Doggie Pile on me

This summer.  Oh, my.

I have never in my life been so consistently overwhelmed.  All my kids all the time with so very few experiences that could be categorized as "breaks."  Let's just say that at this moment 4 kids feels like a larger amount than it sounds like.  I need 3 of me even more than usual.  I could keep one of me more than busy just keeping tabs on the kids.  Another one could clean and clean and clean, (because kids are gross) and maybe cook, and the third one can think more than 10 minutes ahead and plan and record and think clearly and be gracious and funny and get enough sleep.

But despite the bulldozer aspect of the majority of my summer, there have been some shiny moments.



The boys all had a few days of heaven during our bi-annual family reunion in Hanna.  (Bunny however had a cold, so neither she nor I got any sleep and the two of us were grumpy the whole time).



I'm pretty sure I've aged 2 or 3 years this summer from sheer sleep deprivation.  My kids appear to be on a rotating schedule for illness and night terrors and bed-wetting.  It is always somebody's turn.  Last night the Captain came knocking at my door at 1 am, complaining that he was tired.  I do not joke, my sleep losses are not funny to me at this point.

Bunny has nearly exploded with teeth in the past few weeks.  She has also become fully mobile.  She's a cute, slobbery, wiggly mess and nothing is safe with her around.   Everybody who sees me in action says my hands are full, and it seems to become more true every passing day.



Somehow though, in the midst of sheer exhaustion, I can see how I would miss all this craziness some day.  There is a lot of vibrance in the mess.  There is always something to do.  There is something endearing about all this neediness from all these oblivious short people.  They are physically exhausting but they are also transparent.  The stakes are still low.  The drama is still over snacks and losing a game and not wanting to wear pants.  They will all still hold my hand and sit on my lap when they are pouty.  They will grow up, they will need less from me for their health and well-being.  The things they'll need from me will get infinitely more spindly to navigate.  It will get harder to tell how I'm doing and where I'm failing.  So this straightforward exhausting bit will look pretty sweet in retrospect.

Somehow I've just got to wrestle my way through the remaining two weeks of summer vacation.  Sir O starts back and then (gulp) I start back a couple of weeks later.  Things are destined to get more intense, and not less.  But there is hope that with the older boys in school on a regular basis I will occasionally find a moment to come to the surface for air before diving back in.  It's truly amazing what a difference realistic expectations make when one is attempting ambitious lunacy.  I can see how wild it's going to be and how intensely tightly I'll have to budget my time.  I can also see how relatively short of a time the whole endeavor will be.  I suppose it's a sign of some sort of old age when I find myself saying "I can do anything for only 2 years...."

June loves me

I stole more moments from today than was prudent to just enjoy June.



 With the exception of our neighbor's cottonwood tree shedding malicious fluff all over the place it is downright pleasant to be outside right now.  It smells like summer should.  And both the good and the bad news are that the strawberries in my parents' yard are galloping toward ripe.

Picking strawberries is one of those perfectly idyllic activities that everyone in our family loves.... in small doses.  There may be no more satisfying sound than the zippy snap of a perfectly ripe strawberry that lets go of it's stem with ease when tugged on.  We all seem to adore plucking in 5 minute increments.  Longer than that and it is at risk of becoming a chore.



The smell that's leaving hints in the kitchen as the boys bring me present-piles of a dozen berries here and there is sweetness personified.  It's all accumulating into a mound of fleshy rubies, from which we nibble when we think no one is watching.  And I would love love love to put my life on hold to make some jam.  But this is not a terribly convenient moment for jam-making.
Remember, wedding?  moving?  
Yeah.
So I reluctantly send myself inside the house to work.  But I have trouble disciplining my kids for sneaking back outside to play.  It's pretty irresistible out there.

progress

I've got a rental agreement in my hot little inbox.

I'm just beginning to emotionally believe that this "living with the parents" chapter of our lives is ending.  Consequently, I'm finally motivated to pack up in earnest.  For how much I abhor packing, I sure seem to have to do it a lot.  By the end of May my goal was to pack up most of our books (I started!), break down the Captain's crib/toddler bed (done), and sweep the house for our belongings that have migrated outside of our designated space. (Done, but will need done again.  And again....)  We also packed up our toys, which might seem premature, but there are lots of toys that live at Grandma's house, and they boys haven't complained once.
This week I hope to finish packing books, pack up all of our dishes and pantry belongings, and pack up my craft closet.  After that we'll be moving into a higher gear.

We've had an abundance of wrenches thrown in our gears and have yet to be able to find a plausible move date.  I will regardless have a wedding right before and right after the move.  When July 8 rolls around, I expect to disappear in a heap of crashing and nesting.  I am looking forward to it and fully expect to relish it to bits.

