Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Kids Live Here

Maybe it Wasn’t ADD

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It happened.

After 13 years of parenting little people, I no longer have a lunch buddy, a grocery buddy, or a pound on the door while I go to the bathroom buddy. For 6 hours. Every. Single. Weekday.

Starting this week, my kids are all in school fulltime.

I’ve had wild emotional mood swings about this.

Last year when I chose to only put Wanda in half-day kindergarten, it had a little to do with money, but mostly it was about – I wasn’t ready yet. She was ready. SO SO ready. But I couldn’t bear to let go of my last little friend for that many hours each day.

I knew I’d miss her, miss my role as a fulltime stay-at-home mom.

Motherhood is my favorite thing. Gratitude is not a strong enough word to describe how I feel about being a mom.

But it is brutal sometimes. And it is not cessant. Even a little bit.

Halfway through the school year last year, I started to get excited. Wanda was overripe for full day school at that point and I found myself daydreaming about all the things I’d accomplish when I had more uninterrupted time.

I could write a novel worth publishing. I could go back to school and become a doctor or an astronaut. I could even find out what it feels like to finish a thought before being interrupted.

I’ve been a casual on-again/off-again writer and blogger for ten years, periodically taking on too much freelance work. Then I would scale way back when I realized I was incapable of being a great working mom of young kids.

My blog has gone through periods of large readership, but things are quiet around here these days. I just haven’t had the time and focus to give it.

As I contemplated my new free time and all the ways I could fill it, I started to get really excited. I was ready. I could do this. I was simply moving into a new chapter of my life and I might love it.

Then a couple of weeks ago I went online to pay school fees.

And there was a box by Wanda’s name.

For lunch money.

I was overcome with sadness. It was sadness that she would be eating lunch with someone other than me. Sadness that a hugely important phase of my life was ending. My identity for the past 13 years was gone. I grieved.

So I didn’t know what to expect this week as the kids headed off to school.

Would I be sad? Would I be lonely? Would I be bored?

I doubted I’d be bored. I’d spent the entire summer (whenever I wasn’t having emergency surgery) making a business plan for all the writing and marketing I was going to do this year. But maybe I’d be depressed or lacking in motivation to follow through. That scared me.

The morning of the first day of school, Wanda was eating breakfast while I read. She called my name.

I looked up to see a concerned expression on her face.

“What’s wrong, Wanda?”

She eyed me with pity.

“When I leave for school today, the only one you’ll have to talk to is Cortana.”

(We’re a Windows Phone family. Cortana is my personal digital assistant. Like Siri’s big sister.)

To her, that was a horrible prospect. Me, sitting alone at a table, my head in my hands, repeatedly saying, “Cortona, tell me a joke.”

I walked her to school. I had a nice walk home. I showered in silence.

Then I got in the car to run an errand and this feeling welled up inside my chest, a feeling I hadn’t been expecting.

Total, pure, bubbling JOY.

I can do this. In my worry and sadness about turning in my full time stay-at-home mom badge, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would be getting another badge back. KATHRYN. I was overcome with this feeling of reclaiming a part of myself that I willingly surrendered many years ago.

I am autonomous.

I am free.

I am simply Kathryn for six whole hours each day.

And I love it.

I have gotten so much done in the past three days. I can’t even believe it.

Lately I’ve been talking to my doctor about the possibility that I might have ADD. My thoughts have been so scattered and I’ve had such a hard time finishing tasks and following through.

My kids just started school fulltime and I realized – maybe I don’t have ADD. Maybe I just have children.

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I think my explosion of productivity can be explained this way – In the past, when I’ve had an hour to work on a blog post, what I’ve really had is:

5 minutes to work on a blog post

6 minutes to have my hair styled like a princess

3 minutes to work on a blog post

5 minutes to notice the pirate booty on the floor and pick it up before it got ground into the carpet

10 minutes to work on a blog post

15 minutes to kiss the invisible owie and find the band-aids because IT JUST FEELS LIKE BLOOOOD

3 minutes to work on a blog post

And then 13 minutes to figure out how the Octonauts were possibly going to rescue the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a

Now, when I have an hour to work on a blog post, I have AN HOUR TO WORK ON A BLOG POST.

And I miss my kids. But that just makes it more fun to see when they get home each afternoon. Missing them is not the worst thing in the world. I’m genuinely delighted to see them when they come home.

