So let's start with some background, leading up to my 8/13 post.  This leads me to believe I am not going to be a regular blogger by the way.  It has taken me this long to log back in!  So here we go, back to the early days with the kids (to be continued).....

How can you ever doubt there is a God when you have a child?  From the moment of conception until birth – and beyond – it is all a miracle.  No way did all of these molecules just magically come together and create these beings that are so perfect and wonderfully adapted to a mother’s body and care.  From that moment on, there is a bond between a mother and child that is unlike any other.

 

Almost immediately, children’s personalities begin to develop.   Emma was a sweet child but went through a bout of colic that nearly drove me insane and definitely drove me to tears many nights.  Nothing would stop the crying except to breast feed her for hours at a time, literally.  She would start crying at around 5 and continue until 10 pm, like clockwork.  I couldn’t hand her to her father for calming because he obviously did not have the tools necessary to do the job, nor did he have the patience if he had the tools!   At about 12 weeks, the colic stopped finally and she went about her perfect little baby life.  She was a cherished child, because her dad and I had tried for so long to get pregnant and did not think we could have a baby.  After multiple inseminations and in vitro fertilizations, I had begun to fill out adoption papers, desperate for a baby.  We tried one last in vitro, using 5 fertilized eggs.  Gulp…  We had run out of money and I had run out of emotional fortitude to continue the ongoing doctor’s visits and shots.  But hallelujah, that last in vitro worked and nine months later, our precious Emma was born!

 

At my postnatal checkup, I had a very important question for my doctor – “What happened to my breasts?”  He stammered around for an answer, which I found very confusing because surely he had been asked this question before.    A baby is born and the life is completely sucked out of the mother’s breasts!   After giving me some serious doctor answer that went something like, “Well pregnancy affects women many different ways….blah, blah, blah”, he had his own question for me which was “What kind of birth control can I prescribe for you?”  I laughed (though the last laugh turned out to be on me) and told him that after trying for at least three years to get pregnant with my daughter, with the help of many different fertility methods, I was not worried about birth control.

 

Turns out, Emma’s birth must have “cleared me out” as I heard from several people, because when Emma was six months old, I got pregnant ON MY OWN!  Well, actually with a little help from my husband.  But no doctor’s offices, no shots, no blood being drawn!  Emma was going to have a little brother, and he was most anxious to make his entrance into the world, as he arrived three weeks early!  When I was in labor, the nurse was telling the corniest jokes to keep me from thinking about the labor pains, and I swear when Sloan was born, he immediately started laughing.  What a great way to come into this life – early and laughing!

 

The laughter never stops completely because there is so much life, so much adventure, and so much utter craziness in this house.  Laughter is central, but for some reason, animals have played a starring role, along with the children. 

 

As of right now, we have had interactions with a baby possum, a golden pheasant, a couple of corn snakes, a stuffed monkey, an ant colony, a flying shark, a nasty rat, multiple parakeets, dogs and cats, oh and don’t forget the occasional jackass.  It is a veritable zoo in this house.

 

I guess the first of those animals was/is the husband and father as the “jackass.”  From here on out, he will be referred to as JA1, leading the reader to rightfully assume there are more jackasses to follow.  So anyway, right before Emma turned 2 and when Sloan was 9 months old, he informed me that he had found his “soul mate” and wanted a divorce.   It’s funny, but not really funny – ironic – that I thought that’s what I was to him.  I mean we were married, loved each other, had gone through years of trying to have children and finally had them!  Yet now, when I thought we had it all, it all crumbled around me.   I had no husband, no job, and no financial security, yet I did have two beautiful children, a home, a supportive family, a loving God, a great church and the faith that I could get through this storm.

 

Faith intertwined with laughter was the antidote for those times.  I remember one day, after I had gotten a temp job and was at work, I got a voicemail message from my then-ex husband asking me to call him because of something “my son” had done.  By this time, Sloan was a nearly two years old.  Turns out, he had gotten out of bed that morning and was watching cartoons and drinking chocolate milk when he realized he needed to go pee pee.  He walked to the bathroom and without turning the light on, went to pee.  He missed the toilet, which was the start of a long and illustrious career of missing the toilet, and hit the electrical outlet at the base of the toilet.  As a side note, my ex lived in an old house with old wiring.  Sloan started an electrical fire in the bathroom, so everything that was plugged up was ruined.  Of course, my first question was if my little boy’s “wee wee” was okay! (Isn’t there some kind of “arcing” that can take place and electrocute??)  Oh no, my ex assured me that Sloan was perfectly fine but in trouble for causing a mess in his bathroom.  My only thought was…..why didn’t I think of this sooner?  I would have had him peeing all over the ex’s house!  And when I told my friends at work, my son’s new nickname became “Sparky!”

