Katie brought her school journal home today

Here are my two favorite entries. This kid is the sweetest!

A role model for me is my Dad. My Dad is my role model because when I'm confused he shows me tricks to help me understand what I'm confused about. When I'm stressed and tired and sad my Dad shows me the bright side. Sometimes there is something a really want to accomplish and my Dad helps me get it done like my speech for an example. My Dad is always nice and never lets me feel left out. Dad is always doing nice things for us like I used to hate hamburgers but my Dad never gave up and now I love hamburgers. To me my Dad is the perfect role model.

Another one:

The greatest thing in my life is my family. I think my family is the greatest thing in my life because I can depend on them. My Mom always makes me dinner so I don't starve. My Dad makes sure I'm not confused with what I'm learning in school. My sisters always play with me. My dog (Jasper) makes me feel better just by his looks. I love my family.

Oh Dear.

What in the world am I supposed to do with this?

Oh, and the field trip?

Totally awesome! I think I ran my station fairly well. There was that one time when I screwed the fire up and and had to do my entire presentation while we were all weeping from the smoke, but once the kids and I staggered outside to get some fresh air we all recovered just fine.

What I can't decide is whether my favorite part of the day was when they brought out a gigantic vulture (named Upchuck. Here's some trivia for you: a vulture's first line of defense is to puke on whoever is threatening it.) and then left it hanging out on a branch mere inches from a cluster of rambunctious boys, or if it was when the guy in charge told the kids in my group that they couldn't sit because, "Indians aren't lazy like you!"

I can't wait to do this again in two years, when it is Beth's turn.

Places that really make me...

...long for the day when Lucy will be able to ask for a drink like a civilized person instead of calling all beverages, "juice," mispronouncing it, and so screeching at the top of her lungs, "JEW! JEEWW!!!" until I can plug her mouth shut with a sippy cup:





*Waiting in the exam room of our beloved pediatrician, Dr. Israel.


*The Communion line in Church

*Waiting in the parking lot across the street from the girls' school - which is also the parking lot for a Temple.

*Shopping at places where there are lots of people who dress like this:

One thing is for certain: we will not be visiting the Holocast Museum in DC anytime soon.

Field Trip Queen

Chris suddenly found himself with lots of free time on his hands this September, and I have been taking advantage of that by volunteering for everything possible at the girls' school. I'm making up for lost time over the past two years, when I couldn't really volunteer for anything due to a lack of available babysitters. (This is another great advantage - should Chris suddenly become bereft of his free time, I now have two wonderfully accommodating Grandparents at hand to help out!) Everybody knows that to really know what's going on in school, you have to be there, and it has bugged me to no end when that couldn't happen for me. Well, I'm there now and learning all sorts of interesting things.

This months is extra-intense, though, because I am going on not one, not two, but three field trips. The first was to a local farm with the kindergarten (lots of fun), the third will be to the aquarium with the second grade (I did that before with Katie, and am looking forward to it again with Beth.) The second one is tomorrow, and it is the doozy of the bunch. I'm not going to elaborate any more right now than to say that it is an Indian campground, and it is run by the most awesomely crazy person I've ever met. He's awesome. But truly crazy. I am running the "Legend and Fire" hut, I will be facing the fourth graders armed with puppets....and fire, and let me tell you: this is going to be an experience.

Stay tuned.

Spaghetti with chicken

Is there anything more gratifying than spending over two hours* cooking a dinner tailored specifically to your children's tastes and then watching your three year old hold her nose and gag when you serve it?

Humility: served daily in the Mlinek household.

*It should take 30 minutes. I was only able to do actual prep and cooking in five minute spurts, however, due to milk spills, garbage-dumping, homework emergencies, argument interventions, and toddlers determined to drink out of the dog's bowl. Whenever I make a truly time-intensive dinner I generally have to start it directly after breakfast.

We bring joy into the world

At least that is what I am going to assume, as no less than 4 individuals burst into laughter at the sight of the girls and me navigating hardware stores. We were, perhaps, not exactly in our element. But I'm going to assume those people were all just very joyful.

