Getting Those Comedy Glasses On

Does life ever seem to have too many tricks up its sleeve?  I am talking about those little odd events that happen once in a lifetime and seem out of place and so poorly or should I say perfectly timed as to be virtually impossible.  I seem to be in a rut of encountering such events lately and it sure has me scrambling for a better perspective! So sit back and be ready to laugh along with me at the funny, truly insignificant events which have threatened to send me reeling over the last few days.

A couple of days ago I had promised to provide a baby meal for a family with two new little ones.  I have a good, tried and true recipe which I love to make and most everyone seems to love to eat.  It has only five ingredients and you can hardly mess it up... that is if all things electronic operate as promised. I had the late afternoon planned to the minute in order to have our dinner on the table just as Nathan was walking through the door and the baby meal coming out of the oven just in time to hustle it to their home. Although I was tired, I was taking great delight in watching the two dinners come together and feeling rather proud of how good they looked.  Yum!

Our dinner of salmon quiche was almost done as I slid the baby meal in on the top rack of the oven.  A couple of minutes later I began to smell something a little odd.  I reminded me of those naughty times when I have tossed something plastic in the bonfire and hoped no one noticed.  I checked the oven and noticed the top edges of the disposable paper baking dishes were turning a wee bit brown.  Nothing to worry about for sure.  I pulled them out and put some foil on top to keep them from being too hot and replaced them in the oven, this time on the lower rack and further from the heating element.  I must add that by now our own dinner was looking and smelling delicious on the counter - ready to eat.

I returned to other kitchen work and shortly noticed that the smell of smoldering plastic was not getting less, rather it seemed to be increasing.  Surely this couldn't be.  I just needed to air out the oven a wee bit and all would be well.  I opened the oven and quickly regretted that as I noticed the heating elements were still on trying to maintain the proper temperature - or so I thought.  I quickly closed it and went back to work as up, up, up went the nasty smell coming from that gourmet looking dinner I was planning on giving away.

Just a few moments later my lovely oven gave me a warning signal and showed some mysterious error signal.  I turned the oven off and silently prayed that the food would cook even without the oven on.  It did seem rather hot but any "oven temperature" is surely hot feeling to me right now!  I tried turning the oven back on after a few minutes only to have the same beep and error signal flash before me.  A quick google search reveled that it was possible the heat sensor was bad and my oven was overheating.  Having an oven thermostat in the drawer I popped it in and watched it climb all the way to 550 degrees! Yep, my oven was way too hot!

By now time seemed to be reminding me with every tick that I needed to have a ready-to-eat meal delivered in about 45 minutes.  There wasn't time for this meal to fail so it simply had to work! I was still hoping to salvage the food, after all it was just cooking extra fast, right?  Common sense told me to read the instructions on the pan which said to keep the oven temperature below 400 degrees.  This coupled with the foul smell was proof enough that the meal was probably too toxic to eat so with all of the discouragement you can imagine I hauled it out to the porch where at least I wouldn't have to smell it anymore.

There I stood when Nathan came in the door.  Our dinner was ready but I had nothing to bring to the family with new twins.  I hustled my super bummed self out the door after a hasty hello and dinner explanations for my own family and rushed to the local grocery store to scrounge up a meal from the deli section.  Was this a lesson in humility?  I don't know but although I couldn't really laugh at it then, I do find it rather ironic now that my heat sensor had to go bad on the baby meal just minutes after our own meal was cooked to perfection.  What are the odds of that?!

You would think that would check the box for necessary malfunctions of the day, however, the evening's story didn't end there.  I did deliver a meal and after holding an adorable, sweet baby boy I got back in the car for the drive home.  Nathan had encouraged me to enjoy the peace and quiet of the drive and that was exactly what I planned to do.  I didn't get more than half a mile down the road when the low engine oil light turned on.  No, no, no!  Was my car out of oil now?  Hadn't I had enough trouble already just a short hour before?  I called Nate to see what he, my personal mechanic, knew about it and his immediate response was for me to "not touch anything else and just come home." :-)  How I would have loved to do that but if the engine was truly out of oil I might not make it home with a running engine. A dead oven and a dead car didn't sound too thrilling for one evenings work!

At Nathan's suggestion I found a flat place to park and checked the oil.  This was a task in itself as my slightly largish belly hampered my ability to reach the dip stick easily.  I did manage, however, and after adding more oil, thanks to the wonderful mechanic of mine who keeps some handy at all times, I was on my way once again.  Breathe deep, breathe deep and keep on going.  Whew!

