The Gift of Time

What did I do this weekend? I’m glad you asked.

I spent a lovely, wonderful 3 days with two of my favorite people in the whole world: Kitty and Libby.

And I got to spend 3 days playing with my delightful nephew Braswell and hold my tiny new nephew Patrick.

I want to thank Libby right now for providing all of us with two such delightful children and for giving me and Kitty a reason to come and help with all the new baby chaos. It’s so nice to be needed.

A weekend spent cooking and cleaning (or watching Kitty clean) and holding babies and talking and talking and eating way too much is very good for the soul. I loved my night with the baby. It was sweet and tender to have him sleep with me. I loved talking to Braswell and feeling lucky to be his aunt. I loved being with two of my best friends. My only regret is that we don’t all live next door to each other.

Winners

Ah the Science Fair. It’s January so it must be Science Fair time. And the big news of the day today…

Little Ernie took 1st place in his category! Pretty impressive since he goes to school with 450 other 4th graders. He placed in the Geology category for his volcano related project entitled: Is There a Connection Between Subduction Zones and Volcanoes?

Emmaline came home from school today and she scored 100% on her spelling test! This is an achievement, my friends. She has been working so hard at learning how to read and how to spell. I’m so proud of her.

Nigel always makes perfect grades (it’s true). He’s my kid who likes to sit down on Monday and do all of his homework for the week. (As opposed to Ernie- who I rarely actually see doing his homework- who mostly just does his on the bus in the morning. I think.) Nigel offered up the best word I’ve heard all week when he was telling me about his science fair project- a statistical analysis of Skittles bags. He didn’t place, which was disappointing to him- but he told me that they did give him a “Terrificate”. According to Nigel a terrificate is a piece of paper that they give you when you do something Terrific!

Max is taking home the prize these days in the Terrible Threes. (Terrible Twos- what a joke. Max was a dream as a two year old.) I love that kid like he were my own son, but somedays…. Max is funny and willful and busy and stubborn all mixed up in one. But we love him. And he’s cute. And those two things seem to outweigh everything else. I just have to remind myself that someday he’ll be all grown up and winning science fairs too.

What Do We Tell the Kids?

Ernie had his “procedure” done today. As Ernie is not shy about discussing it, feel free to read all his thoughts on the matter on his blog. This is the story about after.

The nurse opened the door and beckoned to me, and then Ernie slowly (gingerly) walked into the waiting room. I thought that he was walking slowly from the pain. But no. When I got up to him he seemed a little unsteady and he was acting more than a little strange. He fist-bumped the nurse. He kept mumbling about donuts. He almost fell over.

The nurse realized that the “after procedure instructions” were going to be lost on Ernie, so she began to speak directly to me (at which point Ernie swayed and the nurse and I both had to catch him again). I took the info, put my arm around Ernie and guided him to the door. In the parking lot- as I was putting him in the car he pulled out his phone, insisted that I go to Krispy Kreme, and couldn’t keep his head steady. That’s when I realized how inebriated he was.

It was a chore to keep the phone out of his hands- he was insistent on making phone calls, despite the fact that he couldn’t pronounce several words and when talking to his sister, he kept telling her that he loved her- A LOT. He called his dad twice. He told one of his co-workers that the nurse “shaved his scrotum”.

I began to wonder how Ernie had managed to put his own pants back on. When I asked, he said that the nurse helped… well- that really the nurse had dressed him.

I asked Ernie exactly what the doctor had given him. He said he wasn’t sure, but that it was a shot and he thought it was a liquid form of valium.

Which leads us to the point where I decided that Ernie was not safe unattended and that he was going to have to go with me to pick up the kids from my friend’s house. Now, the children know nothing of these shenanigans, beyond my telling them that “Daddy has a doctor’s appointment” and that they were going to have to stay at a friend’s house after school. So I prepared them by telling them that Daddy had to take medicine that makes him talk funny and walk funny.

Little Ernie’s comment after we got home: “Hmmm. That medicine Dad took is weird stuff, Mom.”

Nigel’s (the more insightful child) comment: “Why exactly did Dad take that medicine?”

Where’s Ernie now? Passed out in bed. When he stumbled into bed he asked me to bring him his computer so he could get some work done and I pulled a classic “mom move” and told him “Sure thing, I’ll be back in 5 minutes” knowing full well that he wouldn’t be awake in two.

As of yesterday…

Goodbye Relief Society and hello to my sweet, adorable Sunbeam class!

Furniture Shopping

There’s my dining room table. In a giant wood pile stacked inside a barn in Sumrall, Mississippi. It’s going to be the most beautiful farm table ever made!

Ernie and I have chatted about building a dining room table for quite some time and 2 weeks ago I came upon a listing on Craig’s list for Rough Cut Oak. I inquired, phone calls were exchanged, and today we became the proud owners of 200 board feet of beautiful Red Oak. The wood came from oak trees that were toppled during Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. The owner had the trees milled, hauled to his barn, and then stacked where they have been sitting for the last 5 years.

It was a surprise when the owner opened the barn and we all realized that in order to get to the wood that we were buying, a great deal of wood was sitting on top of it that would need to be moved. So the wood was moved by the men (thank you again Trinity for all of your help!!), while the kids ran around and explored, and I took pictures and generally enjoyed myself.

