Anna's homework

Why has Anna's homework been late more often than not this year?  It might be because I'm not on the ball as her mother, or there might be other reasons.

I have been telling Anna to sit down and do her homework ever since she came home from school an hour ago.  I just went in the kitchen to check how she was doing.  She wasn't there.  I searched for her and found her standing on a stool in the bathroom with her pants half down, craning her neck to look at her bare butt in the mirror while making farting noises with her mouth.

We can park there

We were driving through the parking structure by Trader Joe's looking for a spot.  Luke and Ally kept pointing out empty spots, but they were all handicap spaces or spaces reserved for other reasons.

Ally got mad, yelling, "I keep telling you there's a place, but you keep not taking them!"

I explained, "I know they're empty, but we can't take them.  They're only for people who can't walk well, or if they are going to a different store, or if...or if..." I was concentrating on driving, so I just joked, "...or if they're a stinker."

"OH!" Luke exclaimed, having solved the parking problem, "Anna's a stinker!"

Global warming

It's a good thing Kate found her friend Sophia.  Not a lot of kids have so much in common with Kate.

We were driving to get some ice cream, and the girls were in back talking about environmental issues.  They were making plans about how they could get the school to install hand dryers.  (They'd gotten sick of just shaking their wet hands dry to avoid using paper towels.)  They planned how they were going to contact the principal and how they could raise money.

Then Sophia asked Kate, "What do you do outside of school?  What are you doing to stop global warming?"

After a few minutes of listening to their conversation, I was feeling so guilty using gas, that I nearly got all five kids out to walk the rest of the way to get ice cream.

Gross me out

When I was getting Luke dressed, I told him his toes looked delicious and began to "eat" them.

He got a glint in his eye and showed me the space in-between his toes, "Look it's yucky between my toes.  You ate that."

"Oh, no," I yelled, pretend gagging, "Gross me out!"

"No, Mommy," he corrected me, "Gross you in. You ate that!"

I'm a baker

It was one of those days where, three hours after class, I still hadn't changed out of my yoga clothes.  Luke was "patiently" waiting for me to cut the watermelon we'd bought, so I figured I'd wait a little longer to change.  I threw on an apron.  Luke looked at me, and he asked, "Are you a baker?"

I laughed and began singing, "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, Baker-Mommy, cut me some watermelon as fast as you can."

As I was cutting the watermelon, the bus pulled up and Kate and Anna were home with two friends.  When they all sat down for snack, Kate's friend eyed my apron and asked, "Are you a baker?"

I laughed and said, "That's exactly what Luke asked.  I actually put this on so I could cut the watermelon without staining my shirt."

But, Anna explained to her, "She is a baker, and a sewer, and a photographer, and a teacher, and a yoga-doer...and a mother!"

It made me feel like superwoman!

Pull

My tough guy

My little Luke.  I love him more than life itself, but he's anything but a tough guy.  That point was proven again today.

Luke and Ally wanted to swing.  It was muddy, but I knew it would be a good chance to train Finley on the Invisible Fence.  So the twins were swinging on their bellies, and I was walking the perimeter of the yard with Finley.

I heard Luke yelling for me, so I headed back his direction, but I didn't hurry.  Does that sound terrible?  Maybe.  But you have to understand, I am inundated by yelling, often panicked yelling, countless times every day... when they can't get a Lego pushed down, when there's a lady bug, when someone needs their hands washed (and has evidently forgotten we have a sink), when they can't find some minuscule toy that is suddenly of vital importance, when one of the kids has taken an empty paper towel tube that the other desperately needs... you get the idea.  And less than two minutes before Luke's screaming, Ally had lost her mind when her Baba got a little mud on one of his paws.

So, Finley and I made our way around the corner of the house where I could see the swing set and Luke.  He'd been swinging on his tummy, but evidently tipped forward a bit.  He caught himself by putting his hands on the ground, so he wasn't remotely hurt, but there was mud... and his hands were in it.

