Mommiest Moments: March, 2013

[For half of March, I was in Indiana. I have decided to post quotes from the trip separately. -- ed] 

[I'm also trying out horizontal bars to break up the anecdotes. Are they helpful? Annoying? I welcome feedback. --ed]

---

“Eric, where did Jeff’s bull go after it tried to kill you?”

--Gail. Eric dropped the poor bull over the stairs. The bull retaliated by trying to gore Eric. “Go for the jugular!” I encouraged, though his horns were still too little to effect real damage. Eric wrestled with the stuffed animal briefly and then ran away. But once it was time for Jeffie to go night-night, I made Eric join in the search for his erstwhile enemy…

---

I don’t recall how we started having a conversation about childbirth while driving somewhere in the car. But somehow I found myself stuck in the following conversation: 
Gail:…so when the baby comes out, he needs to breathe on his own because he’s no longer getting blood through the placenta. But his nose and mouth are plugged with this hard, dry mucus. So the doctor needs to suction that out quickly. And then sometimes the doctor will spank the baby to make him cry. Because after he cries out, he’ll breathe in.  
Eric: Actually, I do not think the placenta allows a true blood transfer, only an exchange of nutrients and oxygen. 
Gail: [gaping] Uh…well, okay, yes. Because mom and baby can have different blood types. (Where do you read these things…?) I was trying to simplify, obviously unnecessarily. 
Jon: Also, the mucus isn’t hard and dry, just…solid. 
Gail: Just because you have always been on the other end—I’ve read many books about this! 
Jon: I’ve actually seen it. In the trenches. While you were just lying around…Ow! 
[I hit him. HARD. He admitted he TOTALLY deserved it.] 

--It’s still awful that I was corrected—about obstetrics!!!--by an eleven year old Aspie boy.

--Also, now I'm second guessing everything. Does the doctor's slap cause the baby to gasp in surprise and then scream? How can the baby breathe out if he has oxygenated blood but no actual air in his lungs? Sigh. Now I'll go look it up on google or wikipedia and lose an hour of my life...

---

"I used one of mathleague's brownie area problems with Daniel during our math lesson today. It asked how many square-shaped brownies with an area of 4 inches squared could be carved from a 10" by 14" rectangular pan. He argued for an incorrect answer. (He skipped a step and forgot to divide by 2 a second time.) I wasn’t getting through to him. 

"Obviously the only scientific solution was to make a pan of brownies and divide it up into square sections. Granted a 9 x 13 pan isn’t a 10 x 14 pan, but we fudged the inches slightly. (Yes, that pun was intentional.) 

"Later, Eric asked how many 1”x4” rectangles we could carve from the same pan. Without thinking it through, I said “It’s the same area, so it should still be 35.” He corrected me, and, naturally, he was right. I blushed in shame."

--Gail. That's okay, because later that evening, I had more embarrassing things to worry about. I was composing an important email when Jeff came along, pounded on my laptop keyboard, and sent a very unpolished--well, raw--version of the message...to the president of mathleague. (Ouch.) The story above was part of my effort to cajole him during my second attempt. 

---

“Eric, we few, we singers—when there’s a really unusual hymn nobody knows, we have to sing the melody because—well, honestly, we carry the whole ward. So don’t be mad at your mom, though I’m delighted you want to sing alto.”

--Sister Russell, the children’s chorister at church. She was explaining to Eric (at my request) that I was right when I said I’d had a Public Duty to sing the soprano line during an obscure closing hymn, instead of singing the alto line as he requested. (He was so upset, he was barely speaking to me.)

---

"In the abstract, it's hilarious that Eric and Daniel now sit on either side of me and fight with each other, and me, about which part I am going to sing on which verse. 

It's not very amusing in the moment, of course, but I'm sure that ten years from now, I'll look back and laugh about those memorable moments when the congregation's worshipful hymn, about reverence, forgiveness, and God's 'boundless charity', were interrupted by shouts of 'Noooo! Sing Soprano!!!!'" 

--I should note that Eric has been amazing me this last month with his ability to sing alto independently. Some of the more common songs he seems to have memorized, but on Easter Sunday (March 31st) he was sight-reading the alto line and getting the intervals right without help. (That is, I’m assuming Eric was sight-reading. After all, we only sing the Easter hymns once a year.)

I kept poking Jon and pointing, but Jon, who was sitting on my other side, couldn’t hear what I was hearing. It was awesome! Way to go, Eric!

---

“The whole point of exaltation—well, I also want an eternal family—but the other main draw is eternal progression. It promises that I won’t be bored for eternity. I HATE being bored.”

--Gail, to John Edwards, after his testimony on why God doesn’t provide us with “all the answers” right now.

---

"He's driving me bonkers!"

--Gail, to Jon, in a routine update. This time the source of my insanity was Sam, who had finally wheedled his way into a personal "creative mode" world in minecraft. He built bookcases like mad, destroyed pressure plates, replaced pressure plates, erected a perfect fence around his porch...and then shouted "I can't fly!" every sixty seconds because he wasn't checking his headroom. Over and over and over. Some toddlers just obsessively empty and then reload the laundry bin...

---

“Jeff has learned to ask for sympathy. He walked up to me, pointed to his head, and said “aaah.” I patted his head and said “all better,” after which he toddled off again, satisfied.

--Jon. Why should Jeff learn to talk when he can get so far with mere imitation?