What did you say?

I have 9 kids. Everyone knows that....everyone. For some reason it seems to be a conversation starter. I just don't know why... ;)

Now through the years I have sat and listened to nine children learn how to speak. Acutally it's been more like 60 kids or so if you include the 45 I have had during my daycare years and all of the extras from my previous posts. I have heard some funny things in my time and it just keeps on coming.

Skyler is just learning a few new words. Truck comes out like "guck" and when he says down it's more like "dowwwwwwwwn". I love to hear their first words. Some I can tell right away what they are saying and for some it's not quite so clear.

When Mckenna was a baby she would do a "thumbs up" and say look at my fung. She also had a hard time with the letter p so when getting her out of the tub I would say "pull the plug Kenna" and she would repeat me with "full the fug". I cannot tell you how many laughs I had over that one. Jon and I would try to get her to say that over and over again just because it sounded so wrong.

Joe was another funny one. Now I am pretty sure that what he was saying he was actually saying. And I promise on this one I did not ever say this. I honestly do not know where he got this one. One day while Polly and I were hanging out I looked at her and this is how the conversation went...
"Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"Joey...did you hear what he just said?"
"No, but I will listen this time"
After a moment or two she looked at me with quite a bit of surprise because she could not believe that my 18 month old boy was saying what he was saying.
"Did he just say eat shit?"
"I swear that's what it sounds like, and I have no idea where he heard it!"
What was worse was that he would draw out the shit...like shiiiiiiit.....Now, I don't know where he heard it to this day, but it was the funniest thing in the world and I will admit there was more than once where he happened to say it during church. Polly and I decided to check ourselves one day with this one. Joey was sitting there ranting on and on quietly and Polly grabbed her daughter Rebeka. She was only 9 at the time.
"Honey, what is Joey saying?"
She listened and then her eyes got real wide and she said she would not repeat what he was saying. So I am pretty sure we were not wrong on this one...too funny!

I am in love with the baby. Any baby, all babies. They are simply wonderful. I so enjoy watching them learn to crawl, walk and run. Their little bodies are just not built for that kind of stuff and yet they manage anyway. But I think my favorite milestone has to be the spoken word. I recently told Tracy that I want her to try to get Carson on video with some of his new words...I so love hearing those little people trying to talk. I will be sad when Skyler can speak circles around me and there is no more baby talk in my home.

The extra

Erma Bombeck wrote a column about the extra. The extra kid at the dinner table that appears to fit in , is always there and seems to belong. The neighbor kid that just seems to live there. My extras change from time to time, but we always seem to have one.

I love having extras. Years ago it was Kenna's friend Kambri. She is just wonderful and they would hang out here for hours, making videos and singing and dancing the day away. I cannot tell you how much I missed this kid after she moved to a different city. I still miss her.

We also have Ian. He has pretty much been an extra since he was old enough to open his front door himself, and there are days where he doesn't show up and I am totally flabbergasted. I will call Polly and see if he is sick or missing, simply because we didn't get him that day. I don't think I would know what to do without him showing up everyday. It's like the universe would be out of whack without Ian trying to let himself in bright and early everyday in the summertime.

This weekend it's my niece Maddie. We wanted her, I told Lisa and she put her on a plane the same day. We got her. She fits right in, isn't fazed at all by the arguments and has found her favorite spot to be the swing out front. We sure do love having her around.

Truth be told we love having all extras around. Just because we have a big family and my kids have each other to play with doesn't mean we don't love friends. The Greens are here all the time, we sometimes get Tenley and Aspen and next month when my brothers kids are in town we plan to have them for a weekend too. We want extras, we like extras and thankfully we have lots of kids around so that we often get extras.

Point is? Send em on over folks. We love having them and would feel a definite void without them. The more the merrier I always say....

Unconditional

Are we born with it? That ability to love someone without hesitation, without judgment, without end...that ability to love someone who hurt us so badly that we cried ourselves to sleep and yet the next day we found ourselves wanting to be with that person. I think we are born with it.

That kind of love knows no bounds. It has no beginning and no end. I have learned so much about love in my lifetime. I have a family, I have children and of course my cute hubby. I have added more love to that over the years. Added more family, added more people and yet it never seems to find a limit. My mom and dad have always been here. They are one of the constants in my life. I thank the Lord for them...they have always been here for me and always will be. I have Jon now, and my nine kids. Now that they are here it's as if they have always been here. I can't imagine my life without them and I don't even like to try.

