Good things!

I have been shamefully behind on here, and I have no excuse. Lots of good things have been happening, though, and it's time to talk about some of them!

First of all, Abbie is off the chemo! It was the best feeling to get the call from our pharmacy and be able to tell them that we won't be needing anything this month.

The scans of Abbie's tumor have shown no significant growth in the past year, so there is a good chance that the tumor is dormant. She'll continue to get scans every couple months, and as long as the tumor stays stable we will....just live a normal life. :) We are so happy to give her scrawny little body a chance to recover, and the break from the many hospital visits is a nice bonus. She continues to get stronger, and in fact was released from PT shortly before the end-of-chemo appointment. I could tell that the physical therapist was sad to discharge Abbie, and I felt like it was this all over again. This PT was a wonderful woman, and we liked the group therapy sessions but as the girls would say, see ya, sucker-john-suckers! With the end of each cancer-related activity it feels like we are slowly climbing our way out of some underground bunker, where each step brings us a little more fresh air. It is a good, good feeling.

Also, making all of the girls super-excited, we got this:

It is official! The Make-a-Wish Foundation is sending us to Disney World this winter! We still can't believe it!!! The Make-a-Wish people have been truly amazing, and I have been more and more impressed with this organization with every passing week. They've been sending little things in the mail to keep Abbie excited until the big trip, and they have been remembering the other girls as well. They really think of everything. It's hard to believe that we qualify for this, especially since Abbie is doing so very well. I'm grateful, though, because it has been so nice to see the girls this excited.

So - good things going on around here! I'm not particularly the hand-waving type but: Praise God, from who all blessing flow.

Too much girl power

Disturbing conversation today. While we were waiting for Katie and Beth to come out of religious ed, Claire and Abbie began to talk about God.

"Jesus doesn't know I'm a person," Abbie said.
"You mean, you don't think Jesus knows who you are?" I asked her.
"Well, yes, but then Jesus showed me her baby! It was very cute."

??? There were so many things wrong with this that I didn't know where to begin. I plowed through, though, and thought I did a pretty good job, considering the fact that I had somehow allowed my child to form the belief that Jesus is a girl.....who has a baby.

I thought I had cleared the air, but then Claire piped up, "Well Jesus is a boy, Abbie. Because God is a girl!"
"Um, no" I corrected her, "God is also a boy."
"No silly! God is a girl!"
"No, really," I told Claire, realizing that she considered it a matter of course that God is female. "God really is a boy. Male. I mean - God is the Father, Jesus is the Son." The sands were too precarious to even begin to explain the Holy Spirit here.

"Really?" asked Claire. "That's so strange."
"Yeah!" said Abbie, very emphatically beside her, "That is crazy."

Too much of a good thing

Chris brought some cupcakes home from a nearby bakery that just relocated near us. They have a great reputation, especially for cakes, and the cupcakes were.......well, much better than simple cupcakes should be.

Claire especially appreciated it. We knew this because she wolfed down her vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting, and then she then proceeded to eat the paper wrapper. Chris asked her why her mouth was still so full, and she sheepishly spit the paper back onto her plate. Disgust and horror ensued.

They are good cupcakes, though.

I swear it isn't true, but there's no way I can dig out of this hole

Abbie to Grandma Mlinek, "My mommy said you are very, very old."

Thank God this woman has a sense of humor!

Renaissance Festival

Huzzah!

She torments me, but man she's cute!

It Figures

Remember that post I wrote about what a perfect baby Lucy is, and how she's so super-duper breezy-easy that I would looooove to have another?

Lucy hasn't slept a wink since.

Seriously, she has been taking 30 min naps instead of her usual 3 hr ones (just enough time for me to get Claire and Abbie settled, and grab my towel to hop into the shower, but not enough time to actually get into the shower.) She's also decided that it is fun to stay awake all night long. If I bring her into bed with us, she will giggle and pull my hair, kick Chris, nurse/stop nursing/nurse/stop nursing in rapid succession, and generally do other "awake" kind of things. If I actually get up and stumble to the couch to give her a bottle and re-settle her, she smiles and laughs at me and......doesn't go back to sleep. She's not crying during this or in any way unhappy. She's perfectly cheerful, but that isn't as cute as it can be when what I want is for her to be perfectly asleep.