So today, two days later, I had yet another one of those odd moments that seems to mix rare events with impeccable timing...  My littlest one is still in diapers, cloth diapers, and I try to let him air out a bit before I put a fresh diaper on. This has been my method for quite some time and it works quite well.  He lays on my bed and plays with whatever is in reach while I run the wet diaper out to the drying rack and return quickly to cover him up before he has an accident.  I might add that there have been no accidents in as long as I can remember.  Well, today was different!  Not different only because he decided he should go to the bathroom on my bed but because the wonderful mattress cover that daily protects my mattress from soiling was visible out my bedroom window as it hung blissfully on the clothes line.  What is up with off duty mattress covers!  Of all the days for him to decided to feel at ease on my bed!  Did it really have to be the day I washed all the bed covers?  Well it was and I couldn't even feel very frustrated in light of the other odd events of the week.  I even found some humor in it!  As I sopped up the mess I told him, as if he understood, that we don't go potty on mommy's bed.  At first he looked at me as though it was sinking in and he felt some sort of remorse appropriate for the deed done.  This solemn look of remorse, however, quickly melted away into dancing little eyes and a bright little smile.  How could I not smile back at him?

So I seem to have inadvertently entered the school of comedy only it doesn't feel that way as I act out the daily scenes.  I am truly hoping odd events stop happening and all things electric begin working again but in the meantime I will try to laugh and the paradoxical frustratingly funny moments that will be stories worth telling in the years to come. :-)

Chickens!

Tingle showing off her comb

As our family has grown, so has our consumption of some of the best foods this mommy can find at a reasonable price.  One food I will buy in high quality regardless of price is eggs.  They are a wonderfully healthy food in my mind plus I love eating them. Well, we have grown past eating a dozen and the number seems to keep going up.  It can be discouraging when the baby asks for more after eating two.  Hmmm... if we all had three, which I know we could all do, that would be almost two dozen at each breakfast!  Well, we don't eat all that we can but we still go well above a dozen for one breakfast not to mention the baking and nothing spells lovely fall weather for me better than baking with pumpkins!

So, to help with the cost of all the eggs we consume, we decided to get chickens!  After meeting others who have chickens and touring their coops Nate decided it was time and diligently set to work making the loveliest chicken coop you have ever seen.  For a while it even looked better than our house which was in much need of a paint job!  Craigslist was probably the most frequented website for a while as I searched for laying hens all over Delaware and into Maryland and Pennsylvania.  We finally found some young hens that needed a new home and off we went in a rainstorm to fetch them.  I must confess to feeling nervous as we drove them home.  I wasn't sure how to take care of chickens but figured experience would be a good teacher as long as we could keep them alive that long.

We arrived home with eight live chickens (first hurdle crossed!) and happily put them in their new home.  We thought they should love the roosts that Nate had so carefully built and were surprised to see that they all preferred to huddle together on the floor of the coop.  Hmmm...  I guess we needed to read up on that one!  Eventually they all learned to use the roosts and for the most part we find them bunched up on the top one as they sleep in droopy piles.

The first month of chicken raising was quite eventful and full of learning.  One of our original chickens seemed a wee bit ill so we began treating her and the others for possible parasites or worms.  We were never able to see if our treatment worked as she was the first we lost to a predator.  Although Nate tried to prepare me for loosing chickens to fox and such, it was sad and hard for me when she went missing. We haven't had any other successful predator attacks although we did watch a small hawk try to take one of our full sized hens!  The hen was running and it took us just a while to spot the hawk silently coming in to get her.  The hawk was obviously too small to carry her away but we ran out and yelled at it just the same.  Amazingly, it turned and came a second time!  Since then I don't put the chickens out to free range until I have my ever moving "scarecrow" (i.e. clothes on the clothesline).  We also avoid the morning and evening hours when hawks and falcons are more likely to be feeding.

The rubber egg with no shell

I had one additional predator scare which turned out to be nothing more than a garage "eating" my chicken!  We had a bag of bird feed on the garage floor which when found and punctured by the hens instantly became a favorite feeding spot.  Now that they knew something of the inside of the garage the hens thought it was quite fun to rummage through the tools, equipment, boxes, and such in the garage on a daily basis.  I didn't think too much of it until one of the hens when missing one afternoon.  We had looked for about half and hour and as we couldn't find her my face was showing what I thought to be true.... she had been caught some time in the morning while they were free-ranging and we were too busy to notice.  I was bummed, quite bummed, and figured I would check the garage once more and do a thorough job of it as I didn't care much to find out she had been in there in two months time.  As I was nearing the very back of the garage and trying to get a view between some of the boxes and totes piled there I heard a ruffling of feathers and called Nate to investigate.  He moved the boxes aside and found the lost hen down on the floor in the farthest back corner and unable to get back out the way she had gone in!  Whew!  I was relieved to say the least and was so happy to see her back with the others! That night we found a rubber egg on the floor off the coop and as we know all the hens can lay lovely eggs we are figuring she laid it as a result of the stress of being stuck in the garage without food or water for the better part of the morning and into the afternoon.

