Every Mom's Nightmare...Do You Have a Plan?

I remember my first anxiety attack holding my first newborn baby in a public area. I had horrible visions of somebody hurting her, taking her, or the possibility I may not be able to protect her. I talked to my mom about all these horrible thoughts and fears I was having. She assured me that every new mother goes through similar anxieties. She told me that my world had been changed in a huge way and my job as a mother came with overwhelming concern and worry. She told me to get used to it, but to know moms everywhere are dealing with the same wories and fears.

Okay, so I know now that she was right. There is that rush of uncertainty, that fear I may not be able to protect my baby or child  from kidnappers, carjackers, or psychopaths randomly shooting people. As mothers we deal with our worries and fears each in our own ways. We manage and move on with our lives.

Yesterday I was watching the news and talking to my husband about the most recent public shooting. The one in Carson City Nevada at IHOP. I answered a few questions the best I could for my oldest daughter. And it hit me...HARD! Those fears and anxieties we had (and still have occassionaly) that may or may not have been credible at the time, are now becoming seriously credible!

For a moment stop and think about that.

Over the last year there have been many shootings in very public places. I don't need to make a list here, we have all read and seen the news stories. From meals out, grocery shopping, and even loading the kids in the car in a parking lot; the risk of being caught in a violent situation seems to be going up.

I told my daughter that I often times resist going out as a family because these fears are now becoming real threats. It isn't JUST the fact that as a family of 7, a dinner out even somewhere as simple as Olive Garden wracks up a $120 + bill and the chaos of eating out with children ranging in age from 3 to 16 is more work for me out than having the control of our own enviornment at home. (Those are both very serious reasons why we don't go out much at all though).

Now there is a real concern and threat that we may get stuck in a horrible situation of violence. If we were out to breakfast at an IHOP, for example (which is a restaurant our children enjoy and the chosen example for obvious reasons) we would be spread out around a large rectangular table in the middle of the dining room. Seven people just don't fit in one of those nice comfy booths. If a crazed gunman were to come in and start shooting, how could I protect my family? Who would grab the baby? If one was in the restroom would they stay and hide in there? How would we make sure everyone got down and didn't just freeze in fear?

I am not trying to incite panic or encourage people not to go out with their families and I don't mean to sound like a crazy woman. But while I was talking to my husband about the recent shooting, I made a sarcastic remark about having a family plan. One of his eyebrows went up, he gave me that look (that you may be on to something look), and I realized that isn't a bad idea.

Our children hear about these attacks on TV, from friends, online news sources, and of course their parents talking about it. Its not a big secret. There is no reason to try and hide reality from them. So why not have a family plan in case of an emergancy outside the home? They have lockdown drills in schools, earthquake drills, fire drills, and such. So why shouldn't we have our own plan if something bad happens?

We are a family of 7, as I said before. Our ages range from 40 to 3. If we are in Target and the power goes out in a thunder storm and their back up power fails (like it did last month) my children need to know that standing in the isle screaming at the top of their lungs is not part of our plan. Yes, my 8 year old did that. (The funny part was that 3 minutes before the power went out she was asking me what would happen if the lights went out from the storm. I of course told her all about the back up generators and how everything would be just fine. Then boom...total darkness and multiple screaminig kids! Then everyone pulled out their cell phones/flash lights and made their way slowly to the front of the store. So much for backup generators.)

Anyway, we decided to have a family meeting and discuss it with our kids. Every family has their own dynamics and therefore would have a different plan. I am not trying to suggest what kind of plan you might make. I just can't imagine going through what all those people having a lovely family breakfast did last week in Carson City. However, explaining to my children to immediatly get down and behind me and daddy should we ever be caught in a scary situation like that, somehow gives me a little peace of mind. And since its impossible to shut all of our children and ourselves in the house forever, it just seems like common sense.

So, I encourage you to sit down with your family, talk out a plan that would work for you (based on age and maturity levels). That way, in the event you are caught in one of these nightmares you have a chance to make it to counseling,  together as a family.