So. I direct all of you to this blog, from a woman who is researching "The Five Stages of Exhaustion." I think she is really onto something; it describes exactly how these past 7 years have felt for me, but I am too tired to actually write something like that myself.

First day of school!

story later. for now, enjoy the pic!

Feelin' Groovy

For the record, this is not an announcement. I'll repeat it to make sure everybody is paying attention: This is NOT an announcement! But....

I heard somebody's good news yesterday, and I am very excited for her! (And her husband, I guess it's his news, too!) Something happened when I heard it, though, that took me by surprise because it never happens to me. I felt a teeny-tiny twinge of baby lust. Usually my reaction when others are expecting is to A) feel reallyreally happy for them, and B) feel reallyreally glad it isn't me. But this time I thought, "Oooooooh, babies are so great!"

Part of this, of course, is due to the fact that Lucy is the greatest baby on the face of the earth. No, seriously, she is. She's almost always happy, sleeps wonderfully (as long as I swaddle her tightly enough to keep her from rolling over), and smiles and giggles at us until we are all puddles of goo at her feet. Even Abbie, who is........feeling every inch of her two years, to put it delicately, is more than happy to lay any of her own needs or wants aside in order to keep Lucy's happy gurgles coming. It is easy to think about another baby when my current one requires about as much attention as Baby Zuttini Bread (who, by the way, isn't looking so hot these days.)

This is a weird place for me to be. I hardly expected to feel like life was getting easy enough to actually plan for another baby after struggling through five. But these kids just get more and more fun with every passing day, and I guess I'm finally feeling comfortable in my role as a mother - not just a girl with kids. This isn't to say that we are actually planning anything; we aren't. I don't know what God has in His plan for our family, and we aren't really in a place to figure it out right now. But don't bother asking me if we're done. I'm having too much fun to give any kind of definite answer.

Is this my life? Really?

Conversation overheard today:

Chris: Where is Abbie?
Claire: She's sitting on the steps, stinkin' up!
Chris (to Abbie, who just walked in) Are you poopie?
Abbie, nonchalantly: Yup. Sure am.

Later on, Beth warned me that Abbie had (again) taken her diaper off. I ran upstairs to find her, naked, sitting on her training potty. Directly across from her sat Claire, and before I opened the door I heard Claire say, "Just watch me, Abbie, and I'll show you how it's done!"

Mom, you are going to LOVE this

Alternate title for this post: What goes around comes around....

Cleaning the upstairs bathroom this morning, I noticed several toothbrushes missing.
Me, to Beth: Why aren't the toothbrushes in the cup?
Beth: Oh, we left them at Grandma's house.
Me, thinking you left Grandma's house on SUNDAY!: So everytime I asked you guys if you brushed your teeth, and you all answered, "yes".......
Beth: We were just brushing with our fingers.

Scary thing here is that this is a scene directly out of my childhood, Grandma's house, finger-brushing and all. The only difference, to my shame, is the amount of time elapsed before discovery. Luckily for the girls I couldn't flip out too terribly much, seeing how I once went an entire week under the same circumstance.

Lucky for them, indeed.

The truth laid bare

I hate potty-training. Hate it, hate it, hateithateithateithateit. It has been a cruel twist of fate, too, that every time I begin potty-training I always have at least one baby happily soiling diapers in the wings, reminding me that even if this experience isn't the shoot-me-in-the-head-now-and-end-this-agony kind, I only have a few short months before I'll have to do it again.

But Abbie is ready. She's been ready for a while, but I've had concerns about her small motor strength. I mean, she has a brain tumor and all; I should really give myself - I mean her, I should give her, of course, ha ha! - a break. Give her a chance to build up her strength, you know........ Unfortunately, her motor skills have improved enough that she has the ability to take her diaper off at will. And take it off she does, several times a day. She will keep it dry for a few hours and then suddenly soak it through, but instead of informing me that she needs a change now, she'll just take it off and wait until the panicked cries of her sisters alert me to the situation.

Sunday, though, is when I had to admit defeat. The time has come to pull out the old (disgusting, stinking) training potty. On second thought, the time has come to buy a new one so that we have at least a few days until it too becomes unbearable and un-cleanable.

