Choice and Chocolate Fondue

I had a whole post written out about my rotten day yesterday.  In it, I complained about waking up to stinky diapers smeared around the crib, unknowingly sending Fearless to preschool with strep throat, finding out about someone having a blatant disregard for my input and feelings, and Miss B hating the annual Valentine's Day Fondue Dinner.

It was whiny.  It was complainy.  It was a rotten post.

Before I could finish my gripe session, I had to go pick up T-Man from school.

The sun was shining.  The weather was perfect for opening the sunroof, rolling down the windows, cranking up the radio and singing along.

And as I sang The Plain White T's very singable "Rhythm of Love" at the top of my lungs (much to the dismay of Fearless) and felt the warm spring air...I snapped out of my complaining funk.

Sure, a bunch of bad things happened all in one day--all on the one day that love should abound--but it is my choice to feel the love.

One of my favorite quotes from the Harry Potter books is from Dumbledore, "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." 

So maybe I don't have the ability to have the picturesque pottery-barn-Norman Rockwell-Valentine's Day I had envisioned.  But I do have the choice to feel happy or not. 

And I chose happy.

So instead of the intimate look at all the not-so-great parts about this past Valentine's Day, I'll leave you with the highlight--Chocolate Fondue. 

Seriously, I love that stuff.  And, as if chocolate fondue wasn't a treat on its own, T-Man and Dr. C made it so I could take a break.

The love of my family and chocolate covered fruit--what more could a girl want on the Day of Love?

Picky Eating and Some Amazing Skills

*This is another one of those gross parenting stories...if you don't like those, feel free to skip it!  But, if you'd like a real picture of things that go on in my household, read on, my friend.  Read on.

Fearless is an extremely picky eater.  The only foods I can guarantee he will eat have to either be 1) fruit 2) pepperoni pizza or 3) something with honey on it.....and even at that he pretty much has to be blindfolded and plugging his nose to take a bite.  I seriously have no idea where the kid gets the energy that he has because it certainly doesn't come from his food intake.

To top it off, Fearless has an extremely sensitive gag reflex.  As in, he can make himself throw-up at will. 

Nice. 

Picky Eater+ Strong Gag Reflex = Seeing Lots of Dinners Twice. 

This combination is especially lovely when we eat dinner at other people's houses...like the time right after we moved to The South and Dr. C's boss had us over for dinner and I quickly learned how to use my body as a shield to protect some family heirlooms brought over from Sweden from being covered with some ABC pasta. 

Ahem.

Last night, we had enchiladas for dinner.  For Fearless, this was a cause for major distress.  They had red sauce.  They had shredded lettuce on the side.  They had (heaven forbid) poison  black beans! 

Oh, the torture!

My rule is that he has to have four bites.  He can choose which four bites--he can drink as much water as he wants in between bites, but he does have to have four.  And last night I was in no mood to deal with the whining and whimpering and gnashing of teeth that usually comes with dinner...so I informed him that if he made himself throw up, he would be heading straight to bed for the night. 

(Sounds harsh, I know, but if you dealt with your child throwing up at will whenever you weren't serving something drowning in honey, I bet sending your child to bed wouldn't sound bad.)

He made it through dinner. (Hooray!) But as soon as he got down, the wailing began--"Enchiladas taste SO SO BAD!!  I'm ALLERGIC to them!!  I'm NEVER NEVER NEVER eating enchiladas again!!" and so on.  Sigh.

We eventually got him calmed down, got ready for bed and I figured the drama was over for the night.  Little did I know that at 3:15AM, I would be receiving some serious super-woman-mom training.

Dr. C and I were asleep--deep asleep when the door to our bedroom flew open and Fearless made THE sound.  That "I'm About To Toss My Cookies" sound.  

Instantly, I popped up and before I realized what I was doing, I had leaped out of the far side of the bed and to the door in a single bound.  I grabbed Fearless, and in another amazing moment, we were back across the room, around the corner, and into the bathroom.  I threw open the toilet just as Fearless was beginning to open his mouth.  It was no small feat--from dead asleep to saving my carpet from stomach contents in a snap. Zero to 60mph in less than .5 seconds.  I was pretty proud of myself--I bet my high school track coach wished I had had that sort of agility and speed back then!

