Shooting Star

I've have four kids. The oldest is over seven years old. That means I have had experience with kids putting things in their mouths for at least 7 years.
But today was a first.

I had to call 911 for it.
We had picked up the front room this morning and had been playing elsewhere most of the day. Early this evening I put out age appropriate toys for Giddy to play with so I could go through mail, deposit a check (remote deposit) and put away dishes etc. I could hear a tv on upstairs and Zurich telling Olea to shut it off so she could do her homework and come play pirate with him so I glanced over at Giddy to check his current state of happy and he was making his way to the library bag and smiled up at me. By now Zurich was yelling and I knew someone would throw a wounding blow soon. Upstairs I intervened and reminded Olea that the rule was no tv till after homework and certainly no tv during homework.

I headed back downstairs and heard Giddy gagging. I rushed to him to find him in the same place as I'd left him, which is interesting because he drags himself around now. I did a finger swipe of his mouth and didn't feel anything. I could tell something was wrong as I picked him up and took him to the kitchen to wipe his nose. He didn't have a runny nose before and he was still crying in an unfamiliar way. Upon wiping his nose I noticed the mucus was coming from his mouth mostly, at this point I started to get worried. I tried whopping him on the back and that didn't change anything. I swept around in his mouth again. Nothing. More crying and mucus. He still had an airway but he was obviously uncomfortable. I took him upstairs with me to get a bulb syringe... Realized that wasn't of any use and called my mother in law (who is a nurse). She walked me through technique of trying to get it to exit through pushing on his diaphragm and the whomping him on the back. When that didn't produce anything but mucus and crying she told me to calm down and call 911.
I've never dialed 911.
He still had an airway but since I had no idea what he had swallowed I didn't know for how long it would be. He coughed up more mucus and little spots of blood. When I could hear the sirens dispatch hung up with me. By then I had made my way with him to the front porch since Olea and Zurich wanted to go outside. (That's silly isn't it? That while one child is choking I have to still meet the "needs" of the others so I can concentrate on the one...) and I wanted to make sure they were out of the driveway when the ambulance came.

As I sat there with him coughing, gagging and drooling mucus and hanging over my lap on my arm because I felt that was the right position to help him the most, l just prayed. Thankfully as uncomfortable as he was he had had an airway the whole time. Just as the fire truck stopped at the top of our driveway he coughed more and out shot a glob of mucus and in that pile of that m word, was a dark object.

Prayers of thanks.

He coughed twice more whimpered and stopped crying. I cuddled him and looked down to see what it was. A metal star shaped snap clip. When the paramedics made it down the drive I was still shaking and with the relief, crying now. They looked him over blood pressure, pulse and commented on what a pleasant and big boy he was. There was some miscommunication between them and dispatch though because they had another truck and expected to transport. They were told he was blue. I remember her asking me about that and I said he's been breathing the whole time, he's got good color.

That is SO scary. I am so grateful he didn't have to be transported. Grateful that we live as close as we do to the fire station. Grateful for paramedics and firefighters, dispatch. Grateful for nurses, for mother-in laws, for prayer. And for such a pleasant little boy. We have been blessed today and our prayers answered.

After they looked Giddy over and we determined he was fine and didn't need to go to the hospital they invited the two oldest up to look in the truck, sit in it and honk the horn. Cool stuff. The best was Zurich was wearing a pirate costume and towing a light blue rolling suitcase full of toys. (Nev was asleep on the couch in the front room the whole time, that was a blessing too.) Olea was shy at first and didn't want to sit in the driver's seat but I urged her to put aside shyness and take advantage if the cool opportunity. She did.

The offending object as it landed and my happy Giddy all moved on. I do expect him to have a sore throat though.

Ode to being 29

When I was about 16 I or so-ish I came across this song. Love it.
Now you must listen to it now that I am 29.


"There's no intention worthy of mention if you never try."

Thank you. That is all.

