Saturday, May 30, 2020

Wesley's Catalogue of Self-Injuries, May 2020

This is a very abbreviated list, but Wesley creatively injured himself this month.

It began with the knees.  It seems like big bandages = big deal, but he's already forgotten how he scraped both his knees.  I think it was wheel-to-asphalt injury, but since this happened earlier this month, it's been overwritten with other memories.


This one sticks with him--not only does he remember it vividly, but a month later, he still has a bruise under his fingernail after slamming it in a door.  We heard the death scream from all corners of the property.  Of course, it's his middle finger.


This one is far more subtle.  I also heard echos of a death scream from where I was working outside, but Dwayne was in the same room with him, so I didn't come running.  But I cleaned up the blood for days afterward!


If you look closely right in the middle of the picture at the green railing, you can see a blood spot. That's actually a large splatter on the kitchen window, and more splatters were found later on the cupboards appliances, and walls.  Wesley has seen me fix the "oil on top of the peanut butter" problem by mixing it with an immersion blender, and being an independent-ish child, he was going to do it instead of asking me to.  As Dwayne later described it, "Wesley found out the hard way that the immersion blender has fast-moving blades on it."  He still has all his fingers and didn't even need stitches, but that new knowledge about kitchen appliances is going to stick with him for the rest of his life. 

Luckily, snuggling with Kyla makes everything better!

Friday, May 29, 2020

Piper Steps Up for Wes

In his daily tantrum (#YayHomeschool), Wes fell apart over supplementary angles, catching Piper's attention.  I took a time out for myself, and Piper got to work. She put all of Wesley's favorites together to cheer him on: Spidy, with an I 💗 Tacos sign around his neck; Spot the Dog; Larry the Cactus; the Ender Dragon she had knitted for him; and his favorite color highlighter, green.  

Then when he had calmed down, she brought him out and helped him figure out the last problem. I must have gone somewhere, because when I returned home, it was all done and ready for me to check. #PiperWins!

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Frederick Down! Frederick Down!

Uh, oh. 

Wes took Frederick to the back deck, and the baby gate was down from Excessive Deck Maintenance.  Frederick went down the steps, and picked up speed as he careened down the ravine, hitting several trees as he went. 

Wes immediately called for back up.  I was too busy laughing and taking pictures, so Sisters showed up.  Kyla is one with the forest, so she led the expedition.  


Piper is our finder, and she spotted it.  


Finally, Wes had Frederick the Balance Ball back.  He has promised to keep him inside for now on!

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Deckadence

It's a ridiculous name, but I'm now calling the front of our house "Deckadence".  I got my container plants that make me happy,

and my outdoor couch finally arrived! The kids adopted it right away but we've all had cuddles on this couch, on the handful of sunny days we've had thus far.

It's really only good for about 2-3 months of outdoor use where we live, but it will winter downstairs in front of the fireplace, if the cats can let it survive that long. 

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Everything's Coming Up Rainbows

All my children are happiest when they are doing something with their hands while listening to stories.  Wes likes to busy his hands with video games <insert eye roll>, Kyla likes to do puzzles of all sorts, and Piper creates. I bought them all paint pens, first for rocks, and then we added white T's for canvases. Piper ran with it, and with her fabulous apron behind her, she created two identical rainbow t-shirts, one for her and another for her BFF. 

I love all the details she carefully created. The back reads "You can't have a rainbow without the rain."  

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Jumping for Joy



The rain began in earnest this afternoon, and when Kyla saw it, she donned her swimsuit, ran through the neighborhood barefoot, and finished her triathlon on the trampoline.  I love the pure joy she had when I spotted her from my bedroom window. She is full-heartedly herself.

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Scarf & Barf


Thanks, Rosie, for your contribution to my scrubbing the office.  Scarf & Barf is the term for cats that eat so quickly (possibly because their bullying brother lords over the food bowl) that they don't keep it down. So in our home, Rosie is in charge of the vomiting and Timmy does the recreational peeing. It really doesn't get better than a party in our house. 

