Hindsight is always 20/20

I have wanted a digital camera for as long as there have been digital cameras. To be ready at almost any time to capture "moments" and to record videos without all the hassle of tripods and cords, etc... . Before we got our camera, we would buy the little disposable Kodak or Fuji cameras, use them, and then put them aside to be developed "when we have the money". For YEARS. We have a box full of film that needs to be developed. I'm pretty sure we even still have wedding film to be developed. Our babies' first birthdays, milestones, everything are locked away in those little disposable cameras in the box in our closet. When we finally got our digital camera, it was a huge deal for me.
Pictures are very, very important to me. I treasure them. To hold a picture and be flooded with memories that might otherwise be lost to time is precious to me. I love pictures of ancestors, pictures of my grandparents when they were my age, pictures of my parents as babies, and even our goofy family portraits from the 80's. To me, more heart-breaking than being without a computer or internet access or an immediate way to communicate with family and friends hundreds of miles away was the thought that all the pictures I've uploaded might be lost forever.
I got hit square in the chest with that fear today when a certain busy child picked up a piece of metal from a science kit and thought, "hmmm, that USB port looks like a GREAT place for this random piece of metal". The child inserted the metal, wiggled it and the computer went, "POOF" and went black and quiet. After my initial disbelief that this child had done something a TODDLER would do and my anger that such an expensive piece of equipment might have been lost to such a careless, random act of "duh", I remembered all the pictures and videos I'd saved over the last two years on the computer and froze. I sat on the couch and mourned for I don't know how long, kicking myself over and over for not backing up our pictures. How could we have left something so important to us to chance? Then, I picked up the phone and called my husband at work. I said, "do you want to know now or when you get home". That's not code. He knows that means one of our offspring has done something not-very-smart and that it was serious enough that I couldn't fix it myself. He sighed and opted for "now". I told him and he grew silent. Then, he went through the various stages of emotion I had and finally, settled on resigned as I had done. He hung up with me to do some research to see what might have happened to the computer internally and what might be done about it.
We got on with our day as best as we could here, with the guilty party on lock-down in his bedroom except to do school and eat. I was making dinner when he walked in the door, rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He hadn't found much helpful information online except that to call in an expert from "The Geek Squad" STARTED at $199.99 and went up from there. Nice. To attempt to recover information began at $300. We both looked at each other and mentally kissed our pictures good-bye. He hauled the tower to the dining room table and began taking it apart. I left the room and went back to making dinner. The taking apart of expensive equipment- even when already broken- makes me nervous. Pretty soon, I heard him fiddling around, hooking the wires back up and not two minutes later, I heard the "chime" that signals the computer has been started. Trying not to get my hopes up, I walked into the school room and sure enough, he'd done it. He's not sure exactly WHAT he did, but he did it! I don't need to know. What I DO know, though, is that we begin backing up those pictures and videos tomorrow. Maybe this was just the scare we needed to stop messing around and just do it. While the guilty fiddler is definitely grounded for the next week, I suppose he might have done us a favor, in a round-about way.
One thing's for sure. Life in our house is never boring.

And Another from the Archives:

Well, you already know the set-up of their bedroom at night. Two baby gates in the doorway- basically a free-range enclosure for their parents' sanity. The back-story of how it came to be that way isn't so much entertaining as it is frightening. The people who owned our house before us had apparently used the boys' bedroom for an office. It had a half-bath and plenty of storage space in and above the ample closet. The windows looked out on to our pretty, quiet street and it caught the morning sun beautifully. The owner was somewhat of an interior designer and the door to the room was a beautiful old one- with glass panels. It concerned me a bit when we made it the boys' bedroom, but we told ourselves we would put a solid one on as soon as we could. One night when Goober was three and Crash was still in a crib, I woke, not knowing why but feeling uneasy. Pretty soon, I realized I heard Goober crying, but he sounded odd. I jumped up out of bed panicked and opened my door. In the dark, I could make out his shape, walking around with his arms feeling, waving like he was scared and searching for something. I got to him and realized there was glass all around him and he was bleeding. Goober was our one child to have night terrors and had a tendency to sleepwalk. It was the scariest thing we'd ever seen as young parents- your child crying and inconsolable, eyes open, but looking right through you. As the night terrors had tapered off, we had relaxed a bit. Apparently, Goober had been in the middle of a night-terror and had started to sleep walk. When he encountered the door, he had begun to pound on it and bang his head against it. It shattered, leaving him with lacerations on his forehead and arm. I think we sat at the dining room table with him for five minutes with him whimpering and frantically feeling around while he stared straight through us. When he finally "woke up", we got him dressed and Josh ran him to the ER. We were SO blessed it wasn't worse because it could've been. He got two stitches over his eyebrow and his other wounds were glued shut. He's only sleepwalked a couple of times since, but seems to have grown out of it, thank goodness. But, that is the reason for the two baby gates in the doorway that play into quite a few of our "adventures".

