Zombie kids

We are in week 2 of No Screen Weekdays. 

This summer while I had 11 kids in my care! 😱 everyone got an hour a day on a tv, tablet or computer just for my sanity (and if I wasn't watching them they spent another hour watching during a cousin's or siblings turn).  

Exhibit A

There were many family movie nights (which meant the kids vegging out while I do what I do (i.e. dishes, laundry, reading, drinking wine while staring off into space. The usual) 

Aaaand if I needed to leave the house for any amount of time (let's say more than ten minutes, case in point the time I ran down the street to make a Facebook marketplace exchange for less than Ten Minutes!!!  and came back to a hole in a bedroom door Just Because someone had asked a sibling with all of the Nice they possessed to change the channel. Oh Lort) then the tv was used as kids Valium so I didn't have to worry  

A. that small children were escaping and making their way to Canada

and 

B. that the above scenario of niceness wasn't occurring repeatedly until I got back home. 

We are detoxing nicely without screens around here and have run the gamut of The Shakes, Horror, Asking Repeatedly, All of the Complaints, Wandering Lifelessly, and....

 *finally* settling down with merely books/music/toys/puzzles/outdoor activities such as trampolines and swimming and the like. 

Exhibit B 

I just read an article that someone posted today from the New York Times. It is scientific brain facts that screen time is to kids what heroin addiction is to adults. 

And as I watch everyone come out of their zombie-ish summer coma, I concur. 

Screens are basically The Devil. The end.

Mud, poop and ice-cream

I lurched into The First Soccer Practice late and disheveled tonight as I have been parenting alone for a few days. 

With the torrential downpour we had all day the coach decided to cancel practice and just have us parents sign a few forms before we headed home. 

Enter the imaginations I'm usually so happy to embrace as Rowan, Ash, Juniper and Magnolia took off into the nearby baseball diamond to play imaginary baseball, ignoring my feeble calls to stay out of the mud. However, as it was MUDDY, {something that can make me crazy, especially when there's a car ride between the mud and the bathtub} they all got MUDDY. 

We headed to the grass to start wiping the inch thick mud off of the shoes and I realized Magnolia had chosen this special moment to poop in her diaper. 

So we all slowly headed back to the car, and as I'm 10 wipes into the messiest poop on the planet, I hear a little voice say "Mama, I stepped in dog poop". 

The color brown is no longer on my favorite list. 

Juniper's  pink flip-flop was pink no more, and I have no earthly idea how it got all the way up her ankle and on her shin. 

This being the ghetto park with no soap I made do with wipes and c a r e f u l l y wrapped that flipflop for the ride home. 

I was tempted, of course, to just drop it in the dumpster, but being as how she's a kid in my current house, it's her only surviving p a i r of shoes at the moment. 

I can only laugh as I just realized that the Survival Ice-cream I bought on the way home is Brown.  

Don't knock it til you've tried it, I guess

You'd think potty-training your sixth child would come free of surprises. I mean, what haven't I already encountered with the first five? (There is that time somebody peed into the back of a box fan (what in the world?!?) but that's another story for another day.  

Maybe I should've seen it coming with the evening (solo-parenting) beginning like this: 

And as bedtime loomed I *may* have moved the clock forward a few minutes. 

You know, to get the older ones who *can* tell time in bed a little sooner. 

(For those of you who are now trying to decide if I am deceiving my children? Yes. Yes I am. And we're all the better for it.)

I'm helping boys get arms and legs and toothbrushes in all the appropriate holes when I hear little Juniper running to the bathroom announcing, as always, that she 'has to go!' 

Great! I love that she's potty-trained!

Then I hear something that suspiciously sounds like splattering. 

The wrong sound. 

Believe me...I have superhero ears for these kinds of sounds. 

Rushing into the bathroom, I see a naked Juniper, standing on the inner shelf of this cabinet, 

peeing onto the top and *into* the cabinet full of antique tea towels and toilet paper, (no cheap TP here!) with a splash radius on the floor and wall of about two feet! 

I will never know if she was climbing on the cabinet to turn on the light, perform a dance routine, or to actually 'use it'. 

But next time you're visiting The Purple House, you have a choice.  The Cabinet, or one of these Perfectly Suitable Devices. 

Just if you decide to use the pink one, help a mother out.......please?

(Potty-trainee #6....see the merry twinkle in her eyes?)

Of Sleep and Imago Dei

There's a beautiful song that starts with "I see Your face in every sunrise...."

Well, drumroll please.....I rarely see a beautiful sunrise. 

I do, however see my children regularly. 

In the morning. Early in the morning. Think birds-chirping-in-the-dark kind of early. 

Scenario: Me drooling and dreaming, sleeping deeply. Jolted awake by thumps and bumps in the kidzone that is above our bed. Must make the seemingly life-or-death decision of running upstairs and hissing green-breathed at noisy naughty kids (who am i kidding?: boys, always the boys) before they wake the entire household, or laying there Impossibly Hoping they will be magically struck with Narcolepsy ! 

So yeah, no fantastic sunrises in the mornings, but as I sit here listening to my nap decoy snoring, and my June-bug flopping on her pillow, I'm realizing I see His face in my children. 

In Genesis 1:26 God at Creation says "lets make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature".

In my eldest, I see His creativity. She can draw. She can sing. She is SMART. She can keep a clear head in an argument (ahem). 

My 2nd intuitively knows people. She knows what they need, how to make them happy, she LOVES! He Loves. 

My 3rd reLENTlessly pursues what she wants. Never have I met someone so....herm....resolute, to put it nicely. He pursues us. 

My 4th (hang in there, I have 7) is the perfect mix of strong and tender. A leader of superheroes but with the gentlest touch for the babies. He creates the tornados and the feathery mimosa flowers. 

In my 5th, I see His sense of humor. What is life without laughter? Smiles? Happy hugs and fun?

My 6th has always made me think of His Unconditional Love. 

We have a neighbor who's nearly homeless, always scratching at ooze and puckery redness, missing many teeth and sometimes smelling like something died nearby, but baby 6 always has a cheery hello and a sweet smile for her. Always!

And #7? I'm still getting to know her. But I see His beauty in every tiny eyelash and fingernail. She's truly a gift I didn't know I needed, straight from Him. 

Because of these 7 beautiful people in my life I know God is simply amazing. And I want to get to know Him more, the longer I'm around them. 

Nap decoy

Blog post #1

I shamelessly admit to using Ash as a nap decoy. 

Technically he could get by with no nap at all. At 4 he is by far my oldest napper. 

But I have found if I want Juniper to nap at all, she goes down a lot easier when there's another kid paving the way. 

Hence my nap decoy. 

P. s. He almost always falls asleep before she does. So I don't feel bad one bit for using him in this terrible way. 

P. p. s. I've never started a blog because I'm a perfectionist and could never find the perfect name, the perfect first post, or have enough sleep to put together a coherent thought. (See? Right there? I'm not even sure if "putting a coherent thought together" is grammatically correct. But see? I'm trying not to care anymore)

All asleep at once? In my dreams!