See, we were at mass on Sunday, and the girls were all behaving beautifully. At one point Abbie began to stage-whisper to me about her diaper, but I shushed her quickly and she quieted down. It was all just going so well, even Lucy was being quiet and reverent. Abbie remained silent beside me, wiggling around of course, but I hardly even notice that anymore. I'm not sure what prompted me to look down at her, perhaps it was an impression that there was more flesh-color than usual in my peripheral vision. I looked down, and saw Abbie beside me with her rear-end bare for all the world (and all the back of the church) to see. Her diaper had been bugging her, so she just pulled it around her ankles, taking her skirt with it. Due to the nature of our five curious girls, Chris and I usually alert each other clearly if we need to take someone out of mass, but there was no time in this scenario. I grabbed Abbie, bare bottom and all, and hauled out of there as fast as I could. We were in the bathroom before my frazzled mind settled and I realized that I hadn't even tried to cover her backside up during our retreat.

Oh well. I'm sure some people were appalled, and some people amused. I'm mostly sure, though, that Abbie's diapered days are numbered.

too much of a good thing

I have become very good, masterful even, at sneaking zucchini into food. This past week we have enjoyed zucchini bread, of course, zucchini brownies (surprisingly delicious! You'd never guess it was loaded - loaded!- with zucchini), zucchini spaghetti sauce, zucchini omeletes, sauteed zucchini, zucchini-squash medley, and hamburger zucchini. So I guess the following exchange should not have taken me by surprise.

My mom is taking the older three girls for a couple of days, and she called to ask them what they would like to eat during their stay at her house. When she asked Beth this question, she responded, "Anything, really......well, not zucchini."

Not exactly like Nietzsche

Lucy continues to terrorize us with her rolling over. As I type, she is fussing and squirming on the floor, furious at her own physical ability. I cannot wait until she figures out how to roll back off of her stomach!

I guess Claire was concerned yesterday about Lucy's mental health, because she came up with a clever idea to keep her from rolling over. She was working diligently in the living room, where Lucy was stretched out, quietly for once, on the floor, when Claire proudly called me in to see her solution. She had surrounded Lucy with pillows, the idea being that Lucy wouldn't roll onto them, and would thus stay on her back. (This doesn't actually work, but it was sweet of Claire to try.)

As I was thanking Claire for all her hard work, we both looked down at Lucy on the floor, surrounded on all four sides by the pillows. It sort of had the general shape of a cross, Lucy spread out in the middle. Claire looked up at me and said, "Hey! Lucy looks just like the dead God!"

Uh-oh.

Three months old, and already this? Lucy is rolling over. Like, all the time. If I leave her alone for even a few seconds, I can be guaranteed that she'll be belly-down when I next look, those chubby little legs of hers kicking for all they're worth. This would be cute, adorable even, if it did not interfere with her heavenly sleep-all-night routine. She loves rolling so much that she is even doing it in her sleep, which wakes her up. This is Not Good. These first three months were a wonderland of ease - lots of sleep for everyone, making family life so fun and happy. But now we are tired. Tired and cranky.

It's hard to be angry at this little goof, though. Her response when I come to get her is always the same: when the hall light comes on, she stops crying, and when she sees my face over the rim of her crib she gives me a huge smile and a gurgle. Too sweet, too cute........but a little too often as well.

(As a note, I don't know that I have mentioned Lucy's eye on here, but I know this picture really highlights it. She has had a cyst on her eyelid since her third week of life, and it has been slowly growing bigger ever since. We are monitoring it, and hoping for the best. If it begins to damage her eyesight then we will need to consider our options, but for now it isn't bothering her so it isn't bothering us.)

Purty little girls!

It is nearly impossible to get all of the girls to take a good picture at the same time. Especially on Sundays before they've been allowed to eat their dougnuts. Here they are, though. Grandma Mlinek, you have really outdone yourself this time! We are all amazed at how beautiful these dresses are!

The life and times of Baby Zuttini

I thought we were making progress yesterday. Abbie came over to me and sensibly explained that the baby bunnies were hungry, and she thought it would be a good idea to set Baby Zuttini Bread outside so they could eat it. We didn't actually do it - our yard critters don't need encouragement to hang around looking for free meals, but I thought it was a good sign that Abbie's love affair with the zucchini was coming to an end.

