Fold My Laundry Please

As my due date approaches, Ethan, my five year old, has more and more questions about the baby and how it is going to get out of my belly when the time comes.

Ethan:  When will you know that the baby is ready to come out?

Me:  My tummy muscles will start to hurt and that will let me know that the baby is ready.

Ethan:  Will it hurt bad?

Me:  Yes, it will.  But then we’ll go to the hospital and the doctors will help the baby get out.

Ethan:  But how will the baby get out?

Me:  Ladies have a special hole that the baby comes out of.

Ethan:  *looks at me with narrowed eyes*  Is it a big hole?

Me:  Well, it stretches so that it’s just big enough for the baby to fit.

Ethan:  *still looking at me suspiciously*  Where is this hole at?

Me:  Look, your friends are outside on the playground!  Let’s go outside!

Clearly, I’m not quite ready to describe the differences between boys and girls in detail yet.

Last night, during our bed time routine, Ethan started the questions again.  They were the same questions as always and I was answering them with my usual answers.  Then Ethan got to the last question.  I started looking around the room for something to distract him with.  That’s when Dad took over.

Andrew:  Okay Ethan, you know that boys have peenies and that girls don’t, right?

Ethan:  Uh-huh.

Andrew:  Well, on girls, where the peenie should be is a little hole.

Ethan:  *looking a little disgusted* A hole between their legs?

Andrew:  Exactly!  *grabs a wide cardboard tube from a toy building set and holds it between his legs*  You see, when the baby is ready to come out, *also grabs a stuffed clone trooper doll and sticks it up his shirt* the baby moves down and then comes out of the hole.  Like this.  *violently shoves clone trooper through cardboard tube because tube is slightly too small for doll*  Got it?

Ethan:  *smiling big*  Yep!

Andrew:  The the doctors stretch the cord out and ask Daddy to cut it so the the baby can be free. *mimes cutting cord with scissor fingers*  Then the gross part comes out and…

Me:  Aaaaand that’s how babies come out!  The baby gets a bath and then we all come home to rest.  The end!

Then Dad proceeded to start acting out a silly little puppet show with the doll, still holding the tube in his other hand.  The kids all laughed like crazy.  Then we said our prayers, gave them kisses and turned off the light.  I’m not sure if Ethan believed Andrew or not, but the questions seem to have stopped for the time being.  Thank goodness, because I don’t think I could take another biological puppet show!

Andrew:  I think I’ll sign up for an Eve Online account.

Me:  Not until your first paycheck from the new job.

Andrew:  You’re so uncool.

Me:  I’m the Voice of Reason, I’m not supposed to be cool.

Andrew:  Well, what should we do tonight?

Me:  Ummmmm…I don’t know.

Andrew:  Boy, you’re just full of ideas, aren’t you?

Me:  I said I was the Voice of Reason, not the Thinker of Ideas.  The Voice of Reason is not cool, neither does she think quickly when she wants a nap.

Yesterday we decided to take the kids to the pool in our apartment complex when Andrew got home from work.  We all got suited up and walked over there.  The kids had a blast jumping in the water while Andrew decided to unwind for a while in the hot tub.  I stood there with Aurora in her little floating seat thingy watching the boys climb in and out and occassionally catching someone when their floaties slipped off their skinny little arms.  Then we went to the hot tub for a bit, too.  The hot tub was too hot for me and pretty soon I was taking the kids back to the cold pool. 

There was a group of teenagers standing in the pool near us when we got back in; all of them about 15 or 16 years old.  One of the boys suggested they all go to the hot tub.  One of the girls said, "I don’t want to go in the hot tub.  There’s old men in there!"  I looked back at the hot tub to see who the old men were that had gotten in since I left.  The only two people there were my husband (who is 28) and a guy maybe 5 years older than him.  I had to laugh!  I hadn’t realized that I was married to an "old man"!  I thought he was just "broken in"!

