Reliving My Childhood

Yesterday I was coloring/drawing with the boys when Drew shoved a blank piece of paper at me and instructed me to "write my childhood". Huh?

"What does that mean?", I asked him.

"You know, your childhood. Write it. Here's mine." (shows me a rather large piece of paper filled with his signature rows and row and rows of neatly scrawled letters and numbers, frankly a little reminiscent of "A Beautiful Mind")

"Look! Here's Daddy's - I already wrote it! His goes "A-M-A-N.", Drew announced.

"Uh, ok. Umm. Mommy's not sure what you mean by 'writing my childhood'. Cade? What does that mean? Did you write your childhood?", I asked Cade. To which he responded,

"No. I can't remember mine."

Joshie's First Word!

Joshie's been babbling non-stop in an effort to make his voice be heard among the chaos for months. He and I have long conversations where he knows exactly what he's talking about, but I'm totally in the dark. He also frequently shouts and gestures and issues non-sensical edicts to his brothers.

I've been trying to encourage his verbal skills by providing some coaching and teaching him to "Say Mama!", but the little bugger just grins at me and says, "DADA!" Since he's never actually used this word in connection with Aaron, I've decided it doesn't count as his first word and it's just his super special way of saying, "Mama" to keep me entertained.

But today he decided to start speaking our language!

In case you were wondering, his first word was "bye", and not "shut up, you jackasses", as I predicted it would be.

Cade's Family Planning

Fairly certain (completely certain, from Aaron's perspective) that our family is complete, we have been on a baby gear purging rampage this week. We've made everal trips to Goodwill and bid adieu to the high chair, Jumperoo, and a big bag of maternity clothes. The Exersaucer is waiting its turn for dropoff tomorrow, and Cade noticed it in the van this morning.

Cade: Mommy, what's the Exersaucer doing in here?

Me: Well, Cade, Joshie is done with it so we're going to take it some place where other children can use it.

Cade: Why don't you just put it back in the closet?

Me: Well, because we're not having any more babies in our family so we don't need it.

Cade: Why?

Me: Well, because Mommy and Daddy feel so lucky and blessed to have our three, beautiful healthy boys. We think our family is just the right size and we don't need any more babies.

Cade (outraged): MOMMY! How can you even wish that! Every day is a chance for a new baby!

Me (taken aback by his reaction and actually alarmed at the legitimacy of his claims): Uh, well Cade, um, we're out of room for new babies in our house. We can't just keep having more babies - we don't have anywhere for them to sleep.

Cade: Well, Joshie can move onto the air mattress and the new baby can sleep in his crib.

Me (laughing): Oh, really? And where would the new baby after that sleep?

Cade: There won't be any more new babies after that. There's only one more.

Eerily, this conversation reminded me of when Aaron and I were in college and he gave me a trip to the psychic one year for my birthday. I think that was the year after he gave me a WonderBra - he's an awesome gift giver like that.

Anyway, the psychic assured us that we would get married and we would both live long, happy lives, with one point of concern - I would have 2 children and he would have 4. I've spent all these years wondering where the hell those other two kids are that he fathered before he met me. But now that I've got 3 kids, I'm wondering if her vision was a little cloudy...

God help us all.

Cade's Mini-Me

As the youngest (and up until now, least vocal) child, Joshie doesn't seem to get as much blog billing as the other boys. But I have a feeling that is seriously about to change.

Physically, Josh has been Cade's mini-me from very early on. Early baby photos are pretty much indistinguishable and it looks like it's gonna stay that way.

Interestingly enough, it's starting to look like they're going to have very similar personalities as well, save for the fact that Josh is a much more mellow kid than Cade ever was. But now that Josh is officially on the move (he started crawling about a month ago)and able to express preferences by crawling away from things or slapping them out of your hand, we're experiencing a little bit of dejavu. For example:

-Josh has no use for baby toys. Zilch. He is not fooled by the authentic-looking Parents toys key chain and he will let you know (loudly, with fists clenched, Cade-style) that he prefers the real ones. Blocks? No, thank you. Shape sorter? Are you kidding me? Please pass the markers (NOT crayons!) and the Hot Wheels.

-He is single minded in his focus. If he is trying to crawl across the yard and into the street than he will do it, by God, and no amount throwing toys in his path or redirecting him is going to distract him from his goal. The only thing that will stop him is when you carry him away (howling, fists clenched) inside.

-He has a strong preference for electronics and moving parts. His latest fascination is bike wheels. We got sick of peeling him off his brother's bikes for fear he would fall during outside play time, so when not in use, we tipped them on their sides. This is OK with him - he is content to spend countless minutes spinning the bike wheel first in one direction, then the other, mesmerized by the motion. If no bike wheels are available, he will settle for a cellphone, a calculator, a cordless phone, a TV remote, or some equally age-inappropriate contraption.

