You found WHAT??

Yesterday morning I was busy working in my home office as usual. My husband had been outside mowing. My oldest son (J) was in his room, happily playing. My youngest son (K), who will be seven soon, was playing outside and hopefully staying out of his dad's way. Let me back up a minute here. We don't have a typical yard and we don't live in a typical neighborhood. We live on a rural street with houses scattered about. We have a portion of woods on our property and we have private forestland in back of the house.

K came inside and came down to my office (which is on the lower level of the house). He was all excited to show me something. It was two teeth stuck together. He said, "Mom, I found this. It's teeth." Yes, upon inspection, it appeared to be an animal's teeth. I couldn't quite tell what kind of animal as there were only the two teeth, but they were brown and looked rather old. He said, "They were on a stick and I pulled this part off." I said, "A stick? Where?" He said, "In the woods. Back down by the fence." I said, "Could you find it again? I want to see it." He said, "I know you can't come see it right now because you are working, but when you are done can you come see it?" I said, "Yes, when I stop for lunch." He left the room and went back outside. I immediately went to Facebook to post that my son found teeth in the yard.

When it came time to stop for lunch, I went outside to find K and ask him where the teeth were found. He led me down into the woods, along a trail, and I realized that some tree branches had blown over during the last strong winds and decided they'd need to be removed. I had to either duck real low or pull them away in order to get through. At one point, I saw what looked like K's black knit hat. I said, "K, what's this? Why is that there?" He said, "Oh, it's wet," and kept walking. I picked it up and it was sopping wet. I wondered how long it had been out there! I carried it with the intent of draping it over the porch rail when we got back to the house.

I followed K deeper into the woods and along the back fence where my husband and I planted tree seedlings. Here, you might be wondering why, if we have all these trees already, why we planted more. Well, you see, we didn't want to be seeing Bob's house in the winter when the leaves fall off the alders and other leaf trees. We can barely see Bob's roof but just don't want to see it at all.

Anyway, back on track, K got to where the teeth were found and the 'stick' that the teeth were on. I saw it on the ground at the base of a fir tree. I said, "K, that isn't a stick. That's a part of a jaw." It was about seven inches long with a slight curve to it. It looked like a side portion of jaw. My first thought was that it came from a coyote, but maybe not because the coyotes around here aren't very big. K asked what he should do with the two teeth he found earlier, and I told him to put it back into the jaw with the other teeth where it belonged. I said he could keep the whole thing, but NOT in the house. He put the two teeth back into the jaw and carried it with him back towards the house. When we got halfway there, he noticed that the two teeth were gone from the jaw. "Where did the teeth go?" he asked. I said, "They probably fell out somewhere on the trail. You still have the jaw, though, and there are teeth on it." He said, "Yeah, I'll keep this." I said, "You can keep it, but I don't want it in the house. You find a place outside where you want to keep it."

When we got back to the house, K decided to put the bone on a landscaping brick sitting in the front yard. We went into the house to fix something for lunch, and I told K to wash his hands. Seeing as how that jaw was part of a mouth and who knows how long it had been sitting out there, I didn't want to chance a germ/bacteria infestation.

K is happy to have an artifact that he can show people. I love how he is imaginative and creative and will play outside til the cows come home. Look what he found! A jaw and teeth. That wouldn't have happened if he had been indoors all day like his brother. The two of them are so different which is why I love them so.

"It's a 6!"

I am a work-at-home mom - thought I'd throw that out there because I don't think I mentioned it before. This started in mid March. So I was downstairs in my home office, working away, when my six-year-old son came down carrying a polo shirt. He said, "This is too small," and he handed it to me. I said, "It can't be, it's a 6." He said, "The sleeves are here," and he pointed to his upper arm, halfway up. I said, "It's a short-sleeve shirt. The sleeves are supposed to be there." I tossed it back to him and told him to hang it up in his closet. I think he thought it was too small because my husband and I often tell the kids that their long-sleeve shirts are too small when the sleeves are well above the wrist!

