The Puddles

Wow.  What a week. I am exhausted. It is 9:30 at night and I’m ready for bed.  The kids are tired.  Having the kids at two schools is going to take some time to get used to.  We haven’t quite figured out a schedule yet.  The mornings have been hard, but the nights have been worse.  I’ve had meetings almost every night this week and the kids had to go to all of them with me.  Which meant late nights for everyone!  We are using this three day weekend to get some sleep and rest up for the school on Tuesday.  Plus next week, we are starting Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Church on Wednesday and homework.  So I will have to start spending my weekends planning menus, grocery shopping, and cleaning the house so that we can start fresh and ready for the week on the first day.  I’m worn out thinking about it!!  If you add the three doctor’s appointments next week (one of which is at Texas Children’s Hospital again), it is going to be busy.  I’m making Daddy help with the doctor visits at least.  He is taking Madie for the removal of stitches!  At least I can cross that one off the list.  Although, I did try to convince the doctor this week to let us remove the stitches ourselves.  She said no. I begged.  She still said no.  So off we trek to the doctor for that too.

I know that I work from  home.  But as soon as the kids leave, I grab a second cup of coffee and go to work.  I am working until the kids get home.  Lunch is at my desk.  I try to utilize every moment while the kids are at school to work. When there are days that are busy at work, I have to restrain myself from laundry. Focus. Focus. Focus. Try not to let your household chores distract you!!!  It can be really hard on some days.  The upswing is that I can put my hair in a ponytail and wear pajama bottoms to work (Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone!).  And taking the kids to the doctor means you have to work after the kids go down to bed that night.  In the end, it is very positive.  So yes, most often my house is a mess even though I’ve been home all day.  And yes, sometimes we don’t have either milk or bread in the house because I haven’t had time to go to the grocery store because it meant that the kids would have had to go to bed later so they could go with me.  No, I don’t get to read anything for enjoyment unless I’m on vacation at the beach. And yes, I drink copious amounts of coffee/tea/dt. coke/any other caffeinated beverages that I can get my hands on to make it through the day with only 5-6 hours of sleep every night (on a good night!).

So thank goodness for a three day weekend.  Time to rest up, clean the house, spend some time with family and friends, stock up on groceries, get organized, do more laundry, get rid of all of the items that I purged from the house, and find that happy place in order to make it through the next week.  If I have time, I will try to be that more perfect mom and finish putting our family calendar together, make teacher gifts for the beginning of the year, and try to sew patches on all of the scout uniforms.  But luckily, I am ok not being that perfect mom this weekend, so I think I’ll just go to bed and try to pace myself this weekend.  A mom who dies from going insane is no good to anyone!

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After horrible Houston traffic that made it take an extra hour to get here, we are finally here. Ben put on his “fast” shoes today so that he would run fast on the treadmill. He and George are listening to his iPod and the world is good . . . finally!

Now we just have to wait.

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The kids’ rooms and the toy room have needed a major purge for several years. We haven’t had room for new toys! The new toys have filtered to their bedrooms.

So we purged all bedrooms and the toy room. And this pile was the end result (plus a few more nags of toys that hadn’t come down the stairs).

But from all of that comes order. And a real place for everything!

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This summer Ainsley decided she was lonely in her room, so she has decided to take up residence with Ben. On most nights this is how I found them.

After seeing them this way several nights in a row, I decided to take a picture. I can’t decide what is more adorable. Ainsley’s love for Ben by wanting to hang out with him more. Or Ben’s love for Ainsley by not kicking her out each night that she puts her feet in his face!

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Mistake number 1: kissed Ben on the head when I said goodbye this morning in FRONT of friends.

Mistake number 2: insisted I take a photo of Madie at her desk in 5th grade!

Yes. I am that mom. Kids, just get over it and prepare for more humiliation. You can tell your therapist later about how I ruined your life!

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“Mom, I’m just too excited to sleep! I can’t wait for school tomorrow. I really want to learn!!!” says Ben.

An half hour later . . . .

“Mom, I’m just too excited to sleep!  I want to learn so much.  I just can’t wait for tomorrow to get here!” says Ainsley.

*******

I just needed to document this night since the scenario will be entirely different on the night before junior high, high school, college, work, etc.

But until then . . . it was really cool to hear the enthusiasm.

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“Why is it that I am a gazelle when all of the other kids are cheetahs?” asks Ben sadly.

