I Hear Things

Some things I've overheard recently:

Daredevil (while playing a James Bond video game): "Dude, look at that guy!"

Starshine (looks): "Nice mirdle."

Daredevil: "I was talking about his gun."

Starshine: "It's kind of hard to notice his gun when all I see is a man in a mirdle."



Starshine (while taking a bath with Princess J): "Hey! There's something floating in the water! I think it's cookie dough!"

Hubby: "Cookie dough?"

Starshine (leans closer to inspect the object of his attention and then glares at Princess J): "Never mind. That's not cookie dough."

Hubby: "Nope. That's justice."

The Truth About Raising Boys

1. People will say things like "You live in a zoo." This is totally untrue. A zoo has paid staff to clean up the messes, people willing to give you popcorn and cotton candy, and, most importantly, cages that actually keep the dangerous animals where they belong. YOUR life is a safari. Think of it as a wild, dangerous adventure through mostly uncharted, crocodile-infested waters with breath-taking rapids, incredible scenery, and zero bug-repellent.

And poo jokes. Lots of poo jokes.

2. People will say raising boys is easier than raising girls. This is also untrue. It's not that boys are harder, it's that they are different. Comparing the two is like comparing downhill skiing with riding a sled coated in Crisco down the sheet of ice currently adorning your roof. Both are a wild thrill but only one has ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH as a viable side-effect. Boys' brains are flooded with testosterone before birth. This short-circuits every thought-pattern that doesn't end with them trying to achieve world domination through death. Theirs or someone else's. They aren't particularly picky.

3. People will say boys aren't nearly as emotional as girls. This is nonsense spouted by those who don't understand how to recognize emotion in boys. Girls get upset and scream, cry, pull out someone's hair, or go sulk in their room with their cell phone. Boys get upset and shoot their brother in the face with a Nerf shotgun, explode a can of leftover paint on the neighbor's driveway, and do their best to burn down everything in a seven-block radius. If you're pregnant with a boy, go ahead and add riot gear to your baby shower registry. And liability insurance. And a lifetime supply of chocolate.

4. People will say unenlightened things like "Why do you have a lock on the OUTSIDE of your son's bedroom door" or "Who hides their chef knives behind the bags of frozen peas in the freezer?" These people do not understand that you are doing what you must for the good of society. And so you don't exceed your daily ration of Prozac.

5. People will balk at the noise level in your house and ask you how you can possibly tune out something that sounds like a herd of moose challenged a rabid parrot and a hormonally-challenged pack of hyenas to the war of the century. They don't realize that your noise-tolerance has grown along with your children as an act of self-defense. You are now skilled in recognizing the "I'm bleeding and probably broke fifteen bones" scream from the "You opened the bathroom door while I was peeing and now you must die" scream. It's all in the nuances.

6. People will remark on your children's behavior while you are out in public. If your boys have been replaced by aliens and are acting like perfect gentlemen, people will think you are Mother of the Year. It's okay to accept these accolades under false pretenses. It won't be long before the aliens grow tired of risking life and limb and find another host. When your non-alien infested boys let loose in a grocery store, burping the alphabet while trying to pop a wheelie with a cart full of soup cans all while remarking at top volume that the man in front of you MUST be pregnant, you are left with three options. A) Run. B) Pray a hole opens up and swallows you and when it doesn't, run. C) Have in place a Family Emergency Plan For When Boys Are Boys In Public (FEPFWBABIP for short). This is easy to implement. You simply give the agreed-upon cue (a blast from an air-horn usually does the trick) and the boys scatter, meeting up at the car in five minutes. Those precious five minutes are enough for you to deny you've ever given birth to a boy to every onlooker on the premises. To really sell it, buy something pink. Anything pink.

7. People will think you're joking when you say you wear a hazmet suit to clean your boys' rooms. Of course you were joking. You don't wear a hazmet suit to clean your boys' rooms. You wear two. You know this is a necessity of life since while boys understand a myriad of fascinating, wonderful things like architecture, skateboarding, and the quantum physics needed to force their younger brother into the hamper, they don't understand clean. They use dirty socks as bookmarks. They hide half-eaten snacks under their mattress. They load the blades of their ceiling fan with legos and wait for you to turn it on for the day's entertainment. You take your life in your hands every time you cross through the doorway into their bedroom.

