JustJessie

Bouncing off the walls!

Boy were we grumps today!  It was one of those mornings when you wish you could just go hide under your covers without being tackled and jumped on by little people in pajamas.  Part of the problem is that no-one is used to entertaining themselves indoors lately because of the pool, but we had to stay indoors today because of the smoke pollution from wildfires in neighboring states.  SO!  We spent the morning biting each others heads off, and as much fun as that was, I didn't really want to do it all day.  Instead we decided to visit a new play area in our town called "Off the Walls."  Oh!my!goodness!  Stay-at-home-mommy's dream.  This place is amazing.  They have every kind of inflatable bouncing/sliding/climbing toy imaginable, including one that the kids can jump and stick to with Velcro vests AND three that are just for kids under five. 

There is a puppet room, building room, train room, dress-up room, anything you can imagine.  Oh, and karaoke, complete with High School Musical soundtrack.  Oh, and a boxing ring with over-sized gloves (which almost led to an all-out street brawl between Grayson and his cousin)!  Oh, and tricycles, and belly-boards, and laser-tag, and! and! and! 

They aren't even finished with the place yet.  They are adding a Mommy Room!  I said a MOMMY ROOM!  I mean with no kids in it!  With big windows so you can see your kids but not hear them... oh my.  I think next time I'll get Grant a sitter, take my pillow, my laptop, and a good book and stay forever all day.  You know it's not that I don't love and appreciate my children.  If you know me at all, you know I adore them, but sometimes a little "me" time wouldn't be so bad.  You know, the kind of time where you can shower without having to rush to finish before nap-time is over.  The kind of time where you can read a book without pictures and get lost in it's goodness.  The kind of time where those magical things like pedicures or uninterrupted sleep occur. 

But then, there will be plenty of time for those things a few years down the road, and those years are running by all too quickly.  Tomorrow will be a new day, with new opportunities for me to show patience to my children.  To show them that they are more important than household chores or phone calls or emails.  To speak to them softly, to look into their eyes, to really listen when they speak, to give them more than they ask for.  To do all the things I didn't do today, but meant to.

I almost lost him...

I had the most awful, scary experience of my life today.  The boys and I were outside, and I was in the pool with Grayson.  The water is still too cold for Grant to want to go in, so I try to divide my time between the pool and the sandbox equally.  Well, Grant had been throwing rings in the pool for Grayson to dive for all afternoon, and I was staying within a foot of him, I thought, watching like a hawk. His habit all day was to throw them all in, then stay still and watch while Grayson fetched them back.  So he threw them all in, and I had my back half-turned to watch Grayson diving under, when I heard a splash. 

It happened so quickly, I have to really think to remember what took place.  I don't know if everyone does this, but I almost always think in complete sentences, and that is what was so weird to me.  I never thought "That splash was Grant.  He fell in the pool, now I need to get him!"  There was no coherent thought at all.  There was a splash behind my back, and the next thing I know I am reaching under water and pulling out a VERY frightened baby.  He was okay, though.  There was a lot of sputtering and crying and general panic, but he was okay.

I wrapped him in a towel and was rocking him, soothing him.  soothing me.  Then it hit me.  I could have lost this boy.  This precious boy whose every smile lights my world, whose dimples make my heart flutter, whose kisses bring tears to my eyes.  That quickly and he could have been gone.  Oh, it hurts to think it.  I thank God from the very depths of my soul that he protected my baby today.  I cannot imagine a day without his singing, or his laugh, or even his shrill, "Mine!  Mine!"

I knew he would be okay, though, when he asked for Elmo (our ice pack has the red guy's face on it).  Don't ask me where he would have put it, but in our house, ice packs cure all. 

So I end the day a bit wiser, a bit more wary, and even a bit more thankful than I began it.  Wiser because I never knew that babies sink like rocks.  I always heard that they had a natural ability to swim and their fat helps them float.  More wary because I will NEVER turn my back on Grant in the pool EVER again (duh).  And thankful because this wake-up call could prevent a much more serious accident in the future, and also because my boy has become more precious than ever at the thought that I could have lost him.

Early morning at Mom's

Our town has a festival every Memorial Day weekend involving hot air balloons, and for one of the races the flight path goes right over my parent's house.  Last year the balloons all started running out of gas before they got to their destination, and my parents and their neighbors all had balloons landing in their backyards!  This year my folks asked if we would come over at about six a.m. so the kids could see the balloons (and they promised breakfast).  I am so glad we went!  The balloons didn't runout of gas this year (darn!  um, I mean, good for them!) but there were tons of them and they all flew past right across the street.  Both the boys were SO! EXCITED!  Grayson loved watching them through the binoculars.  He thought it was so cool that he could spy on them like that.  And Grant spent the whole time gasping and saying "BOON!  BADOON!  HERE IT IS BADOON!" over and over again.  Every time a new one would fly into view he would start back up. 

Opening day!

The pool is officially open!  After weeks of begging and about $150 worth of chemicals, we got to swim today.  Grayson was SO excited.  It only took him a few minutes to remember what he learned in swim lessons last year, and he was swimming like a fish again!

It took some convincing to get Grant out of his Wiggles jammies, which he's been wearing for two three four days and nights.  First I asked him if he wanted to go swimming, to which he replied "UH-UH".  Then I asked him if he wanted to wear his Moo-mans swim trunks like bubba "UH-UH! WIG-WILLS!" Finally I pointed out the window to the pool and said "Grant!  Wanna go in the waters?"  "WA-WERS!  WA-WERS!  MOO-MANS!BUBBA!DADDY!MOMMY!WA-WERS!"  I took that for a yes. 

