Lifelines

Rhyse officially kicked off our soccer insanity this evening and he was ready to play!

I wasn’t sure my camera and I were going to make it as just as soon as I loaded everyone up in the car (Charlie and Rhyse left earlier), it started to sprinkle.
By now you know good and well how I feel about rain so compound that by the word “newborn” and that was my take on the game tonight.
I went though, hoping that the field they were on was close to a totally illegal parking place (so what, I HAVE A NEWBORN, um, officer sir) and I majorly lucked out because there’s only like two and they were playing on one of them!
(And I didn’t even get busted by the po-lice! Good day!)

Things were a bit nutty for me on the sidelines as my Littles were in ornery mode.
I had one eye on Rhyse, one eye on those rascals, and my ears open for Charlie (this helps me hear what Rhyse is doing while I’m preoccupied with chasing the small ones down).

Wouldn’t you just friggin’ know that right about the time Greer and Creux hit WWF (play fighting) mode and I got up to pull them apart (what IS it with them???), I heard an erupture of cheering and looked up to see Rhyse with both fists in the air, having scored the second and winning goal for his team.

As I was walking back to my blanket, positively FUMING, several moms said, “There it was, Angi! Did you see that, Angi?”

No, ANGI didn’t see sh*t because she was bent over her little people doing that scary-harrassing-whisper/yell-through-gritted-teeth thing to them, threatening to yank the car seats from the car and strap their wee tushies (okay, fine, I said “butts” and I said it MEAN) into them and sit them on the sideline “like THAT, in front of EVERYONE!”

It wasn’t my finest parenting moment but COME ON!
GRRRRR.

Rhyse was in fine form and Charlie’s whole team looked terrific on the field!
It should be a great season!
(Mainly because I have vowed to use a sitter for the rest of Rhyse’s games. The Littles can drive someone else crazy for sixty VERY LONG minutes.)

This was Luxe’s first game.
Our little cheerleader was falling down on the job.
She was not impressed.

But me, I was!
I love watching Rhyse on the field.
Strong, smart, fast, determined.

And look who’s waaaaaay over there in Littles-Free Land!
(Doesn’t he look lonely? Like maybe he needs a kid? Or TWO?)

Luxe was really not very impressed, did I say that already?

Check out that yawn!
Is that not the Best Yawn Ever?
(And don’t you think she’s getting porky? Maybe hitting the boob too much? ;))

This was not his goal photo.
I mentioned that I missed that whole thing, yes?
And this shot did not go in.

But I’d like to pretend that it did.
It just makes me feel better!

Geeeeee, look who’s suddenly behaving so nicely!
Wonder why… (Scary-harassing-whisper/yell-through-gritted-teeth is a HIGHLY effective “I’m a bad a$$ Mama” tool. Have one in my bag of tricks at the ready, every day.)

Doesn’t she look eerily like Charlie in this photo?

He makes that face all the time.
ALL. THE. TIME.
And I’m starting to realize that it’s a GRIMACE.
(Like who could imagine ever grimacing in THIS household where you need earplugs to nap? Surely not him…)

Congrats on a great opening game, you two!

(And Charlie, thanks for stepping up and coaching Rhyse’s team. I know you didn’t want to and I know you know that I didn’t want you to but I’m glad you did it. You are both in your elements out there and things are the way they should be. But if I leap in the car and drive for days in one direction without looking back, you know why ;))

Charlie’s dad hosted a Labor Day picnic last year at this same time and it was such a hit with their combined families (his and his wife’s) that they did it again today!

Last year, things were a bit neurotic for us.
Mainly it was hot, the pond proved to be a drowning hazard and Creux was a WRECK of a boy.
Charlie and I chased him all over that park, away from the water and away from the ducks.
I just remember being hot and pissed.

This year though things couldn’t have gone any better!
We brought along our own wheels for everyone (we had bikes, blades and scooters) to help keep them happy and occupied, the weather was just fallishly wonderful–sunny and warm but breezy–and Creux was on his very best behavior.