He was sprawled over the swing, hands on the ground, feet in the air, and he was just frozen there.  He wouldn't move.  He was just paralyzed there, yelling for help.  I begin jogging over to help him, but the scene was hilarious.  He's lucky my phone was in the house, because I definitely would have stopped to take a picture.

Buster

"Mommy, why him don't have any eyes?" -Ally

Culvert

Oh, my goodness.  What would we do without that culvert?  Hours of entertainment.

Like his 'do?  I did the  style you see there.  His addition, the butterfly clip, fell out.

Baba got worn out from all the playing, but Ally found his weight to be a bit much.
His eye, you ask?  Oh, that's his fourth one.
Finley chewed off the original and the first two replacements.

5K?

When we were driving home from a First Stage play today, Kate asked me if I'd go with her to run a mile to practice for running a mile at school.  I told her that I didn't think she should try to run a mile all at once; I said we should alternate running and walking and work up to running a mile.  She didn't like this idea, so I told her she could try, but that a mile is a long way to run without training.

She ran the mile without stopping, and then she decided she wanted to go for two miles.  I told her she could try, but that seemed excessive.  After she finished the two miles, she proceeded to run a third mile.  I had to make her stop after she'd ran a full 5K.

Somewhere around the second mile mark, I'd wondered if they'd switched the embryos at the clinic and given us a decedent of Forrest Gump or something.

When we got home, I joked to Dave that she was his daughter, since he's the runner in the family.  (This is the guy who ran a mile last year to prove to me he could do it, and he had to pull himself up the stairs using the railing the next three days.)  Neither of us are runners.  I ran for a little while, finishing a 5K and a triathlon, but my knees are definitely not built for running.

Whose kid is this little runner?

Then it occurred to me she ran those three miles because she's my daughter and because someone (I) told she couldn't do it.

My little overachieving perfectionists will have a hard road ahead of her learning to temper those desires to prove she can do anything, but I think she'll go far!

(And I'm not talking about miles.)

Friends, pizza, and s'mores

What better way to spend a Friday night? Our friends Nick and Samantha invited us over last night.  It was so much fun!

I just love this snapshot of all the kids.  Can this really be just two families?  It looks like a class...maybe a party at an all-girl school that Lukey crashed.

And s'mores.  Gooey, sticky fun!

Anna's very first selfies

We had Muffins for Moms in Anna's classroom this morning.  I made her pose for a selfie with me.  (I still kind of hate that word, by the way, but maybe that just means I'm kind of old.)

Afterwards, she asked to borrow my phone and ran over and grabbed her best friends Cheyanne and Joey for a selfie.  Unfortunately her arms weren't long enough; she couldn't get everyone in the picture.

She decided to try them individually.  (Even then her arms weren't quite long enough to get their whole heads.)

Anna's very first selfies:

Look at her concentration.  I love this kid!

Until we meet again

We celebrated my Grandma's life this morning. I was asked to deliver the eulogy. It's hard to sum up a 93 year life when you're given a strict 5 minute limit. So, I just explained who she was to me:

"Nothing I can say will mean anything more to you than her life did, than the role she played in your lives.  Whether you knew her as Grandma, as I did, or as Mom, or as Mary Ann, she held a special place in your heart.  You’ll all have different memories depending on how you knew her. 

Some of my first memories of Grandma was of how she always fed us… and fed us, and fed us.  Ice cream floats, Doritos, all sorts of “usually forbidden” delicacies, and her candy bowl was never empty.  And she never once told us to “take just one.”  

Even recently when she couldn’t get out to get her own groceries, things hadn’t changed.   She’d always offer visitors food and something to drink… and water didn’t really seem to count… she was a tiny bit disappointed you didn’t want a soda.    And, her candy bowl was still never empty.  My own kids started to look forward to going to Great Grandma Gebler’s because she had candy.  And when I’d tell them, “Just take one,” Grandma would wave her hand dismissively.

I didn’t know her when she was a young woman, but as I had my own children, we bonded about motherhood as we compared notes.  We compared how different it was to have four kids in four and a half years, as I did, from having children spaced over almost four times as many years.  We compared my little five and six pound babies to her big babies, and we would laugh at how Grandma herself was rumored to have been born bigger than both my twins combined.   

