The horror.....the horror...

Yesterday, I experienced something that I really didn't believe would ever happen to me. I've heard of such things happening, but I thought I was immune. For one thing, I am an excellent parent. For another, I have been told time and again that my children are filled purely with sugar and spice and everything nice. This sort of thing, I though, was for those "other people."

Well, yesterday was God's turn to have a laugh.

Lucy's diaper was wet. She wasn't at mission-critical yet, but I announced to my mom (who was playing with Abbie and Claire) that I was going to get her a diaper, and then I went upstairs to do just that. However, I ended up talking to my sister in the kitchen for a good half an hour. It was risky, I know, but Lucy's diaper really wasn't that wet.

Claire eventually came up to the kitchen as well, and as Rachel began to give her a haircut I took the diaper I had been holding for 30 minutes and began my descent down the stairs.

At the top of the stairway I heard Abbie announce to my mother, "Lucy is poopie!"

"Oh, okay," said my mom calmly, without looking up. There was.....something about Abbie's tone of voice, though, and I hurried my pace down the steps. I rounded the bend and encountered Abbie, who immediately said to me, "Lucy is poopie!" Her eyes were wide with horror. There was a split second where I noticed that a wet diaper had been wrapped up and set on the steps, but I didn't really have time to process it. I went around the couch, and called to Lucy. She ran up to me immediately, smiling in that adorably sweet way that babies have, and she lifted her hand to give me something.

I remember this moment as though it happened in slow-mo. It was like an exact reverse of that famous scene in Caddyshack. "She's holding a protein bar," I thought, as my hand sloooooowly reached down to receive her gift. In my memory, the voice in my head is even deep and half-speed, the way they do it in the movies. Imagine, if you will, my slow-mo voice saying, "Ooooh, proooteeein baarrrr," as my arm moves down towards my smiling baby.

But it was not a protein bar. Oh, no, it wasn't. There is no delicate way to put this, no way to sanitize this written account, just as there will never be a way to sanitize my hands to my satisfaction. It was not a protein bar. It was a gigantic chunk of poop. Once this realization hit my brain, I went directly from slo-mo to hyper-speed, shouting instructions to everyone around me like an emergency room doctor. "Wet wipes!" I yelled, "Plastic bag! Diaper! Somebody run the tub!"

Thank goodness Lucy has been eating so many bananas. Seriously. This whole scenario could have been a lot worse if she had been on a kick of, say, grapes or prunes. Still, I will never be the same. None of us will ever be the same.

What happened was this: my mom noticed a wet diaper lying in the middle of the floor at some point. We'll just ignore what this says about me: that she thought it was perfectly plausible for me to come down the steps, change the diaper, and then leave it lying there, open, while I gadded about the house. I'm not sure how long Lucy was enjoying the luxury of a fresh breeze blowing under her nightgown, but I'm fairly confident that we caught her at just the right moment. (Well, to be precise, we caught her right after what could have been the right moment, but before what could have been the very, very bad moment.) I scoured the area she was in, and found no......suspicious fingerprints or, ahem, schmears of any kind, so that was a relief.

Still, though, I don't want to ever have to go through that again. Ever. And I'd prefer not to talk about this - the scars are so deep, so deep. It is going to take a long time to mend. I'm thinking I'll finally be healed in eighteen or so years........about the time that Lucy starts bringing boys around. Heh. Payback is a.......well, it's not sugar and spice.

Beth loves her new cousin

The first time we took the girls to see baby Gabriel, Beth got to hold him first. He stayed quiet while she held him, but then got a little fussy as he was passed around to the other girls. Beth took to innocently musing - out loud, whenever her sisters were near, "I wonder why Gabriel cried with everybody but me? Hmmm."

This has been driving Katie nuts. To make it worse, the second time we went to see the baby he began by being fussy....until it was Beth's turn to hold him. He immediately stopped crying and just looked up at her calmly.

He has made a friend for life. This is especially galling to Katie, because she considers herself to be "excellent with babies, just like the baby-kissing Pope." (That would be the nickname JPII has around here.) Beth, not one to miss an opportunity to get on Katie's nerves, has been taking full advantage of this situation.

So, I laughed when this paper came home in Beth's folder. Katie heard me laughing, and came to look at it. Her response? A haughty, "She spelled his name wrong."

Abbie leaves me speechless yet again

Maybe all this religious talk is an indication that she has a vocation to the religious life? Or maybe it's an indication that she is someday going to start some kind of scary cult. I wish I knew.

Claire asked me if she could sit on the stools at the counter for lunch. I thought about it for half a second but knowing that Abbie, who still lacks enough balance and coordination to sit unassisted on a high stool safely, would insist on climbing up there as well, I said, "no."

"Come on, Mom!" said Claire, "It's not a big deal!"
"Yeah!" Abbie chimed in, "It's not like when Jesus was stuck in a tree!"

Well, if by "tree" she meant "cross" - and I'm really hoping here that she did, then I guess she has a point. It's kind of hard to top crucifying God when you are classifying what is and is not a "big deal." Still, though, they sat at the regular table.

Happy Mother's Day

It's hard not to have a great day when you are told that you are like a sunflower in the garden!

An apple a day...

Lucy has developed a weird habit for a baby: eating whole apples. And when I say that, I don't just mean that she eats it unsliced - I mean she eats the entire thing, core included.


Photo proof:

Before
After

I love found objects around here

Katie has been playing a super-involved game during recess this year. They are playing school, and she originally began as a teacher. She took this role so seriously that before leaving for Disney World she appointed a substitute and gave her a curriculum to follow throughout the week.

Well, she has since been promoted to Principle, but I suspect that things are not going well. Here is what I found in the basement yesterday:

Dear School,

I herby say that things are going so wrong and I'm very dissapointed so I say that I will need to stay longer weather you like it or not.

President Katie

Why didn't I take that Scott Hahn course in college? Why???

We had another disturbing theological discussion in the car the other day. These are becoming more and more frequent as Claire and Abbie, for reasons unknown, have become increasingly curious about the workings of God.

For instance, Abbie was insisting that Jesus could fly. God can do whatever He wants, right? Well, then, of course He wanted to fly. She then began to play super-heroes with Claire, with Claire playing the Green Latern (the current fave) and Abbie playing......Flying Jesus.

Sigh.

So back to the car. We were driving along happily when Abbie began explaining how she knows that God loves her. He gave her a nice mommy and daddy. Good one, Abbie. He lets her have enough food to eat. Yes, that's true. Also, God made it so that she can now swallow her throw-up.

Uh....what?

Yup, Abbie used to throw up sometimes but now she can just swallow that throw-up down. God made her do that! Because He loves her! At first I was alarmed - was Abbie about to puke in the car? She assured me that she wasn't, though. She had just been thinking. About the relationship between vomit and God.

Sometimes these kids are so crazy that it actually scares me. Am I raising a bunch of pychopaths here? What do you say to something like this??? In this case, I sputtered a bit and then just muttered in defeat, "Uh, yeah...well, God certainly loves you, I know that for sure."

Here's hoping He loves me enough to ramp up the old brainpower as time goes on (and these comments become increasingly hard to handle!)