9 posts tagged “mommy”

I love the smell of fall. Woodsmoke, moldy leaves, wet earth...the perfume of heaven. I love the nip in the air - just the slightest bite - and drizzly rain.  I love putting the down comforter on the bed and leaving the windows open at night, snuggling and cuddling under the covers in a chilly room. Sunday morning rain is falling...steal some covers, share some skin. I love watching Walker build a fire in the fireplace so we can all spend the day in the room that has no TV, watching the flames jump and listening to the wood pop and hiss. I love to see the leaves turn, especially the huge old oak trees that turn flaming orange like their tops are on fire. I love pumpkins and gourds, and hay bales, and scarecrows and turkeys.

It reminds me of childhood - the first day of school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. All the things little kids love, the holidays of childhood, free of acrimony and full of wonderful, almost magical, surprises. Mom cooking all your favorite things for Thanksgiving dinner. Dragging out the Christmas decorations after the Thanksgiving dishes have been washed. Tiny white twinkle lights.

It reminds me of meeting my husband, and sneaking away from college to spend the weekend with him. His coat on my shoulders, road trips and hay bale surfing and long walks with your best college friend. Deep conversations, endless dreams, and youth in the season of aging.

Now, it's my turn to teach my kids to love this time of year. I get to make magical memories for them, pasted on a background of scarlet leaves and perfumed with the smell of autumn in the air. And I ask you a question: what season wallpapers your fondest memories?

I get to brag, right? I have three small children, a husband, a house full of small animals, and I only take one pharmaceutical a day - so I get to brag, don't I?

We had our parent/teacher conferences the other night. C. was first - he's in PreK and his teacher absolutely adores him. No big surprises came out of that meeting, except the fact that he actually picks up after himself at school. We go round and round about that at home, but he knows he doesn't have to here because K. & D. will do it for him. But the teacher told us how charming he was, and that he is very kind to his classmates, and that she enjoys having him in her class. At 4 years of age, there's just not a whole lot of insight that a teacher can offer.

The surprise (to me, anyway) came when we got to the big kids' classroom. They're both in First Grade this year, and though I see and speak with their teacher often, I didn't realize how impressed she was with them until the other night. My kids got 'satisfactory' grades in subjects she hasn't even taught yet. One of them that sticks out in my mind was 'Writes in Complete Sentences'. The teacher told us that 1st graders don't usually write in complete sentences, but both of mine do. They also both got +'s (exceeds expectations) instead of s's (satisfactory - performs at grade level) in things like Vocabulary and Ability to Express Ideas Verbally. She also told me that my oldest son is so self-sufficient that she has to make a mental note to interact with him during the day, otherwise he flies completely under her radar. And she said that my daughter is frighteningly good with graphs, of all things.

The thing that scares me is this: by the time my kids are 12 they are going to be both taller than me and smarter than both of their parents. Then what are we supposed to do with them?

I cannot even comprehend what strange mingling of DNA has resulted in such good-hearted, smart, beautiful kids. I'd like to take credit for them - I really would - but I just can't bring myself to do it. Half the time, I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Every time I think I do, I'm forced to remind myself of the incident with the watermelon. Oh, you don't know about the incident with the watermelon? Well, well, well....just let me fill you in:

A couple of months after we moved in to this house, I had made my usual weekly trip to the grocery store (at the cost of my right arm, of course) and bought a watermelon among other things. The kids love watermelon, and I decided that would be a great summer treat that week. I unloaded the groceries by myself and the watermelon ended up on the counter of the pass-through bar in the front living/dining room (or The Red Room, for those of you familiar with us). That night at suppertime, K. had said he wanted watermelon but no one else did, so I told him we'd wait to carve it up until everybody wanted some. He was disappointed but didn't argue.

