Day 1534: A Day in the Life of a Sleep Deprived, Streached too Thin, Crazy, Blessed Mamma

This was from a while back and I never finished it. But not bad stuff.
Hi y'all! My lands it has been a long time. I missed y'all so I thought I would stop by and check in. How ya'll doing? Me about the same same I guess. It has been a long time and I can't remember.
I was just thinking that I would share with you a  small peek into my crazy life, People always say they don't know how or why I do it. Raise 5 boys by myself, some of them with special needs. People either think I am a saint or crazy. Neither is true. I picked this life and I love it. Sometimes it is comical, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes so sweet, sometimes it makes me tired and kicks my butt. Just like your life. So here it goes.

I opened my eyes as he was climbing into my bed. I had no idea what time it was because my phone went dead from my 9 year old playing dragonville and my alarm clock was unplugged by someone and lay useless in the middle of the floor. Better that he get in bed with me than wander the house getting into trouble and waking everybody up. My 4 yr old, Dante, had FAS and one of the problems that comes with it are sleep issues. He slept peacfully with me for about 30 minutes and then we were joined by my 3 yr old , Evan. By this time baby ( and by baby I mean my 2 yr old foster son. He is a baby to me y'all.) He sleeps in a crib at the foot of my bed like he has since he was a new born. He has long since been ready to transition to a toddler bed and share a room with his (foster) brothers, But he is leaving us soon for his adoptive home so why rock the boat. It is Sunday morning in our house. That used to mean church for us. Rain or snow unless someone was sick we were there. These days not so much. I am not mad at church or God or anything. Maybe my not so secret sin is keeping me home or maybe I am just dragging my behind tired and I just don't want to go. Maybe both. I am determined to get back to regular church attendance, but not this Sunday. Three days until Ian comes to take the big boys to Cananda for the summer

Oh My

Oh my word y'all I wrote this post last year and never published it because its embarrassing but it is funny so I just have to share. Don't judge.
Y'all my kids are funny. I know every Mamma thinks her kids hung the moon but my kids are really hilarious. Laugh out loud funny. If you follow me on face book you might have a glimpse of their antics. One of the things about our family is that we value honesty. I always tell my kids the truth when they ask me questions. I mean yes I lie bout Santa and the Easter Bunny. But if they ask me for information I want them to know they can trust me. But sometimes it back fires y'all.   The other day I was riding with my five year old when he sweetly said "Mom, Mom, Mom you know what?" I absent mindedly said "What is it honey" expecting to hear for the 100th time that he likes the missing dog poster that we pass every day. Instead he said "Garfield likes to eat vagina. His owner John does NOT like to eat vagina. But Garfield does." My head jerked around. WHAT? Then my brain caught up with what he was actually trying to say. I said very loudly in an over exaggerated voice. "LASAGNA! Garfield likes to eat LASAGNA! Say it with me son LA- SA- GNA. Lets practice. He just smiled sweetly and said " I can't say that word so I just call it vagina and Garfield likes to eat vagina but John does NOT like to eat vagina" Lord help me this boy is going to kindergarten next year. What are those teachers going to think. This got me thinking about a conversation I had with my older son when he was in second grade. I worked hard to teach my children the proper names for their body parts. No cute little names. So I was dismayed when my son got in the car after school and said "a boy kicked me in the ding dong" I told him that he knew the proper names for his body and I wondered why he was using slang. He said "mom if I say penis at school I am going to get in trouble. They will send me to time out"  I assured him this is not the case and if that happened he could come to me for help. Still he insisted on ding dong. Fast forward three years and my six year old comes home from school with a slip that he has been to time out. "What did you do? I demanded. "I was not wrong" he said. "All I said was vagina. That is not wrong. Girls do have a vagina" Sure enough I looked at the slip and it said "Dante said vagina at school. He said he learned it from his mom. He was told to keep that kind of talk at home. Other parents might not want their kids to know what a vagina is" Oh my Good Lord! If other parents don't want to teach their kids proper names for their body parts how is that my problem! As I pondered these happenings I thought about my parent teacher conference for my other son when he was in second grade. My older boys had been asking me questions about how babies are made. I have always believed that the truth is always the best way to go. Giving my children real, age appropriate answers to their questions so they will know they can ask me anything and they can get correct information always seemed to me the best approach. They asked me how babies were made. With out going into specifics I told them the dad brings the sperm and the mom brings the egg and when they unite the baby is made and grows in the moms tummy. Sitting across from my son's teacher she could hardly contain her laughter as she related something that happened at the Christmas celebration. The children were eating cookies when someone mentioned Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus. Another child puzzled about how Mary could even have a baby if she was not married. Shy quiet Michael piped up. "Actually you have the sperm and the egg and what happens..." The teacher intervened  "Coookies! Who wants Cookies!" Goodness me. Then there is the granddaddy of all school stories. I only tell this story because its to funny to keep to myself. When my older boys were in kindergarten I purchased an adult toy.*Hangs head in shame* Don't judge me y'all.  I shoved it in the back of my top dresser drawer along with a hodge poge of other stuff. A rock someone gave me. A lock of hair from my son's first hair cut. A list of books I want to read and the book Twas the Night Before Christmas. It sat their for a year collecting dust and forgotten. Christmas time rolled around and I said to my oldest son "Go in my dresser and get the book so we can read the night before Christmas". A few days later I was driving the kids home from school. One of the boys said "He took your lip stick to school today" What was he talking about? I don't even have any lip stick. "What are you saying" Then the realization came over me. Oh No. No. No. No. "BOY!" I said, my voice dripping with horror "WHAT DID YOU DO?" He looked confused. "What mom? I just took your lip stick to school. My fiends and I played with it. We like the way it vibrates and shakes. I am sorry I know its not mine." With that he pulled it out of his back pack and handed it to me. "Did any of your teachers see you" I asked. "No way. We hid under the slide. We aren't allowed to bring toys to school." Darn right boy. Oh y'all. I guess I have some good black mail stories for the future but I am sure if these teachers ever compare notes they will wonder what the heck is going on at my house. Lord help me.

