"A hit, a very palpable hit!"

The quote is from Hamlet.

The post concerns a groundhog.

Warning! The bottom of this post contains a picture of a dead animal. A very dead animal.

You've probably guessed by now, if you've followed our groundhog saga, that.....he did it! Chris shot the groundhog! I have been planning two posts about how weird my kids are, but this is big news and needs to take precedence. Plus, it kind of fits into the "my kids are very strange" theme.

I have been worried about how the girls would react when Chris actually killed the groundhog, or rather, groundhogs since we discovered that our unwelcome visitor procreated sometime this spring. But I completely underestimated how bloodthirsty these girls are. They were absolutely thrilled by the whole thing, and not only were they not upset, they actually fought over holding the bag containing the dead groundhog. And they clearly thought very highly of Chris' gun-totin' skills. We are not raising a passel of shrinking violets here.

So the funeral was held yesterday evening for "Little Groundhog." It was a very casual affair with little fuss. The grave is marked by a treestump, located convieniently on the edge of our property. And there is plenty of room for more graves.

So here are the promised pictures! I am aware that Abbie is really trashing-up the joint, what with the no clothes thing and the sagging diaper. I actually don't even know where her clothes went, she had been wearing a very pretty little sundress, and as for the diaper - well, we were distracted by all the bloodshed going on.

Notice, though, the size of this groundhog. Yes - it is the small groundhog. The big, clearly diseased one is still at large. But not for long. There is a new sheriff in town, and he's totin' a brand-new childsize rifle from WalMart, so watch out!

We've been busy growing things

Sorry about the long silence here. I'll be putting up several new posts in the next few days.

Abbie wakes up too early

Abbie has been waking up aroun 6:30am since the daylight savings change. This is most often a painful wakeup for Chris, as he's taken over monitor duties since Lucy's birth, but last night's conversation over dinner suggests that he is not the only one suffering from the early morning sunrise.

Said Abbie, "When I wake up in the morning it makes my body hurt."

You know you've gone over to the dark side as a mother when -

You realize that you actually just said:

"If you don't go downstairs right now and watch TV, I will send you to your room!"

Crazed rant

Um. It looks like I need to just keep this space blank. When you need to revise the revision, it's time to admit that you have a problem.

Prayers for charity, which I seem to have in short supply, and direction would be appreciated.

Happy Mother's Day!

To my Mom, my Mother-in-Law, Grandma Lamb and Gram Campbell -- thank you all so much for all you do. We love you! We really do, despite the fact that we haven't acknowledged it in any way (except for here, but blogs don't really count.) Thank you for putting up with idiots like us. The cards will be in the mail on Monday, I promise!!!

Side note, to highlight the unorganized mess that is me:

We went to the noon mass today, because the 1st Communion class was invited to participate in the May Procession. So we had plenty of time to get ourselves together -- I even curled my hair! I was proud of how well we were rolling on Mother's Day: no dirty faces, every head brushed, baby clean and fed. There we were, putting our best foot forward for Mother's Day!

Getting out of the car, though, I realized that Beth had her dress on inside out. Oh well, too late to fix that, I thought. Then, as Katie left to join the other kids in their Communion clothes, I realized that I hadn't put her veil on quite right, so that a big chunk of hair was sticking up out of the crown. Just let it go, I told myself, nothing you can do about it now. Sitting down in the pew, Lucy started to fuss so I picked her up out of her carrier realizing as her cold, wrinkled little feet hit my arm that I had forgotten to put her socks on.

What is amazing, even to me, about this is not that three out of my five children were not properly dressed for mass. It's that I not only did not notice these things until after leaving the house, I was actually congratulating myself for having them so well put together! Add this to the Alzheimer's that I will almost certainly contract in my old age, and you're looking at a scary picture.

So, a happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. May you deserve the recognition more than I do!

When good groundhogs go bad

We loved our groundhog. Last year, I really enjoyed watching the little guy waddling around in the mornings, nibbling on the flowers. It gave our yard a cozy, country-ish feeling, and I really felt like the groundhog and I had a real connection, especially in our shared desire to never, never, ever actually encounter each other face to face. If I so much as tapped the window, the groundhog would dart back into his hole. We never heard so much as a rustle when we were outside. Those were nice days.

Last weekend, we noticed that the groundhog had grown bold after his winter hibernation. He mosied around the yard undisturbed while we tapped on the windows at him, and when we went outside he kept his little head poked out of his burrow entrance, watching us. This seemed strange, but we weren't really alarmed. That is, until things got creepy.

