MO Mommy

like kickball, only different

2012-01-28T15:13:00.000-06:00

Emmett had our family's first soccer game last night, as the boys began an instructional soccer league this week. Cal, Abram & I went to watch, and Emmett had The Time Of His Life. Oh, he was so happy.

He'd wanted the whole family to come watch, but we convinced him to allow Willa & Brett to stay home because we cannot bring Willa out in public anymore as she is A MENACE TO SOCIETY. Willa also began gymnastics this week (all this as their Christmas gifts from Brett's parents... awesome!), but that most certainly deserves it's own post.

So. The soccer game. A few things:

-Emmett was AS excited about Abram getting to watch his game as he was about Calum watching.

-Calum was jumping out of seat to cheer Emmett on. I know he is just ITCHING to play (his first game is tomorrow), but he knows how to be a fan of his siblings (before Willa's gymnastics class, Cal got in her face and said, "I know you're going to be SO GOOD at this, Willa!"). That boy. Heart of gold.

At the start of the game, Emmett was placed in the center circle. Or maybe there's two center circles? I can't remember. Anyway, he was the guy from his team in the middle. Cal says to me, "Does Emmett get to kick the ball first?"

To which I replied something like, "Yes! Er, maybe. Hmm. I don't know. Maybe they toss a coin? Or maybe both teams try to kick the ball first?"

At this point, I realized three parents sitting near me were looking puzzled. So I shrugged & fessed up, "I have no idea how this game goes." I mean, I'm not the COACH for pete's sake. How am I supposed to know?

(Answer: Both teams try to kick the ball in the center at the start of the game.) (Or, I think that's what happened? At that moment I got distracted by my own complete ignorance & missed what actually happened.)

To balance out my ineptitude, I am heading out to a conference this week where I'll be presenting to an audience of 250 other professionals in my field. Here's something you may not know about me: I'm pretty good at public speaking. Or at least I don't suffer from a crippling fear of standing up in front of large groups and talking. In fact, I sort of like it? And it's not that it doesn't make me nervous, but being nervous is okay with me in these situations. Also, I've had a lot (too much, come to think of it) experience speaking in front of large (and occasionally hostile) (oooo! if I could tell you more here about my work I WOULD!) groups. It's one of those things that definitely gets easier with experience.

Here is my guide to public speaking, in five easy steps:

1. Prepare.
2. Make copious notes about what you will say. Study them.
3. Ditch the notes. Do not, no matter how tempting, use them during the actual presentation.
4. Expect to forget about saying a few important things. Be okay with that.
5. If you get nervous, remember that old rule: Imagine everyone in the audience as a muppet.

And now you know all my tips tips hot tips. It helps of course that I know my subject matter. In other words, I will not be presenting on SOCCER thank gawd.

signs i will be grocery shopping tonight

2012-01-25T16:10:00.000-06:00

We had white beans, plain noodles, & canned green beans for dinner last night. Calum gets very hungry at about 7:30.

Growing child: I'm so hungry! Can I have a pickle?

Me: We ran out of pickles hon, sorry.

Then can I have a banana?

You guys finished the bananas last Friday. Sorry again.

Then I'll have a piece of bread.

Uhhh... (giving toothy, sorry smile)... No bread?

(Child, not smiling back) Dang it! Why don't you buy FOOD anymore? I guess I'll have milk.

Hey, I've got this TASTY GLASS OF WATER OVER HERE...

Mississippi Lock & Dam 25

Next time I'll remember: FIRST grocery shopping, THEN eagle watching.

Nah, nevermind. Eagle watching def comes first.

what the world drinks

2012-01-24T04:00:00.005-06:00

I remember my first cup of coffee more clearly than I remember my last. I was 12. I had spent the night at my friend Lucy’s house. Lucy lived in a creaky, wood frame, 120-year-old home with butcher block counters and a screened-in porch that stretched over the whole front of the house. They didn’t have a microwave, which was odd even in 1989.

We’d stayed up late watching Beetlejuice for the eleventh time. We were in the kitchen the next morning in our pajamas & socks. Lucy was the youngest & the rest of her family had already left for the day. She poured a small pot of milk, heated it on the stove. She’d assumed I’d want t a cup of coffee without even asking. As the milk started to steam, but before it boiled & formed a nasty film, she pulled it off & poured two mugs half full with the warm milk. Then she added a heaping spoon of sugar and filled the mugs with coffee. Hot, black coffee.

I’d never felt more grown up.

Call it my gateway cup, but after that initiation into coffee-drinking, I’ve drank it nearly every morning since. My parents were always coffee drinkers. I spent many mornings slouched in a kitchen chair reading the paper (an actual paper, in the days before internet) with cups of coffee—my Dad’s, Mom’s, sisters’, brother’s, grandmother’s—scattered about the table. My Dad & I used to run together when I lived at home; we’d sit & drink a cup before weekend runs. Like we got to linger in that space between asleep & awake just a while longer, like the hot liquid suspended us there.

I’ve been out working all night. In fact, my day started yesterday at 4am, like I’m a damned farm animal. I worked all day, came home to tend children, the whole family went to bed, then I left again for work to conduct an overnight survey in the freezing cold. I just got home. It's 4am again, but now it’s too late/ too early to go to bed. The kids will be up soon. I’ll help them out the door, then I’ll crash for a few hours before starting another day.

What I’m thinking about is that cup of coffee I’ll have when I get up later. I’m yearning for it now but I know better to wait. I’ll probably wake up in a few hours totally confused. The day will seem impossible; my body won’t want to cooperate. But I know: I’ll put one foot in front of the other and everything will move forward. It’ll start with the coffee. I’ll hover over that percolator like a dog at the dinner table. The steam will pop from the machine, that platinum strand rising so delicately, so steadily stringing my days together.

overhead compartments

2012-01-20T19:59:00.001-06:00

It was not my favorite week. And by this I mean, “I spent time weeping in dark corners and thinking that maybe laughter is the best medicine but so is xanax and percoset and zoloft and crying.”

Brett was out of the country for work all week (in Cabo San Lucas, so do not feel sorry for him). I was entirely too sleep deprived. I’m still shamefully behind at work from being off for maternity leave. I didn’t get to run much and life has no meaning. (Er, not that last part.) So I did what any sane adult would do: I unraveled.

I took the boys ice skating for the first time. Another first this week: Cal lost a tooth!

What put me over the edge was not the intensity of the week, or doing it on my own, or even the sleep deprivation. It certainly wasn’t the children, for whom I have built a superhuman amount of patience for (and I don’t say that in a vain way. I’ve simply turned into a very patient person when it comes to children. I never meant for it to happen, it just did.).

But I reached a point on Wednesday night where I was so tired, so frustrated that I considered calling my family to simply cry into the phone. But I knew that would simply cause me to unravel worse. I considered calling my neighbor (who I adore and whose children are mostly grown) or my friend from work (who I also adore and whose children are grown), but that made me feel pathetic. And I knew what I needed more than anything was to get the children to bed and go to sleep myself. So that’s what I did.

"Dinner" time. Food optional.

I’ll tell you what got me to this point. And I’m telling you this because I want to be honest here, to record this, and maybe share a little bit of insight here for you and my future self. What sent me unraveling was that I needed sympathy that I was not getting. And it hurt my feelings.

