Baby poo, cat pee and tampons. Not necessarily in that order.

I usually don't have enough creative juices to produce two entries this close together.  My family has become a most enthusiastic muse.

Let's see, the hair cutting fiasco was Friday.  You would think that God, in his infinite goodness, would have granted me (us) a bye for the weekend.  I guess he really enjoys reading my blog and wanted to give me more fuel.

Saturday started the usual way.  Theron and I woke with the baby around 7:30, laid in bed and talked about the day and how we should get up and be doing stuff already and then the kids all piled in with us, one by itty-bitty one, and soon we were a mass of writhing, tickling, wrestling, screaming, panting Perezes. 

I eventually managed to untangle myself and headed to the kitchen to start some bacon, and make some warm, carmelized apples to go with our spelt buttermilk pancakes.  (Yes, it was all super delicious.  I miss that breakfast.  I want to eat it again.  Now.)  Everyone ate heartily and then Eva and I vanished with Ty to go shopping and drop off some dry cleaning and Theron took the boys out to run a few errands.

Eva and I won because we arrived home first.  Although, I'm not sure it's winning if you're the first to discover the wretched smell of cat urine in your family room as soon as you enter it. 

Some of you know, and some of you don't, that previously our van had been ruthlessly urinated in several times by our furry home companion, Murray.  Murray is our 9 year old, yellow tabby cat.  He was lovely before we had kids and now he's a huge pain in my tush.  I'm not an animal hater.  I love them.  But adding his maintenance to that of the children's, compounded by the fact that he's not all that nice to them and you've got a grumpy pet owner.  But I digress...

Murray peed in our van on more than one occasion.  How did this come to pass, you ask?  We park the van in the garage and I used to be in the habit of leaving the side doors of the van open.  (NOT ANYMORE!)  Once, when I was taking groceries out of the van, the sly little kitty got into the garage AND into the van without my knowledge.  I shut them both and promptly forgot about him until the next morning.  He mercilessly peed on the carpet between the driver's and passenger's seats.  That was an easier fix because we just took out the mat that was there and the problem was solved.  But AFTER that, he got into the van again via his usual route of escape into the garage and since  we didn't know he was in there, he was shut in there all night.  Where else should little kitty relieve himself but in our family-mobile?  It happened so many times, I felt like an idiot for repeatedly leaving the van open and our van was beyond embarrassingly smelly.  Theron and my dad ended up replacing the carpet in the entire van one Saturday.  (Yep.  You can do that.  It's not as easy job, FYI.)

So, lesson learned, we now keep the van doors sealed tightly against the infidel .  You can imagine my horror at being confronted by that singular odor, but this time, in my home!  The first phase was denial.  I called Theron immediately and told him what I was smelling.  I wandered around the play room, into the living room, into the dining room, wondering if it was my imagination. 

I went outside and came back in.  It was faint.  But it was there.  No mistake.  Ugh.

Theron came home shortly after we spoke and he found the offensive patch right away.  Here's the thing.  Just a few days before, Sully had spilled a good bit of water on that very spot.  The water must have activated a long dormant animal fluid from the previous owners and the cat took offense to it.  (Ah, most vexing chain of events, how I loathe thee!  More on that later...)

We talked it over for a full thirty-seconds before it was decided that instead of trying to steam, spray, baking soda, scrub, and/or sweat that smell out, that we would just rip up the carpet.  We'd been down that road with the van, and it just wasn't worth it.  Plus, we had been looking for an excuse to take up that carpet anyway.  It was pretty darn gross.

Without further ado, Theron began ripping up the carpet.  This was NOT on the to-do list for Saturday, or for the next six months.  Such is a day in our lives. 

I shut off the centrail air and opened the windows and sliding door.  I knew this whole process was going to make at least one of us sneezy.  Within minutes I was violently sneezing and my eyes were unbelievably itchy.  I vascillated between fury (at the cat) and deep, dark despair (at our ruined day and our soon to be darker living space).

The floor underneath was what we knew it to be.  Dark, ship plank-esque, wood flooring.  It's real dark, it's real funky, it's worn out and I really don't like it.  I like it better than carpet, I suppose, but I really don't care for it.  The carpet was a light color.  It brightened the room.  One entire side of the room is brick fireplace and wretched paneling.  Now over half of the room is brown.  Much like the kitchen, which is probably 75% brown.  And the rooms are adjacent to one another, and make up about half of the first floor of the house, which means 25% of my house is dark brown. 