But then an hour or two later the Make-A-Wish Foundation volunteers came over to ask Abbie what her wish is. The first thing she did - and I mean the very, very first thing - was to dash downstairs and grab Baby Zuttini Bread so that she could introduce it to them. They were, of course, very impressed with Abbie's beloved vegetable.

Her wish, by the way, was to go to Walt Disney World. Those of you who know me well may laugh at that, knowing my long, deep hatred of all things Disney - his fake "World" in particular- but.........the Make A Wish setup is pretty sweet, and I need to set my personal distaste aside because the girls will really enjoy it. We'll find out in a couple of weeks if her wish is granted (and it probably will be.) I'm just hoping, at this point, that come January we won't need to tote along a withered and mummified Baby Zuttini Bread.....

File under: my kids are weird

We are so surrounded by zucchini here that it is beginning to warp the girls. I had this coming, I guess, what with my childhood haunted by my lost beloved "Pet Pepsi Bottle." I should have expected at least one of my kids to develop a random affection for some inanimate object. But this? This I just didn't expect.

Here is Abbie with her new favorite toy. Her name is "Baby Zuttini Bread," and she now follows Abbie wherever she goes. It's been three days now since Baby Zuttini came into our lives, and I have to say that she's not exactly looking her best; we can overlook the many (many, many) scratches and nail marks now pocking her squeaky green skin, but her wilting top (head? hair? ) has me worried. Abbie is trying so hard, though, to take good care of Baby Zuttini. She feeds her, rocks her to sleep, admonished her when she asks for too many Pedia-Sures, and wraps her up in blankets to keep her warm. She also dances with her - Baby Zuttini really likes to dance.

If this lasts much longer, we are going to need to replace Baby Zuttini. I have enough replacements for sure, but let's hope it doesn't actually comes to that.

Dude, who puked in here?

This is a post I began a few weeks ago, but just got around to finishing today. So if you read this and think, "Hey, I was there for that -- this is old news!" bear with me please.

I walked into my bathroom yesterday and noticed something.....odd. There were little tiny orange-ish splatters on the side of the tub, and on further investigation I saw more little splatters around the toilet bowl and on the wall behind it.

My first order of business, of course, was to clean it up but while doing so I couldn't help but wonder, "Who puked in here?" and, "Why didn't he or she tell me?" Once I was finished, I went out and delicately tried to ask Chris if he had recently vomited in our bathroom. I don't want to give the impression that my husband is in the habit of sloppily puking all over the bathroom, but I couldn't quite see how one of the kids could manage without me knowing about it. Chris, as you may imagine, was surprised by the question and a little bit offended. So I went on, much like the little bird who is looking for his mother, the main difference of course being our questions. His was "Are you my Mother?" while I was asking, "Did you throw up in the bathroom?"

No-one admitted to it. After getting four individual denials, we rounded everyone up in the living room, hoping to tickle some information out of them in a group setting. Blank faces all around: no-one had any memory of recently throwing up. Looking into their little faces one by one, I saw not one trace of knowingness. I began to doubt myself; had I puked in the bathroom, could I have been the one who forgot?

The sorry truth, however, is that one member of the family had already been on a streak. She had taken a trip to Friendly's with her grandparents and turned it into one of her signature "quick, throw as much money as you can on the table and maybe they'll forgive all the vomit," exits. Two days later she puked in our yard because she was afraid of slugs. Then she went into the house in puked in the (other) bathroom. You know who this is, of course. Claire. And it is unfortunately entirely plausible that she would run into my bathroom, vomit, and then walk away as if nothing had happened. She's kind of a pro like that.

We'll never know for sure who the mystery-puker is. But I'll always have my suspicions. In the meantime I wonder: why is it that living with small children is so very much like living in a frat house???

End of an era

I finished the 7th Harry Potter book today. On first impression, I think it might be my favorite of the series. Right now, though, I'm feeling a little sad knowing that there will be no more news from the Wizarding World. I am going to miss the delight and surprise, the mystery and suspense that came with each new book.

However I suspect that there is still new joy to be found at Hogwarts, because this afternoon I found this:

Let the fun begin!