It wasn’t necessarily Brett’s fault, and I certainly could have done better in communicating, i.e., ORDERING him to show me some pity. He was inaccessible in numerous ways and I felt that HE NEEDED TO KNOW I WAS SUFFERING. That small detail would have made all the difference.

I’m feeling much better and was recounting all this to my friend at work today. She gave me this little insight: men compartmentalize better than women. Generally speaking.

When I am away from the kids, even for short amounts of time to run or fetch groceries, I fret about how things are going at home. When Brett is away from home, even for long amounts of time while hanging out on a foreign beach, he can step out of that home-world and leave it behind. It’s not that he doesn’t care; his brain is simply not working the same way that mine does. It’s like he can simply shut down that part because he is not dealing with that world in the immediate sense. How? How does he do this?

I feel as though I am never fully present when I am away from the kids because my mind is fixed on what they might be doing, how things are going, and whether I’m going to return home to find that I've been replaced and now the house is successfully run by three stray cats.

keep on livin' the dream

2012-01-15T15:06:00.000-06:00

Calum taught us a song about Martin Luther King Jr. The lyrics were cute, simple, and about not judging by the color of one's skin. We said "great! thanks Cal!" and then Brett turned to me and said, "It's too bad they have to introduce the notion of race right off the bat when teaching about MLK. Seems like they should start with his basic philosophy on how to treat other people."

At which point I launched into an excited, lengthy dialog with myself on the topic.

As you already know, spending time outside with our children is a Top Priority, probably even higher than reading with our kids. But I don't talk about ecological problems around the kids. Why? Because they are still too young to grasp the complexity, much less the gravity, of such things. I want them to first connect with the outdoor world, to be excited by it, mystified, awed. I want them to not simply appreciate it, but affix their connection to the natural world as part of who they are, how they understand themselves as human beings. Now that's probably an overly complex way of stating it, but we start by understanding, by experiencing, by forming a connection on which we will base all our caring-about-it later.

I don't talk to them about things like habitat destruction, or stormwater management, or extinction. Not yet. I want to avoid introducing fear and shame into the equation. For now, we are simply building a relationship between them and the natural world, whether it's stick collecting or a camping trip. They love the outdoors without us even trying very hard.

There was an article trending this week, maybe you saw it? While it's certainly worth your three minutes to read the actual thing, the summary is this: All kids are ok. We simply have to assure them of this. It doesn't matter their quirks or abilities or talents. They need us to always know they are ok; just as they are, they are ok.

The article dealt with children, but I think adults are the same way. We all want reassurance that we're ok. Without it, we become fearful. We fear others might find out we're totally neurotic, or absolutely faking it, or angry or broken or ugly. Fearing others makes us angry, broken, and ugly. It can cause us, whole groups of us, to treat others as less than we are. It can cause us, whole groups of us, to collectively forget that we are all, simply, humans.

And sometimes being human is a real chore. There have been some recent news stories that speak directly to this: Rick Perry's "Strong" ad and the U.S. Marines peeing on corpses of Afghan men come to mind. Sometimes we believe power makes us righteous. Sometime we judge those we do not understand. Sometimes we are filled with hate and anger and we do shameful things, irreversible things that we must live with. That doesn't mean we are going to hell. We are destroyed by hate and we destroy with hate. That is hell.

My boys are interested in MLK, wondering why they are off school today and what's that all about? Don't get me wrong that I want to deny them their history lesson, because I am all in favor of them learning the full scope of their nation's history. But they are very young, and first I want them to learn about People. Because people? People are awesome. People are the most awesome part of being a person, if you ask me.

I want them to build friendships, to experience people around them without any shame or fear attached to race (or, for that matter, ability or orientation or gender). Emmett will describe another child in his class as, "She's the one who has the Dora blanket and she's dark?" I love this. There's no embarrassment or anxiety to describing her skin color, and in that way, he's innocently color blind. The color of skin means no more to him that her love for Dora. I think MLK would be thrilled.

Out of respect for history and those who lived it, and out of a desire to never repeat society's abhorrent mistakes, of course we all need a history lesson on the significance race and racial inequalities in America. There is a vast gray area between innocence and ignorance. But that's the beautiful thing about children: they are innocent of their histories. Inside that child's innocence: that's where we alter the course of history itself.

I fear that our children will face racial struggles far more formidable than our parents' generation ever did. Their struggles will involve whole nations across the globe and the finite nature of certain natural resources. I don't know what the solutions might be.

But here's a good place to start: empathy. Teach it. Practice it. It's elegantly simple. It's profoundly difficult.

second shift

2012-01-13T08:34:00.000-06:00

Ok. One more post on the daily schedule and then I promise to move on to another topic. You guys had some good questions about the evening part of our Monday-through-Fridays, and as Tessie says, it's good to preserve these things for posterity.

So here's how our evening routine generally goes--

--ACTUALLY, before I get into that, I feel like I should admit something. I feel sort of nervous about telling you the details of our daily schedule. Because I am (you should know) overly sensitive about what you might think. And all the comments were SO KIND from the last post, so I'm feeling more bold. If I could wrap you all up in a big ball of hugs, I would!

But I'm not feeling so VERY bold that I am no longer concerned that you might put all these details together and think, "Ugh, what awful parents! They only spend a few waking hours a day with their small children! Young kids should be wintering in their jammies all morning, lounging around and not having to rush out the door pre-dawn five days a week. Bad, bad mom!"

To which I would hang my head and say you are RIGHT. Absolutely, without hesitation, RIGHT. There are many first-world, middle-class sob stories (term credit: Tessie, again) we can tell. Yet this is our life. And for the most part, it's working just fine.--

My official work hours are 7am to 4pm, though there are many, many exceptions where things get shuffled around to earlier or later or weekend hours. Brett works 6am to 3pm some days, and others he works 7am to 4pm. We split drop-offs and pick-ups evenly. If I drop off, he picks up; vice versa.

One of us is always heading to pick up children by 4pm. The littles are fetched from the babysitter by 4:15; Emmett from preschool at 4:30; Calum from after-school care at 4:45. We are home by 5pm. We eat dinner, sometimes take baths, read books, do dishes/ laundry/ etc., and play games. The boys are REALLY into checkers and mancala these days, which is super fun because I HEART MANCALA as one of my favorite games. (Calum will be learning CHESS next week [thanks to a wonderful before-school child care worker], and I have, um, never played chess? So I will be learning a new trick along side him.)

I put Willa Mae to bed between 7- 7:30pm, depending on how much she is yelling at us (lately, I'm bolting up the stairs with her at 7:00 sharp). Brett puts the big boys down between 7:30- 8pm. I typically nurse Abram for an entire hour between 8-9pm, which is Brett's & my precious, brain-numbing hour of television & internet. I put Abram down and head to bed by 9:30 at the latest.

Minus an hour or so per night when I'm up with Abram, the house is quiet from 9:30pm to 4:30am.

I'd really like to know, what are the quiet hours in your home?

this is how we do it

2012-01-11T16:29:00.001-06:00

Take a little stroll with me.

It's monday night and tuesday is mine all mine with the kids, as Brett leaves for work by 4:30am two or three days per week. Only I have be in my truck leaving the work parking lot by 6:45am at the latest. So I will have to get up at... ok... let's work backward from start time.

