Andy & Jessica

To me when he overheard me trying to delegate diaper duty to Andy, “Mommy, you’re a parent too!”

Nursing homes escapes run in my family, going back at least a generation.  My grandma did it.  My grandpa did it.  And now we are planning my mom’s own escape.  My mom has been recovering from knee and shoulder surgery at a nursing home near my house.  It was not the one I had chosen for her, but probably at least as bad as several I toured and ruled out.  But, when it came time for her to be released from the hospital, the nice place I had picked for her had suddenly filled up.  So, we chose another place near my house blindly.  It is a dump and her room smells strongly of urine.  There are old people everywhere.  My mom wants out badly but they won’t let her out.  They first cited some reason about Medicare as the reason my mom can’t leave, but when we reminded them that Medicare is not paying and my mom is self-paying, they changed their reason for why she is stuck there.  If they don’t release her tomorrow, we are going to spring her out of there.  We did spring her out of that prison for the day today and she’s been at my house with all 5 grandkids.  They surprised us by even sending her with her narcotic pain medicine that normally they make her take while they carefully ensure she is really swallowing it.  Tomorrow she’ll bust out of there for good, one way or the other!

Levi said to me while we were at home today, “Mommy, I want to pee on the grass outside.”  Born to be wild!

“Mommy, it’s catechism time.”  (Funny, because I barely even know what that word means.)

My last 15 minutes are a good indicator of what life is like with my 3 active little boys.

1.  I catch Jude making himself a pizza directly on the glass microwave plate in the microwave.

2.  Asher writes with permanent black marker on the white kitchen cabinets.

3.  Jude yells, “Emergency, emergency, emergency.”  I race downstairs and find Asher at the table trying to cut some of Jude’s pizza for himself with a really sharp steak knife.

Jude was expressing how cool it is that my mom, Grandma Forbes, has reddish (not gray) hair even though she is a grandma.  After letting him go on and on for awhile discussing all the gray haired grandmas he knows and how special his red haired grandma is, I finally disclosed that she dyes her hair.  I further explained that I was going to have to dye my hair for the first time pretty soon, given all the silver hairs I pluck out with a tweezers on a weekly basis.  Jude exclaimed, “Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘be yourself!?!'”

Recounting my miscarriage that was followed up a few months later with being pregnant him, Levi said happily, “Titus died and then we got me!”

To me when he thought I had prematurely quit wrestling with him for today, “But I thought we made a deal that we always wrestle ’til you get hurt.”

I’ll be candid — Andy and I argue about one thing and one thing only, but we argue about it over and over and over.  That one thing is load sharing.  As you probably know, I work as an attorney.  I work a lot.  Lately it has been 65-70 hours a week.  Andy, on the other, stays at home with the kids.  When I come home from work, I don’t come home to to a place that is orderly and with dinner waiting for me.  Instead, I come home to a house that looks like a tornado just went through it.  The beds aren’t made, nothing is where it belongs, no dinner is on the table, but the dishwasher is always ready for me to unload.  I spend much of the night angry at Andy while tidying up the house and finishing up Jude’s homeschooling while Andy escapes to his man cave to do whatever it is that Andy does.  After our talk the other night, Andy has really stepped up the pace and has been helping me out.  He has also kept score and it’s pretty funny.  We’ll see how long this impressive streak lasts.

9/23/13

• Made beds
• Did dishes
• Emptied garbage
• Cleaned orange crap out of freezer
• Accepted apology
• Made laundry soap
• Cleaned poop off living room carpet
• Folded laundry
• Put laundry away
• More dishes

9/24/13

• Made beds
• Met with window guy and ordered windows (2.5 hours)
• Finished laundry soap
• Kept boys alive
• Fixed latch on back storm door
• Dishes
• Replaced some burnt out light bulbs
• Caught Asher as he fell off the top bunk of bunk bed

 

 

 

 

 

On the way to Jude’s music class tonight, I was commenting on all the stop lights, hoping to get green ones.  Jude asked if there were people under the roads whose job is to change the lights.  Ha!