Colossal!

Given our family's current preoccupation with poop, I think a trip to the Indiana State Fair would be a fitting vacation for us this year.

"Indiana??" you ask. "But you live in Illinois!" Yes, this is true. But the Illinois State Fair does not have the Coco the Colossal Colon exhibit.

I am not making this up. Here's a picture of Coco:



You may not be able to tell from that picture, but Coco is 40 feet long and 4 feet high -- tall enough to crawl through and check out what the inside of a colon looks like....both a healthy colon and a diseased colon. Like these ladies did!



And here's a link to the brochure advertising the Indiana State Fair.

See? I swear I'm not making this up!

So if you think all of THIS is fascinating, there's a club just for you.....The Colon Club!! If you want to see more pics of the inside of Coco, click here. From there you can check out the rest of the web site....and join the club if you want! Actually, if you want to join the club, that probably means you have lower GI "issues" and that's definitely NO FUN. So if this is you, I hope you're not offended by this post and are taking it in the spirit in which it was meant -- just some good clean colorectal humor.

Here's the poop.....

WARNING: For those with delicate sensibilities, please skip to the next posting (although it's not much better.)

Logan is getting closer and closer to being potty trained. Here's how I know:

The other day he and Brennan were outside playing in the back yard. They would go from wrestling in the grass to splashing each other in the pool, to eating a snack at the picnic table. Being with them is like being in the middle of a pack of LARGE puppies.

Anyway, I let Logan do all this naked so he can pee in the grass if he needs to go. I put a little potty chair out there but he'll have none of that, that BABY stuff. He sees his brother pee in the grass, so why can't he? He's doing pretty well with this, actually, and has asked to pee-pee in the potty a number of times.

So this particular day he kept pointing to his bottom saying "poop." As one might be when surrounded by a pack of puppies, I was slightly distracted and just trying to keep from getting bowled over. He kept saying "poop" and I kept saying "Yes, that's your bottom, that's where the poop comes out." All of a sudden Brennan said, "Mom! He's pooping!" And yes, indeed, there it was, making it's way out and towards the deck floor. I grabbed it in one hand, Logan in the other hand and RAN to the nearest potty. Logan was all for sitting down on it and I put the poop in the potty. I've been waiting and hoping for an opportunity to make a connection between Logan's creation and where it's supposed to go. This was it!!

He saw it and made all the happy, LOUD, exclamations that one makes when one is appreciating one's work, and then he wanted to flush. I told him to say "Bye, bye, poop!" like Joshua does in Once Upon a Potty, and he happily waved and said "bye, bye, poop!" He watched the water stop swirling, leaned WAY over to look in and said "It's gone!" I said yes. He said "I want it!"

Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you're the parent in the throws of potty training), there's more where that came from.

It's all in the wrist

Bethany broke hers last night at a community soccer camp.

This is not Bethany's hand, but this is what it looked like:

The large muffins seem to have a penchant for breaking wrists -- Carter broke his two years ago, also at soccer practice.

Poor kid....we made her wait until morning to go to "Convenient" Care and get it x-rayed.

Yup. Broken. In two places and maybe a third. If there is a third break, it will likely require surgery. We'll know in a few weeks after a follow-up x-ray.

In a weird twist of fate, this injury happened when Bethany was playing goalie and blocked a goal attempt made by her ex-boyfriend, Michael.

When he apologized profusely, she said "consider us even."

Unabashed

My medal came in the mail today. I'm going to wear it to bed.

Not really.

Just around the house for a few hours.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Same race, one year later

Today was the Fisher Fair 5K (say that 5 times fast). I was looking forward to it for a number of reasons.

1. This is the race I PRed at last year so was hoping to do the same this year.

2. The Traveling Muffin said she'd run it with me. Study-ly Muffin ran it with me last year. It’s cool when your teens will actually be seen in public with you, much less run a race with you.

3. I enlisted a friend/neighbor Tara to run it with me. A newbie to running, Tara agreed to do this race one night after we'd had 1 too many blueberry martinis AND I agreed to take a class on Reiki.

