January 6, 2007

I went home to visit my family after New Year’s Day. I stay with mom. Between the two of us, we had about a week’s worth of scrap booking and quilting and other things to do. I was only home for 3 ½ days. You would be surprised what we got done though.

To Do List

We stopped to see the new granddaughter on the way to Mom’s. She is pretty, although she looks like her Daddy, and he is not “pretty.”  I got to Mom’s around supper time Tues.

We spent Tues night putting pictures and mementos together from Mom’s trip to New Zealand. The Australia ones will have to wait. I left some pre-made pages so Mom can do some herself too. I am not a huge scrap booker person, but I have plenty of stuff. I try to keep it down to what I can haul in one trip, using only a 12”X12” crate. Probably I should get something else to transport my stuff because the crate thing is pretty unhandy. There must be a good reason that I am the only person who carries a crate to scrap booking get-togethers. You could go broke scrap booking if you don’t watch out.

Wednesday I wanted to make a quilt for the granddaughter, Joy. I don’t know what else to give her. I quit making baby quilts for my friends a few years ago when I realized it was not actually possible for me to make quilts and raise toddlers at the same time. Way too many no-nos, and too much stuff to keep putting away and getting out again. I dug out my two plastic drawers with baby quilt cloth in them and packed them to Mom’s. As I sorted through the fabric, lo and behold, I had a quilt in there! It was not pieced, but I had a good start on it. We got the top put together and Mom plans to machine quilt it. She says whoever cut the pieces out didn’t do it very straight. (oops) We had supper with my Dad and his girlfriend and my Grandparents.

Thursday My kids’ paternal grandmother has 29 grandchildren and a handful of great-grand children, and that is only their Dad’s side of the family. From personal experience I know how hard it can be to keep everyone straight, so I made a book for Lydia called “Lydia and the Jam Jam Girls” I used photos I already had of Lydia and got photos of grandmas and aunts and cousins in their jammies and put it all together with a little plot about going to bed. I can keep adding as necessary. Since Sarah was supposed to be Tommy, and I didn’t want a bunch of pictures of guys standing around in their underwear, I called hers “Sarah Reads a Book” and I got photos of male relatives reading various things from a cousin with the newspaper sports section to my truck driver uncle reading a book on semis, while seated in the open door of his truck. Then along came Tommy and Zach. What to do for them…I decided on animals and pets for Tommy, we can do counting and species, then for Zach it will be hats and colors. We just keep adding to it, my first cousins and my kids’ cousin’s children and my step-father’s family and baby sitters. I was pretty organized through Sarah, but it fell apart after that. Mom and I spent all our free time Thurs getting that put together, so I can complete Tommy and Zach’s books. We also worked on Joy’s quilt, and played in the snow a little.

Friday I told Dad we would go out to his place for the morning. He lives where I grew up, a ranch 30 miles from town.  The ladies played with their vintage Little People collection and Tommy flirted with breaking the lower hanging glass Christmas ornaments until noon, which was soup and “girl” cheese sandwiches, as the ladies call them. The kids took a nap and then Dad went to town, leaving me to take everyone to town in my car so we could meet him for supper. I spent all day using their wireless internet with my laptop, and getting five year’s worth of digital photos sent to Walgreen’s for printing via wireless rather than dialup. (Only $15 for 142 photos, not bad I thought, and they were ready two hours later!) We had Mexican for supper, I always want to do that when I go back.  After I got back to Mom’s we put together Zach’s quilt. Mom had done the cutting, and I just sewed. We make a pretty good team, one of us pinning and ironing and the other sewing. She had a pattern for a quilt that she said would go together very quickly for Zach, and it did, in just an evening. The back of it is a map of the US. When it is all tied and bound, I will post a photo. I have managed to make a baby quilt for each of my babies, but have finally resorted to making only the occasional Christmas stocking for my friends, see my Christmas photo for examples.