Friday, May 15, 2020

Sipsies


When the Stay Home order began, we had to figure out coffee.  It's actually not a point of pride that I have no coffee maker in our home; it's more of a point of total self-absorption since I don't drink coffee. (I have three shelves of tea, fully absorbing both myself and teabags.)  But I found myself driving 10 minutes to the nearest Starbucks drive-thru every morning to get Dwayne a drinkable cup of drip coffee.  So when I found myself at Target a few weeks into the quarantine, I brought home a tiny French press and some beans. 

Love began.  

Dwayne loves a splash of half-and-half and a squirt of Stevia in black coffee, and since Wes loves Dwayne's high-calorie mochas, he was convinced he'd love Daddy's new coffee.  And he did.  

Now Wes gets his special "sipsies" each time Dwayne makes himself a cup during the workday.  He'll even get up to make Dwayne's first cup in the morning.  Fortunately, sometimes Wes will throw me a bone and make me a cup of peppermint tea.  

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

#TeamTimmy: If I ever deal with another cat penis, it will be too soon.

Piper’s cat, Timmy, had a close call with death by UTI last weekend, and while he seems to have passed the tipping point of recovery, he is down to approximately half a life now. He had a mucus plug in his urethra and the catheter insertion failed, so they chose Route 2, which is to go in through the bladder and down the urethra that way. After a few nights at the vet's (because I refused to pay the thousands an emergency animal hospital overnight would cost), we brought him home with lots of pills, a collar of shame, and a catheter sutured to a tube sutured to him that was warned not to pull out.

That was about noon. The office closed at 5pm Saturday. By 5:10pm, he had pulled out his catheter. I was supposed to take him to emergency services if he did anything to it, but we pretty much gave him a thumbs up and a promise to call the vet on Monday if he were still alive. 


Piper spent all afternoon cooped up in the tiny, stuffy tiled bathroom to care for our leaky patient, preventing him from pulling it out several times before he finally got it out. In retrospect, it was better he had done it then than later when we made her eat dinner or sleep in her own bed. She has been an amazing caretaker, and if he pulls through, it will be her consistent and sacrificial care that makes the difference. She’s coping GREAT with the emotional roller coaster, but well, it’s an emotional roller coaster. I lost a lot of sleep over this, mostly because I abhor spending that much money on a pet, and deciding whether or not to kill your daughter's pet is not as easy as it seems. I resent dealing with vet because, not only am I at the mercy of my own ignorance, but there also seems to be an underlying assumption that money is no object in saving the life of a pet. By Day 2, I finally figured out a strategy. Whenever I heard, "Now we'll have to .... and it will cost ...", I would reply, "We can't pay that. How much will it cost to have him euthanized right now?". Then a Plan B would be presented that was slightly more reasonable.I learned a few more lessons that I hadn't been looking for over this last week. 1) I'm quite good at giving Timmy pills and making him swallow. 2) When a cat has a catheter, kitty litter needs to be avoided to keep the bits from going up, well, bits. I've shredded many newspapers these last few days. 3) Now that Timmy isn't allowed to have dry food (UTI, um, yay), that's what he wants to have, not the expensive canned food he's supposed to have. 4) I don't have to love a cat to lose sleep over him. And I certainly don't have to like a cat to spend too much money on him. Use that half-life well, TimmyCat.




Sunday, May 10, 2020

Most Fortunate Among Mothers



...and by "mother", I really mean "wife", or in particular, "Dwayne's wife".  The kids let us sleep until it was time to roll out of bed for church live stream.  Afterward, I puttered while Dwayne fixed me
to eat on the front deck (next to my new containers with, ahem, not-yet-manslaughtered flowers).  That would be greens sauteed in fresh garlic, roasted root veggies, over-easy eggs with goat cheese, and sides of tomatoes tossed with olive oil and herbs, fresh avocado, and sliced citrus.   Dwayne did have to help me eat it all.  

Then, Dwayne took Wes downtown to purchase armfuls of flowers, and the kids arranged them and surprised me with riots of colors.  