The next morning I was busy doing I-don't-even-remember-what-now when C. (then about 2 1/2 yrs. old) came running into the kitchen. He was hopping up and down and kept saying, "I'm sorry about the knife, Mommy, I'm sorry about the knife." Way to freak a mom out! My eyes travel instantly to the knife block on the kitchen counter where I keep my Henckels - they all were accounted for, thank the Lord. D. (then about 4 1/2) starts interjecting something about a big mess, and K. (5 1/2) is just standing there looking sheepish. I finally calm everyone down enough to start making some sense out of what they're saying. They led me back to K.'s room where I was confronted with a scene that looked like something out of an episode of CSI. The off-white carpet was soaked with some sort of pinkish red liquid and there were chunks of what looked like guts thrown willy-nilly around the room. In the middle of the mess was the carcass of what once was a watermelon, and a butter knife. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time carving a watermelon with a sharp kitchen knife, let alone a butter knife. And after I got the whole story out of the kids, the butter knife weilding Jack the Ripper had in fact been the 2 1/2 yr. old! Don't get me wrong, it was a group effort - K. carried the watermelon from The Red Room to his bedroom, and D. conspired to keep the whole thing hush-hush while C. practiced his skills as a surgeon. But at that moment, as I stood there and viewed the carnage, I had to admit to my kids that I didn't know what to do. I didn't have the slightest idea how to go about cleaning that up without ruining the carpet, or what punishment the children should face. It's not like this was a crime that deserved a beating - no one was bleeding - but they couldn't grow up thinking it's acceptable to carve up innocent fruit in their bedrooms. What's a mom to do?

So, most of you moms (and dads) can probably understand my thoughts when the teacher was bragging on our kids and I kept thinking to myself, "This is amazing. How on Earth have Walker and I managed to not screw this up?"

Back in the mid- to late-eighties, my absolute favorite band was a county-pop number called Restless Heart. Anybody who's ever worn Rocky Mountain jeans or Wranglers starched to the point that they could stand up by themselves knows what band I'm talking about. One of their songs was titled, "I Want Everyone Who Hears This Song To Cry." It was a typical broken-hearted country ballad, but it got stuck in my head this afternoon after I got off the phone with my friend, The Woman of Steel. Her story can be found at www.melpate.vox.com .

"I want everyone who hears this song to cry.

Maybe I'll get over her...if the whole world helps me try.

When I'm through don't let me see...one dry eye.

I want everyone who hears this song to cry...."

Out of five pregnancies, my friend Mel and hubby Sean have a single surviving child. For years, none of the doctors - not even the ones who delivered her two stillborn 27 week babies - would seriously consider the notion that the problem was anything other than some really atrocious luck. My cat, with her partial hysterectomy and total lack of prenatal care, has a better track record for giving birth to thriving offspring than Mel does. That sounds mean but it's not intended that way, it's intended as a slap in the face of the medical community. If someone came to you with a story like this, what would you say?

Six and a half years ago, at her bachelorette party, Mel confided in me that she was losing a baby, possibly two. She had definately been pregnant, and the doctor at the quack shack on campus at West Texas University said that her HcG levels were high enough to have been supporting twins. She had woken up the day before the wedding spotting, and the pregnancy was lost. Though painful, Mel and Sean shrugged the early miscarriage off as a sign of bad timing or divine grace - maybe there had been something wrong with the baby(ies). 

A few months later, Mel found herself pregnant again with a baby girl they planned on naming Avery..we were all so excited for them. I had two small children of my own at the time, and every happy parent wants their friends to share their misery, right? One day I'm feeding my 10 month old breakfast when the phone rings. I answer, and I'm glad to hear the voice on the other end belongs to Mel. When she told me that she was in the hospital being induced to deliver a baby girl that the doctor had already confirmed was dead, I felt exactly like I had been punched in the stomach. The air whooshed out of my lungs at the same time that tears started rolling down my face. I remember looking at D. sitting in her high chair and thinking, "That's not fair. It's not fair that I have two perfectly healthy babies and Mel can't even have one." Mel is a couple of years younger than I am, the first time I ever met her she was wearing her high school cheerleading uniform. I always called her 'my baby friend', I always looked at her as still being a teenager. From that day on, Mel was an adult to me, one who had shared with her husband the one thing that I hope to God I never, ever have to do: have a funeral service for a child.