 

Not only did he create mischief at JA1’s house, but he did his fair share at mine!  Those terrible twos!  The day before Easter, the kids participated in an Easter egg hunt and games at a nearby church.  It was great.  They had fun and also heard the Easter story about Jesus, not the bunny.  The next day, as I was getting ready for church, I left the kids in the den watching cartoons.  While Emma watched Dora the Explorer, Sloan was doing his own exploring….in the refrigerator!  He tossed – no he threw – eggs all over the kitchen.  He got the idea from the egg toss at the church!  When I came into the kitchen, he was standing beside the counter with yolk and egg shells all over his face, not really sure what all the fuss was about.  Dora was apparently so exciting that Emma did not even notice the flying eggs in the adjoining room.  Sloan and I went through an entire roll of paper towels cleaning the eggs off the floor.  After the eggs were cleaned up, I went into my bathroom to finish getting ready and there was Sloan, drinking water out of the toilet with my shaving cream top!  Amazingly, he never got sick and we actually made it to church on time.  And by that time, I was in serious need of some sermonizing…..

 

Emma did not let Sloan have all the “fun” though.  She was not quite the mischief maker that Sloan was, but had her “Emma” adventures, some through no fault of her own.  When she was around six years old, I was putting her to bed.  I had elaborate bedtime rituals for both kids, usually involving much singing and some tossing of children (note that no eggs were ever tossed after the Easter episode).  Favorite songs included Jesus Loves Me, The Itsy Bitsy Spider (which included hand reenactments on each child’s naked back), Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog, and whatever song was last on the radio that day.  After going through the bedtime ritual with Sloan,  I came into Emma’s room to put her to bed.  As I took one of the pillows off the bed, I saw what I thought was a stuffed animal underneath it.  Then it moved!!!  It was not a stuffed animal.  It was a LIVE BABY POSSUM.  Under my baby’s pillow!!  We both screamed, and as we screamed, it jumped off the bed, and we jumped on the bed simultaneously.   Sloan, of course not wanting to miss out on any excitement, came running into the room and asked what was going on.  Immediately, I told him to jump on the bed with us!  So we were all standing on Emma’s twin bed, not exactly sure what to do.  I am sure the possum was under the bed, just as scared as we were.  After a few minutes of pure chaos, I told them we would all jump off and run quickly to the door.  On the count of three, we did, without a possum in pursuit.  I closed both doors to the room, and just to be safe (and because there is not one even floor, door or window in my house), I stuffed towels under both doors.

 

Emma slept with me that night, rather peacefully actually after experiencing a possum in her bed.  I called my then-boyfriend (who eventually will be referred to as JA2), and he said he had been doing some work in the basement that day and had the door open which is most likely how the possum entered the house.  He said that he would take care of the possum the next day.  I did not ask questions, as I did not really want to know details…..

 

So the next day, we were having one of those “difficult” mornings where I could not get the kids to cooperate.  So I hit on a great idea.  They were still very curious about the possum because, according to Emma, it was just so “cute,” so I told them that if they got ready in the next five minutes, we would go into her bedroom and see if we could take a peek.  These are the lengths a working mom will go to so she can get her children out the door on time!  Armed with a broom, I cracked open the door, and the kids and I peeked in very quietly.  Nothing.  So I tiptoed in and very gently lifted the pillow with the end of the broom.  He was there, under the pillow, comfy as he could be.  I will have to admit, he did look cute from the head up and from a distance away.  So there.  Kids were ready for daycare, we saw the possum, the boyfriend was coming to take care of him, and we could leave.  Oh yes and then I needed to come home and disinfect the entire room.

 

I got home from work that day to find the possum in a cage on the deck.  At that point I realized how very un-cute he was!  He had this long, curly, rat-like tail and a nasty hiss!   That creature had been in my baby’s bed!   So JA2, who actually was not a JA all the time, took him out to some field far away and released him, and that was the end of the possum story.

 

As an aside, we do not live in the country.  We actually live in the City of Greenville close to downtown.  Though we are in an urban area, we have a fairly large lot.  I love it because the back of the yard is my little secret forest.  There are large pines and a path that I created for my “timeout” area.  It is so serene, possibly because of its history.   This goes back to the time right after JA1 left and I was a single mom living in this house that needed a lot of work, including yard work.   The back of the yard was a mess, with English Ivy, briars and downed trees preventing me from even walking in some areas of the yard.  My dad and I worked outside when the children were with their father.  We pulled ivy up like it was a rug.  It was back-breaking work that took months.  One day as I was working outside by myself, I came across some bricks that were buried just under the surface.  They were old bricks, laid out symmetrically, forming a triangle.  They were beautiful old bricks, so I dug them up, intending to use them as a patio or to line a path.  I also dug up a couple of old gate posts, planning to use them at the entrance to my path.  Interestingly, an old stone wall lines the back of my yard.  Other than digging in the triangle formed by the bricks hoping to find some buried treasure (and finding none), I gave these things no real thought.

