This post is a re-post of one I made years ago. I am reposting it with a video as part of the new Throwback Thursday meme. Come and join us.
My father, Robert Bruce McClendon, Jr., was a proud grandfather. When my sister, Sandra, announced that she was expecting, he beamed with pride.
In 1985, his first grandchild, Patrick, was born. For some reason my father could not get it into his head that Patrick’s last name was not McClendon.
My sister and brother-in-law, along with Patrick, lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. From time to time they would come to Iva, South Carolina, for a visit. The time came for their first visit after Patrick was born.
My family owned the Western Auto Store in Iva, South Carolina, and we had one of those changeable letter signs that were popular in the 1980s. We changed the message about once a week. It was my job to change the message each week. We never had the same message on both sides of the sign. Well, almost never.
I usually ate breakfast at Waffle King No. 3. That morning my father came to the restaurant early and told me he wanted me to go to the store right away and get the changeable letter sign changed to say Welcome Patrick on both sides. The store was not due to open for over an hour but he wanted that sign out before daylight.
I drove to the store and located the correct letters. I had to change the sign in the cold December wind as the sun came up. Shortly after that, Papa Bruce arrived and worked on getting the store open while I went back to the restaurant to get another breakfast since I did not get to finish mine earlier. Papa Bruce paid for the new breakfast.
All morning long, Papa Bruce paced the sales floor. Whenever he spoke with an employee, he would say, “When Patrick gets here, he will straighten you out”. When my sister arrived, my father made sure that she and Al, her husband, had seen the sign.
If Papa Bruce could have arranged it, there would have been a ticker tape parade through the town. Papa took Patrick around the store showing him off to all the customers. Patrick helped Papa wait on customers, even though he was less than a month old. Papa Bruce took Patrick and showed him all the Christmas decorations. He was one proud Papa.
Suzanne and I, along with our oldest boy Jared, were in the process of moving into our very first apartment. This was apartment 17-C Country Club Lane in Anderson, South Carolina. Jared was almost 2 years old.
We had everything scattered about everywhere because of the nature of having to move everything a lot faster than we had intended to.
Somewhere in all this chaos, Jared managed to find a pair of scissors. He walked towards Suzanne and me opening and closing the scissors.
Both of us tried to remain calm and keep him from hurting himself with them. Well, he somehow managed to snip the corner of his eye and it was bleeding profusely. Suzanne handed me a washcloth and my keys and I ran out the door. I put Jared in his car seat and jumped in the van and took off.
I turned on the emergency flashers. I was driving as fast as I could, but still stopping at all the red lights. A city police car pulled up beside me with his blue lights on and he rolled down his window.
I rolled down the van window and he asked me, “What’s wrong?” I replied, “My baby cut his eye with some scissors.” The officer told me to follow him. He gave me a police escort to the emergency room and I pulled up to the emergency room door.
I exited the van and got Jared. I threw my keys to the security guard and told him the paper work was in the van and the cop could arrest me inside as soon as Suzanne got there.
I entered the emergency room and, even though it was typical to wait a long time for triage for some reason, I was taken back to a room immediately upon walking in the door.
As we entered the treatment room, I put Jared on the bed and it was then I noticed that I had left the house wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts that did not cover all I would have preferred they covered. My chest hair was matted with Jared’s blood and I looked like a gunshot victim.
The guard brought the keys to the van and said, “The cop just said for you to go home when you get done. Don’t worry about a ticket.”
Shortly, Suzanne arrived with my pants. We waited a very short time and Dr. Gregory Baird arrived and checked Jared out. He determined that Jared’s eye was okay and that there should be no permanent damage. We were very thankful.
We had our two youngest kids a little more than 13 months apart. If they had been born within a twelve month span of time, they would be called Irish twins. They were so close in age they were always doing things together. They seemed to always enjoy one another’s company. Collectively they became known as “The Babies”. They were always getting into things together. The following stories are examples of this.
