Quote of the Day

James: "So you're having Fruit Loops for breakfast today..."

Jay: "Well, my toast fell on the ground and I tried to wash it off but then in got soggy. So I decided to have Fruit Loops."

James: "Gotcha!"

the fears of motherhood

*WARNING*

*The following is not to be read by the squeamish*

So one my biggest motherhood fears came true last night.........Luke vomited in the middle of the night. (I warned you!) I think this is what all parents dread. Dealing with puke.

Luke comes into our room around 1:45am and says, "Mom, I just threw up in my room." I think I wasn't fully awake and my husband repeated it to me. At which point it sunk it and I jumped out of bed and began pushing Luke toward our bathroom. He threw up again on the floor in our bathroom....and then again in the toilet.

But what gets me is what plays in my mind as this occurs and I am cleaning up. First I thought of my mother and I soooo appreciate her! I really can't remember specific instances where she had to deal with this but I do remember her holding back my hair while I was leaning over the toilet. She was a saint!

Then I thought "How am I going to clean this up off the carpet?" That thought dominated my foggy mind for a while. I began thinking of custodians at schools who get called in on a regular basis to clean up puke - of other people's kids! I figure they have a plan for how to clean this up. I wish I knew their secrets.

Then as I am in awe of all the places this stuff has splattered, I begin wondering: When one of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's kids throw up in the middle of the night, who cleans it up? Do they take care of the task themselves or do they have live-in help who they wake up in the middle of the night to care for it?

So this morning Luke climbs into bed with us. He begins saying how glad he was that he didn't "barf" at school - that would be embarrassing. (although his father and I were thinking that puking at school didn't sound like such a bad idea to us!) So then he proceeds to tell us about the kids who have barfed at school - because this kind of thing is etched in the minds of all elementary school kids. He tells of of one kids who wasn't looking too good - "all sweaty and red like someone had just punched him in the stomach." He can also tell us exactly where it happened in each instance - like on the carpet in the music room or on the floor by the blackboard. He had us in stitches laughing and was so confused as to why we were finding this so funny.

But if we didn't laugh about it, we'd cry!

the challenges of motherhood

Well, for some time now I have been telling myself that I would post more regularly and let my reader (I think there's only one person who reads my blog now - thanks mom!) see more deeply into my heart and life. The area I have been putting off writing about is my boys. My husband and I have three boys ages 14, 11 (12 on 2/2) and 8. They are the joy of our lives. And they have stretched and challenged us more than we ever imagined they could.

First off, let me tell you that I LOVE being a mom. Before I had children I was not all that enthused about being a mom but once I had our oldest my heart was totally taken. I love the challenge of raising children to be responsible, caring adults and I love the privilege of watching them grow and develop and mature. My boys are so precious to me. I am honored to have the role of mother in their lives.

The most challenging part of being a mother for me (other than potty-training - those experiences still give me nightmares!) is the fact that my two oldest boys have a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. Oh, I have learned so much by the experience of raising children with special needs. And my heart goes out to all parents out there who are. This experience has really opened my eyes to so many things. First, that there is a grief process that parents go through as they are raising children with special needs. When we are expecting our children we have hopes and dreams that we aren't even aware of and when we discover that our children have disabilites, we have to let go of some or many of these hopes and dreams. And of course there is often a feeling of guilt that we are grieving over our children - but I've learned to just accept the grief and allow it to work through me so I can get to the other side - acceptance and hope and cherishing the life God has given us.

There is so much more I have learned but I think I'll save it for other posts. I am hoping to write a little about each of my boys in the next week - maybe even have them write about themselves as well. They have blessed my life so richly and I hope they will bless yours as well.

Can you say "BRRRRRRRRRR!"?

... WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 PM EST FRIDAY...
WIND CHILLS OF 15 TO 20 BELOW WILL CONTINUE TONIGHT AND INTO FRIDAY MORNING.
A WIND CHILL ADVISORY MEANS THAT VERY COLD AIR TEMPERATURES... OR A COMBINATION OF COLD AIR TEMPERATURES AND WIND... WILL LEAD TO FROSTBITE OR HYPOTHERMIA IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN. IF YOU MUST VENTURE OUTDOORS... MAKE SURE YOU WEAR A HAT AND GLOVES.

so many books, so little time!

Here's a meme of books you may have read from Ben's blog. Thought I'd kick off the New Year with it. If anyone chooses to do this on your blog, please let me know. I am always looking for good recommendations.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Mark in a different color the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - twice
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 1 1/2 of the 3
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - in highschool
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - in highschool I think
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - hs (in highschool)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - 2 or 3 times now
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - a few in hs
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - hs
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - hs
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - I've read about 1/3
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - I've read 3 of them
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - hs
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - a few chapters
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - the entire series
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - currently reading
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - hs
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - I can't remember for sure - maybe in college
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - teacher read to class in elementary school
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - mom read it to me as a child and I read it to my boys
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - I think in hs
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - I think I read it in French in hs
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo