Teeny, Tiny People

When the babies were little, they were constantly attached to me.  I was often holding them on my hip or chest so they were RIGHTINMYFACE and BREATHINGMYAIR most all day, every day.  Which is the wonderful part about having babies, don't get me wrong.  Even for their small size, they were huge in my eyes due to their proximity. 

Now the babies are getting older and.... smaller.  They no longer breathe my air.  The are rarely right in my face, unless they are showing me the latest bump, scrape, bruise, turtle, blackbird or the like to impress me.  These days I mostly see them from a distance, which is becoming increasingly alright with me.  A friend told me once that raising kiddos never gets easier, it just gets different.  Each day I am becoming more aware of just what he meant.  

See what I mean?  I wasn't joking.  Blackbird.  In my face.  He was so proud of himself for catching it.  Still not sure how he managed that one. 

We spent a few days last week hauling hay.  Kenyon LOVES to drive the pickup and flipper trailer through the fields so I can load him with the tractor.  Once I get him loaded he dutifully slides over and lets me drive down the road to the hay yard to unload.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Load after load. 

Not only can he do the manly chores like haul hay, but he's great at walking home to make sandwiches for everyone as well!  He really wanted to keep loading hay while I went home to make sandwiches, but he definitely lost that argument. 

We had to wait nearly 10 minutes for the men to switch fields and bring us a tractor, which is approximately 10,000 eternities in young man years.  He sat on the tail end of the flipper trailer and nearly died of boredom.  

"Seriously, Mom.  I think they forgot about us.  There is no way it should be taking this long.  We should just go find them."

I love picking up these tiny hitchhikers I find alongside the road.  All the kids love to take turns riding in the swather and baler with their grandpa and dad.  After spending many long hours bouncing around in the cab I drive to the appropriate middle-of-nowhere location and find the tiny dot standing at the side of a field that is hopefully my child. 

I loved stumbling upon this scene a few days ago.  The kids found the best vantage point (the top of the ground load trailer) and watched their dad go back and forth with the tractor and baler.  I believe if you click on the individual photos you can enlarge them.

Nearly every Saturday morning while the rest of the world is watching cartoons, we have our kiddos out working a load of calves that arrive to our place the night before.  I run one side of the chute- giving shots, worming and putting in ear tags while my husband works the other side.  He runs the hydraulics of the chute to catch each calf, gives other shots and implants as well as brands each calf with a hot iron.  We both keep an eye on the kiddos as they push calves up the alleyway or simply see how much dirt they can possibly cover themselves in.  Not to brag or anything, but they could earn a gold medal in the filthy kid category.  Hands down.  

The boys have to practice their penmanship skills when they number all the ear tags and vials for BVD testing that I then run in the afternoons.  

This new, different chapter is difficult for me to process at times but I'm slowly adapting.  I never dreamed it would be this enjoyable to watch the children grow bigger physically but become teeny-tiny in my eyes as they become more independent. 

...And Just Like That

And just like that, we blinked and summer was over.  We played our hearts out in baseball, had weeks of swimming lessons and vacation bible school, survived the fair, sold our animals, spent countless hours in the hayfield and one day in town buying school supplies.  

That is a completely accurate recap of our summer.  

It was exhausting, but we seemed to manage very well.  The kids were up and out the door early each morning to walk their animals or ship cattle and then spent their afternoons in a myriad of activities - swathing, raking, baling or hauling hay mostly, and then we'd eat a light supper and head to the ball fields or work with animals again.  We had three children on two different baseball teams this year and it went pretty smoothly.  Everything this summer seemed to go smoothly even though it was incredibly busy.  Last summer each breath and each activity seemed to be a torturous struggle but that weight was somehow lifted and things were rather delightful these past few months.  

After spending so many years at home with small children I am now meeting more parents through all these activities and truly loving this little tribe we've created.  It is refreshing to find another soul that shares similar values and standards, not only in child rearing but their own work ethic and mannerisms.  Conversations are easier when you don't want to beat your head on a wall.  