Luxe, though she stole the show, was rather crabby, however.
Everyone wanted to hold and love on her a bit and she just was not having it which really stunk because I know so many were anxious for a smidge of Luxie Lovin’.
(I know the Fresh Baby crave well and am totally indulgent with other non-newborny mamas. Though with family, I barely have a chance to hand her over because she’s usually being pried from my grasp before I even know what’s happening. Bunch of babynappers!)

Anyway, I have a moment’s peace–my darling HATES her car seat and so she screamed her head off from the picnic to my mom’s where we dropped off the four olders, to the restaurant where we had dinner (just the three of us!), back to my mom’s to pick up everyone but Greer (not a chance of her leaving my mom) and finally all the way home.
All that to say, my gal is just tuckered out from all the excitement of the day and all the yowling in the car.
I could probably blog all night if I wanted, just this once.

I’m not going to but I will toss up a few from today.
There’s more fun in store for this gang tomorrow–a surprise awaits.

Until then, here’s today:

It’s amazing to me the power of a baby.
Luxe was able to round up this bunch of men MUCH easier than I ever have been able to.
(Normally I have to coax them and they will reluctantly participate but only after I say, “I know it’s annoying but you’ll be happy I did this one day…” I don’t think any of them believe me, for the record.)

Anyway, there was no coaxing here.
They saw a baby and they came.

And look at this fine display of traffic stopping!
We walked up and Charlie and Luxe were literally consumed by adoring family members, all anxious to meet our baby.

You can see from my vantage point, way the hell off in the distance, just where I am in the pecking order of importance!
Someone stepped on my foot in an attempt to get closer to THE CHILD I PRODUCED and they didn’t even notice me (or my nearly broken) foot, they were so intent on Fresh Baby oogling.
I could have been on fire and I don’t think a single one of these baby lovers would have even heard the sizzle.

Grandpa was cute with her.
Despite there being so much competition for Luxe, he was not fazed in the least. He simply handed Cookie his drink and reached for that baby.
Grandpa’s got dibs, you see.

Marie was there.

Marie was Nancy’s (Charlie’s mom) right-hand woman when all of the Martin kids (there were six in total, spanning eighteen years) were young–helping her take care of the lot of them during the day.
Charlie has the best Marie memories and stories–she’s an honorary Pavey/Martin.
And she might just be the sweetest lady on the whole planet.

When Luxe wasn’t fussing, she was photographing.
Or being photographed.
I think she thinks my camera is another sibling.
(And she wouldn’t be totally off-base in that thought ;))

Uncle Greg beat Aunt Susan to the baby punch.
Susan was not pleased.

The boys, all three of mine plus their cousin Spencer, spent most of the time dredging up critters from the pond.

We now have many tadpoles in our tank.
Sigh.
It’s a losing battle.

I caught my OWN critter right here for a photo.

Rhyse is tremendously indulgent of me and my camera.
Chas will complain but Rhyse just smiles.
Maybe he knows it’s a losing battle, too :)

And Susan may not have gotten to Luxe before Greg but she definitely scored the most face time!

Susan is a BIG baby lover, and lucky for her, we’ve been providing her with a “fill” every few years.
There’s been a never-ending supply of little Martins for over a decade–sort of like the all-you-can-eat baby buffet.
Except here you have to wait a few years for your “seconds.”

Uncle Jon and Aunt Jacquie would have loved on this darling all day long if she would have stopped yowling for a minute!

They’ve a new grand-daughter way out in Seattle (Hi, Briana!) that they haven’t seen yet so this was sort of a baby fix for them too as they are incredibly excited to get their hands on little Indigo Joy in a few weeks! (Briana, if you come home for the holidays, let me know and we’ll see if we can’t scoot over to Indiana for a few days.)

Marie got a very sweet Martin send-off.
It’s always so good to see her.
Always, always, always.