Enjoying this phase of life doesn’t take away from how much I adored being home and raising my kids full time. Some of my most precious memories were made during those times and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Today as I drove home from volunteering at the school, I saw a mother with her toddler, standing by the construction site. They were holding hands and engrossed in the digger truck action. I felt a twinge in my chest and thought, “I don’t do that anymore.”

But I like this time too. I’m coming to believe that there are seasons enough in our lives for all the good things we want to do. We just need to look for the beauty in the one we’re in and be present so we can make the most of it.

Straight Up!

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80s

Leading up to my sister’s totally rad 80s dance 40th birthday party, I’d been playing a ton of my favorite 80s and early 90s music.

Each song had a story.

Good Vibrations – This is sung by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch when he was still just a singing pile of abs and before he won an Academy Award after dropping the “y” and one of the “Mark”s from his name.

Escapade – Janet Jackson was the soundtrack of many sassy 6th-grade dance parties for me. We could never quite decide whether we liked her or Paula Abdul better.

She Drives Me Crazy – Yes they really are called the Fine Young Cannibals, although the coolest among us refer to them as FYC. No, I do not know any of the lyrics to the verses. Only dogs can hear that.

80s music has become sort of a background to our lives, any time we’re not listening to Hamilton.

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So, the other day, Wanda came up to me and said, “I can’t wait to start first grade in September. I just can’t wait!”

“It will be so fun.”

“Yeah because I can’t wait to see ‘Gomer’.”

“Gomer” is one of the boys she kissed on the mouth last year before I informed her that kissing was for older people. Then he became her boyfriend before I informed her that having boyfriends was for older people. So she asked him to wait for her and be her boyfriend in high school. He said yes, but apparently she’s been doubting his sincerity.

She continued, “The thing is, when I see him, I’m just gonna go up to him and say, ‘Straight up, now. Tell me do your really wanna love me forever?”

“Oh yeah?”

She looked sheepish.

“Yeah, because, you know, like, I really just want to know, okay?”

“I think that is a great idea. Just get it all out on the table.”

I mean, I don’t want her caught in a hit and run or something.

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Post-Op Grocery Shop

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The worst day for me after my surgery came when I went for my check-up a week later and the doctor gave me a clean bill of health. My blood count was up a bit. My incisions were healing nicely and he said the dreaded words, “You can resume normal activities as you feel able.”

This sounds like good news, but to me it was horrible because it turned on my guilt faucet. When I was on bedrest, I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t. Doctor’s orders. But as soon as he said I could listen to my body and decide, I found myself feeling guilty for not being 100%. I was still dizzy when I stood up. My incisions were still painful when I sat upright for more than a few minutes at a time and even walking for short distances left me weak and out of breath.

But I felt bad because I wasn’t up and doing everything. It’s amazing how hard we are on ourselves, right? The heck?!

I told myself it was fine, to listen to my body and take it easy, but it was a real struggle.

Hello. My name is Kathryn. And I have a hard time being nice to myself consistently without conscious effort. I’ve gotten better over the years, especially the last few, but it’s still a struggle and I still have to be mindful about it.
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So it turned out we needed groceries (re: kids eat food all the days) but I was worried about walking around the grocery store. I’d had several friends offer to pick things up for me at the store, but I thought of a better idea.

The kids could do it!

Isn’t that a good solution to most problems in life?

Newly free of the narcotics, I drove the kids to the store. We had a pep-talk where I told them about looking for brands and sizes with the best price. I took them down the cereal aisle and showed them how to look at the price per ounce and see if a bigger box might be a better value even if the price tag was bigger.

I refreshed their memory on how to pick produce.

I told them that vacation as coming so the budget was tight and I asked them to stick to the list unless they saw something they thought we actually needed for a good price. If that happened, they were to come and ask me.

On the list, I indicated that they could choose one treat that they all agreed on.

If they got along and showed good grocery manners, they could have a free bakery cookie at the end.

Then I planted myself in a reclined position in one of the comfy chairs in the pharmacy waiting room and read a great western novel for book club.

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My 13, 11, and 6-year-old navigated the grocery store beautifully and had a great time doing it.

They came and found me with questions like, “You wrote down red bell peppers but the green ones are so much cheaper. Is there a reason you really need red?” and “We want to get a box of Cheez-Its for our treat but there’s a deal where they are way cheaper if you buy three boxes. Can we please buy three?”

They made hard choices and proudly told me about how they refused to buy the salad dressing brand I specified because it was way too expensive and there was a store-brand alternative that looked just as good.