In the late afternoon last Saturday, after everybody who had come over for Katie's Communion had gone home, the groundhog decided to pay us a visit. I was upstairs, and heard Chris yell urgently for me to come down to the basement. What I saw there forever shattered my little love affair with the groundhog. He was standing in front of our basement door with his nose pressed against the glass, looking in at us. His eyes were beady and evil. Worst of all, he was covered, covered in fleas who swarmed around him as though he were the decapitated pig's head from Lord of the Flies. Chris pounded on the glass, but our sinister visitor only backed up slightly, keeping those light less eyes fixed on us. It was seriously one of the freakiest things I've ever seen. I just know that this image is going to figure in my nightmares for some time to come.

Once again, our "fake country" feels a little too real for comfort. In a move that really pushes us towards hillbilly-hood, Chris ran out to Wal-Mart to buy himself a critter-shootin' machine. He spent most of yesterday afternoon sitting in the kitchen with his shotgun, waiting for the groundhog to make his appearance. Of course, now that the groundhog has asserted his dominance of the yard he probably won't feel the need to wander in full view for a while. But when he does, Chris will be waiting.

Last summer I considered naming this creature. What a novice I was back then! This summer, I'm plotting out an animal graveyard.

This puts a whole new spin on an old family joke

Chris and I often joke about selling off one of the girls, since we have so many in reserve. But we had no idea just how lucrative the concept could be...

Chris' sister Becky needed to come up with something to auction off for her school's fundraiser. She often talks about "the neices" to her students, so she decided to put up a picnic, hosted by herself and attended by the winning student, with our four older girls attending.

Now, I suspect that Becky is a popular teacher. I know she really loves her students, and I think it's pretty mutual. So I don't necessarily attribute the bidding war that ensued purely to the attraction of spending an afternoon with my kids. But there was a bidding war, and the winning bid is.......impressive. How impressive? I'm not going to tell you the exact amount, but if you guessed a thousand dollars, you are waaaaaaaaaay off.

These girls are no cheap date.

So now we're a little nervous that this kid won't get her money's worth out of our girls. On the other hand, though, after hearing this exchange between Claire, Abbie and Grandpa Mlinek I think I should be nervous that she will:

Claire: Grandpa?
Grandpa: Yes?
Claire: One time, I fell off the swing and hurt my vee-ginia.
Abbie: BE-GINIA!
Claire: No, Abbie. It's "VEE- GIE-NEE-AH." It really hurt, Grandpa. Right here. I was so sore!
Abbie: BE-GINIA! BEE-GINIA!

What's a Grandpa to do in this situation? Chuckle a tiny little bit.
And look nobody in the eye.

Katie's First Communion

Happy First Communion, Katie! We are so, so proud of you and how well you "get" the mystery of the Eucharist. God bless you, little one.

Oh, hey! We also have some good news...

On top of the baby and all, we have a great update on Abbie!

She had an MRI a few days before Lucy was born, and the results have come in: the tumor has not grown at all, but there is significantly less dye enhancement. What this means is that the tumor is potentially going dormant! That would be absolutely wonderful, because then Abbie could be taken off the chemo and radiation could be delayed indefinitely. Her spine is also looking much healthier, meaning that most of the damage from her surgeries has been healed. So we'll see how her next MRI looks, but we now have a glimmer of hope that she may be spared radiation at such a young age.

All in all, very good news to get before having another baby! :)

More pictures of Lucy and her sisters

Introducing our spider monkey!

Lucy Anna made her entrance into the world without a hitch, at a surprisingly tiny 7lbs 15 oz. I was sure that she was going to be a gigantic baby due to the all the excessive and painful kicking going on, but as it turns out she is just very squirmy. So far she's an excellent baby, never fussy and eats like a champ. The only issue we need to address is her habit of waking up around midnight and remaining bright-eyed and bushy-tailed until about 4am. Hopefully we can talk some sense into her soon.

Friday the 13th....

Is looking like a lucky day for me!

I'm just packing up some last minute stuff, and then Chris and I are heading out to the hospital!

I'll have someone update the blog and post a picture or two at some point either today or tomorrow.

And if you have any spare prayers to throw my way, that'd be cool. :)

Yet another girl meets her destiny?

Beth wrote this story entirely by herself, and I've typed it out exactly as it is written. She asked for help on how to spell "garden" and "trick" but she figured out the rest herself.
I'm just the mom, of course, but I think it's pretty darn impressive for a five year old!!!! Enjoy:

The Big garden with a tree and a bee and a flours.
A trick book
Beths book

The big garben with a tree and a bee and a flours.
Thare wus a big garden with a lots of flours. in the garben thare is a big tree and a bee eding the nektr in the flours.
the girl lickt's too pick flours but wen the bee wus going uwaey she will picks the flours.
the end
and a girl waching all of the flours and the bee and the tree.

T minus 2 days

I am only going to do this once. And only because I was asked very nicely.