A Child's Comfort Isn't As Imprtant As The Child

There have been times in my life when I have driven somewhere unbuckled. I have risked, for some stupid reason, my own safety and the opportunity to pay a hefty fine for no real reason. I think we have all made dumb choices in regards to our own safety throughout our lives.
However, I have never risked the safety of any of my children for any reason. There is no reason I could ever justify risking their lives. We have 5 children. I also have a step-daughter from my previous marriage. I am the daughter of a retired law enforcement officer and an ICU nurse. I grew up with CHP magazine on our coffee table (a magazine that focuses on vehicle accidents and has very graphic, real life pictures). As a young mother I was reminded (lovingly) how important it was to make sure my children were safe in the car regardless of noise and comfort.

I know how frustrating a crying baby in a car seat can be. I understand all too well what its like to be in the car with a child who wants to be anywhere but in that car. An upset child can not only be painful to your emotional and physical body but also a big distraction to the driver. So I get it. It's tough to be in a car with an upset child of any age.

I recently had a second hand experience about a mother who turned her 11 month old around to the forward facing position. The reason in her words, 'she didn't like being rear facing'. At this time I am not going to go on and on about the legality issue of turning your child around at 11 months. I think we can all see the stupidity and selfishness in this particular situation. So for arguments sake, lets just say her child was 12 months old. The legal time to be allowed to turn your child from rear facing to forward facing.

I am not going to list studies and data to support my opinion. I don't think it's necessary. You don't need to see all that to know in your heart whats right and what's not. The safety of your child(ren) is not a like or dislike situation. My son loves candy and it would make him very happy to eat candy whenever he wanted, but it's not good for him to over indulge in sweets. So he isn't allowed to. My oldest daughter is a type 1 diabetic. She hates poking herself all day long to test her blood sugar and to change her pump inserts when needed. But she still has to do them to keep herself safe (and in this case alive). Each example is simple and extreme at the same time. And so is turning your child around to the forward facing position simply because it may make your car rides less stressful.

My son is very tall for his age. Right now at 37 months old he is 40" tall, he wears a 5T or 4 in boys. He is not a small guy and never has been. He has always had very long legs. He stayed in the rear facing position for 2 years.  Why? Well I guess the simplest answer is information I already shared with you, my father is a retired law enforcement officer and my mother is an ICU nurse. I fully understand what could happen, what has happened to other children, and what my child's physical limitations are when it comes to vehicle safety. We have certainly had our moments of chaos in the car and have had to push through them.

Car seat safety isn't the only problem with children in the car. The children who are no longer in seats (and even those in boosters) have a tendency to put the shoulder belt behind there backs because when the belt rubs against their shoulder blade it can be uncomfortable. Please, please don't let them do that. They make little adjusters that attach to the seat belt to help it be positioned in the right and comfortable area.

I am not the one who tells this story anymore when one of our children's friends get in our car and they attempt to put the shoulder belt behind them. My children know the story and tell it well all on their own. It is a simple, straightforward, and very sad story.

We are acquaintances with the family who lived before us in our last house in California. A family of 4: Mom, dad, daughter, and son. One day mom and daughter are out running errands in their large 2006 GMC Denali. They were in a head on collision. The collision was so substantial that mom's left knee was smashed up under the dashboard and shattered. She was lucky. Her daughter, in the back seat, had done what she did every time she rode in the car.  She put the shoulder portion of her seat belt behind her. The collision (obviously from moms injuries) was so hard that the impact force  focused on her abdomen, her back was broken and her spinal cord severed. She was (is) permanently paralyzed from the waist (seat belt) down.

I don't have any stories of children I know being injured from riding front facing instead of rear facing. For that I am thankful. However, just because I don't know anyone who has had that happen doesn't mean it doesn't. Babies just don't have the muscle strength older children do. Car seats have come a long way and can hold children rear facing safely for a long time. Please, please don't risk your child's safety for perceived comfort and less stress. I guarantee you that the mother of the paralyzed child mentioned above does not have a stress free life and would exchange discomfort and stress for the injury her daughter lives with every day.

Car seats, booster seats, seat belts, and adjusters have come a long way in the last few years. Please don't risk the safety of your children or other people's children for the sake of comfort and silence in the car.

