Training up the Squirrels

On November 8th - which just happened to be Orphan Sunday - we dedicated our squirrely girls to the Lord. I was not raised in a church that did a dedication service and always assumed it was some sort of infant christening or baptism but instead, it is a promise that parents make to raise their children according to God's precepts. In return, the church body promises to support parents in their endeavors to "train up a child in the way he (or in this case SHE) must go so when [they] are old, [they] will not depart from it".

We did our best to explain to the girls what this ceremony meant. We asked them what it meant to be dedicated and what it meant to be raised according to God's Word. They threw out several things like "It means...we don't lie, we don't kick each other, we don't be mean, we obey our mom and dad."

How do I tell them it means so much more than that? How do I explain God's grace? The presence of the Holy Spirit? The sense of overwhelming peace? The prophesies of God fulfilled over and over again? When I think about the vast ability I have to completely screw up my child, I wonder how anyone can parent without the Word of God. I already know my kids will need therapy after having me as a mother. If they A) make it to adulthood and B) turn out halfway decent, you will ALL KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that God listened on the day of their dedication and gave us above what we could ask or imagine.

(Photos courtesy of Heather S.)

Post-Traumatic Butt Disorder

I have been receiving several emails about the upcoming Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (or RAGBRAI - as we former Iowegians know it) and the are causing some post-traumatic butt disorder for me...what is this medical phenomenon, you ask? Let me 'splain...

Three years ago, I get a call from the CEO of my company...he was all excited because the town in which our company is located was named as the starting point of RAGBRAI for that year and he felt we need to "represent" by having a company team. In a moment of weakness, my head opened up, my brains fell out, and I said, "Why not?"

RAGBRAI, for those who don't know, is the longest running pleasure bike ride in the U.S. It starts at a town along the Missouri River on the western end of Iowa, and through a series of day long rides (ranging from 65 to 100 miles per day), you wind up on the eastern half of Iowa at a town along the Mississippi River.

The term "pleasure ride" is seriously misleading, as I have first hand (or first butt) knowledge of just how unpleasurable it is to bike 500 miles in 7 days, particularly to the exercise haters of the world, of which I am a charter member. There are 10,000 registered riders and at least another 10,000 riders that don't register but add their bike to the gleaming metal miles long pack each day. The only benefit to registering, I guess, is that you get a bike shirt and a wrist band which allows you access to the "Saggin' Wagon" each day should the ride become impossible.

This 7 week ride is filled with major bike enthusiasts - some of which started months back all the way on the West Coast and coincide their arrival just in time to start RAGBRAI. New riders for the year are marked as "Virgin" with black oil paint on their left lower leg. There are all sorts of costumes, such as RAGBRAI brides (they wear a wedding headpiece to show they met their spouse on RAGBRAI), the team dressed as Holstein cows, Santa and his elves, and various and sundry other characters. Some groups are a part of massive teams, such as the US Air Force and LiveStrong. Since Lance Armstrong has been joining the rides, the throngs of people riding and watching has significantly increased.

My team was comprised of my co-workers and their families - none of which are avid cyclists. We had secured an RV for the trip and another tent for the overflow. We had also set up host families to stay with each night - most of which provided some food and access to a bathroom. I had borrowed a bike from major cycling enthusiast friend of mine who told me I needed a "road bike" versus the mountain bike I had planned to take. I had to figure out how to use bike clips without falling over and became intimately familiar with a product called "Chamois Butter" which is the adult version of a diaper cream. I never knew underwear and biking shorts were incompatible so I guess these teeming throngs of bikers were the largest contingent of Commandos on the road at any one time.

The towns we passed through spared no expense in welcoming the bikers...and where else would you be eating pie and rib eye sandwiches at 9:00 in the morning? I guess the underlying reason for me signing up for the trip was weight loss but to be honest, after 500 miles, I had only lost 3 lbs. I think that if that isn't cause for depression, I'm not sure what else is!

From all of this, I learned that A) Iowa has the friendliest people on earth B) biking through hog smells is enough to make me not move back to Iowa C) if you can push through the third day of biking, you bum goes numb from there on out and D) people can still bike when they are extremely intoxicated (I don't have first hand knowledge of this but certainly, on RAGBRAI, there are several who frequent the beer tents until closing time and still manage to bike 87 miles).