Fighters

 
I'll always be safe with my little fire fighters.

Summer's end: The End

We are now deep into school with Olea. It got kinda crazy there at the end.
But here is how we finished it out.

WEDNESDAY
Today we worked on a collaborative watercolor. Since we have very different ideas and skill levels I am glad we picked up Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzburg at the library Monday. Here is a fun read along.

Olea was very concerned with Zurich's painting style juxtaposed with hers on the same piece of paper. She totally chilled after we read the book and I took the board the water color was taped to and turned it and it started dripping all over itself thanks to Nev's awesome wash job.

What made this special to Olea was being able to use my watercolors and not their crayola washable water color. After they had had their fill of painting (well they probably could have kept going till it was all mud, but we do have to move on at some point) they got to sprinkle it with salt and place pieces of saran wrap on it. We also sprinkled some of the glitter that Nev dumped out last week that didn't get cleaned up.

Let it dry. Peel off saran wrap. Scrape off salt.

Hoping we didn't loose too much glitter. Stay Tuned....

THURSDAY

Olea has been dying to make something with the ceramic clay. I have been re-hydrating some remnants from our last build. So I gathered them around while Nev was napping and Olea made a dish and Zurich a bowl.

It's hard for me to make anything with the kids because they either want to help on mine or need help with theirs. So I was surprisingly happy with the little whale toothbrush stand. I thought for fun I would try to make a shuttle. I didn't think it would work for use but tried to make it for it anyway. Then as I was cleaning up Zurich had a desperate desire for a spaceship. So I tried to hurry and put one together on a cork we had for use as a piggy bank.

Then let them dry for two weeks up high on the cupboards.

FRIDAY
I got a very fine tipped Radiograph pen and the watercolor and gathered the kids around and asked them what they saw and then I drew in the outlines and details they described.

Here are some details of it:


I love it! I need a frame! :)

It's back!

"Eek! Its back!" I exclaimed while driving home tonight. Last week I complained to Gary that they had taken it down before I got a picture of it. Gary said, "Get out your camera," and drove up to the intersection and made a u-turn and then into the rink lot so I could get a good shot on his phone. It is outside of a roller rink. I get such a great laugh out of it every time I pass. Talk about taking a biased survey. But at least they appropriately reported their survey audience.

It might be dumb, but Gary has learned over the years that though I take amusement in simple silly things, it's best to humor me in it.

Summer's end: Catch up

I'm totally sure it didn't pass anyone up that I sluffed on Friday and didn't post. Whatever. :)

Here's why: at 10 am the baby was fed and down for a nap and the kids were watching a Lego movie peaceably on the DVR. I saw a nap opportunity and seized it sleeping without interruption for the next 1 hour and 45 minutes. After lunch the kids were supposed to clean their rooms so I could vacuum... That idea consumed most of the day... And then the power went out and they were too distracted with panic that they didn't clean. Power was out for 4 hours and since I was busy cleaning up stuff and the AC wasn't going 79+ degrees in a humid stuffy house was getting down right miserable. I ended up re-upholstering a chair that I had taken apart to clean by coleman lantern light. By then Gary was home and the power was on so we had glorious leftovers at 8:30 pm.
I took a nap! It was awesome! Moving on...

MONDAY
Today we took an outing. We piled a lot of stuff in one trip and the kids did very well it probably helped that they got to participate in a lot of it. Bread store where Olea timed me. Then we visited the Sculpture that is on the way to the library. Nev always points at it and screeches something unintelligible as we drive by. I have always wanted to go look and see if it had any artist credits. So we did that today. It is funky weird and the kids had a great time using words like triangle crotch and round butt to describe what they saw. Olea, who said it was stupid when I said we were going to get out and look at it, really took advantage of her verbal freedom while describing what was different or interesting about the sculpture.


It's name is FLAMP.
Then library, no pictures, I am spread too thin trying to help with books without a shelf being emptied.

Then post office (the big one this time) where they got to help work one of the postage machines.