Chas and Aunt Susan caught up a bit.
She’s a wonderful aunt–terrificly interested in their goings-on.

It’s great to catch these two (well, three) just hangin’.
Charlie is the youngest of all of Jon’s kids and they have, through the years, carved out a sweet relationship together.

And I’ll leave you tonight with Luxe.
She’s officially two months old if you’re counting by dates (September 5th) or nine weeks tomorrow if you’re neurotic person like me who enjoys confusing the hell out of people by counting the numbers of “Mondays alive.”

Happy Long Weekend, everyone!

We had an absolutely lovely afternoon with Charlie’s family, spent at Woodside Green park (which is really very, very nice!) today.
The weather couldn’t have been better.
And the company wasn’t too shabby either :)

As usual, I pressed for a family photo–you just never know when you’ll find an accidental Christmas card shot, right?
(Boy would my family LOVE for me to choose another “already taken” one like I have the past two years. I don’t think they’re going to get as lucky this time around as I feel like something holidayish but it doesn’t hurt to try!)

Gorgeous day, tons of fun.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more exhausted in my life and I know Charlie would probably say the same thing if you asked him.

We’re in the middle of his “busy” season–when turnover happens for campus area apartments.
Every year it’s bad and I know it’s bad but somehow, (and I don’t know how), I forget JUST how bad it is.

Charlie just wrapped up a six day work week (he would have worked seven if I hadn’t threatened to divorce him if he did) with him pulling some 12-hour work days.
And if Charlie is working six days a week, pulling 12 hour days, guess who else is doing the same at home?

I would raise my hand but I’m so beaten that I don’t think I can.
Regardless, I shouldn’t because I need to reserve that energy for the inevitable “something terrible fell out of the fridge” moment that will happen in less than an hour.
Stuff like that ALWAYS happens when I think I can do no more than the bare minimum.

I’m admittedly spoiled here at home–mostly because Charlie does have a lot of job flexibility and doesn’t work from 8-5 like most.
If he’s home, he usually starts breakfast for the kids while I catch up on a little sleep with the baby.
So I’m REALLY feeling it these days, with me up from 5:00-6:00ish with Luxe and then around 7:45ish with Creux.
There’s no time to nap as we have school bearing down on us as well and I need every single available moment I can get because I’m doing stuff with all four of them.
With Chas in 8th grade, there’s no more loosey goosey :)
I’m lying.
We’re loosey goosey to the very end.
(Though next year, I’m in trouble. High school is a different beast from what I hear.)

Not only is Charlie’s work schedule nuts but our family one is on over-load.
We literally touch base with conversations like this (they are short and not really sweet–more functional than anything else. And I know I’ve got like 35 seconds to spit out whatever I have to say.)

Him: “Where do I need to be tonight?”
Me: “You need to be home by 6:45 and at the soccer fields to pick up Chas. I will drop him off at 6:00 and then come back to get Greer ready for dance which starts at the same time Chas’s practice ends, at 7:00. Don’t be late. Then maybe you guys can start dinner, I’ll zip home and bathe people, blah, blah, blah.”

And just like that, our night is gone.
Not only that but this scenario can and will be repeated all week long.

****Let me just interrupt myself here to let you know that orange juice was spilled all over the kitchen table during the writing of this post. That was my “fridge disaster” that I referenced a moment ago so I got off easy this morning. I should be good until right before I need to leave for soccer, when there will be another messy something. I could set my watch by this stuff, I’m telling you.****

By the end of the night, Charlie and I are literally catatonic in bed.
Last night we were upstairs at NINE-THIRTY.
If you know either of us, you’ll know just how tired we must have been because we are such night owls that we put the owls to bed.

Yesterday, when I was hiding from the children, I asked Charlie, “How much longer? Just give me a date. How. Much. LONGER?”
He replied, “October 1st. Everything will back to normal by the first week of October.”