People along the trip asked me if I had caught the "biking fever" to which I emphatically replied "Nope!" and then they looked like I had just told them their baby was ugly. I think this is one item on my bucket list that I can cross off and say, "Been there, done that, have the biking shirt to prove it." Now, if I can only get the RAGBRAI commission to respond to my "unsubscribe" requests to their many email invitations to join this year's ride...

PG-Rated Bodice Rippers

These past few months, I have been volunteering at a local library that is run strictly by volunteers and donations. That being said, the library's book selection pretty much reflects the community so if you are looking for genres outside of children's books and Christian romance, the selection is severely limited.

I don't mind, though...I have always loved libraries ever since my mom would bring all of us kids to the one in RR for the summer reading program. There was a tiny little lady with black hair pulled back into a tight bun that had worked there forever and I would watch with big eyes as she, with long fingernails, would rifle through the patron cards to select the one with our family name on it, stamp the return dates on our cards, and quietly hand over my towering stack of books. I would go home to our house, get my parent's return address stamp, some slips of paper, and play library at home, making poor Erin be my patron. Only she didn't keep her books two weeks; more like two minutes before they were due so I could pull the cards out, stamp them, and return the books to the shelves and start the check out process all over again.

But I digress...

The whole genre of Christian romance has me shaking my head. So many women come up to the counter with sheepish grins as they push their stacks of PG-Rated Bodice Rippers over to me to check out, and sometimes they mumble, "I really read far too many of these." I tell them it's all good...like I really care about the guilty pleasures of others. And there's enough Christianity laced through all the romance so I would say it's a tame guilty pleasure, at worst. As for me, I stayed away from the genre for so long because I suspected it would fall into the category of cheesy.

Don't get me wrong...back in my BC days (before Christ), I used to devour all the Harlequin and Silhouette romance novels I could get my hands on. I first discovered them when one of my sisters brought them along on a family trip and I opened one up to the juicy part on accident and realized I was going to have to park in front of the air conditioner in the car to take the heat off my embarrassed yet engrossed face.

Not sure why so many books of this genre have to be written...they are all the same. The men have names like Whip Holt and Rochester Remington Sterling and come with chiseled jaws and dark locks of hair that always fall across the forehead. There is always some sort of love/hate, push/pull going on between the star-crossed lovers and usually the man has sworn off women because of a previous bad relationship or broken engagement. Lots of electricity seem to pass when hands are shaken or when they touch each other and the books always mention the woman's hair smelling like lilacs or lemons or something otherwise flowery or fruity. Their hair always seems to be falling in wisps or tendrils and the man cannot resist entwining his fingers in it and pulling on a curl.

Seriously.

I figured with this time honored formula, I could write my own romance novel based on the initial meeting of Husband and I. It would go something like this:

She boarded the charter bus at 4:00 AM heading to O'Hare when her eyes beheld a 6'5" man in a flowered shirt trying to fit underneath the overhead compartments. His flat-top haircut meant there were no wisps falling across his forehead and she would later realize that even when he grew his hair out, it went in the same orbital circumference of a Chia pet rather than letting gravity do its thing.

He saw her climb aboard the bus and wondered what light socket she had stuck her finger in because her hair definitely smacked of a home perm gone wrong. She was wearing a skirt and none to happy about it as he would later learn that she hated skirts and dresses but had to follow the dress code for the mission trip to Jamaica - the land of Love Connections.

They worked side by side throughout the week and the moment when she could no longer deny the attraction was when he arrived for morning breakfast wearing his Desert Storm pants and his Foghorn Leghorn shirt. She didn't even know about the Chuck Taylor's he owned or the knee-high moccasins. This was no two-pairs-of-shoes-black-and-brown kind of guy but a true shoe miva (that would be a "man diva").

He realized he could no longer resist her charms when he realized she had worn the same overalls all week long and they (the overalls) could pretty well stand up in a corner by themselves. He would bide his time for a year while under the guise of friendship, all the while planning his "Ultimate Move".

Ah...and the rest is history. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go fluff my wispy tendrils, put some lemon juice in my hair and get ready to swoon when a tall, chisel-jawed man walks through my door.

