Andy & Jessica

Read about me and you just may feel better about yourself. Although I’m a perfectionist at heart, I have determined after having my 3rd little boy that…

1. It is okay to let my kids go to sleep in the clothes they’ve been wearing all day long (although I did draw the line when I saw Jude wearing his Armor Bears bible memory club t-shirt on Friday when I got home from work, knowing he’d been wearing it since Wednesday night)
2. It is okay to not do a bath night until my kid has given himself a bath in some unknown substance (last night the Levi and his little shadow, Asher, got an impromptu bath after I discovered Levi soaking in something that I later determined was chocolate milk – he had gotten a hold of Jude’s cup and there was a pool of chocolate milk on the carpeting)
3. It is okay to wear a low pony tail to work day after day and not actually do my hair (I can’t even remember the last time I blow dried my hair since I forgot to bring it with to Bloomington, Indiana and haven’t used it since we’ve been back home).
4. Taking a trick from my dad’s book (from the one time he had to watch Mike and I while my new sister, Katie, and my mom were in the hospital after her birth), I’ve learned it is okay to dress my kids in the same outfit day after day (just throw it in the wash at night and it’ll be ready again in the morning, with no folding/putting away required).
5. This one nearly kills me, but I have found the world does not come to an end on the nights I just shut the light off in the toy room and leave the toys out and ready to play with in the morning.
6. Need to squeeze in some school time for the kids on the road? Hello iPad!
7. Change the sheets once a week!?! Whatever! (How about whenever guests are coming or when there are visible stains? Once Katie and Phil got stuck sleeping in the guest room on sheets that I had just changed, but that Andy had laid Levi down for a nap on. Who knew that Levi had pockets full of sand from the sandbox? Katie and Phil were pretty horrified after they laid Jonah down on that bed and he complained it was “scratchy” and then we pulled back the sheets to learn why.)
8. It is okay not to wash the windows as long as sunlight still can come and and you can still see out (but if you have time to kill or need something to do while chatting on the phone, go for it).
9. It’s a good idea to never sit down (who has time for that and it results in a loss of momentum)
10. If I’m going from one room to the other, I need to quickly scan the room I am leaving to see what things are out of place that I should take with me (and if I still have room in my hands, I like to grab a boy or 2 to take with me)
11. Come on — they are kids and they are hungry – do they really care if you use the microwave oven instead of the real oven to make their chicken nuggets? (Andy gives me a hard time about this one, but Jude insists that Mommy’s soggy chicken nuggets don’t taste any worse than Daddy’s crispy ones that take 10x longer to make.)
12. Sam’s Club is a great, easy and cheap source of work clothes – only catch is that since they have no mirrors in the store, I have to rely on my 5 year old’s opinion as to whether the item looks good.

If you know me (and some of you really do), it’s killing me to not have the photos from the last 3 months in the album. There are hundreds of them that show our journey through Jude’s 2nd surgery and radiation and all the fun excursions we went on while making the most of our 7 weeks in Indiana. They are printed, but not organized. It’s also killing me not to be working on Jude’s 2nd scrapbook detailing his 2nd bout of brain cancer and to not have the touch-up painting done around the house (which I like to do twice a year since white woodwork doesn’t look white with little boys banging it up). I like things to be in order, but there’s no time for that yet. This weekend will be jam-packed with fun. Tonight we are all heading to the Twins game, with our free tickets through HopeKids. Then after the game (or maybe even during the game since I doubt our busy crew will be able to sit through the entire game), Jude will gladly help me load up the Scooby-Doo piñata for his party (of course we’ll have to sample the candy while we’re at it to ensure it can properly be served to the party guests). Maybe we’ll bake some cookies too (another opportunity for sampling). Saturday is Jude’s party and he’s so excited for his friends and cousins to come. My sister and her family will spend the night with us on Saturday. Then on Sunday, we have church, followed by a fellowship lunch and then we will be off to the Waterpark of America for some more family fun. One of these days I could also stand to get some more sleep, but I have no time for such leisure at the moment.

Jude’s online kindergarten teacher (who so far has done no teaching) gave us free reign to skip lessons, especially math and phonics to get Jude up speed with his school skills. So, Jude has essentially just been doing the unit quizzes all day long and will be done with kindergarten math and phonics in no time. He’s bored silly, circling the blue object or connecting a picture to the sound that the picture starts with. He is so mad at me for signing him up for the new, boring online school. And Andy was asking me yesterday how difficult it is to disenroll and return the materials. Hopefully it will get better. In the meantime, we are supplementing the materials quite a bit. Jude’s Lego Club and Lemonade Stand Club through the online school can’t start soon enough!