The kids are getting older and starting to be really helpful with activities.  Some of them can even read, so now I can leave for short periods of time and leave them notes with instructions or lists of chores to accomplish.  (Funny, the first few times I left chore lists they always seemed to mysteriously blow away.  Hmmmm.)  

It's an exciting new phase of life, one where I can walk away from children, take a deep breath and be fairly confident they'll survive for a few moments.  We can skip naptime and the entire world does not end.  (Close, but not quite.)  And we are thisclose to being done with diapers FOREVER.  It's a thrilling time around here, let me tell you.  

John found a shell with the live snail inside.  He was so proud.  This was our exciting Father's Day.  The girls rode in the air conditioned tractor with Wesley to bale hay and the boys and I picked up logs from the edges of fields since a recent flood had carried them in. 

We are a filthy little family.  But I'm proud that they spend so much time outdoors on adventures.

Kenyon designed a replica of Big Brutus and took it to the fair.

Again with the filthy kids!

Oftentimes it feels like we eat as many meals in the shop as we do around our kitchen table.

Horrible picture?  Undoubtedly.
But this was my view repeatedly this summer -
three kids running out the door long before the sun came up.

She loves to drive the dozer, dinosaurs and the color pink.  Such a funny little one.

Everything can be made into an obstacle course, especially pallets of mineral.

She's kinda like her momma and has a soft spot for sweet little old men.

Reese is an excellent cattle counter, just like her dad.

She does a nice job of keeping herself entertained in the tractor while we move hay together.  
Also, I highly recommend the $11 writing tablet she's holding.  She can draw for hours with her finger and be perfectly content.  

*I should have mentioned that she enjoys almost all reptiles (like turtles) and not just dinosaurs.  My apologies. 

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Our children certainly have their own little personalities and many of their statements make this blatantly obvious.  

*****

Kenyon (eight years old) is very analytical and math minded.  Anything worth doing is worth doing correctly, even if it is during playtime.  More than once I've caught him diving across the living room to tackle his brother because his toy trailer was not loaded correctly.  

"I told you to load six head in the nose!  WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!"

"So you say I can only have two donuts for breakfast, eh, Mom?  That's still fourteen donuts a week.  I can live with that." 

*****

And then there's John, age six.  He's sneakier than most and he has a quiet vindictiveness that may take him places (but hopefully not jail).  And we've firmly established that his predilection for retaliation means he should, at this point in life, not be in a leadership position.  

He and Kenyon were hauling cattle throughout the house one evening and had been arguing a bit more than normal.  Kenyon drove cleeeeeeeeear into the kitchen and then hollered across the house.  "John - I just drove clear to North Carolina and you mean to tell me there's no load of cattle here???  Are you kidding me?  Why did you do that?"

John continued to drive his pickup and trailer throughout the living room and haul cattle much closer to the pens.  Without looking up, he never missed a beat when he calmly replied and smirked, "Because you made me so mad." 

*****

Kathryn, four years old, is super sweet (most of the time) and her strong faith will hopefully help lead the rest of her siblings down the straight and narrow as they grow up.  She has a mind like a steel trap and will recall minute details from the past three years of her life at the drop of a hat and then become exasperated when I can't recall the same moment in time.  She talks about heaven allllll the time and while some might think it is a bit morbid to be so obsessed with death I find it rather comforting that she's very confident in her eternal home and anxious to get there someday.  

"Hey, Momma, do you think Penny the cat will die this winter???  How cool would that be?  Then she can go to heaven and she and Grandma Curry can be a family again!"  

"Momma, I'm kinda excited to go to heaven.  Then I can have my piano lessons and sing songs with Grandma Curry again."

"Momma, is my heart prepared?"  I frantically searched my memory for any conversation in the past year she may have been privy to for the word 'prepared' and finally recalled the children's message at church a few weeks ago.  "Do you mean is your heart prepared for Jesus and the Christmas season?  Yes, kiddo, I think you're prepared."

*****

And then there's Reese, at one and three quarters years of age.  She's absorbed everything from her older siblings (for better or worse) and is sharp as a tack.  She says several words and is putting small phrases together like I found it!, Where he go?, and I don't know.  