I had settled into a short afternoon of outdoor puttering before my parents came over for an early dinner when Wes came out with my second breakfast:
I had actually been staying away from gluten and sugar, but how could I resist?  He took my 100% dark chocolate, broke it into pieces and arranged it into a smiley face and remembered that I love berry syrup on pancakes.  Diet smashed, and just smack between a really late breakfast and insanely early dinner.  The night before, he had also given me $15 in cash to donate to the charity of my choice.  I found a parasite treatment for school children through the Compassion catalog. That boy is my sunshine and my raincloud--rainbows galore!

The mystery of painting detritus left on the deck the night before was solved when Kyla gave me a watercolor of the calla lilies I had just planted days before (and therefore, were still looking as nice as they had in the garden section at McLendons).  Isn't it lovely?

Dwayne returned from one of my favorite restaurants, Sages, with dinner for four discerning adults, and a bag of Jack-N-the Box burgers for the kids.  The weather was perfect, which is why we were able to set up an alfresco, socially distanced dining experience on the patio.  We were able to talk my parents into a walk afterward, and I even got my Mothers Day's pictures taken!  I would love to continue bragging about how perfectly lovely Mothers Day was this year; however, there was absolutely payback.  The Monday Hangover after good behavior came back full force.


Saturday, May 9, 2020

The Amazing Weather is Back...and We All Freaked Out in Our Own Way

Me, I finally planted by new containers with my new plants from my new soil pile (the 6 yards of garden dirt, not the 10 yards of topsoil). 


They make me so happy to sit our on our front deck.


The girls and I took a walk after Dwayne and I separated a screaming match between Piper and Wes.  Dwayne took the boy rollerblading, and brought back a kid reset for the world.


I thought Piper was just being cute tying her shirt up like this.  Turns out, she was just able to carry her tablet under her shirt in the back so she could still listen to her story.


 Wes rode around the neighborhood on his hoverboard, stocking foot and carrying a piece of drainpipe he had spray painted earlier to make it resemble...something junkier?  Notice I try not add "because" to any statement about Wes's antics. Who wants to plumb those depths?

Piper ended up in a sundress, on the roof, holding Lion Rosie.  Again, I don't wish to add a "because" clause.

And with temperatures flirting madly with 80℉, this needs no explanation!

  

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Mama Signs Off From a PTA Zoom and Finds...

...everyone pilled up like ferrets watching Beast Masters.  That's good, hard discipline, Babe. 😏

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Before the Rains Come

*I* can't get over this beautiful weather, but apparently this weather can. We've had such amazing days, which makes the Stay Home Stay Safe policy really just feel like a lucky vacation--a snow day, but you know, completely opposite pressure system. 

To make the last of the good weather for a day or two, Wes and I rebuilt the fire pit that accidently found itself under the trampoline after my recent yard-attack, and the kids were thrilled to have hotdogs/sausages for dinner.  Dwayne graduated long ago from pyromaniac to pyromaster, and his fire lasted until the kids had the kitchen cleaned up.  It was the most beautiful evening--we so lucked out getting this house 17 years ago. I don't think I ever need to live on water or in a mountain or any amazing destination, but I think I always want a sunset view.


Saturday, May 2, 2020

Piper's Projects

 This girl loves creating and crafting!

Baby Sam has been the recipient of many Piper Inspirations.  Here, he is holding is new toy fish, made lovingly from old rags.


Then Kyla wanted to discard an apron that had been a fun COVID-19 Remote Birthday party, and Piper snatched it.  The original design had Kyla's name under the yellow spot, and the now-blue pocket had other party-related wishes on it.  

And then Piper got a hold of it.
  


Here are some close ups:



I love her flower designs.  She printed off images she liked, and then scribbled all over the back in pencil, making herself poor-man carbon paper.  Then she could then transfer the image to the apron and color them as she wished.








I am particularly fond of the paw print edging.


She captured Rosie and Timmy,

and even her BFF's kitten (the brown one near the bottom of the apron).  Oh, how she enjoyed the hours on this.  Another parent might make a dig about putting half this effort into her classes, but I'm as restrained as I can be this month.