I feel like I’m too busy to think and really process what we’ve been through/are going through with Jude. Maybe I deal with it by not dealing with it. Maybe we just take it a day at a time. Maybe I have dealt with it and don’t know it. I’m just not sure how we’ve held up so well. Maybe it’s because Andy and I know (without even really thinking about it) that God is in control here and that ultimately, everything will work out according to God’s master plan and who are we to judge that? Maybe we’ve dealt with this so well because we have lost another child (the one who was born a couple years after Jude) and we saw how God used that for the best, giving us little Levi instead and giving us a chance to witness first hand and share that a baby is a baby no matter how small he/she is. But, when I do get a minute to think, I can’t help but be struck with gratitude. When the doctor delivered the devastating news on November 21st, 2010 that our precious 3-1/2 year old had brain cancer, we really thought it was a death sentence. In that moment, we never would have expected to still have Jude with us almost 2 years later (let alone that he would be thriving). We still don’t know what the future holds for our little Jude, but we cherish each day that God gives us to spend with him.

Levi took a fall off the couch today and Jude was trying to convince me to take Levi to the hospital.  Jude expressed his concern that Levi has a brain tumor and that bringing Levi to the hospital for the fall could allow them to see Levi’s brain tumor “before it takes over his brain.”  That’s the last thing I want to think about now so it was getting kind of irritating since he went on and on.  Jude even said, “If you don’t bring people to the hospital, the world could become humanless and then God would have to create a couple new people.”

For school, Jude had to complete an interest inventory.  I quizzed him down and passed along his responses to the “teacher” at his online school who is very much behind the scenes.  Overall, I found his responses to be entertaining.

1. His favorite school subject is “Science”
2. Likes to read books about “Scooby Doo, superheros, Ben 10, Star Wars”
3. Things he likes are “Ben 10s and websites”
4. His favorite color is “gold”
5. He would like to take a vacation to “Nepture” 
6. In his free time he likes to “play video games”
7. His favorite food is “candy”
8. His favorite song or movie is “Super Man”
9. If he had $50, he would “buy a toy”
10. In the future, he would like to be “an astronaut”
11. Things he dislikes are “spankings and having head owies”
12. His favorite sport is “soccer”
13. His hobbies are “playing video games”
14. His goals for this year are to “learn Science, Spanish, French and German”

Jude’s first week of his online public school kindergarten was pretty uneventful.  His teacher has not gotten back to us with a plan for how to deal with Jude, whose reading and math skills are several years ahead of his handwriting skills.  Andy skipped the phonics and math lessons and mostly just did the history and a little language arts lessons and supplemented with additional online math games and educational iPad apps.  I have worked with Jude on 10 minutes of handwriting each evening.  Even though the handwriting curriculum is called “Handwriting without Tears,” it nevertheless has resulted in a flood of tears on a couple occasions.  Jude just doesn’t enjoy handwriting, which I suppose isn’t the end of the world.  Overall, it seems to me to be the least important school skill.  Andy says Jude seems bored with the curriculum and he is convinced that if Jude was in a traditional school environment that Jude would have already been diagnosed with ADD and drugged.  He’s probably right.

We had another busy weekend. 

On Saturday, Mike and his girlfriend, Sara, brought Jude to a Gopher football game.  Mike quickly learned that Jude is not a cheap date.  Jude got him for a snow cone, a hamburger (that turned out to be a cheeseburger that Jude wouldn’t touch) and some popcorn.  I guess Jude also asked for cotton candy and ice cream, before Mike cut him off. 

While they were out, I took Asher out shopping.  I had 5 stops to make and managed to make all of them and get home in 3 hours.  Not bad, I thought, but one of my very rare shopping trip would not have been complete without the phone call from Andy asking all panicky, “Where are you?”  He wanted me home so he could go shopping ALONE.  And, he wonders why he can finish his shopping so much faster than me who always has a kid or two in tow.  Funny guy. 

Mike and Sara ended up spending the night at our house on Saturday.  We set them up on some air mattresses in the basement so they wouldn’t have to listen to all the nightwaking that is so common among my little boys.  I learned that the Best Houseguest Ever award goes to Sara.  Before we left for church on Sunday morning, she had already washed, folded and put away their sheets in the linen closets and had deflated and put away the air mattresses.  She also cleaned my basement shower since we had been using it to store our stockpile of diapers and wipes.  Needless to say, I told her she was welcome any time.  I think my mom wants Sara to come stay over at her house now. 

After church today, we went to the HopeKids Festival with Andy’s parents and uncle.  There were probably 8 or so jumpy castles/obstacle courses, etc.  The boys had so much fun and jumped for over 3 hours and wore themselves out.

After they were reenergized with naps, Jude and Levi helped me paint a wall on the back of the house.  Since they wanted to do the painting themselves, I spent my time doing damage control with a roll of paper towels and the garden hose whenever they would touch something with their painted hands that wasn’t supposed to be painted.  But, at least they had a lot of fun and, as my Grandma Proper would say, “that job’s done.”     

 

You know if Daddy gets a job…you know where he should get one?  At McDonald’s.  So many people go there.”

Jude’s response to my new shoes that he was excitedly clunking around in, “Everyone is going to be jealous.  Mom, can you quick wear these before you get too big?”  (He was pretty surprised to learn my feet are full grown.)  Later he said, still raving about my shiny shoes, “These are for real fashion!”

Nice. Notice the basket of unfolded laundry in the background of the video. By the end of the week it was about 4 baskets of unfolded laundry (which I just finished folding and putting away). At least now I understand what Andy busy doing these past couple weeks while I was at work. So jealous of his life of leisure!