My hands down favorite, however; is when she does something naughty and I ask her if she needs a swat.  Without fail her eyes will become wide, she will shake her head no vigorously and adamantly proclaim "Good girl, Momma.  Good girl!"

A Decade

Ten years ago today I left Texas and moved back to Kansas to be a Greenwood County girl for the rest of my life.  I remember leaving College Station and I began to get a bit teary eyed.  Wesley glanced over at me and instantly got mad.

"Nope.  Not gonna have it.  I just spent two years on the phone with you every night, listening to you bitch about how much you wanted to leave.  You're not gonna cry now."

Although I was taken aback, I knew he was right.  I was done with Texas.

When I moved here we lived in a house we now affectionately refer to as the 'snake house', although that's another story for another day.  Wesley was the quintessential bachelor and thus had NOTHING in this house besides his clothes.  No food, no cleaning supplies, nothing.

The next morning I drove to the nearest Walmart 45 minutes away from our little house in the hills armed with a shopping list a mile long and his checkbook.  I filled that shopping cart to the gills with all the essentials for our new life as we played house.  Food, cleaning supplies, toiletries and the like.  Every item on my list was something I would consider 'essential'.

On the drive back home I kept noticing the ditches were filled with the most beautiful orange lilies.  I pulled that old chevy feed pickup over and picked a huge bouquet that I then balanced precariously on the mountain of supplies I'd stacked in the passenger seat of the single cab pickup.

Upon returning to the house I worked feverishly to create some semblance of a home.  Cleaning was towards the top of the list - especially the kitchen.  I found a mason jar in a cabinet, arranged the ditch lilies and placed them front and center in the middle of the kitchen table.

It was official.  I was the perfect housewife.  Wes would come home, see his beautifully clean house, eat a gourmet meal courtesy of Hamburger Helper and undoubtedly ooh and aaahhh over the flowers that I'd so lovingly picked for him.  This day was perfect start to our perfect little life.  Everything was PERFECT, I tell ya.

I made supper and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And nearly two hours after he'd said, he finally walked through the door.  Now, I was no stranger to this lifestyle having grown up in a ranching family, but I was always the one WITH my dad... not the one waiting on him.  Turns out, it is terribly frustrating.  Who knew?

When he walked through the door I was a bit disappointed that he didn't scan the room to notice how much time and effort I'd put into cleaning and arranging things nicely.  He walked into the kitchen, grabbed the store receipt off the counter and his eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw the total.

"$323???  WHAT IN THE WORLD DID YOU BUY?!"

It was then that he started to scan the room, trying to find the gold plated accessories I surely must have purchased that might justify such an expense.  It was then that he noticed the ditch lilies.  The lilies that I lovingly picked and arranged.  The lilies that were supposed to serve as icing on the cake; the cherry on top; the crowning jewel of my master homemaking skills.  This was supposed to be the beginning of our most perfect little life together and instead things were headed downhill rather quickly.

I remember him shooting daggers as he stared at the bouquet.  "How much did THOSE cost?"

***

Things are a bit different these days.  I don't drive a feed pickup as often anymore.  The perfect housewife/perfect life thing went out the window loooong ago.  I can cook more than Hamburger Helper these days, but the kids enjoy it so it's not totally off the menu.  Now, every time I drive down the road in early summer and see the familiar orange lilies lining the ditches I get nostalgic.  We get a laugh and still tease each other every time the kids or I pick a bouquet of wildflowers and I make a pretty arrangement for the kitchen table.  "How much did THOSE cost?"

Life Lately

I've not written in quite some time and the comments from friends and family (okay, like two of you) have been growing more concerned.  Thus, a blog full of life updates.  Of which we may have one or two....

 I just want to do a quick recap.  The picture below is what the children looked like last week, or so it seems.

And now I have these large creatures and I don't know what happened, much less WHEN this happened.

They are old enough now to drive themselves around, which is handy.  