When we got home, Ernie took one of the boards and started it through his planer. You can see the look and color of the red oak in the pictures below. I cannot wait until we are all sitting around this beautiful table- making memories.

Little Ernie was immensely impressed by the whole process and commented that building this table was almost like we were “living in the woods and doing everything ourselves”. So here’s to imagining what it’d be like if we lived off the grid!

 

Dental Work and Dieting

I had two cavities filled today. My mouth hurts.

The dentist went a little overboard on the Novocain, because I couldn’t move or feel the right side of my face for over 4 hours today. Which means that even though I was hungry, I couldn’t eat. I walked through Target with a paper towel in my hand in case I drooled.

At first I considered how funny it would be to take a picture of myself, and then after I actually looked at my face in the mirror- a small modicum of vanity kicked in and decided not to.

And then, on top of all this- I am trying out the new Weight Watchers program. Because this Weight Watchers plan is new to me, I don’t know what to eat! All of this does not make for a particularly pleasant Rebecca.

I need Ernie to come home.

This is NOT a Girl Shirt

Emmaline was gifted a fantastic set of hand-me-down clothes from our dear friends the Hartfields. Emmaline and Carson H. have similar tastes in clothes and Emmaline was basically ecstatic as we pulled each item out of the bags. Max was there for the unveiling of the new clothes and he was only mildly interested the festivities until he saw this:

Max begged and pleaded and sobbed until I put the adorable navy and white striped cardigan on him. The picture above shows his face as I tried to explain to him that he was wearing a Girl Shirt and he couldn’t keep it.

Nigel and Ernie noticed him and started to giggle, which made me and Emmaline giggle- and Max just got madder. He didn’t get happy until I told him I’d take his picture in it- which is a guarantee to make Max happy because he loves having his picture taken. After the photo shoot I peeled it off of him while he cried and Emmaline (who was as excited as Max about the cardigan) got to wear it for the rest of the day. (Emmaline and Max decided on their own to pose with the toddler motorcycle.)

Toilet Musings

Is it just my kids- or do all kids seem to have issues with flushing the toilet?
We have 4 bathrooms in this house. That’s a lot of bathrooms to clean and 2 of them are upstairs so I may only glance at them a couple of times a week. But one thing I can promise you- without fail- I will glance into any of the aforementioned bathrooms and see that the toilet must be flushed.
Last night I started upstairs when I put the kids to bed and I checked both bathrooms. Yep, they both needed to be flushed. Then I picked up some dirty clothes in Emmaline’s room and brought them downstairs to the laundry room causing me to pass by the guest bathroom and yes, again, the toilet needed to be flushed. So I dropped off the laundry and thought- sure, let’s just check out my bathroom- just in case. And people, I was 4 for 4 last night.
Sigh.

To All My Girls

I have been pondering for the last few months, the importance of my friends in my life.
Some thoughts that I’ve had:

1. Women like to talk things out and we learn really well when we can listen to the experiences and thoughts and ideas of other women and then glean the things that apply to us.
2. Women also really, really need the validation that comes from sitting with other women and hearing that we are not alone in feeling overwhelmed. Or to hear an older friend remind us that the toddler years do pass. Or to have a friend say that sometimes it takes 10 years of marriage before a husband and a wife learn how to fight fairly. We need validation.

We’ve lived in 4 different states in the last 12 years and in each place, I’ve been lucky enough to make some really amazing friends- women who were just the people I needed at the particular point in my life.

• I can’t begin to express my gratitude to the friends who tolerated my early 20s when I was overwhelmed as a young mother and I was still really self-centered.
• I can’t begin to express my gratitude for my friends that validated me and loved me in my later 20s when I was overwhelmed and overworked with 3 small children and suffering with post partum depression.
• I can’t begin to express my gratitude for friends that loved me, supported me, and advised me in my early 30s when grown-up life encroached and employment and finances and actual real life got tough.
• And this year I’ll be 35. (Weird) And right now I have great friends who are wonderful examples of selfless service and kindness and compassion- they are just the kind of people that I want to be when I grow up.

I also hold my mission companions near and dear to my heart. 6 amazing women who have tracked through life with me for 14 years now. The kind of dear friends that I talk to and it does not matter how much time has passed- we pick up with each other like it was yesterday. It was a gift to spend 18 months of my life serving with each of them.

And of course I have to mention my own sisters. And when I say sisters, I mean my actual sisters and also my amazing sisters-in-law. I could not ask for better people to be aunts to my children and sisters to me.

Most men, I’ve realized, are more solitary creatures (despite all the sports type things that they do together). It’s the rare man who seeks out and cultivates friendships with other men. Most of the men that I know rely on their wives for friendship and interaction and socializing.

I love Ernie- I think that’s pretty clear. But I can’t live without my girlfriends. I still remember coming home back in 2006 from a whirlwind 72 hour trip to California (of which I slept maybe 15 hours) that I spent with my dearest Mission Companions- where we talked and talked and talked and talked about everything you can possibly imagine for 3 days. We discussed husbands, children, life from every angle. We reminisced and planned for the future. (What man has the patience for that? Not even Ernie.) And when I got home Ernie asked me how my trip was and I looked at him and I said, “Honey- I have nothing left to say. I talked this weekend to the point that now I literally have nothing left to say.”

It was awesome. And that’s why- too all my girls out there- I couldn’t do it without you.