Category: family

embrace the suckiness

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Sometimes life can really suck. And there are levels of suckiness. And we all have varying levels of tolerance for the suckiness that enters our lives.

Embrace the suckiness.

This is an anonymous quote (by one our friends).  Sometimes life sucks for a day or two, or a week, or a month or even years… but there are ways we can embrace it.  And grow from it.
Now we are going to explore 3 levels of suckiness and how to embrace them.

Level 1. an Annoyance.  You have a Ginormous zit on your eyebrow line (at least that’s what I’ve got going on the last few days) or it’s cloudy outside and you’re a sunshine kind of gal (or guy) or you had a terrible day at work/school… or your $4 mocha was accidentally thrown away.

Embracing Level 1. Cover up your zit with tons of make-up.  Or let it shine.  Deal with the clouds. Or don’t live in central Ohio.  Get over the bad day, tomorrow will be better.  Buy another mocha.

Level 2.  A strain.  A health strain.  Your kids are sick, up all night puking, so you are cranky b/c you didn’t get any sleep.  Or you are sick and need to work.  Or you AND your kids are sick (this is a level 2.5)  Or there is a strain on your marriage or a friendship.  Or you are having difficulty with your job.  Or a financial strain.

Embracing Level 2.  This can be tricky – one of my examples below.

Level 3.  A loss.  Personally.  Financially.  Relationally.  A loss of trust.  Or loss of a loved one.

Embracing Level 3.  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…” Proverbs 3:5  This is difficult, and is not always easy to do.  Trust in the Lord gives way to surrender and produces an attitude of thankfulness, which leads to an unexplainable peace and joy, despite circumstances.

Then there are those days I just forget the make-up, pull my hair back, put on my stretchy pants and consume large amounts of coffee to get thru and embrace the suckiness.

Today was one of those days.  It was a level 2.  Selah was up all night puking.  Which meant I was up all night cleaning.  She puked every hour.  I slept a little on the floor at the end of her bed in btwn cleanings.  As I laid on the floor, I kept thinking of funny sayings in the book “Stuff Christians Like” by Jonathan Acuff (a must read btw).  I was embracing the suckiness with laughter.  When I was washing the 6 extra loads of puke laundry, I embraced the suckiness, thankful for our washing machine.  Selah slept most of the day.  She had a fever and was worn out from being up all night.  I was thankful for the extra time I had to cuddle with her, and hold her close.
                                                      
 Then she woke up and had a little bit of water.  And went back to sleep on the floor.  Her brother and sister played around her as she laid in the middle of the living room.  I was thankful she was able to rest, even with her sibs running in circles around her.
                                                                                            
Later she moved into the kitchen and had a few bites of cracker.  I was cooking dinner by this time.  She laid down on the kitchen floor to be near me.  I was thankful to be near her.
This morning, she had her 2-year-old check up previously scheduled – coincidence – so we went to see the Dr.  From the moment we entered the office, she was crying the entire time, “I want daaaaadddddyyyyyy!” and raising the suckiness to a level 2.3.  Then I started crying in the Pediatric lobby while the receptionist stared at me from behind the glass with sympathy… or disgust, I couldn’t tell as tears welled up in my own eyes.  Eventually I embraced the suckiness, thankful that Selah wasn’t throwing up anymore…

After we got back home, I let her have some milk.  Bad idea.  How can I deny my baby milk?  A few minutes later, the chunks started flying again.  Salem comments, “It looks like shaving cream!”  Great observation.  I was thinking cottage cheese.  He’s a bright boy.  Meanwhile, Soleil turns queezy and hides to avoid all physical and visual contact.

Thankfully, today I wasn’t sick.  I’ve been there, done that.  Those days when momma PLUS kids are sick, I try to embrace that suckiness level 2.5.  Being sick and taking care of my wee Babs 
is difficult really sucks.  But I can embrace it…eventually.  If I’m sick, I’m thinking Yes!  I’m gonna lose a quick 5 lbs!  and sure it will come back, but for a few days I get to enjoy being 5 lbs lighter.

We’ve had many opportunities to embrace the suckiness.  On all levels.  Annoyances, Strains and Losses.  Of friendships.  Being a laid off of work.  A miscarriage.  And in time I will share those stories and how we embraced them.  And how we have grown.

