With Age Comes Wisdom

"Grils use hairspray

and boys use jello

 to get their hair nice and pretty."

"You know what?  Once I was four I went into the baffroom to go potty

and I shut and locked the door and then I was playing wiff hairspray."

"So you lied?"

"Yes, I was four."

Sweet Little Prayers

12 AM: Tessa wanders out of her

room for the 4th time, sick to her tummy, feeling like she may give us

a dramatic re-enactment of dinner-in-reverse. 

Also, she had the sniffles.

*

"Baby, what are you doing?"

"I need to find a quiet place to say a sweet little prayer so to make me

not be anymore sick, but you keep making all that noise."

(I wish I can hear her words, but from the hall I can only hear her tiny voice

murmuring as she kneels beside her bed negotiating

with the Great Almighty for her health).

*

12:15 AM: Tessa is on the toilet crying.

"I am just not ready!"

"For what, baby?"

"I think I am just not ready to be very sick."

*

12:17 AM: She does the dry-heave fake-out, 

her expression, one of shock that her body has betrayed her.

"My heart is like a drum, like someone is beating it hard."

*

12:30 AM, after a battle over taking some medicine

("But what if it taste-is nasty?"),  she compromises and allows me to give her some homeopathic remedies.  Her legs have fallen asleep

from being on the pot so long.

"Do you feel better?"

"Well, I don't feel great-great, because it feels like

it's getting my foot squished because it's asleep."

*

At least something is getting some sleep around here.

Can you say Glu-ten?

God Job!

Now, can you say

Glu-ten free?

So about a month before our big trip, Tessa began complaining of a hurting tummy. 

The complaints went from weekly,

 to daily,

to many times a day,

to all darn day.

The doctor ran tests.  She was a trouper, and never even flinched when they took five vials, or as she tells anyone who will listen, "five bottles!" of blood.  Double stickers for the brave one.  They said they have grown men who can't do what she did.  But when all the tests came back on blood work and other *a-hem* bodily excretions, all were:

negative.

Good, I guess.  And not.  Then what is hurting my little girl?, I needed to ask.

"Maybe it's Irritable Bowel Syndrome" says our pediatrician, who, up till then I had liked.  "Go look it up on the Internet and you will find all kinds of information and helpful hints."

You are kidding me, right?  How many times have I been scolded by thems wiff high-falutin' medical degrees for my looking online for answers.

Besides that, my Mom-dar (that's Mommy Radar, of course) went off right away.

It ain't IBS.  I hate to say it, but...

I knew it in my gut.

Then, via answer-to-prayer mail,

an inspiration came;

What if it's gluten?

Easy enough to check for.  We took her off gluten.

Three days and not-one-complaint later, I asked her how her tummy was doing.

"Fine, ah'cept for when you gave me that cookie."

Oh, yeah.  I forgot and gave her a cookie.  Good job, Mom.

It's been almost 3 weeks now, and (almost) no complaints.

Plus, she loves it that she gets special food just for her.

We put it in her "Tessa Cupboard".

It makes her feel pampered.

For now. 

She knows, now, how to look for "wheat" in the ingredient label,

where to find the allergy information, and how to read the words,

"gluten free".

*

Yesterday was my birthday.  In the car the day before she spoke up.

"So, tomorrow is yer birffday, huh?" Very matter-of-fact like.

"Yup." Sez I.

"How old ya' gonna be?" she asks, all casual, like she's asking what's my sign.

"Twenty-eight"  comes my standard annual reply.

"Oh," she says, hardly listening, then moving right along, 

"so I was thinking, maybe we should have a gluten-free cake,

 'cuz it would be sad if some people in our family couldn't have

 birffday cake on some people's birffday."

Yeah, I think she is going to be just fine!

Boys and Girls

So, I may be a really bad mom,

 but I'm afraid I don't listen to Barney or hymns in my car.  I listen to rock. 

Hence, so do my kids.

Ethan's first sing-along was to a song by Shawn Mullins called Lullaby.   I can still hear his gravelly little voice singing "Rrrrrrrock-a-bye!" 

Adam sang along to Coldplay's Yellow.

For Ellie it was Weezer and Beverly Hills.  Some how she was hearing a little voice saying "Honey! Honey!"  We have never figured out what they are actually saying, so I love Ellie's version.

The other day Tessa was busy doing "stuff" (I really have no idea what she was doing,

I am also not super observant.  Bad, bad mom!) and singing her latest fave,

 Hey Baby by No Doubt.  You know the one;

"Hey ba-by, hey ba-by, hey!  Girls say!  Boys say!"

At one point in the song, Tessa, in her best imitation of a reggae voice,

spoke her version of a tag, "And the boys and the girls in the back!"

Then she suddenly stopped singing and said, "Hey mom?"

"Yes?"

"If the boys and the girls are in the back,

who's driving?"

*

Almost as good as the time Ethan heard

 "Gloria, Hosanna!"

and was heard to be singing

"Hurry up, old fella".

*

That's ok.  Today in the car when "Pour Some Sugar on Me"

by Def Leppard came on the radio, Guy confessed he used to sing,

"Awesome, shoot the hombre!"

It must run in the family.

Family Nite

Yesterday was a conference at church.  There were a lot of really wonderful speakers, and I got to listen to the entire thing because I was in the choir and NOT sitting with my five wiggly children.  I was not cocking one eyebrow or doing The Angry Whisper.  No one nearby required a nose wipe, a referee, or a cheerio.  And not once did I use the sign-language "No!" signal.  If you don't know what it looks like, just pucker your face, stick out your jaw and pretend you are snatching a fly out of the air.  It's pure magic, baby.  

I even took conference notes.  And if those notes were in front of me right now I might be able to remember what they talked about yesterday in greater detail.  At the moment, all I remember is one moment of counsel, and sadly I don't even know who said it.  But I remember what he said:

"I hope that tomorrow for Family Night you will work on your 72 hour kits".

I swear there were some other really touching, moving, motivating, inspiring, and amazing things said.  I even cried once.  Yet, even without "the five distractions", 72 hour kits are all I remember.

So, tonight we tried.  The functional word being tried. 

We broke out the old kit.

We discovered that:

Adam no longer wears 2T Dalmatian undies

Military MRE's from 1997 taste nasty (Hey, now, they expired in 02.  That's THIS century!)

Vaseline, diaper cream, lotion and pretty much anything in a container will leak

We now know where the mess kit is, one week late

Small pull-top cans of fruit can explode in the heat

If you leave the burst cans long enough, the contents biodegrade into black liquid

Tampons look like a stick of dynamite to a 14 year old

By the end of the night, we had accomplished very little,

but it was all good for a few laughs. 

My favorite quote of the night came from Tessa:

Ellie:  "Tessa, don't color in that coloring book. 

That's for an emergency some day for if we get bored."

Tessa:  "Well, good, cause I'm bored right now."

May we never need to use our 72 hour kit. 

Or at least not until we have replaced the canned fruit.

Spider Boy