 

One Sunday, though, as I was working in the yard -- and in hindsight, probably should have gone to church -- I did give these items some more thought.  I had come into the house to get a drink and to rest for a minute when I heard a knock on my front door.  It was my next door neighbor who was also, shame-on-him, working in his yard on Sunday morning.  He was cutting a large tree that had fallen long ago.  His question to me when I opened the door was, “Do you know if somebody was buried in my backyard?”  Well, at that point, I KNEW I should have gone to church.  I immediately asked if he was talking about a pet or some type of animal.  No, he wanted to know if a person had been buried in the back yard.  In my mind, at some point, I am sure I would have been happy to bury JA1 in the back yard, but no, I am too much of a rule-follower to ever do such a thing.  Plus I knew I could never live with myself. 

 

Turns out, when the tree rolled after my neighbor cut off a section of it, he had unearthed a tombstone.  It was a legitimate tombstone along with the footstone and had a name and date on it from the late 1800’s.   It was both very cool and very scary at the same time.  Immediately I thought – oh heck, I will never be able to put in a pool.  But I also thought, I wonder who lived here and who died here.  Needless to say, he stopped sawing and I stopped digging.  The next day, he started doing some investigating.  He learned that both his and my backyard were at one point a family cemetery.  He then had someone come over with a ground-penetrating radar device so he would know exactly what he was dealing with.  According to those results, there was some type of “objects” buried in the ground.     His options were to either dig further and to designate the area as historical and notify the family, or to do nothing.  Seeing that he was planning on moving in the near future and this could impact the sale of the home, he decided to do nothing.   When he left, he took the gravestone with him.  If there is anyone buried in my backyard, they seem to be at rest, though perhaps they are somehow at work in all the mischief that takes place in this house.  In any event, the soil is dark and rich and absolutely wonderful for growing plants and flowers.

 

It is possible, because of my deep back yard, that I just have more room for critters and more opportunities for them to interact with my family.  One of those interactions occurred not too long after the possum episode.  An interesting point here is that there appears to be a coincidence with Sloan and toilets and mishaps. 

 

As Sloan was lifting the toilet lid to pee, a very large, nasty rat jumped out.  Again, this resulted in much screaming from both Sloan and me.   I ran into the bathroom, grabbing a broom as I went, and both he and I stood on the toilet seat.  Yes it is possible for two people to stand on a toilet seat when you are scared that your toe will be eaten off by a large, wet rat.   I do not even know what Emma was doing at the time, but she was smart enough to stay out of the bathroom.  Plus, I do not think the toilet seat would have held a third person anyway.  To this day, I do not know what happened to that rat.  I just know that we did not use that bathroom for several days afterwards and Sloan always looks first before he pees.

 

Dull moments were few and far between during those early years.  I went back to work at my previous company which not only kept me busy but also allowed me “adult” time and the familiarity of good friends who were able to provide a dose of sanity.  Karma – that exotic-sounding word that rolls off the tongue so much better than “he got what was coming to him” – was alive and well.  JA1 had moved into a house with his “soul mate” before we ever got divorced, adding insult to injury.  After a couple of years, his “soul mate” moved out of his house and off to Arizona, leaving him alone and trying to navigate the difficult waters of being a real single parent.

 

Early on as a parent, I realized one of the great benefits to being a parent is to now be able to do the things you wanted to do as a child but never did -- or did so long ago that you forgot!  These children were a built-in excuse for me to climb in McDonald’s PlayPlace tunnels, jump on trampolines, stand on my head, lie in the front yard on a blanket and look at the stars, and adopt multiple, diverse pets.  Initially, we started out with a white lab named Cotton.  JA1 and I had purchased Cotton before the children were born.  He was a great dog; he was loving, gentle, and obedient.  He was infatuated with balls and, no matter how tired he was, perked up immediately when he saw or heard a bouncing ball or when anyone even said the word “ball.”  He performed several tricks, one of which was fetching the newspaper.  This was great especially when it was cold outside or when I was too lazy to put on something presentable to wear outside.  The only problem is that occasionally he brought in the neighbor’s paper, so then I had to go get dressed anyway so I could go out and replace the paper.  Cotton didn’t care because by then he was on his sixth peeing spot.  He weighed in at around 115 and was massive compared to the kids, but he was a big teddy bear with them, gently taking food out of their hands without one tooth grazing them.