What do you say to someone who has had to endure giving birth to a dead baby? To someone who has had to pick out a tiny coffin and watch it be lowered into the ground? 'I'm sorry' doesn't cut it. 'Please don't hate me because I have children' doesn't quite do it, either. For the first time in my normally eloquent life, I didn't know what to say. I wanted so badly to take some of her pain and somehow absorb it into myself so that she didn't have to endure it all by herself. Then, five months later when I found myself pregnant with my third child, I really didn't know what to say. I couldn't tell her, I just couldn't. You can only imagine my relief when I got an email from her one day, and all it said was: "I'M PREGNANT!!" I called her that night and said, "Thank God, because so am I!" We laughed and cried, and she fussed at me for being afraid to tell her that I was pregnant. That was when I started calling her The Woman of Steel. As much as she had lost, she still held the capacity to feel joy for people who could have what she couldn't. How amazing is that?

After a difficult pregnancy and quite a bit of bedrest, Mel gave birth to a beautiful baby girl exactly one week after I gave birth to our youngest son. When Mel called to tell me that M. had arrived in this world safe and sound, I remember looking up toward the heavens and saying a prayer of thanks. I was more relieved when that baby was born than when my own was born! I had the pleasure of getting to babysit Mel's daughter last week, and let me tell you - she is a little dream.

After all the trouble they had had, I was kind of surprised a year and a half later when Mel called to tell me she was pregnant again. Come to find out, Mel and Sean had been surprised, too. But we were all glad, because they had never intended for M. to be an only child. None of us were expecting Mel to have an easy pregnancy, but we all figured the worst was behind them. Mel made it through the first trimester, and we all breathed a sigh of relief because that usually means that you're home free. Walker and I saw Sean and Mel in May, and when we were driving home we both agreed that she had looked a little peaked, like the pregnancy was taking a toll on her. I worried - but not too much because frankly, being pregnant makes me look like hell, too. Walker and I bought our first house that summer and we were terribly busy. We were packing and closing and moving and raising 5, 4, and 2 year olds. We spent a week sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of the new house so that we could paint and clean. The day the movers were coming to load up the furniture, we got up at the crack of dawn and drove to the old house. I decided to check our email before we unplugged the computer, because I was afraid that somehow the emails would be lost to me during the move. Sean and Mel had said that they weren't going to find out the sex of the baby before it was born, so when I saw the email subject line that read, "Jackson William Pate," I had opened it up, excited and thinking they had caved in the presence of the sonogram tech. Walker heard me scream and start crying from the kitchen and came running into the bedroom thinking that I had hurt myself. I was hurt alright, but it was a broken heart, not a bruised toe.  The screaming and sobbing began when I read the email and saw, instead of fuzzy sonogram pictures, a birth/death announcement for another 27 week baby, this time, a son. There was a sad little picture at the bottom of the page of a beautiful, normal looking, ever-so-tiny baby with only the slightest tinge of blue to his perfectly porcelain complection.

I could not wrap my mind around the fact that it had happened again. Once is a tragedy, twice is beyond endurance. It was cruel. I have not forgiven myself yet for finding out two weeks after the fact that they had lost another baby and Mel had spent several days in the ICU, hovering near death. What kind of a friend gets so wrapped up in her life that she forgets to call and check on the people who mean the most to her? The Woman of Steel tells me, of course, not to beat myself up about something I couldn't have helped or change, but the guilt lingers. Where was I when she needed me?

Fortunately for Mel and Sean, they still had a child at home who needed her parents. I think that M. is probably what kept them going. She forced them out of bed in the mornings, and kept their minds busy during the day. I don't know, but I think the nights would be the hardest, when the house was quiet and M. was asleep. I would think you would lay there unable to sleep because you know it shouldn't be this quiet - a little voice should be crying out to you to feed me, change me, rock me, hold me. But I don't know, because I can't even begin to imagine.

