Sunday Morning

Sunday morning our family got up and it was a typical winter day in Scottsdale. Absolutely stunningly beautiful. I don’t want to make you guys mad or anything but it was just gorgeous. I said to the kids, “How about we all walk to Starbucks?” There was no complaining from anyone. McK had a friend sleep over and she came along, and then we stopped to pick up another one of her friends. AJ and Luke grabbed their longboards (do you guys know what those are? They’re just like skateboards, but more moveable), and then one of AJ’s friends came too. We had a whole posse with us.

We walked along to Starbucks and on our way we can see the mountains and blue sky and the white clouds. Before we moved to the dessert, I never thought of a place like this having so much beauty and color. I always thought it was going to be brown, brown, brown. Some days I will leave a store and see the mountains in the background and palm trees in the forefront, and think to myself, “Holy Cow, I get to live here?” 

It was just really nice to walk with the fam, and spend some time with them. The weeks are so busy with basketball (two boys who are on three teams – do that math!), art class, car pools, friends, babysitting, Mr. Manic’s work schedule, and other obligations, it seems like we never get family time together. 

Plus, it is really nice to see that finally, FINALLY, we feel at home here. All of our kids have great groups of friends, we feel like if we need to, we have neighbors we can call on if we’re in a bind. It’s certainly not like our old neighborhood, but every day gets better and easier. We’re in a really good place. I could look back a year and a half at some of the posts I wrote when we first lived here, and when the kids first went to school, and how much we all cried and cried, and how much we missed our Chicago home. We’ve come a long way. And we’ve done that because of the strength we have as a family. 

When we got to Starbucks, I said to our group, “You know, I think I could really live anywhere as long as I lived close enough to walk to a Starbucks.” And AJ’s buddy finished my sentence perfectly by saying … “In January!”

Yep, I would have to be able to walk to Starbucks in January. I don’t think I could go back to freezing cold weather. I’m too much of a wimp now. But we all had a good laugh at that. The boys then skated home and we girls sat outside with our drinks and enjoyed the sun on our faces.

It’s nice to be with family and friends, and on the way back, I called my best friend from home, because even though I live here now, I still have my close friends from home, and I’ll never forget them. 

When we got back, McK said we should do that every Sunday. And I liked that idea. I wish we had all the time to do lots more things together. Are there things you and your family do together that have become something of a tradition to you?

I’m sharing this story as part of a FreshTakes on Family Time, and if you’d like to go to their site and share yours, you can win a $50 gift card and a chance to be featured on their site. Some of the stories are really amazing, like the one about this amazing family – the dad is blind yet they find ways to go on family adventures all of the time. It’s truly inspirational.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and I’ll be back later this week with a winner for MWF Seeking BFF, and then next week I’ll have another book for you to win!

My blog is a part of an incentivized online influencer network for Fresh Takes on Family Time Powered by Subway.

About My Third Child

I have a third child. When he was a baby, he was often shoved in a corner. I didn’t realize it, but later on, when watching home movies, I noticed he spent most of his babyhood swinging away in the baby swing. When he was born, he had a three-year-old brother and a two-year-old sister who demanded much of his dad’s and my time.

Who am I kidding? His brother and sister demanded ALL of our time when Luke was a baby.

Luke was the baby who hated the car. Unlike his brother and sister, who would immediately calm down during car rides, Luke would howl in the car. How could this be? I thought all babies were soothed when they felt the rhythm of the engine. My other two kids loved the car. Why didn’t Luke? Now I understand it was because Luke was constantly tossed into his car seat and taken for car rides. He had to go wherever I had to go – and I had to go to a lot of places with two other kids – Luke was along for the ride. All of the time.

He had to go with the flow. He never got the luxury of scheduled naps. He never got to be his own person, he’s always had to share – friends, toys, a bedroom. He’s always had to have the hand-me-downs. He never got to enjoy his own playgroup. He always had to tag along.

But the one thing he did get is the most very special gift of all. And I remind him of it every chance that I can.

I tell Luke this, in the quiet of night, when I am tucking him in to bed. I say, “Luke, do you know why you are so special to me?”

He always grins at me, and my heart melts a little bit each time, because by now, he knows.