How will you embrace the suckiness?

lunch box

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I let our wee Babs eat of the floor.  It’s all about the 5-10 second rule.  P.A. is cool with it, especially if I’ve just mopped (which is rare).  But if I haven’t mopped in several weeks months, I lean more toward the 5 seconds.  We don’t have a dog to clean up the mess our floor embraces after the 5-10 seconds.  P.A. usually sweeps up the after dinner crumbs.  And I unusually mop.  Speaking of mopping – which I rarely like to speak of –  if your kids eat oatmeal and half of it lands on the floor like at my house, it’s much easier to clean up if you let it set for a few hours…or even days.  This way it hardens.  MUCH easier to clean.  And that advice was free.

Our fam loves to eat.  However, we don’t care to eat just anything.  we are food snobs.  and coffee snobs.  I’ve mentioned this before in a previous chronicle -“Poop and Panera”.  What we eat is important to us.  We prefer to eat…naturally.  C’mon, shouldn’t ALL food be natural?!?  But it’s not.  We have to read labels.  Carefully.  If our food does have a label, we like to be able to read all of the ingredients.  Sometimes there are exceptions.  Cheeze-its.  They are mostly natural. And addictive.

Then there is the dilemma of the lunch box.  What goes in our 7 year old’s lunch box is important.  Thankfully, our wee Babs have embraced our fam’s natural way of eating.  A peanut butter and honey sandwich, an apple, and a salad or green pepper, with water to drink – this is what Soleil has everyday in her lunch box.  Salem eats his “normal lunch” everyday – a peanut butter and apricot jelly sandwich, lettuce with lemon, and chips n salsa.  Selah normally eats a mix of the above.  It’s not all health food though, they do eat the free donuts at church.  Believe me, we like sugar, chocolate, butter and bread.  Naturally.
So every morning, I pack Soleil’s lunch box with pride.  Knowing she’s a kid who likes eating green pepper.  Now our 2-year-old wants a packed lunch everyday.  Even though she’s not going anywhere.  She wants to go to school so badly like her big sibs.  Waiting to go to school in 3.5 years is going to be difficult for her to reconcile.  But she will have to deal.

We’re proud of our wee Babs for making good food choices on a daily basis, and even at birthday parties.  They have cake boundaries.  And sucker boundaries.

Sooo…. What’s in your lunch box today?

Noted. By Les Babs

Does God really care about my $4 Mocha?

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This is the last of my 3 Panera stories… I know you are saddened, but no worries – I am sure we will go to Panera again soon, and some sort of Chronicle will emerge out of our visit there…

After visiting the Grands in Oklahoma over the holidays, we set out for our long drive home.  We made it 3 seconds down the road… and decided to turn around.  After packing all of our crap up the night before, we had planned to leave by 10am the next morning.  So, about 2 hours later, we were really leaving right on “Bab time”.  We always hope to get somewhere sooner than we ever do.  We have high expectations, but rarely meet them.  We are okay with this fact about ourselves.

So, 3 seconds down the road, we realize we are already hungry for lunch and that our original plan of leaving at 10am – 10:30am at the latest – left us on Bab time leaving at noon and we really should have eaten lunch before we left the Grands house.  We go back to their house, I knock on the door and enter the kitchen to find my mom saying, “I hope you didn’t come back for that coffee you left in our fridge…” She is saying this as she is pouring out $4 worth of peppermint mocha into her sink.  GAAAAHHHH!!!!!!  Crap!!!  As she is pouring, I am remembering that I had left my leftover $4 mocha in her fridge and I had planned to re-warm it and take it with me!

Originally, my plan was to come into their house, slap together a few pb&j’s and be on the road again.  But as I’m listening the $4 mocha drip down the drain, my plan is suddenly highjacked by a range of emotions.  I hold in my frustration with my loss as I  throw together the pb&j’s, holding back tears.  Stay calm, Leslie.  Calma-down-down.  It’s not that big of a deal, you can buy another coffee, I tell myself.  My mom didn’t know I had planned to keep the coffee – I had forgotten it on our original departure in the first place!  Had we not decided to go back for pb&j’s, I would have never known the mocha was tossed away like a meaningless piece of trash.  Don’t be upset with your mom, Leslie.  Keep your cool.  I tell my mom, “It’s no big deal, it’s not your fault, you didn’t know…”  But even as I am speaking the words, there is a part of me that is still upset.  I am not moving on…

A few more minutes down the road and P.A. decides he wants to stop by Taco Bueno.  Ugh!  I say, “Why can’t you just be okay with a pb&j?”  Seriously!  We really need to get on the road, get out of town, be done with this place already!  But P.A. is stubborn, so we stop at Taco Bueno.  The T.B. in my parents town is always busy.  It is located across the street from the church I grew up in, so my youth group friends and I were regulars there.  And it was always packed.  And today was no exception.