Even though she nearly died from complications that arose with Jackson, Mel is made out of sterner stuff than most and after two years she was actually ready to try again. I didn't even know she was pregnant again until I got an email telling me that it was lost, this time very early. The good news, she said, was that the OB/GYN and a maternal/fetal specialist were both taking her seriously and running a whole bunch of tests. They both felt that the problem had to do with a clotting issue, and could probably be solved with some baby aspirin or heparin. It seemed ridiculous, when she told me, that something as simple as a baby aspirin could have spared them the heartache they had suffered. Both Drs. ran tests, and both gave them the unofficial okay to start trying to conceive. I saw Mel this past weekend, and she was talking about asking for some Clomid to regulate her cycle a little. We were all excited at the prospect of them having a successful pregnancy, of giving M. a sibling.

Today Mel called as she was leaving the follow-up appt. with the specialist. Through her tears of anger and sadness, she told me that basically, she can't have any more children. That M. was a fluke that likely would not be repeated. That, if she got pregnant again, she would have a 45% chance of delivering yet another stillborn child, and a 20% chance of not surviving the pregnancy herself. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't take those kind of odds to Vegas. The Dr. also told her that if she were stupid enough to get pregnant again (the Dr.'s words - not mine), the Dr. would not be able to treat her since it would in essence be a suicide mission.

So, after mourning two early miscarriages and two dead babies, my friend now gets to mourn her fertility. Something that comes so easily to millions of women - including teenagers, crack whores, abusers, and welfare leeches - is beyond her abilities. What's wrong with this picture? So, the chorus of an old song keeps running through my head:

"I want everyone who hears this song to cry.

Maybe I'll get over her...if the whole world helps me try.

When I'm through don't let me see...one dry eye.

I want everyone who hears this song to cry."

I know I'm crying, and I can't help but thinking that maybe...if the whole world cries with Mel and Sean tonight...just maybe it will ease their pain.

The other day I was putting some snapshots into the 'media storage boxes' that I resorted to using a few years back (when I finally admitted to myself that I was never going to get all my pictures neatly lined up and labeled in cute photo albums - who the hell has time for that?). Anyway, I came across a picture that took me back to the days when I had a pair of four-year-olds and a two-year-old who was a handful by himself (can anyone say "crazy lady"?). And then I remembered a specific day that I really felt should be immortalized on the internet for all to read, and from which all mothers could learn. *Giggle* Ahem...

My sister-in-law says that there moments in every mother's life when she is confronted by a situation that makes her wish that she were somewhere - anywhere! - else, preferably not on this same planet. She also wishes fervently that some other person, preferably her husband, were responsible for dealing with the situation. Those are the moments when, upon walking into a room and looking around, the mother thinks to herself, "Beam me up, Scottie!"

Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of sharing their home with a willful two year old is aware of the inherent potential for disaster, and have at one time or another thought to themselves something akin to "Beam me up, Scottie!" For those of you who don't have your own toddler, you should borrow one from a close friend for a few days because words cannot even begin to prepare you. Have you ever had a bassett hound as a pet? They are difficult to train, willful, forgetful, and retaliatory in nature; actually, they're a lot like toddlers. In fact, I think that all high school graduates should receive a bassett hound pup with their diploma. If they manage to raise the pup without losing his/her mind, then they are issued a license to have children. If not...well, no license for you, Bub.

But I digress. Sometimes it seems like you couldn't keep a busy toddler from getting into things even if you tied him up, which - for the record - is illegal. We were having one of those days. C. (who was oh so very TWO at the time) had already dumped a brand new box of cereal in the middle of the living room floor. I was completely unaware that he had learned to open the pantry door. About the time that I got that mess all cleaned up, I realized that his older brother had neglected to close the bathroom door all the way. This resulted in an unfortunate incident involving a running water faucet, some toothpaste, some toilet paper, a cup, and the potty. Not a pretty sight. I was beginning to feel a trifle frazzled, so when my mother-in-law phoned, I was glad to sit down on the couch and talk to her for a minute. And I do mean, one minute.

