Just Laugh

At this very moment, there is a 9 page home study draft on my desktop that needs my attention. Whats one more day?!  I tried to work on it tonight. I opened it and changed my font to "red" and started editing and realized that I had put the wrong date, name, and place in the blanks that were supposed to hold my birth certificate information.  Annnnnnd "save" and "close".  Baby steps. Baby steps.  But so these last two weeks have been a little "heavy".  And I haven't blogged since July and well, its just time.  Time for an update.

The Home Study

This is our HUGE deal in the last several weeks. HUGE.  We had our first home visit with our social worker on July 27. Jake and Cole had been out of town for a week, were home for one day and fell victim to this crazy lady as I prepared for our first visit.  Let me just say that I'm typically "not right" as it is. There's something a little off about the way that I function on so little sleep and the way that I manage to multi-task so many things into very small amounts of time.  This particular week though, I was full blown crazy.  My house. looked. immaculate.  We're gonna call our social worker "Lady". Cause she's a lady and until I have the official copy of the homestudy in my hand I shouldn't call her by her real name ;)  Lady was scheduled to be here around 8:30 am on a Friday. I was up, dressed, coffee in my hand by 7. Its summer people. This was a ginormous accomplishment. Around 7:30, Lady called and asked me for directions, which I gave, which she then rejected and said I needed to come meet her because my street wasn't showing up on her GPS. Neighborhood has been here for 6+ years. Update your Garmin.  I met her. We get back home and the meeting continues. There's about ten different little stories that need to be attached to this first meeting.....again, waiting for complete study before I share. But it was about an hour. And she was gone. She walked through the house. Checked for dead bodies. That was that. I was LIVID. Where's your white glove, Lady?! You aren't going to check my baseboards or ask my children to sing "Jesus Loves the Little Children"? But we practiced!!!!!  You aren't even going to use the guest bathroom after I even washed the hand towel and steam mopped the floors?! You aren't going to comment on how the clothes in my childrens closets are hung according to season, occasion and color spectrum (ROYGBIV - learn it)?  Well surely if you can't check these things, you can't possibly be a good judge of parenting.  These thoughts, minus the parenting one at the end, legitamately went through my crazy brain.  And then Zella needed to potty and I was brought back to normal people world.  First visit, July 27. Second visit, August 15.  In those two weeks (ish) I gathered paperwork, got tested for communicable diseases and discovered that on my health certificate, my doctor accidentally shaved an entire inch off my height ( I NEED that inch. I was one lapse of good judgement away from paying the co-pay again just so I could see her and make her fix it.). Also, during that time, Jake rebroke his ankle and assumed the position of Coach on our church softball team. You know what that means? That means that by default, as the coaches wife, when there aren't enough girls to field a co-ed team, I had to play. After the first game, I remembered very well why I hadn't touched a glove, bat, or ball since 8th grade. I should stick to raising kids. A few days later......by default, I was on the field again. This game was the night before our second home visit. I got up to bat and swung at this beauty of a pitch and I hit the ball!!! I was so stunned that I hit it, that I forgot to run, and upon remembering to run, I forgot how to run. Thus, pulling BOTH groin muscles. The rest of that game was spent walking around like I was giving birth. It was flat out embarassing that night when I couldn't lift my feet high enough to step into our walk in shower. And the only thing I could think about? Lady is gonna see me walking like this and think Jake beat me and she's going to write a bad report!!! Because why wouldn't that be the very first conclusion she would jump to? Again......not.right. (pointing to myself).  I slept it off....woke up, and made this house immaculate. She was here 30 minutes. Took our money. Hit the road. Same reaction from me. Still wondering where her stupid white glove is and why nobody cares that my house was that clean other than me! And Jake. His most favorite part about the home study process was how clean our house was - twice.  Love that guy. But so now we have a draft, and soon we will have a final copy and then it goes to DSS.....and well we will just stop right there because the DSS step is going to take some serious prayer.  BUT, we are one whole step closer to Ukraine and are ridiculously thrilled :)  Oh......also, I totally turned a double play during that second softball game. That's right. Cy Young I own you.

