Adventures in Not Getting Lost

Let me be honest: this blog deserves pictures. And I do not have any. The simple reason being that I forgot to bring my camera on our excursion, and my phone's memory is too full to take more pictures (and they won't download onto the computer anyway for some unknown reason), and the Man's phone is on the fritz, by which I mean, his screen has cracked into a gazillion pieces and we are spending extensive time praying over it every day because evidently we didn't get insurance on it and it can't be replaced 'til February. That was a run on sentence. Since I am a bad blogger with no actual photos and really bad grammar, I will have to ungrammatically paint you a picture with my words. But considering that I was up all night with Teething Tiny (this is now his never to be replaced nickname) and his Screeching Sibling (who threw a tantrum at midnight because he was out of water and then another at the crack of dawn because he had wet the bed--naturally), that may not go as well as we might hope.

I digress.

Here's where the story starts. The boys happily ensconced in their car seats, the Man and I up front, lunch plans to discover the "best burger in Oklahoma" which is supposed to be down one road out of base and then something-something-something a dirt road and then to a old, out of use gas station with a sign for peanuts. Yes. I do not exaggerate. This is how they give directions here. Thinking to ourselves that this couldn't be that hard, we blithely headed out under the sunny sky without a care in the world. We then proceeded to criss-cross the entire state of Oklahoma for an hour and a half without finding hide nor hair of Biddy's Burgers and Peanuts. Again, I do not exaggerate. Both boys fell asleep in their car seats; we went through half a tank of gas; we even called for directions (which would've been helpful had we been where we thought we were). We started recognizing cows that we had passed before, but still no Biddy's. The worst part of it is, since we were going to lunch (supposedly), we had not brought road trip snacks! It was a travesty.

Finally we decided to go back to the beginning (Vizzini would've approved) and regroup. And lo and behold, it worked. The hilariously annoying part of it is, we had been driving in circles around Biddy's the entire time. Again: I do not exaggerate. The result of all of this was that we were very hungry by the time we got our burgers and they really did taste like the best burgers in the state of Oklahoma (and possibly the history of mankind) although whether or not they really were is completely up in the air because our taste buds were most likely affected by the growling of our stomachs. Also, as a side note and in case I ever take up work as a food critic and need to prove my absolute, unbiased honesty, the buns did leave something to be desired.

And the point of the story (although really it's not a point and who needs one anyway?) is that although we couldn't find what we were looking for, we weren't really lost, and how does that possibly make any sense?

The End. And yes, you may have some fries with that.

Miracle Baby

I used to think Little Man was a miracle baby. For one, technically, my pregnancy shouldn't have happened. Don't ask. For two, his first year of life he almost died. They said if I'd waited one more day to bring him to the hospital, his lungs would've collapsed (we'd already done multiple ER visits before that point). We had an overnight hospital stay and came on home. He's already made it through two separate surgeries, tackled an inhaler and multiple breathing treatments, and figured out how to sleep comfortably when his feet are connected with a metal rod. This child has skill.

Now, however, I think Tiny is the miracle baby. As in, it will be a miracle if he makes it through his first year of life alive--that is, if his brother has anything to do with it. Don't get me wrong, Little loves Tiny. And most of the things he's done to him were accidents. I think. I hope? But so far, Little has sat on Tiny's head, laid bodily on top of him, elbowed him this way and that, covered his face with stuffed animals, and then yesterday, for the win, Little tipped over Tiny's stroller--with Tiny in it. Yes. That's right. With. Tiny. In. It. Every day that child survives his older brother's exuberant and accidental man-handling is a surprise to me. What doesn't kill him makes him stronger?

The funny thing, though, is that I really am married to a real miracle baby. The Man and his twin, by all accounts, shouldn't have survived. So even though I'm joking about my two silly boys (and I am so glad for their wonderful health--what a blessing), at the risk of sounding very, very cheesy, it's nice to rejoice in the fact that 27 years and some odd months ago, the incredible man I'm married to was born, a little early and not perhaps with ideal circumstances but alive. I love my boys. All three of them.

On that note, I came home last night after going for a quick drive in the rain to drop off some bread for a friend at a house that wasn't hers (again, don't ask--but her husband is a ninja and did some incredible under-cover bread retrieval), and I found that my littlest man had talked the biggest man into taking him out of the crib (ostensibly loudly and with tears). When I arrived, they were cuddling on the couch watching baseball together; Tiny's head was leaned up against the Man's chest and he was cooing happily to himself. The picture of contentment. I kind of loved it.

Ragged Claws

When I was in college I went to a reading where we were supposed to respond to T. S. Eliot's line "I should have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas" from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It was an optional assignment and I don't think I got very far with it, but I went to the reading and then forgot about it. Until tonight as I was walking home in the dusk with the Dog and all of a sudden I heard that pair of ragged claws scuttling after me. It was just leaves, dried hard in the summer oven of Oklahoma, bouncing and clattering against the basketball court, screeching across the sidewalks, tapping feverishly over the streets toward me. And, as silly as this is, I had to fight the urge not to break into a run because for the life of me it sounded as though there was an army of crabs advancing towards me or a skeleton dragging its bony fingers along the ground as it lurched in my direction. I was--honestly--creeped out.

