My husband is gone for an indefinite amount of time helping those affected by Hurricane Sandy. Whenever he leaves for these types of projects, I get to renew my healthy respect for single parents. My observation from this go-round seems simple and quite obvious, but is quite sobering when it is your reality: when the ________ needs ________, it’s my job. Examples: when the dishes need washing, it’s my job. When the laundry needs folding, it’s my job. When the booboo needs kissing… When the child needs disciplining… When the dog vomit needs cleaning… It’s. My. Job.
Now, I am fortunate enough to have family close and a great babysitter who has done more than I could ever wish for to help care for my children. And I have friends who have offered to help and others on whom I have called for help.
But the day-in, day-out routine operation of a home is largely left to me, and I’m fairly certain the laundry and dishes are going to overtake us this week! Granted, mine is a temporary “single-parenthood” and if I were in this situation more permanently (God forbid) I would make adjustments to my way of life that hundreds of thousands of single parents have made.
That being said, the finality and gravity of the daily reality of single parents does not escape me: it’s all their job. And they need help! No one can do it all!
Which brought me to this question: What are we as the church (myself included) doing to help them? And what should we be doing?

We returned to the same McDonald’s Playplace of which I previously wrote. We gave her the pep talk about pooping in the potty and telling us if she had an accident and not coming down the slide if there is poop in her panties, etc.

Well, off she went to play. After about 20 minutes she is now at the top of the play structure and my mommy-sense knew something wasn’t right. I called to her and asked what was wrong to which she replied, “nothing.” I then asked her if she was poopy, to which she replied, “No.” She continued to appear not quite right and play around so I asked her again if she had had an accident to which she now replied “Yes” (What is it about this particular playplace that makes her poop?!?!?!) Mom, Dad, and Mimi all started screaming to her to NOT GO DOWN THE SLIDE!!!!!! I shed my shoes and up the (2 1/2-foot-tall) plastic spiral staircase I go and proceed to escort her down the stairs and into the bathroom making sure her bottom touched nothing on the way down. The clean-up this time was (needless to say) much easier.

She then returned to the play structure and again acted weird at the top. We asked her if she had pooped again to which she replied “yes” so up the (keebler-elf-sized) staircase I go again, only to discover it was a false alarm. She was now claiming to be scared to go down the slide (not this again. We just got over this. I can’t tell you the number of slides I have been down with this child on my lap because she has been so scared to go down slides by herself. I once spent 2 hours at a birthday party in an inflatables place following her up the inflatables then down the slides because if I didn’t, she would stand at the top and scream and cry until I did. Ugh, not again!!)

So since I was already there, I agreed to go down the slide with her just once. Little sis Sport, refusing to be outdone, insisted on going down with us, so the 3 of us “slid” down the slide together (it was really more of a scoot because that slide really isn’t that fast if you’re going down by yourself, so add 2 more people to the equation and your frictional coefficient is just to high for sliding). She seemed to get over her fear of the slide pretty quickly because the rest of the day was quite uneventful.

So, all-in-all, it was a successful return to the site of the previous event. We haven’t managed to prevent her from pooping in her pants on the playplace, but at least we contained it and got it to the potty without mommy having to climb up the small green slide!!

Number of…
…Donuts purchased for breakfast: 5 (+ 2 dozen donut holes)
…Minutes past goal time that we actually left: 41
…Errands run before leaving town: 4
…Minutes of driving before the first “Are we there yet?”: 26
…Ounces of orange juice poured into and under the middle row of seats in the van: 12
…threats to end the vacation immediately and return home: 3 (by 2 different parents)
…minutes spent cleaning the van: 60
…seats taken out of the van to find and clean said oj: 3
…years since my van has been that clean: 4 (as long as I’ve owned it).
…fried pies purchased in Davis: 12
…fried pies consumed en route: 3
…chicken nuggets consumed en route: 20
…Miles driven without air conditioning: approximately 80
…hot and sweaty Masheks that have arrived safely at Aunt Judith’s house: 4
…number of hours til I know if I’m taking my van or a rental on to the beach: 15

Conversation at the breakfast table this morning:
*bark, bark
E: what was that?
Me: Little One barking because she wants to come in.
E: oh, is that how she barks?
Me: yes
S: dogs bark but not kitty cats
E: yeah, kitty cats meow
S: Meeeeee-ooooooowwww, Meeeeee-ooooooowwwww
The next five minutes were spent with incessant Meowing coming from both children.

