If you are just coming on board, you might want to read Part 1 of this topic before proceeding. It will explain the foundation of bad parenting, bribes, and clogged sinus passages, none of which you’ll get in this installment. This installment contains a great deal of spurting.

So AG had agreed to step in and be the neti pot guinea pig. He was grinning from ear to ear. I really have no idea why he agreed to this. I have to believe the hope of a new little lego pal was speaking to his soul. It’s hard to imagine that he’d flush his sinuses for less tangible things like love and sacrifice. I don’t mean that he’s not loving or sacrificial. He’s a fantastic brother. But he’s not one to mix his sinuses up in all that emotion. And he’s never been the first one to get a shot. But there was no sense in further questioning. I had a volunteer. I wasn’t going to turn this one away. AG marched up to the kitchen sink, getting slower and slower as the water warmed up. He was definitely getting cold feet, but was determined to carry through with it. I filled up the pot, tossed in the saline packet, and mixed it around. And much to my very great shock, he bent  his head and offered me a nostril.

This is really ridiculous. I can’t believe I’m telling a story with the phrase “offered me a nostril.” I should delete that. It’s totally within my power to stop this.

I’m not gonna.

Within a few seconds, the solution went in one nostril and out the other. He sputtered, wiped his face, and smiled. Mama’s Boy watched this with wide eyes, waiting for the reaction; for the verdict.

“It’s not too bad, B,” he said. “You should do it.” Yes, boy, you should.

Even still it took some haranguing, but the result was a chair pulled over to the sink (he’s quite a bit shorter than his brother) and a boy standing on that chair. He had a deer in the headlights look on his face as he leaned over. I still can’t believe he let me stick the end of that pot in his nose. It’s not like him at all.

Unfortunately, he was so clogged that there was no “in one nostril and out the other” experience, as there had been with his brother. The saline went in and ran into a wall. It tried to break through. But all it really did, as far as he was concerned, was burn the living daylights out of his sinus cavity.

So, he spewed it out of every place in his face and began to wail. This is the part I expected. If anything, I’m just surprised it took 45 seconds to arrive there.

“It’s STINGING!” he wailed. “That was HORRIBLE!” More wailing. “It didn’t work at all! The wailing continued. It was answered by my pleading.

“Boy, you are so stuffed up! You didn’t give it quite enough time to work. Let it work, boy. Try again…” Oh, no. There was to be no more trying of the neti pot. His mind was made up. I could have upped the ante to 5 mini figs and a trip to Chick-fil-a (I didn’t. I do have my limits…) and he still would have walked away.

The crying continued. I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you the effects of crying, but just for the sake of stating the obvious, crying generates more snot. More snot means more games of Kadiba in our future.

We solved nothing.

At this point, I started looking for some Benedryl. Maybe we could go about this the less natural way. While looking for the Benedryl, I came across the bulb syringe in our medicine box. (I have a friend, who shall remain nameless to protect her very delicate reputation, who calls the bulb syringe a “boogie suck.” I am not making this up. A boogie suck? Seriously.  I just can’t even go there. And if I can’t go there, no one should.)

I pulled the syringe out of the box and showed the kids.

“I should have done it this way,” I said. “This is what we used to do for you guys when you were babies.” All four kids wanted to hear stories about being stopped up and flushed out as babies. Well, Mama’s Boy was still pretty miffed, so he didn’t care to hear any. What kind of family has a bag full of these kinds of stories? I know. Sick.

“Hey,” I said in a stroke of genius. “I’ll try it this way,” I said. “I’ll show you how easy it is.” I was going to show Mama’s Boy that this was an alternate method for us to help him out. So I took the solution that didn’t get used and put it in the little blue syringe. Then, without any further planning, I pumped that up into my sinuses. We are all about examples tonight. Unfortunately for me, I think I sent it through at about 35 mph. I about lost an eye in this. What happened next is a bit of a blur to me. I think I made a pretty big scene, because the kids were really wide eyed by this time. Mama’s Boy stopped crying. When I came to my senses and washed my face a time or two, I looked at Mama’s Boy and said, “That was worse than the neti pot. I don’t recommend it.”

