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The Damp Mop

As I write this blog, it is 12:30 at night and I have 8 awake girls in my basement. They don't seem to be running out of energy, so I finally encouraged them to put on a quiet movie and turn the lights out. I'm hoping that they will finally pass out so that I can go to bed. I am going to need a very long nap tomorrow.

I just wanted to share a humorous Christina story. Her class uses a reading program called Open Court Reading, and as part of the program, she brings home short stories that she reads to me. One of the short stories that she brought home this week was called Panda Band.

Let me give you the gist of the Panda Band short story. It is about a Panda that cleans a jazz club for a living. She is sick of her job and wants to be on stage and play the saxophone. I was pretty surprised that I didn't get a hundred questions about what a jazz club is, but that is not the point of the story.

Each story emphasizes a new sound. The sound for this story was the mp sound as in lamp. The panda in the story is pushing a damp mop. Here is the funny part:

Christina has always had speech issues. Most have cleared up, but she still has problems with the r sound. She also seems to have issues with the mp sound. She just pronounces it as a straight m sound.

Here is the story (as I remember most of it) of Panda Band. Imagine a child that can't pronounce the p in damp:

"I work at a place that plays jazz music. I push a damp mop. I am tried of pushing the damp mop. I want to be on stage and play the sax..." and then the panda ends up playing saxophone and being on stage ..."I don't have to push the damp mop anymore."

As Christina was reading this story I was really trying my hardest not to laugh, but it was so hilarious. She has no clue, either. I am convinced that the story was written by a former janitor or cleaning lady that was sick of their trade. There can't be any way that the writers didn't know what they were doing.

I needed the laugh that day. It was stressful. I enjoyed hearing Christina read it so much that I had her read it to whatever adult I ran into that afternoon. Maybe I'll share this story for her one day. She just thought that I was proud at how well she could read. If she only knew...

Accident Prone

Yesterday wasn't the only time this week that Mark saved one of our children. Last Sunday he was given the same opportunity.

The worst sound that any parent can hear is the sound of their child shrieking in pain. Thanks to Micah, I've heard this sound two too many times. I don't know if it is because he's my first boy or if it is because he just has a special inclination towards injury, but Micah is able to find danger in what seems to be the most harmless of situations.

At church on Sunday Elena received a coupon for a free donut because it was the Sunday before her birthday. She couldn't wait to claim her gift, so we all decided to go upstairs with her to the cafe. After we picked up Micah and Christina, Elena ran up the stairs to the main floor of the church. The other 5 of us went to take the elevator because Isaiah was in the stroller. Mark had to run to the bathroom and separated from us.

Christina pushed the button for the elevator. I was talking to Isaiah, when I heard the highest-pitched, blood-curdling shriek. I look up, and Micah's fingers were stuck between the door of the elevator and the wall. I guess that he decided to push the door open with his hand and his hand went into the pocket for the door.

The elevator for the church is set away from all of the activity, and we're always the last ones to leave, so there was NO ONE around. (Yes, out of almost 2,000 people there wasn't a soul anywhere within ear shot.) My first instinct was to try and pull Micah's fingers out of the door, but they wouldn't budge. In the meantime, he is screaming at the top of his lungs. Christina was yelling and panicking at the same time. If Elena was with us, I would have had her run for help, but she was upstairs.

I tried to push the door in a bit to give me some more room to pull his little fingers out, but I had no luck. I squeezed into the open part of the door and started pushing the buttons, but the door wouldn't respond. I was about to push the alarm button, when the door all of the sudden opened.

Apparently, Mark was in the bathroom mid-stream when he heard the scream. He finished quickly and ran outside, where Micah is screaming, Christina is panicking and Isaiah is watching the scene half-awake from his stroller. As I was trying to open the elevator from the inside, he tried to pull his fingers gently, but they wouldn't come out. Then he decided to yank them out. He pushed his weight against the elevator and pulled as hard as he could. I guess he's a little bit stronger than I am, because Micah's fingers finally pulled free.