Hang on.

I think I might lose it. 

Deep breaths. 

The good news is that the carpet is gone and we're that much closer to our dream of a nicer downstairs, whenever that may be.

The bad news is that Theron has some projects that need to be completed before the brown goes bye-bye.  We bought a camper in the spring that needs some work before we can take it out.  With summer a little over half over, that's top priority.  When that's done, he has to finish ripping out the shower in our bathroom and installing a new one to ensure no leaks happen in the room we just ripped the carpet out of.  Then, he'll be able to rip out the brown paneling in the pee room, replace it with dry-wall, and then and only then, will he be able to replace the floor.  You see.  Chain of events.  So, so, so, so, so much fun.  So much fun, I wanna cry.  Because we all know how much spare time my overworked husband already has for projects of this nature. 

The good news is (Yes! There's more!) we'll get an area rug to cover most of the offensive brown and I won't give a rat's behind what happens to the ugly dark, faux ship planking in the meantime.  (I'm clinging to this knowledge tenaciously.)

I also want to be clear that I'm not ungrateful for our home.  I love where we live.  It's a lovely neighborhood and a lovely location on the creek.  I have running water and indoor plumbing.  My home is warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  I am clothed.  I am loved.  I want for nothing. 

But I am also an artistic person who deeply appreciates a certain asthetic in her surroundings and five years ago we left a townhome that was pretty close to exactly how I wanted it for a home that needed a lot of change.  It still needs a lot of change.  We've changed the things we could afford to and when I list them all, it really is a significant amount of improvement and that's encouraging.  But my kitchen is as dark and brown as it was the day we moved in and I spend A LOT of time in that room! Changing the curtain above the window from time to time hasn't done much to improve it.  I thought we were moving closer to painting it and getting new counters, but things like cat pee on a carpet we didn't intend to rip up for a little while, has set that goal back even further. 


The day sucked it out of all of us, so Theron suggested we go out to dinner. (YAY!)  We went to a buffet one of his coworkers had told him about.  It was a large place with a large and eclectic selection.  (Frog legs AND tacos.)  I'm surprised we're not all sick with food poisoning yet, but there's still time. 

When we were nearing the completion of ingesting all sorts of things that I don't normally let our family even smell, Theron commented that the baby, who was happily resting in his lap, was quite gassy.  Uh-oh.  He then picked him up to find that he had actually pooped up the entire back of his onesie and onto Theron's clothes.  Time to go.  I changed the baby in the bathroom, which smelled really odd, although I'm not surprised given the wide variety of food offered, and after we left smelled a smidge worse given the volume of said baby poop.

We got home and threw the kids in bed faster than you can say, "G'night."

On Sunday, the Lord was merciful.  Nothing crazy happened.  At least not that I can remember.

Today is Monday and it's become our grocery day.  Grocery day, by it's very nature, is tiring.  I hate grocery shopping, although I'm learning to like it more.   I usually end up taking all of the kids, unless it's one of those random days Theron has off and then we ALL go.  The little boys stay with me while I shop, and the older kids go to the Fun Center and are watched, for free, for an hour.  Tis bliss.

My bliss was siderailed today in the middle of my list by the baby, who, again, needed to be changed.  This meant going back to the front of the store, sloppily parking the gigantic cart, meant for women with annoying amounts of children, near the bathroom, unstrapping Quinn, unstrapping the baby and hoping the family bathroom inside was not occupied.  It was. 

Once inside, things got much, much, much worse.

I was nearly done changing Ty when I turned around to find that Quinn had opened the trash can for sanitary napkins and had pulled out a tampon applicator! There isn't enough hand sanitizer in the world, folks.  I shrieked and told him to put it back and to never, ever, ever, ever touch one of those again!  He looked bewildered.  It's understandable.  My reaction was pretty intense. 

When I left, I called Mom to tell her because I pulled a similar stunt when I was a little bit older, but with one of her applicators and I was going to take it to show and tell.  True story.

