Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Not only is my Mom sweet but she is Hip. Check out the material of her shirt. 

So retro. And so is that lamp. And the material on the chair.

I love this pic of us both. She looks like a Movie Star. Thanks Mom for putting up with me 

and helping me through the rough times throughout my whole life.

Marbles are not Food

About eight or nine years ago the kids were sitting around watching TV. Calvin had been playing with a marble and apparently had been sucking on it. Gross, but not to a little boy. After playing with it for a while he finally did the unthinkable, he swallowed it!

He jumped up and ran over to me. He was gurgling and coughing and grabbing his throat.

"What's wrong?" I asked a little worried.

He managed to choke out, "I swallowed a marble!" And then he proceeded to gasp and gurgle some more.

I frantically thought back to my yearly CPR and First Aid training. Was he big enough to do Abdominal Thrusts on his little body? I got behind him and placed my hands in hopefully the right place.

Wait! He was still breathing! Abdominal Thrusts are for when someone's airway is completely cut off. Whew! Thank goodness I remembered that little bit of training. But I hovered just in case his throat became completely clogged by that marble.

Meanwhile he continued to choke and cough. Finally he swallowed that pesky marble. "OOhhh! Ouch! That hurt!" He was still grabbing and rubbing his throat.

"Are you ok? Can you breathe now?"

"Yes, my throat just hurts. Wow!"

"All right. I'm going to call the doctor just to make sure I don't need to worry about anything." Remember, he was my first and I called the doctor about anything abnormally weird that kind of scared me and his almost choking scared me.

I dialed, waited, listened for the correct prompt, and finally reached the receptionist. "What can I help you with today?"

"My son just swallowed a marble and I wanted to know if I should be concerned about anything."

"Let me check with the doctor." She proceeded to take down the pertinent info and put me on hold while she consulted with the doctor.

About a minute later she hopped back on the line, "Is he still choking?"

Boys Will be Boys

When Olaf and I were dating I lived with a family we had been friends with since I was a baby. They are a very nice family and had six children, similar to the seven I grew up with. Her last three children were boys and I had never been around that many boys before. I only had two brothers and they were five or six years apart and never really played together.

These were really sweet boys. One morning the littlest one got up and gave me a hug and then went back to bed. I had to leave for work around 5:30am so no one else in the house was up when I left so I was surprised when he woke up that morning.

But nonetheless they were boys. They would run and romp and play all the time. Their bikes were on the lawn and their pants had rips in the knees by springtime. For the most part they got along great, which is miraculous considering they all shared a room together. But one afternoon I witnessed a real fistfight break out between them. There was a flurry of clothes and fists and bodies. I couldn't even see if two or three of the boys were fighting. And I just stood there unable to move, frozen to the spot, clueless as how to get them to stop before they killed themselves. Having witnessed few fights, and never between brothers, I thought for sure they would kill themselves! But their Mom heard the scuffle, came running, reached right into the middle, (how could she not be afraid of them? I was!) pulled those boys apart, and sent them to sit on their beds. I was absolutely amazed! I was in awe! She was better than Wonder Woman!

Fast forward ten years. Now I know how she did it. I've done it several times. I didn't know I had it in me before three boys, but I have reached into the middle of a fight and split it up. I never even considered being afraid like I was before children. I never realized what Motherhood does to you until I had three boys of my own. You do become Superwoman and Wonder Woman just to keep your kids alive.