So That I'll "Remember That Time When..."

Hannah and I visited my sister, Ashley, Sunday through today to "help" while her husband, Ed, took a business trip back east somewhere. I'm not certain they'll be looking for my brand of assistance in the future. We'll see.

First, recall that Ashley has five children from 6 weeks to 8 years in age. She home schools her three oldest, though she didn't accomplish much schooling with me there. (Strike one against "helping.") Add Hannah to that mix and we had the equivalent of eight children being supervised by one-and-one-half adults.

Two-year-old Gianna and Hannah antagonized each other the entire visit. For example: while Hannah played with the MagnaDoodle, Gianna took the magnetic shapes that work only with the MagnaDoodle, not because she had any means by which to play with the shapes, but because it was certain to solicit a scream from Hannah. Want another example? Even though Hannah sucks her fingers almost constantly, she decided that Gianna should never, under any circumstances, suck her thumb. And if Gianna did suck her thumb, Hannah stood directly in front of her and screamed, "No! Don't suck-uh fumb!" Furthermore, if Gianna tried to escape said screaming, Hannah followed her and screamed all the more. I'm fairly certain that mothering assistance from a five-year-old wasn't the kind of "help" Ashley had in mind. Imagine any variation on those two scenarios, throw in the word "mine," and it probably happened over the past few days. Ash's house sounded a lot like the first 25 seconds of this clip...minus the "shut up" part (though I certainly thought it numerous times).





Monday evening Ashley lined up her awesome babysitter so that she and I could play Bunko with ten other fun women. We had a blast and returned to a clean house and a frazzled-looking babysitter. Later Ashley told me that Alex never looks like that. The only change? Hannah. In a momentary lapse common sense I failed to give the poor girl any kind of heads up about Hannah: no warnings, no suggestions as to how to handle meltdowns/breakdowns/Hannahisms, nothing. Thankfully Ashley had mentioned that Hannah had "special needs," but that was it.

While we played Bunko, Alex took five children to the park (Ashley kept the baby) and at some point Hannah crashed and burned, scraping her elbow and bottom, which was no big deal. However, it probably contributed to Hannah's later refusal to put on the jammy-shirt I had set out. Poor Alex had no idea that Hannah spends 85% of her life completely naked and that clothing falls far below sanity on the priority scale. Thankfully Ed happened to call that evening to make sure things were going OK (now why didn't I think of that?). When Alex mentioned her clothing struggles, Ed gave her sage advice: Do whatever is easiest.

Though Hannah often placed herself smack dab in the middle of most of the conflict, she also made us laugh until we cried more than once. I know before I even write this anecdote that you will not find it as funny as we did, but we were a little punchy by the end of day one. In part of our attempt to have five children dress for bed and brush their teeth, I instructed Hannah to take off her Pull-up and throw it in the trash. When she finally removed her Pull-up after my third request, she bumped into Isaac on her way to the trash can and dropped it. She picked the soggy big-girl diaper off of the floor, thrust it into Isaac's face and said, "Smewh it (smell it)!" Ashley and I took one look at each other and cracked up. Where does Hannah get this stuff? I'll lay the blame on Carl. He's not here to defend himself.

Some other memorable moments:

• Ashley put Isaac's new remote-control four-wheeler on the kitchen counter so she could sweep the floor, unbeknown to Isaac who was walking up the stairs. He revved the four-wheeler across the counter and scared the you-know-what out of us.




• Ethan, my eight-year-old nephew, thought Disney's The Sweet Life of Zack and Cody was a "bad" show to watch because they said (gasp!) lactose intolerance. Even funnier, he couldn't remember how to pronounce it once he realized it wasn't a bad word and therefore asked us--at least twenty times (no exaggeration)--how to pronounce it: loctas intelligence? slacker trancelot? tallerance scolah? Ashley told me that he knew exactly how to pronounce it when he thought it was a cuss word.




• When I was in Colorado Mom cleaned my house, put fresh flowers on the table and placed mints on each of our pillows. She did the same for Ashley when her family traveled to Denver recently. Ash and I wanted to do something similar for Mom while she visited Alaska, but Mom hyper-cleaned her house before she left. Instead of cleaning we placed a pampering gift basket and two bright orange shasta daisies on her bedside table. In front of the gift basket we stood three cinnamon gummy bears, each holding a toothpick flag that, when lined up, read "We Missed You." The gummies that we placed in her office said "We Love You" and on her dining room table they waved "Welcome Home Mom." The biggest feat, though, was keeping six children from destroying Mom's clean house while we created the gifts.


• Ed was sitting on a plane on a Baltimore Airport runway when the FAA had its computer glitch Tuesday. Thankfully the glitch didn't result in any accidents and Ed made his connecting flight in Atlanta with time to spare.
  

All-in-all we had a good time, the kind of visit that will be repeated for years to come in stories that start as Remember that time when...