Death!? Not Today!

The kids and I were having a nice, calm morning in my bed—taking turns telling jokes. Then, we heard what sounded like furniture falling down stairs (only, we don't have stairs) coming down our hallway toward my bedroom. The only reason I didn't go and hide under the bed with the rest of the kids is because as the noise reached my room, I heard our dog yelp. He came into the room, seemingly unharmed but looking shamed.

I ran down the hall to see what the heck he must've been stuck to in the hallway and saw nothing. Then, I heard the sound again. It was coming from Ev's room. I looked under the crib to see our cat with completely black eyes. Also, there was a paper Olive Garden bag that Willis had brought home from work last night with him. It all started to come together.

After I let the kids give the cat some space, he finally came out from under the crib . . . with the paper bag still attached. He's free and OK, now, but I really wish I had a surveillance camera in the hallway to capture what the heck went down out there.

We kind-of all thought we were going to die for a minute. But, no. Hilarity.

Keep Truckin'

Clearly, I haven't taken much time to blog over the past year. There's been a lot happening, and it just hasn't been a priority. There was a time I would have felt sad about that, but I guess I have a better-placed priority list, now (since there's an absence of guilt).

What's been going on? Just a few things.

• I became the web administrator for our town.
• I helped the town rebuild their website.
• My kids are still small enough to play in the water in the bathroom and make an extraordinary mess every day—and dump out all the shampoo. (I really thought we were past that, but I was mistaken.)
• Nora started Kindergarten and became an adult, basically. I'm still absorbing that.
• About 20% of my day involves answering questions about where specific toys are. Only about 1% of the time do I actually know the answer. Maybe less than that.
• Everett went through a long and (somewhat still) messy potty efficiency process, but we're out of diapers! Whee!
• Willi has been taxed (emotionally/physically) hard at work, and he's there a lot.
• The roof fell in at his work during a blizzard (interstate-closed type of stuff and in Gary, Indiana, where they barely plow the roads on a good day) and caused MAJOR damage. He's lost some staff members while he's been there (various reasons). They were already understaffed. His heart hurts a lot day to day, and I can see it in his face.
• Oh, yeah. I work. I still have my job. So, that.
• We got buried in snow, so I spent a good portion of the winter shoveling the driveway. Then, we scored a free snow blower before the latest snow, which was SWEET.
• Laundry. Dishes. Tripping on toys. Tripping on the dog. Tripping on kids. Trying to clean up the house occasionally. Fixing stuff that breaks (all the stuff breaks). Trying to get Henry to stop telling me he's starving by throwing food at him constantly.
• Actually trying to have real (instead of via social media which was a large portion of my interactions with people while my kids were infants), social, interpersonal relationships/interactions.
• I try to keep moving (which involves a membership at the Y) which serves many purposes: I get a boost of energy, I get a break, it gets my kids out of the house during the winter, and we get discounts on swim lessons (also happening).
• Strep. Strep has been happening. There has been less barf-o-rama this year, though, which has been welcomed—well, at least with the kids. The dog did have a serious barf-o-rama incident on New Year's Eve when he ate an ENTIRE plate of cookies with LOTS of chocolate. That, by far, was probably the grossest thing I've cleaned up to date, and that is actually saying something.
• Oh, and we're trying to be decent parents. So, that. Not sure if that's working yet.

So . . . there's an update.

One day, we'll spend Saturday mornings like these drinking coffee, missing our children, and thinking about going cross country skiing or snow-shoeing or just a walk down to the lake to see how different it looks today. Or, going out to eat somewhere (cool/different). Or doing whatever we want . . . like visiting the children we're missing. Or nothing.

It's not that right now is devoid of enjoyment, but it's definitely not a simple time right now—especially not for Willis. If it isn't a simple time for him, it isn't for me, either. In the meantime, we do what we can, the best we can. Just keep on . . . keep truckin'. Good stuff.

Don't Stop

My morning started out with me still being half deaf. (For real. I still cannot hear out of my right ear right now from being sick. That sucker will not clear out.) All of the kids crawled into bed with me and stuck their cold feet onto my bare skin at different points. Then, Willis, from the kids' bathroom, said, "Well, Jenny, I hope you didn't like your makeup."

When I asked him to, kindly (or maybe not), further explain, he said something like, "Everett just wanted his lizard to have a desert."

I popped out of bed to find a pretty epic mess (involving a toy lizard and my powdered makeup) that took probably 35 minutes to clean up. Also, Everett used my green concealer stick to make a faux hawk on his own head. He was particularly proud of that, and I guess he should have been. It was well done. It took about four washes with soap in the bath tub before I just gave up on getting it out of his hair.