We drive up and the drive thru is about 15 cars long, so P.A. decides to “run in” and get the food “real quick” while me & the 3 wee Babs wait in the car. HA!  About 25 minutes later he returns with anxiety thinking I am going to deck him for making us stop at T.B. in the first place and for it taking so stinkin’ long to get our food.  But my response isn’t anger.  It is peace.

While P.A. was running into T.B. “real quick”, I had myself some quiet time with Jesus.  The wee Babs were content eating their pb&j’s I had slapped together earlier. The smallest Bab was now sleeping, and I was journaling to Jesus.  I was asking Him to take away the anger & disappointment I felt about “losing” my $4 mocha, the money wasted, the feelings I had toward my mom for accidentally throwing it away.  I didn’t want to be upset.  I didn’t want to feel those things (Romans 7:15).  I didn’t want to feel ridiculous.  There are so many things in life that produce emotion.  A $4 mocha shouldn’t be one of them.
While P.A. was in T.B., God was doing a work in my heart and soul.  He was changing my thoughts.  He was settling a battle between my flesh & spirit.  He was replacing my anger with His Peace.
  
So we set off on our journey.  We finally left town.  We made it to our half way stopping point – a Panera.  We went inside, got settled, ordered our food, went to the bathroom and saw poop on the toilet seat.  (btw, if you missed this chronicle, it was the one I posted a few days ago called “Poop and Panera”).  After getting our food – this time at  a much more timely rate (btw, if you missed this chronicle about our late food at Panera, read my recent post called “Back off old lady”), I realized Panera was prepping to close.  Oh no!  I’d better order my coffee for the rest of the evening’s journey.  I went up to the register and noticed they all said “closed”.  Oh no!…  But I wasn’t going to flip out.  I calmly asked the Panera worker if I could still order a peppermint mocha and I would pay cash, but didn’t need any change.  He said, “Sure.” He made me the best peppermint mocha I’ve ever had from Panera.  And he gave it to me.  For Free.

Whoa.  I was floored and thankful.  After the fit I threw earlier behind gritted teeth, a battle in my mind, and anger in my heart… God replaced my $4 mocha.  I felt like He was telling me, “I see and care about every detail of your life.  Even the menial ones.  Trust Me.”  What a gift.  

Some of you reading this might think, who cares about a $4 mocha?  Why would you get upset about that in the first place?  Why would you even take the time to write a blog post about it?… But what are the menial things you value?  a tv show?  maybe you get upset when your child is wanting your attention while you’re trying to watch?  a material possession you want?  maybe you get upset because you can’t have it?  or even time wasted on something you regret doing?

Many times our anger is exhibited as an underlying lack of Trust.  We lack Trusting God and that He knows what is best and He is taking care of our every need, the menial ones and the most important ones.  Matthew 6:25-34.  God is always teaching me how to trust in Him.  He really does care about my $4 mocha.

Noted. By Les Babs

Back Off Old Lady

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On the morning of Christmas Eve, we visited another Panera, a few towns away from ours. You might be thinking – “Geesh, the Bab’s sure do go to Panera a lot.”  And well, yes, we do…when we have a gift card.  For Christmas we were generously given a $50 gift card to Panera – and we blew that money so fast on pumpkin muffins, egg sandwiches and coffee, it didn’t last the week.