 

Meanwhile, the kids were in daycare and learning about nature and the various animals, including birds, insects, fish, reptiles and mammals.  We started small in expanding the children’s knowledge of animals at the house – both in size as well as upkeep.  We had two Beta fish, one for each child.  I don’t remember their exact names, but they were definitely named, and Sloan started then and proceeded throughout the years in naming pets with boring human names, such as Fred, Bob, Harry and Bill.  After a couple of months, we realized that not only was at least one name boring, but the fish were not that exciting themselves.    We then upped the ante and brought in an ant farm.  When I was a child, I created a worm farm which consisted of a shoe box, dirt and worms dug up from the yard.  I have no idea what possessed me to collect worms but it was a short-term fixation; I think it lasted about three days.  Now, the ant farm I purchased for the kids was nothing like my hand-made worm farm.  It was a nice plexiglass container that was narrow enough that you could see the ants burrowing through this cool, blue gel.  It was both fascinating and educational.  The ants were shipped separately and were frozen, so they had to be refrigerated to thaw out.  Sci-fi and the possibility of cryogenics in humans sprang to my mind while the kids were just in a hurry to get them thawed!     Once the ants were thawed and in the container, we spent hours over the course of the next several weeks watching them.  Sloan insisted on bringing them to the table while we ate and keeping them in his room at night.   

 

One morning, as we were, as always, hurriedly trying to get out the door, Sloan picked up the ant farm and, in his haste, dropped the container.  The top flew off and ants went in all directions.  My thoughts were a jumble.  Do I step on the ants?  Do I gather the ants since they are “pets” and I have paid for them?  How quickly will the ants get in the pantry?  How much of a bond does Sloan have with these ants?  What is that child thinking?  During these moments, when the thoughts run so quickly, I am not really sure if it is just the multi-tasking, high functioning brain of a female or schizophrenia kicking in, and do not really know when one stops and the other starts.  Regardless, something had to be done about the ants scurrying around the kitchen.  I stomped some that were getting too close to cabinets and captured others that I could sweep into a dustpan.  I eventually gathered about half of them so that now our ant farm was a mixture of ants, gel and dust from the floor.  The ant habitat was not nearly as pretty or as sanitary, but the ants were alive though somewhat shaken.  Ultimately, the dust and dirt from my kitchen floor sadly brought upon the demise of the entire colony.    

The benefit of being a boring fish with a boring name is you are more likely to live, swimming around in your little fish bowl for your little fish life.  So the Beta’s lived, the ants died, and then JA2 brought home a gorgeous old bird cage that somebody took to the dump.  I loved this bird cage, with the peeling paint that somehow combined with a sense of elegance.  Yet it just seemed so lonely without any inhabitants.  My grandmother, who died when I was only seven, kept birds in a cage in her foyer.  So ultimately, I simply had to get birds for that cage.  It was one of those sentimental acts, similar to purchasing the blue hydrangeas like she had in her yard that took me back in time to those young years and gave me a sense of comfort and love.  We went to the pet store and purchased three parakeets – Harry, (shoot, I cannot remember the name!) and Blue Belle.  Initially, the kids planned to “handle” their parakeets regularly, and they made a great effort to do so, however, parakeets required more discipline, time and patience than what the kids were willing to offer at that time.  Sloan was closest to his parakeet, Harry, than Emma was to hers, because he spent more time with him.  Harry would sit on his arm, his finger, and even his head.  Meanwhile, Emma would hold hers in her hand, he would poop on her, and she would immediately put him back into the cage.  Eventually, the kids just fed them and left them to their own devices in the cage.  They were beautiful and chirped happily throughout the day.

 

One summer, we took a vacation to the beach with JA2 and his daughter, and this is when we expanded our pet collection to felines!  I have never been a “cat person” but on this particular trip, we were swimming at a friend’s  condo when JA2 went in to get us some drinks.  He came back out holding a tiny gray kitten.  This was unusual because he was allergic to cats!  He said that there was a box of kittens in the restaurant that had been rescued from a farmer who had intended to kill the kittens.  Apparently this had been his method of birth control for quite some time.  It was a teeny cat, only a few weeks old, so I questioned JA2 about both his allergies and his sanity.  Either was a valid question.  He was amazed that he wasn’t sneezing around this kitten.  Well, several factors could have played a role in this:  (a) the kitten was so tiny it probably was not generating much dander, (b) the kitten was too young to have dander and (3) he was holding it beside an ocean breeze so if it did have any dander, it was affecting somebody down the beach.  I was not crazy about bringing a cat home but the kids were ecstatic, each saying they would personally take care of it, including cleaning the litter box.  I lost that battle, so we were off to Greenville with instructions on bottle feeding a kitten and the kids arguing about whose turn it was to hold the kitten and what the kitten would be named.  In the end, we named the kitten Storm which was a good depiction of the back seat of the car on that five hour drive home.