Saturday, as I prepared to dash out the door for a day of house-hunting, I decided to check the online classifieds one last time to see if anything new had come up since the night before.  I already had a list of more than 25 houses to look at (and we came nowhere near getting to all of them) so I'm not sure why I felt compelled to consider adding more.  But there was one new listing that morning, and when we stopped by that house, we liked it enough to call the number, and the owner sounded excited to hear from us and drove right over to show us through the house.  We stayed for almost 2 hours and our search went no further.  (Which is good, the whole process was beginning to make us both uber-ornery).

(the back yard)

Assuming things go as planned (which I try to never assume with too much emotional investment), we'll have a house in a lovely neighborhood on a quiet street (we didn't see a single car drive by while we were there) with almost 1/2 acre, 3 fruit trees, grape vines, berries, rhubarb(!), and a large garden plot (that already has some volunteer pumpkins growing in it).  Along with flower beds full of the sort of loveliness you don't regularly find in Utah yards(double peonies, lots of clematis, columbines, and a whole row of irises).  The house has never been rented before and there are no other rentals in the neighborhood.  The neighbor over the back fence gives away gobs of garden produce and eggs from their chickens.  It's ridiculously close to Mr Renn's work and Sir O's preschool.  It seems like a pretty marvelous fit.  I've had more than one vision of myself making and canning jam in the kitchen.  It's not perfect, but it's certainly more than adequate.

So on the one hand, I have so much to do in the month of June that I need time to slow down.  On the other hand, I am so excited at the prospect of mid-July that it can't come fast enough.   Somewhere between the two is my stop-and-go reality and my emotional whiplash.  My plate is very full, but it's full of good things.  Now, back to work.

How to have a long day

Our dear Mr Renn had another morning of testing the waters at his *new* job yesterday.  We elected to have me bring the boys down for a late lunch and then make an afternoon of exploring our new town.  Sir O got to meet his new preschool teacher (who reminds us a lot of his current preschool teacher, whom we all adore), the boys got to play in the "kids room" in the waiting area of the clinic (it has a treehouse, a tv, and at least one monster truck), and we checked out in person a few of the rental houses we'd been considering online.  Most of them were in neighborhoods that we were only "alright" with.  There were only 3 that I felt any real energy about.   And one of them, of course, I fell head-over-heels in love with.





It has the most perfect back yard known to man.  It also has only 1000 square feet and 0 closets in the entire house.  It would be tiny and tight living there, but a part of me can't fathom living anywhere else just now.  It is right across the street from the Art Museum, and the kids played in the backyard for over an hour and we had to peel them away with great alligator tears.   All of us want to live there, we just think the lack of space inside might just kill us.  We'd definitely have to have a storage unit again.  We'll see.



We stopped by Sammy's in Provo for dinner on the way home. (A friend from my freshman ward is married to "Sammy")



 It was as cool as I'd hoped, and the food was a good as I'd hoped.  But it wasn't as kid-friendly as I'd hoped.



 I also had a "welcome to Utah county" moment when I was surrounded by 3 moms trying to force their kids to be cute so they could mamarazzi them with their dSLRs.  I was happy that at that moment my camera was out of sight.  That part of life "down south" will be an adjustment for me.



Do people really sign a lease for a house and move in a week later?  Everybody wants their rentals filled by June 1st and we are not moving until July.  I can't quite wrap my brain around not planning ahead more than that.  Perhaps it's because I'm moving from far enough away that I can't buzz over to look at a new listing.  A rather large part of me is anxious to nail down our new temporary home and move on to the next stressor.  How have you handled temporary housing?

bloggers anonymous

You may begin wondering whether you have a blogging "problem" when every time your camera is whipped out you get an "is this going on the blog?" comment.
How often does this happen to me?  Pretty much every time there's another adult in my picture.
But it's always nice to find out people actually read what I write.  More than occasionally I feel like I'm talking to myself here in bloggerspace.
I slipped out last night to visit some out-of-town friends from college, most of whom I haven't seen in years.  My, how we've all grown up.  I was the only one with kids who managed to make it to this shin-dig (thanks to my lovely husband) and I got to contemplate lots of deep and happy things.  God's good to me in the "landing lovely people in her lap" department.

up and out

While I'm preoccupied with the near-future, my kids determinedly grow up in the here and now.





In the "just a year" that we've been staying here, Sir O has completely blossomed with his ability to communicate complex thoughts and ask meaningful questions.  Our Captain has transformed from a babyman to an autonomous toddler.  (And he's picked up great momentum with his speech, just in the last two weeks).  Oh, and the gentleman has exploded into a ginormous tubby chunk of sunshine.