Seeing the pride on their faces, even though one of them wouldn’t admit she’d had a good time, I wondered why I hadn’t done something like this before.

And when we got to the long lines at the end, I asked the kids to pay for the groceries. They balked. Using my credit card was taking things a bit too far for them. I told them I could really use their help and asked them to try it because I didn’t think I could stand up in line that long.

Then a sweet lady overheard us and asked if we would like to take our massive load of groceries and cut in front of her in line. Drops of Awesome for kind strangers. I meet them all time!

Pete the Cat’s Magic Sunglasses – Put Me In The Story

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I’ve been a little bit obsessed with personalizing things lately. For Christmas I got all my nieces and nephews InchBug labels with their names on them. Then for birthdays this year, they all got monogrammed fleece blankets.

One of my favorite new things to personalize are books. So, when Put Me In The Story reached out to see if I would be interested in having them personalize a Pete the Cat book for one of my kids, I was excited to volunteer.

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Thusly, I am on the official book tour of Pete the Cat’s Magic Sunglasses.

My daughter adores Pete the Cat so I was thrilled to upload her picture and share a few personal details so the book could be printed with her in mind. The process was really simple. I think it took about 5 minutes and then I waited for the book to arrive.

I think it got to my house in about a week and I saved it until a moment when I thought she could really use a special pick-me-up.

Well, since my surgery, she’s been a bit of a basket-case, weepy, whiny, needs her mom to help her with everything. (And she’s not the only one!) So, as I’ve gotten more mobile, I’ve been pouring on the love. Lots of extra hugs and special story times, and today I pulled out the book.

She freaked out as soon as she saw it was Pete the Cat.

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And then she noticed that her name was in the title.

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AND THE BOOK WAS DEDICATED TO HER!!!

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Every page brought huge grins and excited gasps, smiles and giggles.

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She could NOT believe that they had a street called THOMPSON PKWY.

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And she was the sunshine.

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Overall I thought they managed to personalize the book just enough without going overboard or cheesy. It felt fairly seamless and Wanda was thrilled with it.

I would consider this a home-run gift, a gift she clutched to her chest and carried around for a good chunk of the afternoon.

Many of the books on the site are picture books, so they would be a fine gift for younger kids as read-alouds but I think the magic happens when you give one of these books to an emerging reader, someone who can discover all the places where her name appears and be delighted.

Apart from the personalization, it was just a really sweet book with a great message about looking on the bright side and deciding what perspective you will have on life. Do you want life to be awesome? Then look for the awesome!

Put Me In The Story is currently running a giveaway of a couple of personalized books and a book bag. Here’s the link to enter. I’m going to do it because I’d love to give away more of these books as gifts.

Enter via the Rafflecopter by doing any of the following:

  • Sharing your Sunglass Selfie! Share a selfie of you and your child wearing sunglasses with the hashtag #MagicSunglasses
  • Sharing a Tweet
  • Signing up for Put Me In The Story’s newsletter

*I received free product to review for this post. However, I only ever give my real opinions on this blog and none of this text comes from the company.*

Simply Awesome – Summer Calendar

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PicMonkey Collage

We always have a huge mental list going at the beginning of summer, a list of all the things we want to do, places we want to go, deliciousness we want to stuff in our faces. We see this never-ending bucket of free-time and think we’ll get to do EVERYTHING. Then the summer ends and we find we’ve done almost kind of a little bit nothing.

I’ve tried writing down the list or typing it into my phone but we still get distracted and waste a lot of time and miss out on doing the Awesome. And everyone cries. And we vow to do more and do it better next year.

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So the past few years, I’ve done a couple of things to plan better. First I make a giant calendar and put everything on it with sticky notes. Second, I have a daily planning meeting with the kids where we decide what we’ll do the following day and how we’ll do it. Info on the kids’ planning notebooks will be available on HowDoesShe.com tomorrow.

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Here’s a little bit about how I do the big calendar.

I start by getting little sticky notes in a bunch of colors. I “made” these this year by cutting standard sticky notes into four equal pieces and only using the top two pieces because they are capable of bringing the sticky.

Then I drew out a calendar on a piece of poster board with day squares big enough to fit a sticky in each one. This requires a little math, just enough to keep your summer brain as sharp as a Cutco salesman’s demo knife, but not so much as to make you cry.