Ben is wondering why he doesn’t run as fast as the other kids.  I’ve just never heard that concern asked in that way before!  Leave it to Ben!

Even though he isn’t as fast as a cheetah, he is certainly as graceful as a gazelle.  And I love gazelles.

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That is a quote from the movie Annie and it was very appropriate for  the events of yesterday!

Madie fell at the church pool party and sliced her knee open.  Of course, Chris was in Louisiana (which is typical, our ER visits tend to be when he can’t help).  After first glance, I knew we had to go to the ER.  After first glance, Madie knew she was going to get sick.  She got really nauseated and loopy.  But we laid her on the ground and while the others wrapped her knee, I gathered my wits about me and figured out what to do.  Even though we were in Willis, we drove to the hospital emergency center that I had taken the kids to before in the Woodlands.

Madie did really good.  After the doctor confirmed stitches, she hit the roof.  She begged for an alternative (yeah, right) and she tried to convince us that we just needed to take her home (not gonna happen). I asked the doctor for some medicine to help relax her for the stitches.  I told him that she was not going to calm down for stitches.  She had to have several nurses hold her down for a blood draw.  She throws up when she sees others getting shots. I told him that this was not going to go well.  He said he would send the nurse in to give her a shot of medicine to calm her down.  Again . . . Doctor, she does not react well with shots.  So he offered a pill. Yes, please give her a pill.  About an hour after the pill, Madie was feeling good.  I gave her a piece of gum and she kept trying to eat the wrapper instead!  Poor thing. Friends from church had stopped by to help pass the time at the ER with us and she didn’t stop talking!!  When the doctor finally came in to do the stitches, she was nervous but she did great.  She had me lean over her so she couldn’t see, but there was no screaming and no nurses were needed to hold her down!

The doctor thought she might have broken her knee cap, but after X-rays there was no broken knee, just a badly bruised knee.  Not surprising.  But she can’t really bend her knee for a week because the stitches are right on top of her knee cap. Poor thing.  She was up until 2am this morning in pain.  I am completely exhausted this morning.  At some point last night I was begging her to get some sleep.  Unfortunately, I don’t think we will make it to church this morning.  The youngest two didn’t go to bed until after 10pm. Madie didn’t finally go to sleep until 2am. And I was up early helping get Chris out of the door (I think I ironed his pants with only one eye open!).

After all of this, a big thank you to our church family.  They took care of my other two kids so that I could completely focus on Madie. They wrapped that bloody knee and carried Madie to the car.  They talked to Madie, loved on her, kissed her on the forehead and made her feel completely safe in a scary situation.  And very sweetly, a pair of friends met us at the hospital and stayed with us for almost the entire five hours we were there.  Although I am the person who would normally tell everyone that I didn’t need anyone to be at the hospital with me and could handle everything by myself, I realize that it is ok to let someone in your bubble and walk through that difficult leg of your journey with you.  So thank you to everyone.  A big thank to Aunt Deb, who was getting a moment to herself on Saturday (away from her two beloved children) but met Ben and Ainsley and took them home with her so that they didn’t have to go to the hospital with us.

In the end, all of the kids are still asleep, and since I can’t go back to sleep even after only four hours of sleep, I will try to make something of the morning.  No matter what happened yesterday, tomorrow is still the first day of school!

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“I need to do my school moves to see if these shoes will work,” says Ainsley before she starts to twirl.

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Dear Friends,

Over the years many of you have given my girls Barbies as gifts. Thank you. Others knew the love that both of my girls had for Barbie and they would give them Barbies that their daughters had outgrown. Thank you again.

My girls love to play with Barbies but to all of my family and friends please do not send us any more. Tonight we are cleaning the playroom and I realized just how many we had.

At last count there are over 50. And those are just the ones we found downstairs. I was shocked!!! How had it gotten so out of hand! Even the kids were surprised.

Even more shocking is that there was only one guy.

He is missing part of his leg which might have destined him for the trash but the girls decided years ago that he is an Iraqi war vet who was hit by a roadside bomb. He is a war hero!! So I guess it is ok that he has 49 wives.

So to conclude, thank you family and friends for your contributions to our huge collection but this Barbie refuge is closed. Even Madie said she doesn’t have time to keep them all in clothes. And my mother would die if she saw all of the naked Barbies.

Thank you,
The Lakes

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