6:45am. I'll need 10 minutes from Cal's school (last drop off locale) to get to work. 6:35. I can drop Emmett off at 6:30 at the earliest (when preschool opens). I can drop Willa and Abram off a little early (special arrangement with babysitter) at 6:20am. So I'll need all kids dressed, coated & shoed, and buckled in the car by 6:15am. Which means they need to be out of bed by 5:50. Which means I need to start nursing Abram at 5:30. Which means I need to be pumping one side by 5:10. Which means I need to be in the shower at 4:50am.

I'm good at this counting backward business.

Except I'll need an extra 10 minutes to make breakfasts/ get warmed milks (my children are only spoiled in certain ways and that's one). So that puts me at 4:40. I also will need to drink some coffee, load the van with backpacks, diaper bags, lunch boxes, breast pumps, coolers (4:30) and I'll leave myself an extra 10 minutes for unforseeables. 4:20. Or, maybe only 5 extra minutes for unforseeables. 4:25am. That's when I need to be up and moving.

Sometimes this type of thinking causes me to go paralyzed. So I think it through ONCE. Only once. I set the alarm and refuse to revisit the strategy.

These kids are troopers.

(And for the record, Brett does the same on his days and in his own way, so we've got the genuine teamwork thing going for us.)

the first rule of fight club

2012-01-07T12:19:00.001-06:00

I tell you what. I am teetering on the edge of being very overwhelmed. I am concentrating very hard on not going there.

So far it's working but dang me. I feel like my brakes are gonna burn out from this persistent effort to slow the flock DOWN all the time. Here's my basic strategy for not getting overwhelmed: don't talk about it, don't think about it, don't make too many lists, if you start listing & thinking too much, concentrate on NOT, and again don't talk about it. Also, don't talk about it.

And I'm only talking about it here to pass along that this is The Most Effective Strategy I've found yet. You can only do so much. Also, very few people have actual sympathy for a parent of four small children because YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF, etc., so best to keep it under wraps. Sympathy is at a premium these days, amiright?

I'm no behavioral psychologist and I don't mean to make gross generalizations about people (because, gross), but if I WERE to make gross generalizations, I'd say that people are habitual in their thoughts. We all know individuals who like to participate in recreational anger. There are paranoids who think it's always us against them, or know-it-alls who believe everyone outside their inner circle is a big dummy. Conversely, there are those lovely folks who are always calm, seemingly unflappable. There are those who take genuine interest, place confidence in others without appearing labored by it. Some of these habits are circumstantial, sure; we learn from our experiences and adjust our interactions with the world. I think, however, that we place too much emphasis on circumstance when it comes to thought patterns and not enough on simple habit.

I want to be in the habit of not getting overwhelmed. So I'm working on it.

In other news, it seems I cannot figure out how to accept a compliment without making it enough awkward to kill an elephant. I get frequent compliments on my purse, and that's nice, right? "Ooo, I like your bag!" people say, and I always without fail reply, "And it's MACHINE WASHABLE!" What? Who cares? I mean, OTHER THAN ME, because that's THE key feature of my purse, WHO CARES that it's machine washable?

Or this: "Your hair is so shiny; it looks nice." Which is terribly kind to say, especially since my hair style can usually be described as, "and I didn't brush my teeth either." Yet every time I reply with, "'Cause I didn't wash it today! It looks nicer when it's dirty!" Why? WHY? Gawd.

I do this all the time. Compliment my necklace and I'll tell you that I only paid six dollars! for it. Say you like the cookies I made and I'll tell you that they're good because I put three sticks of butter in them so they're really bad for you.

In short: please don't say anything nice to me because clearly I CANNOT HANDLE IT.

crucible

2011-12-30T17:01:00.000-06:00

Willa willa WILLA willa WILLA.
(deep breaths)
Willa.
How do I even begin this?

******
And that’s as far as I got on a post yesterday morning regarding our most recent Willa tribulations. It made me too glum to continue, and as it turns out, that’s just as well.

Willa has been a nightmare lately. It was getting the point where Brett & I were starting to feel, simply, defeated.

Then when I got home from work yesterday, I picked her up and noticed that she had thick bloody pus draining from her ear. HALLELUJAH. And after three treatments with antibiotic ear drops, she’s like a regular demented two-year-old again. As opposed to the two-year-old on a prolonged methamphetamine-induced-rage. She was laughing and dancing and smacking her brothers this morning, and I could have just squeezed the cantanker right out of her. (Though that’s not actually possible. I tried it already.)
So! As you were. Freak out, little monster.

take that, wednesday!

2011-12-28T06:57:00.002-06:00

It only took me 34 years, but today I finished my cereal at the same time I ran out of milk in the bowl, like I just won the game of breakfast.

Take THAT, wednesday.

festivus christmakkah trivia for judeo-christian pagan-ish children

2011-12-25T14:16:00.001-06:00

I'm claiming Christmas Success this year. We got this reaction this morning:

Brett & I happily lost Find Jesus and let Cal and Emmett flaunt their victory this morning. We had a last minute game change where we switched to team play, parents vs. children. This move probably averted Christmas Catastrophe if only one of the elder sons had won. Instead, they won TOGETHER. Phew. And for the record: we totally LET THEM WIN. They have lots of opportunities to learn how to be a good losers, but Christmas morning is not one of them. (But Brett & I still could have won. Let's be clear on that.)

Waiting to come downstairs this morning. (Willa still takes a bottle WHAT OF IT?)

Willa loves her new (old) rocking chair. Though not as much as she loves Abram's new train conductor overalls, size 6-12 months. (Is there NO standard sizing in children's clothes? Have children's clothing makers ever MET a 6 to 12 month old child? There's variation in sizes, but crimony, not THAT much.) So much for that Christmas dress she was going to wear today.

She's mad about something, but not the overalls. She's just mad at the world for existing without her permission.

The big boys got soccer shin guards and socks,which they are wearing all day today. Brett's parents have given them the awesomest gift of indoor soccer league registration. They are pretty pumped.

Christmas Eve has the potential to be The Longest Day Of A Child's Life. To pass the time, we played a trivia game, with a question every hour on the hour. (I stole this from a very creative co-worker.) I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it before yesterday, because it really helped to pass the time.

However, I had not wrapped A SINGLE GIFT before yesterday after lunch, at which point I frantically wrapped 46 presents in 90 minutes. So don't brag to ME about your procrastination. I WIN. And for my prize, I get this trashbag full of wadded up wrapping paper.

My baking assistants.

I made the trivia a team activity, so as long as one answered right, everyone got the prize. I'm definitely resurrecting this game for future Christmas Eves, but also for long winter days, and probably long car rides. The prizes were things like a cup of chocolate milk, a starburst, a puff of canned whip cream right into their mouths, and a piece of fruit from a giant box that came right from Produce Row (where they unload shipments off the river in the middle of the night and you can get it before distribution or cold storage).

Here's my questions & answers:

What's the name of the rabbit in the movie Frosty The Snowman?
Hocus Pocus

Hanukkah celebrates the reclaiming of the temple, when there was only enough oil for one night but it burned for how many?
eight nights

The grinch did not like Christmas at all, because he heart was WHAT?
two sizes too small

What do people mean when they say Jesus lives in your heart? Is there an actual Jesus in your heart?
No. It means that Jesus was all good and we have all that goodness inside us too.