That was a stupid thing to say. He took it as gospel. But in the very next moment, I readjusted my trajectory and perfected my technique. This time was  less painful, but no less explosive. I lost the syringe altogether and things went flying. A whole bunch of saline hit the wall and the inside of the toaster.

“Whoops,” I said. Even Mama’s Boy was laughing now.”You see?” I said. “Not so bad this time. Want to try it?”

He was laughing.

“Nope.”

I knew he was going to say that.

We didn’t solve his problem, but he fulfilled his part of the bargain. And part of me believes we took a baby step toward something that will someday solve his problem. So true to my ill-fated bribe, I went to Target tonight.

To buy a Bini Fig.

This is not over yet, Boy.

I am about to drive to Target to buy a couple of Lego mini figures.
Why? you ask.
Well, I will tell you.
I am buying them because I bribed two of the children tonight: the boys. And while the experiment itself appeared to be a failure, I believe we covered enough ground to have earned the mini figures.

Now, before you judge me, I’ll tell you I don’t believe in bribery. I also don’t believe in sin. But I manage to mess that up on occasion. So, you know, I am known to strike a bribe with a short person if the situation calls for it.

It’s bad parenting that got me here. You don’t have to tell me that. If I had gotten a few things solidly in place when they were babies, we wouldn’t be making a Lego mini figs run tonight.

We’ve all been sick in one way or another this week. We camped last weekend, which is a separate blog, if I ever get around to it. I sat around just enough campfire smoke to come home stopped up. I was stubborn for 2 full days. Finally, on Day 3, I got out the Neti Pot, dusted it off, and grimaced as I thought forward in time about 30 seconds.

Have you ever flushed out your sinuses with a neti pot? It isn’t a glamorous process. In fact, it’s horrible. If you are married to the wrong person and that wrong person happens to come around the corner while you are flushing with a neti pot, it might cause a 48 hour Bermuda divorce. It’s really that awful. Many marriages have ended over lesser matters. My husband, instead of filing, jumped on board. We share a respect for The Pot. We also have very clean sinuses.

But there’s one person in this family who needs the neti pot more than any human ever. That’s Mama’s Boy. He was born allergic to everything. We have jokingly mentioned getting him a plastic, hypo-allergenic bubble for him to tool around in. It’s really what he needs.

Today, quite suddenly, his sinuses flared. I guess it’s a cold. I guess I gave it to him. Either way, he was stuffed so full of his own fluids that his request to play me in Kadima came out clearly as “Kadiba.” I’m not good at Kadiba and I promptly told him so. I realized then that he was headed for the doctor if we don’t intervene somehow. He has never done the neti pot. And unfortunately, I’ve said a bit too much about the process for him to just agree peaceably to try it. Truthfully, Mama’s Boy isn’t going to agree to try anything without some type of a very serious discussion. It may end in threats. It may end in bribery. But you aren’t going to get an easy ‘yes.’ And if you do, I will pay you in mini figures. I’ll buy you 100 of those puppies if you fix this problem.

Clearly I’m not learning any lessons here.

“Listen, boy,” I said, very earnestly. “I really, really want to help you. I’m telling you the neti pot is a near miracle cure.”

“No, thanks,” he said, without even letting my words fall softly to the carpet.

I went on with more persuasion, more earnestness, more pleading.

“No, I don’t want to. You said it was terrible. You said you hate it.”

Hmm. Did I say that? Actually, I kinda love it. I just hate getting the whole thing started. OK, I kinda do hate it. But I LOVE how I feel immediately following.

“Boy, you remember how you looked at me with horror when I opted to have the doctor give you a strep antibiotic shot instead of 10 days of antibiotics, 3 times a day?”

“Yes.”

“Remember how you thought I betrayed you to the doctor? But then the next morning you felt like a million bucks and you thanked me for the shot?”

“Yes,” he replied, skeptically.

“Well,” I continued. “This is just like that, minus the painful shot part.” Why did I compare this to a shot? That was a totally counterproductive move on my part.

“No, thanks,” he said again.

“OK, OK,” I said. “Listen up, boy. If you will just try it…and let me help you…I will pay you a dollar.”

“No!” he said, emphatically. We must be spoiling him. He didn’t even bat an eye at the $1 mark.

“Two dollars…” I said. Are we at an auction?

“No!” he said, but he laughed. I think he at least considered it then.