8. People who understand items 1-7 will mistakenly offer you their sympathy when they hear you have a household full of boys. This sympathy is misplaced. Yes, boys are loud. Yes, they get creative with glue sticks, popcorn, and the family dog. Yes, they once held a Pee For Distance contest in the middle of the cul de sac while every neighbor was out on their front porch. But you wouldn't trade one second of your adventure because boys are also enthusiastic, affectionate, smart, funny, talented, and endlessly entertaining.

Even when what they're doing will probably lead to someone's imminent demise.

Starshine Discusses History

Starshine: Hey, Mom. Have you ever heard of the shotgun heard 'round the world?

Me: You mean the shot heard 'round the world?

Starshine: Yeah. Did you know it wasn't really a shot the whole world could hear? It was just something that affected the whole world. Kind of a rip off, if you ask me.

Starshine's Christmas List

Today, we asked Starshine what BIG item he wanted for Christmas since we have a fairly expensive present already purchcased for each of his brothers. We said keep it between $80-$120. Here are the answers he gave:

1. A coupon book including coupons for parents to clean his room, do his homework, and punch each other for the entertainment of their spawn.

2. A box of Nutcrackers (25 please!) to create his own Nutcracker army.

3. A gun. A real one.

Is it wrong that I'm actually looking at the Nutcracker army as a viable option?

Deep Thoughts -- Or Something Sort Of Like It

Here are a few gems gleaned from conversations recently with my boys:

Scientist: You know, if you go to hell, I bet it isn't the heat that gets you. It's the humidity.

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Starshine: Hey cool! A toothpick! Now I'm all set if I get arrested.

Me: Why?

Starshine: Because I can pick the lock on my handcuffs with a toothpick and then use it as a weapon!

Me: I'm sure every cop in this county is disturbed to hear that.

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Starshine: I'm really glad you haven't been guillotined yet.

Me: That makes two of us.

Deep Thoughts - With Starshine Part Dos

Starshine: "Hey, Mom! Did I finish my twenty minutes of reading?"

Me: *checks clock* "Yes, you did. See? I told you it wouldn't be that hard."

Starshine: "Know where I was?"

Me: "Where?"

Starshine: "In the restroom. Time really flies when you're on the toilet."

Deep Thoughts - With Starshine

A recent conversation with Starshine, transcribed here for your enjoyment. So, er, enjoy:

Starshine: "Hey Mom! We should get a platypus!"

Me: "Really? Why?"

Starshine: "Because then we wouldn't have to buy milk anymore!"

Me: "..."

Starshine: "Didn't you know that a platypus sweats milk?"

Me: "Holy Gag Reflex, Batboy, that's disgusting."

Starshine: "I think the word you're looking for is useful."

Starshine Becomes Ironman

Clearly, it's been a while since I blogged. Some of that is due to a busy month and using my usual blogging time to run my online query workshop. This week, I've been absent because up until yesterday, I was staying with Starshine at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.

On Monday night, at around 8 p.m., Clint and I heard a thump and then ear-splitting screams from upstairs. The kind of screams that every parent knows signal something is really wrong.

I got upstairs first and found Starshine lying on the floor at the top of the stairs, his right arm stretched out in front of him. I took one look at his arm and thought, "That isn't the right shape" followed quickly by "Is that bone poking out of his skin?"

We spent the next several minutes keeping him calm while we called our pediatrician to see if we should try to move him or if we should call 911. (It should be noted that I had to take a 1 min break to splash cold water on my face so I wouldn't pass out or vomit. I then splashed cold water on Starshine's face to keep him conscious as his face turned gray and his eyes kept rolling into the back of his head.) The pediatrician said call 911 and so we called and then asked a friend to come over to stay with our other children. The paramedics arrived with sirens (thus ensuring maximum neighborhood audience for our exit from the house) and it took four of them 20 minutes to stabilize his arm enough to get him on a stretcher.

I rode in the ambulance next to him (trying desperately not to get car sick because we soooo did not need that at the moment). Clint met us there. The rest of Monday evening was spent in the emergency room while Starshine was given an i.v. of morphine and other painkillers, taken to get x-rays, and then sedated for the first attempt to re-set his bones.