One more month of this crazy sh*t?
I’ll be insane.
AND I’ll also be incredibly skinny, from sheer stress and no time to put a single thing in my mouth.

Ah, there’s always a silver lining, isn’t there? :)

Wish me luck, the baby just started fussing and my kids are rolling down the stairs…

Last year, we bought Creux a balance bike for his 2nd birthday.
It was not a success initially–not until this spring, really.
(His birthday is in October so he only had about a good month to mess around with it at first.)

That kid is hell on wheels, let me tell you.
When he learned what he was doing, he took to that bike like a fish to water.
He zooms around the neighborhood right along with his siblings.
No baby here, he thinks :)

The balance bike has no pedals, requiring the use of feet for movement and allowing for the option of NO feet (thus balancing) when one gets good and going.
Seems sort of primitive but it really teaches kids to learn how to truly balance.
And isn’t that what’s so hard about riding a bike in the first place?

We decided to try out the balance bike and see if it helped the transition to Big Kid Bike–you know with pedals.
But no training wheels.
I assumed it would–I loved the concept.
I just never dreamed it would happen when he was still TWO.

We recently pulled an old bike of Rhyse’s out of some random storage unit that Charlie keeps somewhere (seriously? we have MORE crap? enough to justify a storage unit? someone shoot me.) and inside that unit was this bike.

I came home tonight from dance–I’d only been gone 40 minutes, mind you–to round the bend onto my court only to see my little baby boy riding a two wheeler like an old pro.

No training wheels.

No nothing.

Just a HUGE proud-as-hell smile plastered all over a very little, very sweet, very happy face.

Balance bikes?
1,000% yes from me!
Little Miss Luxe is up next–maybe if we get her started early, she’ll be whizzing around at nine months :)

Here’s the Boy-With-Crazy-Mad-Bike-Skillz having a brief rest with dad after all that hard work:

Cheerleading Squad of Two:

And there he goes…

Yesterday was Charlie’s birthday and it was a “big” one.
And I’d like to say it was a great day for him but the truth is, it wasn’t.

This is the second time we’ve had a baby on his “big” birthday–I had just had Greer back when he turned 30 and so, we really couldn’t do much to celebrate.
That year, I snagged some pretty fabulous VIP tickets to Cirque which happened to be in town and it was a really great night for us.
Us WITH our newborn, that is :)

His 35th found us in a similar situation and despite my almost booking four different excursions for the “three” of us (me, Charlie and our wee bitty chaperone, Luxe), it was just not in the cards.
I could not get him away from work (our 6th child) as it’s his super busy season and he couldn’t take off any time.
(Sidenote: if I can find the blog time, which I can’t, I’ll post all the super-neat-yet-relatively-close-getaways that I rummaged up in case anyone else is looking for a quick over-nighter with all the swanky trimmings.)

The reason that his birthday wasn’t great this year wasn’t about that though.
About not getting away.
I know better than to try and sneak off in August–I just wanted to do something memorable and that’s what I came up with.

What made it less than spectacular was that we got into an argument in the morning that extended through the afternoon and into the evening, thereby ruining the entire day.
While the tiff wasn’t without its merit, it didn’t need to drag on like it did and that part of it was definitely my fault.
Sometimes when my back is up, I can be incredibly stubborn and no matter how well I’m apologized to (he offered up a near perfect one, to be honest), it’s just not enough to snap me out of it and make me let it go.
He did his best but I wasn’t to be swayed I guess and the plans that I DID make (a surprise picnic and a round of disc golf with the whole family) were botched as well.

Eventually, we sorted our funk out and put ourselves back on the path of harmony but it did put a major damper on his day.
And for that, I am sorry.

In the end, I don’t think all was lost.
Even though it didn’t even remotely resemble the birthday “party” I had hoped it to be, we were all once again smiling by bedtime.