As soon as he was finished, Fearless proclaimed, AGAIN, that he was allergic to enchiladas and that he would NEVER NEVER eat them again.  Apparently, he had woken up, thought about how much he hated enchiladas, and made himself throw up.  Lovely.  At least I didn't have to clean up the carpet.

Brave Feet

This morning (and just about every Sunday morning), Dr. C had some early meetings at church, so I was in charge of getting all three kids ready for church and out the door by 8:30AM.  For some reason, this feat is next to impossible for me, despite the fact that I started at 6:30AM.  I think in the three months that I've been doing Sunday mornings on my own, we've made it there before church started maybe twice.  Not a great record.  I'm still trying though!

Anyway, this morning I was trying to hurry and I was scolding encouraging the boys to get their Sunday clothes on--a process that takes infinitely longer than putting on regular clothes.  I got them to a point where I thought they could handle the rest on their own, and headed to the kitchen to make our lunches.  (We live 25 minutes from the church, and church is 3 hours long, so by the time we get done at noon, the kids are starving!  So we eat lunch on the 25 minute drive home.  That way we all get to take Sunday afternoon naps--one of my favorite things!)

The boys were in the living room, slowly finishing up.  All of the sudden, Fearless started wailing about his socks being "too tickly" and that he couldn't wear them.  T-Man was blessedly finished getting dressed, so I asked him to help Fearless while I finished the lunches.  From the kitchen, I overheard this conversation:

T-Man: Here, put on your socks.
Fearless: (sobbing) It's tooooo TICKLY!!
T-Man: (patiently) Okay, which foot is your brave foot?
Fearless: (stops crying) Um, this one.
T-Man: Well, it's not being very brave right now.  It needs to wear the sock.
Fearless: Okay.

And then, silence--no crying, no whining, no complaining...just silence.  During which time, T-Man helped Fearless put on both socks, then the shoes, and even tied the laces for him.

Sure wish I had thought of that.

And Then There's a Rainbow

Last week was a hard week.  Dr. C was out of town; we had the toilet episode, then the faucet on one of the bathroom sinks broke, then the air conditioner in my van broke during a solid week of 100+ degree heat index days, then the dryer (that was already taking bites out of our clothes) started squeaking in that make-dogs-go-crazy way.  Then the phone company and the Internet company had some miscommunication and turned off our phone service.  Then I hit the wall for the first time running.  Needless to say, it was not a pretty week.

Sometimes I think it takes those low weeks for me to recognize all of the good things that I have going. 

One of my favorite hymns:

When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings; name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

Now I don't think that last week counts as being "upon life's billows" because we've certainly had harder weeks than that one.  But when something seems to go wrong everyday, my usually-sunny disposition gets overrun by dark thunder clouds of grumpiness.  Ironically, the weather the past few days has seemed to mirror my mood.

But then the other night we were driving home in the rain with the windows rolled down (no air conditioning!) and the rain cooled things off a few degrees.  Grateful for some relief, I could feel my irritability lessen a little.  And then T-Man yelled from the back seat that he saw a rainbow.

A rainbow.  One of nature's simple, beautiful phenomenon.  A flash of color over a dismal gray sky.  A small reminder that the gray doesn't last forever and there are wonderful things just around the corner.

In an instant, as I appreciated the wonder of the rainbow and heard my children oooh and aahh over the beauty of the colors, my grumpy clouds started to disperse and life was good again.

To top it off, Dr. C has returned and has been fulfilling his role as my knight in shining armor.  He fixed the faucet, restored our phone service, figured out what was wrong with the dryer (waiting on a part to get it totally fixed) and the van will be fixed hopefully by the end of the day today.  I love that man.

Today, I am thankful for rainbows--the ones that show up in the sky after rain and for the people around me that break through my grumpiness and remind me that there is beauty ahead.