I had hardly sat down when my daughter (who had just turned four) came running into the living room, yelling something at me that I couldn't quite understand. Those of you who have preschoolers know that children this age have no sense of personal boundaries. When our children are babies, every time they whimper or wiggle most of us drop what we're doing and redirect our attention to them. This leads them to grow up with the notion that they are the center of the universe: little gods with tunnel vision whose needs eclipse those of the lesser mortals around them. I had been trying, pretty much in vain, to teach them to say, "Excuse me, please," and wait patiently until I could give them my full attention. I had to give them credit, they were trying. But so far my attempts had resulted in them standing next to me and saying, "Excuse me, please," over and over and over, getting progressively louder and louder until I couldn't focus on what it is I was trying to do or who it was that I was trying to talk to. I must admit, I found this very annoying. Finally, though, what she was trying to tell me wormed its way into my consciousness and my blood ran cold.

"C. pooped and he took his diaper off and now he's naked." She pronounced the last word in true southern fashion so it came out 'nekkid'. "Aaannnd," my little drama queen continued, "he made a mess in K.'s room." At that very moment, the instant before my so very helpful toddler rounded the corner with baby poop smeared from his hips to his ankles, proudly carrying his diaper which he gleefully bestowed upon his stupefied mother - all I could think was, "Beam me up, Scottie!"

And that, my dear friends, is why birth control pills were invented.

I've been worried about the fact that everyone else has this cute little photograph of themselves beside their blog, and I have the webpage-issued silhouette with a question mark in it. Don't ask me why I worry about that, like I don't have other, more important, things to worry about. That's why I take Lexapro, people.

Anyway, it worries me because I don't have a digital camara that I know how to operate. I certainly don't have a clue how to go about uploading a picture (even if I had one) to replace the face with the question mark that reminds me of the Batman character called The Riddler.

Riddle me this, riddle me that...

And I have finally come to the conclusion that maybe that silhouette with the question mark says more about me than a photograph would. I'm almost 31 years old. I have three kids and a husband, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Worse than that, I don't even know who I am anymore. I can't remember any of the dreams I had when I was a teenager. I know I love animals, but lately I find myself tired of the responsibility of taking care of them. I know I've always wanted a college degree (or two or three), but I have no idea what they should be for and frankly I'm scared to death that I don't have the organizational skills and work ethic to achieve them anymore. When I accidentally find myself with some free time, I don't pursue things I'm interested in - I sleep. Granted, sleep is a commodity almost as rare as free time, but still....

When did I quit being me? Once a year, all my girlfriends and I get together at someone's house and spend a weekend catching up, talking about husbands and kids and jobs and bills and medical ailments. Sometimes we swap recipes because we all get tired of cooking the same ol' same ol'. Sometimes we drink too much, often we eat too much, and we don't sleep near enough. The slumber party is usually held in July, and I start getting emails in February telling me that the girls are already looking forward to it. For that brief weekend, I feel like me. The girl who was always ready for a road trip, loved to dance, laughed at everything, ate whatever she wanted and didn't worry about weight, and thought the world was hers on a platter. Where does she go the rest of the year?

Did she drown in dirty diapers? Did she die from the bacteria growing on the dishes piled in the kitchen sink? Did the laundry monster eat her whole? Or did she just grow up?

If this is what being a grown up is, I think I'll pass, thank you.

I'm going to find me, and I'm going to ask her what she really wants out of life. And I'm not going to tell her that it's not possible.

Anyone have any ideas where to look?

My mother swears that before a woman leaves the hospital after having a baby, she should be handed a lifetime prescription for anti-depressants.

I think Mother's on to something. But I think the hospital should take it one step further, and make sure that the new mother has a list of all her friends' phone numbers and email addresses with her in her diaper bag at all times. And a medic-alert ID bracelet that says: "In case of meltdown, contact one of the women on the emergency sheet in the diaper bag, she'll know what to say."

Who else is going to listen to you when you describe the baby's poop because you're worried that it's too loose, too firm, too yellow, too tarry, too often, or too irregular? After you've had a fight with your husband, who else is going to tell you that he's an ass and it's all his fault, then tell you a story about when her husband has done the exact same thing? Who else is going to tell you that you're being an ass and you've got to stop, then tell you a story about when she's done the exact same thing? It makes me feel better to know that I'm not alone, to know that husbands and wives across the nation are having the same types of arguments that my husband and I are having. To know that other mothers are at their wits' end, too. Somewhere, there's solace in the fact that my problems aren't unique, that the people whom I think of as "having it together" sometimes don't have it together. Most of the time, the advice my friends give me is wonderful and helpful. But what is really helpful to me is that they act as my sounding board, they let me hear the things out loud that are rattling around in my head. I think out loud, I guess you could say. I can't really get a handle on a problem or something that's bothering me until I've heard it out loud. And they never, ever throw back at me later something I've said to them while I was thinking out loud. Women need to talk - it's a fact. Oprah said so. I probably need to talk more than the average woman, I seem to talk a lot.