It's mornings like this that I wish I could see the hilarity of it at the moment that it is happening, but I'm just not that cool. I usually calm down while we wait for the bus in the car at the bus stop, but we were running so late (and the kids were so absolutely insane), that the calm just didn't come.

After the boys and I got back to the house, and after Henry wore me down about how much he is STARVING (we seriously just had breakfast that involved scrambled eggs, people), I ended up giving him a Pop Tart. While I was transferring said Pop Tart from the toaster to the table, I heard Henry singing the beginning of this song (he's like a happy, chirping bird when he knows he's about to eat again).


And, that's about when the calm came. And, I finally laughed.

So . . . let's do this day. I've got stuff to do.

Also, I have to go buy some more cheap makeup. (BTW, this is why I don't buy expensive makeup or shampoo or, well, anything.)

That One Guy

Ten years ago, November 1st, Willis planted a smooch on me in the kitchen of my college apartment on Wood Street in West Lafayette and promptly walked out the back door. Prior to that moment, I knew he was someone I always wanted near me, but I remember the way my mind (and heart) raced when I realized he liked me just the way I had hoped.

What ensued after that was just bliss. Mostly. Well, there were some sub-par days. After we were engaged in July of 2004, I hated not knowing where my life was headed (career-wise). I graduated that August, and Willis was still in school for another year. I had a really awful job situation that year, and it was really hard. (In fact, I freaked Willis out pretty badly when I walked out of that first job near the holidays.) We planned a wedding on a tiny budget. I think some of my family was still in shock at our "short" dating prior to engagement period (eight months, if you were counting), and we could sense that.

Then, the wedding day came. It rained. I wrecked my car (totaled it, even, which sounds more horrific than it was. My car was not worth much). I fell down some stairs (before the wedding—my shoes were wet). The hotel lost our room reservation. But . . .

My friend, Bethany, rescued me from my car accident and took me to my hair/makeup appointment (and desperately tried to get me to think happy thoughts so I wouldn't cry my makeup off). Our friends and family came together to help us throw a sweet (yet, terribly sweaty) party. There was music. There was dancing. It was actually a pretty sweet day when you minus all the negative things. Believe it or not, it was actually easy to forget all those bad things.

June 11, 2005—Happy to be alive. And also married to this guy.

Then, after a honeymoon on a houseboat in Kentucky, we moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Lebanon, Indiana. I worked for a start-up newspaper called The Daily Sun. He was a warehouse guy in Fishers for G.W. Berkheimer. I was on a schedule where I would sleep for about four hours at a time and head into the office twice a day. I forget the time frame, but not long after we moved in, Willis got offered a purchasing job at G.W. Berkheimer's corporate office. He started driving two hours to and from work (Lebanon to Portage) after that. When the newspaper announced that a new law was passed to allow unlimited (and capped pay) overtime, I realized we had to leave Lebanon.

So, we moved to an apartment in Valparaiso (after only living in Lebanon for three months). We gained a cat (he followed us home on our last night in Lebanon, believe it or not). I got a job as an in-house graphic designer for G.W. Berkheimer. We carpooled to work. We learned (after spending the holidays with family and falling horribly ill) that we would NEVER have one bathroom again.

We bought a house in La Porte just before the housing market crashed (worst time to buy). We worked our butts off on it putting in some sweat equity (well, more sweat than equity). We got a puppy. He ate some of our stuff (including five remote controls and a brand new pair of running shoes). We got buried in snow a few times.

We had our three kids there. I said that like, "Whoop! There they are, and we did that."

Nope. They may have all been about 22 months apart, but they each came with ridiculously long, difficult labors through which Willis coached me (and saw things that can't be unseen). The last one didn't even want to come out . . . ever. Some of our kids didn't like to sleep. One of them cried A LOT—it turned out that he had ear infections . . . and so did I (cried a lot AND had ear infections). Every winter has had at least one barforama since these kids started arriving. One of the kids even ended up in the hospital in January of 2012 for four days with complications from RSV (even though all three kids had RSV).

We laughed there. We cried there. We found our church home there. We shaped our life there.

Then, Willis got the opportunity to work at Berkheimer's Gary branch.

After the first week of that commute, I remember seeing the look on his face and knowing in the pit of my soul that we needed to move. And then, we proceeded to have the longest slog of ridiculousness (in selling our La Porte house/buying our current house) that most people have ever seen.