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Then I choose a color of sticky for each type of activity. I have a color for:

–Vacations and other pre-scheduled activities – this includes, camping trips, vacations, out-of-town guests, piano lessons, dental appointments, concerts, festivals, etc.

–Beaches, parks, and pools – I asked around on a local community Facebook group for pool, park and beach suggestions and we have discovered a TON of new places we didn’t know about before. Especially if you’re new to an area, asking around can save you a lot of research time.

–Hikes and walks – I was shocked when I found out how many trails were within a VERY short distance of my house.

–Museums, tours, and historic sites – In our plan this includes science centers, museums, factory tours, tours of local sports stadiums, free or cheap movies, and any other cool and interesting local treasures

–Projects and activities at home – While the kids are looking for sugar and swimming pools, my favorite summer activities involve child labor. I like to include big house projects as part of the festivities.

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We don’t only list things we think we have time for. We make a sticky note for EVERYTHING we can think of and place them on the poster board next to the calendar. Then we start sticking them on the calendar. This is a great way to realistically see that we don’t have infinite days in the summer (BOO!) and that we have to make some hard choices. It lets us prioritize and we get to do and see WAY more than we would otherwise.

The nice thing about the sticky notes is that if you’re feeling over-extended or like you just need a mental health day, you can easily remove things from the calendar and put them back in the holding area.

My final piece of advice is – type all the ideas into a document on your phone so that next year you can pick up where you left off. Maybe star your favorites so you remember to do them again.

Good luck! I hope your summer is filled with joy, fun, and just the right amount of house scrubbing, hopefully done by someone other than yourself.

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Sad, Mean, and Sort of Enjoyable

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I love the way Wanda’s mind works. I’m sure I still love the way Laylee and Magoo’s minds work too, but unlike with Wanda, I’m not privy to a constant stream in voice and writing of every thought that has ever passed through their brains. I have an open internet connection to Wanda’s thoughts. The older kids send me text messages.

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On the walk to school yesterday, Wanda asked, “Do you know what a patteroller is?”

“Nope.”

“It’s that thing where the cops carry a big stick around and if you don’t go to school or do something else bad, they hit you with it.”

“I was not aware of this.”

“Yeah. We learned about it in music class. There’s a song that says, ‘Run children run. The patteroller catch you.’ I just like to think about that.”

“Well, I have two things to say to you. One. Did you know there’s an even more polite way of referring to a ‘cop’? I like to call them, ‘police officers.’ Two. I don’t think police officers chase kids with sticks anymore for skipping school. I think that song was written a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” she replied, “It’s from… like… 288 or something.”

Yes. It’s a song written about local law enforcement when Diocletian was emperor of Rome. Those were serious times.

She spends a lot of time thinking and overthinking everything and then telling me about it. Take this simple homework sheet for example.

The teacher read Goldilocks and the Three Bears and then asked the kids what they thought about it.

Check yes or no. Was it good or bad?

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Sort of.

Why, sort of?

Wanda responds.

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And it makes sense. It IS sort of a sad and mean kind of story. Chick breaks into a family residence, uses or destroys all their stuff while they’re out battling the obesity epidemic with some family exercise. When she’s caught, she books it. What kind of a story is that?

Sad, mean, and sort of enjoyable.

The Funny Thing About Softball

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When I agreed to coach Wanda’s itty bitty softball team, I had no idea what I was in for. I signed up under duress and with serious stress and doubts about my ability to pull it off.

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It turns out that all you need to be a softball coach at this age is patience, a bit of organizational ability, and love for the girls. And dang. They are so lovable. I’m a bit blown away by how much I’m enjoying managing this team. It doesn’t hurt that the parents are great and jump in and cover for me where I’m weak… like in anything that relates to doing the sportings.

One of my favorite things about coaching is watching the girls learn and process this new sport. Here are a few of the highlights from last week’s games:

They’re learning to bat a live ball for the first time and they’re hitting more than I expected but it’s still very new and often when they do it looks like they hit more by accident than on purpose.

Last week one of my cute girls was up there swinging the bat, and when the ball hit her bat, she was so shocked she didn’t even run. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes got huge, and when we finally convinced her to run to first, she ran all the way there with biggest smile on her face and then covered her mouth both hands. Total shock and awe.

The way the game works at this age, every girl gets to bat every inning until she hits the ball. Then we retire the inning. So, while most girls are only allowed to advance one base per hit, the last batter gets to circle the bases for a home run every time. On the last batter, the defensive players are supposed to throw the ball to home and then the catcher can tag everyone out as the empty the bases.