What sound do the reindeer paws make on the roof in the song Up On The Rooftop?
click click click

The owl that hoots outside our house at night is looking for a girlfriend right now, and that's why he sings this time of year. What kind of owl is it?
Great horned owl

The winter solstice is the longest WHAT of the year?
night

The winner of Find Jesus is the person who him WHERE on Christmas morning?

In the nativity scene

10 cousins, all age 6 & under! Top row: Lily, Audrey, Jack, Daphne, Keenan. Bottom row: Abram, Calum, Emmett, Willa Mae, Charlie

spare the rod, spoil the-- eh, nevermind

2011-12-21T17:00:00.001-06:00

Here’s another benefit of having four children: they aren’t going to be spoiled.

Yay.

We are getting by with spending shamefully little this Christmas. Like, one lord a leaping, which we will split evenly amongst the children. Could be gruesome.

But let’s be real: we don’t exactly have to spend much to please this crowd. Calum made a driedel the other day and the three non-baby children played with it all evening. Have you ever played the driedel game? Not exactly a thrill a minute. My kids get SO EXCITED when I clean the toilets because BLUE POTTY WATER! The boys use teamwork and cooperation to turn the water green. So perhaps I’ll even clean the toilets on Christmas Eve. Boy oh boy. Someone stop me. I’m pulling muscles here reaching this new low.

Though I’m excited because I think Christmas will be just right; we’ll focus on playing with the kids, actually engaging with them, and not on all sorts of STUFF. I mean all that in the most cliché sort of way.

The boys helped me repaint an old rocking chair for Willa's present. And by "helped" I mean "triggered a severe nervous tic in which I keep sputtering, 'careful now! don't splatter it! careful!'"

But before you hate me for too much Christmas spirit, I will also share this: Calum has this silly notion that we will let him win Find Jesus just because he’s—I dunno—a kid? Or something? And it’s Christmas? I’m not sure if he’s simply naïve, or terribly overconfident, but he’s got literally no experience at this game. And the last 24 hours of Find Jesus can be straight up INTENSE, YO. So unless he’s got some secret Jesus Ninja Skillz he’s planning to unleash, I think his rookie year may not have the fairy tale ending he’s expecting. You need to be hardened, STEELED to Find Jesus in today’s Christmas tradition.

And Cal is only six. Because he turned six yesterday! (segue much?) And oh. He is such a great kid, you guys. He is sweet and helpful; he loves other kids and makes friends easily; he is much more tender-hearted than he tries to appear. He is loving school. I feel sincerely proud of everything he’s learning, and I know he’s not like The Smartest Kid In Kindergarten, but he works so hard. SO HARD. And the earnestness is enough to kill me. Or at least humble me. And maybe (MAYBE) make me concede a Find Jesus win this year. Six years old? This is my favorite age yet.

birthday party, cheese cake, jelly bean, boom

2011-12-13T07:46:00.001-06:00

I have a new nephew! You don't get to be the baby for long in this family. I hope my sister doesn't mind, because I cannot help myself but show him to you. He is Abram's new best bud, even if neither boy knows it yet.

Meet Keenan. Abram seems to like him.

We also threw our first ever kid's birthday party with friends. We've decided to have certain years where the kids can have parties, since we literally cannot afford presents AND parties for every birthday. So, turning 6 is the first party year. We had a swimming party at the Y. It was awesomeness.

Brett & I were discussing someone we mutually dislike. (Not YOU. Please! We love you!) We’ve decided to refer to this particular person as “It.” Which is enormously satisfying and I highly recommend it. I mean, I don’t highly recommend It (the person), but rather I recommend the practice of referring to people you dislike as “It.” Because it will make you feel laugh-y instead of irritated & mad (and I don’t mean It, the person, but rather “it” the practice, again). (Or forget the whole thing. It’s too confusing) (<--it, not the person). (Damn it.) (<-- both meaning appropriate there.) I think I need to lie down now.

If you’d really like to have a pick-up to your day, may I recommend filling your pockets with jelly beans? Sure fire.

Until you get to the part of the bag where you can no longer effectively avoid the black ones. And don’t EVEN TELL ME that you like the black ones. I knew someone who liked them once, and they were MENTALLY ILL. The sole purpose of black jelly beans is to remind you that life is not all sweet and beautiful, and eventually things will turn dark and bitter and then you die.

I discovered that I possess REAL, ACTUAL COURAGE. Here’s what happened: I watched my first episode of Walking Dead and I still got up to run in the dark early the next morning. COURAGE. I’m telling you. Me, throughout the whole run: "I do not believe in zombies... I do not believe in zombies..."

Nighttime walks with flashlights! Fun winter activity. Until you get eaten by a zombie.

I’ve gotten some requests for an update on Find Jesus 2011. OF COURSE we’re playing, sillies. Brett was a little slow to get in the spirit of things this year, but now we’re Finding Jesus all over the house. You know, he was just turned off by all the commercialism of Find Jesus. All the Find Jesus sponsors and ads; it really takes the Santa out of Santamas. But you can’t blame the ad industry for everything bad in the world. Without the ad industry, we wouldn’t have Mad Men or this this beautiful Lexus December To Remember.

pause, play

2011-12-08T19:50:00.001-06:00

We're 80% of our way to surviving my first week back to work. Turns out, if you do nothing for 8 weeks, you fall behind. But I'm not one to get stressed about work. Like, AT ALL. Sometimes I fake it just because I'm supposed to be stressed, right? To show that I'm busy and motivated? But inside, I'm not. Don't tell.

This was all Calum's idea.

I'm feeling pretty much the same way with parenting these days. It's nice, the whole feeling-calm thing. I know things will get easier with this routine in time. We'll work out the schedules. We'll put one foot in front of the other and find our cadence. I also know things will get harder. We'll get sick. Snow days and random school closures will throw wrenches in our very carefully, very precisely laid plans.

We'll deal.

I'm officially done with stressing. I could credit experience, but I think I've simply run out of energy for stress. Either that or all my nerve endings have died. Toss up.

And as if to counter everything I just said, I cried once (or twice) on the way home from work this week. But not stressful, fretful crying. More exhausted, resigned sort of crying. This schedule is tough. It's non-stop and unmerciful.The momentum must be maintained. Socks, shoes, coats, out the door. Never stop, never pause, or we'll all miss the next step and the dominoes will topple.

Yet there's nothing special about this week, and that's where the resignation comes. I've never much liked the whole discussion of work/home "balance," as if an ideal exists, as if we can achieve it if we could only steady ourselves better. There are only choices and there are consequences. This is our life. These are the choices we've made; these are the consequences.

On maternity leave, I was acutely aware of simply being with Abram. I soaked him up like the sun through the windows in February. I breathed him in, I smelled him and watched him sleep and rocked him until my shoulders ached.

I absorbed the comforts of home, of open days with only meals, errands, naps, chores to fill the time. People would call and ask, "Are you stir crazy yet?" And I was not, not in the least. I had no desire to get out. No drive to fill the time. If I could have slowed down even more, I would have. It was a pause that made me hunger for less. For less distractions, less commitments, less demands and fantasy ideals. Just time. That is all.

I dropped Abram off at the babysitter's for the first time on Monday morning. I didn't cry. Not then. But he looks SO like Emmett. I keep calling him by his brother's name automatically, like my brain can't stop going to baby Emmett. After leaving Abram (and Willa) at the babysitter's, the next stop was dropping Emmett at preschool. From the window, he waves and waves. He stands there until I've pulled around the corner, after I can no longer see him. And I have a flash of Abram. In a mere flash, I see my baby boy, waving happily, grown tall, wearing his football jersey tucked in to his pants and socks in his signature way.