Okay, I will now step down off my soapbox. :-)

I Really Am The Cool Mom!!!

I am preparing to have yet another surgery. Deep Sigh! (There is a light at the end of the tunnel, so it is all okay.) As I was getting my house in order for me to be down, in bed, for a bit, I enlisted the help of my beautiful girls to help me out. Now its summer and seriously who wants to clean and organize for mom all day? No one. And I understand. To be honest I would rather not do it myself. So, I planned a little motivation.

My girls are 13, 13, and 16 (and add a friend who is visiting for a few weeks who is also 16). They have all been asking me to put color in their hair. Streaks, all the underneath, 3 different colors of streaks, and one wanted her whole head of hair one vibrant color. So, I bought the neccessary supplies, proposed my plan, and we all got to work. (I did get permission from our visiting friend's mom before adding any color to her hair. I'm cool, but not stupid.)

So the downstairs and the upstairs of my house are clean and organized. They did a great job helping (thank you ladies) and it was time to pay up.  I spent an entire day playing with hair and making a mess with color.

Here are our results...now remember, its just hair. The color is semi-permanent, it will wash out eventually, and its summer. Besides, I the cool mom. Didn't you hear?

 Toria with her blue, black, and blond streaks

 Macy with her purple hair underneath (the entire bottom section)

 Zoey (visiting friend) with her blue streaks

 Our first attempt at an entire head of blue hair... didn't get the results she was looking for.

 Sooooo...

DO-OVER! My smurf, Jessica with her very blue head of hair.

 All that matters is she is happy with it!

It was fun to do but a pain to clean up after. I would have loved to snap pictures of them all with their heads wrapped up with saran wrap waiting for the colors to set, but they didn't like that idea at all. Aparently they didn't want anyone to see them that way. But its cool to have colored hair, LOL!
Teen girls are funny.

My First Wordless Wednesday...

Wait, what are the rules for wordless Wednesdays? Am I allowed to use any words? If I can't use any words than how will anyone know whats going on in the pictures? I mean you could guess, they are pretty self explanatory...I would be willing to even say that the pictures could tell a few different stories just because my children are so dramatic and silly. So I guess I won't say anything. I will make it wordless. Well, starting now.

(I took these through our backdoor window while they thought no one was watching...I am always  watching! Ok, now I will start the wordless part...)

WAIT, WAIT, WAIT! How come whenever my kids take pictures of me they always seem to get these kind of shots? I mean really, you had to click the button then?

Ok, well this one isn't so bad. I guess I will resume wordlessness...

(its a word!)

Delusions of Granduer

There are times in you life when you are able to complete a task and it brings you not only satisfaction but that feeling of great accomplishment. Creating something with your own two hands, building a gift for your children that they will love and appreciate for years to come. This was not one of those times.

Achievement, accomplishment, completion, conquest, triumph, victory ...yeah right, it was more like defeat, failure, forfeit, and misfortune.

My husband's knee surgery was scheduled and approaching fast. Everyday we chipped away at our list of things that could not be done while he was recovering. He worked his tushy off the last couple of weeks. He built me two planter boxes that I requested for Mother's day (and he bought me a beautiful diamond necklace too! Sorry ladies, he's mine!) and then we got the idea of the play structure for the two younger kids. Now when I say 'we' got the idea, I mean me.

Pack your bags we are going on a side trip...

We bought a play structure, not swing set. I had a swing set when I was a kid. They were metal and tubular. There were holes in the 4 corner legs for anchors to secure the swing set to the ground, but who used those? If you got swinging high enough you could get one, maybe even two legs to jump off the ground. That was the challenge.

The slide was part of the swing set, an important part. Without the slide, chances are the whole thing would've fallen over as you swung forward. There were 2 swings, a bar in the middle, and a teeter totter thing that actually was a lot of fun if you had someone to do it with you. I am thinking back to all the time we spent on our swing set and I am amazed we didn't slice our hands open going down the slide  (because they were rather sharp metal sides not fancy plastic). I am amazed that two of us could swing at the same time and it didn't just snap in half. And I am still confused as to the purpose of that square bar in the middle. All you could do was hang off it. What was the point of that? I mean if you were serious about your bar skills you had to use a very stationary and strong bar. So I personally think that they ran out of stuff to put on the swing set and needed something to plug the hole.

