to sterilize too. Maybe lots of people have time to let their bathrooms stay wet for 10 minutes but I certainly don’t. With only one bathroom in the house I’m lucky if I get to leave something wet for 10 seconds before cleaning it. Usually what happens is I spray my  cleaner and if by magic someone hears the sound of the spray and comes dancing into the bathroom with an urgent need to use the toilet that absolutely must happen now or I will be cleaning a puddle from the floor. But I digress.  So here we are, spraying enough of something to makes sure it stays wet for 10 minutes so we can actually clean the bathroom. Bleach doesn't do that. You spray that sucker on and BAM, you've killed your germs. None of this waiting just lots of germ killing. It’s a wonderful thing! And it’s environmentally friendly. According to my husband, water neutralizes the bleach…so spray, rinse, and done! Plus, if you grew up in my house you would know that nothing is actually clean until it smells like bleach.

I for one will be a defender of bleach. It is a trusty standby that has fallen victim to the latest fads in cleaning.

My second rant comes because I was reading a FB post by a local school district that was reporting that something was returned to someone completely “in tact.” Now, the last I checked, “intact” was one word. In fact (not to be confused with intact) every time I type “in tact” my computer goes bat excrement crazy trying to tell me that it’s one word. I know, everyone is entitled or maybe “in titled” to their spelling mistakes now and again but if you’re going to post for a school district I suggest checking your spelling prior to hitting the “post” button. I totally almost pointed it out on the thread, but I used the last modicum of self-control I had for today and let it be.

This minor incident is compounded by my recent visit to Marcos Pizza. In the shop there were many letters written by some lovely little school children thanking the nice pizza people for their pizza party. Each letter started as follows: Dear friends, blah, blah, blah. Does anyone see the problem with that? If you said that the “f” should be capitalized, you win! Every single one of those letters had a lowercase “f” in the word friend. This leads me to believe that the example they were following was done incorrectly as well. GAH! It’s enough to make my head want to explode…who are we let teach our impressionable young minds?

Well now, there you have it. Those are my rants for the day. Bleach and spelling…they have nothing in common...but they've made me nuts today and now you got to share in my insanity. You’re welcome.