We’d never practiced with a catcher before our first game so the concept of catching the ball at home and then tagging girls out is totally new and each girl, as she takes her turn as catcher seems highly confused by this.

When Wanda got her first turn as catcher, our pitcher threw her the ball after the last batter. Wanda looked around for it, which is hard in all that gear, picked up the ball, dropped it in the ball bucket and went back to her position behind the plate to chillax. All the parents are yelling, “Tag her Wanda! Tag her with the ball,” and Wanda’s looking at us like we’ve lost our minds.

Another cute player figure out that she needed to tag the girls out but the girls did not want to be tagged, so they ended up running in zig-zags and circles back and forth over the baseline and around home plate in a crazy game of tag.

My absolute favorite catcher play came, however, when one little girl got impatient for her outfielders to retrieve the ball that was hit.

“Tag em with a ball?” she thought, “Hmm. Why wait for that specific ball when I’ve got a whole bucket full of balls right next to me.” Like any good problem solver, she just grabbed a new ball and started tagging girls out with it. This reminds me of my mom keeping an extra spoon in her chair when we played spoons and pulling it out when she needed to. Genius.

Now, after one game Wanda proudly informed me that she had learned how to eat sunflower seeds at the games. I was surprised by this pronouncement because sunflower seed eating is actually a pretty advanced skill. Nope. Wanda has it nailed. Video evidence below.

All About that Base…ball

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BASEBALL IS NOW!!!

At the beginning of each calendar year, there comes a point, and I never know when it will be, when I get an email that essentially says, “BASEBALL IS NOW!!!”

What this means is, “You signed your child up for baseball six months ago, not knowing when it would be, and then you planned your schedule and moved on with your life. But starting tomorrow you will have baseball practices and games 3-5 times per week in various towns all over the valley and you will no longer be in any way in control of your family’s schedule. You will not eat normal family dinner for the next 4 months.”

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And we do this every single year because, flying in the face of everything I thought I knew about genetics, I have a kid who adore sports, particularly baseball.

This year is especially special because not only is Magoo playing, but Wanda is six and it’s her first year playing softball. And she’s not the only one playing softball. Due to an utterly desperate coaching situation in our little corner of Little League, I am managing and coaching her team.

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Have I ever played softball before? No.

Have I ever touched a softball before? No.

Have I ever watched a single game of softball being played? Not so much.

Am I much more qualified to direct a theater production, conduct a band, or coach a team of mathletes? Yes.

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But I do know how to dial up the YouTube. And I know how to interact with kindergarteners. And I have great parent support and the sweetest assistant coach ever, Coach Laylee. So I’m doing okay so far. Our games start soon and then we’ll see exactly HOW okay.

Not only am I… ahem… coaching, we also decided to sponsor Magoo’s team this year. I have a business license in Washington State as an LLC for my writing and coaching work. So when the team asked if any of us had a business who’d like to sponsor the team and have our business name printed on the back, I could not resist.

Meet Team Drops of Awesome.

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While other kids go around with the names of local restaurants and hardware stores printed across their backs, our kids wear the banner of Awesome.

I love to cheer for them but my cheering is at best awkward. At the moment, I’m working to use phrases that don’t in any way come naturally to me to support the kids as they try to do the good baseballing.

When other parents call out things like, “Good cut,” and “Way to get a piece of it,” they sound cool and sports-like. When I call out those things, I feel like I’m dressing my vocabulary up in a baseball mom costume and the costume doesn’t fit so well and I sound silly.

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One seasoned baseball mom recently told me it’s all about yelling things with authority. It doesn’t really matter what you say. You just have to commit and sound like you know what you’re talking about. So here are a few I’ve come up with this season and I’m excited to try them out.

“That was high quality cutting!”

“Your arm is nice!”

“You swing with great strength!”

“Throw the ball with more hardness!”

“Knock it to Sammammish!”

“I like the way your bat touched that ball even though it didn’t go the right direction to allow you to run to a base!”

Okay, that last one’s a bit long but I think it gets the point across nicely. I could also go uber short with things like, “BOOM!” “Ska-DOINK!”

I’ll fine tune it and let you know.

Besides vocab choices, the main concerns I have during baseball season are how to feed my kids when we’re at baseball from 4:30-8pm and there’s no eating allowed in the dugout, how to get stains out of white pants that are worn exclusively for times when you plan to slide and roll around in the dirt and grass, and how to prepare for every possible weather situation.