But there are others. People that have come and gone in my life that I love dearly. I have friends, people that touched me for a moment, but forever. Polly and her family are this to me. We are not related in blood, but in heart they are there forever. I want to be mad at her or her kids at times, but I have found that I just love em so darn much that it never lasts. Yesterday as I was at her home eating and laughing, her two oldest daughters came into the room and were goofing off and being silly. I look up, literally, to these kids now. They are both taller than me and they both have become such beautiful women. I feel very protective of them at times. I want to wrap my arms around them and love them and knock em up side the head at the same time. They mean the world to me. I am so glad they are in my life.

As I have lived though I have added even more. Some that I didn't expect. Years ago when they found me, my life would change forever. It did and continues to. My sisters, my biological ones, came into my life 14 years ago, and ever since then it's been something that has grown. These last couple of years I have come to appreciate them so much for who they are. They are amazing, they love me (I don't always know why), and I have found that I am protective of them like I am my kids. That's the amazing thing about love..it truly does grow. Each and everyday it becomes more. Now, you do have to work at it, you do have to let it in, and give it back. Then it can become something larger than life itself. When Lori, Lisa and Tracy came into my life they brought Susie with them. No more needs to be said on that one. We all know what she means to me.

Here we are just a few days away from Fathers Day. My dad is my dad. He is quiet and conservative, but he is mine. I love him for the man he is, for the dad that he has always been for me. I have a new emotion this year too though. While in Vegas this last time I got to see a picture of my biological dad. When I saw it, I saw myself in him. Only in looks, but there I was, there he was. I am forty and I am just getting a glimpse of him for the first time. From what I hear he is not someone that even has interest in me, or any of his other children for that matter...but that doesn't change the fact that he is my father. I looked at that picture and even at a table with eight other people at it I was completely alone. The noises around me faded away, and for one brief moment it was just the two of us. He and I. I started to cry, although I don't know why. One more piece to the puzzle. One more answer to an endless array of questions. I hope you have a good fathers day...whoever you are. I think I might just love you, although I don't know why.

Unconditional love knows no bounds. I know it, I believe it and I try to live it.

"I don't know..."

They told me they did. With each and every child the techs at the ultrasounds told me their brains were developing normally in utero. They say that you can't live without a brain, but I swear my kids prove that theory wrong each and every day. It's like Bill Cosby says...they all have brain damage. Cosby describes this experience where he tells the child not to drink his drink. He looks away...child quickly picks up the drink and proceeds to guzzle..."Why did you do that?" child's response..."I don't know"

Jon and I have rules...basic things that are there just for safety reasons. Yesterday while Jon and I went to take dinner to a friend of his from work whose wife had had a baby, we get a phone call from home. It's Lacie...

"Dad....when are you coming home?"
"Well, we aren't even there yet, he lives a ways out here. Why?"
"Cause Colby fell off the swing and now he has a black hole in his knee..."
"A black hole?"
"Yes, a black hole, but we put a band aid on it and he's watching tv...he wants to talk to you"
"Hi daddy, I got an owie"
"I'm sorry buddy...you going to be ok?"
"Yes, but Isaac is jumping out the window..."
"What? Let me talk to him!"
Brief silence while Isaac is beckoned...
"Hello?"
"Hi Isaac, this is dad..."
"Hi dad!"
"Are you jumping out the window?"
"Maybe"
"Which window?"
"The one in the dining room"
"Isaac, when has it ever been ok for you guys to jump out the window?"
"Never"
"Then why are you doing it?"
"I don't know....."

This was just yesterday. There are so many more that I could relay, but really, that would be a world breaking marathon blog if I tried to write about them all. Now, after Jon hung up the phone we laughed a little, and then went on the tell each other about the times when we did dumb things when we were young. I used to tie bedsheets together and shimmy down them out of my window. Jon used to jump down his laundry shoot until the laundry baskets would split out the back and his mom was stupefied as to why the baskets never lasted. Or maybe it's that they only chose to engage said item once in a while. That is probably the most likely answer, but I wish they would use it more often. Like when riding bikes in the road. Helmut please? Or when they decide to play kickball in the house...how about not in the house guys? I have too many broken picture frames from such games.

In other words, we all have brain damage, or maybe non of us is born with a brain. Question of the year is though, when do they "grow in"? I sometimes think I have a brain, but do I? I have to wonder...and I am always wondering if the kids have brains. Always....