I wondered how he would do in the pool this year.  Last year he was not so impressed.  He stayed on my hip, HATED his baby float, and was always so cold he was shivering.  We did a lot of our swimming during his nap-time.  From what we saw today, I think this year may be a little different!

We had so much fun.  I think that's what I'm going to miss the most when we sell this house.  I won't miss taking care of the pool, but I will miss the family time we spend out there.  Our summers are so grossly hot it's impossible to spend any time outdoors unless it involves water.  It'll be back to wading pools and sprinklers for us soon, but until we have to move I intend to spend every waking moment in that pool.

Injun braves

Today was an Indian kind of day.  We spent our morning dancing around imaginary campfires, hunting for animals with our bow, and singing Indian songs.  The boys shared Grayson's Halloween costume from a couple of years ago (which is too small for Grayson and too big for Grant).  We read Longfellow's Hiawatha poem while we took turns playing the drum, then Grayson made up his own (nonsense) poem to go with the drums.

I am sure there will be more Indian stuff tomorrow since we never made it out to the driveway for "cave painting" or to the kitchen to make clay for pinch pots.  At this point I'm sure Grant doesn't know what an Indian actually is, but he knows it's fun when Mommy sits in the floor playing drums and he and bubba run in a circle screaming and beating their mouths with their hands.  He'll think it's even more fun tomorrow when we get to fingerpaint the driveway!

Friendly neghborhood "Moo-mans"

"Moo-mans" is Grant's favorite superhero right now.  He doesn't know much about him, only that big bubba thinks he's cool.  So now he's obsessed with "Moo-mans" and we had to dig out Grayson's old underoos.  Grayson even let Grant's bear borrow Kasey's spiderman outfit so they could match.

He was so cute walking around in that mask and the big ol' gloves.  He could barely see out of the eye-holes and his whole hand was in the palm of the glove, but he felt SO big wearing them.

My treasure

I love them because they're mine; I treasure them because they're them.  Since Grayson was two years old, he has loved coming up with his own costumes to play dress up in.  He was forever coming out of his room wearing a conglomeration of hats, shirts, and masks, making us laugh at his creations. 

Today he came to me with his new goggles and his army hat trying to fit the goggles onto the hat.  He was making a pilot's hat and wanted me to go flying with him.  Well, who can resist an offer like that?  So I rigged him up a plane and got on board.

 

We flew to China (which is not across the ocean, it's just below Mexico according to Grayson).  They were having a birthday celebration for everyone in China, so when we got into the restaurant we had to say, "On Som Nows" which Grayson said means "Happy Birthday Everybody!"  And then we flew back home.

A little later I went to the Wild West with Grant.  We rode horses and said things like "Giddy-up horsie!"  and "Ride 'em cowboy!" 

I love my world travelin' little boys.

Hide and Seek

Where's Daddy?  Believe it or not, it took Grayson a while to find him there!  After dinner tonight Daddy and the boys played a game of hide-n-seek in the house.  How backwards are we?  We ate dinner outside and played hide-n-seek inside.  Sometimes things are more fun just because you do them in a different way. 

It took Daddy forever to find Grayson here:

It didn't take me quite as long to find them all here:

Aren't they sweet?

Life goes on...

Sorry I've been gone for a few days.  I am TRYING to get my house ready to go on the market on top of all the usual craziness.  I guess the most important thing happening in the ol' family unit right now is my nephew's graduation.  About five minutes ago I was eleven years old, waiting at my great-grandmother's house on the last day of school, hoping to hear if I had a nephew yet.  He was the cutest little blue-eyed thing when I went to see him the next day.  He was the first newborn I had ever held, and I fell in love right away.  I took him to his first "real" movie, the Lion King, when he was three, and he laughed so hard at the funny parts that the rest of the theater was laughing at him.  I took him to see the Power Rangers a couple of years later, and we sat on the front row, then pretended my car was the white "zord" all the way home.  Hubby and I used to take him fishing and camping and laugh as we had to untangle his line every time he cast it.

Well, now he's graduating.  We went to his Senior Recognition Service Sunday night.  Do you know what those evil graduation people did?  They had the chorus sing "Wind Beneath My Wings."  Why would they do that?  Evil, evil, evil manipulators of emotions!!  That's almost as bad as singing "Butterfly Kisses" at a wedding.  Torture, I tell you.

Well, here he is now:

I can't tell you how proud I am.  He is going to begin college in the fall, hoping to go into some type of engineering (a big thing in our area).  Without going into detail, he has overcome a LOT to be where he is.  He is the opposite of what statistics say he should be, and the sky is the limit for this incredible young man.

"Best Brother in the World" trophy

While Grayson was staring lovingly at his new trophy, talking about how he had TWO of them now, it suddenly dawned on him that Grant had none.  He wanted to make him one, and he asked if we could make him one out of tinfoil.  It took some pondering before I could figure out how to make it work, but this is what we came up with.

We started with an old toy of Daddy's and half a plastic heart, and we glued the man down with glue dots: Then we started wrapping him in foil.  Grayson was sooo happy with the results.  He couldn't wait until Grant woke up and he could give it to him.  He presented it to him and made a little speech, telling him he got the trophy for being the best baby bubba in the world.  (To which Grant replied, "MINE! MINE! MINE TOPIES BUBBA!")

He carried it around all day as if he knew how much work Grayson put into it.  It made me so proud that he  would be that thoughful of his little brother.  It was one of those moments that make parenting a pleasure.