52 Free Apron Patterns You Can Make - site review and ratings

52 Free Apron Patterns You Can Make - site review and ratings

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It's Friday and the kids are home

It's kind of hard to work when you constantly have a child coming to your office to ask if he can play next door. It is hard to work when it's sunny outside! Most of all, it's hard to work when the child keeps coming into the room to ask questions. Why is it that even though his dad is upstairs and not doing anything significant, the child must come down to my office to bug me? Well, it's because I'm mommy and I usually give him the attention he needs. Now that I have officially quit for the day (quit working, not quit being mommy) that child is nowhere to be found. At least it's quiet upstairs. Makes me wonder what the kids are up to!

Friday and the kids are home. They had school but they get out early each Friday. A working parent's nightmare - if they work outside the home. We used to pay for daycare for the kids and it was quite a struggle getting the older one to agree to get on the bus to go there. The daycare was basically geared toward the younger set (toddlers, pre-K, etc.) and while my youngest didn't mind it, the older one was bored. As luck would have it, my husband ended up at home during the day and the kids no longer had to go to daycare. Now that I work from home as well, the kids will never have to go there again. Amen to that!

It's sunny out but it looks a little cold, so I am going to get out of this chair and go outside. I'll bring the dogs (and maybe the kids, too - if I can find them) and get some fresh air!

What should I have expected?

My 11-year-old son really let me down. I was very hurt by his nonactions. Does that make sense? Let me explain. Last night he had his music program at school. Most of the program was honoring the veterans (the program was held the day after Veteran's Day) and one song was truly touching. It was called American Tears and put a lot of people in tears. Not just the song, but the slide show that the students/teachers made to go with it. The pictures in the slide show were of family members (of the students and teachers) in the military past and present. Not one of those were submitted by my boy. I was hurt and saddened. He didn't bother to ask either one of us (my husband and I) if we had pictures of his new family's relatives that had been in the service. I know my dad was, my dad's father, my father-in-law. I had tears in my eyes not just because of the lyrics, but because my own child didn't come forth and ask about pictures. Maybe it's because he forgot. Maybe it's because he's adopted and didn't think about his new family's past. I really don't know.

Talking to kids about death

My cousin's husband died of a heart attack at the age of 50. I found out at work when my mom called and left a message on my voice mail while I was at lunch. She had said, "Call me as soon as you can." I called when I got back to my desk and she told me what had happened. So sad. I waited until I got home to tell my husband. He just didn't know what to say except that Keith was a fun guy and that he really enjoyed the time he spent with him.

At dinner, we say grace. We take turns saying something. Last night J started and he prayed that his team would win the last soccer game (tomorrow). I prayed for my cousin's family and for Jesus to open the door for Keith. Ok... here come the tears again. :( Anyway, Kent was next and he prayed also for Keith's family and then my youngest prayed for a yummy dinner.

During dinner, our conversation was about death and funerals and memorial services. Not your typical dinnertime talk, but it came up and we just kind of went with it. J was confused as to what a funeral was and what a memorial service was. K is only six, so we really had to talk in six-year-old language. I said that a funeral is where a dead person is put in a big box and the box is put in the ground. People stand around the box and say things and then dirt is pile up over the box. The box is buried in the ground. A memorial service is where there is no dead person, no body, no box. People come to remember the person and they can say things that they remember about that person. Kind of sounds too simple, but kids don't really understand if it's too hard.

My husband said that he wanted to be cremated. I said that at first I wanted my body to be buried, but then again, I didn't want worms crawling through my body. Cremation was probably a better plan, but where did I want my ashes? Certainly not in a little box to sit and gather dust on a mantle. Maybe to spread them down in California, a place I remember visiting as a child. My husband said, "Why not Arizona? That's where a lot of your family is." I said I just didn't know. He wants his ashes spread over the islands which are west of where we live.

Anyway, J had said that he went to a place (a building) once where all these dead people were. I looked at him and asked if he meant a mausoleum. He said he didn't know. He then asked what the area is called of a hospital that has all the dead people. I told him that was a morgue.

Meanwhile, my husband started getting gross in his explanation of something else and since it was dinner, I made him stop. We were eating chicken and he was talking about rotting flesh and stuff. Ewww!

Well, that's basically what we talked about at dinner and I don't know if it helped any, but at least we are very open and will talk about pretty much anything with the kids.

Quote for the day

I couldn't resist posting this which I saw on the parent-teacher organization's web site for my kids' school:

Children seldom misquote. In
fact, they usually repeat word
for word
what you shouldn't
have said.
- Author Unknown