The Bee and Me

Last night, I was running from activity to activity in my every night's business of feeding and nurturing five little busy bees and their "king bee." The boys had a ball game, so supper did not go on the stove until 9:30! I threw together some "Fiesta" which is a family favorite for a quick but tasty meal. It consists of a layer of tortilla chips or Doritos, then a layer of rice, then ground beef, and finally hot cheese sauce mixed with salsa and topped with fresh tomatoes if you have 'em. After wolfing down a very late supper, everyone ran off to his individual computer to get on the homework.

I settled into the sofa and fired up Tim's laptop which my genius has fixed to be wireless! It has a battery life of about 2 hours, and it gets its Internet connection through the air, a concept which I find to be amazing. It is wonderful when you are dog-tired to just curl up on the sofa and brainlessly surf for a while. Since I don't have cable right now, I at least can check the headlines on CNN and Fox's sites, among other favorites. I went to the "America's Most Wanted" site and read up on this elusive guy---"BTK"---and a little about the history of the case. I have always been somewhat of a True Crime buff, so I thought I would read and bring myself up to speed on this case. We know a few people that live out that way, so I wanted to see what the latest was on "old BTK."

I was surprised to find that there are some who have found strange similarities between the BTK killings and the case of JonBenet Ramsey, a case which I followed with interest for a year or two after it happened. It was fun during my "divorced" years while I did not have a lot going on to read the forums and post a little concerning the JonBenet case. Most of us felt at the time that her parents did it, but there are some troubling aspects of the case that have not been explained.

This BTK fellow apparently knew enough about his victims comings and goings that he knew when they would leave and come back. He would let himself in and wait on the victims, kill them in an unhurried, leisurely fashion, and leave when he felt like it. In the JonBenet case, if there was an outside killer, it is theorized that he broke in while they were gone and waited inside the house until the family went to bed, and then he went and got JonBenet, took her to the basement and killed her. It is a long shot that BTK and JonBenet's killer are one and the same, but I will follow that theorizing with interest. There is also some mention of the Zodiac killer with these other two. All in all, they are a nasty crew. Apparently, BTK is alive and well and taunting the police through one particular t.v. station in Wichita. They know it is really him, as he is sending them back pieces of evidence that he took from the crime scenes years ago. It is either him or someone who was in cahoots with the real killer and knew the details of the killings.

I read one post last night about these two ladies who came home one night from somewhere, and the daughter went in the bathroom and said, "Mother, you left the window up in here and the air is on." Her mother defensively grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen, went and got her daughter and quietly told her she did not put the window up. Eventually, as they searched every inch of the house, they went in an unused bedroom and found a man under a quilt on the floor. He jumped up and ran out, and they did not apparently get a good look at him. They wonder to this day if it was BTK! It gives me the eebie-jeebies to think about that! I will be double- checking my locks from now on--even though I am miles and miles from this creep. There are creeps everywhere.

I digress from my story about last night, though. I eventually had to leave my comfy couch to go help Daniel with something in his room, so while I was in there, I decided to sit down and check my email. (I leave that one on all the time, and my mail downloads in there.) It wasn't long before a blood-curdling scream was heard from the den. It had a familiar ring to it. It was Sarah, and she was letting me know that "the Bee" was in trouble again.

Hannah "Bee," as we affectionately call her, is the busiest baby you have ever seen in your life. She can single-handedly wreck an entire house in nothing flat. If there is folded laundry, she unfolds it. If there are items on a table, she cannot rest until they are all in the floor. Toys have to come out of the toyboxes, toilet paper gets unrolled, and mail could end up anywhere in the hands of the Bee! She does not "do" playpens or cribs. Hannah is a free spirit, and she must be free to be a busy Bee!

If sleep positions do indeed reveal personalities, then Hannah is going to be as outgoing as they come. She insists on sleeping on her back, arms and legs outstretched, with absolutely no cover and no one or nothing touching her. She is also a co-sleeper, meaning that she has shared our bed since she was very little. Like my friend "Jennifer" who blogs, I love having my little ones right beside me so that I can know when she needs something, make sure she is warm enough or cool enough, and just enjoy her while she is little and cuddly. But the "Bee" is not much for cuddling! She will grunt if you touch her, even accidentally! Sometimes, when she is really deep in sleep, I take the opportunity to grab her and hold her close for a while and observe her while she is still. I know it won't last long.

Like all my kiddos, Hannah does not require much sleep. Four hours is generally enough for one block of sleep for her. A nap of 30 minutes recharges her pretty well. So it is pretty much a constant battle for me to get the sleep I need ( I stay perpetually tired these days---sometimes I think a good 12 hour night would be wonderful!) If I did not get Tim and the kids to juggle Hannah-watching with me, I surely would have died of fatigue by now. I used to ask the pediatrician when Daniel and Sam were little what I could do to get some sleep. He would just shake his head and reassure me that when they got to be teenagers, they would sleep. So I have now been continuously sleep-deprived for 18 years now with around 12 to go! I'm doomed! :)

But back to the story...

So Sarah is screaming as though I need to come really, really quickly instead of just at my leisure. When I get to the den, I see Daddy's laptop open, with about 8 of the keys pulled off! I panicked, because Daddy uses this for work, and I could just hear the moans of agony if Daddy saw the computer looking like this. Quickly, Daniel and I figured out where all the characters went on the keyboard and replaced them. Luckily, they just snapped on! Hannah had done quite a job on the keyboard, but we managed to make it o.k. again.

However, that apparently was not all she did. She managed to actually post about 6 gibberish posts to my blog! Luckily, Daddy discovered them early this morning and deleted them before too many readers were left scratching their heads. I have never seen a child more adept at pressing just the right buttons to actually accomplish something on a computer. More than once, she has launched applications on my desktop computer, and she has added some addendums to my letters at times. For those of you thinking about writing your own blog, rest assured that if a 15 month old baby can add six posts, then it should not be too hard for you. She sure seems to have her father's love of technology along with her mother's boldness in learning new things on a computer.

It's like that a 1000 times a day, it seems, with the Bee around. I tell Tim that if she is alive every day when he gets home, then I have done my job! Some days, we don't get a whole lot more done than just follow Hannah, getting her out of trouble. It is a huge departure for me from how it was with Sarah. She has always been the best kid---rarely getting into much trouble at all. Hannah is just a daily reminder that every child is different and special and that each one deserves that individual dose of love and care!

I'm listening to the nine o'clock news that we can get with the old rabbit ears atop the t.v. set. We had planned not to have any channels at all, but we found during tornado season that we needed a way to see if we were about to be blown away. We have loved not having all the filth that permeates the air waves nowadays. We get PBS and one local channel and some religious t.v. channel that we seldom stop on. PBS has really polished their lineup from the days when I was a child and had to watch that annoying singing woman and her sidekick with a pointed hat called "the Professor." Every lazy elementary teacher I had stuck us in front of the t.v. set for "music" class rather than doing something live with us. I came to dislike that show very much! Now, there are some really well-done shows that even teach morality and values, and I have been pleasantly surprised when the girls and I watch together. PBS allows me to get a few things done every day without feeling guilty that they are watching some mindless show.

Well, it is way too quiet in here. I am off to see what the Bee is into now. No telling---she has probably completed our taxes by now.