We’re wet and freezing. We’re sizzling and baking in the sun. Sometimes we do both of those things during a single game. So I bring umbrellas and sunscreen, snacks and water bottles, sunhats and parkas.
This year Magoo’s level of Little League team chooses a Major League team for their team name, so we’re the Dodgers. I like this because it makes finding fan gear easy.

The Northwest, and online store that specializes in exciting, new and innovative products for the majority of the world’s most recognized and loved brands in sports, entertainment and lifestyle

9 Secrets to Raising Happy Kids

The Northwest, an online store that has all kinds of great MLB gear, reached out to see if I was doing a story on baseball this season and when I told them I was, they sent me this awesome Dodgers blanket which helps keep us snuggly warm on rainy days or as the sun drops behind the trees sunny days. It’s fun to be cozy and support our team at the same time. Their site also has tons of other cool licensed products from just about every type of sports team and entertainment companies like Disney, Universal, Marvel Bros, etc. Next time you go to a hockey game, played between Kylo Ren and Santa Claus, they can hook you up for that too.

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At least next time I yell, “Dodge like a Dodger baseball man!” I will look legit while saying it.

**Sometimes I get free stuff for mentioning it in a post. I always tell you when that’s the case.**

Conference

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One of my favorite weekends of the year is our church’s General Conference broadcast. I can go into it tired or frustrated or worn out or nervous about the future and when I’m done watching apostles, prophets, and other strong leaders speak for 8 hours, I’m good. I feel refreshed. I feel confident. I know God is in charge and therefore everything will be fine.

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The kids love General Conference weekend too, but for different reasons.

First of all, we get to attend church in our pajamas in our living room and snack while we watch. A pair of fluffy pajamas and a cinnamon roll really help eight hours of church go down.

Secondly, we make it a game for the kids. The night before each session we all guess what color dresses the ladies of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will be wearing in a little thing we like to call the MoTab Ladies’ Fashion Betting Pool. We always guess all kinds of crazy colors and Dan always guesses Red for Sunday morning and he is always right.

My contention is, “Is it fun to be right if being right requires being boring? Pick another color.” And this year he did. And he lost. Because they wore red Sunday morning. C’est la guerre, mon ami.

The other game we play is set up sort of like a churchy drinking game. In front of the TV screen, I set out several cups full of small treats with common but not too common words written on them. Every time they hear one of those words in a talk, hymn or prayer, they get to take a treat from the corresponding cup.

Conference is broken up in to four 2-hour general sessions so I change the words and sometimes the treats each session.

The kids ALWAYS want me to pick words like “Jesus” or “and” but I NEVER do. RE: I am not an idiot. Also RE: I hate sugar comas.

This game sometimes produces interesting reactions in my kids.

To Quentin L. Cook’s talk, in which he said the word “missionary” more times than should be strictly legal, netting the kids hundreds of Gummy Bears, Wanda exclaimed, “Best. Talk. OF MY LIFE!”

Then there was the talk that described in great detail the transformative power of the Savior’s ultimate sacrifice and the kids looked like their faces would explode.

“Oh! Come on!!! He is describing the atonement. Why doesn’t he just SAY it!?”

They wanted that chocolate but they had to wait for the actual word.

Personally, I love watching them really listen to the words, even if on the surface it seems like they’re just playing a game. The fact that they were listening well enough to know he was talking about the atonement is a big fat bonus.

For one session I had the words Joseph Smith on one of the cups.

Nada.

Not one mention of the guy.

So I changed out the words before the next session. During the opening prayer of that session, the person offering the prayer mentioned his gratitude for the prophet Joseph Smith. I heard Magoo let out a disgruntled sigh. “Are you serious?” ye mumbled.

Probably my favorite moment of the weekend came when D. Todd Christofferson was talking about fatherhood. At one point he said something about how the greatest gift a father can give his children is to love their mother. Of course Dan took the opportunity to plant an epic kiss on my mouth. I imagine parents all over the world were engaging in churchly make-outs at that point and I’ll be derned if that doesn’t just make me proud to be a Mormon.

After our kiss, Magoo responded with his traditional, “I didn’t see that,” and without missing a beat, Wanda chimed in, “Thank you, Dad.”

You’re welcome, Wanda. Any time.

