Shoes, Vows, and Colored Cows

The other Saturday I found myself doing triage with my children and their shoes. Inspecting each one, I made some moment by moment decisions on what passed and what didn't. We were, after all, about to leave to go to a wedding (the one pictured below, two weddings back). What better time to take inventory of our family shoe situation but for just before we were supposed to leave? It's too late to suggest that I should've been more on top of that before hand....

 I determined that everyone was good to go except for two: Miles (7) and Clay (1). I peeled back the tongue of the baby's shoe and saw a "6". Ok, I'll get a "7". I left the baby at home with the older children, but nabbed Miles to accompany me to the shoe shop.

 Hurry, Miles. Oh yes. I forgot. Miles generally takes a very long time with his new shoe selections. It's as if all the shoes on the shelf belong to him until he makes his final selection. These? No, these? Hurry, Miles. Not those, those are too expensive. Those are fine....none in your size? How about these?

  As Miles scans the shelves for shoes to his liking, I scan the shelf for anything in a baby size "7". It's amazing how the very size you are looking for is sold out when you are in a hurry. Ah! Size "7". Not too shabby. I'll take those.

I help Miles find his size in the style he likes. He opts to put his old beaters in the box and wear the new ones out of the store. Good thinking, that way he won't need to change shoes when he gets home.

We race home (doing the speed limit, of course) and I find the baby. I plunk him down and whip the paper wads out of his new shoes. I twist and wiggle the shoes onto his feet and tie them up. I can tell he is not happy to be thus encumbered. I back away slowly, speaking affirming words of how lovely the shoes are, blah, blah, blah. Good boy, now let Mommy go get ready for the wedding.....

I return to the kitchen where I left Clay and what do I see but a stocking footed baby joyously running past me. Hey, what happened to your new shoes? Clay, where are your shoes???

 He doesn't talk much, Clay doesn't, but he is a smart little fellow. He takes a hold of my skirt and leads me to the basement steps and points down. I think he even giggled. There were his new little shoes. He had removed them from his feet and tossed them down the basement steps in a gesture of triumphant finality.

 I retrieved them and put them back on him. By this time, I tucked the squalling child under my arm, threw the diaper bag over my shoulder and headed for the van. We were going to be late for the wedding if we didn't hurry up.

Do you know that boy refused to wear those shoes that day? Of course I wasn't about to force the issue on him during a wedding. Later I tried to coax him to make friends with his new shoes so he'd be more willing to keep them on his feet next time. I think they are now on amicable terms, but I know he still prefers his barn boots or being barefooted.

What I haven't mentioned up until now is that while I was wrestling my small son about his shoes, Daddy wasn't even home although he was also planning to attend the wedding with us. Where was he, you might wonder?

Millersburg Tire. To his credit, he didn't want to be there any more than I wanted him gone at that moment. He was getting a new loader tire because *somebody* managed to impale the tire with the claw end of a hoe that had been hidden in the snow. He got the new tire, jammed it onto the loader, got the cows fed and arrived at the wedding after us although somewhat late.

The other day Paul was on the phone with his mom who is in Florida. He was telling her what I had mentioned to him about Trevor (3) going through a growth spurt or something. He just seems so extra hungry all the time and is always asking for a bowl of cereal or other such thing. Gramma just laughed. She said the real story is that since she isn't home, he isn't getting his quota of jelly sandwiches that she's been making for him when he wanders across the porch to her house telling her how hungry he is!

It'll be a few more weeks until Gramma and Poppy come back from Florida. When they're home my little children can amuse themselves at their house for a change if it's too cold to play outside.

I did stock up on some crayons, coloring books, and Play-doh. Why do I succumb to the Play-doh thing??? I don't really love scraping up brightly colored blobs from all the places that it inevitably drops to, and I really don't like the smell of it. The little people love the stuff, though.

My fridge is plastered with pictures of cows: pink cows, green cows, blue cows. At this very moment, my three year old is arranging them so as to fit in a few more. I'm not sure why they're all those strange colors. It might be because he couldn't find the rest of the crayons. Or it may be because his goal was to scrub each page with happy colors and the hue was beside the point. He's like that sometimes.

 Don't get me wrong, I love three year olds. A lot. This particular child can have the most trying "problems", though. For instance, he was given one of those two minute sand timers. You know the ones. They are shaped like an hour glass and the colored sand falls from the top into the bottom in exactly two minutes. He kept getting unreasonably frustrated that the sand would NOT stay in the top every time he set it down. He didn't want the sand to go to the bottom. This is, by the way, not unlike many adults with the sands of time. Oh, the explaining I have had to do with that thing. I finally resorted to hiding it.

Uht-oh. Not only is my fridge front full of colored cows, Daddy's office bulletin board is full of them now, too. I wonder what that little boy did with all of Daddy's stuff that had been on the bulletin board? I had better go find out.....

~Colleen

I'm Still Here

I feel like I've been running on fumes lately and thus the sparcity sparsity (that word is spelled with an "s"??) of written blog posts of late.

 I write a small column for a local bi-weekly magazine (for which the only pay I receive is local notoriety---of that there is plenty). Certainly there would be more qualified people if they were looking for an advice columnist or a dispenser of sage wisdom. Since they only really wanted some degree of entertainment with a "farmer's wife and mother" flare, I'm good on that front. If nothing else, maybe it's some small way for me to "teach the young women....to love their husbands, to love their children..."

The next post will be  mostly what I wrote for that....plus a few other things that I added later.....


 ~Colleen

P.S. It is nearly 2 o'clock in the morning and I should be sleeping.....however....

1.  I had several false starts to my night, not the least of which is Clay is fretful because he is sick.

2. The older ten children were ice skating at Kevin's pond.  They came home in stages, the middle stage having brought a very talkative Miles home who gave me a play-by-play of his entire (magical) evening.

3.  And then the phone rang at about 12:30AM (just after Miles quit talking and went to bed).  Who should it be but an Amish guy wondering if someone could take his friends/relatives to the train station (now)!!!!!!!!!!!!   NO....I AM NOT KIDDING...... I read him the weather report from my computer screen.  I convinced him that the roads were bad (or heading that way) and perhaps he could get his group to delay their trip until what is amounting to tonight.  He understood.  After all, there *was* a reason their originally scheduled driver did not show up.

I have NO idea when I will EVER be allowed to sleep without being "on call". It is laughable how often my sleep is punctuated with people walking up to my bedside (or calling me on the phone) expecting my full attention and swift assistance at a moment's notice. 

Yawn....