Peanut Butter Dance
Years ago, my child-bride Suzanne was home with the kids when she noticed it was very quiet in the next room. She went to investigate and found our youngest son and our youngest daughter covered from head to toe in peanut butter. They were naked as little Jay birds and having the time of their lives.
There was peanut butter all over the kitchen, dining room, and some in the living room. No matter, the babies were having a ball. They were having such a good time that the older kids wished they could join in.
So, what do you clean first? If you clean the house, first the kids keep getting it messy. If you clean the kids first, the kids get the room messy again. My wife put the babies in the tub and left older brother and sister to watch them. Then, she cleaned the house.
The Babies Make Cake.
Since we had four kids, we shopped at places like Sam’s Club and Sav-A-Lot. When we found a
good deal, we stocked up. Once we found a great deal at Sav-A-Lot on cake mix, so we bought a lot. We always purchased eggs in the 2- 1/2 dozen case.
We had two refrigerators and one freezer.
One day, my mother-in-law called to ask if my nieces could stay a few days with us. I said, “Sure”. I hung up the phone and realized I had left the babies unattended for too long. I went in the kitchen and found our youngest son loading eggs out of the crate into my youngest daughter's arms. They had opened all the cake mixes and dumped all of them into a bowl on the floor. There was cake mix everywhere. The babies had also dropped most of the eggs.
When I saw what was going on, I put both of them in the bath and cleaned them up. I put both of them on the couch and got the shop vac to clean up the mess in the kitchen. I was just getting started with that when a squad car pulled up in the yard with my four nieces in it. The Department of Social Services pulled in with them and we got an emergency D. S. S. certification. I explained the mess and got written up.
Regardless, the babies had fun and no one got hurt or sick.
What about you, do you have any interesting adventures with your kids?
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My child-bride Suzanne just told me about a new blog she just read called Creative Therapy, where a new mommy (her child is 15 weeks old) has started a series of posts regarding taking care of a newborn.
Wow, this takes me back nearly 30 years. It will be 30 years this coming 5 June. That is the day Suzanne, we call her Moogie now, and I became parents of an out in the world baby. Of course, we actually became parents approximately 40 weeks before.
We knew almost from the second of conception that Suzanne was pregnant. We just had the feeling. The feeling was followed up by Suzanne throwing up, a lot.
For most of the first trimester, Suzanne could not keep anything on her stomach. She threw up everything. She even blew chunks of steak out her nose during a cookout we were having. Thanks, Roger.
On one occasion, Suzanne became so dehydrated that she had to be sent to the emergency room straight from the doctors’ office to get IV fluids.
Suzanne and I had seen Halloween II back when we were dating and the killer, Michael Myers, kills one of his victims by draining all of their blood out of their body by using the IV tubing.
Suzanne’s first tank of “IV” ran out and blood began backing up the tube. She began to have a panic attack and I shut off the IV flow and went to get a nurse. When I went up to the nurses’ station, the nurse said, “Someone will be right there.”
I then grabbed the nurse by the arm and said, “NO, you will come now.” The security guard was standing right there and I turned to him and said, “You can arrest me in a minute, but right now if you get in my way, I will kill you.” (Note here that the guard was actually a friend of mine.) I drug the nurse by the arm to the room where Suzanne was. The security guard said nothing.
Fast forward to the many, many times we went to the OB/GYN floor at the hospital with Braxton Hicks contractions. Then, finally, the big day arrived. Suzanne passed the mucus plug while we were at work. We finished the day and she and I headed to the hospital in a very calm way.
Before this time, I was sure I was going to go nuts and not be able to find my car keys. I figured I would not be able to get the car started or it would run out of gas.
I am a former Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and was well trained in emergency child birth, but I figured this time would be different. I kept an OB Kit in each car.
I made sure that both cars were always full of gas and backed in the carport every night. I had multiple sets of keys to both cars made. We had a bag packed for the hospital in both cars.