A mom with a sense of humor overheard me telling Mom the story and started laughing.  She then apologized to me, but I told her it was fine.  It you don't laugh you'll cry.  I kept running into her after that and each time we'd share a knowing chuckle.

I honestly wonder what my life will be like when the kids are less crazy.  When they're old enough to not do things that are intensely amusing, gross, and adorable without realizing it.  I long for and hate the thought of that time coming, all at once. 

If they keep up at this pace, I'll be blogging a lot more often and their stories will be immortalized on the internet.  I can't wait.

Head Explosions

Today has been a mother of a Friday.  Usually, I look forward to these days.  It's the last, itty-bitty push before Daddy is home for two whole days in a row!  Yay!  But today.  Oh, today.  I feel like I should have woken up weeping.  It's just been that awesome.  I'll briefly digress to tell you that I may just be a tad hormonal.  (I feel like a lot of my blog entries start this way.  I'm detecting a pattern.)  Things haven't returned completely to normal since the baby and I feel like my body is trying really hard to make me have my monthly, but it just can't quite get there, so I'm stuck in this nasty web of perpetual PMS.  Ask my family about it.  They think it's the bees knees.

I slept a thousand times better last night than I did the night before.  Theron was in bed at least an hour and a half before me.  Which is to say, he went to bed at 9:30.  Poor guy needed his beauty sleep.  I woke up from a blissfully, sound sleep to the baby squealing in delight at something Theron said around 7 a.m.  I mention this only to let you know that the day started out on an positive note.  It went downhill from there.  I heard Quinn ("Is it mornin' time?"), then Sully.  Eva usually outsleeps us all.  Lucky little chit. 

Theron finished getting ready for work, deposited the baby back in his bed, and left.  The boys were playing downstairs.  I picked up the baby and began to nurse him, knowing it would only take 10 minutes or so and then I'd go downstairs and get the boys their breakfast.  I was five minutes into nursing when I heard Quinn say, rather sadly, "I want Mommy!  I want Mommy!"  I didn't think much of it.  Thought maybe Sully was harrassing him a little bit.  There was no screaming.  No death-like silence.  No questionable banging or thuds.  I thought things were fine. 

I was so wrong.

How do I put this?  Alright.  I'll just come out with it, since if you're on Facebook you already know the gory details.  SULLY CUT QUINN'S HAIR!!!!

I had cut Theron's hair some time ago and left the scissors I use for such a task on the island.  They were, I thought, buried sufficiently under some papers so far that none of the kids would ever really notice them.  Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.  This is, sadly, all my fault.

At first, I thought Quinn had done it to himself.  I called my Mom, completely distraught.  I know it's not fair to my other kids, but Quinn is the golden boy and she gets this.  He's adorable and two and, quite literally, golden.  His hair was honey blonde and shiny and fine and it had grown out into a halo around his chubby, fabulous face.  It looked so fetching with his big brown eyes.  What greeted me when I got downstairs was his fabulous face no longer framed by butterscotch bangs, but a scalp with tufts of hair sticking out of it.  He looked like a chemo patient.  I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but he really looked like he was in treatment.  It was awful. 

(Please pardon the awful placement of these pics.  I'm a novice blogger at best.)

What the...?!

See how pretty!  And sweet.  Sweet and pretty.

Doleful.

The finished buzz.  You can still see the thinner patches.  Ugh.

"Please don't cut my hair!"  Sorry, Charlie.

"I'm less than happy about this."

While speaking with Mom it became painfully clear that Quinn could not have done this himself.  In the background I could hear my Dad pointing out that it took a good deal of coordination to cut one's hair and Quinn didn't have it. The damage was only on the top, it was very thorough and there is no way he had the arm length or  skills to have pulled it off himself.  I zeroed in on Sully.

"Did you cut your brother's hair?" I demanded, trying to dial down the fury in my voice.

"No."  Ah.  So innocence is going to be maintained is it?

"Are you telling me the truth?" 

Quieter, "Yes."

I let it go for the moment.  I'd ask again in a few minutes and see what happened then.  He is the most quixotic of all of the kids and I knew as surely as the sun was shining he'd probably change his answer in a few minutes, or thirty seconds.  Take your pick.

Sure enough, the truth came out.  Sigh.