We went to Costco on a junk food run today.  We got super healthy snacks like a lifetime supply of Mint Patties and a crate of 3 Musketeer bars.  Because no diet is complete without mass quantities of sugar. 

For some reason, that store had a rather electrifying effect on me.  The floors are all plain, smooth cement, and no one else seemed to be affected, so I’m not sure what was going on.  But every time I touched someone, they got a massive shock from me.  At first I tried to avoid touching anyone because the shocks were strong enough to hurt.  But eventually I got over myself and the silly side of our family took over.  Everyone started trying to sneakily tough me on the ears and arms when I wasn’t looking and I was leaning over for explosive kisses on baby cheeks.  What had started out as a quick stop in Costco ended up being an hour long excursion consisting largely of the five of us going in circles around the store annoying other customers and making general fools of ourselves.  But boy did we have fun!

I looked over at my beautiful little girl yesterday.  She was sitting on the floor amusing herself with something and giggling happily.  "How sweet," I thought, "she’s certainly enjoying herself.  I wonder what she’s playing with?"  She was batting something around, but it was moving funny across the ground.  I watched for a minute before realizing that whatever it was wasn’t just rolling around, it was running away.  A closer look revealed that the thing was fairly large and hairy and was behaving in a way that seemed a bit panicked.  Suddenly, I figured out what it was.  It was a big. Hairy. Wolf spider!  *shudder*  A wolf spider that my 22 month old baby girl was trying to pick up; for what purpose, I can’t even imagine. 

I, being the Mommy, want to set a good example for my children.  I want them to know that there is nothing to be afraid of about insect-like creatures, despite my unreasonable fear of spiders.  So I decided to display this shining example by whipping Aurora up off the ground and running 6 feet away.  I stopped just six feet away instead of my desired one mile away because the thought came to me that it needed to die and that task wouldn’t be accomplished if I didn’t throw something at it before it ran off.  At this point Ethan, started bouncing around me asking over and over again, "What are you doing, Mommy?  What’s going on?"  I turned around to locate the beast only to find it scurrying after us rapidly, apparently on the attack.  This is when I screamed.  I mean really screamed.  Like, I got a call two minutes later from an unnamed B-movie director asking me to do the scream-track for his next slasher movie sort of screamed. 

This scream resulted in two things.  The first was that Ethan ran to the furthest corner of his bedroom, curled up into the fetal position, and began sobbing uncontrollably.  The second was that the hairy little ogre chasing me stopped dead in its tracks.  I don’t think spiders can hear noise, but surely it heard that scream!  This pause in the action was when I took the opportunity to get a grip, both on reality and on a nearby shoe (because I had no Clorox Clean Up handy).  I had noticed how my overreaction had affected Ethan and now I had to initiate damage control.  I seized the opportunity and announced bravely, "Back, Furry Fiend!  Eat shoe!" At which point I threw that shoe at the spider, immediately scoring a direct hit!  It did its dead spider routine and curled up into a ball and expired. 

"Alright," I said, "which brave boy wants to flush him down the toilet?"  Because that’s what you do with dead critters, you flush them down the toilet.  Also, there was absolutely no way on earth that I was ever going ot touch that thing.  I very bravely walked past the corpse and got a few tissues out of the bathroom.  Ethan had come over to verify that the enemy was down.  He was still wimpering, but at least he had come out of the corner.  Gideon was sitting next to spider beating it into a fine powder with the shoe that was still lying on the floor.  I offered the wad of tissues to Ethan who flinched as though I had swung a butcher’s knife in his direction.  Gideon reached up and grabbed the tissues, picked up the dead spider with them and then shook the spider out into the toilet. 

"Throw the tissues in, too." 

"No, I wanna watch him swirl around!"

"Whatever floats your boat."