Micah was still screaming at the top of his lungs and staring at his fingers now. We hurried into the elevator and went upstairs to reunite with Elena and get ice from the cafe. The whole time Micah was screaming. His fingers swelled up like little balloons.

I reported the incident at guest services and I was starting to worry that his fingers might be broken. I asked him to bend them and he wouldn't. Then, he saw one of his friends from his Sunday School class. He started playing, all the time nursing his hand. We kept trying to get him to keep his hands in the ice, but he want to play more and more. Finally, we saw him give his sister 5 with the elevator hand. He winced a little, and then switched hands, but he didn't scream. That was when I knew he was going to be okay.

You know, this reminds me of his last trip to the ER. I will have to share that one with you a later time. Oh, and it reminds me of the escalator incident. I'll put that on the list, too. Now, I need to go make sure the boys aren't getting into any MORE trouble.

Locked

When Mark and I designed our basement, we thought it would be a good idea to put a lock on the office door. That seemed like a good idea up until Isaiah was locked inside the room.

Before I continue, let me assure you that it is no one's fault that the baby was locked in the room. From listening to my kids, you would think that the door somehow magically locked AND closed itself. I've always believed in miracles. It was definitely not the girls fault. Micah couldn't really defend himself- he just said that Isaiah did it by himself.

Anyway, I was putting the kids to bed. The girls were already in their PJs, but the boys never showed up to put their PJs on. I walked downstairs into the basement and saw Micah playing with his blocks. Isaiah was happily sharpening pencils, crayons, tips of glue bottles, paperclips - what ever he could fit into the pencil sharpener. I walked towards him to stop his sharpening-fest when I tried to open the door. The handle didn't budge.

At first I was glad that he was sharpening random items. He had no idea that he was locked in the room. I went to the place where the keys were SUPPOSED to be. No luck. I looked where I keep the tools to open the doors that lock but don't have a key. No luck. This is when I started to get nervous. I looked back in the room. Isaiah was still sharpening, but he was running out of ammunition. Mark wasn't home yet. He had been installing a tankless water heater. He left at 7:30 AM and was still gone at 8:30 PM. I called him to tell him about the situation. He told me that he would be home right away.

I looked in a few more places. No keys. I ran downstairs. Now Isaiah's face was pressed against the glass panes on the door and he was tapping on the glass with his little fingers. He tried to open the door a couple of times, but the handle wouldn't budge. I grabbed Micah from his block building and placed him in front of the door. I didn't want Isaiah to be lonely.

Next, I opened the door to the furnace. The furnace is basically in the office closet. There was a little room around the side of the furnace, but not nearly enough room for me to fit in. There was insulation around the furnace and sharp corners. I didn't want to send the older kids that way. I glanced over at the door. Isaiah was drooling on the window and starting to whimper. Micah had wandered off somewhere. I grabbed him again and firmly told him to stay at the door and keep his brother company.

I decided to go out in the cold and try the window. It looked locked, but sometimes it won't lock all the way when the window is slightly open. As I worked on trying to remove the screen from the wrong side, Isaiah came over to the window and started to climb on top of the printer. As I was trying to get the window open, he climbed on top of the printer and leans towards the window so far that only one of his little feet remained on the printer. I was starting to worry that he was going to hurt himself and I wouldn't be able to get to him. I kept telling him to get down - he just kept whimpering and staring at me with his big, brown eyes as he was perched on one single foot.

At this point I decided to call Mark. I couldn't use the cordless phone because it was locked in the room with Isaiah, so I had to go upstairs. I grabbed Micah, who had wandered off again and put him back in front of the door. At this point, Isaiah had noticed that my laptop and a mouse were sitting on my desk. He started to climb on top of the desk. I grew even more worried.

As I dialed Mark's number, he came running in the door with a flash light. He descended into the basement and I pointed out that the only option I saw was to somehow make it through the closet. I was sure that he was going to use Christina, so I had already called her out of bed when I saw Isaiah starting to fall off the desk.