ERRRRRRR…. I Don’t Think it Goes That High

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Wanda wasn’t feeling great when she woke up yesterday morning. She had a 102 fever and said her tummy hurt. Who am I to send a walking biohazard into a building full of children on the cusp of spring break? Not a terrorist. So I kept her home, gave her some watered-down Gatorade, and got to work blogging in my pajamas.

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Early afternoon I made her turn off the Power Rangers and she quickly drifted off to adorable sicky sleep. But when she woke up, she looked horrible. She started sobbing that her tummy hurt and her skin felt hot to the touch. When I asked her to show me where it hurt, she pointed to her lower right side and moaned. I had her try to use the restroom while I Bing-ed “What side is the appendix on?”

Soon she was yelling for me to help her because it hurt too bad to get off the toilet. As I lifted her from the throne, I could tell her fever was really out of control and the forehead thermometer confirmed, 105.8!

Now, for normal kids this is insanely high but I’ve measured Wanda at over 107 in the past and anything under 103 is no big deal for her. However, combined with the side pain, I thought I should at least make an appointment with our pediatrician.

So I called. And his nurse told me to get to an ER quickly. Just like me and Bing, she was vibing appendicitis. So I rushed around like an unshowered maniac, grabbing my purse and phone charger and some grown-up clothes. Five minutes later the nurse called back to make sure she had told me the correct ER and to encourage me to leave as soon as possible.

We zoomed. But it takes about 45 minutes to get from our house to Children’s Hospital in Seattle and my red-hot bubs cried off and on all the way there. “It hurts, Mom!”

I feel so helpless when one of my children is in pain and there’s nothing I can do about it. I was doing what I could, which was praying and driving faster than the law allows. I also texted my family on the way out the door and they all said they’d send up a prayer as well.

We pulled into the ER parking lot and I loaded Wanda and her barf bowl and Gatorade into the softball gear wagon and wheeled her into the hospital, red hot and whimpering. The check-in nurse commented on how awful she looked, took our insurance card and sent us to the lobby to wait.

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For twenty minutes I watched Wanda become absorbed in a Disney movie and slowly but surely the violent red flush of her cheeks disappeared and her skin color returned to normal.

“Wanda,” I asked, “How does your tummy feel now?”

“It still hurts a little.”

“On the right side?”

“No. Just kind of in the middle.”

They called us back. They took her temperature.

99.9

Magically. Healed. By. The. Hospital. Lobby.

The intake nurse looked at Wanda. And then back at me. Then back at Wanda.

She asked all the questions and Wanda answered them like a person who should stay in for recess and maybe miss school just to be safe, but not someone who needed to be taken to a doctor and certainly not the ER.

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I was relieved, truly, that she was feeling better. And if me looking like a hypochondriacish idiot was the price I had to pay for her health, I was willing to pay it. Grudgingly.

They gave her the world’s most expensive popsicle and, as a bonus, she got to pee into a cup and all over my hand.

When the doctor asked me again how high her temperature had been at home, I told him 105.8 and he startled and asked what kind of thermometer I had used. I pulled it out of my purse to show him.

“I don’t think they go that high,” he responded.

“They sure do. They don’t get an error until 108.”

He had no response to that.

I texted my family to tell them that all was well except for the fact that I looked like an idiot. He said they must all be really good prayers if their prayers could bring her back from the brink of death that quickly.

I decided not to share the prayer hunch with the ER doctors but I did wonder how I would ever know if she had been miraculously brought back from the brink by divine intervention. I tend to be more of a Heavenly-Father-please-help-my-daughter-no-wait-she’s-fine kind of person. This could use more in-depth pondering.

Everyone was super nice to me, the way you’re nice to a crazy person. And, according to the supervising ER doctor, it was good that we came in, just in case. Apparently, there have been several cases of this crazy stomach virus in the ER lately. The cramps are intermittent, localized, and extremely painful, accompanied by high fevers.

They look like appendicitis.

The doctor said she had watched kids have acute episodes that had totally faked her out and she’d ordered all kinds of tests that turned up nothing, only to have the kids seem fine half an hour later.

Such is the humbling life of a mom. You sacrifice your pride for the safety of your kids, people who delight and terrify you every day.

On the bright side, at least they discharged her just in time to hit rush hour traffic so we’d have plenty of time to take a rare look at the gorgeous mountain that was showing up against the clear Seattle sky.

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When I checked her temperature this morning, she was back up to 104.9. Or not. I don’t think the thermometer really goes that high. But I should probably shower this time, just in case.