Summer

I absolutely love summer. This has to be and has always been my very favorite time of year. When I was a kid I liked the snow, I like the leaves in the fall and the flowers in the spring...but above all I loved summer. Where I grew up they have a community pool and I was there everyday. I would go alone all the time without complaint. I preferred to go with friends, but with or without I was there. My skin was always brown and my feet were tough as nails from walking everywhere without shoes. I am still this way. If I can find a pool to take the kids to, I am there. I rarely if ever wear shoes and my skin is currently a nice shade of brown.

Polly and I sat outside yesterday with the kids for it was the first day in a long time where it was actually nice enough to do that. I had Kenna get a baby pool, I turned on the sprinklers, pulled out lawn chairs and sodas and there we were. That's where I plan on being most of the next 2 and half months. It's where I am the happiest.

I am not sure what it is about summer that I love so much. It gets hot, the kids are home 24/7, my house is a mess and I spend a lot more money on food than during the school year. I must spend $220 just on popsicles each summer. But I love it. I have this long laundry list of things that are wonderful to me about summer...

No homework
No car pools
Lemonade stands
Swimming pools
Lawn chairs and friends to go in them
Fire pits with friends
Evening walks
Soft green grass that's been freshly mowed
Chalk drawings on the driveway
Canyon drives
Day trips to the lakes to swim and picnic
Camping

I could go on and on. I think this is why I struggle so much during the cold months of the year. I want so desperately to be out of the house and doing some of these things that it's hard not to be able to so much of the year. I am about the warm months, always have been.

Posts from me for the next three months will be happy, carefree and content. It's summertime....

Torn

I am exhausted today. I have to admit that's actually putting it mildly. I stayed up until 2:30 am talking to my sister Lori on the phone. It was fun, it was confrontational, it was wonderful. I loved every moment of keeping in touch with her. She and I had lots of questions for each other and lots to tell each other about what's been going on in our lives this past week or so. We could have gone on longer but we knew we had to stop, we knew we had to go to bed.

I often have people marvel that I am up at unholy hours of the night on facebook, writing or just catching up on my favorite tv shows. Buy people, let's think about this. I have 9 children. I have a husband. The demands for my time and attention are astronomical. I literally never have time for myself, at least time that isn't interrupted several times every moment with requests for food, juice, tv remotes, phone calls, item finding and all manner of all other things. It's truly amazing how many times in an hour I am beckoned. As we speak I had to stop writing long enough to check the baby's blood sugar, give him some juice and clean up a little glass salt shaker that Jessi broke.

So there is one sure fire time when I can get alone time. The middle of the night. I can watch my tv shows. I can write uninterrupted. I can listen to the music I like and talk on the phone or on facebook without having to get up and say "hang on". I like it. Yes, I do pay a price for it the next day when I am super tired and want nothing more than to lay down and go to sleep, but it's still worth it.

When evening comes I just have to judge how tired I am and how desperate I am for that time...by 10 or so I have my answer. Tonight is going to be an early to bed night. But that's because Lori and and I were up late last night. And it was worth every moment of it. :)

Come in...

I have a favorite book. Just one. Shel Silverstien. I loved his poetry from the very first line I ever read it. My grandma Flagg gave me one of his books for my birthday when I was only 10 and I have loved him ever since.

I love to share his poetry with my kids. I have two in particular...Megan and Abby. They both love to read his books and they share the one with my grandma's signature in it. When I was in high school and college I used to write poetry a lot. It was something I was always fond of and some of my work resembles his. Maybe it's because I loved his work so much. I was going through some of it today and I found a few gems that I need to print off and put in a book. Fun fun fun.

I have found I like to write. I like to write and share it. It just isn't the same to write without anyone ever being able to share it with you. My family is crazy, our lives are crazy. But it's so fun to tell the stories of my family to others. I find that people laugh, cry and are amazed. I want to be able to do that more, to share with not only those that are close to me, but those that aren't. When I was in Vegas this last time I surprised Lisa at the Gin Mill. She was excited to see me and every time she introduced me to someone it went like this..."This is my sister Julie...she has nine kids!" I think I am the lady with nine kids before I am Julie...but that's ok. I do have nine kids and my life is crazy..but always fun. I have stories daily about my life, my kids lives and our adventures as a family this size in today's world.

My favorite author now, as an adult has to be Erma Bombeck. Her stories make me laugh, and cry. She knows how to take life's experiences and make them fun to read, and they make us all feel a little more human because we all have the same life's experiences. We can relate. We understand. We can laugh together.

My life is crazy. I have nine kids. I laugh and cry every single day. Come in and join us...you might find that you feel a whole lot better when you leave...for a number of reasons!