When I first got up this morning, my goal had been to put the dishes away and get the sink clean again.  Now my goal was to buzz heads and try not to cry while doing it.  I told myself it was just hair.  I told myself I was too prideful over Quinn's beauty and this was God giving me the fall I desperately needed.  I told myself it was better one of the boys than Eva.  I still wanted to weep.

Because Sully did it to Quinn, I felt it only fair that they both get shorn.  I couldn't bring myself to cut off all of Quinn's hair.  He really should have had the Mr. Clean treatment because Sully had managed to cut chunks out all the way down to the skin, (Miraculously without cutting into his head!) but I couldn't bring myself to do that to him.  It's still uneven on top, but I'm hoping it's not too noticeable since his hair is nearly the same color as his flesh.  Poor kid.

Sully was not amenable to the trim.  He cried.  Later in the morning, he claimed that he liked it.  Have I mentioned he's wishy-washy?

After shearing the sheep, I had to make a run to the local meat market.  No, seriously.  In keeping with the theme of the day (Wretchedness.), the store was packed.  I have no idea why.  I saw signs on the way in saying something about a Friday the 13th sale and I quickly stuffed any notion of believing in any superstitions waaaaaaay in the back of my already crowded mind. 

Nothing overly bad or new happened while at the store, but an unusual number of folks openly gaped at the mother with four young children and there were a plethora of sympathetic glances and tut-tuts from the old women.  Really?! Is a thirty-something woman and her four children such an oddity these days?  I know so many others like me that I can't believe I draw this much attention when out anymore, but I guess I'm wrong.  I feel like I bring the circus to the store.  Maybe I should have one of the kids carry a hat for the gawkers to throw their coins into.  I'll get Eva to chant in a phony, British accent, "Alms for the poor!  Alms for the poor!"

While we were at the store, the kids, of course, asked for every horrid, naughty, disgusting sweet thing that I don't let them eat anymore and Eva got really belligerent.  I was a bad mom, a nasty mom, a mean mom.  I never let them have anything fun anymore.  Oh, boy.  This was doing wonders for my already fragile grip on mental stability.  I could feel the scales tipping in favor of the loony bin.

We got home.  I whipped up a quicky lunch of hot ham and cheese, open-faced sandwiches on organic, sprouted wheat bread. (Yes, I'm that mom now.)  Quinn and Sully didn't want it warm.  I didn't warm it for them.  They ate it fine.  I heard no dissent from Eva.  She got hers warm and immediately whined, "I didn't want it this way!" 

I lost it.  And in losing it, I felt the pain of my mother all those years before me.  "What do you mean, 'YOU DON'T WANT IT THIS WAY?'" I screeched.  "Why can't you just be thankful I made you lunch?!  Do you want to make you're own food from now on?!  I can just let you fend for yourself! That would be more than fine by me!"  My sails were losing wind by this point.  The energy required to keep going wasn't worth it.  She looked moderately bemused. 

You see, this ENTIRE week, and, I am sad to add, I am NOT exaggerating, she has been ranting and raving about all of the stuff she doesn't have or can't do or can't eat.  It has been discontentment city over here in our little corner of the world.  I don't know how to root this out.  One day this week, when she started going on and on about something she didn't have and wanted, I stopped her, made her sit on the piano bench and told her not to get off of it until she could come over to me and calmly tell me three things she was grateful for.  She whined and moaned that she couldn't think of three things, so I told her that instead of three she better think of five.  (The beatings will continue until morale improves...)  I was in a good mood that day, so my rage monster stayed neatly tucked away.  She finally came up with Quinn, Tyson, Rainbow (her purple, plush unicorn) and two other things I can't remember, but it was a long haul getting there. 

Add this fun to the boys' hair debacle and the fact that the baby has taken to sleeping on his face, which makes me immeasurably nervous, and you've got yourself a trifecta of pure, unadulterated joy.  And I mean that in the most sarcastic way possible. 

Also, not to ruin the perfection of a trifecta, but I was recently reminded by a friend's blog that my lady parts are about to get uber saggy again once the baby is weaned.  I have so much joy awaiting me.  I can hardly stand it.  Again, with the sarcasm.

I'd end on a heartwarming note about how I know God is with me and so all will be well, but I already know that, and I know that you know that I know that, so we'll just leave it at that.  I'm off to pray my head won't explode.