A Funny Thing Happened...

Of course it did, we're the Hiesters and it's been 5 days since I've posted. Lots has gone on around here... 5 days is an eternity in a family this size. Let's see if I can organize my thoughts.

On Thursday, not a lot happened around here, but I heard something pretty funny at Ally's volleyball practice. I spent the first 2/3 of my 3 hour wait time making stuff for Amy's baby shower. I tied little bows on all the name tags and fashioned a cloth diaper cake (yum) for the first time in my life. Stephanie, one of the other moms that sits at practice, asked if I had directions to follow... Hmm, there's a thought. Not to worry, I figured it out on my own, much to the curiosity of all the girls playing volleyball. They wondered aloud what it was that I was making and why. They asked me if I was going to sell it, and I even got one offer to buy it. What do high school students need with a diaper cake??? At one point a volleyball flew over and knocked it all down. The culprit looked in fear for her life, but I assured her the masterpiece could be quickly restored. Towards the end of practice, another mom came to get her kid and brought her two little boys, Tyler, age 2, and Chad, 2 months. We talked about potty training and the methods they've tried with Tyler. She said they bought him a potty video featuring Elmo... Tyler calls it CaCa Elmo. I thought that was classic.

I spent most of Friday getting more stuff ready for Amy's shower. I ordered pink sweet peas through the Fresno State Ornamental Horticulture Department and have since deemed them "The Most Darling Flower In All God's Creation." They were so adorable, and they've actually gotten cuter in the time since I picked them up. They are so precious, they are actually the prime candidate for Papa Tim and Tina's wedding at this point. Robben was a very good boy through all the planning of the shower... Thank God.

Saturday was a busy day!!! We had Amy's baby shower, which was absolutely gorgeous, as was she. Then that night, Amy and Logan took Todd and I out to Cool Hand Luke's to "pay" Todd for painting their nursery. We had so much fun with them! We laughed so hard and so loud, I'm surprised the other patrons didn't complain. Our conversations encompassed such topics as: pooping your pants as an adult; things that disgust even nurses; and steroid-enhanced shrimp. I hope we get a chance to hang out with them that way again, but I have a feeling it might be a few years, since they'll be having twins sometime between now and April 10! I just love Amy - and I'm not just saying that because she's the president of my fan club! To see some photos of Amy & the fabulous Two Peas In A Pod shower, click the link to "Grandma Honey" under "Blogs I Follow" in the right hand column. (When there's more time, I'll try to get some pictures on here)

Sunday is where it gets funny. Ally had an all-day volleyball tournament in Madera. Todd, Wesley, Tyler & I hit church first before heading out there. (The little girls spent the weekend with Grandma Alice, and Robben was with my mom) It was my week to work in the nursery, with 4 other people, fortunately. We had 12 babies! 12 babies! 2 of them got picked up before service even started (because they cried so much) and then we had to page 3 other parents during service! I've never actually had to page a parent before, but things were just out of control this day. There's a sign-in sheet when they drop off their babies and they specify how long they want their baby to cry before we page them, 5, 10 or 15 minutes. Even a 15 minute one had to be paged!!! There were 2 little Chinese twins that were just darling. They were pretty happy at first, but then one of them started crying, so I held him and tried to soothe him. After about 5 minutes of trying, he finally let me know the real cause of his fussiness by puking on me. He'd had hot dogs. I felt particularly lucky that it only got on my hand and pants since I had to wear the same outfit ALL DAY at the tournament. Then his brother started to cry, too, so we finally gave in and called their mommy. The balm for my self-esteem came when he didn't calm down for her either... so it wasn't me.

So after church we headed out to Madera. Ally's tournament was quite a success. The teams are divided by age, so instead of having JV or Varsity, they have 16s and 18s. In addition, they have teams within the age brackets. So the 16-1 team is the travel team (they fly places to play), then there are 16-2s and 16-3s. The 2s being a little better than the 3s. Get it? Well Ally is on the 16-2 team. Most of the girls on the team are actually 14, but they are good enough to make the 16 team. Well at the first tournament, the coach, Monty, decided the competition wasn't tough enough, so he moved them into the 18 bracket. So yesterday was their first time playing at the 18 level. They went into the tournament as the last place team (being new & young, I guess), and they came out of it Number One! They beat every team there! Gosh, volleyball is so much fun to watch when you are winning!!! Two funny things happened at the tournament, though. These are not in order:
There was a girl, not a small girl, on the opposite team from ours. Erica, the smallest but one of the more powerful servers on our team, served the ball. The not-so-little girl squatted forward to get it and misjudged the distance, hitting it instead with her left cheek. Though she didn't hit it with the part of her body she intended, her mission was accomplished when the ball sailed successfully back over the net. Everyone laughed uncontrollably, but tried to hide it, cuz the girl wasn't that small, as I may have mentioned before. Our team, our coach, the ref, the ref's team, me, Wesley (he had his face all the way inside his shirt)... Todd kept telling us to knock it off, but that made it even harder. At least I hid behind Todd so she couldn't see me. He said it would have been okay to laugh if she was skinny or pretty or something. I guess when something's funny, it's funny, no matter who it happens to.
Which leads me to the other item of hilarity. Todd was sitting on the bleachers and felt a tingling sensation on his booty (crack). He instinctively knew that he had sat in a piece of chewed spearmint gum. My first question is, "how did he assume that's what had happened? Has this happened before? Or did his bum have someway of detecting the flavor? Does that qualify as a sixth sense?" That's funny! The situation only worsened about an hour later when he informed me that he tasted spearmint, which means after picking it off his pants, it made it's way to his mouth!