Yes, bones. The x-rays showed he'd completely snapped both bones in his forearm. One snapped and went through his skin. The other snapped and slid on top of itself. And all of this happened because he decided it would be fun to stand on top of his brother's rolling desk chair and jump. The chair slid out from underneath him and he landed with his right arm fully extended, palm flat on the floor.

And yes, he broke his writing arm. But I digress.

We'd arrived at the E.R. at around 9 p.m. They tried to set his bone at around midnight. He was under heavy sedation and thankfully doesn't remember a thing. After the re-set, they took more x-rays, called a pediatric orthopedic specialist, and began studying the break. At 3:20 a.m., the doctor informed us that Starshine needed surgery in the morning to insert rods in his bones and to irrigate the tissue broken by the bone to lessen the risk of infection.

Clint left for home, arriving at 4 a.m. to send our amazing friend Derreck back to his house (where he had to get up and do a full day of work in two hours!). After grabbing an hour and a half of sleep, he got our other boys up and ready for school and returned to the hospital. I stayed with Starshine, tried to nap in a chair --not an easy thing to do when both of Starshine's arms were immobilized (he had the i.v. in the elbow of his left arm) and the morphine made the skin on his face itch, and went with him to the surgery prep area where a nice doctor explained to me that Starshine needed two long titanium nails to "shish-ka-bob" both of his bones from wrist to elbow.

Clint made it back to the hospital minutes before they took Starshine back to surgery. We said goodbye, said a prayer, and then headed out to a waiting room full of other worried parents.

The surgery went well and they kept Starshine another night to manage his pain with morphine and give him three strong doses of anti-biotic. Paul came up to stay with him for a couple of hours so I could go home, get a shower, and take my toothbrush back with me to spend a second night in the hospital. We brought the other boys with us and other friends brought us pizza for dinner.

I hoped to get caught up on some sleep that second night because Starshine had a private room and there was a couch for me to use but his pain was difficult to manage. Once we finally had him settled in and sleeping, I crashed only to wake up four hours later to hear the CRN call the nurse to help her because Starshine wasn't getting enough oxygen in his blood.

Few statements can bring an exhausted mother straight out of her sleep and onto her feet like that one. We spent 45 minutes re-positioning him to open his airways and re-medicating him, and then the nurse took out his i.v. since it was kinked. By the time they left, I was awake.

I stayed awake until around 5:30 in the morning and then crashed again only to be awakened an hour later by the doctor coming in to check on him and release him to go home that day. He asked me several questions but at that point, I'd had about seven hours of sleep in two days and while I realized sounds were coming out of his mouth, none of them resolved themselves into coherent words. I think he finally realized I was too exhausted to comprehend anything and told the nurse to return when Clint was there to give us our final instructions.

Poor Starshine was such a trooper. After the initial break, he didn't cry or scream, though he certainly was in enough pain to warrant it. He has to wear a full arm cast for the next month and then a partial cast for another 2-3 weeks. In 4-6 months, he has to have out-patient surgery to remove the titanium rods which is a shame because he's sort of excited to be turning into Ironman.

I slept hard last night but already feel completely exhausted again. It's going to take a few nights of unbroken sleep for me to be back to normal again. I appreciate everyone who brought dinner (Littrels, McEntires, Mike) and everyone who sent prayers and well-wishes for him.

And I have to note that the staff at Vanderbilt took excellent care of us. I'm nothing but impressed with the staff and the facility. If you have to take your child to a hospital, that's definitely the one to choose.

Starshine--The Experience

Yesterday, Starshine bounced into my room to get the swimsuit he'd left drying over the edge of my bathtub. The ensuing conversation sounded like this:

Me: Hey! Who's taking you to the pool?

Starshine: Um ... guess.

Me: No really, who's taking you to the pool?

Starshine: *rolls eyes* My friend.

Me: You have a lot of friends. Which one is it?

Starshine: My bestest friend.

Me: Okay, that narrows it down to--

Starshine: *who, at this point, is now stark naked* It's only my bestest friend in the whole world whom I've known since the second grade!