Those are Nev and Zurich helping work the touch screen, Olea's photography story telling is lacking on these ones. Then Zurich hung on the lever with all his weight and Olea picked Nev up to put the letters in the drop box.

While there we were subject to an embarrassing display between a child and his parents. I mean loud and uncomfortable. The parents were way over reacting and in their attempt to keep their kid in line, made quite the display themselves. When we got in the van Olea made some observations: we had four kids they just had 1, there were three adults to the one child, and we were being pretty good, and daddy wasn't here with us, they were really loud and scary. Olea said, "I am glad that when we make sad choices in a big place like that that you talk to us quiet and if we are bad you just take us away and not be mean and noisy." (I am feeling happy about this observation.) So we got to talk about being good kids and parents so we don't embarrass ourselves or our families. Then we stopped off at a doctors office to get a refund... Which we won't be going to again, it's been a horrible hassle and they still owe me $. Then to the bank.

The kids had some money that they needed to put in the bank. Olea helped me fill out the deposit slips.

And they got to each give their money to the teller. We ended up with almost all the tellers at our attention because they were oohing and ahhing over my adorable babies, their names and their pretty eyes. One said, "she's a beautiful baby!" to my dressed in blue Giddy. The other teller corrected her, "it's a boy." "are you sure? She's so beautiful!" One asked if Nev and Zurich were twins. We get that fairly often here with them. "they all yours?!" and "you've got your hands full!" were other comments. After getting our transactions squared away the kids picked out a sucker and sat peaceably in the lounge chairs waiting for me. What a pleasure it is to have good kids. For the record they are kids, running around screeching and whatnot but they kept it all within tolerances.

Since the kids think it's great (because we rarely do it) and because they had coupons from the reading program we went to McDonalds for happy meals.

I feel awesome. We survived, the kids were so good and Giddy smiled through it all but when we got home he sure was hungry and tired.

TUESDAY
We cleaned the house so we could have some friends over for pool play and dinner. No pictures. The End.

Summer's end: Floral Pens

Tuesday night while shopping with Olea she saw a pot of flower pens and said she liked them and wanted to make some so we picked up a roll of floral tape.

I already had everything else I figured we needed. So today I invited everyone out to do our outside jobs so we could do our project. Olea chose to ignore me. I figured I would let the consequences speak for themselves. As I directed the two younger kids I had to repeat myself several times, And so I figured I would open up the opportunity for Olea to listen and added some clarifying paths, "Get your shoes so we can do our jobs and then do our project." "Ok, lets hurry with our jobs so we can make flower pens." etc.

We went out back and picked up the pot from the Mother's day plant that I managed to kill (every year) and filled a barrel with leaves and then went inside.

We washed out the pot. I let the kids pick out flowers from my stash from our old house where they had hung in bunches like so: (top left of the picture of the epic battle between Olea and Zurich) I'm just not feeling it in this house, so we are going to re-purpose them.

Zurich liked the black ones and wanted them "big and tall." Nev had a hard time deciding. We wrapped the flower and pen together with the floral tape. They each did two... and had to make sure the pens still worked after being decorated.


Then Zurich poured a bag of dry beans into the pot and they arranged their flowers.


And helped decide where to put our pretty pot.

Olea never joined us. I was genuinely disappointed because this was the project she wanted to do and much more her skill level than theirs.

When I tried to talk to her and invite her to do her jobs so she could make some she plugged her ears, screamed and put herself in time out. :( Hopefully tomorrow she will get to make a pen.

There is one problem with this project. I now know how I want to decorate my kitchen... but I am so not in a position to do it. And we found an outlet under the island tonight. That could be quite useful.

Summer's end: read-a-thon

Yesterday, included in our shopping trip was a trip to the library. Olea got her very own library card. She has been asking for one since we moved. Super exciting stuff. I tried to direct her to books that she could read easier and faster to get her excitement back up. She is known to boast about being able to read chapter books but I have yet to see her actually finish one that she picks out.