Day 2423: Still Kicking Y'all

Oh y'all. I have been gone a long time. Four years and twenty six days to be exact. Y'all missed me. Say you did. Y'all I am not fat anymore. I went and got skinny. I had some help. I was gonna make a blog about that but I got a little lazy and never got around to it. So longish story short I had gastric surgery and lost 106 pounds. Now I can sit in chairs with arms, I can wrap a towel around me after a shower. I am free from disease. I can run and play with my kids. I can ride in an airplane and not sweat about if the seat belt will fit. It has been two years now y'all and so many things have changed for the good. Some times my boys observe. You used to be fat and now you are not. I always ask them am I a better mom now that I am skinny? They tell me no. I am exactly the same. Its true. I am still just as me as I have always been. But if you think I am not still a hot mess. Well, I am. We all are and its ok. So what has kept me away all this long while? Well for one thing this whirl wind life I am living. You know. Four sons and a bonus kid have been keeping me on my toes. But more then that its my promise to you. I promised on day one that I would speak the truth and shame the devil. I made a commitment to honesty. The past few years I have been distracted. If you know me you know by what. I let myself fall in a hole. And keep making the same mistake time after time. I dose not really matter what it is because we all have our thing. An addiction, a habit, an unhealthy relationship, a way of thinking or acting. Something we just think we will never be free of. And some of us just end up in a never ending loop that keeps spinning us around. Look at here. You can get out. There are people that can help. There is a God who cares. And you can finally decide that its enough and you want something else. So that is where I am right now y'all. I am out of the hole. I see the light of day and the beauty that this life brings. I feel happy again. And y'all I am ready. I am ready to do the things that make me strong. I am ready to use the gifts that I have been given. I love to write and I love to talk and I love to share my winding journey. I have a powerful message of hope and healing and I am ready to share it. Stay tuned y'all. I am just getting started.

