Mother's Day

This comes from Have Children Will Travel... http://havechildrenwilltravel.blogspot.com/

So, we had this great 10 year old cat named Jack who just recently died.
Jack was a great cat and the kids would carry him around and sit on him and
nothing ever bothered him. He used to hang out and nap all day long on this
mat in our bathroom.Well, we have 3 kids and at the time of this story they
were 4 years old, 3 years old and 1 year old. The middle one is Eli. Eli
really loves chapstick. LOVES IT. He kept asking to use my chapstick and
then losing it.So finally one day I showed him where in the bathroom I keep
my chapstick and how he could use it whenever he wanted to but he needed to
put it right back in the drawer when he was done.

Last year on Mother's Day, we were having the typical rush around and try
to get ready for Church with everyone crying and carrying on. My two boys are
fighting over the toy in the cereal box. I am trying to nurse my little one at
the same time I am putting on my make-up. Everything is a mess and everyone has
long forgotten that this is a wonderful day to honor me and the amazing job
that is motherhood.We finally have the older one and the baby loaded in the
car and I am looking for Eli. I have searched everywhere and I finally round
the corner to go into the bathroom. And there was Eli. He was applying
mychapstick very carefully to Jack's . . . rear end. Eli looked right into
my eyes and said "chapped." Now if you have a cat, you know that he is
right--their little butts do look pretty chapped. And, frankly, Jack didn't
seem to mind. And the onlyquestion to really ask at that point was whether
it was the FIRST time Eli had done that to the cat's behind or the
hundredth.

And THAT is my favorite Mother's Day moment ever because it
reminds us that no matter how hard we try to civilize these glorious little
creatures, there will always be that day when you realize they've been using
your chapstick on the cat's butt.


So I read that last week and it made me laugh out loud. I thought it was hysterical! Then my 10 year old treated me to three different kinds of lip balm for mother's day. Is she reading my blog or trying to make up for something that I don't know about?

A little more technical than "Owies"

Got this email this morning from some folks at church asking for prayers for their son...

"he is going for surgery tomorrow around noon at TCH for a broken right ulna and a displaced distal radius. He is going to have general anesthesia to have a closed reduction of the distal radius. "

Mom is a doctor. I guess once a doctor always a doctor but from the tone of the email it sounds like the kid is going in for major surgery, touch and go, months in the hospital, only the best surgeons could attempt a case like this. Hubby read it and said, "Sounds really bad, huh."

Allow me to translate these two sentances of jargon....

"He's going to have a little procedure tomorrow for his broken arm. He broke both the bones in his forearm pretty close to the wrist. One of the bones popped out of place when it broke so they are going to put him under to set it. No incisions or pins, they can pop it back into place manually."

Now I'm not callous to the feeling of having YOUR baby go for surgery. I get weak in the knees when littlest daughter walks through the doors to the OR to get ear tubes placed (she's had four sets). But the jargon speak of an email sent out to a Sunday school class made me giggle a bit!

More seriously though, if you read this pray for this little guy. This family has been through A LOT in the last 2 months. Mom had a mastectomy and is going to start Radiation for breast cancer soon.

Matching owies on my head

Last week i fried a little spot on my forehead with the flat iron. Literally, I fried it. I heard it sizzle when the iron touched it. Didn't really hurt too much but that noise made my skin crawl. I have a little one inch square red spot on the top of my forehead which is largely covered by my hair. Then this morning, I was standing up from the potty (there's an image for you!) when i banged the other side of my head on the open door of the wall cabinet that is above the toilet which I left open when I got TP out of it for one of the girls. Now that HURT!

School update

So I went to orientation...

Met a few classmates (I can hear my mom's voice, "Did you make any new friends today?"). The class is very diverse, old - young, male - female, black - white - latino - asian. They didn't scare us too much. It will be hard but they stressed the 89% retention rate saying that they want us to succeed and will do everything they can to help us get through the program. The schedule is going to be difficult the first semester. I have two night classes and then one early morning clinical (Be at the hospital at 6:30 a.m.!) so I'm holding my family to their promises to help get me through all of this.

The best part though was, gasp, ordering a stethoscope! How official!!!!

So I guess this makes my decision official, I'm going with Hard and Presigious over Cheap and Easy. But for the ultimate in irony, within an hour of when I got back from orientation Igot an email from Cheap and Easy congratulating me on my acceptance!

Off to school!

Today is orientation for nursing school! I have to be there at 8 a.m. which means hubby gets to get the kids off to school! i made it easy on him. They all have lunchables. I'm excited and nervous but mostly excited.

Off to the shower...

Thunderstorms

I just read this post http://krisgirl.blogspot.com/2007/04/morning-deliciousness.html in Krisgirl's blog and the very next night we had a booming thunder and lightning show complete with two of three children showing up to get in bed with us. It seems that even among those who think the family bed is a little odd, a thunderstorm is a good reason to let the kids pile in. I've never heard of anyone letting a kidlet Cry It Out in the middle of a thunderstorm. Perhaps because we parents are instantly transported back to those feelings of being so small in the face of something so loud and out of control. In the face of thunder the difference between a 50 pound first grader and a slightly larger mom is pretty small! I was glad to snuggle those little bodies next to me while the storm boomed itself out and I was glad to return them to their bed when it calmed down knowing they would come back if they needed to.

It was like seeing a celebrity

Today hubby and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts exhibit of a bunch of borrowed paintings from the Met in New York. The show was an overview of Impressionism. I took an Impressionism class in college and loved it so seeing some of the paintings was a little like seeing a celebrity in person. It is amazing to me to see paintings I've read about, seen in books and on various calendars in person! The one on top was ont he cover of my Art history book, The Boaters by Edouard Manet. He painted this other cool one called Olympia. It is in Paris but I would love to see that one. It caused an absolute scandal at the Salon in the early days of Impressionism. Anyway, the other one is called La Orana Maria (Hail Mary) by Paul Gauguin. It is Mary and Jesus depicted as Tahitians complete with Tahitian angels in the background. Very cool!

The other celebrity sighting was last night at my most recent gala event. Wore the dress and the shoes again. Little shorter night so the shoes didn't hurt so much at the end of the night. Anyway it was the Open Door Mission gala and featured Newt Gingrich as the key note speaker. He was actually pretty good. I didn't realize he has a Ph. D in history. Anyway the person that invited us is onthe Board of the mission and took us to the VIP room where we got our pictures taken with Newt, himself. Pretty cool! Now honestly, there are lots and lots of other famous types Id rather meet but hey I'll take this one too! It also explains how people end up with pictures of themselves and the President or some other politico in their office. These meet and greet photo ops must be standard procedure at events like this. That had newt standing in front of a back drop with a line to walk up, shake hands, pose, have two photographers snap several pictures and then move on. We don't actually have the picture yet so the stock headshot above will have to do in the meantime.