So why don't I feel like I've changed much at all?  I expect I just can't see it because I've been experiencing every minute glacial iota of it.  I know it's impossible to keep from changing, and I hope hope hope I'm changing more for the better than not.

homework

This month I'm enrolled in Nicole's Photo 101 course in an attempt to polish my photography skills. It's so weird to have homework again! (Almost as weird as cramming for my floral design exam this same time last year). Here's a peek at some shots I've taken for my homework assignment this week. I find it hilarious that I appear to like my photographs tight and close (with shallow depth of field), just like my floral designs.....

cutting block

Between the receding hairline, the post-postpartum fuzz, and severe time restrictions for my morning routine, my hair needed a big change, and I finally bit the bullet and got it over with.



You like?

tulipa

My grandpa has a garden-full of tulips. Years ago he planted the bulbs extra deep so that he can just till and plant his kitchen garden on top of them once they're done for the year. I'm told that people stop to look all the time, it's certainly an unexpected and cheerful wash of color when one is cruising down Main Street in Farmington. My mother told us that we needed to find time to visit it last weekend while it's still in it's prime.  We made the briefest of drive-by visits, but still; lovely lovely. As close to the Keukenhof as we're likely to get this year.

brief bouts of insanity

Despite having another intense wedding week ahead of me, and a 50% chance of precipitation, the HSF and I decided to take all our crazy kids to Red Butte Garden and get some mileage out of my membership yesterday.





I can't be certain but it's possible that I spent the entire time yelling at my kids.  Either I am awesome or they are. Must have something to do with vessels of water large enough for children to fall into.





The poor Gentleman was stuck strapped in the entire time, and he endured it as best he could.



We wrangled the kids out the front entrance just as our sanity reached it's limit. And about 45 seconds later we started getting pelted with hail. I will forever be grateful I didn't have to do that wrangling during the hailstorm. Tender mercy? I think yes.

The Bunny Hop

We are wrapping up Easter preparations in our corner today.  Towards the last second I decided we ought to go ahead and color eggs.  At this point I figure I'm more likely to regret skipping it than not.



The boys were surpisingly good and the mess, while certainly existent, was far less impressive than I was expecting.  It must have something to do with having Dad around.  The man's got some familial leadership skills.



I also pulled together an egg-shaped centerpiece comprised largely of leftover flowers from the funeral piece I did earlier this week.  The yellow roses weren't happy, but hopefully they have it in them to last 1 more day.

Homecoming/Passover

Mr Renn's parents survived a trip home from Argentina this weekend.  We're almost half-way through 4 years of having them gone October-April serving a mission for our church.   I think Grandma was pretty anxious to get here and hold some babies.  She hadn't held our gentleman since he was just a few weeks old, and Mr Renn's little sister just had a baby girl a few weeks ago.



So we found an excuse to have a family party post-haste.  Mr Renn's been wanting to re-create the passover meal we participated in last year, and his brother-in-law has a master's degree in Hebrew studies.  So we organized ourselves, divided assignments, and went for it.  I give props to everyone for being willing to try new things.



Although some were more excited about it than others.



Afterward we skyped Mr Renn's sister in Michigan and felt like we were "sort of" all together for a minute.



Then Grandma and Grandpa pulled out some fun surprises - little Argentinian futbol uniforms! (Which both of my boys insisted on wearing today despite the cold and rainy weather).



It was a good, good way to wrap up an otherwise crazy weekend. The kids had so much fun playing with their cousins and loving on their grandparents. It is good to have them back.

Weekend Recap: put a fork in me

An awful lot had to happen to get me through the last 7 days. I am still decompressing a bit.

On Wednesday I had to pull some strings and ask a few favors in order to pick up my first "order" from the wholesaler. Then I had to pull some more strings to drive back and pick up the parts of my order they forgot the first time. That's called learning the hard way to double check everything before you drive home.



I got everything soaking in a hydraplus solution and got my workstation set up. I then spent most of Thursday gluing corsages and boutonnieres. (And making a mess of my mother's basement)



I made 4 bouquets, 9 boutonnieres, and 4 corsages. Written like that it doesn't sound like much, but it took a fair number of hours for me to get them done, thanks in large part to interruptions from my littles. (It's okay, that's my full-time, all-the-time job)



I spent Thursday night helping to set up a church gym. I got home super late.





And Friday I woke up to Sir O puking. That is always a lovely way to start one's day. Luckily all I had left for the wedding was finishing touches, and the actual reception. I may have eaten a cakeball or twelve after forgetting to eat dinner. (Hmm..... that sounds good right about now)







Friday was also the day we realized my antibiotics for fighting my sinus infection were also giving our gentleman thrush. Just to complicate my life, really.



Saturday has meant gluing ribbon on the flowers for the temple ceremony/pictures, completing two arrangements for a charity auction, seeing my little sister off on her first date/prom, cleaning up the unholy mess I had made, and attending said auction/carnival. My kids consumed their weight in sugar. And were hilarious and happy until bedtime. Bedtime was sort of like wrestling greased pigs into bed.





This little man attempted his first night in a twin bed tonight.  He makes me laugh every single day.  I wish everyone were so lucky.