Sick or not sick? That is the question

I spent most of last night at the toilet, shivering uncontrollably, and doing unmentionable things, but otherwise feeling fine. By that I mean that I didn't have a fever. Still, I was mighty uncomfortable.

When I felt things were finally over I crawled back into bed and texted Andrew to tell him that I'd been up half the night being sick. I realize he was right there beside me, but the man is an absolute zombie when he wakes up. You can't tell him anything (or things like this happen) because chances are high that he's still half-asleep and dreaming until he's been awake for a good ten minutes.

The only time—the only time—I've ever seen him jump into action after being torn from his sleep is that one time I was 33 weeks pregnant and screamed from the bathroom, "Help! I'm bleeding!"

That is the one time.

And even then he didn't quite ask me what was going on until we were halfway to the hospital.

I've just learned to not wake him up for much. I mean, occasionally I do, like if multiple children are throwing up in the middle of the night. And I'd probably wake him up if the house was on fire or something. But even that one time I woke him to tell tell him I was hearing screaming he just patted me sloppily on the head, assured me it was the wind, rolled over, and went back to sleep...when what it really was was our neighbour being chased around by her knife-wielding mentally-unstable brother-in-law.

Super oops (but don't worry; someone else helped her).

So last night I just texted him to explain how sick I'd been. He read them after his alarm (and a couple of snoozes) went off and since I was awake (because I'm usually more disturbed by his alarm than he is) he asked me how I was feeling and suggested that I stay home and rest while he braved church with the three kids alone.

That was an excellent plan, truthfully, because I don't think there was any way I could have peeled myself out of bed.

And then he asked an interesting question: "Is this a side effect of your shot?"

I hadn't even thought about it so I just said, "I dunno. Maybe."

Both nausea and diarrhea are listed as possible side effects, but I suppose any number of things could have caused to my little problem as well. I mean, I got the shot on Friday morning and didn't have any nausea until Saturday night...so...

"Are you going to get up or are you going to stay home today?" he asked. "Why don't you just stay home today?"

"Yeah," I said, and pulling an Andrew I rolled over and went back to sleep and didn't get up until church was nearly over.

All I know is I was so miserable last night and so tired this morning and I'm so grateful Andrew took the kids to church by himself today.

*****UPDATE*****

I'm still so grateful Andrew took the kids to church by himself today even though Rachel's skirt was on inside out the entire day and Miriam wore a dress that is approximately three sizes too big for her—things I didn't find out until everyone came home from church.

Ice cube capades and rereading books

"I not has ice!" Benjamin pouted in the middle of dinner last night. He threw such a fit about it that we knew he had to have ice or we'd just have our hands full. We read a story recently called The Baby on the Way by Karen English, and with a title like that you'd think it would have something to do with preparing an soon-to-be older sibling about their new role but it wasn't about that at all. Rather it's about a grandson who asks his grandmother if she was ever a little girl, then if she was ever a baby. She answers and tells him that she was even "the baby on the way."

So the story is the grandmother retelling the story of when her family was preparing for her to be born, which I suppose is kind of like a story preparing children for a new baby in the house, but it wasn't exactly what I was expecting from the title.

Anyway, about in the middle of the book she said that whenever she would cry her mama would tell all the siblings (there were nine of them) to "Give her what she wants," because "she was tired by the tenth child.

Shoot! I'm tired by the fourth (which I've mentioned isn't a 'large' family in my religious culture (though ten is certainly starting to sound large) but is apparently considered a large family elsewhere...like here...and it does pull my attention in a crazy number of directions at once) so our Plan A was to give in—as soon as—to his simple request so that we could continue dinner in peace.

The main problem was that no one wanted to get up to get ice for him.

He can use the refrigerator to get ice or water depending on what setting was last used, but he has no idea how to change settings (and I'm not sure he can reach those buttons even with the stool he has to stand on to reach in the first place). Lately he's been enjoying getting water so much that every morning—almost the very first thing—he gets out five cups and fills them one by one, declaring, This a Daddy cup, this a Mommy cup, this a Shasha cup, this a Mimi cup, this a my cup!"

(And in case you're wondering his current pronunciation of his own name is "Benja-him").

Anyway, he wasn't about to get his own ice. We didn't want to disturb the girls from their plates because they were already eating so slowly. I certainly wasn't planning on standing up (I've got that fourth baby in my tummy, remember?). That left Andrew, who had plenty of ice in his own glass, which probably inspired Benjamin's little tantrum in the first place.