“I’ll pay you in a mini fig!” I shouted. YES! THAT will do it!

This almost destroyed him. I had held up the golden ticket. Oh, he wanted that mini figure so badly. For those without Lego knowledge. This is the equivalent of $2.99 on the bribery scale. Now he had a real choice to make. He so totally did not want to do that neti pot flush, but he wanted the Lego guy bigger than life.

That’s when AG stepped in.

“B,” he said. “What if I try it first? To show you it’s ok?”  I yanked my head around in a “What you talkin’ about, Willis” kind of way. Did he just say that for real? This was an uncharacteristic move. The doting mother in me wanted, with all my heart, to believe that AG was throwing himself under the bus to help his brother.  But I think he was secretly hoping there’d be a mini figure in it for him, too.

“Wow, AG,” I said. “Thanks! But hold up…is this about you getting a mini fig, too?”

“No!” he said. “Not at all.”

After much hoopla, Mama’s Boy agreed to watch AG try it first and we began the grand experiment.

To be continued…(later, because I have to go to Target right now).

Well, I think I’m watching a hamster die. And while, quite frankly, I have wished for this before we move, now I regret my wish. Claire, the more hyper and aggressive of our two  hamster girls, appears to be almost dead. She isn’t right, for sure. My niece is over for the afternoon and came to me with Claire. She was cuddling her and said, “I thought she would wake up, but she didn’t. She’s so sleepy.” Red flag. Claire doesn’t sleep through anything. She’s a wild one. So I touched her and she doesn’t feel warm and cozy like she usually does. She is still breathing, still twitching the whiskers, etc. But she’s either sick or on her way to the other side. Either way, she now has clean bedding and will rest in peace and dignity. My poor niece was already crying over it and it hasn’t happened yet. Sweet soul, that one. She’s 15 months old now (the hamster, not the niece…). Hamsters don’t usually live more than a year. Then again, neither do goldfish, and we had a run-of-the-mil goldfish last for 5.5 years. That’s Methusaleh old.

That’s not what I meant to say, though. I’ve been thinking since reading a really great article. And instead of restating something that was well-said in the beginning, I’m just going to send you to a great blog. I’m a firm believer that functional, loving families exist and people can be close even when they are vastly different. I believe teenagers can be fun AND respectful. I believe siblings can get along and treat each other like friends, not warts and tumors. And I believe that they learn all of this from me and Todd. How we treat each other, other people, and them will shape how they treat each other, other people, and us. I have had quite a few regretful moments. I believe I don’t have to keep having them. I believe change is possible. And I believe Jesus absolutely wants me to get this right; for the children.

I think we’re on the right path. This article hit me like a ton of bricks and shoved me hard in the right direction.  Go read it. It just might change your life.

Civility in the Christian Home

To be completely and totally phonetically proper, this name should be spelled MawMaw. Because I’m talking about my grandmother, not referring to my own mother in southern twang. And though it is spelled phonetically wrong, just pronounce it right in your head and I’ll be happy.

We all have people we remember with great emotion. My mama is one of those people for me. She was always around. She was the quintessential grandmother: Sweet. Plump. Polyester pants and clamdiggers (and she called them clamdiggers!). Canvas keds with an old lady rubber sole. Cokes in the refrigerator and full sized candy bars in the candy jar that were offered to us every time we walked through the door. The supply never ran out. Quarters for us for jobs that were too easy.  The Young and the Restless every day at 1:30 and Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights. That part I don’t remember all that fondly. Man, I hated Lawrence Welk. Man.

Whatever you asked of her, the answer was yes. She never, EVER got mad at us. And I loved her for all of it. Even Lawrence Welk. Maybe.

She was determined that she would not lose her mind. She was going to die with her mind fully functioning. I would be skeptical of a person having this kind of control except that she managed to do just that. She died of complications related to cancer far sooner than we were ready to let her go. But I have to believe that she went out on her own terms and I was forced to accept that. I was away at college when I found out she was gone. I went back home, did the funeral thing, went back to school, did the school thing, came home, did the summer thing, finished another year of college, and then got engaged. Somewhere in all of that time, my parents went through a lot of her stuff.  And the night I got engaged and came home with Todd to tell my parents, my mom brought a box down off a shelf in a closet and gave it to me as a present.