All in all, it has been quite fun to have chickens!  The kids love looking for eggs and are learning new responsibilities as well as getting first hand education on birds.  Learning about birds in science took on a whole new meaning this year as I found them out in the yard pulling the chicken's wings out to see the primary, secondary and tertiary feathers. :-)  I am normally not a big fan of pets but it has been a joy to have these hens who provide something so great for us!

We love finding twin eggs although it hasn't happened in quite a while.

The lovely variety of colors and sizes

Some of our small flock of hens. 

Baby Guessing....

So, the weeks are rolling by at a rather rapid pace!  While I am just getting my mind wrapped around the reality of another little one joining our family, this little one has developed cute little feet that push out and wiggles all over the place letting his or her presence be known all day and, sometimes, all night too. :-)

We usually don't find out what we are having and this baby has been no exception although I must confess to wishing we knew most days.  I generally don't mind not finding out as I love old wives tales and the various tricks of the trade to help me in my guessing.  However, with this little one I took time to look over over the records from my previous pregnancies and discovered that some of those "tales" don't seem to be true for me!  For example, it is generally supposed that the faster heartbeats belong to little ladies and the slower belong to little men.  I always remembered Jeffrey's dropping down to 119 which seemed pretty slow to me but I couldn't quite remember the other's heartbeats.  I pulled my records for when Anani was born and had a sad realization.  Her heartbeat was right in the middle of all my boys!  The 130s and 140s!  That really blew my ambitions of secretly discovering the baby's gender!  There are other ways to make guesses but I don't have the necessary info to help me in those decisions so here I find myself without much of a clue and it is killing me!

I honestly am getting and ever increasing hunch that it may be a boy but I could be wrong about that one!  After all, what method makes me think that?  The heartbeat..! :-)  Last appointment the baby was quite active and had been for about 30 minutes and the heartbeat only hit the 130s so that does look low but didn't I just say that Anani's was in the 130s and that "tale" doesn't seem to hold true for me?  You see what a problem I have with my hunches and love of guessing? :-)  Disastrous I must say!

So while I sit here and crochet cute, ruffly, pink diaper covers and blue rompers with bears on the tush, I thought I would ask for your help in my joy of guessing. Let me know what you think!  I know it is all guessing but I do think it is fun!  You can also guess for when the baby will arrive and how big it might be.  I will say that if you get wind of a date Nate is suspecting, go with his guess as he has called the day for the last two babies!

Here are the stats:

Due date: December 26, 2012 (the date I am going with) or January 4, 2013 as determined by a super fast ultrasound.

Measurements: Completely normal

Heartbeat: Ranging from 130's to 150

Previous babies:

39 weeks, 8lb 11oz, boy
33 weeks, 5lb 1oz, girl
37 weeks, 7lb 5oz, boy
40 weeks, 10lb, boy
39 weeks, 8lb 15oz, boy

24 Weeks

Ooof! School has started up again...

Oh how I wish I could write a better title to this post!  I wasn't thinking of posting anything at all about school as it hasn't gone quite as smoothly as I, my husband or my children would have hoped.  However, it is a true part to the symphony we are daily composing even if it is full of discord.

I must admit that I was amongst the crowd of Schauermanns who were not quite sure they were excited for school to begin again.  I think my sentiments were topped by Jeffrey's who has loved the many hours of sunny summer play, the amazingly fun joy of playing with cousins in Alaska, the delightful fun of visitors coming here to play with him, countless lego creations, and so on.  Not to mention, he is in fifth grade and although he is fully skilled for all that fifth grade requires of him it chafes just a wee bit that he has a little more school than his little brother who is in first grade. Honestly, I wish I could keep it simpler than it is but I have already made quite a large effort to simplify the work load for this school year... remember I wasn't quite sure I was excited? :-) Oh yeah, there is also the small matter of a little wee one arriving in the middle of the school year to further prompt my search for happy, fun, simple school. :-)

Well the first day of real school arrived.  I was tired and the kids were still riding high on the wave of company that had left just days before.  I think the beginning of school felt something like a boogie board hitting a large submerged boulder.  There was just enough curiosity to tide us through the day despite the initial "shock" of having to do something inside and I was pleasantly surprised yet still a bit apprehensive about the coming days when the curiosity wouldn't be there to smooth the bumpy way.