Andrew reached his hand into his glass to fish out an ice cube for Benjamin (he's done this trick before), but Benjamin flipped out more.

"Don't touch the ice, Dad!" he shrieked. "Don't touch it! Dad! DON'T!"

"Why not?" Andrew asked, pausing his ice-fishing expedition.

Family Walk Fail

This morning Andrew took Miriam to cheer and then they went grocery shopping. I stayed home with Rachel and Benjamin and we worked to clean up the house a bit.

This afternoon Rachel went to a birthday party at a neighbourhood friend's house, Miriam went to play with the girls across the street, and Benjamin and I took a nap while Daddy prepped dinner. It's a beautiful day and he wants to barbecue (and I say all the more power to him). By the time I woke up, Benjamin had already been awake for a while and Andrew was ready for a nap, so he fell asleep on the couch and Benjamin and I played around and then started getting ready to go on a walk to pick up Rachel from her friend's house.

Benjamin and I woke Andrew up, but Andrew made no sign of ever getting off the couch, so I assumed he wasn't coming with us. I put Benjamin's shoes on, put his sweater on, said goodbye, grabbed the keys, got the stroller out of the trunk, put the keys back inside, and left. After all, I figured it was probably a good idea to pick Rachel up on time since she'd been there for four hours.

Andrew swears he had gotten up to go to the bathroom and get ready so he could come with us (I don't recall seeing any evidence of this). He made Miriam come home so she could come on a family walk with us but by the time she was ready to go we were long gone and Andrew freaked out a bit.

"I don't know if I've been watching too much Broadchurch or what but I suddenly started thinking, 'What if she was abducted right under my nose? I don't even have a solid alibi. They're going to think I did it!'" he told me.

An afternoon at the museum

This afternoon we went to the Museum of Life and Science for a couple of hours because Benjamin has been dying to go. Every time we get in the car he says, "How 'bout us go moo-see-um!"

I had to take the kids to a parent meeting for the upcoming silent auction for Rachel's school on Wednesday night. When we got out of the meeting it was almost 8:00 PM and it was super dark outside.

"How 'bout us not go home," Benjamin suggested. "How 'bout us go moo-see-um?"

"It's dark," I said. "The museum is closed."

"Tomowwy—sun comes up," he said. "Us go moo-see-um tomowwy."

"We'll see," I said. "I think Daddy needs to take the car tomorrow though."

"Us go moo-see-um! Just take Daddy's sukey!"

"Oh," I said. "There's no way we'll all fit on the scooter!"

Baby babblings

We may not have Benjamin sleeping through the night yet but we do have him trained to come quietly into our room and lie down on the floor. He used to wake me up and then cry about not being allowed in the bed. But I just can't be kicked from the outside while I'm being kicked from the inside. I just can't. So on the floor he goes.

In theory he's supposed to sleep on that blue mat and the maternity pillow (which my friend Melissa gave to me because she doesn't need it anymore, but which I tried and didn't like as much as just my regular ol' body pillow) is supposed to keep him from rolling off said mat (he calls it his "nest" or his "puppy bed" depending on his mood). Obviously it doesn't work out like that in real life and he ends up either banging his head on a piece of furniture or sleeping on the hardwood floor, so I usually have to get up in the middle of the night to make adjustments to Benjamin's bed (such as lifting his poor wee head off the hardwood floor and wedging a pillow under it as I did early this morning).

Why my house is a mess even though I clean all day

Whining Warning; This post contains a lot of whining

Benjamin woke up bright and early yesterday morning completely obsessed with the idea of playing basketball. It was all he could talk about and he talked about it a lot.

"I get ready! Go backy-ball team! Me...I need mine backy-ball! Sun come up—backy-ball day," he nattered on and on about basketball.

Unfortunately for him, yesterday was actually take Miriam to preschool day. I explained this and he said, "Aster Mimi go pee-school, me...I go backy ball team!"

"I'm not sure that's going to happen, little buddy," I said. And it didn't.

We dropped Miriam off at preschool (co-op with Lincoln) and then I had the gall to drive home. Benjamin was livid. He screamed the whole way, only calming down at intersections long enough to beg me to turn the wrong way.

"Go 'is way, Mommy! Go 'is way!" he'd plead.

I'd turn the opposite (and correct) direction.

"No! Not 'is way! Mom! Mine backy-ball team not 'is way! Mom! Go uzzy way! Stop! Mom! Nooooooo!" he'd scream until the next intersection.