Queen of Defiance

Something has happened between pre-school and Kindergarten to turn my little baby bird Kate into a defiant little diva and it's about to send me over the edge.

We had the normal Kindergarten curiosity problems when I received a note sent home with her indicating Kate was caught peeking in on a teacher going to the bathroom. She was made to apologize to the teacher and when I asked her what possessed her to spy, she said (at first) her three favorite words, "I don't know!" and then confessed that she wanted to see if there were three people in the bathroom. We had to have a frank discussion about people's "private 'bidness'" and she nodded like she understood. I have learned that she is very good at faking like she understands and can put on the most contrite face and it doesn't mean diddly squat in behavior change.

Then we started receiving notes that she was refusing to participate in PE games and when another teacher came into her class, Kate was rolling on the floor instead of listening. And pulling her hands inside her shirt and doing only the Lord knows what under there. Mind you, this is the same kid whom, when my previous pastor went to introduce himself, she has her hands down the back of her pants. I could have crawled under the carpet, I was so mortified.

I told Kate that if I heard any more reports of her being defiant and disobedient, she and I were going to have some "intense discussions" that just might involve my hand swatting her rear end. She bawled and promised not to do it again. We had a game of practicing to obey where I would tell her to do something and she had to tear off like a flash and comply. Normally, she has one gear...and it's called "neutral"...I've had to set a timer for her to finish breakfast in the morning and get ready for school. Many is the night when Darren is pushing her to finish her supper because she is slower than molasses in the month of January.

I thought our stern talks and "reinforcement" were making headway until yesterday when I had yet another note that her music teacher asked her to participate in the sing-a-long and she refused whining that she didn't want to do it. It became so annoying that he sent her out of class to sit on the steps outside.

Now, some of you that know the Little Baby Bird are shaking your head in disbelief that sweet little Kate could be such a diva...but she is one passive-aggressive defiant little thang when she puts her mind to it. And it seems her mind is to it a lot lately. I am at my wits end trying to decide what to do. We have taken away toys, made her write several apologies over and over again, spanked, given time outs, given time in the corner. I am all out of strategies. Sometimes I do think she doesn't mean to disobey, she just becomes distracted...like she hears the directive but then sees a shiny ball and all she can think about is the shiny ball.

So I pose this dilemma to my parent network out there reading this little known blog. If you have a solution, I am all ears...

The Soccer Amoeba

I don't think there is anything more chaotic in this world than little squirrelly kids trying to play soccer. I'm not sure who decided that we needed this grand adventure for our children but the ONLY reason I agreed to the madness was that Husband assured me it would wear Elisabeth out. That seems to be my main goal these days. The girl pops up wide awake at 5:15 AM and runs flat out, jabbering non-stop, until 9 PM at night (and would stay up later if I would let her).

This is her second season in soccer...the first season, I only managed to attend one game and it was during this freezing cold, drizzly rainy afternoon in which I spent most of it in the big blue bus trying to keep Kate from catching pneumonia. Elisabeth was covered in head-to-toe mud by the time she finished and her hands felt like ice.

This season, Husband takes most of the game runs. I went to one of her Saturday games and realized I should probably make sure she has ADHD medication before a game. She was supposed to be playing goalie when I saw her messing with her oversized yellow mesh jersey while humming to herself and hugging one side of the goal post. The opposing team easily scored against her and she looks over at me grinning and shrugging like "Oh well". I ask her why she didn't try to block the kick and she says, "I hate playing goalie. I'm no good at it." I tell her she let her teammates down when she didn't give it her best effort then I wonder to myself "Why do I really care? It's kids soccer, for crying in the night!"

I tell my sister Lisa about it - a veteran soccer mom - and she gives me no sympathy. "Try having the kid who is swinging from the top of the goal box like a trapeze artist." she tells me. "Well," I shoot back, "I had the kid that was crouched down on her haunches playing with blades of grass."

But really, anyone who has observed a game realizes it's just mass confusion. Our teams do not have any real coaching before the first game and half the time the coach is running out on the field with them. The kids haven't quite figured out their positions and poor Elisabeth thought she could not cross the outer white line near the goal...so she'd be charging pell mell and stop on a dime when she reached that as I am telling her to keep going. The rest of the kids follow the ball like one giant soccer amoeba (thanks, Husband, for that imagery) all kicking at each other (thank goodness for shin guards!).