Sometimes, I think I may lean on my friends too much, like I don't pull my own weight in my friendships. Sometimes, when I'm feeling really down, I wonder if my friends don't get tired of hearing my problems. But I always try to reciprocate whenever the opportunity arises. I don't have any sisters, and I don't have the kind of relationship with my mother that some girls have - the "tell mother everything" kind - because Mom kind of lives in her own little world. And my husband, well, let's just say that he's not the most empathetic man in the world (if there is such a thing). But my girlfriends, they take up the slack. They're my family. And I love them.

So, in order of our meetings, thanks Cree.

And Beth Ann.

And Chris.

And Ken (Mouse).

And Brit.

And Mel.

And Tonya.

And Spouse.

And Tataum.

And Julia.

And Erika.

You guys rock.

If you can't write about your sex life when you're a faceless entity on the internet, when can you write about your sex life?

I'm going to take the leap.

We have three kids, right? So, our sex life should be non-existant, right? Well, normally it's not, but lately it has been. I don't know why, maybe it's because we're tired. Maybe it's because I've been sick with some sort of chest crud. Maybe it's because - having PCOS - I've had my first period in, oh, about 6 months. Maybe it's because the Lexapro I've been taking to thwart the crazies has affected my sex drive. Whatever the reason, yesterday morning I guess the planets were aligned, the cosmos was singing, and we were both home and we both felt like having sex.

The boys were awake, but they had had breakfast and were playing and watching TV in back of the house. D. was spending the night with Gran. So, I get up, lock the bedroom door, and we snuggle quietly under the sheets. Right about the time that things start getting interesting, Walker's phone rings. He's the boss so he has to answer, but I really feel like chunking the thing right out the window. This is not the first time that this has happened. He finishes the call, and things start getting interesting again, when the cat jumps up in the middle of the bed. Walker hates the cat. So, I get up and throw the cat out in the hall and re-lock the bedroom door.

Things start getting interesting again, when we hear it:

bang, BANG, BANG on the bedroom door.

"Mommy, K. won't let me up on his bed!"

"Mommy, where are you?"

BANG, BANG, BANG!

"Mommy!"

I give up.

Sooo, yesterday was my husband's 31st birthday. Happy Birthday, Dear. I asked the kids if they wanted to cook for Daddy or take him out to dinner. My little restaurant-addicts promptly replied, "Westauwant, westauwant, westauwant, Mommy!!!" at the tops of their little lungs while jumping enthusiastically up and down. Westauwant, it was.

My kids' current favorites are Chili's and The Olive Garden. Daddy is sick unto death of both. Daddy probably deserved a big, fat, juicy steak, but the idea of wrestling with the children at some fancy steakhouse was just not appealing to me (anybody else understand my reluctance?). So there's this Mexican food place that all of my local friends have been raving about, and I thought that would be a great compromise - Daddy loooves Mexican food, and so do the kids.

In hindsight, we should have gone to the danged steakhouse.

We hadn't been there fifteen minutes when disaster struck, in the form of the natural disaster that is our youngest son. Daddy had opened all of his birthday cards, we had ordered our supper, and we were drinking our tea and eating chips and salsa (you guessed it - we're from Texas!), when our four-year-old  fell out of his chair.

Here's the "Bad Mommy" moment: I snickered. At my own child. Unforgiveable, I know. In my defense, the first few times that my son fell out of his chair while wiggling around at the dinner table, I jumped up like a "Good Mommy" and scooped him up and checked for boo-boos and kissed all the ouchies. However, our little wiggle-worm manages to trip over his own feet, walk into a wall, or fall out of his chair at least twice a week. Natural consequences of doing ev-er-y-thing at 90 m.p.h. while paying not the slightest bit of attention to one's surroundings. I stopped snickering abruptly when my normally unflappable husband said, "No! He hit his head."