My mom also came to the tournament with Robben. I sent a perfectly good baby to her house, and she returned a feverish one :) Poor baby is sick. He was out of it all day and didn't want to eat anything. Luckily he had a doctor's appointment scheduled for today, so we just had to get through one night. Not as easy as it sounds. Todd and I were both exhausted from a long weekend, so we hit the sack at 8pm. We kept Robben in our bed, which never really works, but we always try. He does better in his own bed, but when he's sick, we're more comfortable with him near so we can tell how he's doing. He fell into a fitful sleep, and then started coughing at about 8:45. He coughed and coughed and coughed. Todd figured he was about to throw up, so he grabbed him quick to get him off the bed. Unfortunately, the purging began at roughly the same moment that Todd picked him up and inadvertently aimed him at my face. Curdled milk came hurling at my face and hair. Counting the one in the nursery at church, I got puked on twice by two different babies yesterday! Is there some type of reward for that? So we stripped the bed, stripped the kid, stripped me. Got everything cleaned up, mopped up (the majority of the puking did occur on the floor) put in the washing machine, and showered off. Then we put new jammies on the babe and put him back in his own bed. He fell right back to sleep. About 2 1/2 hours later, we heard the coughing again. Todd sprung out of bed (he springs from a dead sleep a lot) and got Robben onto the floor before he started the second round of wretching. So we only had to mop that time... and strip the baby. He slept the rest of the night in his diaper. We then put a blanket down in the middle of us and tried our bed again. No more puking, but lots of tossing, turning, head-butting and kicking. At about 2:15 we finally moved him to his own bed where he finished the night without further incident. This afternoon is a different story, however. Again, this morning he was out of it, but he had his appointment to see Dr. Mojibi. He did very well in her office, with more energy and personality. Among whatever else is going on with him, he also has an ear infection that needs to be treated. I'm thankful that she caught it now, since we'll be flying to Kansas next week! Poor baby would have been miserable!! So anyway, I decided to keep my lunch date with Tina since he seemed to be doing better. Fatal flaw! After chowing down on his Pear Strawberry Granola, a handful of Goldfish crackers, and a couple of bites of Sweet Corn Casserole, he purged on the table, high chair and floor at Wahoo's Fish Tacos. The least I could have done was choose a table in a corner, but no, I had picked the most prominent table in the place, the one that EVERYONE had to pass after making their purchase. Luckily, I did have the forethought to bring him a change of clothes. Good thing Tina already likes us, huh? I was smart enough not to give him anything else, and then he crashed in the car on the way home. He's been pretty lethargic the rest of the day. The only other incident we had was when the phone rang, I ran to retrieve it, he woke up, fell off my bed and then started another purge. Since then he's been snoozing peacefully in his own bed... for about the last 3 hours now.

So now that I've gone on and on, I need to finish up with 2 bonehead comments/thoughts from the kids. The first was from Ally. She goes by landmarks rather than street names because she says streets are too complicated. On Sunday morning I finally broke it down for her... here is what she thought: She thought every street changed at every intersection. So rather than 2 streets crossing each other, she thought 4 streets met at that point. Imagine the chaos! When I explained how it really works, she was amazed at the simplicity of the system. She laughed at herself and asked me to put it on the blog. Whenever someone would ask her the cross streets before, she thought, "how do you know something like that? Do you have to memorize the whole world?" I can understand, now, why it was all so overwhelming to her!! And the second comment was from Tyler. On the way to the volleyball tournament, we were sitting at a traffic light and he said, "Hey, why is the red light on the top here!?!" Then he laughed at himself and admitted that he has always thought the red was on the bottom and the green was on the top. I have scary news for you folks: Both of these children will be on the road in 2010! I'll notify you before it happens for your own safety!!

Enough? See ya later...