Keep your pants on!

There comes a time generally in my conversations with people that it reaches a TMI point.   I am a nurse and people tell me and show me all sorts of things, so very little bothers me.  I sometimes forget that it does bother others. However I am going to go ahead and just rip that band aid off right now.

We were taking care of our friend's place while they were on vacation. We would stop by and feed the cats and water their plants.  My middle son, who was almost two at the time, and I stopped by to take care of things after we had been swimming at a nearby friend's house.  We were still in our bathing suits and needed to change there before picking my other son up.  We got to the house and our shorts were pretty wet from our suits underneath.  I took off the bottom half of my suit and shorts along with Ben's suit and threw them into the dryer. I had gone to the bathroom and got a little surprise from mother nature at that exact moment.   I grabbed  a sanitary napkin and unwrapped it so that it would be ready when the clothes were dry. With that still in hand I turned the corner and their cat came charging at us, hissing with his claw up like we were his prey.  I quickly grabbed Ben, dropped the sanitary napkin on the kitchen counter and ran into the nearest room and shut the door.  We had barely made it and the cat was attacking the door hissing and scratching. There we were in the office safe with no pants on, and this cat hissing and stalking the door.  I didn't quite know what to do.  I thought about the window but, again, I had no pants on.  The window didn't open anyway. I looked around the room and there wasn't one thing I could cover up  with.  I saw on the desk there was a phone and a church directory.  I called up a friend that had a cat and explained we were trapped in the office, with the cat at the door and we had no pants.  There was silence on the other end of the line for a period and then laughter.  As I was talking to her I realized the vacuum was in the room and asked "cats are afraid of vacuums right? , Great"  I plugged the vacuum in turned it on rolled the vacuum in the cats direction grabbed our pants quickly put them on and got out of the house as fast as I could..  (Ben didn't get his pants on until we were outside).  It did cross my mind that I had left the sanitary napkin on the kitchen counter and the vacuum spread out in the hallway. I didn't care.  I was so relieved we had gotten out of there with some of our dignity intact.  So when our friends got home they were welcomed with their vacuum in the hallway a sanitary napkin on the kitchen counter.

All I can say from this experience is when taking care of a friend's house always keep your pants on.

The widower

We named our son Jonathan because it means God's gift.  It is also associate with being loyal, a good friend and  manly.  His middle name is after my husband which is fitting since they are the spitting image of one another.  Jonathan was even born the day before my husband's birthday.  Last weekend I was at a friend's house doing a garage sale and he would come out of the house with his nerf gun with a serious look on his face asking if there was any trouble pointing this nerf gun at anyone who looked suspicious to him. His loyalty is fierce.
 About three years ago he was a ring bearer in our friend's wedding. Of course I thought he was adorable in his tuxedo and the flower girl had a beautiful white dress.  He took the job very seriously.  A couple of months later we were looking at the photos of the blessed event and he looked at me in a panic saying "Mom I got married,  I don't want to be married, I don't like it,  what I am going to do,  I want to marry daddy"!  I reassured him he was just in a wedding and he was not the one that got married.  He did not buy it.  You are married when you have a wedding and according to him he had a wedding.  He continued to lament over this fact for two years.  I thought he would forget, but that boy remembers everything.  Despite frequent reassurance from both me and dad he thought he was married and told people he was.  It was if his life was over.  Two years later he was still worried about it and with nothing else reassuring him I looked him straight in the eyes and said "Sweetie, I'm sorry to tell you that your wife died"!  (I know that is terrible, but I was desperate) He looked back at me and was finally relieved.  I thought great he doesn't have to carry around this burden anymore.  I didn't hear anymore about it and then one day I was taking Jonathan and his friends somewhere and they were discussing who they were going to marry. It was  quite entertaining to hear this from a bunch of little boy's perspectives. A lot of who they wanted to marry was based on legos. When it got to Jonathan he stated  "I have already been married, but she died"!

If I only had a brain

Growing up I should have always known I was going to be a mom based simply on the fact I have always had a case of mommy brain. In fact, someone gave our family a foam brain and the running joke was that they had finally found my brain.  It wasn't that they thought I was stupid by any means ( I did manage to graduate college and land on the deans list), but I would do things like go to school with Noxema cold cream all over my face (two days in a row).  I always hoped I had a secret genius that would come out someday. It might still happen.

After the birth of our third little boy my mommy brain went to new heights. We had a month where we had a birthday party every weekend and I sent Declan's present to Sam's party (labeled to Declan) and vice versa. I then started putting produce away in the cupboards among the cups and instead of putting the dirty diaper in the trash bag I placed it in the drawer with the extra trash bags.  This last weekend I think I hit the peak of mommy brain.  I buckled all of the kids into the back seat of the car which in itself takes thirty minutes. I went inside to grab just one more thing and came out and got into the car and started the engine.  I was marveled on how quiet the car was and then it dawned on me that I had gotten into the other car (the one my children were not in).  I was so thankful I realized this minor little fact before I started driving. Of course my children thought it was hilarious.

That is why I just love my  kids.  They are so forgiving and if anything think I am great for all of my little imperfections. As for my mommy brain, it is a gift that comes with the joy of living life with three boys!