Three of the Scariest Words

There are three words which strike fear in the hearts and souls of men and women alike. Three words which know no boundaries and affect people from every walk of life.  It does not matter what language you speak or your socio-economic status, those three words stop mankind in his tracks.

What are the three words that cause such genuine fear?

 

"Some Assembly Required"

I am betting those words just caused an uncontrollable shiver of revulsion to run down your spine. Seeing those three words may have even triggered a flashback to pulling an all-nighter trying to assemble a special gift so it was ready when your child or loved one woke up the next morning.  Or maybe you have one of those nightmarish memories of trying to assemble a baby crib or other baby paraphernalia.

My flashback is from when I was a teenager. My parents decided I did not have enough storage and bought me a new wall bookcase unit.  It was one of those fancy all-in-one units that looked really neat in the store. 

The store's merchandiser had neatly organized the books on the bookshelves, the desk section had been equipped with the perfect desk set organizer, and precisely folded clothing was beautifully arrayed inside the drawers.  When my parents saw this behemoth, they swore they could hear the angels in heaven sing as they imagined all of my belongings neatly stored and displayed......... instead of being stacked or strewn across the floor of my bedroom.

This white six foot high and ten foot long laminated particle board wall unit was not sold fully assembly, but for an extra fee, the store delivery personnel could assemble the unit for us.  My dad puffed up and said he was not paying extra for something he was perfectly capable of handling.  He had all of the necessary tools at home, and after all, if he could fly jumbo jets around the world, he could certainly follow some simple directions on where to put a few nuts and bolts.

We brought the thirteen boxes of various parts home and carefully piled them up in my bedroom according to the number labelled on the outside of each box, which was printed right next to the label which stated "Some Assembly Required".  We opened box #1 and quickly dug around for the book of instructions.

My dad leafed through the booklet and discovered all of the instructions were written in a foreign language.  He and my brothers looked through the box together to see if there was another set of instructions.  There had to be another booklet! 

My mom quickly called the store. Nope.  There was only one booklet of instructions. They informed her to "just follow the pictures".

The realization of what my dad had gotten himself into hit full force.  He politely excused himself and went to the garage.  For several minutes we heard things being banged and slammed around in the garage.

My mom stood at the doorway to my room with one hand on her hip and an exasperated look on her face as she listened to the chaos in the garage.  After a few minutes she announced "Well, I think your dad may need a minute or two to himself.".

A little while later my dad came back inside. He was ready to get to work and had a hammer in one hand and a set of screwdrivers in the other.

As one of my brothers and I looked at the directions together, we discovered the main language was German.  He was in his second year of German and I was in my first, so we started reading the instructions together while my dad used the pictures to figure out the parts we could not translate.  This was the blind leading the helpless.

It took us 2 days to assemble that enormous wall unit with all of its drawers, doors, and the drop-down desk.  When the assembly was complete and we were all standing back admiring our work, my dad calmly announced "This unit will never be moved.  If we sell this house and move, it gets sold with the house.  Oh, and just so everyone knows:  no more "Some Assembly Required" furniture will ever cross the threshold into a house I own.  Ever.".

It was a nice announcement and it certainly held up for a number of years, until his first grandchild arrived.  Then he got tasked with assembling cribs, pack n' plays, baby bouncers and toys of all kinds.  But, as he has said each time since then, at least all of these directions have been in English.

Christie Bielss

 

Wishing Time Away

12 years ago I gave birth to a beautiful bouncing baby boy.  It was such a relief to have that ball full of energy out into the world where he wasn't kicking and punching me for a good 20 hours out of every day.  Ironically, when he was born he was quite the snuggler.  If you held him, he would sleep soundly for hours upon hours.  If you laid him in his crib, playpen, bouncy chair, swing, or anywhere else, he was awake in 20 minutes or less.

In his first year of life, he went to the hospital more times than I can count.  We were there so many times, the ER nurses knew our insurance information by heart.  Between the middle of the night cases of croup, the asthma complications, ear infections, and the capper:  RSV, I learned more than I ever needed to know about an infant's breathing.  Most of the gray hairs on my head now came as a result of having to learn how to pacify a baby enough so he'd allow a nebulizer mask to be put on his face to receive his asthma medication so he could breathe.

I'm not sure how many hours of sleep I actually got in his first year of life, but I'm betting I have more fingers and toes than I did actual sleeping hours.  Many long hours, both day and night, were spent rocking him in the rocking chair, as well as watching Barney's Super Singing Circus every 2 hours so he wouldn't notice the nebulizer in his face.  Oh, how I had a love/hate relationship with that blasted dinosaur.  In those days and hours of frustration and exhaustion, I can't even count the number of times I thought about how nice it would be when he was older and we both could get some sleep.

I wished those days away without even truly realizing it.  Now he is older, and in less than 3 years he'll have his driver's permit.  In 6 years he'll be graduating from high school and heading off to college.  Instead of wishing for the years to pass so I can get some sleep, I really want time to freeze.  I want to have lots of memories I can hold onto when our nest becomes empty and his room stays clean for months on end, or I look in the cupboard and realize I don't need to go to the grocery store 2-3 days a week to restock what he's devoured.