“It’s because you know that Daddy and I didn’t have to have you. We already had a boy. We already had a girl. We could have stopped right there, with the perfect little family. But we wanted you. We wanted another child so badly and we knew our family wasn’t complete, and then you came into our lives.

You made us be our whole family.

Previously posted on Real Moms Guide. Thanks for reading!

iN THiS BeD

In this bed I have lain for almost a decade.

I have not made any babies in it, maybe one, but probably not, as the third child was probably procreated on a family room floor, or a couch, far away from the cries of the smaller children, in a moment of hurriedness where I said, “Strictly clinical! Baby-making sex only!”

This bed has held sick childen.

It has nursed hangovers.

If only I could count the hours in which I have slept.

It has lumps. It is uncomfortable. I wonder if I have spent more hours in it than out of it in the past ten years? Probably so.

Today, we put this bed out to pastures. For a new one.

I wish I wrote this when I first thought of writing this. When I first woke from the bed I was sleeping in, when it was fresh in my mind, what I wanted to say about the bed I had slept in for so long. This companion of mine who will be mine no longer. It departs today. For a new lover comes.

My Westin Heavenly Bed.

Complete with 12-3/4 pillow-top. Oh how I will roll around in it. How I will luxuriate in its pillowiness. Is that even a word? I say it is! I am afraid to share the new bed with my family. I guess I will have to share the new bed with my husband right?

The old bed came along about the same time as my daughter. I spent 11 long overdue pregnant days with Tukey laying in that bed, waiting for something to happen, for a contraction, for water to break, for that baby to come.

Nothing. For 11 days. I lay there. Convinced that baby would never come. I remember the one day I didn’t leave that bed at all except for the one time I went downstairs and ate 3 or 4 Dunkin Donuts, then trudged back up to that horrid (not so horrid back then as it was new) bed, and got in.

I stayed there the whole day. Waiting for a baby to come. I stayed there and read. Probably cried. But mostly waited and slept. Waited for a baby who was 11 days late to get out of my belly.

Then, after that baby came, nine days after, I was back in that bed. Again. Crying. Crying about buildings that had crashed. Airplanes that had shattered the glass and steel, the world, that day. I lay in that same bed again. Crying. Holding that baby. In that bed. Wondering what the purpose would be to ever get out of that bed. Why bring a child into a terrible world like this, I had wondered.

And since then. That bed. That bed has nursed children to health. Has held crying babies. Has cuddled and nurtured and snuggled and tended when nightmares have been so bad there’s just no sense of sending them back to their own rooms now is there? When it makes more sense for someone else, someone much bigger and less scared to go sleep in another bed just this once, because this one tiny little child might just need this comfort tonight.

This bed has done that for these children.

So, while it is lumpy and crappy and there has been nightmares and sleepless nights, there have been memories and a safe haven in that bed that we are sending out.

There have been dreams and chats and laughter. There have been tears and quiet fights and lovemaking, sometimes loud, mostly quiet, oftentimes silly, because it’s us, and we’re silly and we laugh, and this is our life and it’s our bed, and we’ve made it and we’ve lied in it, oh, no we haven’t … we’ve never lied in it, but we have laid in it. We don’t lie in our bed. We tell the truth in our bed.

And, our new bed will arrive today, and I’m going to embrace it like I’ve never embraced a piece of furniture, and I’m going to love it like a dog lover loves a new pet, and I’m going to care for it like a florist cares for its peonies, and I’m going to treat it like I want it to treat me!

With respect and kindness and goodness! No jumping on this new bed please! No wrinkling of the new sheets please! Do not sit on the comforter the wrong way please! Shower before going to bed please!

We will make new plans in this bed; we will continue to raise our family from the foot of this bed. This bed will be the cornerstone to the future of what is to come. Yes, no babies will be made here, but dreams will be hatched.

Oh yes, dreams will be hatched!

Tukey Talk - Beverages & Bodily Fluids

I bet you're all so excited the contest entries are closed because now we can get back to our regularly Manic Mania, and what better way to start than by a post titled: Beverages & Bodily Fluids?

* * *

So, lately, when we go out to dinner, we've been playing TELEPHONE, you know how you whisper something into the person's ear, they then whisper to the next person and the whole thing gets completely messed up and the last person has no idea what was said? Well, we played that the other day at breakfast, where, by the way, we don't ever go to breakfast, but I had an amazing GUT-BOMB skillet that included:

bacon
loads of hash browns
scrambled eggs
cheddar cheese

Oh yeah, and buttered and jellied (grape only please) wheat toast, and fresh squeezed OJ, which I usually hate the pulp but I choked it down. They were out of vodka.