We calmly drove towards the hospital. We passed Suzanne’s mother and sister and I turned the car around to tell them we were going to the hospital. Suzanne then said that we should stop and get a hamburger at Burger King because she would not be able to eat until after the baby was born. So, we stopped at Burger King and got two triple meat, triple cheese Whoppers. Our parents beat us to the hospital. They were not amused that we had stopped.
Day turned into night, night turned into day. Suzanne is very introverted. The very last thing she wants to do is to call attention to herself. Well, about an ten-thirty AM or so, a teaching doctor came in the birthing room and asked if we would mind if about thirty student nurses came in to watch the birth. I was just getting ready to say no when Suzanne said, “Sure let them all come on in.”
I was surprised to hear this from her, but childbirth does strange things. Was this the same woman who, just a few hours before, said that my parents were never married?
The student nurses were due in class at 11:30 AM. Several left to get to class on time. Many stayed. Jared popped out at 11:29 AM on his due date, 5 June 1986. He was going to hold out until exactly noon to make for perfect timing, but he gave in for the nurses. He always did like an audience.
Dr. Henry Hearn was the one to deliver this 8 pound 8 ounce bundle of all boy. He told me after the fact that he was very surprised that Suzanne, as small as she was, was able to birth such a chunk.
He further told me that he had an emergency team ready in the hall to come for an emergency C-section. In addition to that, he had a tool that looked very much like a clear toilet plunger to use to get the baby out.
Dr. Hearn said that Suzanne was the best Lamaze student he had ever seen. He said she did perfectly.
When Jared was born, we made sure he had the best of everything. He had name brand Pampers. He had bottle warmers. We had every type of contraption made for a baby. His crib was the best we could find. He had not one, but four different strollers. He had a crib at my parent’s house which was just up the hill from ours. Actually, he and his cousin Patrick shared that one.
We read everything we could get our hands on about being perfect parents. We heated his food to the recommended temperature. We made sure we had the best of everything for him. We thought we were the perfect parents when, in fact, we were amateurs.
I realized this just after our fifth baby was born. She was the fourth that we got to keep. Jesus needed Dorian Lee, our number three child.
When you are on your first child, you pack the entire house to go anyplace. If you are going to Grandma’s house for two hours, you take four completely loaded diaper bags, a portable crib, a play pen, multiple changes of clothes, and hundreds of diapers. Grandma’s house is in the back yard.
When you get ready to go to church with numbers four and five, Daddy sticks two diapers for number four in his left back pocket, two for number five in his right back pocket, one bottle for each baby in his front two pockets, and takes a couple of burp pads and out the door they go.
When the first born child is diapered, he wears top of the line Pampers. When the second child is born, she wears the second most expensive diapers, Huggies. When number four came along, we used the Walmart brand, Parent’s Choice. When number five came along, newspaper. Really, we used newspaper.
Well, only once. There was this place in Williamston, South Carolina, where we loved to go to get hot dogs. We called it “The Dump” because we would park our car by the dumpster and go in and order roller grill hot dogs. We would eat while parked at the dumpster, hence the name the Dump.
One day we were at the dump and our youngest child, Maggie, was standing on the front seat. Suzanne noticed something dripping down Maggie’s legs and I said, "It looks like chili.”
Suzanne sniffed and said, “That’s not chili.” We were so used to being able to go out without having to change our angel baby that neither of us had thought anything of leaving the house without any diapers or baby wipes.
I went into the store to see if they had any diapers. They did not. I bought some paper towel and the local newspaper. We had a roll of duct tape in the car. We fashioned a diaper out of newspaper and Duct Tape and headed home.
We would have died had this happened with the first child. We had to sterilize everything before he could touch it. By the time Maggie came along, the fifteen second rule applied.
What about you? Do you have any interesting baby stories you care to share? If so, drop us a line or make a comment on this blog.
This post is a re-post of one I made years ago. I am reposting it with a video as part of the new Throwback Thursday meme. Come and join us.
My father, Robert Bruce McClendon, Jr., was a proud grandfather. When my sister, Sandra, announced that she was expecting, he beamed with pride.
