Oh, the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we’ve no place to go,
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

This cheerful Christmas burst was instigated when I asked Audrey to go find me a clean table cloth for the kitchen nook. Off she went, the little decorator in her full of glee, and returned with a table cloth that says all over it, “Let it snow!”. And that is what we put on our table this Memorial Day. And the singing began and just couldn’t be put to a stop.

All this singing of Christmas led to a wonderful little conversation at the kitchen nook while Audrey ate her apple pie (leftover filling from last years pickings at the orchard). It was preceded by me making up a song (at Audrey’s request) about Christmas and how it is all about celebrating Jesus’ birthday. The conversation went something like this:

Shanel: “Audrey, Christmas is a big birthday celebration for Jesus, isn’t it?”
Audrey nods her head in agreement.
Shanel: “Audrey, who is Jesus?” (What kind of mother asks these big questions of her four year old? It just kind of came out; I was curious to hear her answer.)
Audrey shrugs her shoulders.
Shanel: “He’s God isn’t he? He came to be with us on the earth as a man.”
More shrungging of shoulders.
And then she starts talking. “Jesus came to wash our sins away.” (She got this after watching a video of her cousin singing in her old lady voice, “O Happy Day”.)
Shanel: “Yes, and our sins are those bad things we do and say sometimes.”
Audrey: “Yes, mommy, like when you talk mean to me sometimes.”

Oh dear.
Yes, daughter, like when I talk mean to you sometimes.
O, happy day, he’s washed my mother sins away, all my impatience, anger, hostility and aggression, and straight up rage at times.
O, happy day.

And as Audrey insists conclucing every dinner prayer, we say, “Thank you, God, for Christmas.”

BTW, Ivan has inspired me to get back on the blog bandwagon. He suggested I try to blog Mon, Wed, Fri. So I will attempt this great feat. Get me back on your blog roll, pretty please.

And all I have to say when it is all over: thank God for Solumel.

Postscript: My kind husband has pointed out that the above writing could be misconstrued as anger. No. Exasperation mixed with humor is more like it.

Postscript2: Get this: the girls wake up from their forced naps. Audrey tells me she is thirsty while I am cleaning the upstairs sitting room. I tell her to go downstairs and find her water cup. I come down a bit later after not seeing her for sometime, and lo and behold, there she is in the kitchen nook eating the very food we fought to the point of vomit over earlier. You have got to be freakin’ kidding me?!? Get this2: This evening, instead of eating LoAnn’s amazing homemade macaroni and cheese, the kid wants a repeat performance of what we had for lunch. She is currently in the kitchen eating another helping of it (tuna fish salad).

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (like four year old’s who refuse to eat their lunches and puke all over my stairs) and courage to change the things I can (like my visceral reactions to not liking being a mom some days).

So you will understand exactly why the moment we arrived at my parents house we unloaded perishable items and perishable children and left immediately for the local bar, the Hilltop.

And you will understand, based on previous mentioned evidence, that it would be totally appropriate to catch Ivan drinking one of these:
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My dishes went unwashed today,
I didn’t make the bed,
I took his hand and followed
Where his eager footsteps led.

Oh yes, we went adventuring,
My little son and I…
Exploring all the great outdoors
Beneath the summer sky

We waded in a crystal stream,
We wandered through a wood…
My kitchen wasn’t swept today
But life was gay and good.

We found a cool, sun-dappled glade
And now my small son knows
How Mother Bunny hides her nest,
Where jack-in-the-pulpit grows.

We watched a robin feed her young,
We climbed a sunlit hill…
Saw cloud-sheep scamper through the sky,
We plucked a daffodil.

That my house was neglected,
That I didn’t brush the stairs,
In twenty years, no one on earth
Will know, or even care.

But that I’ve helped my little boy
To noble manhood grow,
In twenty years, the whole wide world
May look and see and know.

HA!

Can you believe that? And it was, truly. I think I was the most well supported woman in that hospital probably for the entire month of November. I had so many people loving on me before the birth and so many surrounding me (in multiple ways). I was covered. I popped that baby out without any difficulty (all things considering) and I held her in my arms and was just amazed.

God buys back really bad birth experiences and gives us new ones. Right, Sarah? And he continues to do that in other areas of my life. He does.

So here’s to God and his love for me as a mother, as a birthing woman and as a courageous, pink-caped soul! And here’s to the little life he formed in my womb and brought into being, Scarlet Charlene. I celebrate her this day and all that she means to me.

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We are sitting on the little couches, evaluating our handiwork and design when all of a sudden, Audrey pushes on my belly, the chubby part above my belly-button, and inquires, “Baby in the belly, mom?”

Oh, dear.
This is not good.
If my daughter thinks I look pregnant, it must be really bad; the chub, that is.
I think I need to do something about all this leftover baby fat, stressed-out and don’t know how to cope sort of fat.