Here's one from the "they did WHAT" family stories

There was a time about six years ago when Goober was three, Crash was one and I was pregnant with Princess. I was tired. All. The. Time. Two very busy little boys in diapers and I was the size of a house. I will never forget the morning I woke up to hysterical giggles. Anyone without kids ( or with "normal" kids) would smile and think, "how precious!" Not me. I came slowly into consciousness, my fuzzy pregnancy brain trying to comprehend.
I hauled my giant eight-months pregnant self out of bed and waddled to my bedroom door. I opened my door and was greeted by a winter-wonderland scene in my dining room. It took me a second, but I realized my ENTIRE house was engulfed in a cloud of baby powder. Why-oh-why did we have to buy the "economy size"?! I walked across the dining room and living room to the boys' bedroom. Back in the day, we had two baby gates stacked on on top of the other to make about a four-foot tall fortress designed to keep our very nimble monkeys in their room at night. We always ran a fan for "white noise" to help them sleep since their bedroom was right off the living room. Well, in my addled state, I had apparently left the diaper bag on the shelf in their closet. Not easy to reach for your average three and one-year-old, but we're talking about my kids. Apparently, they'd woken at the crack of dawn and spotted the foreign object in their room. Anything out of the ordinary deserves their undivided attention. Goober had apparently pushed his toddler bed over to the closet and stacked toys until he could reach the diaper bag.
After apparently squirting a pretty good amount on his baby brother ( Crash was white from head-to-toe), he had discovered an even more FUN way to use it. The fan was on high, blowing out through the baby gate. You can guess the rest. An economy bottle of scented cornstarch can cover an entire 2,000+ square foot house in a fine layer of powder pretty efficiently. I was cleaning it out of the cracks in the wood floor for WEEKS. On the plus-side... my house had that bath-time fresh smell for just about as long. I was still finding it in cracks and crevices when we moved three years later.

Well, almost two years later...

I created this blog, posted a couple of times and then dropped it. It's been nagging me in the background all this time and a friend just gave me the kick in the seat I needed to pick it back up. So, here we go! :)
I am now 31, Goober is now ten, Crash is seven and Princess is six. They're still at it, too. I will try my very best to remember to write down our adventures as they happen.

Maybe it was the beautiful day... .

I broke my strict "no gum" rule for Crash and Princess. It was Friday, it was a gorgeous day,I was happy, the kids were behaving... . Yeah. I messed up.

So I let them all have a piece of gum. Goober does great with gum. He understands "keep it in your mouth or it goes in the trash"- no problem.

About half an hour after I let them have the gum, I'm standing at the stove making dinner. Goober comes tearing into the kitchen in a total panic yelling, "LOOK WHAT SHE DID!!!! She stuck gum in my hair!". He had practice in an hour. I grabbed his head and dragged him to the window so I could see better. She got him good, alright. He had a big wad smack on the top of his head, and it was strung across to two other spots on his head. I panicked and had visions of having to shave his head, or at least give him a severe buzz cut. I calmed down a little and grabbed the Sunbutter ( our version of peanut butter- tastier and doesn't carry salmonella ;) out of the fridge and smeared a huge glop of it on his head. I rubbed it in with my fingers and tried pulling some out. I got a huge "ow!!" out of Goober and a few hairs. Not much gum, though. I started to panic again and tried tweezing it out with my nails. I guess the oil in the Sunbutter had started to work because it began coming out easier. It really didn't take too long at all to get it out. I stuck him in the shower and lathered his hair up really well. We actually managed to get it all! I was feeling pretty triumphant when I walked into my bedroom and Crash goes, "I don't want my gum anymore, it's all stickyyyy". Whuuuut? Sure enough, he'd strung his gum all over the computer desk and onto the keyboard. Let's just say Goober made practice on time smelling cherry blossom fresh and Crash and Princess are doing time in their room until dinner.

Random Quotes

"Mommy, how come everything fun is also illegal?"- Goober,my then 7 year-old.
"Mommy, this lunch is like love in my heart"- Crash
"Aw, Mommy, I'm happy at you!" - Princess
"Cheese, I command you to get on my fork!" ( Princess eating salad and getting frustrated).
Princess after her cousin asked her what she was doing, "Tortilla!!!"
Crash to his cousin, staring at her arm: "You have a lot of meat on you. I'm going to eat you. I'm a Macannibal!!"
Goober to his cousin as she was walking into their room at bedtime: "Uh, you might want to leave, we strut naked here".
Princess at Thanksgiving, watching me roll out cookie dough: "I'm thankful for COOKIES!!!" Goober to Crash in a commanding voice: "you are getting sleeeeepy. You are no longer Crash, you are MOMMY!"
Goober to Crash in normal voice: "can I have a snack?"
Crash: "No!"
Goober: "It worked!!!!"