Sure enough, day two proved to be quite rough.  If faces could be transcribed they might say, "Oh dear, do you really want me to write my name?  My whole name?  Can't I do just one math problem instead and two pages?  That one looks way too hard!  I don't even want to try!"  Meanwhile a brightly colored buoy was swinging lazily in the trees begging someone to ride it.... A small motorcycle was weeping in the garage as it looked at the long hours it would have to sit idle as it waited for school to come to a close for the day.  Oh yes, there were those chickens constantly going in and out of the coop tempting all my not-so-studious pupils to come see if there was another egg to fetch.

What was I to do?  Although we highly value the "education" the kids are receiving through the chickens, the skills they are developing on the motorcycle, and the fun they enjoy in the back yard, I still need to teach them some "not-so-exciting"skills like writing their name, math, reading, etc.  Honestly, a piece of paper cannot hold a candle to a buoy swing or a motorcycle ride, unless you are Arden who loves to color simple grey lines with a number 2 pencil. :-) It seemed almost hopeless and I was increasingly discouraged as the days passed and our supposed to be fun school quickly made a crater sized dent in my days, even etching its path into the evening hours and past bed time.

So here I sit today having finished today's school with the kids and still mulling the how-tos of teaching.  I am also mulling the how-tos of being a mom and seeking for answers to what appear to be my weak spots, maybe areas where I am not holding the line I should hold or where I am half-hearted in my own approach.  I am also mulling about children, what is motivating them and how I might be able to become at least a piece of that motivation. Do they know how far is too far or have I let the line sag too often?  How can I take some great, fun school and entice them against the odds (buoy swings and motorcycles :-) to try and find some enjoyment in it.

I was talking with Nathan this morning and asking him if he had any suggestions that might help me while, back inside, timing with the kids chores spun out of control before the nine-o-clock hour.  I have always felt a little sheepish in having the kids do too much work and have striven to make it fun while lacing each day with breaks and play. After listening to his suggestions I realized yet again that the kids might be eligible for a PhD in phycology for they have me figured out!  A little restlessness and mommy is sure she has overdone it again and they can have a break.  Although I am still a big fan of giving them opportunity to get wiggles out and have a change of pace as well as keeping school fun, I have been got!  He showed me how they have been walking on me and with his full backing encouraged me to manage my little people with a bit more gusto, to give commands and ensure that they were completed under my watchful eye (I do so love to put the watchful eye away at times as I work on another task or tend to the little wanderers who are not in school yet!) and to keep play in my back pocket until the work was done (Oh dear, but I thought they needed an outlet!).  He also encouraged me to mix the days up.  For now I need to reign in my wild and energetic, unbroken, summer herd and later I can hope to infuse the days with more fun while still keeping the reigns in my hands and the feet off my back.

Today was hard simply in towing the line Nathan encouraged me to set.  It meant all of me had to be focused and tuned into the actions of those I was teaching.  I noticed things I have suspected but never seen for sure before.  If I set two to a task they could accomplish on their own and turned my attention to the one I was assisting then looked back quickly, I noticed there was a whole audience either watching me or the world outside their window but certainly not doing the simple task they had just been given.  Sure, this can look like a tiny little problem, after all maybe they are thinking about the work they are doing while they stare aimless about them, but for me it was ever growing into a mountain I couldn't climb. This may have been just a toe walking over my authority but those toes do add up!!!  I also worked on setting time limits for one of my students in particular.  That meant learning the importance of a buzzer when Mommy says, "Go!".  I took for granted that kids liked to beat the buzzer and was shocked when I had to actually teach the joy of buzzer beating by giving somewhat of a race course that could be beat then repeating the race until the runner hit the finish line before the buzzer rang.  Go figure!

I think the other big factor in my difficulty with school this year has been my own hesitance to set a line and joyfully (that would be on my part) expect the kids to stay within it.  I have always seen myself as the un-fun one, the boring adult, the one who doesn't like the things kids find great delight in.  I have seen that as a negative feature that couldn't possibly bear any good and, therefore, constantly tried to exert myself just a little more... and a little more... and a little more... until SNAP!  As I already mentioned, this came into play big time in my sheepishness in assigning "too much work".  Talk about being half-hearted and weak in the eyes of the self awarded PhDs!!!

So, all that said, here goes the rest of the school year!  "Every day is new with no mistakes in it... yet" (Anne of Green Gables), right? And God has already promised me the strength I will need for what comes tomorrow. I know I will have to tow the tight line a few more days (maybe weeks) at least and hopefully I will gain confidence and gusto as I smile my way right through the giving of assignments without inwardly apologizing in case they are too big.  And here is to hoping that we can find the line at which we capture and delight in the fun of school right alongside the fun of play while also walking in diligence.  Easy, right!? :-)

Capturing "Wanderer 1"

Good times do come!!!