Trust me, THAT was something to celebrate :)

We’ll try this one more time over the weekend–hopefully we can carve out some private family time so that we can properly “do” the 35th.
AGAIN :)

So what do you give a guy who never has any wants?
(Seriously. It’s almost maddening.)

You give him a knife so sharp he can cut the world in half if he so chooses.
(You’ll be happy to know that I gave this to him POST disagreement. Haha. And ignore the mess–it was tested upon opening.)

And I thought this thing was super cool–a knife block without any holes.
Love it.

A self-timered family photo to mark the occasion:

And one with all of his babies:

Despite absolutely fuming all day, I baked him cupcakes.
There’s forgiveness in there somewhere, right?

Holding his girls–one of which just so happens to be singing “Happy Birthday, dear daaaaaddy” at the top of her lungs:

May all your wishes come true!

(Well, except the one where I vaporize mid-argument. That’s actually called a FANTASY and there isn’t a “make a fantasy!” cake anywhere to be found. Lucky for me, eh? :))

Taking a break from all the Wilds fun because there’s other super cute things going on around these parts!
Luxe is seven weeks today–almost two whole months old.
Unbelievable.

I snapped this just moments ago of the two of them, Luxe and Charlie.
They hadn’t seen each other since this early this morning–she was nursing and then sleeping when he came home late from work tonight.
She’s only finally popped up now at 11:15ish and he scooped her out of the swing.
This is their reunion.

The soccer drama is over.

Charlie is coaching Rhyse’s team and while I’d like to say “There’s no way we could let an entire team of boys down,” I’m not really in that place emotionally.
We really couldn’t let Rhyse down.

Charlie came to me that night before he called the Coordinator back and said, “What do you want me to do?”
What could I say to that?
I REALLY don’t want to juggle Chas’s traveling soccer team plus all of Greer’s games on my own with Creux and Luxe along for every ride but I DID make this bed so I suppose I get to lie in it.

We decided that Charlie would agree to coach if the Coordinator agreed to pinch every other single person he could think of before sticking Charlie to it.
Unfortunately, he’d already done that and we were the very last resort (and the very last registrant) for this team in particular.

I must say though that it irritates me that all these other parents knew the situation as well and still no one else stepped up.
I’m not sure how on a team of 15 kids, when parents are notified that their child is on a team that’s about to be cut due to a lack of a coaching VOLUNTEER, that no one holds their hand up and says, “If no one else, then me.”

It’s always the same people who volunteer and frankly, it’s annoying.

Things worked out for Chas, he was able to sneak a spot on a team without us having to do anything other than the footwork.
Thank goodness because there’s just no way Charlie could effectively coach two teams as the middle schoolers in particular are a HUGE time commitment, especially with the traveling component involved.

And so, I will not only lay in the bed I made but snuggle in deep and get REAL comfy because it’s going to be a two-season long nap in there for me this fall and spring.

The very same day that this all went down, my friend Stacie emailed me to let me know that the 3:00 dance class we were banking on for our daughters was not going to be offered and so we needed to take an EVENING class.
Being that we have soccer every day of the week between the three kids, any other evening obligation SUCKS and it sucks BAD.
But once again, this is something important to Greer so we’re now stuck in a 7:00 pm class every Tuesday from August to May.
Nice.

(Stacie, Mrs. Straub called me on Thursday after receiving my registration to let me know that Janie is in the 5:45 class. She wanted to make sure I was aware of this as she somehow ??? knew we were friends and noticed that our girls were split up. BUM. MER. Are you firm on the 5:45? And Jenny and Mindy, are either of your girls dancing? AT SEVEN??? Um, please? :))

I’m going to pull hard on my mom and sister this fall (Mom and Brit, you’ve been notified) and Emily when she’s not in class as I have NO idea how we’ll manage this craziness but I’m gearing up for the challenge.

One day at a time.
That’s my fall motto.

On second thought, one hour at a time.
Yeah, that’s better.

Message to Arrivals desk at the Looney Bin:
Prepare my bed, people. I am a’comin’.