Suddenly, fear gripped me again.  My baby had been playing with a creature that hunts.  That means it also bites.  Creatures that feel threatened bite.  Did that devil spawn bite my Precious Princess Baby Sweet?  I found Aurora, who was hiding behind a box being mad at me for interrupting her play, and started to search her hands, arms, and legs for bite marks.  She fought me off the whole time, spitting and scratching like a cornered alley cat.  "You can’t play with spiders because they bite, Baby.  I don’t want you to get booboos."  This bit of reason calmed her down enough for me to finish my inspection.  No apparent bites.  Good.  But I vowed to check again later in case they just weren’t showing up yet.  Surely there had to be several bites because she wasn’t exactly being gentle with the spider. 

But aren’t some spider bites poisonous? 

I turned to Mr. Google and shouted, "Officer Ugh!  Officer Ugh!  How do I get the number to Officer Ugh?!?!"  The internet is a wonderful thing and the phone number to our local Poison Control Center came up instantly. 

"Poison Control.  What can I help you with?"

"Do you happen to know if wolf spiders are poisonous?"

"Wolf spiders aren’t the poisonous ones."

"Oh, thank goodness!  I just found my 22 month old playing with one on the floor and I can’t tell yet if she got bitten or not.  I just thought I’d call and make sure."

"We get calls like that all the time.  In fact, usually it’s something like the mother found her child with a spider leg sticking out of his or her mouth."

Suppressing gag reflex, "GAH!  Why would you tell me that?" 

"Oh, sorry.  Is there anything else I can help you with?"

After that, I was able to relax a little bit.  Not a lot, though, because we had been trying to get out the door to my doctor appointment when the whole incident started.  The car ride there was filled with questions about Officer Ugh, spiders, and was Aurora going to die of a spider bite, but we still managed to get there on time.  Good thing I started getting us ready to go early so that we wouldn’t have to stress about anything!

Last Thursday, one of the counselor’s in our ward’s bishopric stopped by to extend a calling to me.  As of yesterday, I am the Wilsonville Ward’s new Primary Secretary.  I realize that the last sentence was written in Mormon-ese so here is the translation for non-mormons:  ward = church group; counselor = each ward is led by a Bishop, a First Counselor, and a Second Counselor which make up the bishopric; calling = a role you are asked to fill within your ward which helps the ward to function more smoothly, hopefully;  primary = the children’s organization for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintsfor all kids 12 and under.  This means that my Sundays just got way busier!  I’ll be taking the attendance, choosing kids to give talks the next week, and just generally being the brain of the Primary President.  It’s a calling I’m really excited about since it takes advantage of my anal retentive detail oriented nature.  Finally, an outlet for my propensity to file papers into neat little binders!

Portland, Oregon is known as "The City of Roses".  Every year it has a huge Rose Festival complete with tours of Navy ships and a Grand Floral Parade.  I’ve heard a lot about this parade since we’ve moved here.  All of the floats are made up of only organic materials such as fruits, flowers, etc.  It’s supposed to be huge!  The parade is this Saturday, and I’ve been really looking forward to it because I LOVE parades.  My husband has even reluctantly planned on attending despite the fact that he hates parades.  I was checking the parade route online this evening and seeing if there were any recommendations about how early to get there in order to park relatively close when I noticed that there is a $30 per person admission fee to see the parade!  What’s up with that?!?!  There is no way I’m going to pay $30 per person to sit in a lawn chair desperately hoping the other people will stay out of your way so that you don’t end up having to stand throughout the entire thing!  Is it normal to charge admission for the big parades?  If I wanted to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade some year, would there be an admission fee?  And how exactly do they regulate it?  Are they going to have the entire parade route blocked off with gates you have to go through just to reach the curbside?  I realize that parades cost tons of cash to put on, especially the big ones, but I kind of thought they were supposed to be free events designed to get people into the city to spend their money at local businesses, museums, etc.  Silly, silly, girl! 

