Sometimes I don't even know what to say.

About this time the last few years, Scrunch announces what she's going to ask Santa for Christmas. And while it may seem a little early, she hasn't wavered no matter how I try to influence her. Two years ago it was a pink kitty, and last year it was a pink puppy.

Last week the announcement came while I was doing her hair. And boy was she excited about it! "Mom, I know just what I'm going to ask Santa for Christmas!"

"Pixie dust. And then I will fly."

She has convinced Porkchop that they will get to fly on Christmas.

I am toast.

Also, she loves Alexander.

Alexander invited her to his birthday party at the zoo. I let husband escort her knowing he would enjoy the up close and personal animal encounter more than the kids. He reported back that Scrunch did not leave Alexander's side the entire party. In fact, she considered herself his honored guest and didn't seem to get that all the other kids that were there had been invited too.

Today after watching them play for a long time after school, I brought him up.

"I noticed you seem to like playing with Alexander a lot."

"Yes. I'm going to marry him."

"Oh. Well. You don't have to marry him. You can be really good friends. You might meet someone else you'd like to marry so maybe you should wait to decide."

"I can't Mom. I have to marry him. I want to play with him forever."

The least photographed, least frequently painted room in my house.

There is only one color of paint on each of these walls. For me, that's like a record. Everything except the leather couch was thrifted, Craigslisted, or free. So while the walls may have very little paint on them, all of the furniture got a coat or two.

I wanted really big art for over the couch, but really big art (that I like) is expensive. So I bought a $20 dollar projector on Craigslist and printed a transparency. Bam! Big chalk art that I can change out with the seasons. The ottomans used to be the green reupholstered ones, but they started to get grimy so I recovered them. The lighting is wonky- making it hard to see, but the lamps were painted with chrome spray paint and the shades are out of vintage knitting patterns. The old green door and most of the art came from that estate sale with the old drunk guy. The needlepoint above the armoire was someone's Grandma Edith. I bought it at a garage sale over the weekend for $2.00. I almost cried. I do stuff like that (knit, needlepoint, etc.) and it makes me throw up in my mouth at the thought that it will someday be sold by my ungrateful posterity for mere pennies. The trunk was my $4.99 trunk that I spray painted with chrome spray paint and used some gold rub and buff and Annie Sloan's dark wax to distress it. I put the legs on from an old kitchen table I had. The brass elephants were from a garage sale a few weeks ago and I made the 'Believe...' art with my Cricut and brass/white vinyl. I made a matching one for my Grandma's birthday a few weeks ago.

I need to finish the silhouettes for over the piano. Maybe I'll finish them and Peck can have a photoshoot. Can you see our cockatiel through the blurry pic? And how about our bunnies? Yes, plural. 'Gnomeo' and 'Serendipity' joined us on Friday. They deserve their own photoshoot, too. Eventually, I'd like a much larger light fixture, but this one was...you guessed it...free. It used to be in my Mom's kitchen. Homer and Marge are my ferns. I named them just as I was typing, but I think it'll stick should they make it through the summer. They came from Lowe's.

Remember my old, green, free piano? It's white now. I bought jute webbing on Ebay to cover the seat.

Manual Labor

Every night this week at about eleven o'clock I'd think, "Holy Crap! How'd it get so late?!?" and then I'd be a little bummed that I only got about half as much done as I'd hoped to. Every evening as soon as Papa came home from work we'd tag team digging holes, moving dirt, moving bark, moving more dirt, changing diapers, making dinner, moving more bark, digging more holes, and so on... Finally after a week of manual labor we got up early this morning and finished hauling the last of the dirt piles in the driveway. We had to be finished by nine so we wouldn't miss out on moving more bark. Our little project was really good practice for our Mormons Helping Hands assignment. We moved and renewed the playground park at three different parks. We are sunburn and sore and I have been (temporarily) cured of wanting to go the nursery and scope out plants for a while.



Front garden beds. We still need to repaint shutters, install new door, outdoor lighting...it doesn't end. But it's not anywhere near eleven o'clock and I'm finishing my ice cream and going to bed.

