Seven

It's official. I'm pregnant.

Yep, during Adam's and my 7th year of marriage, we found out on February 7th that we were expecting our 7th child, due on the 7th of October. Then, when I called the doctor to make my appointment, the nurse said, "When you come in you will be 7 weeks." I smiled. Of course I would be.

With all this seven nonsense, I felt the number had to be significant. There were just too many 7's to ignore. A lot of people have suggested we name him (yes, I know it's a boy) Seven or something to do with the number. My sister-in-law sat with me the other day and researched the Greek and Latin words for seven and seventh. The only one I liked was the word septimus. That would definitely be a strong manly name. I'm still toying with the thought.

After my search with Kasey, I dug some more. I googled 7. I clicked on the link that said, "The link between God and the number 7". Hmmmm....that intrigued me. Within the first paragraph I read that 7 was a symbol of God's perfect completion and rest.

Perfect completion and rest? I warmly smiled at the perfect completion part, feeling that this baby would mark the perfect completion of our family. But rest? This simple word made jubilant tears stream down my face!

Lesson 106: tears of joy pouring down your face over the word rest = a clearly exhausted white trash woman

This shows you how extremely tired I've been. Reading that, for some reason, made me believe that if I gave birth to another child I would be granted rest. Huh? Does that make any sense at all? I haven't slept in over a month, because my kids have been sick since January 29th. No lie! In fact, we have only been fever free since Saturday. Marky had strep throat, Jagger had a double ear infection, Jude and I had bronchitis and all of us, but Adam, had a 5 day fever virus on top of it. It's like a coughing symphony all night long. I can't sleep through that. And I'm bringing another child into the world to cough along with them. Rest? I'm staying hopeful! You never know.

Even if this baby doesn't bring me rest, I'm still looking forward to meeting the "perfect completion" to our family.

Guns

There are a lot of boys in this house. This results in an ample supply of fake firearms. The fake ones have always been enough, but as of late, the boys have put in requests for REAL guns.

My response to their pleas? Dramatic laughter in their hopeful little faces.

Adam took the adult approach and decided to inform them about real guns. The conversation went like this:

Adam: "Boys, do you know what we use real guns for?"

Picture this, my boys jumping on our bed in excitement. I'm pretty sure they thought they were closer to reaching their dreams now that Dad had engaged them in a real conversation about it.

Their responses:

Jude: "To shoot trees!" - What did trees ever do to Jude? I wonder.

Jet: "To shoot animals that are being bad!" - Jet gets a gun and his first order of business is to find Old Yeller and put him down.

Jagger: "To shoot the Rebels!" - Oh, my little Sith Lord, living in a constant state of warfare with the Jedis in his mind.

Adam busted out laughing and the conversation was over. Trust me, they won't be getting real guns anytime soon.

Lesson 105: one question asked, and the responses from my children offend environmentalists, PETA, and those who use the Force = white trash

Puke

I've had it. I swear, if one more kid vomits I'm going to lose it. The past 8 months have been so full of puke I can hardly stand it.

On May 3rd, Adam and I celebrated our anniversary with a sick Jet and Jude. Then, after the 4th of July, Jet, Jude, Jovie, and Stone had some sort of stomach bug. Yep, stomach bug in the summer. Isn't summer supposed to be a break from illness?

Right after Labor day, Jovie, Jagger, and Jude had another bug. Are you detecting a trend yet?

Halloween we were safe, but forget about Thanksgiving. Jet woke up sick.

Lesson 103: spending Thanksgiving cleaning vomit and Thanksgiving dinner consisting of nothing but Oodles of Noodles = white trash

Jet ended up making the whole house sick, including me. I haven't had the stomach flu since February 1998! Thanks Jet.

Martin Luther King day kicked off with Jagger puking at 5 am. No holiday is safe!! The following Thursday Jude woke up sick. The next Monday Jude was puking AGAIN!

Lesson 104: kid puking on the sidewalk in front of Steak and Shake = white trash

That was this past Monday. Guess what happened this morning? Yep, Jagger's sick.

All that's left to be said is, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

St. Francis de Sales This One's For You

There are a lot of saints that I ask to pray for me on a daily basis. Mary and Joseph I have praying for Adam and me to be the best parents we can be, Saint Dymphna prays for Stone and Jagger's mental issues, and poor Saint Jude, being a drama queen I feel all stressful situations are desperate cases. I never leave that poor guy alone.

A few years ago, when I started my writing adventure, I would pray before I wrote. I wanted God to guide me always. After saying my prayers, I was going through my saint list and asking them to pray for various issues. When I was done I thought to myself, "Did I get everyone?" That's when I heard it. It wasn't audible, it was written on my heart. "Ask St. Francis to pray for you."

Huh? I brushed it off. A few seconds later it came again. I chuckled and knew it wasn't me. I remember saying, "Ok, and even though I don't know why, St. Francis please pray for me."

After that experience I had to immediately look on the internet to find out what St. Francis was the patron saint of. I looked up St. Francis of Assissi, since he was the only St. Francis I knew. Animals? No. That couldn't be it. I noticed St. Francis de Sales and clicked on the link. I smiled when I read he was the patron saint of writers.

Needless to say, he's become a good friend. So good in fact, that when Stone was born I told Adam I wanted his middle name to be DeSales. Adam agreed.

When Stone was born Adam texted friends and family. A couple days later we got a text from a friend that said, "lol, sounds like Stoned As Hell."

Noooooooooooooo!