Grandma’s life at my age was very different from my own, but she always seemed to “get” my life, to understand the highs and lows.  I found a kinship with her that is hard to find, especially with women who are done raising their kids and now have an idealistic view of life as a mom.  I can’t count the number of older women who have stopped me in the grocery store and told me to enjoy every minute of this time, but grandma understood.  She knew all the joy of having little ones, but she never once underestimated the difficulty.  A few years ago, I tried to pack up my 10 day old twins to come see her, and ended up sitting in the back of the van at a gas station less than a quarter of the way there, in tears trying to feed and console two inconsolable babies.  I turned around, went home, and called her.  I was so upset that I couldn’t make it up to see her; I wanted her to meet the babies.  She told me she couldn’t imagine how I would have gotten up there; give myself some time!  She’d often tell me not to do too much, especially when it was things I was doing for her.  I got a gentle scolding every time I’d bring her meals.  More than once she told me, “I wish I was healthier so I could come help you.”

That’s how she was, she never wanted to inconvenience anyone.  She’d lived her life self-sufficient, and it drove her crazy to have to let others help her. 

Grandma had been a great cook.  I have binders full of her recipes, and my cooking skills definitely don’t compare.  (In fact, I truthfully find her “simple sweet bread” recipe anything but simple.)  But, even though she was a much better cook than I am, she’d so kindly rave about my cooking.  It would come back through the grapevine that I’d brought her something just amazing to eat.  It was never amazing.

But, that’s how she was with her family.  She took pride in every one of us.  She’d brag about Ellie and her basketball, my dad and his woodworking, Jeff and his restaurants, Jessica’s beautiful daughters, every one of you… and her face just lit up when I showed her Derek’s drawings in published books and she brought up the mural he did in high school, over 20 years ago.

She suffered so much for so many years.  Her eyes causing her constant pain.  Her vision failing more and more.  But, she found joy wherever she could.  And she had faith.  She knew there were better things ahead.  She wasn’t afraid to move on.  She welcomed it.  

And we all loved her.  We loved her too much to selfishly want to hold on to her anymore.  To see her suffering, the pain she was in, the strain of each breath, the indignity of a once strong women, still strong inside but unable to care for herself.  We loved her, and we wanted her to experience the blessing of her body being released so her soul can live on in comfort and peace.  We’re all here because we love her.  And we will miss her, but I think we’re also happy for her, knowing she has finally found that comfort.

One last thought that makes me smile.  Even though Grandma is no longer with us in body, she’s certainly here in spirit as we celebrate her life today, because she made sure that there would be a meal following the service.  Grandma continues to offer us food.  That’s my Grandma!"

Kate and Anna with Grandma in 2008

Grandma holding Anna in June 2009

Grandma and Kate in June 2009

Grandma with Ally in 2010 

A cake we made (and tipped over) for Grandma's 91st birthday

Triggers

Ally has found one of Luke's triggers.

If he does something she doesn't like, she'll say, "Lucas Dabid!"

He'll say, "No!  I 'Lukey'!"

With a smirk, she'll continue to call him "Lucas Dabid," until he dissolves into a tearful heap on the floor.

But, Luke's not that innocent himself.

At breakfast on Tuesday, Ally was listing her favorite colors, "I don't just like lellow, I like white, and purple, and white..."

"You like two whites?" Luke asked with a sneaky grin.

"Noooo!" Ally yelled.

He looked at her with wide eyes, feigning innocent confusion.

This made her madder.

She yelled and started crying.

"What?" he asked, "You said white, purple, white."

"Stop it!" she screamed, now hysterical.


For the most part, though, they're the best of friends.  They look out for each other and are really loving.  But, I guess even best friends need a little excitement every now and then.

Luke's look

I didn't remember the scene, but Kate assures me the quote come from Frozen.

Ally also remembered it, and she stored it in her brain for future use.

The time arrived when I spiked up Luke's hair after a bath, and asked Ally how he looked.

"He look like a chicken with the face of a monkey," she said definitely.