I can't pin-point the reason behind my momentary terror except that I have always loved the sound of autumn leaves crunching cheerily beneath my feet and this was so like but then not. The otherness was unsettling. Autumn leaves fall in their time, dried and crinkled by age, not baked prematurely stiff by the sun. They are vivid and bright, each one unique in its spray of colour while these leaves were all the same yellowed brown. By the time autumn gets here, there won't be many leaves left to change colour and fall. But I don't think that's the point and purpose of Eliot's words. It's more about looking inside of ourselves and wondering if we too are nothing more or less than a din in the darkness, an unnamed fear, perhaps for me tonight a reminder of something that could have been but wasn't.

I love Eliot, have always loved "Alfred Prufrock", but will now probably never read the poem the same way again. Isn't it interesting how our reading affects our experience and vice-versa?

Sleep--or Lack Thereof

People who say they sleep like a baby generally don't have one.

Leo J. Burke

Recently I have begun to measure the quality and quantity of my sleep by how much water I have left in my water bottle in the morning. Let me explain. Every night before bed I fill up my water bottle and place it on the bedside table. Then, each time I wake up to check on Tiny (or rather, each time Tiny wakes me up to demand a diaper change, a midnight snack, or just some moral support for his teething), I take a few sips of water. Which inevitably means that every time I get out of bed I'm also going to the bathroom--having two almost nine pound babies bounce around on my bladder for months on end did that to me. So, yes, when I wake up in the morning I can tell just how much or how little sleep I've gotten by how full my water bottle is.

Lately, it's been empty.

Interestingly enough, I can tell how well the Man has slept by how many random scraps of paper or old receipts or paper towels  covered in what I call "cop scrawl"are littering his bedside table. Because every night before bed the Man forgets to get a decent notebook and pen and put them on his bedside table for when he gets calls from the desk about whatever crazy thing has gone down on base. Instead, in the middle of the night, he scrounges around for whatever he can find and has been known to use important banking information or a receipt for some big ticket item that needs to be returned or some other not-so-blank surface to jot down the latest on-base crime. I love that he does this because the next day I get to be all Nancy Drewish and try to figure out what happened. I also love that I sleep through all of these phone calls but still get to hear all the best gossip when he gets home from taking care of what really did go down.

Anyway, lately, the Man's bedside table has been more than covered with papers of "cop scrawl".

All this means that we have been very tired. And I have been very crabby (the Man can subsist on significantly less sleep than I can--or maybe he's just a nicer person). And the fact that I'm still avoiding caffeine because I'm nursing doesn't help. But that's okay because when I don't get around to cleaning the house or exercising or doing anything else productive, I can just blame it on my lack of sleep instead of the fact that I just didn't feel like it. And then I can lounge around on the couch and be entertained by the Man.

A Little Transparency

I've been thinking a lot about my identity lately. It started when I finally eked out a three mile run this month (it hasn't happened again since thanks to Teething Tiny). I told the Man that now I felt that I could legitimately call myself a runner again instead of just saying I was "trying" to run. He said that was ridiculous. I couldn't disagree, but it felt that way.

It got me thinking though about who I am and how I see myself (and how those two things are not necessarily the same thing). The truth is if anyone had told me I would be an Air Force wife and stay at home mother of two at 25 I would've told them they had the wrong girl. When they reassured me that they didn't, I would have informed them that at least I would have written a New York Times bestseller with all the free time I would have staying at home. Yeah, about that... I don't even manage to blog weekly, much less write a novel.

I would never have imagined myself in the second round of taking off 50 pounds of pregnancy weight or that my stomach could be mistaken for a road map thanks to all the stretch marks. I would never have imagined that my housekeeping Super Power would turn out to be baking and definitely not cleaning. I would never have imagined that I would have an SUV but make my baby food from scratch, buy disposable diapers but use vinegar as my main cleaning product. I would never have understood how much I could love my husband and my kids and yet still struggle with being who and where I am.

But then I think, maybe it's not about me at all. Maybe it's about the moment-by-moment obedience that in and of itself is Pure Grace when I think about it, because I don't have the strength to be obedient when looking at the big picture but saying Yes in the small finds me with an incredible husband and two awesomely hilarious sons. Saying Yes in the small brings life long friendships and growth, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Saying Yes in the small teaches me lessons and gives me gifts that I would not have understood or appreciated five years ago.