However, I'm excluding the cashier at WalMart who later literally yelled, "Oh, holy God!" when I affirmed that the girls were, in fact, all mine. That was a first for me, and I wasn't quite sure how to answer her. I think I just gave one of my standard replies, even though it didn't exactly match her remarks. (I said something like, "It's a lot of fun!" Lucy was sick to death of shopping and getting fussy and I was really off my guard: the cashier was going on and on about how terrible it must be, and I just couldn't think of anything better. ) I'm not exactly angry - she was just a stupid teenager running off at the mouth without thinking first - but I do wish it hadn't happened in front of Katie and Beth. They definitely noticed her horrified reaction.

It doesn't usually bother me when people express disapproval of our family size. I think I hit my breaking point somewhere after Claire, and I just don't care anymore. The funny thing is that I get fewer negative comments now, when we have five kids and I don't give a damn what anybody thinks, than I did when I only had three and was kinda sensitive. It did bother me to see the older girls so surprised, though. But only a little. We may be following a different drummer than much of the world, but you know what? I like our tune. It doesn't matter so much when some twit at the register doesn't get it. I was worried that Katie and Beth might be upset, but they weren't at all. They like our tune, too. What's ironic is that I feel like I've been trying to say with my life the exact same thing the cashier was saying. I'm not going to act like I've been successful, but I'm trying. The inflection is totally different, of course, but we're absolutely trying to say the exact same thing: Oh Holy God.

Ramblings

Lucy is 17 months old, an age that I have been waiting for, thinking about in the back of my mind, since her birth. This was Abbie's age when her tumor was diagnosed.

Abbie at 17 months
Lucy is absolutely healthy, and I have no (and have never had) any cause for concern. Brain tumors are not genetic. But I figured that I would breathe a sigh of relief anyway, once she'd passed that milestone without showing any worrying signs. And I do feel better, a bit relieved, but it has also been strange to watch her. I can't help but mentally compare the baby that Lucy is with the baby that Abbie was. I watch Lucy and I think - Lucy can do this, and Abbie couldn't. Abbie could say this, but Lucy doesn't need to.

This isn't to say that I am obsessing over this, or anything. I don't dwell much on Abbie's ordeal, or at least I make a conscious effort not to. This is the sort of thing that a person can get bogged down in forever, and I don't want that to happen. Abbie is healthy, and thriving, and hilariously quirky and I want to be able to fully appreciate her. If I can't let go of the past's hardships, I can't give the present's joys their due. I have four other daughters as well, all of whom have been fearfully and wonderfully made, and I want to fully appreciate them. As Mother Theresa said: The past is gone. The future is not yet here. We have only today. Let us begin. Sounds right to me.

Lucy at 17 months
I'm going to tell you about Thursday, however, and why this period has been a little...unsettling, I guess, is the best way to put it. I was cleaning Lucy up after her breakfast, and she was resisting me. There were little flakes of oatmeal stuck under chin, and to prevent me from reaching them Lucy craned her neck down, so that her chin touched her chest. I was simply in the moment, trying to clean up this psycho baby, when Lucy looked up at me with her chin still lowered. I'm not sure I can really even explain what happened. I was no longer in our house, looking down on stubborn little Lucy; I was standing in my townhouse looking down on Abbie, and thinking, "What in the world is wrong with this baby's neck?" It wasn't that I remembered the fear, and worry, and heartbreak of that time. For that split second, I was there, feeling it.

This lasted no more than a second. I shook myself, finished cleaning Lucy up and got the girls ready for school. I barely thought about it again that day. Chris took the younger girls up to visit his parents, so I had the morning free to run errands, and then I volunteered in Claire's class all afternoon. It was a good day.

That evening, Chris and I settled in to watch the VP debate. We're both feeling pretty bitter and jaded about politics these days, so we were mainly making snarky comments to each other, or expressing frustration with this non-answer, that smoke-screen. But when Biden began talking about losing his wife and daughter, and he choked up for a moment Chris turned to me, just in time to see me burst into tears. I cried through the rest of the debate. I couldn't even really tell you why.

So, there. I haven't bothered to even analyze why I wanted to put this on the blog. I know that I wanted to acknowledge, in some way, that - hey! - Lucy made it to 17 months and things are looking good. And I guess in some way, too, I'd like to say : We hope the worst is over, and everyone is doing really well. But, you know what? It was all really, really hard. Please don't stop praying for my family.