Day 937 : Just Keep Swimming

Here I am y'all. I know y'all been wondering where I am. I am here. First let me answer the burning questions. Yes I am still fat. Okay I am a little less fat. I have been working really hard to eat healthy food and plan my meals. Sometimes I do such a good job at it I think I should take my show on the road and shout it to the world. Hey world! I can cook healthy good tasting food and I am losing weight every week! Yipee y'all! Then other times like today I drag my tired butt to the fridge and just eat. I eat stuff that is not so good and I don't feel like shouting to the world any more. I have lost about 30 pounds in all and it feels really good that my pants are too big and my face is a little thinner. The difference now is when I mess up I seem to be able to recover faster and I have hope that I won't always be this way, that I am a work in progress, that if I keep at it I can make it a life style and not a passing trend. So y'all I am just going to keep trying. I fall down seven times, I get up eight times. Or something like that that I read on someones face book page. I know the other question that y'all are wanting to know. You do too. You want to know how the Wart is. Well first off I have decided not to call him a wart any more. Forgiveness has taken root in me y'all. Not lip service forgiveness y'all. Real deep down the past is gone and I don't hold it against you any more forgiveness. So I have decided not to name my cat after him and not to call him names and to extend kindness to him when ever possible. And y'all it has set me free from a prison of hate. It is a good feeling. And then something happened. His relationship ended with his girl friend. All of the sudden he is in a vulnerable place. He is saying he is sorry for things that happened in our divorce. He is emotional and lost. When I was all bound up in hate I would have been doing a happy dance and been so happy that karma finally bit him in the back side. But now I don't feel gleeful at all. I feel sad for him. Don't mistake me. We will never be together again. I have not taken leave of my senses. But y'all that feeling of "ha, ha, ha you get what you deserve and you can go to hell with gasoline underwear" is just gone. And I am glad ya'll. It frees me up to do other stuff with my life. Y'all if you have unforgiveness in your heart for someone it is time to let it go. Just drop it and leave it where it lands. You will feel so much better. I promise.

Day 792: Boys Day In

Hi y'all! Look at here. I have not blogged at all in 2012. I missed y'all. A lot of good stuff has been going on y'all. I will tell you all about it later. Right now I want to brag on my youngsters. Y'all some times being a single mom is hard. Sharing my kids with somebody I don't like is even harder. I have to do all the heavy lifting like correcting them when they disobey, taking off work when they are sick, making them do their home work and clean their room. And y'all he gets to have them for the whole summer. That dumb old judge said so. Not only that they are going to Canada. And every time he calls that Wart tells them of some new thing he is going to buy them. A new bike, a trampoline, new DS, ipods, a dvd player the list keeps getting longer and longer. All the while I have to beg him to pay his lousy $200 a month in child support. And he lives in Canada so they are unable to take it from his check. So y'all I have been wanting to take my kids on a super sized vacation before they go. We had plans to go to Lego Land and Sea World and the San Diego zoo and the beach. But I am STILL waiting for the money from my divorce settlement. The money did not come in time  and our plans fell through. Oh well I tell my self. We can go when they get home. Meanwhile  I am sure it will be here in time for us to take a staycation here in the Black Hills and have some fun. Did not happen. So now it is  a  week before they go and all the bills are paid and we have food to eat and gas in the car but until that money comes I don't have two nickels to rub together. And I am feeling a little down in the mouth because I can not compete with Disney Dad. I woke up in a rotten mood. Yesterday I dragged everything out of my room and my closet, determined to organized and sort through all of the junk getting in my way. So my living room is full of blankets, fishing poles, picture frames and all kinds of other junk. I was so cranky trying to keep the boys and babies from making an even bigger mess by messing with all of the stuff that they found interesting and to top all that off I was so busy organizing and sorting I neglected the rest of the house work and the kitchen was a wreck and the cat box smelled. Things were not going well.  We went to church this morning, Pentecost Sunday. What a blessing it was to my tender soul to sit with my boys and sing and worship with them. It was also communion Sunday. The boys and I have been talking about communion and what it means and why we do it and practicing it at home. Last week we took communion with popcorn and grape juice. Y'all I kept tearing up because I am a cry baby and I can't help it. We went home and had lunch and a rest time. My room and closet were totally clean and empty so naturally that is where every one congregated. Everyone on my bed watching a movie and all of the sudden a massive tickle/pillow fight erupted. Babies, big boys, mom all rolling around and laughing and sweating. Y'all it was the most fun I have had in a month of Sundays. We were covert. Hiding under blankets, peaking around corners, screaming and daring each other to cross the "chicken line" (thank you pastor Brent for that). After our fight we had dinner. For some reason as we ate our potato soup and homemade hummus Christopher started singing "I like big butts and I can not lie" I have no idea where he learned this song so I started a game and changed the words. I like big books and I can not lie, I like big boots and I can not lie, I like big buttons and I can not lie. Soon every one was cracking up and  falling out of chairs and just having the best time. After dinner the boys begged and begged for more tickle fights. Y'all vacations are fun and I sure would love to buy my kids everything in creation to put a smile on their faces. But that is not where it is at y'all. Today. That was the good stuff. Sure I have the tough job. And it does not seem fair that he gets to have them during the easy times when there is no school or home work. But y'all I am the lucky one. No vacation in the world or expensive toy  could ever mean more than days like today. I love those boys and it is going to be a hard summer with out them. But y'all I am not down in the mouth anymore. I don't have to compete. I got all the stuff that money can't buy.