Every Halloween we go to a friend's house where they have downhill power wheel races.  Best. Thing. Ever.  All of these power wheels are old and don't work.  The gears are stripped out of them so the only thing that powers them is gravity and a strong push from someone at the top of a steep hill that contains large rocks.  The kids don't run the full course, but participants roughly 10 years and over race down a hill more than 100 yards long and occasionally run into each other, do somersaults, run off course and into trees, etc.  My belly hurts terribly every year from laughing and this year was no exception.  It is good, clean fun.  No video games, no whining, no bitching and moaning.  Just some good smack talk and the occasional bruise or scrape.  It warms my heart.  (And if you happen to have any old power wheels that you would like to donate to the cause, let me know.  They typically don't last more than a season or two for obvious reasons.) 

Kenyon LOVES school, which came as quite the shock to me.  He has the most wonderful teacher ever, so I didn't anticipate a problem there, I just never imagined he would take this newfound job so seriously.  He enjoys the constant challenge that each day brings - like reading.  I cannot believe he can honest to goodness READ.  He is verrrrry serious when he gets off the bus each day and comes to my desk to lay out his paperwork.  He explains to me exactly what each worksheet entailed, some of the challenges and what was 'totally easy, Mom'.  I love that he loves to learn and hope it continues throughout his life.  My dad beat education into our heads.  'People can take most anything away from you, but they can never take away your education.'  Words to live by, folks. 

John is.... just John.  The kid cracks me up.  He has blossomed in his newfound role as 'top dog' now that Kenyon is gone all day to school.  He lives to make folks laugh and enjoys attending the school of hard knocks most every day with his dad.  

Kathryn is a pretty little girl, with her long, blonde flowing locks.  Her biggest downfall is that she has a fairly good idea that she's pretty.  I'm alright with this as long as she never plays the dumb, pretty girl card as she gets older.  I'll not stand for that.  She enjoys talking incessantly, wrestling with 'my boys', seeing 'my Justin' and being treated like a big boy.  While she does wear a pretty dress most Sundays to church, the rest of the time she's a filthy little animal that runs feral just like her brothers.

Wesley is doing well.  He works too many hours and has too many projects going all at the same time but he doesn't complain as he knew what he was getting into when he was born.  We both talk about how things are tough now but hopefully if we keep our heads down and keep working one day we can sit on the porch in rocking chairs and relax.  Then we laugh, heartily.  If we didn't enjoy it we wouldn't do it, right? 

And then there's me.  Pregnant, again.  But if we didn't enjoy kids we wouldn't keep having them, right?  I'm due in the spring, which is perfect as that's typically one of our slowest times of the year.  *Insert eye roll here*  I've never had babies born this far apart, so I'm at a bit of a loss on what to do when you only have one in diapers.  Sometimes I kid myself into thinking I'll have all sorts of free time on my hands, and then I remember that the oldest are now able to be enrolled in t-ball, swimming lessons, school activities and all the other fun things and then I realize we'll be just as busy as ever while toting this little one around.  

It is always an adventure around here, that's for sure. 

'Member That Time?

'Member that time we (I) thought it would be wise to schedule surgeries for two of our children on the same day?  

(Before you all gasp and clutch your pearls, know that it was a wise choice to get it over and done with.  I dealt with 2-3 children sick at a time all winter.  The prospect of two in recovery at the same time didn't even phase me.)  

'Member when we were at the hospital at 6am, bright eyed and bushy tailed?  

... and then we had two hours to kill before surgery so we rode and rode and rode in the little red wagon they had in the pre-op area. 

'Member how Mom met her FitBit step goal for the day by 8am? 

'Member how we read book after book after book after book? 

'Member how bored we all got so Dad let you play with his phone and call random cattle buyers?

'Member how surgery didn't even phase you and you came home and immediately did a headstand on the love seat and told us you were a monkey?

'Member how it was also Dad's birthday so we baked him a cake and decorated it with sprinkles because that's all Mom can manage to do? (It's a star and a cowboy hat, if you can't tell.)

'Member how he loved his card and the way Kenyon wrote on it all by himself? 

'Member helping him blow out the candles? 

'Member all that?  What a day that was.