Saturday My cousin had a baby Friday, so I went to see her in the hospital. I thought she was only about six-years-old, but she says she is 26, so that must be old enough to be a mom. It is hard to believe that she is all grown up, I remember when she was born. She had a beautiful 5 lb baby girl, causing me baby envy as well. Zach was nearly twice that. Mom drove with us after lunch to meet my Stepdad who had escaped the chaos at his own home to his son’s house to spend time with his other grandkids. My stepbrother lives somewhere near half way between mom’s house and ours. That worked well for me. Five hours by yourself in a car with four kids can be a little rough.

November 2007

Drumroll please. The moment you have all been waiting for…how will she fare by herself with four kids under 5-years-old? A quick reminder, Zach is nearly three weeks old, Tommy is nearly 1-and-a-half, Sarah is 3-and-a-half and Lydia will be 5 this weekend.

I spent Sunday mostly alone, my first day with nobody around since we came home from the hospital. All four kids and I made it to church, everyone who had teeth had ‘em brushed, everyone who had hair had it brushed, and everyone’s shoes matched. Can’t ask for much more; we were on time for 9:30 church, the ladies helped with the service which was kind of a pageant. Tommy, Zach and I held down the pew. Half way through the service Tommy wanted to run in the aisle, so a nice lady took him to the nursery. Our church is really small, so the nursery is not staffed, but you can watch though the window and listen to the service.

Monday went fairly well, we stayed home all day. For supper I managed to have a meat dish, a vegetable dish, and fruit slices, on the table at the usual time.

Tuesday the ladies had school at 8:45. As they were getting dressed, Tommy decided to finish off Sarah’s dry cereal. Lydia came out with capris on. After explaining that it was 19 degrees outside I finally convinced her to put on long pants, and admonished her not to do everything Sarah told her to do (this is a new thing, as Lydia is usually the boss). I put Zach in the nursery and laid out some clothes then went to get Tommy. I helped him off the chair and asked him to come to his room so he could get dressed. I then went to dress Zach. When Tommy didn’t show up I sent Lydia to see what was going on in the kitchen. She called out that something was wrong with Tommy’s tongue. I finished dressing Zach and went to investigate. Sure enough, Tommy was staggering around with his tongue hanging out. He had spilled the pepper on the table and I could see fingerprints in it. Two plus two equals “pepper is not meant to be served by itself, or on cereal.” He didn’t want to drink water or milk from his sippy so I left him alone to fix his little problem, and he did, somehow.

We were running on schedule and I had three kids buckled in the car. When I went into the house to get the last of my stuff I found out Sarah had taken off her coat and was trying to stuff Sad Baby into her backpack. I hit the roof, she doesn’t have a clue where her library book is, but she wants to take her polar bear to school! On the way into town, I was informed by Sarah that she was “going to live in her pink house, and she was taking Zach with her.” The as yet unbuilt pink house is across the street from Grandma.

We made it to school on time, then I went to run some errands. I put Tommy on his leash (which looks like a puppy backpack) to go into the grocery store, as he had dirty pants. They were cleaning the bathrooms which gave me a chance to check out the dark chocolate selection (lacking) and peruse the wines (well stocked). Once everybody was back in clean undies, I put Tommy in the cart and headed down the aisles. I was looking for a greeting card when out of the corner of my eye I saw Tommy take a nose dive out of the cart. I caught him by his beltloop as he was headed for the floor. That could have been ugly.

I picked up the ladies and fed the baby in the school parking lot. I hope their surveillance camera doesn’t go that far! We then drove to the newspaper office, to place an announcement of Zach’s birth in the local tattler. I parked on the street, as the parking lot is about two blocks from the front door. Keep in mind the weather here.  (The street is one-way through town, if the next part doesn’t make sense) I took all four kids into the office with me, then visited with a friend for a while. When it was time to leave, I put the baby in the driver’s side door and told the others to wait for me. We waited until traffic was safe and then proceeded as a group to the passenger door of the van. I lifted Tommy in and turned around to find Sarah dancing in the middle of Highway 30. Well, you can imagine how that went. She is getting a leash too, a monkey one.

A side note, Zach is the pottyingest kid I know. He has tinkled on me no fewer than six times. I gave him a nice warm bath the other night and he pooped in the towel! Then he tinkled! I have learned that tinkle follows poop fairly shortly, and it is best to wait a few minutes before changing him.