Today I had intended to spend the day cleaning the house.  I’ve gotten a little bit behind on housework lately and once again the bathrooms are begging me to scrub them and my family is getting dressed out of laundry baskets.  But as I maneuvered my way around boxes this morning (no, we still haven’t finished unpacking) I kind of snapped.  Aside from the fact that if my belly gets much bigger, I’d have to grease up to get around the house, the piles are driving me CRAZY!  Most of the boxes that were left hadn’t been unpacked in 3 moves.  As I opened them up, I tossed out a lot of stuff.  There were tons of old papers that needed to be shredded, speakers from computers that we no longer own, clothes that had been boxed up for donation and had somehow never quite made it to the drop off site, wires, cords, and plugs to things unknown, and a bunch of other unexplicably packed things.  Basically, I did a large purging of stuff which was long overdue.  I also moved furniture around and lifted things I probably shouldn’t have.  My back and belly are telling me I should stop, screaming at me actually, but you know how it is when the cleaning bug hits, you don’t want to stop until you’ve totally exhausted yourself.  I’m always afraid it will sit there half done for another week while I "recover" if I don’t finish it right then.  As it is, I’ve gotten through about 3/4 of what was left.  I still have to go through the kitchen and straighten it all up and make it more usable for me and there are 6 small boxes and three large ones left to unpack.  *sigh*  Perhaps that’s what I’ll spend this weekend doing, because I honestly think that if I don’t stop soon, I won’t be able to move for days.

Ethan:  When you dance, you should use your arms more so you don’t look like a dancing fish.

Gideon:  I like fish.

Ethan:  But you don’t want to dance like one.

Gideon:  Yes I do.

Ethan:  Okay, that’s it for the dance part of our program.  Now on to the fighting!  Gideon, you take two lightsabers and Aurora, you stand very still so he won’t hurt you.  No Aurora, you have to stand still.  Stand still.  Aurora, we’re done dancing, it’s time for you to stand still so Gideon can slice you up.  Stand still……..stand still……..stand still.  Okay, Gideon, give her one of your light sabers and you two can fight each other instead.

Gideon:  I want to bake cookies!

Ethan:  Now on to the cooking part of our show.  Gideon, here are your ingredients.  *hands Gideon an empty bucket*  Make sure you mix them up good because I’ll be counting the chips in all the cookies.

Gideon:  I’m using raisins.

Ethan:  Okay, I’ll count the raisins.

Gideon:  *points to toy box*  This is the oven.  Don’t touch it, it’s hot!  GET AWAY FROM THE OVEN OR IT WILL BURN YOU!

Ethan:  Now lets play with our guys.

Gideon:  I’m still cooking.

Ethan:  You can play with guys while you wait for the timer to beep.

Gideon:  I’M STILL COOKING!

Ethan:  But the cookies will be in the oven FOREVER!

Gideon:  No they won’t.  Beep!  Cookies are done!  Mmmmmm, they’re delicious!

I could go on, but it doesn’t get any less strange.  At least they left me in peace to get my stuff on the computer done.

Have you guys seen this movie yet?  It’s been out on DVD for a little while now and we just got around to finally watching it last night.  It was such a good movie!  It’s about a man who is going about his daily routine when he suddenly starts hearing a voice narrating his life.  The movie is mostly about him trying to figure out who the voice is and why he hears her.  One of my favorite parts is when Harold (Will Ferrell) is trying to figure out if his "story" is a comedy or a tragedy.  He spends the day with a little notebook, one page marked "Comedy" and the other page marked "Tragedy".  Whenever something happens he makes a little mark on one of the pages.  At the end of the day, he opens up the notebook and the comedy page has one mark while the tragedy page is completely full of little marks.  He then turns to Miss Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhall) as he’s walking out the door and says, "I know this won’t make much sense to you, but I think I’m in a tragedy."  How many times have I felt that way, myself!

Will Ferrell has done so many jerky sort of comedies lately (I like the jerky ones, too, don’t get me wrong) that I honestly didn’t realize that he could do something more serious.  This movie, while still a comedy, had Will doing what he does best, only with subtlety, if you can imagine that.  Quite frankly, he was perfect for the part.  Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhall, and Dustin Hoffman were also great in this movie.  It was well written and had a good message.  I must say that I’m going to recommend this movie to all my friends.  Hey, look at that, I just did!