In Porkchop's version of heaven we all ride around on tractors.

Grumpy Garden Baby

All my tired helpers.

A very long post that ends with my favorite family video of all time.

Rewind four or five days.

We were watching an episode of Call the Midwife (my latest Netflix BBC series). I sat and knit while Husband chipped away at the laundry mountain. It was so nice. So, so nice. And then the episode got weird. A young girl has a mental breakdown after being forced to place her baby for adoption, so she kidnaps another young couple's infant. The young mother is almost on the brink of another breakdown as the year before she had given birth to a still born baby. The show is really not as sinister or weird as my description makes it seem, but obviously this wasn't my favorite episode- for many reasons. I could tell because my knitting kept getting tighter and tighter and I dropped several stitches. When we went to bed I made Husband check the front living room windows to be sure they were locked. And the garage door. And then once in bed, get out and check on the kids one more time.

"What do you want me to check?"

"I don't know. Just go check..."

And he sleepily stumbled away mumbling something about shark infested waters, lemonade, and Dr. Laura. God love him.

When he came back he asked me what was wrong.

"I don't know. I just...I just...I just want everything to be okay."

"Everything is okay" he reassured me.

I went to sleep thinking about all the things that are okay right now. Better than okay even. My kids are all at really great stages. Jobs are good, pay well and offer the flexibility we like. The house is becoming more and more "us" with every project that is completed. We love attending the Spanish ward and watching our family's language skills increase. And to be truthful, I haven't wanted to blog about just how good things have been the last couple of weeks. This is the "easiest" we've had it in a long, long time. Could this be our new normal? I don't even want to jinx it.

Wednesday evening I needed to take my bunny to the vet. No biggie, just getting checked out in case I decide to spay her before bringing home our new bunny buddy in a couple of weeks. Husband met me in the parking lot and took the kids to Taco Bell and the park. I met them there. As I walked up the sidewalk I could see Papa swinging as high as he could and Scrunch and Porkchop begging him to jump out (again). Juju saw me coming and got excited and started clapping. The weather was perfect, they were so happy and I thought, "This is awesome. Everything is better than ok."

Papa needed to go back to work for a few hours, so I took the kids and we went and washed the car. Twice because they think it's fun. And we stopped by Lowe's to pick up our last chair. We came home, did jammies and stories, and put everyone to bed. Scrunch and Juju have had a bit of a runny nose and I knew Porkchop was well on his way. I felt like I should cover him with his inhaler just to be safe. I don't know why I thought that, but I did it anyway.

My Porkchop is big for his age. Like really big. And according to the speech therapist his 'mean length of utterance' (# of words in a sentence) is great, but his intelligibility...not so much. This means he has full on conversations that no one can understand but me. He's this great big, wonky-nosed, goofy kid that you can't help but smile when he talks to you. He's all boy. And by that I mean he wants to go, go, go and break things and loves anything cars, trucks, and especially fire engines. Obviously he's carved a special spot in his mama's heart. He's so tough. But when he gets a simple cold or runny nose it leads to an asthma attack, making him seem so fragile.

After I put Juju to sleep I went and cuddled in my bed with Scrunch and we both ended up falling asleep. A few hours later I woke up and checked my phone. It was just before midnight and Husband should be home soon. All of a sudden I felt that new mom panic feeling of "where's the baby?" but instead it was "Where's Erick?" I jumped out of bed and ran into his room. He was sitting on the side of his bed with tears running down his face, wheezing, and unable to talk. His inhaler lay on the shelf where I'd left it. I gave it to him and waited for it to work. Part of being a mommy is that you become accustomed to doing three or seven things at once without thinking about it. In that moment, I completely maxed out the skill as I simultaneously checked the time on my cell, started timing and counting his respirations, scooped him up in a blanket, and took him into the laundry room to search for my pulse oximeter.