So when I mess up the times of appointments and get there an hour and a half too early after rushing out of the house and getting slack for blowdrying my hair, putting some color on my eyes and spritzing my wrists with cheap perfume and realize I forgot all my normal things I would bring with me anywhere: knitting, a journal, a book or some work to do from my home care nursing job, I KICK MYSELF—over and over and over again. [I'm aware of the run on sentence; that is how my life feels these days, one big run on sentence.] As I cry with someone I confide in regularly, I realize that my life has very little margin for these sorts of error. I cannot afford to waste any time whatsoever and every half hour is so precious.

So you might understand why it appeals to me to run away on most days. I drive over I-94 and fantastize about just driving north, deep into the woods of Wisconsin. Drive and drive until I get lost and can’t find my way back. But then it occurs to me that even if I did “escape”, I would be haunted by life here and the family I left behind. It just wouldn’t work. So I stay and keep plowing hoping that I don’t get so utterly depleted that my insides compress and there is nothing left of me. Kind of bleak, eh? But, hey, that is where I am at most days if I really sit still and distill it all.

I cling to these words in this bleak and leaky place…”And I rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but I also rejoice in my sufferings, because I know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint me, because God has poured out his love into my heart by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given me.”

God is producing something in me.

It kind of reminds me of the movie American Beauty and the crazy wife, Carolyn (played by Annette Bening) who is extremely tightly wound. There is this scene where she is driving in her stereotypical suburban SUV listening to a self help tape and is repeating a mantra over and over again. Carolyn is trying with all her might to hold it together, appearing happy, light, like there is nothing wrong but really her facade of a life is completely unraveling before her eyes. She has no control left in keeping her shell held together and she is about to crack. You can see craziness oozing from the whites of her eyes. One of the best scenes in the movie, I am digressing here, is where she literally loses it and starts screaming like a lunatic in the car with tears running down her face and she keeps shaking her head in disbelief as her craziness erupts. Those are the images that ran through my mind as I started singing this “happy song” about vomit.

But really, come on, how much vomit can one woman handle in one day!?! There is a limit, people! I have decided that my newest daughter, the lovely Scarlet, is a geyser of vomit. Non stop vomiting. And it really does erupt just like a geyser. Unpredictable, straight up into the air (well, kind of), and coming from deep within (her bowel). Yesterday, I actually showered; mind you, it was three o’clock in the afternoon. But I finally showered; that is the point! I even put on a cute outfit and lovely things (if you know what I mean, ladies). And wouldn’t you know: I sit down after adorning my body with lotions, clean (and cute) clothes, and some spritzes of my new favorite perfume (embarrassing to admit but why not, J. Lo’s, Glow, hee hee), and nurse my baby. Everything is going just fine until the burp. It always starts with the burp. Burps are good for my * gas attack * prone daughter, but without fail, vomit ensues. And wouldn’t you know, she decides to aim this time. I’m serious. Vomit goes straight down the front of my shirt, not on the outside but down the inside of my top, straight into my lovely things. Exasperated, I gasp and look her straight in the eyes and say, “You have to stop this bad little habit of yours!” I say it just like Carolyn in American Beauty with all my craziness oozing out of the whites of my eyes this time, pretending to be cutesy and lighthearted about it. But all the while, seething and ready to erupt and have a serious melt down.

Ahhh, my little geyser. My little geyser of vomit.

And then there is Audrey Anne. Oh, Audrey Anne. How can one resist her cuteness? She has some quirky things to her little person; yeap, she does. She loves to organize things; according to shapes, color, sizes, similar objects, etc. She is really good at it. It reminds me a little of the produce section in Whole Foods. You walk in and it is simply lovely. The colors, the arrangements of fruit, the greens, all stacked in a color wheel sort of way.

However, she is always moving stuff from here to there. I have decided she is like a mini tornado. Being someone who is also soothed by order and organization, I have a certain idea of where things should go. I am okay with having toys in all corners of the house, but they have to have a home and some sort of system in all those corners of the house. You know what I mean? The play kitchen stuff needs to stay in the little mini kitchen area. The wooden blocks need to stay up in the play room in a very specific basket designated for these blocks. But she rumbles through the house collecting stuff in little bags and baskets and is constantly transplanting and reorganizing it in her on sense of organizing. It just occurred to me that she is more like a tornado shaped honey bee, transplanting her pollen of chaos throughout my house. I want you to picture this. Lil’ Audrey Anne, the tornado honey bee. Can’t you see it instantly in your imagination? A bag on one arm filled with letters, a basket in the other hand carrying her porcelain tea dishes. All the while, she is pushing her pottery barn pram filled with George, babies, Elmo and bunny. She may even have loaded the bottom of the the pram with play vegetables and sorted them according to color and separated them with little bottles of paint. And then off she goes upstairs transplanting some of these items to the play room. On her way down, she will bring with her a collection of the yellow and orange blocks in another little gift bag and a purse slung on her shoulder filled with the strings that belong to the little cut outs of animals still up in the play room. And lets not even begin to talk about the beads!! Breathe, Shanel, breathe. Chaos is threatening to unravel me and there is probably a carol about to emerge from my mouth about tornado’s and honeybee’s and toys and toys and toys and beads!

Ahhh, my little tornado honeybee. My little tornado honeybee.

[God sustain me.]