So at 8:30am, we arrive in the Panera parking lot, hungry and ready for a fun fam day.  P.A. goes in for a parking spot and is cut off by a car that he thought was pulling out, but was really backing into that said parking spot.  So, we move on and find another spot after affectionately nick-naming the driver of the other car “mustache guy”.  As we are unloading the wee babs to go into Panera, I hear P.A. grumbling things like, “I can’t believe mustache guy wasn’t watching where he was going” and “mustache guy should’ve just parked normally, instead of backing in”, etc…

Once inside Panera, P.A. gets in line – which was long – behind mustache guy. I take the 3 wee babs to find a good table.  Soleil & Salem head toward the comfy chairs next to the fireplace, disturbing an older lady who was sitting there.  I call them over the booth I’ve found closest to the fireplace… (it’s all about sitting near the fireplace when you go to a Panera on a cold winters day).  The wee babs are on one side of the booth, peeking over the top trying to see daddy while he’s waiting in line, and I am on the other side.  A few minutes later another guy, who I am affectionately calling “santa hat” guy, comes over to say “hello” to the kids.  He assumed they were looking at him, and I assumed he thought that because he was wearing a santa hat.  When he says “hello”, they dive into the booth, hiding from him.  I kindly explain, sorry santa hat guy, they don’t care about santa and know he’s not real.  We don’t really care about your santa hat, they were just looking for their daddy in line.  He smiles and goes back into the line with his wife, who I’m affectionately naming “wife of santa hat guy”.

Then I hear P.A. talking and saying “no, you can have it…(response) but if you don’t want it, we will buy it.”  A few minutes later, he comes over with the muffins and declares, “Mustache guy just took the last souffle!  We ordered it at the same time. He wasn’t even sure he wanted it, and I had to wait for him to discuss with his wife (wife of mustache guy) whether or not they wanted it, when I knew we wanted it!”

Dilemma: this was a crisis moment for me.  I could either get upset, flip out and say something like, “Oh great! Now our breakfast is ruined!”  Instead, I calmly said, “It’s no big deal, the kids can eat their muffins and share my egg sandwich.”  After all, it was nice for P.A. to give up his rights to the last souffle and let mustache guy have it.

So the wee babs started eating their muffins while P.A. was waiting for our egg sandwiches to be made.  Then all hell broke loose.  He waited. and waited. and waited. After waiting some more, he went up to the counter and the Panera worker confessed, I’m sorry sir – we forgot your order.  Now P.A. was fuming.  He came back to the booth explaining the situation to me, upset that he was missing Christmas Eve breakfast with our fam.  He calmed down a few minutes later when the first egg sandwich was delivered.  As the Panera worker handed us the sandwich, she realized we had ordered 2, so she offered to give us a 3rd egg sandwich on the house.  She also brought the wee babs tubes of yogurt and chips to appease the situation.  Nice, nice girl.

As we are waiting for the last 2 egg sandwiches, the kids are eating the yogurt and finishing up their muffins.  Selah now has yogurt all down her shirt and on her new blue purple suede boots.  I switch places with Salem and move over to sit by her and clean her up.  By this time, Salem has decided he is done with this wonderful family breakfast and does not want to sit back in the booth.  He has decided he wants to go home and is now sitting on the floor, arms crossed, lips pouted.  This upsets P.A., so he grabs Salem and pulls him up off of the floor to make him sit down in the booth.  Meanwhile, Selah is crying because I took away her yogurt.  Salem rebels against P.A.’s advances, flings his head back and hits it on the wooden edge of the booth, and is now screaming/crying.  Selah is still bawling and Soleil is cowering in the corner of the booth, wishing she was part of a different family.

As I calmly try and mom-mediate the situation saying things like, “It’s gonna be okay” and “everyone just calm down” or “calma down-down”, thru gritted teeth and a fake smile, I see P.A. put up his hand and say “Mam, please don’t.”  I turn and see standing beside me the older lady from the comfy chair beside the fireplace.  She starts to talk and P.A. cuts her off again, “Mam, please don’t, no thank you.”  She then responds, “Oh, I was just going to tell the kids about santa clause”.  P.A. just looks toward Salem, and I give her a fake smile with worried eyebrows, while thinking – please just go away.  We’ve got this situation under control.  The kids don’t care about santa clause.  They know he’s not real.  They will stop crying in a minute. and they did. And she did.  She just walked away.