Me: Oh. Dane?

Starshine: *pulls swimsuit on and grabs a towel* Yes! I knew you could guess it.

Me: Wouldn't it just be easier to answer my question in the first place rather than go through all that?

Starshine: *looks at me with pity* Mom. It's more of a challenge that way. Talking to me be should be an experience.

Me: It certainly is.

From The Mouth Of Daredevil

Daredevil has thick hair with gorgeous ringlets and waves in it. He used to wear it short but decided a while ago he wanted to grow it out a bit. As a result, we spend time every morning trying to tame his hair (think Harry Potter!) with water and a hairbrush.

The other day, while we were working on his hair before school, we had the following conversation:

DD: Why do you have to brush my hair with water every time I get ready to go anywhere?

Me: Because it's thick and curly and gets all tangled up.

DD: Why do I have to have curly hair?

Me: Because you take after me.

DD: *long pause* So...you're saying I'm weird?

Adorable, isn't he? *snorts*

Ambition. He's Got It.

A few days ago, Starshine and I were discussing his plans for the future. I approached this topic with a great deal of interest. This is the child who announced at his kindergarten graduation (After a string of other kids said stuff like "Fireman," "Cowboy," and "Soldier") in answer to the "What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up" question--"I want to be an ice cream truck man. But my mom is going to drive the truck."

Naturally, I figured any occupation that left me OUT of the equation would be an improvement. I was pleasantly surprised. The conversation went like this:

Me: So, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Starshine: *considers this seriously* I think I want to work on cases.

Me: Cases?

Starshine: Yeah, you know. Gather evidence and help the cops arrest the bad guys.

Me: Wow! That's really cool. You want to be an investigator.

Starshine: Like with the FBI.

Me: I like that. You want to be an FBI agent. *is busy thinking how having her son as an FBI agent totally trumps Paul's county sheriff status and thus grants her some sort of immunity for any future crimes committed.*

Starshine: And if that doesn't work out, I have a back-up plan.

Me: What's that?

Starshine: I'll be a kindergarten teacher and teach the kids stuff like the color indigo, and how to read, and how to write their name.

Me: Cool!

Starshine: I'll give them a piece of candy to keep them quiet.

Me: Hmm.

Starshine: And if both of those don't work out, I'm just going to be an anteater.

Me: An anteater?! Why would you want to be an anteater?

Starshine: *gives me the "Gee, Mom asks some pretty stupid questions" look* Because I want to eat ants.

And thus ended our discussion of future career options for Starshine. =D

For My Next Trick, I Need Absolute SIlence

Overheard yesterday in the car.

Starshine to his brothers: "Everybody be quiet! I'm trying to scratch my head."

Come In To My Parlor

Said the spider to the fly...

(Please note that I was going to put a picture of a Black Widow up with this post. I googled it, found several that were appropriate, but just couldn't overcome my ingrained ICK response enough to have a spider pic on this blog.)

Conversation I recently overheard:

Starshine: Hey! Did you know that spiders eat their babies?

Daredevil: What?? Gross.

Scientist: Only the Black Widow eats her kids.

Daredevil: What kind of mother does that?

Starshine: A hungry one. When spiders are starving, they eat their babies.

Daredevil: That's just wrong.

Scientist: Maybe they don't eat all of them. Just one or two to fill them up.

Starshine: Hey. You don't think Mom would ever do something like that to us, do you?


Small silence ensues.


Daredevil: Probably not.

Scientist: I don't think so...


Another small silence ensues.


Scientist: Wait! No, no she wouldn't. Know why?

Daredevil: Because she keeps the pantry full of food in case she gets hungry so she isn't tempted to eat her children?

Scientist: Well, yes, there is that. But I meant that she doesn't let us eat sugar and bad stuff so she obviously isn't fattening us up for a good dinner.

Starshine: Well, if she ever changes her mind, we should split up and run for it. We're faster than she is.



Guess this nixes my plan to dress up as a spider and creep up behind them ... I really can't afford the therapy bills.

And The Poop Saga Continues

By now, all blog readers are excruciatingly familiar with our family's odd tradition of making gingerbread poop cookies after putting up our decorations. One blog reader (who doubles as CP extraordinaire) Keli Gwyn was out and about when she spied what she felt would be the perfect gift for my boys.