I opened it up, all smiles, having no idea what to expect. It was an afghan made by my mama, one crochet square at a time.  And sitting on top of that ivory afghan was a tiny little note in handwriting I will never forget. It said, “For Missy when she marries. With love, Mama.”  I broke down crying. There she was, many months later sending me a note, meeting Todd through a gift. That was one of the greatest gifts I ever got from anyone.

I went through many of her boxes of books and bibles later and found several copies of a couple of different poems. She was all about little poems and quotes. This one has always been sweet to me. And since I found it on my laptop today, I got all sappy and decided to post it. Forgive me. Surely you can let me have this one time…

Bits and Pieces
Bits and pieces, bits and pieces.
People.
People important to you, People unimportant to you cross your life, touch it with love and move on.
There are people who leave you and you breathe a sigh of relief and wonder why you ever came into contact with them.
There are people who leave you, and you breathe a sigh of remorse and wonder why they had to go and leave such a gaping hole.
Children leave parents, friends leave friends. Acquaintances move on. People change homes. People grow apart.
Enemies hate and move on. Friends love and move on.
You think of the many people who have moved in and out of your hazy memory.
You look at those present and wonder.

I believe in God’s master plan in lives. He moves people in and out of each other’s lives, and each leaves his mark on the other. You find you are made up of bits and pieces of all who have ever touched your life. You are more because of them, and would be less if they had not touched you.

Pray that you accept the bits and pieces in humility and wonder,
and never question
and never regret.
Bit’s and pieces,
bits and pieces.
-Anonymous

Yeah.
I do.
I know some things. Some of them are useful things. Like, I know that the square root of 81 is 9 and 7 x 8 is 56. I know that a conflagration is a very large fire and that if I ever should encounter one on my person or clothes, I should stop, drop, and roll. I know that my childhood phone number was 904-385-9788 and that my grandmother’s number was 904-386-6262. And I know 800 other obsolete phone numbers and weird number facts that will never benefit me, except in my dreams.

But there are things I don’t know.  I didn’t know how to spell cacophony, until it was one of my son’s spelling words this week. I still don’t know what demography is, which is another of those words. I suppose I could make a guess and say that it is the study of categories, or something dumb like that. I don’t know. I’m not even going to look it up. Pandemic? Is this word going to enter his regular vocabulary? No. It is not.

And I don’t know lyrics. Phone numbers from 30  years ago? I got that. Lyrics I’ve been hearing and singing ALL MY LIFE, I just can’t do it. Seriously, I might mess up Amazing Grace without the song book. Tonight I tried to sing My Favorite Things from Sound of Music to my children at bedtime. This is a great, great song. Fantastic song. But it occurs to me now that it is not for the lyrically challenged. There are more words in that song than there are fleas on a dog.

I started strong: Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

But then, out of nowhere, the words “Bright cornucopias and warm woolen mittens” came to me. Bright cornucopias? What IS that even? It’s not a lyric. I still don’t know what goes in that spot of the song, so I kept my bright cornucopia and kept singing.

Another thing I don’t know is how to file taxes in April without filing an extension. And that’s all I’ll say about that one.

Maybe I should try to create my own version that I can’t mess up:

Potty trained babies and eating with chopsticks
Soft, smelly kid toes and boys doing drop kicks
Playing like banshees till bones are in slings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Finding a refund when taxes are over
Seeing the fourth leaf show up on your clover,
Feeling the squish hugs of toddlers who cling,
These are a few of my favorite things

When the kid wails, when it all fails,
When I’m feeling mad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad.

I’d like to say I’ll remember these lyrics tomorrow but I won’t. But I know a whole bunch of old phone numbers, so I can just phone a friend and surely somebody will know what goes in the place of “bright cornucopias.”

I’m going to bed now.

Today was exciting.
Sort of.
I spent all day at school making copies, cutting, laminating, etc., while trying to convince a 3-yr-old not to be hungry and tired and to stop changing the default language on AG’s Nintendo DS to Chinese. Have you ever tried to choose an electronic activity in Chinese? Good luck to you, if you have. I couldn’t get it done.  I ended up handing the thing back to Snugglemonkey and saying, “Just change it back to English, please” in a snarky tone. Part of me said that dismissively and the other part of me half expected she could do it. She did. Blows my mind.