Granny
It gets a little heavier here. But this is where I remind myself that I have to laugh. Laughter is amazing medicine. Kinda like valium......or miralax.  But so Granny fell and shattered her wrist....it will be 4 weeks tomorrow. She needed surgery immediately to put pins and a plate in it. She had just gotten to cast taken off of her other wrist from a fall several weeks earlier where she broke that one. So Left hand was weak, right hand, shattered.  The doctors decided that she needed to go to a rehabilitative facility until she could use her right hand again. She was doing great, in good spirits, getting lots of attention and doing physical therapy twice a day. She was supposed to go home a week ago. But a few days before she was slated to go home, she got pneumonia. Now I won't go into all of the medical stuff.....or why I believe that I should have just gutted out college and fulfilled my potential as a doctor.....regardless of my opinions as to why, she got sick.  Heavy duty antibiotics, lots of nebulizer use, etc. etc. took a heavy toll on her body and now she's in the hospital.  And the little girl in me has cried a lot. A lot. Because this is my Granny. And she's 85. And I'm not an idiot. And the adult in me has remembered that this is not where we belong, as Christians. This isn't our final resting place. That what is waiting for us is far greater than we could ever imagine. And that's where Granny is headed, whenever that time comes. And when I reconciled that, I had some great memories flood my  mind.  Here's one of my very favorites from not too long ago......On the first of every month we send out a couple hundred invoices. Granny loves the first of the month because she gets to come to the office and hang out with the girls all day and stuff envelopes. She was sitting at the kitchen table this day and I was walking through the kitchen and she started talking to me......Granny: "I heard there wasn't nothing to see at that festival this year." (She's referring to Gopher Hill. It's an annual festival in Ridgeland that's usually the highlight of the towns year.) Me: "what do you mean there wasn't anything to see? There weren't any people there?" Granny: "I heard they boycotted it." Me: "Wait, who boycotted what, Granny?"  She leaned across the table, stuck her finger out and motioned for me to come closer and she whispered, "well you see", she looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was listening, "the blacks is having trouble with the whites again. so they boycotted.". I thought I was going to wet my pants. If you just read that, and you are thinking anything even remotely related to racism, don't. But that's my Granny. She is always in "the know". And I love that memory. Because she's hilarious. I was in the hospital this afternoon and a respiratory therapist came in and asked why she had taken the oxygen out of her nose. Granny said "well the other nurse said my oxygen was fine so I didn't need it." The respiratory therapist said "well, I'm a respiratory therapist and I say your oxygen is not okay" and Granny, in all of her sickness, without skipping a beat said "Well I'm sick and I don't think any of ya'll know what you're talking about!"  She's spunky. She's challenging. She knows what she wants. I sure do hope she stays around for a whole lot longer.

Cole
Reason #437 that I cried this week....wait, its only Tuesday.  Anyways.....Cole started 1st grade yesterday. Ugh. I feel so OLLLLLLD! I mean, he's handsome! And he likes me to spike his hair and he told me on Monday "Mom, these new kicks are super fly!"  My baby is officially growing up. And I always anticipated hating it.  But I never anticipated hating it for these reasons. I never anticipated hating him growing up.....because it means that I have to watch him struggle. I never anticipated hate like this, because I thought it would be for things like having to let him go.....not out of concern that the little punk girl that bullied him last year is in his class again and I might have to beat her up. I never thought that watching the frustration on his face, would cause me to cry at his open house, in front of his teacher, who went and told the other teachers that a mom cried at her open house. "Hi! I'm the Mom that cried!"  I officially don't need a name at school.  Awesome.  That was Thursday night. Monday morning, I walked Cole in and handed him his bookbag. I knealt down to give him a hug, and he tripped and collapsed into me, knocking us both onto the ground. Not a single thing about us was graceful......sprawled all out on the multi-purpose room floor.  The Kubnicks are here! Good grief! LOL! But he had an awesome first day. I kept Jesus SUPER busy with my begging and pleading on Cole's behalf and sure enough he came home unscathed with a good report in his bookbag. Today, day 2, he came home with a note that says he's a great helper and very sweet.....and "somewhat off task". I chuckled at that one. Welcome to my world, lady ;).  I'm so proud of him. He's becoming such a great little man. He challenges me one minute and the next he says "Mom, lets pray".....melt my heart. This little guy....he keeps me and Jesus TIGHT! He's an amazing little dude :)

Zella

Its a good thing that Lady didn't check our kids for bruises. If you were to check Zella out you would be certain that we beat her on a regular basis. Baby girl is ROUGH!  Jake joked the other night about how he used to fight a lot in school. And I commented that we didn't need to worry about Cole fighting, because Zella was going to be doing it all for him. She's hilarious. And as Aunt McCall put it "a mess". She gets it from her mama :).  She is officially potty trained now. Yaaaaaaaaay daycare! I honestly can take zero credit for this. Her verbal skills, I'll take that, but the potty training, that's all daycare. They deserve a raise. No they don't....but I did say "thank you".  And so with this new big girl attitude comes her HUGE and hilarious personality.  She's forever asking "whats that?" or "what's that smell?" or "what you eatin'?".  She's quick to call herself out too.  I'll say "oh my gosh. who farted?!" and very proudly and confidently Zella says "meeeeeeee!" and raises her hand. I have never known a child with gas like Zella Claire. I just laughed out loud at the idea that someone may have just read that and cringed at the word "fart".  I live in a house with two boys. Boys that love protein. And broccoli. And eggs. This is my reality.  But so Zella is growing up way faster than I remember Cole growing up.  She was sitting at the table coloring the other night wearing her Green Bay Packer tshirt, her tiny little "unnies" and her hot pink Chuck Taylors. She kept wiping the hair out of her eyes while she was trying to color and her little hands are still so tiny, but her mannerisms are so grown. When did this happen?! Oh baby fever, you have taken hold of my brain!!! I want to bottle Zella and sell her energy. I want to preserve every tiny little centimeter of her toddler body. I want to make a mold of the way she still just "fits" on my chest. Oh how I love this little girl. Time, can you please, just slow down just a little?

And that's where we are. I'm sure there's more. I'm sure I've forgotten a major event of some variety. But that's our life. A sweet friend of mine is constantly reminding my ever wandering brain....."this day, these tasks".  And that's where we are. We are handling today.  We are soaking up today. We are doing our very best to remember every second of today. And when we don't seem to be able to handle it all......We are learning to Just Laugh.

Thank you, God, for this crazy, beautiful, laughter filled life :)