Day 632: Chewing The Fat

Well y'all I can not go to sleep yet. I have to wait for a car seat cover to finish washing so I can put it in the dryer. That boy was sick this week end and y'all don't want to know what ugly things went on in that car seat. The wind is howling outside and I could be using this time to clean my house but I just thought I would chew the fat a little bit. I was thinking that most of the people who follow my blog are my mom. But there may be a few of you out there who say hmm... I sure would like to know a bit more about this blogger. So let me clear a few things up and maybe tell a little about myself. First off you may wonder why I blog in this southern vernacular. I don't talk like this in every day life y'all. But it is my mother tongue. I was at Mt. Rushmore y'all. I heard some one saying "well we gonna head on back over at the hotel. What y'all want for lunch. It don't bother me none what we have" Y'all I swung my head around to get a good look because these folks were speaking my language. I am from Texas and although not every one in the great state of Texas uses bad grammar and talks like a hick some do. Add to that my father's people are from the deep south, well lets just say you got your self some back woods talking going on. And I like it. I don't use it in everyday conversation. Mercy no. But it feels comfortable to write like this. It is not just about the grammar or the dialect either. People from the south have special words for certain things and sayings that make me feel at home. My Mamaw always called hair spray hair net. She never said she was happy to see me she was always proud to see me. My uncle often yells out howdeey when he sees a loved one and instructs them to hug his neck. When asked to do something he would rather not my Dad always replied "Let's not and say we did" I love the southern dialect because it is comfort and hospitality and has such variety. It feels like home.
What else do y'all want to know about me? How about one of my pet peeves. If you go to the store and you only have one child and you use a cart with seats for two small children you will be on my last nerve. I need that cart y'all. I have two small children! You are messing up my shopping trip. Stop stealing carts you don't need. You don't either need the extra seat for you PURSE! I need it for a kid. Think people. Think. Oh sorry. I got a little carried away.
What was that? What kinds of stuff do I like? Well if y'all think I am going to say puppys and kittys and rainbow and lotions that smell good you are wrong. I like comfortable clothes. I like the way my baby's hair feels so velvety soft. I like talking on the phone with my sister for a long time. I like seeing my ex husband squirm. I like food. I like thinking I could win the publishers clearing house and thinking of all the fun things I would do with my winnings. I like the taste of grape juice because it reminds me of communion and the smell of vinegar because it reminds me of easter. I like a million other things like the way that Randy Stonehill says well, well and calls people baby in many of his songs and how if you watch Robin Williams movies he often call people cheif. I like lots of sugar in my coffee and I like the lady that gives me my coffee at McDonalds every morning. She is nice.
Well y'all it is time to put that car seat cover in the dryer. Y'all have a good night now.

Day: 632 Shiny Threads

A few months back I had a birthday. My sweet friend came to my office and put silver metallic streamers all over my office. They were everywhere y'all. After a while I got sick of them. By a while I mean after a half of an hour. They got everywhere y'all. I have trouble throwing away things that I might use later so naturally I put them in my car so I could take them home. They sat in a walmart bag in my front seat and eventually got moved to the back seat floor. Well y'all my kids started stepping on them and meddling with them and got a hole in the bag and before you know it those durn things were everywhere. Every time the door opened some flew out or they stuck to our feet and clothes and traveled with us where ever we went. I got fed up with that and scooped them up and threw them away. Then I started to notice something y'all. When I went to drop the kids at day care I looked down and there was a streamer or two stuck on the fence. At school when I dropped the boys off there was one stuck in the automatic door. I found on on the ground at the bank y'all. In the gutter by my neighbors house, at little ceasers pizza. I am not kidding y'all. Everywhere I travel frequently I keep seeing these little silver streamers. Then I thought of something. We leave little streamers where ever we go in life. Only life streamers are not visible. We leave them by the words that we speak and the things that we do. Just a little remnant to say we were here and we left something. We don't even mean to or sometimes know that we have done it. But they stick to us and we deposit them to the people and places we frequent often. I know it is not profound but next time I see a silver streamer I will be reminded that I am leaving my mark on this world weather I want to or not. So let my mark add beauty and let my mark point to the truth. Let my mark, be it ever so humble, be a blessing to someone else. Just a little something to chew on y'all.