The 3 of us left the house around 6:55 and drove north-east towards Fisher, and towards a very big and very DARK storm front. You could see lightening flashing in the clouds, and half-way there the wipers were necessarily on the high setting.

Things weren’t much different when we got to the fairgrounds. Bethany stated loudly and firmly that she WASN’T running this race, she’d just take a nap in the car. Tara and I decided to make a dash to the registration building and found a surprising number of other soggy participants. We were all glad to hear that the race would start around 8:30 when the storm had moved out of the area.

Tara and I agreed we weren’t going to try to pace each other – we both assumed that I would be ahead and finish before her. Just after the first mile water station (first split was 8:48) I stopped and walked briskly while I drank. And Tara cruised right past me. I never caught up after that.

Mile two marker (10:06 ) came and I walked a bit more for water. I’m not sure why I needed so much water….the muggidity was very high. At any rate, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to go sub-30 this go ‘round so didn’t really push myself. But then I got to mile 3 and heard the time keeper say “28 something” and realized that I COULD go sub-30! I sprinted the last tenth and gasped my way over the finish line. I barely heard someone say “good race! You kept me going!” I just needed to catch my breath. What I didn’t hear was my exact time but I knew I’d broke 30. That was good enough for me.

Sunday I got a phone call from one of the race organizers who told me that they had made a mistake with the finishers for my age group. Originally they had me as finishing third but found that my time actually put me at second. They would engrave a new medal and send it right out to me. That’s FUNNY – if I came in second, then there were some pretty slow 40-somethings running. What I really was interested in was my exact time. So I asked.

29:29.

YAY ME!! And now I get my pink running skirt!

THIS is why we wish it away

This morning the mini-est muffin woke us up at 4:00 am demanding "JUICE!" and "WARM!" (code for warm chocolate). This is actually an improvement from the nightly midnight, 2:00 am, and then 4:30 demand, which had been going on for a couple of weeks. It was like having a newborn again, something I'm pretty sure I don't want to do again!

I finally pulled my thinking out of my sleep-deprived brain and realized that as long as I gave him a reason to wake up and demand, this would continue. I also realized that this probably started when we were all very sick with fevers and coughing and pain from ear infections and the goal was to JUST GET EVERYBODY TO BE QUIET SO I CAN SLEEP A FEW MORE MINUTES!!!!

What this means now is that we're going to have to "help" him return to the habit of sleeping through the night with the ability to self-soothe. Sounds reasonable and caring and appropriate. Until you add the "Logan Factor."

Logan is what we euphemistically refer to as an "intense child." (This IS the reframe!) He came into the world this way, literally tearing his way out in less than 4 hours (not enough time to get the only epidural I ever asked for, thank you very much!!)

This dramatic entrance set the stage for life with Logan. Don't get me wrong, he is very, very cute.....and it's a good thing! Otherwise, he'd probably be in someone else's care, if you get my drift.

So, this morning, after lying calmly (said through clenched teeth) in Brennan's bed and not responding in anyway to "JUICE!" or "WARM!" or "DADDY!" and occasionally dozing, Logan was done for the night at 5:40 am. So we got up. Bleary-eyed I made some coffee, made first "JUICE!" and then "WARM!" and snuggled with Logan on the couch while he watched some TV thinking hopefully "maybe he's waking up so much because he's not getting enough Mommy-time?". I went upstairs to take a shower which meant more crying and pleading and, of course, that woke up his brother.

I went ahead with the shower, a little worried about what might be happening out there. My fears were justified when I discovered a diaper on the bathroom floor but no Logan. I hurried downstairs, towel-covered and dripping, wondering how much pee I'd have to clean up.

Logan met me with a you-know-what eating grin. I mean that literally. He held out his hand and said "Poop!" with much pride and excitement. Then he said "Mouth."
There is no word in the English language that effectively conveys how nasty/gross/nauseating/disgusting that is.

It took me a while to find all of it, but I did and cleaned it up after giving Logan an unwanted bath. All this before 7:30 am.

Fun times.