Glorious

glorious- Having a striking beauty or splendor that evokes feelings of delighted admiration.

Today I had one of those glorious days when I never left the house.  I love having a day with nothing on the calendar.  It doesn't happen too often, so I try to cherish it.

And now I will proceed with a poop story.  Read it or not.  I don't care.

My day began with making oatmeal, cereal, and toast for various people.  Juliet insisted on eating her oatmeal while sitting on the potty.

And even though I knew it would make a glorious mess, I let her.

I've been potty training.  And my method, for this the fifth child, is this:

To keep one eye closed, act indifferent to whether or not she gets it, and hope my indifference and lack of involvement somehow ends in her being completely potty trained by the end of summer.

To say things like, "You want to eat oatmeal on the potty?  Sure!"

And let me tell you, to my own surprise, it's totally working.  She's doing awesome.

She peed and then got up, went to her room, and got dressed.  (See what I mean?)  She was wearing a dress with nothing underneath, but hey, I didn't have to get up from my toast.

To make a long story short, in a few minutes she pooped on the potty for the first time.  There was a glorious uproar of the whole house rejoicing in this.  It's a huge ordeal.

I was a bit suspect...she had run really fast to the potty before doing it.  Usually that means she has just peed on the floor somewhere in the house.  But I couldn't find a trail of wet footprints, so I thought we were good.

I had to take her to the back of the house to wipe her bottom.  (We have a kid potty in the kitchen.)

What do I see in the hall but a big piece of poop.  The children had already run up and down the hall in their rejoicing, so I was afraid they had played a little soccer with it.

They had.  I find a trail of poop that went all the way down the hall.

I clean it up.

Then I have to deal with the mound of poo in the pristine pink potty.  I dump it in the toilet and head outside to use the hose on it.

As I stand outside spraying the pink pot with force from a considerable distance, one of my kids begins to play the drums really loudly inside.

Now the drums are new.  No one knows how to play them, but we want to support our kids musical bent.  So we let them bang on them.

And I have made a choice.  The drums were Jimmy's thing, and I'm not going to be the one to ask them to stop.  So unless we have guests or I need it quiet for a specific reason, I let it slide.  I don't want them to grow up remembering me asking them to stop drumming.  I'm not going to make that mother memory for them.

So I sprayed the potty a little longer than necessary, just staring at the poop flecks get more and more diluted, gathering my pensive thoughts and enjoying being on the other side of the sliding glass door than the drums.

But eventually I had to go in and face the music.

Then, something else glorious happened.  Jimmy took both boys with him to an appointment and to go to Sam's afterward.  Not that I don't want my boys here, but we go into total girl mode when it's just us and I love it.  There is pretending galore and much of the time they forget I am even here and I get a ton of work done.

I took some pictures of them and their intense play.

Then I remembered I have not yet introduced Peanut Buddy to the blog.  He is Libby's hamster.

I have hesitated blogging about him, being afraid that as soon as I announced him as our new pet, he'd escape or something.  Since he's already escaped and been found like 5 or 6 times, I think if it happens again I can't blame the blog.

So here he is.  Peanut Buddy.  Peanut for short.  He's a good guy.

Later play began in the kitchen.  When I let the girls play, this is what they do.  I love it.



We can see that Grandma prefers her ponies over men (of any kind) quite a bit.

The boys got home for lunch.  Here is Jax and Ju Ju.  My biggest and my smallest.  Whenever these two get together it warms me.  They are not middles.  They are their own set.

I am full of love for all of them.  Later tonight we went for a walk/bikes/scooters/stroller down the street and I just count them sometimes.  And wonder how I got here.

I an on a glorious adventure.   Poop, loud drums, and lost hamsters.  Aren't these things what every glorious adventure is made of?  It's what mine is made of.

Now quiet down!  King Peanut Buddy would like to address his subjects...

Fourth (well, fifth) of July

We spent four days with my family at my parents lake house this past week to celebrate the Fourth of July.  Of course I planned to take tons of photos but only snapped a few with my phone until yesterday, the fifth of July.  But I tried to make up for it and have pared down what I took to a mere 22 photos.  And here they are.

The morning began with Pop-Pop taking the four youngest boys out to barefoot ski off the boom.  There was no begging or coercing.  They all went willingly.

 Here they are getting a little instruction.

 Here we are just pulling out.  Lincoln is not shown because he volunteered to go first.  Everyone is looking a little sleepy eyed, but hopeful.

 Lincoln got up!  We are all proud and excited.


What happened next though wasn't so exciting and resulted in a few shed tears and the other boys now looking like this.

Not really sure they should have gotten out of bed early for a bodily beating.  Here is Cash trying his hardest.

Lincoln, despite the beating where it counts, if you know what I mean, decided to go again.

 He was letting us know it hurts just a little.

After some breakfast we all headed down to swim/kneeboard.

There is a lot of post diving (diving off the post of the dock) since the lake is very close to an all time high, due to tons of rain.

 Here you can see Nicole and AJ heading off for a sail.

 Adam is a master at diving and I do not do him justice trying to capture it.

 Libby and Cash kneeboarded together.

Penelope kneeboarded for the first time!

 Libby and Juliet watched.

 But even though exciting, sitting in the boat can get boring.

Before dinner we got a shot of my parents with all eleven grandchildren.

And the cousins!

It was a wonderful day!