Taylor is at the age of imagination. Right now her focus is on school, and I am her trusty sidekick that becomes whoever she needs me to be at the minute. When at home working around the house she calls me “teacher.” When driving around town she calls me “bus driver.” However, I think we’ve reached the limit. When I gave her lunch today she said, “thanks, lunch box.”

(* for the record, I'm not sure who took this picture or why her head is four times larger than her body, but it made me laugh almost as much as she does - so I had to share!)

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. - Proverbs 22:6

Don't you sometimes wonder what kind of people you're molding as you work with your children in day to day life? I'm always wondering if I've taught them the important things, the things that they will need to be competent and successful in the world and in their life's purpose. Daniel likes to remind me that I my priority is to raise them to be good women and mothers. Seems easy enough until we have conversations like these:

Emily: "When my hair turns white I will turn it back to brown."

Morgan: "If my hair turns brown I'm going to color it blond."

Check vanity off the "to teach" list. Then there was this one:



Rylee: "Should I throw this jam away? I think it's bad." (referring to a batch of
homemade jam in the fridge)

Kari: "Why do you think it's bad?"

Rylee: "It's thick."

This makes me wonder if this is indicative of the homemaking skills that I'm passing along, that the only reason that jam wouldn't be totally runny is because it's bad. Then yesterday Taylor cleared up the whole matter for me in this conversation.

Taylor: "Strawberries are made of jam."

Kari: "Do you mean that jam is made up of strawberries?"

Taylor: "No, you squirt out the jam and roll it into a strawberry shape and cook it and then put it in the 'dawden' (garden) and 'den' (then) it will grow into a big strawberry plant."

So, it seems that sometimes we as parents learn as much from our children as we try to teach them. Obviously the reason that my jam doesn't set up is because I've been going about it all backward! I'm so lucky to have such clever children.

Sad but true, I found a couple of moments of simple pleasure today, and this article was one of them. I'm still chuckling. It's crude, I know, but it takes a level of class, which I no longer claim to have, to not find it amusing - so enjoy!

Since I've crossed over to the baser subjects, I may as well share the other funny of the day. Due to crass, cruddy mouthed, perverted kids in our new area I had to give a detailed explanation of the birds and bees and how all that works, so as to clear up some confusion in one of my children. At the end of the conversation she said, "Wow, that's really disgusting. I can't believe you had to do that five times." Again, still chuckling. You just keep thinking that until you're 23 and married little missy!

Humpty Dumpty Returns

Howdy blog world and long lost friends! I read my sister's blog and realized how much I miss reading and sharing blog updates. I tried converting over to Facebookism, but really I hate it. Somehow I don't mind writing here, where people can choose to come or not, its all voluntary. However, on Facebook, every little comment gets smeared all over to every person you claim to have known whether it was intended for them or not. It makes me itchy.

It's late, I'm tired, and this is a super lame post, but I thought I needed to post something publicly to force me to come back tomorrow and post something amusing - or remove it all together! I've lost myself somewhere between South Dakota and here, not all of myself, I have he original body, plus a bonus bonus 15 lbs of baby/stress weight. It's not a fair compensation, however, as I seem to have lost the portion of myself that experiences joy at small things and I have fully lost my muse - as I'm sure anyone who received my Christmas newsletter can attest.

I was hoping that by back tracking (it's what I tell my kids to do when they lose something!) I would be able to find all my pieces and get myself back together. So we'll consider this the first step back. Nevertheless, if you are driving the interstate between Oregon and Nebraska and see odd pieces of mirth, irony, inner-peace, patience, or any other desirable quality, send it my way COD, it'll make my journey that much easier!

The Juicy Details

For the male readers (or those who think less is more when it comes to birth stories):

Name: Naomi Beth
Weight: 9 lbs 3 oz
Length: 21”

For the ladies:

Can you believe those cheeks? That’s one week early, imagine if she baked until her due date!
I’m wondering if our dates were off a bit. When I went in to the doc's last Monday for my 39 week check up I was quite done being pregnant and a bit scared that it was going to be a nine pound baby if I went to my due date (her response, “You don’t have a nine pound baby in there!” and in her defense I was didn’t think it was either, but the ultrasound we had at 37 weeks said she was already 7 lbs 11 oz then.)

I asked her to strip my membranes again. This was the third time, but the first two times she was very gentle, apologizing the whole time for any pain (which there never was) and they obviously didn’t work. I told her that this time I wasn’t getting off the table until my eyes were watering – and success!

The whole labor and delivery delay and discomfort are of course my dear Daniel’s fault. He willed the baby to come after he was done with the busiest part of the corn harvest – which she waited for. Then he asked why I couldn’t have a baby in the daytime hours rather than in the middle of the night like I always did. So instead of my typical labor that starts between midnight and 2 a.m. and baby born by daybreak, I had slow, unproductive labor all night. I woke up in the morning with contractions between 3 and 5 minutes apart. I made breakfast and the girl’s lunches and sent the bigs off to school and was trying to decide whether Daniel should go to work or not when I bent over to pick up a laundry basket and my water broke. The best part of the whole labor was me trying to catch the deluge while Emily and Taylor are yelling “Gross, mom!” and the other said, “You should do that in the toilet!”

We went into the hospital around 8 a.m. and she was born at 10:24 a.m. and I got to Jacuzzi this time! I had to go through 5 labors to get that privilege and it was AWESOME! She was shockingly big, so her shoulders got stuck coming out and all I can say about that is OUCH! An epidural would have been nice right about then! However, when she finally got out, while the doctor held her up and was rubbing her back trying to get her to breath, she had her eyes open wide and was scanning the room looking around at everything. It was really pretty cool – she was so alert, like she was taking in the world from the second she came into it.

She is pretty sweet stuff and we are sure excited to have her in our family!