Sunday night before church, a little girl gave Evan and Caroline some Canadian nickles. On the way home, Caroline was fiddling with hers and asking what she could buy. Josh said, "well, they're not really worth anything here, you can't spend them- I thought you were going to put them in the offering plate". She spread her hands out and said, "well, that wouldn't work either because then God would have to go to Canada!".

Goober to his little league coach last night, "I can't come to practice on Wed. night because I have church, and church is more important than baseball." Out of the mouths of babes...

Crash's trip down the stairs, March 7, 2008

Okay, a little background, my kids know-know they're not to go down the basement stairs. It was that way at our house in Indiana, and it's that way here. Both places, painted wooden stairs lead to a concrete floor. I'm afraid if they're wearing shoes, they won't be able to judge where their foot is and mis-step. If they're wearing socks or slippers, I'm afraid they'll just slip. If they absolutely have to go down the stairs, I prefer that they go barefoot so they'll have a better grip and feel. Anyway, they know they're not to go down the stairs, it's just storage and laundry- nothing for them. I always keep the basement door shut and locked with a chain- they know how to un-do it, of course, but I hope it'll be enough of a visual deterrent that they just won't bother ( yeah, right.).

Yesterday, I put in a movie, tucked Crash and Princess in on the couch with blankets and pillows and set cups of water on the table- all my bases covered, and went to take a shower. They were totally engrossed in the movie. I figured that'd buy me a good ten minutes. Wrong. I came out of the bathroom and Crash is on the couch looking guilty and just not... well. He looked at me very seriously and said, "Mommy, I did something bad". I said, "What did you do?" He scrunched up his face and whimpered like he knew it was so bad that when he told me, I'd come unglued. I said, "Crash, tell me, what did you do?" He didn't answer, so I gave up and went to finish getting ready. When I came out and looked at him, he said, "I'm ready to tell you now. I fell down the stairs and hit my head." Then, he squeezed his eyes shut and braced for the explosion. WHAT?! (Dear God, give me patience). I went over and said, "where? show me." He pointed to the side of his head, right above his ear. His ear was bright red, but there wasn't a bump. I checked his pupils, 'cause that's what my dad always did and it made me feel better to do something. His pupils reacted normally, but his eyes just looked really sleepy and his lids were at half-mast. It freaked me out a bit. I went and got him an ice pack for his head while biting my tongue. I knew if I got mad, he'd clam up and I wouldn't get any more information out of him.
I said, "were you at the top, or were you partway down the stairs when you fell?" He said, "I was halfway down." I said, " Did you land on your arm, your leg... what part of your body hit?" He said, "I landed on my head".
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
We had to go pick up Goober from school just then, so I had them get up to get their shoes and coats on. Crash stood up and said, "whoa, I'm dizzy!". Fabulous.
After we got Goober, I had to go to the bank. I looked back in my rearview mirror to check on him and he'd fallen asleep. I said, "CRASH!" and reached back and shook his leg and he just turned a little. We were on a country road, so I hit my brakes hard. He jerked forward, woke up, gave me a dirty look, stuck his fingers in his mouth. When we got to the bank, though, he was back to normal, pressing his face agains the window to make pig faces at the teller and make Princess laugh.
He seemed okay by evening- a little more subdued than normal, but okay.
This morning, I was downstairs doing laundry ( after SPECIFICALLY telling them to stay upstairs). After I started the dryer, I turned around and there was Crash standing there with his fingers in his mouth, just watching me. I gasped ( he scared the daylights out of me) and he laughed and said, "Mommy, you're silly". I was about to really let him have it when it occurred to me that I might be able to get some more information out of him. I walked him to the stairs and casually said, "so, where were you yesterday when you fell?" He walked up to about the sixth step and said, "here". Okay, not soo bad. I said, "and how did you fall? Did you slip? Did you miss a step?" He said, "well, I got here and thought the next step was the bottom because..."
WAIT FOR IT....



"I COULDN'T SEE WITH THE BLANKET ON MY HEAD".

Oh. My. Word. Seriously!!!! All I could say at that point was, "oh." Thinking about it, though, the blanket and his ear probably kept him from cracking his head open- though neither he nor the blanket should have been anywhere near the stairs- let alone together. *Sigh* The child's determined not to make it to his sixth birthday.
The night before, they were supposed to be getting ready for bed in their room. I kept hearing uncontrollable giggling followed by BOOM followed by more giggling. They were jumping off the top bunk onto my little trampoline using a blanket for a parachute.
I'm letting them keep the trampoline and I'm just going to block it out. If they're determined to break something, I'd rather it be an arm or a leg instead of a head or neck. See? I can compromise... .