After school, we had exactly 45 minutes before we needed to be at the public library to meet up with Mama’s Boy’s class and teacher for a Reading Pow Wow. As anyone who knows him knows, he hates to read. So of course I accepted the invitation to drag him to the library and preach the reading gospel to him. I honestly think he may be coming around a little bit. His teacher is young, single, from Long Island, NY (really fun accent!), and VERY educated. She knows what she’s doing and she is starting to light a fire under the lazy ones.

On our drive to the library, angry clouds were beginning to crowd the sky. In just ten minutes, the day looked entirely different. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t get out of the library without some rain. I didn’t expect it to be so crazy, though. A furious storm unleashed while we were in there. It cut power for a few seconds. Snugglemonkey began to wail, which is typically discouraged in the library. I enjoyed chatting with the teacher about literacy and literature and books in general. Then I started wracking my brain on how to get more books for their classroom and school.

In thinking on all of this, I launched a weird little IM with Todd who is not upstairs as he often is when I chat with him on IM.

(9:41:50 PM) missysnapp: I’m trying to drum up ideas to find mass quantities of books. Or find out how to write grants or something.
(9:44:03 PM) rocketreadytes: what do you mean?
(9:44:57 PM) missysnapp: They don’t have books. There are places that donate money for such things. Just doing a little research to see if we could get some money for woodmont.
(9:45:03 PM) rocketreadytes: oh ok
(9:45:06 PM) rocketreadytes: sounds good
(9:45:12 PM) rocketreadytes: Like Andy Dufrane
(9:45:20 PM) missysnapp: Exactly
(9:45:28 PM) missysnapp: I hear Laura Bush is a person to write.
(9:45:30 PM) rocketreadytes: we just had a moment
(9:45:33 PM) missysnapp: ha

Not that many people know who Andy Dufrane is. Todd doesn’t like to read and doesn’t read ever (I blame the 2nd grader on him…), but he does know about the dude in Shawshank Redemption who wrote letters and got books…for the prison.

Hmm.

Wednesday was a really bad day. It was a frustrating, exhausting day full of Whinese and overreactions.  By 7 p.m., I was pretty much done with the kids. Done with listening to them whine. Done with answering questions that had no answers (why do I have to read?). Done with requests that were stated as demands. Done.

I was.

They weren’t.

So on the way to church, Mamasboy piped up for the 44^th time that day that he didn’t like reading, didn’t understand why he had to read, wasn’t supposed to read books that were too easy, didn’t have any appropriate reading material among our 156,000 books for all ages, and didn’t like reading. Did I already mention that he doesn’t like reading? I’ve considered electric shock therapy. Truly. This is all just as wrong as it can be. At any rate, this little miniature tirade from the back of the van on the way to church set me off. I was the camel. His speech was the straw. My back broke. I think I actually heard the bone snap. And as I am prone to do on occasion, I spouted off at the flapping gums. What happened next is a perfect representation of every single member of the family. And here is how the next 3 minutes went:

“Mamasboy, I don’t want to hear another word about this. I am so tired of talking about this. All of you guys have been ridiculously whiny today. I can totally understand why God just got mad and smacked the Israelites around when they started whining. I understand why He sent them into the desert for 40  years. In fact, if I could send you guys into the desert right now, I would.”  Wow, right? I know. Not that I need to clarify this point, but I was the speech maker here. Todd was shaking his head at this speech and I think maybe his hand was on his forehead in exasperation.

There were four distinctly different reactions to my speech in this exact order:

AG: Did not react at all. Silence. He blew me off, as he probably should have. He knows enough now to know that sometimes moms get mad. Just let them be mad. Let the moment pass. Don’t speak. He’s a smart boy.

Mamasboy: “You would send ME into the desert to wander for 40 YEARS??!!” He was now wailing so hard he almost couldn’t get the words out. I felt terrible. Mostly.

Snuggle Monkey: Mama would never send ME into the desert. She would not do that ever.

Beloved, looking over at Snuggle Monkey, said in the very firm, rhythmic voice of authority: Oh, yes she would.

Right about then, Todd pulled into the parking space in the church parking lot and said:

“Get out. All of you.”

And we did.