Wednesdays

Wednesdays are usually our crazy day.  It looks like this:
5:10AM:  Alarm blares and I stumble out of bed
5:30AM: warm up, stretch, 4-8 mile run, cool down, stretch
6:30AM: Dr. C, T-Man, Fearless and Miss B wake up
6:45AM: Help T-Man get ready for school and out the door in time for carpool at 7:15
7:15-8ish AM:  Help Fearless get ready for school and Miss B get ready for all of her therapy sessions.  I catch a shower in there sometime too and only with Dr. C's help, we eventually make it out the door by sometime around 8AM when I drop Dr. C off at work.
8:15-8:30ish: Drop Fearless off at preschool, chat with a few other moms, get held up for an indefinite amount of time by the preschool teacher, eventually slip away around 8:45ish
9AM: Occupational therapy and physical therapy co-treatment
10AM: Speech therapy
11AM: Run home to clean house or run quick errands
11:45 AM: Pick up Fearless from preschool, try to evade the preschool teacher that will talk for forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever (despite a cranky Miss B and a ready-to-leave Fearless)
12: Lunch for all
1PM: Miss B's special educator comes our house to read books, do ABC's, etc
2:30PM: Leave to pick up T-Man from school, sit in carpool lane for what feels like an ETERNITY
get home sometime between 3:15 and 3:30

After that it's the usual homework, piano practice, playtime/cleanup time, dinner prep, dinner eating, dinner cleanup, bedtime routine and then finally around 8PM, I sit down for what feels like the first time all day.  It's a whirlwind! 

I'm sure other people have just as crazy of days EVERYday, and we are getting to that point now that the boys are getting more and more involved in sports and afterschool activities...but for right now, I feel like Wednesday is the day I have to mentally brace myself for.  The day when I know I have to give up any sense of "me" time and just check things off one hour at a time.   Wednesdays are the day that make me hate Thursdays because after a Wednesday, I'm ready for it to be Friday!

Today is Wednesday.

Ugh.

Our Corner of The South

I've been neglecting my blog and reading others' blogs lately because things have been so crazy that when given the chance to  choose between 1) napping or 2) anything else...I've been taking option 1 just about everytime.  The past 3 weeks have been crammed full of friends' birthday parties, end-of-the-school year activities, piano lessons, trying to figure out what to do with my new calling as the Primary President at church, Dr. C coming home late because of traveling to some random cornfield out in the middle of nowhere, plus marathon training, and just the normal household day to day stuff.  It has been BUSY!  I have started several blog posts, only to leave them half-finished because I fell asleep in the middle of it!  I'll finish them at some point I suppose.  I'm going to finish this one though!

Today's post is about The South. 

I won't lie--it has been a big adjustment for me to live here.  I think most of that is because I've had to get used to living in The Village, as opposed to The City.  My three biggest complaints (and they are BIG) are:

1. Lack of quality medical care.  Those of you that read often know about Miss B's medical adventures, almost every single adventure involves me not trusting the doctors here or having to travel several hours to get to a specialist or the time that the local Village hospital people were not planning on wearing gloves while taking Miss B's blood. Nice.
2. Lack of quality education.  T-Man and Fearless watch movies at school--ALL. THE. TIME.  I can understand occasionally, or as a treat that they've earned, but when T-Man comes home and tells me they have been watching movies even in PE class, I get a little crazy.  I already have nightmares about when Miss B turns 3 and will leave the Early Intervention program and be under the school's jurisdiction.  Seriously, pure panic.
3. Ok, so this one isn't a big complaint--and definately not as important as the first two--but I could really use a Target, Kohl's, Costco or Sam's, and a good craft store.  We have Wal-Mart but I will do just about anything to avoid going there.  Target is a happy place, Wal-Mart...not so much.

On the flip side though, there two things that I absolutely LOVE about Our Corner of The South.

1. Winter here is amazingly short and not so bad.  We had a few really cold days...and we even had one snow day (which I will have to post pictures of sometime--hilarious!!  And it cracks me up when it is 50 degrees and people are bundled up in their fur coats and big winter boots!) but by February, we were leaving the coats and gloves at home and by March the boys were in shorts.  Compared to Nebraska winters this place is Fabulous.  Simply Fabulous.
2. Southern hospitality is THE BEST.  People here are just friendly and welcoming everywhere you go.  The neigbors are neighborly, the store clerks are friendly, and people are just geniunely nice.  I thought the Midwest was a welcoming place...but, I have to give credit to the South for having the Midwest beat.  I'm hoping that I'm learning a few things and that we will have great Southern hospitality too.  I never really understood it until we lived here.  It has made my transition MUCH easier than it would have been otherwise.  LOVE IT!!

And that's my update on living in Our Corner of The South.  Feel free to come visit and check it out for yourself!