Twins (July 14-18)

I finally posted a few pictures of our week with the twins.  The week of five children all under 3.5 went exceedingly well and was a lot of fun, completely due to the fact that at least a dozen people were praying for the children and for my sanity.  As a result of that, though, I still have not changed my mind in secretly wanting my own set of twins.  Unfortunately, Cindy’s were too much fun.

Most of the week passed in a blur, but there were fun moments of cousin interactions.  Eli wanted to read to his cousins quite a bit, hold them, wrestle with them, and also feed them.  In fact, he was a very helpful boy.  For the most part he was mature that week, although that was the week that he shaved his thumb with a razor and stuffed an airsoft pellet up his nose, so perhaps I had best not comment too much on his maturity.

Hannah, when she had time in the midst of her multitude of princess duties, deigned to smile at the twins and occassionally make one giggle.  She told me she likes girls better though (meaning her sister Nayah).  She also loved stealing the twins’ toys, especially their stuffed animals because they made great additions to her crowd of admirers.

Nayah was the most content and happy she had ever been, I think because the boys were so fascinating that they distracted her from being bored and demanding Mommy hold her.  Also, they brought new toys and an exer-saucer which she enjoyed when they were not.  I would pay to have them come if they could continue to keep Nayah from screaming 65% of her waking day.

Sweet, Sacred Moments

There are a few sacred moments in my day, and by sacred, I do not mean “divine” or “religious,” but “set apart from the ordinary.”  Those moments are my shower, my breakfast, and my tea time; and of all the moments in my day, those are the ones that are seldom “set apart” (or rather, uninterrupted).

My toddlers can play happily by themselves for hours a day, but the five to ten minutes I am in the shower (whatever part of the day I may try to squeeze that in), invariably sin (or creative naughtiness) exerts itself.  Today Hannah came in to report that Eli was playing with the honey.  We buy honey by the gallon.  I had left the gallon in Eli’s sight.  He climbed onto his chair, then onto the table, unscrewed the lid, and bathed himself in honey.  I decided, after Hannah’s announcement, that I did not want to see or know what was taking place, because what you cannot see is obviously not happening.

I inevitably had to return to the kitchen, though.  Eli jubilantly greeted me at the entrance, his hands and arms dripping with honey and water.

“Look, Mommy!  My hands are not thticky anymo-eh!” (And I am not going crazy anymo-eh.)

I re-washed his hands, arms, face, neck, the sink, the faucet-that-he-had-to-touch-to-start-the-water, three chairs, and a table.  Basically every surface I theorized he could have touched I attacked with a lot of force and water.  I do not think I got it all, though.  Honey has amazing properties.  It is the one substance I know of that can spread and grow and multiply itself.  You leave a pinprick-sized spot on the table.  You set your arm on it.  Then your chair, glass, eating utensils, children, walls, light switches, toothbrushes, earrings, and toilet paper are sticky and full of honey.  That minuscule amount of honey has multiplied like the widow of Zarephath’s flour and oil (1 Kings 17) and it can feed a family for a week.

I discovered that Eli had immersed his arms––both of them, in their entirety––into the honey gallon.  Then he held his hands over his cereal bowl so the honey could drip into it.  The end result was two inches of honey in his bowl, and two dozen Cheerios cemented into the mass.  Or mess.  He cried when I emptied his bowl and disallowed him to eat his honey-breakfast (or play with it further).

Have I failed as a parent that he actually believes I will joyfully let him eat two-and-a-half cups of honey with his accompanying two dozen Cheerios after I have told him to never again play in honey?  I feel like thumping his head: “Think, Child-Deficient-in-Judgment-and-Common-Sense!”

I did not plan on washing honey off of my son’s eyelids and out of his armpits when I woke up this morning.

Measurements

A house under construction means that our toddlers are introduced to an entirely new world of vocabulary and objects. Eli locates my DeWalt in the basement, carries it upstairs, then asks me what he should “crew.” Today they found my measuring tape, and Eli with his dark and solemn eyes told me that it was his, and had always been. It is hard to argue with his sort of gravity.

Hannah asked him to measure things. Like a grand magician, he pulled the tape out and tapped it on the table’s edge.

“Eli, is it forty-five minutes long? Yep or no?
“Yep.”
“How long is the refrigerator? Is it three minutes or forty-five minutes long?”
“Free.”

And Hannah’s wise, wise daddy has quite a head-size. It is “69 of 30 hours” in circumference.

Boys Are Not the Same As Girls

What’s brown, has four-and-a-half fingers, and is red all over?

Eli.

