bsmiles and sunny days

63 months of pregnancy 15 years of marriage 9 moves 7 children 5 homeschoolers 34 years of age 10 loads of laundry a week 1000 questions a day not enough time not enough energy I'm having trouble getting the weight off.  I didn't have any trouble getting it on even though it was a lot. It's the coming off part that I'm struggling with. I waited to post a picture of myself for this very reason. The doctor told me that I could expect to retain three pounds per baby. That's a hefty twenty-one pounds the I should expect to carry around for the next 66 years. ugh. If you wouldn't mind not noticing...                    I'd feel a lot better about things. lvb

If I didn't have all these kids... Who would save me from eating all the brownie covered oreos by myself? Who would reassure Max that he is loved after I find him eating out of the trashcan? How would I know what life with a teenager is like? Who would chase screaming little girls in circles with scary gorilla hands? Who would carry Deisha around in the Snuggly sideways? Who would take countless self-portraits with my camera? I'd have never experienced this... or this... or this guinea pig's birthday party... or seen this... or this. And Scooder's neck would still be cold. And no one, not one person, not a single other person in the universe, would tend to holding this giant crayon in the air, if I didn't have all these kids. I'm so glad they're mine. lvb

sigh...

It must've been every hour.  At 11:15pm I was falling asleep on the couch.  Scarlette was still wiggling around in my arms    which is why I was still awake.  I started to fall asleep at 10:30pm. Unusual for me since the time change JUST happened and I haven't adjusted to it.  So... I should've been wide awake for a few hours, but I wasn't. I was tired. I decided to just take her to bed and see if she'd conk out. She wiggled for another thirty minutes wrestling against the pacifier before she conked out. One hour later she was ready for a snack. One hour later she was ready for a snack. One hour later she was ready for a snack. One hour later she was ready for a snack. One hour later she was ready for a snack. One hour later she was ready for a snack. One hour later she was ready for breakfast so we moved to the couch. My back was stiff and sore    from being contorted during the in-betweens       when I fell asleep nursing. Not. Restful. But she smiles. I'm not

Dale has had training all week which means his schedule is "normal" for one week of the entire year. 8-4 M-F  I love it.  I love "normal"        in theory. I didn't know it would be normal when I scheduled six appointments for this week.  Actually I thought he'd be home for four of them... which sort of bombed on me, but we survived. He had a normal lunchbreak all week and wanted to meet us for lunch of a couple of occassions, but we couldn't because I had scheduled six appointments, most of them during his break, unbeknownst to me. Today I decided that if he did call, since we didn't have six appointments, we would hop in the car and drive to wherever he wanted to meet us.  Except that we're broke.  It would be fine if he and I were meeting for lunch because we're a cheap date, but all nine of us eating out-- even at McDonalds-- is a minimum of $35.  So I got ahead of the game and made us a picnic to take with us when we jumped in the car. M

Backwards.  We're counting backwards from the usual way that expression is used.  Usually they say, "Ten seconds and counting: ten, nine, eight..." What I mean is that I am six weeks from the day my life changed. Fruitbasket  upset!! Did you ever play that?  It's a great youth group game.  The kids are all labelled as a fruit, one person is in the middle of a circle of chairs.  That person calls the name of fruit or fruits and they change places.  If the person says "Fruitbasket upset," everyone scrambles for someone else's seat.  It's chaos.  Pure chaos. My life isn't pure chaos, it just feels like it.  Everytime I get into the car I am siezed with panic that I've forgotten one. I count heads, I count heads again, then we go. Still I worry. There's a moment of panic everyday.  Yesterday I was siezed with panic when one of them brought a bowl of thawed meat into the living room and dripped rancid blood all over the carpet. We just had our

You know the type.  They have trendy shoes.  No handprints on their pant legs.  Their kids' clothes are folded in their drawers. They have great hair. Lipstick. Hand sanitizer in thier purse. I'm not one of those.  Last night Scarlette woke up in the night with a snorty nose.  I dug through all the drawers in our room and the bathroom in search of the bulb syringe to no avail.  It wasn't impossible for her to nurse, but it was noisy.  I felt bad.  Every few minutes she had to stop and cough to keep from choking on the obstruction in her sweet little newborn nasal passage.  I thought about running out to the truck at three in the morning to see if it was in the diaper bag.  source Remember that part on "When a Man Loves a Woman" when Meg Ryan attempts to kick the booze on her own and carries the last bottle out to the trash bins only she chugs it before valiantly disposing of the bottle? When she goes back to the house she realizes she locked herself out and had t

It's just that I heard this song on a movie and I fell in love.  I was fascinated.  Even a little addicted. This rock star, dancing wildly inside the perimeters of all the other rock stars in the gig, was singing the soundtrack for this stay-at-home-in-sweatpants-mom's life.  ...mmmm ba da DEH... Sure, I thought it was Ice, Ice Baby at first, but then when I realized that it was a whole new twist on that 90s mantra that we all used to do the running man to, I was hooked. I immediately downloaded it and put it on my ipod so I could blast it through the house.  I have considered starting every morning with it.  It energizes me.  If I know what I have staring me in the face each day, and I accept it, I can do it.  Six weeks ago I breathed focused forced air through excruciating contractions and then delivered a baby in a single push. I knew I HAD to do it.  I knew that if I just embraced the reality and handled each moment with concentrated resolve, it would be overwith faster.  A