The phone...the grandkids

My phone rings. I love caller ID. I recognize my daughter's number, so I answer with a cheery, "Hey!" No one responds. Ahhh! This means I have a grandchild on the line. So I shift into Grammie mode. "Hi, sweetie! Who is this?" "Iss Ax!" "Hi, Alex. How are you?" "something unintelligible" "Did you have breakfast?" "YES!" "What did you have?" "something unintelligible" "Are you and Matthew playing?" "YES", then a long something unintelligible. "What are you--" "BYE". He's all done with me.

His mom comes on the line, laughing. "What did we just say" I ask her. She laughs again. "I don't know; I thought he was answering your questions."

So she and I start a conversation about the craziness of childrearing. We talk for about two minutes, then there is weeping in the background. "I'm sorry, sweetie, we don't have any plums. I offered you one but you didn't want it, so someone else ate it. You can have some tropical fruit if you're still hungry." Still weeping. "Ax" is not hungry for tropical fruit. He's only hungry for the plum he didn't want which is now in someone else's tummy. We talk for a few more minutes, and then..."ALEX! Get your tongue off that! Alexander, do not lick that! If your spit goes anywhere near that, I will put it away and you will not be allowed to play with it!" And there is more weeping.

We chat a few more minutes. The weeping is the background ceases. And we chat a little longer and then..."WHY ARE YOU NEKKID?! Mom, I gotta go." We hang up.

And I laugh and laugh. Being the mother of the nekkid child is serious work. Being the grandmother of the nekkid child is HIGH-larious!

I love naptime!

My sweet little babies have tag-teamed me for most of this week, but today for the first time in awhile they all went to sleep at the same time. So I can reasonably expect more than an hour of uninterrupted time in which to do something productive. And this is where I question the sanity of having added blog time to my already overburdened schedule. Am I cleaning? NO Am I trying to figure out what in the world we will have for dinner? Certainly not. Am I even treating myself to some channel surfing while I fold laundry? Anything that will dig us out of the end of the week pileups? ...sigh... You already know the answer to these questions. I sit at the computer...and...now what I will do with all this time is a moot point. I hear someone in the other room who wants to get up. Oh, well...

And now there is "fashing"

I've been too busy to post for awhile. We were preparing for the "graduation" of a marriage class that we were teaching. Getting ready for that involves massive amounts of cleaning (and prayer), and phone calling (and prayer), and then setting out chairs for a totally unknown number of couples to come and hear about how to have God's best for their marriage. As we tell the couples, then is the "hardest fun you will ever have".

The day after we finished with that, my DH told me that he wants to start a remodeling job in our living room. And I said, "Yes, we talked about doing that at some point and yes, what a good idea that is and yes, when we get this, that, and the other thing done first, then we will jump right into that project." And HE said, "Uh, no. I want to start now." And I said, "Now? Like, right this minute, now?" And he said, "Mmmm...yes." And he went and got his crowbar and here we are--in the midst of "fashing" which is our granddaughter's unique rendition of the word "smash". In the space of just a few hours, he very efficiently ripped all the trim off most of the room, tore the paneling off one wall and then smoothed the sheetrock underneath with joint compound. When he's all done, we will look smooth and clean and modern instead of 1978 chic.

This is a very new thing around here--his wanting to do something like this in our house. But 2 years ago, he started a home remodeling business and now he has all these new skills and he's fast and he enjoys the process. And he has all this joint compound and...stuff...from a whole bunch of jobs he's done. So to do our LR is just his labor (and he's promised me a discount!) Already one wall is all stripped and half prepped and could be ready to paint with one more layer of joint compound. One down, three to go. In the meantime, I have to decide on what color we are going to use (he's all excited about something called "spiced vinegar") and then figure out how to decorate my posh new room. I've never had a posh new room before and I have no clue where to start. (I'm told that someone I love who reads this blog is a Martha Stewart fan! Suggestions are welcome.)

Takes My Breath Away...

For most people, that phrase calls to mind a hot shot movie. But that's nothin'. What takes my breath away is bouncing my 6 week old granddaughter up and down in my lap and watching her wonderful chubby little face crinkle into the same goofy, cross-eyed grin that I got from her mother 24 years ago. It's watching her 2 1/2 year old cousin dissolve into hysterical giggles as she pours water into her Dora bath doll's face and I make sputtering, drowning noises. Matthew telling me very earnestly that "Ayaksa" is one of the fifty, nifty United States. The little grin on Alex's face when I come into the room, followed by the huge, ear to ear smile when he realizes that his Poppy is right behind me. I love it! Mmmmmm...takes my breath away....

The Learning Curve

Our children keep us modern. They are the reason we have 2 computers, DSL, and now, my very own blog. They make sure we update, modernize, and just generally have some forward motion in the technicological march to the sea. I learned from my daughter not to type my messages with the CAP key on, because that's SCREAMING.

Last night I learned, all by myself, not to blog right before I go to bed. Not to read my daughter's "100 Things About Me" post; not to get those creative juices flowing. Because I will go to bed and lay there making my own "100 Things" list (I just assume I'm going to need to do that--that's what blogging is for, right!) So, now I know that blogging is like caffeine--just fine during the day, but not for consumption after 6:00pm if you want to get a good night's sleep

What am I doing here?!

The obvious answer that springs to mind is either "I don't Know!" or "My daughter made me!" Part of me (a big part!) is very sure that I totally don't have time for this. But I really enjoy reading Kelli's blog. We live close enough to each other that neither of us has to go to WalMart alone, we talk on the phone a dozen times a day and yet...I still love to read her blog. She called today and (yet again!) told me I should blog. When I told her that I had gone so far as to sign up with a username and a password, which I could no longer remember, but that I had bogged down when I had to decide what to call it, she got right online, finished the set-up and told me to get busy! So here I am. It will be interesting to see where this takes us.

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