It is not like we have not warned him. During his unsupervised shower (no adults will shower with him), he decided to play with a razor. He ran his left thumb over it and watched as the bright red blood flowed to the surface. Out of the shower, not listening to Mommy who had told him to hold the toilet paper on his thumb while she got a bandaid, the blood had a chance to run out of his thumb, down his hand, and
drip
to
the
floor.
It terrified him.

The cut was not very deep, nor very major, but bright red blood that drips can be quite panic-inducing. Is it wrong for me to laugh quietly and unobtrusively to myself when he does these things?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Eli crammed the contents of a small bowl of chili into the deep pits cut into the plastic of his toy vacuum cleaner. The bowl of chili was in the kitchen, in the middle of the table, which means he had to climb up onto a chair to get it. He then had to carry the chili to his vacuum, which was on the other side of the living room farthest from the kitchen. He had not even been at the table eating when the chili was out, which was over an hour before this inspiration hit him. I could understand if the two items were near each other, but this?!

A week ago, after the eight children (ages 8, 6, 3.5, 3.5, 3.5, 2.5, 1.5, 8mos) I had been watching left, Eli poked Hannah’s ear with a thermometer and scratched her eardrum. He came to me holding the thermometer and explaining that Hannah’s ear was bleeding. What made him think of putting a thermometer in her ear? (Hannah’s ear is fine now. It was a bit scary for a time, though. Blood is not supposed to come out of ears.)

There were four girls in my family. We did not have to deal with things like this.

When Eli climbs the various ladders at the park he always looks down at his toes, not up at the next rung. So EVERY TIME he climbs
at EVERY RUNG
he hits his head. He has a half-crown of grey and purple bruises dotting around his head.

Daddy is teaching Eli to pee “like a man.” Part of the sequence involves a process they call “shaking.” Eli has not mastered this. Yesterday I watched as he zig-zagged his potty stick up and down the toilet, then “shook” while still peeing. And my sister wondered why our toilet often smells of urine.

Eli’s stomach is so round and pudgy that he cannot see his feet, nor what he is doing when he pees. So he leans forward, which causes his tinkle to shoot lower rather than higher, and often he pees into his “nunnerwear.” I guess I do not wash them often enough.

This whole job of potty-training a boy baffles me. Especially when he looks at me with consternation and notifies me that his “potty thtick ithz not pointeen down.” How do I respond?

Today from across the yard I saw him digging in his nose and eating the residue off his finger. I yelled at him to stop. Up his finger plunged again. Again, I told him no. The finger hit his mouth. A third time the finger ascended while I quickly walked toward him to enforce my command. I popped the finger out, and he began to sob. After we calmed him down enough to understand what he was saying, we had a new problem: fishing an air soft pellet from his right nostril. n8 efficiently (from vast experience?) took control and helped him blow it out. Why on earth was it stuck up there to begin with? What made him chose to insert the pellet into his nose? This is not something he has ever seen modeled.

I do not know where his brain came from, but I have a feeling n8’s mom does.

Mark’s Dirtbike

We finally got word on Mark’s stolen motorcycle. From what I understand some guy found it on his property up in Titusville (out by Daytona Beach) and called a towing company to get it off of his property. They alway check the VIN before they will tow it and found that it was stolen so they reported it to the policed there who in turn reported to the police in Ocoee. The only catch about it is that we have to pay to get it back from the towing company. Mark went and talked to the police department and they said that the only way to get the money back is to convict the guy that stole the bike and get him to pay retribution. We are pretty frustrated with the whole system. WE have to pay to get our stolen item back. Kinda seems like they are punishing those that have wrong done to them more than those that do the wrong. And there is the possibility that he won’t even have to pay any retribution. As you can tell I am really frustrated with our legal system right now.  Please be praying for us.

Lucas Self-feeds

I love it when your children make you laugh and smile!

This afternoon, I nursed Lucas, then fed him some veggies in the kitchen.  Leaving him in his booster chair with some toys, it was Paul’s turn to nurse.  As I nursed in the other room, I could hear Lucas playing but soon heard his toy drop.  Since he wasn’t fussing, I decided to finish with Paul before checking on Lucas.

When I stepped through the kitchen doorway, there was Lucas gorging himself with sweet potatoes.  Silly me left the plastic container with about a tablespoon of sweet potatoes on the edge of the table, just within his reach.  He grabbed the container and proceeded to get it all over his face, fingers, bib, high chair tray, and floor.  But he was as happy as could be licking his fingers and sucking on the plastic container.  Realizing it was food, he attacked the mush as quickly as he could.  I just laughed, took pictures, then cleaned up the mess.