-He has no fear. If we're at the pool, he wants to be "jumping" off the side or splashed, preferably in the face. Crawling across the driveway? C'mon - make sure there's some acorns for him to crawl over and scrape his knees on - where's the challenge in concrete? Sitting on the sofa is for pansies. He prefers to scale it, crawl right off the edge, and dangle by a toe from the coffee table.

Yep, the two are so much alike that we often find ourselves wondering how we ended up with the genetic anomaly that is Drew. I once jokingly suggested to Aaron that it would be fun to keep having kids as a little statistical experiment - just to see all the variations of children we could produce.

Yeah, he didn't think that was funny either.

Proud To Be An American

The star of today's story is Drew. In honor of the 4th of July holiday, a realtor in our neighborhood stuck little plastic American flags at the base of all of our mailboxes. Once the holiday was over, the kids quickly seized ownership of the flag.

This morning we found Drew marching through the living room, waving the flag and singing at the top of his lugs, "I'm an American, I'm an American, through Christ Our Lord!"

I'm not sure who would be more proud - The Pope or The President.

I Smell a Rat

Aaron (upon arriving home from work): Hey, guys! How was your day today? How was camp?

Cade: We were late to camp because Mommy didn't drive fast enough to get us there.

Drew: Yeah. And she ran a red light on the way to the dentist. It was an accident, but still...

Aaron: Oh, really? Wow. Well, what did you do at camp? How did it go at the dentist?

The boys' response was to run off, laughing hysterically and refusing to comment.

For the record, they were NOT late to camp.

Isn't It Funny...

how life can change in an instant?

It's been a challenging couple of past years for the Fox family. For the record, I do not recommend back-to-back babies with business school sandwiched in between and a third baby tacked on the end. And I have a giant dent in my living room wall (where I literally "threw the book" at Aaron) to prove it.

But lately, since Joshie arrived safe and sound and Aaron graduated and returned to the land of steady paychecks, things have been rocking along pretty good for us. So good that I often found myself saying a little prayer of thanks and wondering how long "too good" could last.

Last week, we had a wrench thrown into the works. I got a call from my doctor, who has been monitoring a cyst on my ovary since I was pregnant with Josh. It turns out that the cyst did not get the memo that it is supposed to dissolve on it's own and is in fact, getting larger, and has a "hard mass" to it. Which caused my doctor to mention that there is a teeny tiny chance it could be cancerous and has to be surgically removed ASAP.

First of all, I really feel that there should be some mathematical qualification of how "teeny tiny" a chance of cancer has to be before a doctor can just leave the word "cancer" out of an explanation at all. Because it really does not help a person feel better about the surgical procedure (however minor) that they have to undergo ASAP to think that instead of restored health, cancer may be waiting to greet them on the other end of the surgery.

It took both Aaron and me a good 24 hours to get past the shock of the surgery part of the phone call, because it was the first time in the course of a year's worth of monitoring the cyst that the word "surgery" had every been used. I stupidly assumed that it would either dissolve on it's own, as cysts are wont to do, or we would just monitor it from now until the end of time. That'll teach me not to be more proactive in monitoring my own health from now on.

Of course, surgery sucks because it involves anesthesia and a recovery process, and the potential of the entire ovary having to be removed. But ever the Pollyanna, after a day or so of wallowing, I decided to look on the bright side. After all...

-I will get to spend at least half a day or more sleeping on the day of the surgery, which is quite possibly the most sleep I have gotten in 5 years.

-I will be forbidden to lift my children (this part I will miss) or perform menial household tasks (this part I will not miss) for a week following the surgery.

-Even if they have to take one of my ovaries, it will be OK because perhaps it will slow my gush of childbearing to a slow trickle.

-My doctor has caught the (remotely possibly cancerous) cyst very early. Given that I have been pretty much been continuously pregnant for the past five years, I have enough pictures of my uterus and its various inhabitants to stage a traveling art exhibit. The little gremlin in question surfaced somewhere during Joshie's pregnancy, so we've been monitoring it since it appeared.

-Most importantly, the person that has to be poked, prodded, and cut is me and not one of my children. Although Aaron was quick to point out that it would be highly unlikely for one of our children to have an ovarian cyst, but you get the point.

All that to say, I'm nervous as hell about the surgery even if I am trying to focus on the positives. I know it will likely all be fine and even if it isn't, I know it will all work out according to God's plan for me.

I've never been more grateful for the flurry of small children in this house that keep me too busy and too tired to do much thinking.