I haven't decided if Elisabeth will continue in soccer. I think the main reason she wants to go out is for the snacks and drinks afterwards. Maybe we'll just skip the mad running two nights a week next time and feast on Nutty Bars and Capri Suns at home.

Ambulips and Reversing the Ax

Kate came home with a book from school this week that has the letter "A" underneath pictures of things that being with that letter. Normally the pictures are of easy to pronounce but this week we had "astronaut" and "acrobat" among others. We were slogging through learning pronounciation when I turned the page and groaned.

It was a picture of an ax.

Why the groan, you ask? Well, when Kate first came, she constantly used the word "AX" instead of "ask" - a common misuse in her culture. We have worked over and over to have her use the correct word to ASK me a question. I knew as soon as I saw the picture we were in for a battle. Sure enough...she kept naming the picture an "ask". I'd correct her with "Ax" and she'd look at me like I had said a bad word. Finally, we reached the point where she would say "Axsk".

Good enough.

My favorite mispronounciation in the book came with the word "Ambulance" in which I broke down into "AM" BYU" "LUNTZ". She kept repeating "Ambulips?"

Finally, I decided to go more how it was written and told her to think of her cousin Lance so now she halts through AM BYU LANCE! Now I just hope if there is an emergency she can AX and AMBULIPS to rush over here.

Four-Eyed Bull in a China Shop

Kate flunked her school eye exam last year and so we embarked on the fun adventure of having a miniature four-eyed bull in a china shop AKA a kid with glasses. We went to the local eye doctor to have her eyes checked and I'm not even sure she had a clue what she was supposed to be looking at because most of her answers about what she saw in the picture were said with her head tilted and her voice ending in a quizzical lilt (like when she answers every question in Sunday school with the word "Jesus?" because she figures that must be right).

Nonetheless, she was determined to be slightly farsighted with astigmatism in one eye. Beings she is covered by Medicaid for her vision care, I had a limited selection of glasses to pick from. I made the classic rookie mistake of picking something that looked halfway cute.

I should have instead looked for the pair that was titanium, double reinforced, kryptonite coated, flexible side stems, polycarbonate shrouded, and metal framed. I had no idea kids could be so destructive in such a short amount of time. We were less than 24 hours into our glasses wearing season when I got a call from the daycare provider that Kate had busted the stem trying to "clean" her glasses. I took a look at them, whipped out my Krazy Kat glue and glued them back together.

The glasses broke again the next day at preschool. This time, I called the eye doctor and they said there was a 90-day guarantee if the glasses were defective. I told them the glasses were not defective but my four-year-old certainly was! They told me Medicaid would replace the glasses but they required the original pair to be sent in and it would take about two months for a replacement. Yikes! I opted for packing tape instead.

So now Kate's class pictures coming home from preschool showed several smiling, normal looking kids and one wild-braided/beaded Baby Bird with a chunk of packing tape on the left stem. We went that way for several months until she finally busted out the lens and we couldn't locate it so I was forced to trudge back again to the eye doctor.

We were given a replacement pair and as it was towards the end of the school year, I decided she could go all summer long without glasses. School started up again in the fall and we dutifully started the glasses routine where she would put them on right before getting on the bus with instructions to take them off and set them on her desk before she went to P.E. or recess.

All was well until I got an email from her teacher that Kate was repeatedly cleaning her glasses with the class-shared wet wipes. Her teacher asked if that was okay. "NO!" I told her, "Tell Kate she is NOT to clean her glasses at school; I will clean them when she gets home.". "Okay," her teacher replied, "I wondered why my wet wipes were disappearing so fast and I think I may have found the culprit."

Well, if the smeared glasses fit...

Then, two weeks ago, I look in the bottom of Kate's book bag, among the spilled out popcorn and old Cheezits and find her glasses in two pieces. I asked her what happened. She says, "I broke them.". Yet again. So back to the eye doctor we will go only this time I am going to take my sister Mary's advice and see if they have any in a swim goggle variety! Forget cute...we are going for STAYING POWER!