Lesson 102: trying to name your kid after a saint, but winding up with his name sounding like "Stoned As Hell" = white trash

So, in honor of St. Francis de Sales's feast day, this blogs for you! Thank you for all your prayers!!

Brother Bowling

Today, I rounded the corner to find my kids had created a new game.

Lesson 101: using your baby brother as some sort of bowling ball = white trash

Ghetto Hoo-Ride

Our family has been in need of a new vehicle for a long time. I've just been too cheap to admit it. Who cares if we didn't all fit in it, the air conditioning and heat didn't work, the cd player was broken, the vhs player was broken, there was a huge crack in the windshield, and the power steering belt, that also controlled the coolant, fell off every other week, resulting in the van over-heating and needing to be towed home? We didn't have a car payment and that, my friends, was all I cared about.

I guess Adam had had enough, after being towed home twice in one month. He pulled the we're getting a new vehicle and I don't care what you say. He was right. It was definitely time.

We started our car search with a few must-haves. First, air conditioning. We haven't had an air conditioned car since 2005. I'm for reals! I was pregnant for 3 of those past summers. I remember, when I was pregnant with Jude, the temperature was 100 degrees with high humidity and I had to take Marky home in the middle of the day, on route 51 in Pittsburgh, going to the South Hills. If anyone has driven on this road, you know I had to stop at a red light every 5 seconds. It was so hot and humid that I let Marky, Jagger, and Jet wear nothing but underwear and diapers; and at every stop light I turned around and sprayed them with a spray bottle full of water.

Lesson 99: spraying your kids down like a bad dog, because you don't have any other way to cool them off in your car = white trash

The next thing on our list, seating for 8 or more. I told him we needed something that at least sat 9, but all we could find were those 15 passenger vans, and all the reviews we read said they did horrible in the snow. HA! We live in Pittsburgh.......on a hill! Adam said he didn't want a "Yoder-toter" anyway.

Adam searched for weeks, until he found a really good deal on a used Ford Expedition. It sat 8 and had 4-wheel drive. We drove all the way to Ohio to check it out. Adam fell in love immediately. All I could see was the price of gas. (It actually isn't too bad. I was pleasantly surprised.) Needless to say, we bought it. Here it is.

On the way home, Adam kept going over the speed limit. It wasn't his fault. The ride was so smooth. Nothing like the van that shook violently after you hit 60 mph, shaking your brain loose. I finally told him, "Please be careful in this thing. The police are going to be looking for a reason to pull you over."

"Why would they want to pull me over?" he asked.

I chuckled, "Because it looks like a druggie-hoo-ride."

"No it doesn't." Adam got defensive.

"Honey, there's no Ford emblem on the front, like the person who owned it before wanted people to think it's an Escalade, the front windows are extremely tinted, and we have rims for crying out loud! This used to be a druggie-hoo-ride!"

Adam started to laugh. "Yeah, it probably was."

The funny thing is, I'm the one who got pulled over. It wasn't even a month after we bought it, when I was driving down my own town's street, I passed a police car that busted a U in the middle of the street just to pull me over. I wish everyone could have seen this officer's face when he peeked in the back of my vehicle to see a car full of children.

Lesson 100: getting pulled over, because your car looks like a drug dealers, and surprising the officer, because it's obvious the only kind of dealin' you're doing, is dealin' with your ridiculous life, and he can read that ALL over your face = white trash

He gave me a warning, and made Adam remove the tint from the front windows. Now it doesn't look as suspicious. We definitely need to get one of those family stick figure decals for my back window. That way the police know we need the car for the seats, not because we gangsta.

But hey, it's got air!!!

Trash Tree

The Christmas tree is one of our family's favorite traditions. We bundle up every year and head to Grupps Christmas Tree Farm. These very sweet people hand us a saw and a cart, and send us into a field to pick out and cut down the tree of our choice. The kids love this. I love that it's such a safe environment that I don't have to worry about my kids running ahead and losing themselves in the labyrinth of trees. Not that they are ever hard to find, I usually follow the loud squeals of delight and trail of snow angels made between trees.

This is the tree Adam and I picked out.

I called the kids and told them to hurry up because Dad was cutting down our tree. They all ran, screaming with excitement. I wish I could have gotten their expressions when they saw this pathetic twig. We even took the joke so far as to make them pose with the tree so I could take a picture. They were so depressed. They didn't find this as funny as Adam and I did.

After the kids realized we weren't serious about that tree, their spirits were renewed. We trudged through snow for a long time before finding the best tree for our house. Adam cut it down with Stone's help.

We took our tree home and decorated it the next day. (The day we got it, Adam threw the tree in the house and went to work. He doesn't have ANY days off this month.) Jude and Jovie really enjoyed the decorating this year, but they still don't get all the rules of tree decorating. First we had to explain to Jude that we only had a certain amount of ornaments and a whole tree to cover.

Then, I've had to tell them every day since, that just because something has a hook or something resembling a hook, that doesn't mean it's an ornament. Every day I come down to find random crap hanging on our tree's bottom branches. First, Jovie found a Halloween spider and hung it up. Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a big hairy spider. Then, Jude made paper monkeys at pre-school. Notice the hook shaped tails? The thing that took the cake was when Jude found a piece of cardboard that was connected to a pair of gloves, price tag still on it, and hung it on the tree, just because it had a hook. I told him it wasn't an ornament and we had a 15 minute argument about it. He just kept insisting, "Look at the hook!"

Lesson 98: hanging Halloween decorations and garbage on your Christmas tree = white trash

For all you wondering, yes, they are still there. It makes for good conversation.

Merry Christmas!!