And boy, did he hit his head. On the concrete floor or the brick wall, we're not actually sure. So, as blood starts gushing out of our baby's head in the middle of a packed restaurant with tons of people trying to actually enjoy their suppers (salsa, anyone?), the manager non-chalantly strolls over in response to our son's shrieks and asks if he's going to be okay. Which, for those of us veterans of the food-service industry, translates directly into: "Could you please quiet your child, he's disrupting my patrons." I have to give Mr. Manager a little bit of credit, he scurried away for ice and a clean towel pretty quickly after he saw the blood. I've noticed blood has that effect on most people.

In the end, we decided that C. should probably be taken to the hospital. I volunteered to take him and let his Daddy and siblings eat their supper. We hadn't been at the E.R. for an hour when the three of them came in - the big kids refused to go home until they were sure that their brother was okay. My charming four-year-old held court in the emergency department like Liberace in Las Vegas. At one point, he had roped in the mother of another casualty, a clerk from the hospital, a nurse, and a paramedic. The highlight of the night's entertainment came when he announced to his audience, "I'm four, and I go to school at St. Paul's, and don't I have big feet?" Talk about your non-sequiter.

So, my husband got to spend the evening of his 31st birthday in the emergency room, getting our four-year-old's head stitched up. One thing's for sure: it's not a birthday he'll be forgetting any time soon. I think C. really capped off the evening when he sang his dad "The Happy Birthday Song" ~ while he handed him the bill from the hospital.

Okay, I may not be an actual alcoholic yet, but I sense that the day is not too far in the future...for right now, chocolate is a viable and preferred alternative to alcohol. Oh, and Lexapro. And caffeine. And carbohydrates!

Sooo, I guess I should introduce myself.

I'm a wife, a mom, and a zookeeper ~ alright, so I'm really a stay-at-home mom. And I have come to the conclusion that children, not alcohol, kill brain cells. Loss of intelligence seems to be directly porportional to the number of births a mother has endured. I saw a coffee mug the other day that said, "Memory loss is contagious, I got it from my kids!" But I digress...

My name is Yvette, I have a husband of 8 1/2 years (and I swear I haven't made even one teensy, tiny attempt on his life in all that time) named Walker, who I still love and who still makes me laugh. And please, the "Walker, Texas Ranger" jokes are not original. We have three beautiful, healthy children with a total age span between the oldest and youngest of 34 months. There are 10 1/2 months between my son, K, and my daughter, D; there are 23 months between my daughter and my youngest son, C. Before you ask, yes, we know what causes it and we have a license to do it...yes, we did wait the 6 week post-partum moratorium on sex...and yes, we did finally get a TV for the bedroom. Oh, and yes, they do keep me terribly busy. They keep me running. For my life.

The children have managed to accumulate a small number of additional responsibilities for their tireless mother. We have an English Spaniel named Angel, a Siamese cat named Bella, and a white-faced cockatiel named Sam. And though Bella was supposed to have already been spayed when we got her from the Humane Society last year, we now have a six week old kitten named Ellie. We also have a time-share Jack Russell Terrier that spends part of the year in Alabama with my mother and part of the year here with us. The kids are currently begging for a chinchilla, some fish, another bird, and a pet snake, but I have to draw the line somewhere. We already have entirely too many links of the food chain represented in one household.

I have a slew of fantastic, patient friends that get me through my days. One of those friends, who shall remain nameless, has been encouraging me to write my own blog as a means to "vent". (Thanks, Amy! ;^) ) Then, my friend Mel finally roped me into it with an invitation and promise of getting to design my own page - finally, something I actually have control over! Because, of course, at home I have about as much control as a shepherd trying to herd cats.

Anyway, this is my blog. It probably won't be very funny, and it probably won't be very original, and it probably won't be very good, but it doesn't matter. Because when I feel like poking my fingers in my ears and yelling, "Bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bahbahbah..." I will have a place to do just that.