In 1985, his first grandchild, Patrick, was born. For some reason my father could not get it into his head that Patrick’s last name was not McClendon.
My sister and brother-in-law, along with Patrick, lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. From time to time they would come to Iva, South Carolina, for a visit. The time came for their first visit after Patrick was born.
My family owned the Western Auto Store in Iva, South Carolina, and we had one of those changeable letter signs that were popular in the 1980s. We changed the message about once a week. It was my job to change the message each week. We never had the same message on both sides of the sign. Well, almost never.
I usually ate breakfast at Waffle King No. 3. That morning my father came to the restaurant early and told me he wanted me to go to the store right away and get the changeable letter sign changed to say Welcome Patrick on both sides. The store was not due to open for over an hour but he wanted that sign out before daylight.
I drove to the store and located the correct letters. I had to change the sign in the cold December wind as the sun came up. Shortly after that, Papa Bruce arrived and worked on getting the store open while I went back to the restaurant to get another breakfast since I did not get to finish mine earlier. Papa Bruce paid for the new breakfast.
All morning long, Papa Bruce paced the sales floor. Whenever he spoke with an employee, he would say, “When Patrick gets here, he will straighten you out”. When my sister arrived, my father made sure that she and Al, her husband, had seen the sign.
If Papa Bruce could have arranged it, there would have been a ticker tape parade through the town. Papa took Patrick around the store showing him off to all the customers. Patrick helped Papa wait on customers, even though he was less than a month old. Papa Bruce took Patrick and showed him all the Christmas decorations. He was one proud Papa.
When my oldest son was a baby I discovered something. It seems that it is a bad idea to feed a baby straight out of the baby food jar. I learned that each time the spoon goes into the baby's mouth a little saliva is left on the spoon and that saliva goes into the baby food jar. Once in the baby food jar that saliva starts to digest the food in the jar. If the baby does not eat all the food and you put that jar in the refrigerator, then when you take the jar out the food will be all watery and gunky. That food in the jar is partially digested food. In other words, the food in the jar is puke. Yummy! And you thought baby food tasted bad the first time around. If we take this a step further, let's say that we are eating a big plate at Thanksgiving but we discover we just don't have enough room for all of it. So, we wrap our plate up in plastic wrap or aluminum foil and pop it in the fridge. There it sits with the plates of food that were left behind by our family and friends who were over for dinner. Later you pop in and look around inside the fridge to find your plate of puke amongst the other plates of puke left there by the others. Yum! This made me think, you see people cooking and notice they are tasting the food as they cook it. This is not a bad idea. But, unless they get a clean utensil every time they taste the food what we have is cooked puke. Doesn't that sound appetizing? So, cook Bob is in the kitchen making stew. He is sweating and wiping his hands and forehead on his apron. Then he takes out his spoon and tastes the stew. To make sure the spoon is clean for the next time he wipes it on his apron. This is the same apron he wiped his sweat with. So now, we have a bowl of puke and sweat stew. Invite the whole family over, we are going to eat. What really grosses me out is to go out to eat somewhere and see an employee in the bathroom. The employee will be wearing their apron into the stall with them. It will be dragging the floor. The person gets up off the toilet, wipes and then puts their apron back on. Hopefully the employee washes their hands before they return to work but as is often the case they don't. So, at best we have an apron that has been touched with hands that have just wiped their butt. At worst we have the same thing with the employee returning to work with unwashed hands. Don't get me started on those employees who work in a restaurant and have a cold. Once my family and I went through a drive thru and witnessed a cashier wiping her nose on her hand and then she reached down and wrapped our burger up and served it to us. We did not eat the burger. We did report it to the 800 number. One time we were at a famous chicken place. The cashier was emptying the trash cans and sweeping the floors when we walked in. She did not wash her hands but went back to the kitchen to get our food. We walked out. What gross encounters have you had like this?
back when we were dating and the killer, Michael Myers, kills one of his victims by draining all of their blood out of their body by using the IV tubing. 
in each car.
and headed home.