Yesterday we also purchased more candy than one should ever have available in their home at any given time ever.

Today I had the kids get their pillows and blankets and pick a sucker. Olea and I took turns reading books to the younger ones. I was proud of her, she does read well. She also likes to pan the book for all the audience to see the pictures. Zurich and Nev kept trading suckers.

We read through a pretty good stack of books. Calling it a read-a-thon also upped the coolness.

Summer's end: Trip

Today was another bad Tuesday. The kids were constantly going at each other and I couldn't figure out anything to get them to chill out. Jobs weren't done. And repetitive interruption of my jobs meant they didn't get done either. I was very frustrated to say the least.
We were going to go to the library, and go pick out candy for the candy jars we unpacked and well... We'll save that for when we do it.

We needed an intervention. I called Gary at work and he told the kids to go gather sticks. Zurich went out for ten minutes but came in when Olea went out. She was so worried about trying to get him to do his job she wasn't doing hers. So I assigned him an inside job to keep them separated.

Then the incessant doorbell ringing started.... And ditching....
I was not my best mother today.

An experience last week opened up some of the things Olea is feeling. It can pretty much be summed up in two things: 1) the move has been hard, 2) she misses the way things were when she was three. That is the way she says: I wish Mommy liked me, had time for me, I wish there weren't other babies.

Apparently, I need to figure out her love language.

There are things I can't and won't change. For instance her siblings will not become orphans. So to make things better for my baby girl I'm doing the best I can to help us both enjoy where we are, to enjoy each other, improve our relationship, be grateful for what there is, what we have, where we are. I don't know what to do. I have no idea. But I'm trying, and that's got to be worth something. That is the major reason I started this summer's end project. Tonight with the spirit of trying, especially after a worthless day, I told Gary that Olea and I would go do the shopping after he got home.

I didn't take a picture. I was too busy back tracking and re-directing. So when we got back and Gary asked me if I had a good time, I was honest. "I hope she did, I hope it meant something to her, because I am exhausted."

I realized something though, I don't know if I remember the last time just her and I did something, just boring old stuff, together, with no one else. We need to.

I need to keep searching. Parenting is the hardest, most cryptic job ever.

Summer's end: Baking

Today was math/ baking.
I've had a hankering for peanut butter cookies. The last time I made them we didn't have any crisco. (Canola oil is not the right substitute.) We had crisco this time... But no eggs or milk. We had dried eggs and powdered milk. It's not quite the same and I didnt have time to go to the store....But there are a number of baking problems I have had since moving: I don't know where to get the yeast I am used to, I have no idea how to adjust for proofing and flour usage due to elevation and humidity changes, my ovens cook hot and uneven. But even with all that, today was a baking project.

The kids love to help in the kitchen. I suppose you could say that I am not that confident or talented in the kitchen. I cook from scratch, I cook from cans or boxes, whatever fits the day and the need. I do not love it. It is not a hobby. It is a necessary task. So it is hard for me to let the kids help because that always draws a project out and I'm just trying to get the job over with.

However, Olea has been very impressed with a friend of hers who can bake stuff all by herself. So feeding off of her interest I had her read the recipe and gather the ingredients and the appropriate measuring utensils. She mixed up the dry egg and got things ready I helped keep her focused as I made dinner. We were to have the missionaries over tonight.

When everything was gathered we called Nev and Zurich down to help. They each took turns measuring and putting in the ingredients. As I have mentioned before, gathering all the ingredients is a big help and a major stress reducer.
They love to scream when the mixer is on.
I do not love it.
But I can't stop them so I let them have at it.
They had a good time and the mess was minimal. Success!
The cookies were pretty good too. But I need to make them again when I have all the right ingredients... And milk.

(As a side note, dinner managed to turn out pretty delicious too. But now that I have been in the kitchen for pretty much the last 7-8 hours, I'm done.)