Please disregard the weird look on my face - getting the picture right was harder than I thought, and I was really concentrating! :)

Happy Easter!

Despite being totally jacked up on candy......



















the girls were angels for Easter! :)

More Tales of Claire and Abbie

Abbie's tumor has had more ramifications than I ever expected. For example: playing doctor.

"Doctor" has been a favorite game around here since the dawn of our children. Katie and Beth have spent countless hours slaving over either Chris or me, almost always resulting in the need to amputate at least one limb. They give shots, slap on band aids, listen to heartbeats -- all the usual stuff. Claire and Abbie, though.....well, their game has reached a whole new level.

I recently had one of those moments that really made it hit home; my kids know way more than they should about medical procedures. Claire and Abbie were playing doctor, and they ushered me into the guestroom for an impromptu surgery. Abbie very methodically checked my arm for a good vein, and then gave me an IV. She then took a blood sample to check for infection. Claire did the MRI to see where my tumor was, then put the anaesthesia into the IV line. They operated on the tumor, making sure to close and then wash the incision. And when I woke up, they made me take a sip of juice to make sure I was swallowing OK. Then they gave me pain medication and told me that I needed to start rehabilitation right away.

Pretty dead-on. At least, it's a far cry from the "here's your band aid, let me listen to your wrist with the stethoscope," we used to encounter in our pre-cancer days. I assure you, Katie and Beth never even thought to start an IV when they played doctor!

It's sad in a way, but funny in a way, too. At the least, it seems like Abbie's ability to play (and enjoy) this type of game is a healthy sign. Despite all the trauma, she's managed to avoid being traumatized. There is something sick and wrong in watching the two of them play doctor, but there is something beautiful and heartening about it, too. That Abbie (and Claire, who has seen, and thus had to process, more hospital action than the older girls) can tread this ground with such a light heart, such unconcern, shames me when I think of all the stupid things I've let myself be affected by. So hook me up the IV, girls! I can take it.

Proof that we have been overusing a certain phrase....

Claire woke up at 5am on Friday because she suddenly realized that her bear wasn't in her bed. She looked for it, then came down to enlist me in the search. I took her back up to her room, did a cursury look (no bear) and then convinced her to wait until morning to find Bear.

As Claire was climbing back under the covers, a little voice from Abbie's side of the room piped up, "Be quiet, Claire! I am SICK and TIRED!"

Melt my heart

Overheard during lunch:

"Hey, Princess?"

"I'm not a princess, I'm a ballerina."

"Oh, Ballerina? I love you."

"I love you too, darling."

Palm Sunday, or How To Torture A Young Family

Mass on Palm Sunday. Ah.

Our first mistake was to pick our mass time without reference to which priest would be presiding. Our parish has two wonderful priests, and we like both of them very much. However, one is lucid and mercifully succicint while the other is pretty elderly and not in the best of health, and a very sloooooooow talker to boot. Veeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooooow. Think Princess Bride guy, without the speech impediment.

Katie and Beth did a wonderful job. I need to state this first. Katie followed along in her new First Communion mass book, and she enjoyed reading the entire gospel as it was read. Beth couldn't quite follow the entire thing, but she could read the congregation's lines and that was enough to hold her interest.

Abbie, though, just really wanted to talk to Chris. She had a lot on her mind, I guess, and the long pauses between each word being read seemed like the perfect time to convey these thoughts to her Daddy. Claire, on the other hand, was not happy with all the attention I was giving Beth (I was pointing out the audience response ahead of time so that she would be ready) and decided that I need to read something to her. Right now. She wasn't satisfied by my efforts to show both her and the Beth the same book and in protest she began to squirm against me, evidently trying to touch as much of my body at once as humanly possible. And so Beth leaned in closer to me as well, both to see the book better and, I suspect, to defend her territory. And at that moment the baby started to kick me. Hard. I have never felt so claustrophobic in my life. Black spots were literally growing around my peripheral vision and it was becoming impossible to breathe. Meanwhile, Claire began crying because she wanted attention, Beth was shoving her head right into the part of my stomach where the baby was squirming, and the priest was up on the alter taking a full minute to read each. and. every. line. And then Abbie decided that she needed to be near Mommy as well.

We were smack in the middle of the pew, and there was nowhere for me to flee. Cue hormonal pregnant tears.

So Claire was crying, I was crying, Abbie was clearly thinking about crying, the baby was trying to break my ribs, Beth was shoving the book at me to keep on track, and Chris - from his end of the pew where there was air to breathe and just one, perfectly behaved 7 year old quietly reading, gave me a look that clearly said, "what is your problem?"

And Pilate said to the crowd, "What offense has this man committed?"
And they responded, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

Holy Week is going to be great. No, really, it is. Because I'm getting my own pew. And we'll see then who gets to leave mass with dry eyes.