Folks say it ad naseum, "They grow so fast!" We all hear it and sometimes-- many times-- it's aggravating. When you're stuck mid-morning in a slow motion day of tantrums and dirty bums, it's not exactly helpful.

If nothing else, returning to this life-- this impossibly fast, impossibly demanding routine of working with four children-- brings me closer to that realization.

They do. It does. So fast, indeed.

act fast! get the last of the herman cain jokes!

2011-12-03T13:41:00.000-06:00

I was so surprised to hear Herman Cain's announcement. Truly, shocking. I was SURE he had the last hidden immunity idol and was sticking around to participate in the special GOP episode of The Apprentice.

You guys! My housekeeper is doing SUCH a terrible job of cleaning the bathtubs. It's so inexcusable. I'm actually withholding her entire Christmas bonus and I am NOT looking forward to that conversation.

What? I don't have a housekeeper? OH. Huh. That explains a lot.

We had a house sparrow fly right in our front door the other day. I got it under a blanket and back outside fast, but not before it festively strewn its feathers all over the downstairs and smacked its head leaving a blood streak on the family room ceiling.

"It's all fun and games until a house sparrow smears blood on the ceiling."-- Chinese proverb

One advantage of having four small children is that someone is always screaming or breaking something. Oh wait. That's not an advantage.

Um. Ok. One advantage of having four small children is that I no longer fret over whether or not to manipulate them during the holidays by saying, "Santa's watching you!" I just say it over and over, all day long without a hint of scruples.

After almost six years of data collection, I have deduced there is no difference between waking up in the morning and getting punched in the face.

this post made from 100% natural disappointment

2011-11-30T19:19:00.000-06:00

Turns out, we squeezed another year of Christmas Humiliation out of these hokey costumes. They actually WANTED to do this. A note to future Calum: you requested the elf costume, so nobody's buying that whole, "aww, mom MADE me do it" baloney.

AllRecipes.com likes to send me meal suggestions. Today they sent me a recipe for "Pumpkin, Spinach and Feta Frittata," which I foolishly made. So, AllRecipes hates me, right?

"Wow, this soundtrack of babies crying and toddlers tantruming is SO RELAXING!" --says no one, ever.

I brought an old book case over to my sister today. I described it as "not heavy, just awkward," which is also my body type.

When your small children ask, "why is he called Santa Claus if he doesn't have any claws?" tell them that he does have claws and uses them on the bad kids who yell for their moms in the middle of the night.

There were a record number of antlered does killed during Missouri's deer season this year. On a related note, a record number of deer hunters taking Cialis were also loose in the woods, peeing on trees.

I return to work full-time on Monday. And to prove that this is ultimately good for society, I'll have you know that I composed this post while totally sober! True story.

fashion offensive

2011-11-22T13:38:00.000-06:00

I've been trying to photograph the topic of this post for weeks now. But Emmett is extremely camera-averse these days. So I do what all parents do in order to get what I want: I lie to him. I say, "I'm NOT taking your picture. I'm testing to see if your sister's screech can shatter my lens!" Snap, snap!

He thought of this ALL ON HIS OWN last night. He said, "I cannot listen to all this crying!," pulled his Dad's ear phones from his work bag, and wore them through the rest of dinner.

He's just afraid that being photographed will rob him of his fashion soul. Can you blame him? The kid has very... unique... fashion sensibilities. Or, to put it another way, he's got absolute zero style.

This is how he dresses every day: shirt tucked in (and when I pick him up from preschool, it's frequently tucked into his underpants), pants pulled up past his belly button, and pant legs tucked into his socks.

I have no idea why this started, but it's been his well-established routine for over a month now. I just hope it continues for a while, because stuff like this is the reason why we had kids.

who's the boss

2011-11-18T14:28:00.002-06:00

Oh, my darling daughter. She is so very, very bossy.

This week she has decided that I am not allowed to let my hair down. If I take my ponytail out, she points and demands-- LOUDLY--, "Hair BACK, Mommy! Hair baaaack!"

She's also discovered the power of alleging (at inconvenient and unfortunate times), "You're HURRING me!" (You're hurting me!) And it's easily intelligible, even by those not fluent in Toddlerese.

For examples, if I'm carrying the baby, trying to herd her and Emmett into Cal's school in the afternoon, but she wants me to carry her, she'll stand her ground and yell, "You're HURRING me, Mommy!" At which point I try my best to scoop her up, get on my way, and preferably disappear all together because-- standing in the school entrance getting scolded by my toddler for HURTING HER-- this is not my idea of a good time.

Or when I am trying to leave the grocery store, after indulging Willa's need to betow admiration on the store's selection of balloons for a good 8 minutes, and she does NOT want me to carry her. So I pick her up, kicking and screaming, "You're HURRING me, Mommy! You're hurrrrring meee!" and do the best dead sprint I can manage with a tantruming toddler and a cart of groceries. When what I really want is to turn INVISIBLE. But it seems that life with four young children makes that an absolute impossibility.

So I cut her hair short. I'm going for strength-reduction, Samson-style. Not really, but this gives me a good transition to show you pictures of her recently bobbed hair.

******

Here's my four babies, all 6-8 weeks of age. Can you find Abram?

I'll give you a hint by labeling the first picture (thanks Tracy and family for the adorable onesie!):

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Exhibit D:

the anti scholar

2011-11-14T18:46:00.001-06:00

Before it's too outdated to mention it, I'll tell you that we joined the million of Cardinal Nation downtown for the World Series Parade a few weeks back. Whoa, was it PACKED. There were people 20 and 30 deep, but there was this nice little void surrounding us the whole time. You know how we managed that? We brought along three behaviorally-challenged children.

We'd found a babysitter for Abram, which was fortunate because lordy, we were a train wreck. People were pushing to get AWAY from us. But I'm certain we provided some priceless pre-parade entertainment in the form of mini-MMA bouts.

Note Emmett's head gear. He insisted on wearing two wooly hats and a sweat band. He is also INSISTANT these days on tucking his shirt in (WAY in, and frequently into his underpants) and also tucking his pant legs into his socks. This topic definitely deserves it's own post.

******

Now I will shamelessly engage in a trivial anti-literacy rant!

Calum's school is hosting their Scholastic Book Fair this week. I've got a beef with the book fair.

First, and I doubt I need to point this out, but have you read your children's randomly selected library books lately? There's a 75% chance that the selected book is a piece of... um... crap (sorry). It seems that anyone can publish a children's book. (This is especially true of celebrities. It has somehow come to be that if you star in a movie, you are allowed to publish a book and call it Children's Literature.) Just because it's printed and bound doesn't make worthwhile.

So. Children's Literature: lots of great stuff, but even more crap (sorry). I really don't mind when I take my kids to the library and they check out endless Captain Underpants. We've gladly read all the Captain Underpants books, and also gladly returned them to the library. There's no earthly reason I would willingly BUY one of those books. I even feel this way about the Magic Tree House books; we read LOTS of them, but I don't care to purchase and waste valuable shelf space on a single one.