As a mom there is nothing worse that seeing your child about to fall of something when you are absolutely powerless to help. He was trying to hold onto the desk with his chunky little fingers, but there isn't a lot of traction, so he was starting to slide off the desk with his legs dangling. Right behind him was a small wooden chair at just the right angle to do damage to him. Mark saw the same scene. That was when he decided that he was going to make it no matter what.

Mark removed the insulation and started to squeeze his body between the unfinished wall and the vent shaft towards the room. He wasn't quite thin enough to fit, but he pushed himself hard and started making a moaning/grunting sound as he forced his body through the opening. Once he got past the vent shaft, I looked at Isaiah, and he was still trying to not fall off the table, but he was sliding a little bit at a time. Then, I heard an awful scraping sound and the door to the closet opened. Mark materialized and grabbed little Isaiah - who was very excited to see him. He wasn't without his battle wounds. There was a long scrape across his belly from a metal piece sticking out the side of the water heater and a red mark across his back from the light switch being shoved into his back as he squeezed by the water heater. Victory!

My personal project for tomorrow is to find the keys or get new ones made. Somehow it is supposed to be really easy to get a new key made (which kind of defeats the purpose of having keys in the first place). I am very grateful about this feature on my door hardware. I also get to reclean the office, which Isaiah made a mess of as he was climbing different surfaces. I guess it's just another day in the life of my family. Baby saved from certain doom: Check. Another injury (this time it was Mark's turn): Check. Mom needs the kids to go to bed so she can emotionally recover: Check.

My next blog is about Micah getting his fingers caught in an elevator door on Sunday. You just can't make this stuff up...

Tooth Fairy Take Two

I have previously confessed to being the worst tooth fairy ever here. Well, I was ashamed to blog when my worst tooth fairy experience repeated itself. However, we are always trying to improve ourselves. Last night we had a much more positive tooth fairy experience.

Once the kids went down last night, Mark and I collapsed on the couch and started to watch the Biggest Loser. That's when we heard the dreaded sound - little footsteps coming down the stairs. Usually, that sound means that we are about to be tortured by Micah for an hour as we try to get him back to bed. We were pleasantly surprised when it was Elena that came around the corner, but she did not look very happy.

When anything happens that might rock Elena's world and it is after 7:00, we're in for an emotional cry-fest. Her big brown eyes were brimming with tears - I was almost afraid to ask what the problem was. "I have to tell you something..." she began.

Elena then proceeded to delve into a long, overly detailed story about losing her tooth. I'll just share the shortened version: Elena had some candy at church. It started off as a chewy candy, but then it started to crunch in the middle, and she thought is was strange, so she threw it away. Well, it turns out that the crunchy part of the candy was actually her lose tooth that fell out. She threw the tooth away with the candy. As she was laying in bed, she realized what had happened.

At this point in the story, with the way that she was telling the story, I was starting to worry that she really wanted us to go to church in the freezing cold and go from door to door, looking inside hoping that a janitor would let us in. I could already picture us with our winter jackets on, leaning on our cupped hands, looking inside for anyone to help. Instead of letting her come up with a solution, Mark interjected, "Why don't you just write a note telling the tooth fairy what happened?"

If you recall our last tooth fairy blog, Elena has plenty of experience writing to the tooth fairy. She liked this idea and perked up as she went to find a piece of paper. Once she went to bed, Mark got thinking, "Why don't we take one of the old teeth that we have upstairs and stick it under her pillow with the money and see what happens?" And that is exactly what we did. (You might wonder why we still have teeth laying around the house - when you do the tooth fairy thing at midnight you just throw the tooth on a high shelf and deal with it later.)

Mark went to go grab the note and place the substitute tooth and a gold dollar coin. He brings back a cute note that read:

Dear Tooth Fairy, I thought my tooth was a rock because I had candy and felt it. On axadent I threw it away. (I never claimed that she would win the national spelling bee. LOL)

This note was way better than the last note. The last time that I failed my tooth fairy duties was when Christina lost her first tooth (or at least the first tooth that she actually could find after it fell out.) I swear that note used the word "please" about 10 times....

The next morning Elena runs in the room. First, she said, "The tooth fairy came the first time!" (*ouch*) Then she said, "She found my old tooth. I guess she dug it out of the trash? Can I put it back under my pillow and get another dollar?"