As I found it and watched as his oxygen saturation dip lower, I started debating with myself. Should I have John meet me at the ER? How will I get them all loaded into the car and watch him at the same time? I finally decided that if it didn't resolve in a couple minutes, I would call 911. We are 25 minutes away from the nearest hospital and three from a full time fire station. I knew they would have an oxygen mask. I got John on the phone and told him he needed to get home and I took Porkchop to sit on my lap on the front porch and wait. It seemed like a really long time as I sat there in the dark praying. Please, please let him breathe. Let his work. Let him breathe. "He needs a blessing", I thought. Where the hell was my husband? So I kept praying and calling on blessings for him myself. He began to relax and while still wheezy, I knew it was passing. Without greeting, John pulled into the driveway and ran up the sidewalk. "He needs a blessing right now." So on the front porch Porkchop got a blessing.

It was hard to go to sleep that night. I sent Husband in to sleep with him just in case. The next morning Porkchop wandered into my room, like he does every morning. "Wake up, Mom. Wake up. Weed to me. Peese weed to me." So I did.

He is going to be okay. I know he is going to be okay. Everything is okay.

Things I need to blog about but probably wont get around to it...

Removing the sliver from Scrunch's thumb that she got 4 months ago while visiting my in-laws.

Jedi and that damn possum. His late night bath with clorahexidine, and bandaging him up with my car stock. 5 dead possum babies in the backyard. Eww, ew, ew. "You can't just throw them in the trash! How will they be resurrected?" "They're not people. We're not having a funeral." "Not just people get resurrected. Ani will be resurrected too!" Ay ya yay.

The fact that the people who work at the nursery are starting to recognize me. And then fitting a tree (or two) through the sunroof.

A late night trip to the Lowe's an hour away because they had my chairs in stock and then the dude not believing I could fit all five chairs, plus my kids in carseats in my car. Behold the power of the
minivan!

My garden and its 80 sugar snap pea plants. I love em. I hope I have some friends who like them too because there's going to be nothing but snap peas for about a week.

Traumatizing my poor parrot and why I will never step foot in a pet store, but especially a bird store again.

My $4.99 Goodwill antique luggage trunk turned console table.

My love affair with Walgreens fleece lined leggings.

Porkchop being mesmorized! Mesmorized! by the cement truck in his very own driveway. Couldn't get him off the front porch or out of the window all day.

This will leave me time to blog about the most exciting event of the week...

Scrunch lost a tooth.

(You can imagine the drama.)

A little over a week ago she burst into tears because it was loose and she thought she had done something wrong. I'm all for dental hygiene, but really? Did they have to tell them that the sugar bugs eat your teeth? She thought her Easter candy did it. Sunday night she happily skipped into the garage and announced to Papa, "I have really good news. My tooth came out." On her own she decided to twist it and see what would happen. It came right out. And of course in the spirit of procrastination I had waited 'til the very last possible minute to sew up her tooth fairy pillow. The tooth fairy made an appearance after several discussions over just how she would get in and just exactly what did she want with kids teeth anyway.

I am scrubbing my house of the plague scum. This for some reason also involves painting chairs and updating my porch pots for spring. But Juju wanted to stop in and say "hi!"

On Having A Brother

It's like a rollercoaster. With ups and downs every... oh...thirty seconds.

Up.

Down.

"I wish our house was fatter so I could get farther away from Porkchop."           -Scrunch

And back up.

Never in my life have I been so sick.

I will tell you the same thing I told Holly.

Women talk too much of labor and tout it as "the worst pain". I think they're wrong. A sinus infection can feel like birthing through your brain. But it doesn't end after a few hours, and there's nothing to show for it- unless you have a Neti pot in which case we'll just stop right there. I can hear my mother gagging from 300 miles away. It might not have been so bad had it not followed a week of the flu. But I am getting better.

Like I told Ellie, "I'm upright. So of course I went to Lowe's. Now I regret it. I've never been so sick in all my life. I'm almost sure it was the flu. Or SARS, or huntavirus, but now I never want to get the bird flu- that's for damn sure."

So what does the foggy-brained, sleep-deprived, on-the-mend Mayor do? After Lowe's and going to two different nurseries?

Bring home a cockatiel.

Say, "hello" to 'Peck'.

I lurve him. Even if I do eventually get the bird flu.