Back to the book fair! I frankly think that Scholastic's selection of books STINKS. And I GET all the stuff about Scholastic supporting the school. We've bought our fair share of books from the book clubs for this reason, and gifted books to the kids' schools via Scholastic, and generally support it, etc., etc.

Last Friday, Calum's school brought all the kids down to the book fair and had them create a wishlist. And you see, this is a problem. Because this morning Cal was over the moon that after school today, we would arrive with our wallets and purchase him the books on his list. And it's not even about the money (though I admit that we are sometimes Stingy to the point of being Not Very Fun). It's about the expectation. The precedent. Because next year, Emmett will expect the same. And also we will have to HOUSE all these craptastic (sorry) books until we can sneak them into a charity pile without being caught.

Here's how we're handling this: we will buy Calum one book, and we will let him choose one for Emmett. Anything beyond that, he has to buy with his own piggy bank savings. This limits the household increase in Crappy (sorry) Children's Books and also sets a precedent for next year which will be manageable.

It also raises our Parental Level of Stinginess to extreme.

beebs and bubs

2011-11-10T10:43:00.000-06:00

Abram is a champion nurser. And by that I mean I spend a lot of time nursing him. And also that he seems to be growing a lot. A LOT. On my list of things to do today includes pull out the 3-6 month size clothes. He is five weeks old.

When I sit down to nurse Abram, Willa Mae climbs up next to me and demands, "I heel a Beebrum now. Now Mommy. Now!" Roughly translated, this means that she would please like to hold Abram now, now mommy, now, thankyouverymuch.

The way she calls him "Beebrum" is so awesome that it instantly founded him a nickname. Beebs. You may or may not recall that Emmett similarly nicknamed his sister Bubba Hey way back when. Her nickname has certainly stuck, and she answers without hesitation to the name Bubs.

So there you have it: Beebs and Bubs. How long you think until Beebs outgrows Bubs and she's stuck with three bigger brothers?

one to grow on

2011-11-08T13:55:00.001-06:00

It seems I've waited too long between posts these days. My head's all log-jammed with things I wanted to say, things I've forgotten & can't seem to recollect, things that scoot in and out of my forebrain too quickly for me to put them in any coherent order.

So I'll start with this.

Willa turned two. She is a HANDFUL, you guys. Like, she needs a second mom. A handler, maybe? She is also a hoot and I enjoy her immensely, even if she makes my ear drums bleed.

She is a firecracker. A pistol (a pistola, as Brett calls her). She is short; still smaller at two than Cal & Emmett were at one.

She is rough, she is bossy, she is stubborn as a mule. She loves cats, airplanes, baseball. She tackles her brothers, she snuggles the baby, she feeds her brothers' action figures milk and crackers. She loves to talk to her grandparents on the phone, to color on her brother's drawings, to steal Abram's binkies.

She speaks in long-winded and indecipherable paragraphs. She dances wildly, running into things and tripping over herself. She sings. She pats me on the back. She looks at my old t-shirt and exclaims, "Oh Mommy! Pretty dress!"

She hears over and over again how fortunate she is to have three brothers. Three brothers! Everyone says, what a lucky girl!

But we are the lucky ones. And we know it.

moving right along

2011-10-27T15:32:00.001-05:00

I was driving along, fully tuned-out to all the noise and backseat corruption when I heard, "Mom, what does 'No Outlet' mean?" And I realized that my Calum is... how do I put this?... reading?

We're coasting along here, like the fourth baby is a cinch. And I can tell you, out of all four additions, this one has been the most seamless. The first child was jarring, naturally. And the second was a doubling of our diaper-soiling population. And the third suddenly thrust us into the world of zone defense. But the fourth? What's the big deal? It's just A BABY.

In short, Four Children: Highly Recommend.

I realize there are things I shouldn't say out loud, because we all know that moment I share with you that Abram is a very mellow little dude, he will turn on me. Then I'll be here faced with my forked-tongue offspring and resent the fact that you think I've got it easy.

But. This baby? He is what we call A Good Baby.

Life has been incredibly full lately. We had an epic weekend culminating in the big boys crossing the marathon finish with Brett. Brett's worked hard over the past months to help bring this event to our city, and worked even harder to support the race's charity organization TASK.

So in turn, I've worked hard as the behind-the-scenes support crew at home. We got to celebrate for both of us this weekend, attending concerts and fancy dinners and vodka-soaked post race parties.

I've had a lot on my mind lately. So much that instead of thinking through the big items on our plate, I'm fixated on the small stuff. Like Emmett's hair. Which I trimmed like never before. Suddenly he's such a boy. And I can't stop staring at him. It's a perfect distraction.

impossibilities

2011-10-17T13:47:00.003-05:00

Sometimes it seems impossible. When everyone is crying, needing, demanding something. When they all want to be physically touching me: this one giving the baby a "hug," which is more like a giant head butt; this one trying to sit on my lap, atop the baby, dangerously swinging a board book; and this one alternately cramming himself behind me and climbing up the back of the couch, precariously balanced above this fragile 9-pounds of human I'm trying to nurse.

They fight. They laugh hysterically. They dance violently, throwing themselves around our mosh pit of a living room. They have homework to read, speech therapy lessons to complete, invisible owies that need endless kisses and sympathy. They need their milk. They want a treat. They refuse to go to bed. I warm milk in small cups, I exhaustively refuse treats, I coax them to bed with a trail of stories and compromises. I nurse and swaddle and pacify, and still he fusses.

Sometimes the lack of sleep and frustration sit in my stomach, churning acidic, and I know that it cannot be done. This is impossible.

Sometimes it seems impossible. I sit and stare at his sleepy breathing, his round tummy doing all the work, rising and falling. I am hypnotized. The delicate velvet on his back, the staggering intricacies of his ears, his eyelashes, his fingernails; these things make me dizzy with their bantam grandness.

The oldest loves him instantly, completely, with a tenderness that shouldn't surprise me but does anyhow. I pull my silky-haired four-year-old on my lap and look into his dark chocolate eyes. He tells me about his day, about his bike riding and leaf collecting, this boy who looked so exactly like the baby, the memory so clear it feels like I woke up this morning to find him transformed, stretched out, thin and strong and speaking confidently. And the girl, suddenly so big, so fierce, so ridiculous and funny. She follows the big boys around, copying, learning, counting, pointing out letters, swinging the baseball bat. Her rate of change is double-time; each day she is saying something new, scouting the world in stumbles and discoveries.

I see them together, in a mere blink of stillness, and I take a picture so I can examine it. So I can count them, convince myself that there are, assuredly, FOUR of them. Four pregnancies. Four births. Four people of ours, so perfect and imperfect, so precisely who they are. It seems impossible.

I haven't really written about it here, or even talked about it much, but the end of this pregnancy was hard on me. The ventricular heart arrhythmia that came with my past two pregnancies ramped up to a degree that made me squirrelly. Hours, hours, would pass while I sustained a bigeminy rhythm, with every other heart beat being irregular. It's harmless, physically speaking. But it could drive you mad. I guess I didn't want to acknowledge how anxious I was, how exhausted. It's nearly faded now, as it did after Willa was born. And I realize now how relieved I am.

Saturday morning I ran four miles. The sky was clear blue and cool. I left all the kids behind with Brett and ran. Just ran. I breathed hard and my heart pounded. I felt like myself for the first time in a long while. I just wanted to move, to feel alive, whole, grateful. To feel like everything, anything is possible. Because it is. Because we are.

one inning at a time

2011-10-11T14:08:00.000-05:00

Just like THAT and this boy is a week old already. Yet somehow I feel like we just walked in the door from the hospital.

