My little post-modernist

When I had children I expected to have to teach them truth at some point--as in telling the truth versus lying. And, we have had some lessons on that in our house. However, John, recently, has been taking the matter of what truth is to an entirely new level. There was a time this last week that I actually thought that maybe he had become a post-modernist. It all started a few weeks ago. We were on our way to the doctor's office (imagine that :) ). We have to go over the river to get to our pediatrician's office. So, as we were crossing the river, John said that he saw a sailboat. There was no sailboat where he was looking. There was, however, a very large buoy. I said, "no, John that is a buoy." His reply "No, mommy, that is a sailboat." After several exchanges mirroring the above statements, he finally said "Okay, mommy, how about if you call it a buoy and I call it a sailboat. It can be a buoy for you and a sailboat for me." (How's that for relativism?!) It was at this point that I said "Well, you can call it whatever you want, but the truth is that it is a buoy. You would be lying if you insisted that it was a sailboat." I think he eventually got it because the next time we crossed the bridge, he very emphatically told his sister that it was indeed a buoy. Well, this last week on our way home from dropping the girls off at church, he was in deep thought in the backseat. Finally, he posed this question "Mommy, can I call yellow white and white yellow?" "No, John, the color yellow is yellow and the color white is white." Of course the next questions were "Why, mommy?" And "Who named the colors?" It was at this point that I answer like I do a lot of times as a mom "I have no idea, John." John: "I want to call yellow white and white yellow." And so I again explained the matter of truth. Needless to say, we have been reinforcing with him where he can find Truth, but I do think he will give his philosophy professor in college a run for his money--not to mention the kind of challenges he will give me before he leaves home. I should probably brush up on my apologetics.

My rain maker

We have a garage semi-attached to our house. It isn't attached in the sense that you can go through a door in the house and walk through it and be in the garage. You have to go outside and then go into the garage. However the roof line is attached to the house and the walkway to the garage is entirely covered. So, I call it a semi-attached garage--not sure if that is the technical name for it or not. In any case, it also has an automatic garage door on it. I think this is so cool because it is the first house that I've ever lived in where I have an automatic garage door. When we first moved in, it wasn't working real great and you had to push and hold down the button on the wall to get the door to go down. However, now, thanks to a guy in our small group who works on garage doors, it is fixed and it works perfect! I even play little games with it to see how far away I can be and still get the door to open. I also occasionally check and see if my opener will open anyone else's garage door. Do they program those things? In any case, you can bet that I ALWAYS park the van in the garage now. And I've kind of made it a big deal to everyone that we can now get in the van without getting wet when it rains. The bummer is that we really haven't had any rain since it started working. That is --until this weekend when I didn't have the van parked in the garage!! The truck got parked in the driveway a little funny and so, in order to ensure that I wouldn't hit the truck, we left the van in the driveway. And by the time I was ready to drive it again, it was raining. I couldn't believe it--I actually got wet! Then, again today, I went shopping this morning. I didn't park it in the garage when I got home because I had a bunch of stuff to unload from the car. Keep in mind it was a beautiful sunshiny morning, but now, within an hour of leaving the van out, I just looked outside and it was raining. Also, I kid you not, I went outside, pulled the van into the garage, and it immediately stopped raining. In fact, as I look out the window I see the sunshine. Kind of eerie...at least now I know the next time what I should do if we begin having a drought.

The new description of my son

My son Nathan has more energy than a stick of dynamite. Joe added that he can be more destructive than dynamite as well. Am I getting old or do two year olds really run faster now than they did when I had my first child? I told a friend the other day that I should have had my boys first--when I was in my 20s. She said I would have to take that up with the Lord. I just may...

My future doctors

So what have I been up to lately since it certainly hasn't been blogging? Believe it or not I have been spending some more time at the doctor's office. This time it was with Ashley. It was determined on Monday that she is to have her tonsils and adenoids removed. Plus she is going to have some tissue in her nose trimmed. At this point, she thinks this is all going to be pretty cool. And, so far, she has handled everything like a pro. She had her blood drawn on Monday afternoon. I must say I was at least slightly worried about that. Anytime you mention needle, shot, blood, or anything of the like to her in the past she completely freaks out. So we did some major preparation before they took her blood. She sat on my lap and I began my speech about how you don't have to watch and maybe it would be better if you just looked at me, etc. Personally, I pass out if I watch them draw my blood. Okay, so it doesn't have to be my blood--I pass out watching them draw any one's blood. So the nurse prepped her and then poked her. After a really big shout of "OUCH!" from Ashley, she stared completely mesmerized by what was taking place. And, then when it was finished, she stated "That was so cool. Did you see all the dark blood they took from me Mommy?" And, of course, the next day we had to keep the band-aid on because "I want to show it during show and tell, Mommy." Who knows, maybe we have a future doctor on our hands. John is showing signs of that as well---when Joe got back from his surgery, John was very insistent that he wanted to see what tools they used to cut Daddy. He was a little too fascinated with Daddy's cuts.

My corrections to the previous blog...

On our way to visit the surgeon this morning I was relaying my previous blog post to Joe. As I was relaying it, he began correcting me. Joe has to correct me a lot, I mean, a lot. I don't know if I just get in a hurry in life and don't pay attention or what, but I've learned that 99% of the time when he corrects me he is right. And so, even though he was in so much pain that he had to take morphine, here are the errors that he corrected.