Okay, so anyway we go the play structure at Costco. I did some research before hand to make sure we weren't throwing away money. Turned out that the one at Costco was a great deal for the quality and size.
On Sunday evening we go in and get this monstrosity. Someone was thinking ahead because they had the boxes all divided and loaded onto those giant carts parked under the demonstration model. Easy enough right? Pull out the preloaded cart, push it up to the register, pay, load it in the truck, and head home. Well we thankfully had a cashier who pays attention. We had two #6 boxes and no #2 box. (There were 6 boxes. One box was not too big, it contained all the hardware and such. But the other 5 boxes were huge). We only came in to buy this one item and wouldn't you know it, the 2.5 year old was freaking out,  wanting to climb all over the boxes and open them up. I can usually make it through Costco in about 45 minutes and he starts getting antsy towards the end. But not this time, so I headed out to the truck while my husband patiently waited for the employees to figure out how to switch one of the #6 boxes out for a #2 box. About 45 minutes later my husband was heaving this cart towards the truck. We began to load the boxes in the truck.

Let me just say thank you to the very nice tire guy who saw a very incapable woman trying to help her husband load huge boxes into the back of a truck and was so sweet to not just come over to help but he ran over to help. So the strong men get the boxes loaded and now all that's left is to take it home and put it together. How exciting!

So this is late Sunday evening, my husbands knee surgery is Thursday morning. On the way home we get hit with a huge thunderstorm. Even if he could have dealt with the pouring rain, its really not safe to be outside putting together a 12 foot play structure with ground strike lightening going on. So, my husband said I will start on it tomorrow after work.

Another side trip...

I love thunder and lightening storms! My husband shakes his head and thinks I am a bit off when it comes to my weather related excitement. He grew up in Pennsylvania and is quite used to the type of weather we have here in Virginia. I however grew up in northern, northern California. It rains 60% of the year and the rest of the time its foggy. There is no exciting weather. No snow storms, no hurricanes, no nor Easters, no tornadoes, and our thunderstorms are lame. We have earthquakes though! Okay, that's a whole other subject. 
So I love when we have the severe weather and I get very disappointed when they skip over us or break up before hitting us. I have an addiction to checking the radar on the weather channel application on my IPhone. Honestly if I am in town (15 miles away) that's when there is a big storm. I will come home and everything will be wet and blown around. My husband will say, you just missed a pretty nasty thunderstorm. The thunder shook the house and knocked out the dish (or Internet, or whatever). And every time I am pissed that I missed it!

The one week we have serious outside work to do in a short amount of time what do you think happens? Yep, severe thunderstorm warnings, flash flood warnings, non stop heavy rain, and huge thunderstorms with lots of ground strike lightening. So my poor husband had to work around this weather for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday trying desperately to get this play structure put together.

Monday afternoon, my husband is outside opening boxes, reading directions, scratching his head, and pacing a lot. I finally get an opportunity to go out and check on the progress. There is a huge diagram and a 40 page book of directions. Wow they weren't kidding around with the serious technicality of it all. EXCEPT of the 2,000 pieces (and I am not exaggerating) in the 6 boxes none of them are labeled. Nope, none of them. Well the slide pieces are obviously the slide pieces and the swings are obviously the swings but all those wooden boards....not a mark on them!

There is this wonderful diagram that lists every piece in the box, with a picture of what the piece looks like, the dimensions, the quantity of the pieces, and the identifying number that goes along with each piece. And in the 40 page booklet identifies each piece with the numbers listed on this chart. But there are no labels on the wood pieces themselves!

Have you ever tried to put together a puzzle upside down? Well imagine if that was a 3-D puzzle that was 12 feet high. This was my husbands challenge. And every time he got some kind of rhythm down, BAM, thunderstorm!

After about 2 hours of piecing things together and trying to identify parts my husband began to feel horrible and got a migraine headache with all the bells and whistles. So off to bed he was sent with medicine and lots of water.