The box arrived yesterday and the boys were instantly hovering around me as I announced that it was addressed to them from my friend Keli in California. What could it be? Race cars? Bags of "gold nugget" candy? Journals so my aspiring inventor, comic strip writer, and author could work on their own projects?

No.

Not even close.

Instead, I pulled out the Poo-lar Bear (The Sub Zero Poopin' Hero!), the Super-Dooper Reindeer Pooper, and the Grumpy Party Pooper, each with the tag line "With piles of yummy jelly beans" and a handful of brown jelly beans.

The kids were thrilled.

We pulled off the heads of the poo-lar bear, reindeer, and sheep and dumped the jelly beans in. My children, being well acquainted with Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans were naturally suspicious as to the flavor of the jelly beans in question. However, as these are the same children who gobbled up vomit, booger, and earthworm jelly beans this summer, they were not about to be deterred from their prize by the daunting prospect of candy that tasted like fecal matter.

Happily, the beans were chocolate or cola flavored instead.

We filled the animals, popped the heads back into place, and the fun began. To access the candy, each child simply pressed down on the back of their animal and retrieved their jelly bean. The reindeer and the sheep both hoisted their tails in the air and shot a bean out their backside. The poo-lar bear, heaven help us, squatted and squeezed out his offering onto the table.

Thank you, Keli, for a gift perfectly suited to the demented brains of my three boys. =)

Starshine the Multi-Cultured

Tonight I took Starshine with me to pick up Chinese food from our local restaurant. Because we're adopting a baby from China, we've been learning simple Chinese phrases. Starshine has mastered one.

When we walked up to the counter, the proprietor looked at us and Starshine said, "Ni-how!", which means "hello" in Chinese.

The proprietor smiled and asked "You know how to speak Chinese?"

To which Starshine replied, "Si."

Hey, it's not every seven year old who can conduct a conversation in both Chinese and Spanish, right?

Good morning, Starshine!

Starshine has had a busy weekend. He made a youtube video with his friend in which the two fight a light saber duel to the death. They titled it "You Shall Die."

No, I don't worry about my kids.

Also, Starshine and my hubby were playing a game of catch with a football when Starshine grabbed the ball, ran for a touchdown, and tackled himself.

Yes, you read that right.

He seemed to forget we were even there, grabbed the ball, began a sport's announcer's running commentary, hiked the ball to himself, called the play, tackled himself, got up, ran, tackled himself again, and managed to get up and make it across the goal line before being tackled by the entire opposing team, who mercilessly threw him onto the ground several times and pummeled him until he lay still.

We just watched in awe. It's not every child who can play every member of both football teams plus the announcer without assistance.

Today, Starshine received a bandanna at church and was allowed to write his name on it in blue puffy paint.

That was fine.

He then decided to wear it. On his head. When I picked him up, I complimented his accessory (even though Paul thought it made him look like a mini-Aunt Jemima) and approved the spelling of his first name across the top of his head only to be informed that he'd written his last name too.

When I inquired as to the location of the additional seven letters of blue puffy paint, I was told they were on the flip side of the bandanna.

The one currently pressed against his hair.

Yes, the paint was still wet.

Yes, it stuck to his hair.

Yes, I've cut a large swath of hair off the back of his head and he still has blue paint on his scalp.

I've assured him that warriors of old named Picts would paint themselves that very shade of blue before heading off to battle so he looks like a scary soldier from the Middle Ages.

Starshine the Pict. God help us.

What's It Worth To You?

Yesterday, Starshine went to the eye doctor because A) he is far-sighted, like me, and B) his glasses were crushed the other day at school by an errant back pack. When asked how his glasses came to be sitting on the floor in the general vicinity of the back packs in the first place, he was quite vague.

The dr. ran through various tests and then came to the point where he was figuring out Starshine's prescription by having him look through lenses and read rows of fine print.

He toggled the lenses, put them up to Starshine's face, held out a card and said, "Please read the bottom line."

To which Starshine responded, "Sure! For five bucks."

"Five bucks?"

"Yes. I want five bucks. Otherwise, I don't read the line."