My tummy flipped today when I realized a whole week of my miniscule-sized maternity leave had already passed and DAMN IT. Next thing you know my baby Abram will be in kindergarten, and I'll be the only parent sobbing on the school steps, and I'll wonder if five babies wasn't such a bad idea... (I can say this all now because the baby is sleeping and it's daylight out. Another twelve hours from now, I'll be sweaty and sleepless and madly figuring when is the soonest I can schedule my own tubal ligation.)

Yesterday morning, Cal & I were waiting to walk to school and we had the following conversation:

Cal: Mom, when our new baby was born, I thought he might feel ugly. So I didn't want to touch him right at first. But then I tested it! I tested it, and he didn't feel ugly! I really like him.

Me: Yes. Newborns look a little funny sometimes. But they start to look more like real people after a few weeks.

Cal: But they ARE real people, Mom.

Washing their pumpkins.

It's so cliche, but this girl is suddenly SO BIG. Not just physically. She's also funny (HILARIOUSLY funny) and interesting. And capable of causing major trouble.

Our first week has been both better than expected and much, much harder. On one hand, newborn care comes back easily. On the other hand, all three older kids ran fevers this week, so good luck to you, little buddy.

Adjusting to this fourth child is going to take a while; I have a strong inkling it will take much longer than adjusting to the second or third.

The person who is struggling the most (besides ME, naturally) is Emmett. That roll-with-the-punches little fella is punching and kicking and (oh my GAWD) ARGUING. We're trying hard to give minimal acknowlegement to the negative stuff and praise the living daylights out of the positive stuff. So far: results are negligible.

My tough guy. This picture is a 9 days old, but it feels like AGES have passed. I mean, I was still PREGNANT, which seems impossible.

As Brett said this morning, we're gonna take it one inning at a time.

abram

2011-10-07T09:43:00.000-05:00

Abram Hamilton

10-4-2011, 12:50am

8 pounds, 6 ounces

20 inches

OH I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY!

Abram is here (OBV) and we are all home & doing well. His delivery was my most exciting one yet, but the end note is that he is perfect & healthy & here. I'll have to tell you about it sometime. (It involved an epinephrine shot! in the midst of labor! wild!)

Approx 20 seconds old. He made his entrance with gusto.

Our first night at home was pretty typical. I slept for about 4 hours, as Abram tooted and pooped the night away. My milk came in after 48 hours, so he is happily nursing away but suffering the consequences in his tiny tummy.

And then Calum woke up at 5am flipping out because, as he claimed over and over, "Every time I move my head it feels like a BOBBLE HEAD! My head is a BOBBLE HEAD!" Which I wish I were making up, but it's true. (He had a headache last night and I think he just had a little residual headache hangover... his head was NOT, in fact, a bobble head. Just FYI.)

I want to write and write and WRITE and tell you SO MUCH. But for lack of time, how about a ton of pictures?

And to all those who comment, "WOW. You've really got your hands full!" You're absolutely right.

My biggest & littlest. Calum is so sweet and caring to Abram. I sometimes forget what a tender hearted boy he is. I'm just so proud of him for how he is with the baby.

Miss Willa Mae is doing well. She is, not surprisingly, possessive of the baby and wants to direct his and my EVERY MOVE. But she's doing much better than expected. She's also obsessed with Abram's feet. Like, OBSESSED.

Cheesiest photo ever. But I love it. Might even frame it for his room.

Perfection.

I'm tired and a little overwhelmed, but it all pales in comparison to how incredibly grateful I feel right now. Welcome, welcome, my newest baby boy!

the great pumpkin 2011

2011-10-02T14:50:00.000-05:00

In lieu of a baby, I give you a pumpkin.

(In other words, I'm still gestating over here.)

October 2005

October 2006

October 2007

October 2008

October 2009

October 2010

October 2011

let's review

2011-09-28T20:56:00.000-05:00

Oooo nelly, do I have a treat for you!

But first let me state that I do not dress up my children. Like, EVER. Neither Cal nor Emmett has ever worn a tie or anything but sneakers & water shoes. The only suit coat they've ever worn is when imitating Lawrence Welk. I'm not saying this as some sort of proud judgement; I'm merely giving you the facts.

But check out Emmett's new kicks. He loves them. They are very YELLOW.

So when School Picture Day came around for Cal's kindergarten, I thought I should at least send him in something other than a t-shirt. I've also never gotten professional pictures taken of our kids (and really screwed up the little league team photo order earlier this summer), but splurged and purchased an $18 package.

When I dropped him at school, his top button was NOT buttoned. But he so rarely wears any shirt with buttons, that he thought I'd forgotten to button that one and rectified the situation. I find this photo SO FUNNY I cannot adequately express how pleased I am. Best $18 I've spent in a long time.

******

As far as I'm aware, I've never recommended a book on this blog (though I've been at this now for 5.5 YEARS so it's entirely possible and I don't remember). But I just finished the most amazing book I've read in a long time and I'm wondering if anyone else will PLEASE READ IT so we can talk about it?

It's The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht. The author is so young, she's practically a baby, but don't let that deter you. The writing is phenomenal, the kind you get carried away on and momentarily forget where or who you are or even what the story is about in the first place. It's sort of complicated and I'm glad I read it PRE-BABY instead of post (when I'm only capable of reading The Cat In The Hat or lit of comparible difficulty), but I'm seriously considering starting it over right away because I have the feeling I missed a lot of good stuff.

I was afraid she wasn't going to be able to tie things together at the end, but was mostly satisfied. It was tied up in an open-ended sort of way, and while sometimes I find that annoying and lazy of an author, in this book it was thoughtful and appropriate.

My only real criticism is that there should be a map on the inside cover, or something of that sort which you sometimes see in books that jump around geographically. It all takes place in former Yugoslavia/ Serbia/ Kosovo or roundabouts (she's from Belgrade), and she has high expectations of the reader to follow along geographically.

Anybody read it already?

This photo is irrelavent to the above topic.

******

I spent a whole day this week teaching seniors in high school which is not my typical occupation. It was great fun and I'm so glad I don't do it every day. All day I was astounded as I heard coherent sentences coming out my mouth while my mind was a monotonous but very loud "babybabybabybabybabyBABY." I can't explain how I'm even FUNCTIONING at this point because it's my only (sort of) complete thought.

But my POINT is: there appears to be an awesome trend amongst the high school boys to carry very girlie backpacks. I saw big-shouldered, pimply, deep-voiced 17-year-olds with Dora and Hello Kitty and some-pink-monkey-I-didn't-recognize backpacks. I am in favor of this trend.

******

And since I successfully wrote about THREE TOPICS that were not baby-related, I will reward myself with this last one.

I'm simultaneously very excited slash INSANE over wanting this critter OUT, and also thinking "holy shit! I've finally mastered the whole three children scenario and I should AVOID birthing this baby for as long as possible." Brett's been at a conference this week (it's IN TOWN, but he's not coming home at all unless I go into labor), so I've also been single-parenting it. Despite the inability to-- like-- tie my own shoes or keep my pants on if I bend down to pick up a toddler, I'm feeling pretty confident on the three-child front.