And now, we are settled into our "new" home. It's been about 18 months since we moved here. While I am finding myself coming into an age of comfort and more clarity that I'll attribute to friendships, our faith, our community, consistency, and more sleep, I'm watching Willis get up nearly every day and go into work (I say nearly every day because he works most Saturdays, too). He is managing a branch that barely has enough staff. (One of his dear staff members was in an accident this summer and hasn't been able to come back to work.) I've watched him just be this man that leads people (without realizing it himself), and he does it well. He comes home and cooks dinner for all of us—when he probably hasn't eaten a thing all day. Sometimes, he's cooking in the midst of kids that are FREAKING OUT because I've just worked all day (and had to ignore them to meet a deadline), too. Then, I'll just be standing there, stunned, wondering what the heck happened to the whole day.

He never complains about any of it. I can see in his countenance that he is struggling through it sometimes, but he never says anything out loud about it. I know that he'll be annoyed that it (any hint of frustration) even shows, but I'm the only person who can read it (accurately).

What I've told him before, and what he doesn't seem to realize, is that him not being able to hide that from me is a quality that I happen to like about him. I think a lot of people think he's stoic and boring (due to this honed skill and his perfect hair), but I know that he isn't. Not even. In fact, he's hilarious. He's smarter than I am. He's kinder than I am. He is better at putting his belief into practice than I am. He's a better planner than I am. He's my human calculator, dictionary, and map (and people wonder why I don't need a smart phone). He's not above changing diapers, holding a child, or just being an engaging dad. He always does the right thing. He always knows the right thing to say (or not to say). He's considered all the sides to all the issues. He answers the phone like a professional all the time (see? Hilarious). He's more patient with animals than I am. He's more patient than I am in general. He has taught me that not everything has to be done right this second like I think it does (valuable lesson, by the way).

Here we are at Nicole (Angi) Kaeding's graduation party about nine years ago. Photo by Christine Angi.

Here we are, ten years later. Here I am, looking at our life, and I still feel like we're just getting started. There's still more to know about this guy. There's still more to experience with this guy. And, while things aren't as simple or as fun as we'd like them to be right now, I'd still rather be right here than anywhere—with this guy.

He's still that one guy.

Mommy Guilt

Now that I have had minute to sit down and rehash the day, I am thinking back on my waking moments this morning. Nora crawled into bed with me before I was even remotely ready to wake up (and before dawn). She immediately started talking at full volume, nonstop.

I'm still not a morning person, even though I haven't seen the back side of 8 a.m. in I don't know how long. So, I didn't really welcome it warmly. In retrospect, I feel a little bad about that.

Here's why: about ten minutes after Nora came in, Willis came into our room to turn on the light (my signal to get up—his ability to make sure he's wearing matching socks, etc.). Everett came running in with him. Everett hopped up on the bed with a huge grin on his face, and said, "Hi, Mama."

I smiled and said, "Hi, buddy."

Nora said, "Oh. You don't smile at me like that, Mom."

Dang it.

I did mention that she came in to greet me in the dark. So, I suggested that maybe she couldn't see it. (Even though I know that she knows I wasn't smiling.)

Poor kid. I wish I could show her that I totally used to smile at her like that when she was two . . .

And, I still wish I was a morning person.

She loves me so much she even drew this for me so that I can remember she loves me when she's at school. And I can't even light up for her when she comes to snuggle in the morning. Darn it.

Here's another sad thought. Henry was in the room, too, when all this was happening (he came in a little before Willis and Everett in the dark, still). He probably watched all of this happen, and didn't voice any of his feelings on the topic. I'll bet he has some. Poor guy.

Also, I won't go into great detail about the fact that after Everett climbed up on the bed, I realized that he was covered in poo. (His own.) So, that abruptly ended snuggle time and began laundry and disinfecting time . . .

"No, Mommy."

So . . . here's what I'm dealin' with.

Poor Mr. Caterpillar

I think it was a week ago that Willi came home from work with a fist-full of black-eyed susans for me. I put them in a vase that we got as a wedding gift, and sat them in the middle of our table. Nora was particularly thrilled to watch this exchange, I think.

That evening (or maybe even the next day), we realized that there was a caterpillar living/eating on one of the flower heads, covered in pollen. I got the brilliant idea that I could keep this caterpillar in a jar (with holes) and some foliage, and we (mostly, the kids) could watch his transformation.

I put the flower he was nibbling on in a quart-sized jar, and I poked holes in some plastic wrap to cover it. The flower didn't last long. So, I added some lettuce, hoping that would sustain him.

This morning, while we were eating breakfast, I discovered that Mr. Caterpillar had probably passed sometime yesterday, unnoticed. I felt terrible.

Why did I think I could take this little being and hold him in captivity just so we could watch him? I'm already keeping five other little beings (including the cat and dog) alive on a daily basis. Why did I think I could add another?

Also, what do caterpillars eat? 'Cause it isn't lettuce, I guess.