I had an odd experience today.  I looked up and it was December 12, the day before my oldest child’s 4th birthday.  Now, that in itself isn’t very odd.  The odd thing is that it seems like yesterday was Halloween and now its December 12.  That would make this the first year in 6 that November 1 has come and gone without me noticing it.  November 1, you might think, doesn’t really seem like a day to be marked.  But it is the day my first child’s heart ceased to beat, or at least the day I became aware of it.  It was November 1, 2004.  She (I say “she” because my other 2 are girls and I assume she is also) is “buried” in a memory garden in Fort Smith.  I guess that’s one reason my heart is so fond of Fort Smith; it is the town in which my first child’s heart began and ceased beating, without me ever seeing her.  The story of my short pregnancy, devastation, and road to healing is filled with so many people that touched my life with their love and those people are the biggest reason my heart is so fond of Fort Smith.

I guess the fact that I didn’t mark the day maybe speaks to the old saying that “time heals all wounds,” although, I don’t think this wound is healed, per se.  So, since I didn’t mark November 1, I’ll mark it now.  This blog post is to you, my baby angel.  I’ll hold you one day in heaven.

In my line of work, I occasionally take care of patients who have experienced a prolonged period of being without oxygen and are then revived.  Often they have some brain damage and even brain death.  I have, unfortunately, taken care of more of these in recent months than I usually do.  And for some reason, I began thinking the other night, where does the soul live?

Does it live in the brain, the mind, the consiciousness, if you will?  That would make the most sense to me because our mind, our consciousness, our “sense of self” is what makes us individuals, capable of loving God and obeying God.  So, if that is the case, when someone is “brain dead” is his/her soul already in heaven?  Is he already sitting at the right hand of our God while those of us down here on earth decide if he is actually brain dead and then what should be done?  If that is the case, the decision of what to do with someone who is brain dead should be quite easy for those of us who are Christians.  Actually, it should be quite easy for anyone, knowing there loved one is already wherever they are going to spend eternity.

But if the soul does not live in the brain, then it must live in the body?  So as long as one’s heart is beating and lungs are exchanging air then his soul is still on earth?  So even if someone is brain dead but we have kept them alive by artificial means then we are keeping his soul here on earth?  Then the family might want to let them go sooner if they are confident they are going to a better place since they are unable to enjoy anything here on earth but they are trapped and unable to go on to heaven.  Or maybe, if they thought the person might not go to heaven, they would want to keep them alive even longer.

I don’t know the answer.  I don’t know if there is a way to actually know the answer while here on earth.  And I don’t know if it really matters.

Just by random musings.

I have a friend getting married this coming weekend and we’re giving her some kitchen things so I decided to write down a couple of my recipes for her (I’m not putting what they are in here because she might read this and it could give away part of the gift!) These 2 recipes I make quite a bit and 1 of them I do without a recipe each time but the original recipe came from my mom several years ago. So I sat down with my recipe book to see if I could find the original and see how far off my current method is from how it started. Now, I can’t remember the last time I opened this book but I think it may have been 5 years. I make almost everything from memory and the stuff I don’t I look up on the internet or in a printed recipe book. Here are just a few things I found in this book:

1. A recipe card my mom had TYPED (with a typewriter) and put my late aunt’s name and address on to mail. I don’t know why she never sent it and I got it instead but i know it was typed at least 10 years before I got it because it has a route and box # address on it (now that’s rural Oklahoma).