KIDDING! But keep reading, cuz I do have a vodka part coming up....

And yes, I slept all afternoon, and no, that wasn't a particular counting-points day.

So, telephone, and it's Tukey's turn and he says something that is so stupid but so five-year-old-ish we were all cracking up at the table.

"Say 'WE' two times."

Pause. Think. Crack Up.

"Say 'WE' two times."

Every time someone would whisper it back to the next person, you'd watch their faces, and then there would be an eruption of laughter.

He's just so dang cute.

Now you're supposed to actually say, "Say 'WE' two times" not say "WEE-WEE" which was the funny thing because ... well, I don't know why it was just so funny, but trust me. It was. He's my kid and if I think he's funny, then he is.

(Wee-Wee!)

* * *

I don't know what the fascination with the word is, but it's being said all around the house. Yesterday morning, as I was getting the other two darlings ready for school, Tukey, all cutesy in his Pirates of the Caribbean boxer briefs, jumps off his kitchen stool, walks to the bathroom door, stands in front of it, and raises his arms to point to the door and announces:

"Entering the Wee-Wee Station!"

OK, tell me that's not cute. Yes, there are so many times hubby and I look at each other and just shake our heads over that kid.

One final Tukey story and I'll be done. I promise.

I took coffees (OK, they were lattes, but for the sake of carpel tunnel, I will not tell you how each was prepared cuz that would just take too long) over to my neighbor's house today because we were pseudo-celebrating another neighbor's birthday. The little kids: Tukey, and two others will all be in kindergarten together next year. So we ladies are sitting in the kitchen, chit-chatting, sipping our lattes, eating quiche, muffins, and fresh fruit (cuz we all know that's what we do at least three times a week, even though the husbands have completely no clue we are being this non-productive, right? Right-O!)

The three kids are upstairs playing and I hear Tukey...

"Mrs. O! Mrs. O! Jimmy won't share God's blessings!!"

Mrs. O and my other friend look at me, and they are like, "What?"

I just smile.

Mrs. O goes upstairs to check on them: "Tuke, what is it that Jimmy's not sharing?"

Tukey: "He's not sharing God's blessings!"

So, she goes up there trying to figure out what this God's blessings toy is while I'm just laughing. She discovers Jimmy's God's blessing is the keyboard, and comes back downstairs and waits for me to explain.

Me: "That's what we say in our family; if one of the kids isn't sharing candy or whatever with the other kids... We tell 'em "Share God's blessings!"

OK, and I lied because I forgot one more Tukey Talk...

I take Tuke to school today and I'm wearing shorts because I'm going to the health club and also because the sun is out and it's like 40 degrees, so to me, it might as well be spring.

I drop him off at class and the teacher is like, "You going to work out?"

I say, "Yeah, but I really want to take a nap."

She says, "Me too. I had a couple last night."

The teacher has a hangover! I love it!

So I ask, "What were you drinking?"

"Apple martinis."

I love this woman! And then, a moment of panic seizes me and I think, "OH My God, she reads my BLOG! She knows that's my favorite drink in the entire world, and she must read my blog and how I talk about puking and poop, and sex and parenting and hangovers and all that other stuff I talk about!"

Then I think, "Nah, she's not reading my blog." And I figure it's safe to continue the conversation and I ask her, "So, how many did you drink?"

"Two."

"Yep, that'll do it, sometimes three though. How do they make 'em?"

And then she and I go into detail about how we like our appletinis made, where we've had the best appletinis, and what should be on the rim of them (cinnamon, sugar, apple Jolly Ranchers crunched up, caramel), what kind of garnish we prefer, and if we like Grey Goose or Absolute and how we cannot stand when they mix in that sweet-and-sour mix because then they just do not taste good, and how I save the apple slice, if that's the garnish and suck the vodka off it before eating it.

Meanwhile, the other teacher has the class settled into their circle, and Tuke, who was in the bathroom, comes out crying because he hurt his fingers, and here's me and the teacher discussing the pros and cons of a great appletini.

Man, I love Tukey's teacher!