"I don't have five bucks," said the dr.

"Well, what do you have?"

"Gumballs."

"I'll take five gumballs."

"Deal," the dr. said.

Starshine flawlessly read the line, pocketed his gumballs, and came home with the skewed world view that any dr. he visits from this point on will have an acceptable bribe waiting for him.

Like A Good Neighbor

Last night, during dinner, I went around the table asking each child to tell us the most interesting part of their day. It's a dinnertime tradition here, and I've found that phrasing the usual "How was your day?" question as "What was the most interesting thing that happened to you today?" gets much better results from my boys.

Usually.

Of course, now and then you run into Daredevil's sly sense of humor and his refusal to have his interesting moment overshadowed by anyone else's. Last night, Starshine's most interesting moment was that his caterpillar entered a cocoon (apparently each child has one they are supposed to observe during this particular science unit.). The Scientist was thrilled with the use of microscopes during science class.

It was Daredevil's turn. He took a deep breath, looked at all of us, and said, in utmost seriousness, "I switched insurance agents today."

Without missing a beat, Starshine's eyes lit up and he asked excitedly, "Nationwide?"

Daredevil shook his head in disgust. "No. They aren't really on your side."

"Geico?" Starshine asked, while hubby and I choked on our chicken.

"Of course not Geico. They've got the stupidest commercials." The Scientist said, his voice dripping with scorn.

"Allstate." Daredevil explained. "I'm in good hands."

It's Official...

My children are trying to kill me.

When I sat on the miniature torture device that looks like a toy metal airplane but feels like a colonoscopy, I chalked it up to childish forgetfulness. I did pause to wonder why a child of mine would be playing airplane in my bed, but why do my children do anything?

You see my point.

When I stepped on a glossy I Spy book discarded near my bed and wrenched my back as I slid precariously across the floor and launched myself onto my mattress, I congratulated myself on having a soft surface to land on and made a mental note to ban all books from my bedroom.

But last night...last night the true agenda of my spawn became frighteningly clear.

As you know, I hauled myself upstairs at an insanely late hour. My hubby, who does not hear voices in his head and therefore feels no compulsion to stay awake for hours turning those voices into a literary masterpiece, was already asleep. I, being a respectful wife and not wishing for a repeat of the Earthquake Incident in which I, as a newlywed, learned that the consequences of startling a heavy sleeper awake is a backhand across the face (YES, I startled him by flinging myself on top of him and NO he did not mean to backhand me...), did not turn the light on in our bedroom.

Instead, I carefully picked my way across the floor to my side of the bed, feeling around with my toes for stray books, metal toys, or my dog before committing myself to each step.

The path was clear.

I sat on my bed, gingerly and with great care, in case another surprise awaited me there.

All clear.

At this point, I made a fatal error in calculation: I relaxed my guard.

My hubby winds the blankets all around himself and tangles everything up on the bed so when I come to bed it is with much tugging (Oh, alright, I rip the blankets out of his hands...but he once backhanded me, remember? Save your sympathy.) and rearranging of blankets to get the bed into the state of organization that makes my little heart happy.

I tugged. I yanked. I realized the top blanket was tangled up at the end of the bed. I bent forward at the waist to tug it forward and impaled my eye on the point of a large K-nex sculpture placed inexplicably at the foot of my bed by my children.

Ouch doesn't quite cover it.

When questioned this morning, my children pointed to Starshine as the creator of the sculpture (which has seven - count them...SEVEN - pointy ends sticking out of it) and when I inquired as to his reasons for placing it on my bed at night, he looked innocent and said, "I made a game. It was your turn."

Ah.

Well.

Hmm.

Nevermind that Starshine is the master of the non sequitur. I got the message. The game is Unlikely Injuries For $500 Alex and apparently I'm the only one playing.

Greetings...

When Daredevil came home from school, he walked up to me, raised one eyebrow (a look he started giving me the day he was born) and said, in a very formal voice, "Salutations."

When I laughed, he looked worried and asked, "Do you even know what that word means?"

When I said it meant "greetings" he just shook his head sadly.

"No, mom, it just means hello. I can say hello from now on if that's easier for you."

Lol. I love my kids.