• It was not called the Skinny Cow. It was called the Spotted Cow. I guess there are ice cream sandwiches that you can buy in your local grocery freezer section that are named Skinny Cow. And so, even though I got it wrong for where I ate on Tuesday night, I still ask who wants to eat a skinny cow or look like one?
• Second thing I got wrong--not sure how this happened--the doctor's name. His name wasn't Joseph. No, in fact, his name was James Brown. Yep--that is almost even better than if his name was Joseph. I'll let your mind wander on that one...

He goes in for surgery tomorrow afternoon to remove an organ that God gave us, but we evidently don't have to have in order to function in everyday life. I'll keep you updated!

Look at all the pretty houses!

Tuesday night we decided to check out one of the ERs in town. This is something that we try to do when we move--especially when we get bored. And seeing how we had nothing else to do on Tuesday night, we decided that would be the night. Okay, actually, Joe had been sick since Monday morning and was in really, really severe pain by Tuesday evening and so we made the trip. (I wish it was because we were bored.) Anytime you have to go to the ER there are interesting things that happen. Tuesday night did not leave me disappointed. It happened around suppertime (doesn't it always!). And so I put the half cooked hamburger in the refrigerator, gave very brief instructions to our wonderful friend who was going to watch the kids and jumped in the truck to take Joe to the nearby town where the ERs are located. You would think I would have been a little more prepared since he had been sick since Monday, but, honestly, I hadn't really noticed how sick he really was. I won't go into details, but let's just say Tuesday was a crazy day even without our trip to the ER. So, we are in the truck headed to the ER when I realize I don't even really know where I am going. (We are new to town, remember?!). I ask Joe which hospital he wants to go to. (Fortunately he had already had to make a couple of hospital visitations so he was a little familiar with them.) He tells me. And then I mutter somewhat under my breath that I don't know if I can find it and I wonder if Joe can tell me how to get there. At this point Joe says "Stop worrying about little things and just get me to the hospital!" Obviously he either didn't here me or he had completely lost perspective on what the big things and little things are! So I make my way blindly there and start cracking jokes (I had early been informed that I needed to "be strong" and "not cry" so the only other option was making jokes). His pain seemed to come and go quite a bit so I thought we should start timing them. We knew how to do that since we have four children. He didn't think it was as funny as I did, but I found out later that the pain actually is very similar to childbirth. Anyway, we got to the ER and you can always find funny things at the ER. Here are just a few things I came across:

• The nearby cafeteria (I hadn't eaten supper, remember) was called the Skinny Cow. Now why would you name a restaurant the Skinny Cow? Have you seen a skinny cow? Do you really think you want to eat a skinny cow? Are they trying to give you subliminal messages and make you think you will look like a skinny cow if you eat there? And even then, again I ask, have you ever seen a skinny cow--I don't think I would like to look like one either!
• What are the odds of the med student, the doctor and the patient all having the name Joe? (Okay, technically the doctor's first name was Joseph, but you know no one actually calls him that.) This prompted all kinds of things to go through my mind, like "how many Joe's does it take to find the patient's gall bladder with a bedside ultrasound?"
• They gave Joe morphine--need I say more? Okay, even though I don't need to, I will. We were driving to the pharmacy after they dismissed us and Joe kept saying (keep in mind it was dark!) "Look at all the pretty houses." When I mentioned that it was dark to him and I couldn't really see the houses, his response was "But aren't the lights just beautiful." And, no, the people did not have Christmas lights out yet, they were just the regular city lights.

Joe is doing a little better as far as the pain is concerned. It was determined that it is a gall bladder and we see a surgeon today. Pray for us!

My new view

Any of you who remember our old house remember that we had a halfwall between our dining room and kitchen. I loved that halfwall. It is where the kids hung out a lot--especially Sara and Ashley while I was cooking. And so, now you can see my new kitchen view. We got barstools for our breakfast bar. It feels a lot more like home now that I've got these smiling faces to look at while I work in my office (AKA the kitchen) each day.

Maybe we should try a smaller scalpel...

My future surgeon
Seriously, is there anything cuter than a 3 1/2 year old boy?

My knight in shining armor!

Check out what I made for dinner the other night--looks real appetizing doesn't it?!
And so my knight in shining armor comes to the rescue!

Blue state bureaucracy

Yep, I'm still alive. Actually I'm the only healthy one in my family. (Oops, I probably shouldn't have said that out loud! Who knows what will happen tomorrow now!) Today I made my third trip to the doctor's office since Friday. I also went Tuesday of last week. So I guess that makes 4 visits within a week's time span. My pediatrician aptly said today that we evidently don't get along with our new locale's germs. To be fair, today's visit was a physical for the girls so they could continue to attend school. Now usually in this blog I stay fairly apolitical, but I can't resist to comment on the blue state bureaucracy that I ran into this last week concerning my girls' physicals. It all started last Monday when I got a letter from the school--a fairly harsh letter involving words like state "code" and "said child will not be allowed to attend school" and "truancy" and "sheriff will be notified"--I think you get the idea. Evidently they didn't have the appropriate physical form for Sara to be attending school--and Ashley as well although I created that one myself by letting them know that Ashley didn't have our current state's physical form either. Now a phone call or previous letter would have been nice, but that is a whole other story. So I got the appointment made for their physicals so there would be no need for a sheriff's visit to our house. Now here is the beauty of this whole situation. The form that needed to be filled out was basically just their vaccinations. So the school gave me a copy of the vaccination sheet that they had received from Sara's school records and from me for Ashley. I took the copy of that vaccination sheet to the doctor's office. The doctor (actually the nurse) wrote the vaccinations that were on the school's sheet onto the official form, the doctor signed it, and we are all set. How absolutely, unbelievably crazy is that! Ahh, you gotta love living in a blue state--it adds humor to my life.