In just a few short years, the quiet I enjoy today while my kids are in school will become a deafening silence.  Now where there is shouting, arguments with his sister, rough-housing with his friends, and Nerf gun battles that take place throughout the entire house, in 6 years time it will all be replaced by quiet........ lots and lots of quiet.

I will be hanging onto these next few years memories with an iron fist.  I may even enjoy every time I have to ask him to make up his bed, pick his shoes up out of the middle of the living room floor, or take out the garbage.  As he enters the teenage years, he may drive me batty with his excessive energy, teenage eye rolls, and attitude, but I'm going to put every single one of his mannerisms in my memory bank.

Just as my mother said would happen, my perspective has changed.  When I hear a mother talk about how her infant sleeps soundly through the night and how wonderful it is to get things done around the house, I think "how sad". We have a lifetime of doing laundry, cleaning, and picking things up, but only a short while to enjoy our children while they are small. 

What I saw 12 years ago as an exhausting, thankless job was actually a blessing filled with hours of snuggling and cuddling with that little bundle of snips and snails and puppy-dog tails.  Yes, I still look forward with great anticipation to seeing the man he will become, but for now, I'm going to relish in the teenager he's about to be.

Written by Christie Bielss

Kids and Cars - Oh My!

Yesterday seemed to be the day for kid trouble. From them waking up cranky, to coming home from school picking at their siblings, to driving their parents insane with the:
"He's touching me!"
"She started it!"
"I did NOT!"
"DID!"
"NOT!"
"DID TOOOOO!"
"DID NOOOOOTTTTTT!"
Oy!!! 

The last time my kids drove me this close to the brink of having the men in little white coats take me away was right after our daughter was born and we drove to a family get-together several hours away. Being only a few weeks old, we were concerned with how well our infant would handle being strapped into a car seat for that length of time.  

Things were going along so well on the drive to the family function, our worries were for naught. To our great delight, the baby slept the entire way. If we hadn't been so sleep deprived, I think our parent spidey-sense signals might've alerted us to the fact that the baby wasn't sleeping innocently, she was taking a power-nap so she'd have super-human powers later to take over the world and suck all of our brain cells. 

Unaware of our pending doom, we relaxed and spent several hours enjoying being in the presence of family before it was time to load up the kids and head home. After lots of running and playing, we expected our 2 year old to be exhausted and sleep the whole way home. Our new baby had handled everyone holding her and had stayed awake for most of the visit, so we were confident she would as well. Our spidey-sense was lulled into complacency and we didn't know what was about to be launched our way. 

We didn't even make it 1 minute down the road when we heard the baby "Puh-tooey" her pacifier halfway across the minivan..... and that's when the drive from the most nether regions of the earth's core began.  She started crying and got louder by the second. We pulled over and fed her, and she fell asleep but as soon as the buckle snapped on her seatbelt, she awoke and started wailing again.  We decided to use the age-old wisdom of letting her cry it out.  I bet whoever invented that had a great pair of ear plugs - which we did NOT have in the car.  Mike asked "How long can a newborn cry when there's the constant motion of the car to soothe her and baby Beethoven playing as mood music?". 

We found out.  About 45 minutes later and with her wailing ever louder, Mike turned around in the front passenger seat, found the baby's pacifier and plopped it back in her mouth. He gave a victorious grunt and just as he was turning to sit back down, you could hear "PUH-TOOEY"....she'd spit the thing out again. With a grumble he turned around again, found the pacifier and plopped it back in her mouth. He no sooner took his hand away when she spit it out again and started wailing.  And then the 2 year old starts chiming in "Dada, make it stop!" 

As the battle of baby and pacifier vs. 40 year old grown man waged, the 2 year old saying ever louder "Make it stop!" and with as much willpower as I could to try to stop it, I couldn't contain a small fit of laughter that bubbled to the surface.  A dirty look and a cranky grumble to "drive faster" luckily were all I got in return.  Mike finally gave up trying to sit in his seat, or to even let go of the pacifier.  For the next 1.5 hours he had his knees in the front seat with his back hunched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and with one hand was holding the pacifier in the baby's mouth, and using his other to brace himself so his head would quit bouncing off the car's ceiling.  With fits of grumbling erupting every so often and the constant battle of man vs. pacifier, I could not contain my laughter.  I started giggling which erupted into a full-fledged laughter when Mike shot me a look.  That really got me going. 

By the time we got home I had obviously lost all brain matter from listening to the battle that was waged and was laughing so hard I had tears running down my face.  If the men in little white coats had seen me, they'd have surely taken me away.  When we arrived home and I took the baby out of the carseat, she immediately stopped crying and fell into that long-awaited exhausted slumber we'd all prayed for on the drive.  It took Mike a good 20 minutes before he was able to unkink his back and get the circulation to return to his legs so he could exit the car.  And with a "next time I'M doing the driving!" he collapsed in his recliner.  We didn't do much travelling after that trip.....

by: Christie Bielss