2. An email my mom sent to me (probably from med school). The recipe I have always referred to as “my mom’s breadsticks” but as the source my mom had someone else listed; this lady I now know again as an adult (we go to church together again) but I was the flower girl in her daughter’s wedding at age 3!!! I had no idea that came from her!

3. A recipe for sopa from some dear friends from med school.

4. A hand-written 3x5 card from my uncle with the recipe for “microwave hot dogs.” It starts with “Remove package from freezer. Remove plastic wrap. Insert knife blade between dogs to separate.”  That was from the shower my aunt had for me at her house where she asked everyone to write down recipes for me. Thanks, uncle J!!

5. A recipe for a “fine arts” pasta salad from my college piano teacher and advisor.

6. A recipe for fresh apple cake on my mom’s recipe card that has the source as a lady she’s been friends with since high school. And the date is 1970!!

7. A recipe that appears to have been hand-written by my late grandmother that the source was my great uncle’s (her brother-in-law) first wife!!

Wow!! What a heritage just in my recipe book. It reminds me of several important people in my life who are now with the Lord. It reminds me of people who were influential in my parents’ lives when I was young and people who have been influential in my life up to this point. In all, it reminds me of where I came from and where I’ve been along the way. It won’t be 5 years before I open this book again!! What’s in your recipe book?

Disclaimer: If the discussion of poop bothers you, stop reading now.

I believe there are times in every parent’s life when they question their parenting methods and possibly even every decision they’ve made as a parent. I had one of those moments today. Let me set the stage.

My in-laws - God bless them - are taking the girls for 5 days so we drove east to meet them. We met at a nice little McDonald’s where there is a brand new indoor playplace. This is perfect because it allows the girls to get out of the car for a little while and run around like crazy children and no one really says anything about it. We also happen to be potty training our 3 1/2 year old, E.A., which is a nearly year-long process now. We’ve been there about an hour and E.A has successfully navigated using a public restroom with the automatic flush (which is no small feat!). Luckily, most of the children who had been there when we arrived had left with their families.

Too my horror, E.A comes out of the green spiral tube slide with a distressed look on her face and says the telltale “Mommy?!” at which point I look up to see her standing in front of the slide and behind her is a dark streak as far up the green tube as I can see (which is not too far because it is a pretty tight spiral). I promptly show this to her father, grab her and the diaper bag and head for the little bathroom in the playplace. Her dad assures me that he will handle the poop slide while I clean the child, who, by the time we hit the bathroom door, is yelling, “there’s poop on my hands! There’s poop on my hands!!”

So first I have to navigate her washing her hands in the sink - which she is not tall enough to reach - with poop all over her lower body. Then, we have to get the clothing off and clean her up with approximately 1/8 of a package of wet wipes. And because this McDonald’s is green (or cheap) there is a hand dryer in the bathroom and therefore no paper towels. There are also approximately 12 sheets of toilet paper on the roll!! So I commence the cleaning with a little commentary from the cleanee: “There’s poop on my leg!” “There’s poop on my socks!” “oh, no! Now it’s on the floor! Get it, get it!”. Thank you, my little poop radar!  She also kept saying “There’s poop on the slide!” and I kept assuring her that Daddy was getting someone to clean it.  Once she was convinced that other little children were not sliding down through her poop she kept saying “I need to go help clean the slide.”  So at least she’s a conscientious slide pooper!

We are finally poop free and the “package” has been tightly sealed in a plastic shopping bag. We return to the playplace to find the very nice, very gracious, late 50’s McDonald’s employee attempting to clean the green spiral tube slide which is apparently streaked pretty much from the top to the bottom. After awhile she comes down and starts climbing up from the bottom. She then comes back down and tells us that she is unable to completely clean the slide because she is unable to get to it. So my lovely husband climbs up the slide and cleans a little more but comes down and says he can’t get it all either. So, yep, you guessed it! I shed my sandals and climb barefoot up the slide, cleaning poop off the slide as I go!