Thus continues our tooth fairy adventures...

Who wants to be a millionaire?

I decided to blog today just because I am feeling a little burnt out. Micah called 911 for the 6th time this morning and Isaiah just walked by with a huge Tootsie Roll pop that he found somewhere in the house, leaving a dripping red trail of stickiness behind him. I feel like my sanity is about to reach the tipping point, so it's time for a little stress relief.

My last blog was about our last trip to McDonalds. As I was writing it, I remembered the other half of that adventurous fast food trip. Elena discovered the McDonalds Monopoly game. She is convinced that we are going to win a million dollars.

It all began when she saw the Monopoly tabs on the side of the french fry box. She pulled the tabs and started reading them. She asked what they were for. I told her that they were for a game and showed her the boards.

All of the sudden, she is peeling every game tab off of every box that we have, and then she began searching the floor for more. She was so excited, "Mom! We have Park Place. All we need is Boardwalk and we'll have a million dollars!" If only it was that easy...

Now everyone we meet and everywhere we go, Elena is sharing that we are going to win a million dollars. I don't have the heart to tell her that McDonalds has most likely only produced 1 Boardwalk tab and it is probably on a french fry box in the windiest part of the country, where the experts know that it will blow away before it will ever make it back to their corporate office. Actually, telling her would probably make my life easier.

As soon as we returned home from McDonalds, she had to call Mark and tell him the wonderful news. Then she pleaded for him to go to McDonalds for lunch so that he might find the "golden Broadway ticket." Mark must have been skeptical, because then she went into detail about the game works and how she is sure that the Broadway ticket is only a Big Mac away from fruition.

I remember when I believed that I was going to magically become a millionaire without lifting anything but a sticker on the side of my food box. Now I realize how the world works, but I can't break it to her. She hasn't believed in Santa since she was 6. I have to give her something! Plus, I have guilt from being the worst tooth fairy ever, but that is an older blog.

I'm not sure I'm done with this blog, but I have to save Isaiah from certain destruction. He's standing on my dining room table next to my crystal cake pan...

Survivor Part 2

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my scavenger child: Isaiah. He loves to find food and eat it - no matter how old it is. Well, he has reached an all new level.

My MOPS group had a play date at McDonalds last week. All 4 children were with me because it was fall break. (By the way, does anyone else remember fall break? I keep sending my kids to school and the school keeps inventing reasons to send them back. Sorry, I digress...) Isaiah slept while the older 3 kids were eating. When he woke up they swept him into the play structure.

I try my best to not think about what might be happening in the play structure. They are designed to let really small children in only to a point. At that point there is some type of barricade that prevents them from going further. As long as Isaiah looks desperate enough, some other child will always hoist him over the barricade and he will find his way into the part of the structure that dangles 12 feet in the air. I keep telling myself that the equipment is safe as I see him waving from a place that there is no possible way I can get to. I at least had my older 2 girls with me. Whenever one of their brothers is in distress, they are always willing to drag them kicking and screaming and throw them down the first available slide.

Well, apparently, the girls threw Isaiah down a slide and failed to tell me. I was chit chatting with some other MOPS moms when I looked over and saw Isaiah holding 2 half eaten ice cream cones, licking from them both one at a time. I was horrified. When he exited the slide, I guess he looked up and saw all of the left over food that other kids didn't finish just sitting on the tables. He felt free to help himself to whatever he could find.

One of my MOPS friends saw Isaiah and told me that the ice cream cones belonged to her kids, but he could have them. I wish I could express how embarrassing it is to have THAT child. I have the child that steals food. When I took the empty cones from him, he started casing the food tables, looking for his next tasty snack. That's when we went to visit the food counter. Now I know why he always seems to have a runny nose.

The moral of this story is: If you see Isaiah at McDonalds, and your kids want to save their food for later, then you must hide your food in a location that Isaiah cannot see. Then, it may be safe. Some children aspire to be astronauts, some aspire to be firemen. My child aspires to be a homeless person.