I'll close with this. Madeleine L'Engle once journaled, "I talk to people--oh, people I respect, people I like--and yet I never feel any sense of terrific excitement in their own lives about Jesus, in the way that the early Christians must have been excited so that they were transfigured by Jesus. In no one, no one, no matter how loudly they talk about salvation being possible through Jesus, do I find this great thing showing in them, glowing in them, lighting their lives, as it must if it is to make any sense today at all." I'm challenged. And humbled. Because it doesn't matter if I'm a SAHM in the middle of Oklahoma or a missionary writer in a third world country, this is the end goal: to be so in love with Him that there is no other option but to overflow with Him. And when that happens, it stops being about our identity and starts becoming about His.

That Day (with extra fun pictures)

Os and I feel the same way.

Today has been That Day. You know what Day I'm talking about. That Day where I wake up and in the first minute out of bed I discover that my oldest son has a) dismantled the diaper genie and b) dropped the crib rail on his little brother's bed (I think that if Tiny had decided to roll over he would've bounced, he's so pleasantly pudgy). After averting disaster, I drag my groggy self to the garage to put the trash out and discover a massive spider hiding behind the bin. It died. Not terribly swiftly since it took me a while to smash it for real as the bottom of the Man's running shoe is all curvy and weird and I was still half asleep. Don't tell the Man that's what I used to kill the beast though... Not sure he'd ever wear those shoes again.

This has been my face today. Just kidding, this was Tiny's face at his first taste of cereal.

Things progressed from there. By 9 o'clock I heard these words for the first time ever: Mommy, I'm angry at you. Little Man was quite sincere. Time out has that effect on him (sincerity and anger). However, hitting Mommy has the effect of time out. Funny about that... We continued with tantrums on the hour, but I did get him to pee standing up for the first time--so he's become a real man. I also discovered that since I can successfully throw a foam softball through a basketball hoop, I have all the skills necessary to be a mom to little boys.

Yeah... They're conspiring against me.

Anyway, my eye has been twitching all day, I forgot Tiny's spoon at supper, Little wanted to go to Braum's--not Sonic--I told him it was Sonic or no milkshake, the pets were at each other, Tiny refused to eat peas for lunch, I didn't have time to shower, our one sippy cup broke, the car wash made Tiny cry... I think I should move to Australia? (And yes, I really feel that I've written this post before.)

This is my usual Tiny.

Does this say nakal or what?

But I have to say that I had a great time laughing about it all with the Man over bbq tonight, while I sat back and let him be the parent--and it's not complaining if you're laughing about it, right? Right? And if I can ever get these boys to go to sleep, I can say that tomorrow is another day and we get to start over. But at this point I'm considering going in there with a roll of duct tape and forcing the issue.

Little has taken an interest in canine photography. This is the best in a series of pictures of Trigger from random angles.

See Tiny. See Tiny pop out gleefully from under the bed.

Little is styling: Elmo pajamas, ski cap, and a tie made out of a belt.

And above picture (of Tiny) is my face now that the boys are both passed out cold. Hurray! Let us celebrate with laziness and quietude!

A Little Green about the Edges

I have never been accused of having a green thumb. When I was a child, I entertained myself by pretending to garden but really just killing off the cacti that my loving parents would buy me. How hard is it to keep a cactus alive? Evidently too hard for me. Interestingly enough, I have the same effect on sewing machines: death and destruction abound. But I was determined to turn over a new leaf (haha) when we moved this last time since we actually have a yard now. I had grandiose ideas of going out into the backyard, cutting dew-misted flowers, and bringing them inside to festoon our home with sprigs of springtime. Yeah, not so much.

The backyard got some grass grown in it, mostly thanks to the hard work of my single-minded and yard-work inclined husband. We tried to plant a little garden in the enforced gardening space provided for us, but when we took our trip to Tennessee in April, Trigs went a little stir crazy and dug up all the bulbs the Man had planted--this in spite of the decorative fence put up by aforementioned husband (he tries so hard). Our garden in the front has done much better. Admittedly, the Man did most of it. He left me a little plot to "try my hand" (but mostly to make me feel like I'd contributed something), and for some reason I had it in my head that mine would blossom into this incredible English garden, overflowing with fragrant blossoms, and make his neat, tidy area look bland and boring. Once again: yeah, not so much...

My grandmother has a sign in one of her flower beds that says, "Everything I grow in my garden is tired," which is funny because she's actually quite an excellent gardener--these genes skipped me. I'm thinking about stealing her sign. My gladiolas grew up and flopped over haphazardly. The zinnias (I think they were zinnias...) sprouted where they shouldn't have. And the daffodils never came up at all. It looked like a tornado went through it, to be honest. So then I just left it. For weeks. Until yesterday at which point I decided to man up, go out there, and weed--something I'd never done before in my life. And I have to admit, while I'm a rotten gardener, I do like the smell of dirt and green beneath my fingers. It was...cathartic. Plus, the cute little gardening gloves that I'd made the Man buy me last year--for no other reason than that they were green and I was pregnant and not supposed to be gardening bare-handed (I didn't garden, period)--were still pretty adorable.