He is like his father (and like his father's mother) and knows his way around town pretty well. I, on the other hand, still rely heavily on the GPS because I was born without a sense of direction, so it always amazes me when he'll tell me step-by-step how to get to church (which is a twenty minute drive withI believe, six turns). Anyway, the point of all that is to tell you that he knew exactly where we were going and it wasn't where he wanted to go. In my defense, I wasn't quite sure where to take him. You can't just show up at Cameron Stadium and say, "My son would like to play and/or watch basketball now, thank you."

So when we got home I showed him the little basketball hoop we have in the backyard but it was too cold outside to be interesting, I guess, because he went down the slide once and then asked to go inside.

Once inside I settled him down in the living room with his cars while I cleaned the bathroom.

Baby Booties

I went to a baby shower for my friend Mickie this past Saturday. After three boys she's finally getting a girl!

I worked up a pair of baby booties for her and though they didn't turn out as well as I was hoping they turned out alright:

Even though I've been crocheting for over ten years now, it's a mostly self-taught and very part-time hobby so, crochet-speak still stymies me every now and then. I've figured a lot of things out over the year, for example, YO means "yarn over." It doesn't mean that the pattern-writer is interjecting their pattern with "Yo!"

So it's "insert hook into stitch, pull up a loop, yarn over, insert hook into next stitch..." and not, "insert hook into stitch, pull up a loop, yo!"

Sleep, baby, sleep

This is what Benjamin's room looks like every night after he falls asleep:

If I could get him to magically fall asleep, I would. But I can't. So he gets reading time like his sisters. He comes out to show me every book he chooses.

"'Ook at 'is one, Mom!" he'll say.

"That's great," I'll say. "Get in your bed and read it to yourself."

As much as I love story time it has to end at some point and the kids have to be sent to bed. I can only talk for so long before I just can't talk anymore. Or be touched anymore. And the kids just have to go to bed. They just have to.

It's not like I'm stingy with stories either. Tonight we read three picture books and finished Stuart Little (and we had so many chapters left that my voice was cracking by the end). And then the girls demanded to know if there was a sequel because, honestly, that ending in no way ties anything off at all. So I had to tell them, in the words of E.B. White,

"There is no sequel... A lot of children seem to want one but there isn’t any. I think many readers find the end inconclusive but I have always found life inconclusive, and I guess it shows up in my work."

The girls shuffled off to bed, hardly satisfied with that response. Benjamin went to watch the Super Bowl half-time show with Daddy (he really liked the dancing sharks) and then was sent to bed again but instead started playing the piano. He was quickly caught being out of bed because...piano....and was sent to bed again where he decided to "quietly read books by himself," which mean that he continued to get out of bed every two minutes to show me what book he's going to read next.

Unlikely synonyms

Benjamin's still mastering the art of speaking (who isn't?) and only recently has begun using the pronoun "I" to refer to himself. This morning he was full of "I go church, too!" and "I found my pants!" and "I see something!"

It made him suddenly sound grown up since yesterday was full of "Me go, too!" and "Me see something!"

He's getting quite easy to understand and I'm thrilled because there was a time when I wondered if he'd ever attempt speaking at all—let alone master it. Still, he has his own little code that you have to learn if you want to understand him well enough. I'm still learning this code.

A while ago the kids were obsessed with playing fairies. They each found a long, thin object they decided was a wand of sorts—a pencil, a stick, and an actual pink sparkly wand. I'll let you guess who had which wand.

Just kidding. I have to tell you that Benjamin had the pink sparkly wand. And he would not let the game die out.

The girls gave up the game after a few hours but Benjamin carried it on for days. He clung to that pink sparkly wand like it was his lifeline. And he'd run around the house tapping people with it and saying, "Poof! Me a shark! Daddy a shark! Mommy a shark!"

"Did you turn me into a shark?" Andrew asked.

Benjamin looked up at him, furrowed his eyebrows, and ran away. He came back a few minutes to try to explain himself.

Cheering at Duke

Miriam's squad got to cheer during half-time at a basketball game in the Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke. Everyone seems to be super impressed when they hear this until we clarify that it was a women's basketball game, as if that should make any difference. The women's basketball team is actually ranked higher than the men's basketball team but it's certainly not as celebrated. The stadium wasn't nearly as full as it's been when we've attended men's games—there were no Cameron Crazies or anything like that—but I think that was better for us.