I used up the last of the 2 rolls of paper towels we had and still had quite a bit of poop to clean. So my husband goes off to find more paper towels (because, remember, there are none in the bathroom). Meanwhile, I sit, wedged in a small green plastic tube which reeks of poop and it is at this point that I start to question the decision to put her in panties today, our potty training methods, our parenting methods and possibly even every decision we’ve made as parents.

A family that we know adopted 3 little girls a few years back.  The girls are now preschoolers.  They have a younger sibling who has recently come to no longer live with their biological mother. The safety and permanence of the child’s current living situation is unknown to me at this time and to my friend the last I heard (this is intentionally vague to protect anonymity).  I overheard our friend, the adoptive father, telling another friend about the situation.  She asked him if they could and would take the 4th child in if needed, to which he replied, “Sure!”

Wait, a second.  Now, I know several families who have adopted and fostered children so this response, while not exactly what I expected, was not at all surprising to me, especially because of how I know the adoptive father.  But after I thought about it for awhile, I realized that there is really a lot behind that answer.  “Sure” we will take in a 4th adoptive child to go with our other 3 preschool adoptive children and 2 teenage biological children in a house that we already had to expand to fit the 3 little girls in there.  “Sure” we’ll take in this small child that has probably not been physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually nurtured in anyway close to what is appropriate.  “Sure” we will love this child and do whatever it takes to help this child heal and become a part of our family and deal with the difficult and often frustrating parenting that goes along with it.  “Sure” we will be open to the will of God for our family, even if it means we have to be uncomfortable.  “Sure.”

I am awed by the love demonstrated in that one word response: the love for a hurting child and the love for God that allows them to be open to this possibility.  Raw, real love.

So, our little first-born angel, E.A., is 3 years old.  She turned 3 in the middle of December.  We have been somewhat potty training since she was about 2.  And by “somewhat,” I mean we bought the potty seat (3 of them, in fact), bought the books, talked about “pee-pee” and “poop”, sat her on the potty, occasionally used it for its intended purpose, and attempted some bribery with stickers.  So we decided that Potty Training Boot Camp began January 1.  We had tried pull-ups but she just went in those like she did in her diaper.  We were pretty sure she was ready because she was showing several signs of readiness, which I will not bore you with by listing them all here.  And we (actually I) had read “The No-Cry Potty-Training Solution” by Elizabeth Pantley (who has several books, all of which I recommend).  Our potty-training methods, however, are not entirely from her book, but we did borrow a few ideas.

So January 1: panties.  Yep, that’s right, we jumped in feet first.  Not just panties, my friends; panties with plastic diaper covers.  She figured out real quick that these were in no way like her diapers or pull-ups.  Thus began the battle of the wills.  For 10 days (yes, TEN DAYS!!) she absolutely refused to sit on the potty.  Pee, poop, didn’t matter.  She was doin’ it in her panties. At home, at MDO (God bless her very patient teachers!!), NO POTTY!!  And then, it happened.  She started sitting on the potty.  The struggle was far from over but she started sitting on the potty and getting a nice little (wrapped) present every time she used it for its intended purpose.  She did pretty well for awhile and we even left the plastic diaper covers off for a few days.  But she was still having poop accidents so we would leave her in her pull-up in the mornings for MDO then when she poops, she gets panties.

So here we are 4 months or so later and she still has pee accidents and absolutely NEVER poops on the potty.  She even screams and cries when we ask/make her sit on the potty at home.  At “school” (MDO) she goes all the time and only has poop accidents.  So here’s my question to all those moms out there: what else can we do to get her to go on the potty all the time?  I know I should probably know this, but is this normal?  She’s a very smart and willful child; is this a control issue? (then again, what isn’t a control issue to a preschooler?) We bought and are awaiting the arrival of the book “Everyone Poops” because I have been told this is a good aide for getting her to poop on the potty.  Any other suggestions?  I’m open.