That creek like area isn't a creek, its just part of
our backyard.



Tuesday afternoon he began to work on it again. Our back yard began looking like we had a creek running threw it. It had been raining since Sunday evening non-stop. My husband is working hard and about 3 hours into his work he comes in cursing and breathing heavily. He had injured his hand. The tip of his pointer finger on his left hand got stuck between a bolt and the board while the drill was putting it into place. It took the tip of his finger off. It didn't get his fingernail, it was just beyond that. So I cleaned it up, bandaged it, gave him some meds, and sent him on his way to continue working. (Later I would here the same story over and over of how I took care of him and then sent him back to work one handed. Sigh.) By the way his hand is completely healed.

By Wednesday evening the rain hadn't stopped. I was able to go out and help him because one of the older girls played with the 2.5 year old for me. I seemed to be more in the way than a help. So I decided to start labeling pieces. I used a white oil crayon to mark the pieces. It had stopped raining for awhile which made things much easier. So I manage to label about I would say maybe 100 pieces of wood for my husband and put them into stacks according to their category. BAM! Another huge thunderstorm is coming. We are both outside so we continue working, as it is getting closer and closer, the rain is getting heavier and heavier. Just as I come to the conclusion it is time to get out of the danger zone for us both, I notice that the white oil crayon is rinsing off of the boards I have labeled. Well Hell!

We go inside and as we both sigh, I asked my husband, "How much do you think Don (our carpenter who does handyman work) would charge us to put this together?" The idea is a pleasant relief to my husband who immediately goes out and calls Don. He comes back in from making the call and tells me that he will do it but won't be able to come out until the end of the next week. Sign, okay. At least it will get put together and our kids will be able to play on it this summer.

So this is the time my husband realizes he will not be putting this structure together. There will be no feelings satsatisfaction or years down the road bragging rights of the huge accomplishment he was able to achieve by single handedly (ha ha little pun there) putting his children's play structure together. But at this point I think my husband was perfectly okay with that,
My husbands knee surgery went well. (We hope it was successful. we won't know for a few months). It rained for 2 more days. And honestly since then, I have missed every thunderstorm that has occurred here at home.

Day one of professional assembly

Our carpenter Don is a very nice guy. He brought a helper with him on a Friday morning. I showed them where everything was, handed him the huge diagram and the 40 page instruction booklet and I left them alone. It took his helper and himself almost 7 hours to get this far (see photo on right)...my husband had managed to get the lower level done all by himself and one handed (as I am reminded).

I was disappointed when they let me know they had to call it a day and would be back sometime the next week. We had 2.5 year old and an 8 year old asking every hour when it would be done. But they did show up that next week, I think on Thursday. And it wasn't an easy job. So I managed the children.

As it went together it became easier and easier to build since there were less and less parts to have to choose from. He said it was like a puzzle. So after 2 days of hard work in the hot sun they completed the play structure.

Haley got home and ran from the bus to our backyard. She was so excited to see the swings up and the slide going up. She wanted to be out there with them while they finished it. I of course was a mean mommy and refused. There is nothing quite like an 8 year olds constant questioning to slow down the work and stall things. Don finally came to the back door and asked if she could come out and test everything. I could barely contain her. She shot out the backdoor and was on that set in no time.

Everything worked out well, despite all the leftover hardware. Hmmmm, why is it men seem to think that leftover hardware is no big deal and us women are the ones who seriously question the reasoning behind random numbers of leftover parts? Regardless, the structure was complete. It is sturdy, attractive, and fun. All the things we were hoping for.



Ms. Haley and Don with the finished product!

 Now I have promised Don to not write down how much he charged us to put this play structure together. Lets just say we got a great deal and Don learned how much to quote on future projects of this type. Of course if the parts are labelled it wouldn't have taken so long. Thanks Cedar Summit for the extra work!

If you are in the Fredericksburg area and need a great contractor Don Anderson is your guy. He has done many different things for us, all of which turned out great. He is reliable, personable, and skilled. Thanks Don for your hard work! The kids love the play structure.