A few moments passed and the wee babs calmed down.  Then, as we were watching the older lady leave Panera, she says good-bye to every worker, and a few of the other customers. Yep, she was a “regular”.  They all knew her name. Whew!  We were just thankful this whole incident had not happened at “our Panera”.  No one knew us at this Panera. Then P.A. started to question his actions, “Was it rude of me to cut her off?” I said, “No way, you did the right thing.”  This woman – however well intentioned she might have been – did not have a right to “speak” into our lives or “comment” on the situation.  I imagined if we would have let her talk she might have said something like, “Oh little children, if you’re crying and upset, santa can’t come and visit you tonight.” Blah, blah, blah.  Had she said that, I would have flipped.

In this ‘day and age’, people think they have the right to comment or speak into others’ lives probably more than any other time.  And we allow it, sometimes to a fault. Much of this is because of facebook or blogs or other communication avenues in which we ‘put ourselves out there’ and wait to hear what people have to say about it.  But mostly I want to hear from God, and I value most what He thinks of me, my life, my blog, my facebook.  I do welcome and enjoy comments on my blog or my facebook page from all of you.  It’s fun to get feedback.  But I have boundaries.  So don’t cross them.  Or I will have to say “Back off old lady”.

Noted. By Les Babs

Poop and Panera

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Over the holidays, we traveled to and fro, over the river and thru the woods to Grammy & Grandpa’s house in Oklahoma.  Really, we drove west thru 5 different states, for 18 hours stopped along the way at 4 different Panera restaurants.  We plotted our stops out carefully with the help of Yelp.  We timed our intake of liquids and held our pee in order to only have to stop at a Panera.  Because We are food snobs.  and coffee snobs.

But we are not poop snobs.  We deal with shit on a daily basis, sometimes several times a day. For the last 7.5 years, our lives have been enhanced by experiences with shit.  Thanks to our 3 wee Babs, we are experts at changing diapers, in any position, on any surface and wiping up their 
shit poop.  You get the picture.  And if you don’t, you can come over and visit anytime.

We regularly joke about poop.  It’s a daily part of our lives.  Our son plays with dolls – wait, did I just say that?  He plays with dolls by squeezing them, flying them around the room and chasing his sisters, while holding the doll over their heads, saying “I’m gonna poop on you!”.  The other day our 2 year old stepped into her own poop I had neglected to see and clean up.  It ended up on her heel, and tracked around the house as she came to find me and tell me her struggle.  I cleaned it up.  Shortly after, our family engaged in a wrestling cuddle match, one in which we rolled around on the carpet and rug that had just been cleaned. Yelling and laughing so hard we were crying saying, “Don’t roll in the poop!”

But I digress…back to our stop at Panera.  My oldest daughter and I went to use the Panera restroom, as custom before getting back in our van for the rest of our looooong drive.  As we were patiently waiting for an open stall, I gently told her, “Soleil this is your last chance to go potty before we get to Grammy & Grandpa’s.”  There are no more Panera’s along the way.  This may seem harsh for a mother to tell her daughter on a long road trip, but have you ever been in a Panera restroom?  They are NICE!  And given the options along I-70 and I-44, they are the definitely the best option.  No stoppin’ at Wendy’s, Love’s or Kum & Go gas stations for us – Panera all the way!  Though, Cracker Barrel is a close 2nd.

But I digress…again.  So we enter the “big” stall together and prepare to take care of business when what do I see on the toilet seat?  SHIT!  I mean, POOP!  Whatever you want to call it!   There it was, and it was the last thing I expected to see.  For a Panera bathroom, I had higher standards.  Sooo, I calmly took out a baby wipe and scrubbed down the toilet.  Then I proceeded to go first, in order to absorb any germs that might be lingering, so that Soleil wouldn’t have to.  Maybe all of this is TMI?  But I’m making a point, people.
We have lived many places, traveled to other countries, and poop is something I would expect to see in a bathroom in… India or another country.  Heck, I don’t even expect a toilet when we travel to India.  But not in the good ol’ US of A, and certainly not at a Panera!

But we are not poop snobs.  I left that Panera thankful.  Thankful for a toilet I had to clean first, thankful for toilet paper, thankful for soap & water to wash with, thankful for my family I have to travel with.  Thankful.  Even for the poop we have to deal with in our lives.
Note: this is the first of 3 Holiday Stories involving Panera, which I am affectionately calling “The Panera Series”…stay tuned!


Noted. By Les Babs