I was relaying this to a friend of mine who happens to be much wiser than me and she pointed out, "You should probably just drop that thought. It's a little late in the game for it seeing as how you ARE going to have four children. And soon."

field notes from pregnancy

2011-09-26T20:06:00.000-05:00

Well.

I'm still pregnant. In case you were wondering.

I'm one week from my due date, certifiably uncomfortable and mildly insane. I have a serious inclination that this baby is coming soon though, and not just because pregnancy is BOUND TO END at some point. I just really think things are going to start happening. I'm a closet optimist.

Want to know a big not-so-secret? I've gained 40 pounds this pregnancy. In fact, I've gained exactly 40 pounds with ALL FOUR of my pregnancies. How about that.

I'm still working of course. Because I don't know when to quit. Last week I worked a 50 hour week (that's long for me. I'm typically a 40 or MAYBE 45 hour/week kind of employee.)

I'm trying to do a little cardio here and there, mostly to tame my wildly irregular pregnant heartbeat. (It's the same odd thing I had during Willa's pregnancy, only more so. It tends to beat more irregular if my heartbeat is at resting for long periods.)

I'm sleeping approximately 4 to 5 broken hours a night. Five mornings last week, I got up between 2-3am to walk four miles and then fell back asleep for an hour before the kids woke and the day began. My brain is BUZZING, YO. Like, nesting has socked me straight in the cerebral cortex or whatevs.

And even though this is not my first rodeo, I still need to remind myself on an hourly basis these days that this will end in an actual BABY.

No one stays pregnant forever.

(right?)

three plus one

2011-09-22T20:13:00.001-05:00

I’m fond of saying “two kids isn’t twice as hard as one.” I say this frequently to folks who are having an additional child (as in, not their first). Mostly I say this because people said this to me and I thought it was nice. And it’s about 30% true. Or maybe only 20% true.

This has been running through my head in anticipation of The Fourth, and probably in attempt to squash my anxiety over HOW IN THE HELL WE’RE GOING TO MANAGE FOUR CHILDREN.

Ahem. So, I think there are lots of things that do not increase proportionally with additional children; these things do not double in difficulty when a second child is added. Then there are things that increase in remarkably direct proportion with each child. And then... THEN there are the things that increase exponentially with each child, in seemingly senseless and insurmountable proportions.

Let’s review some examples. Please feel free to add your own to any of the three categories.

Factors that do not increase proportionally to number of children added:
-Time and energy involved in food preparation.
-Baby supplies needed. (You don’t need to re-buy gear for a second child.)
-Anxiety over childcare arrangements. (You’ve already figured it out once.)

Factors that increase in direct proportion to number of children added:
-Childcare costs.
-Food costs.
-Dirty laundry.
-Sleep deprivation. (Questionable in this category. Might belong in the next one. Or maybe in the first one. Truly, it depends on the day you ask.)
-Difficulty in getting out and doing something, ANYTHING, without a child.

Factors that increase at inexplicable, exponential rates with each additional child:
-Chaos.
-Noise.
-Horrific state of bathrooms. (Might be especially true with boys? Or maybe mine just have really bad aim.)
-Failure to juggle schedules.

-Rate of aging.

the tale of two parents

2011-09-19T05:38:00.001-05:00

Brett spent the weekend on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, flying a corporate jet out to Philadelphia, eating four course meals, staying at the Westin, and getting VIP treatment at the Rock & Roll half marathon.

What else is there to do, when you're 38 weeks pregnant & your husband is half way across the country playing high society?

I left Willa Mae at home and went camping with my boys, naturally.

Emmett, the seasoned Walnut Smasher. He must have spent 3 hours smashing walnuts, cracking a whole TWO edible ones.

Off in the land of No Cell Service and Pit Toilets, down in the river valley where we did all sorts of big boy stuff like shoot bb guns and caught enough sunfish for an actual fish fry on Sunday afternoon. (FYI, it takes a lot of sunfish to make one meal.)

It was exhausting but wonderful to spend some quality time with my Big Boys before my attention is diverted to the newest young gun for the better part of a year. There's some old Mark Twain quote about how in 20 years you'll regret the things you DIDN'T do much more than the things you did.

They killed lots of tin cans & paper plates.

It was chilly and rainy most of the time, but the river was so peaceful and restorative, I am thinking I could really abandon our regular suburban life and live there all the time.

Though I'll still prefer to birth this baby in my climate controlled, big city hospital.

I was with friends of course and the nearest hospital was a 20 minute drive, just so you don't think I'm entirely unfit. And the bb gun activities were highly, securely, intimately supervised at all times, I PROMISE. I'm certain that these boys flinging around fish hooks is much more dangerous. It takes me a few days post-fishing to stop flinching.

Though I still sent Brett this (slightly disturbing yet undeniably hilarious) photo, with the message, "Don't worry hon. While you are away this weekend, I'm taking very good care of the kids, keeping them safe and sound."

It's a BB PISTOL not a glock. (But don't tell Calum that.)

who me? yes you! wasn't me! then who?

2011-09-14T04:20:00.009-05:00

I was packing Cal's lunch when I opened the package of oreos. The middle row of cookies were all dismantled, heads and tails shuffled about like a bad streak of cookie divorce. Then I saw that SOMEONE had dragged a finger through the icing layers and then stuck all the cookie layers back in.

I immediately knew the perpetrator. But let's go over the prime suspects anyway.

Calum would ask for a cookie and then piss and moan for 30 minutes when he was told "no." He would never-- at least not yet, not at this point in life-- dream of committing such a blatant act of cookie thievery. He simply doesn't have it in him (YET) (I'm too seasoned at this to deny the inevitability).

Willa Mae will probably be capable of such cookie vandalism soon, but lacks the physical coordination needed to climb pantry shelves while handling a package of cookies. Besides, she'd eat the whole deal, not swipe the icing and replace the cookies.

Also, her current thought process goes something like this: "I want cookie. No cookie? I WANT COOKIE. I am so mad at you. I want your shoe. I want MY shoe. Where is my shoe? There's the doggie! Hi doggie. Hi doggie! I am so mad! Peakaboo. Ha ha. That was funny. But also enraging. I'm so mad!"

So in about 30 seconds she's still pissed but is already 15 angry thoughts removed from the original flashpoint.

Which leaves the prime suspect.

This is classic Emmett MO. I don't recall precisely, but I'm certain this is what happened: Emmett asked for a cookie. I told him "no." He raised his eyebrows, bit his lower lip for a few seconds, and gave me a questionable look. As I busied myself with something else (probably making a healthy meal for my children), he eased his way over to the pantry, stepped inside, and shut the door behind him. Four minutes later, the crime is complete and he hops back over to his brother to continue their quest to destroy the house.

Emmett seems so EASY much of the time. But I'm beginning to realize it's largely because he's just getting away with it.

initially

2011-09-12T19:19:00.000-05:00

If I turn just so, and wear black, and hunch over, and hold an apple right in the line of focus for the camera, it ALMOST looks like I'm not very pregnant!

But oh. I am so so pregnant. I do think there is something TO this end-of-gestation uncomfortableness, as I'm really looking forward to labor & delivery. And getting my whole bladder back. Also: my rib cage.

T minus 3 weeks!

We've certainly decided on a first name. I'd be very surprised if we changed it now. And the last name was a cinch, naturally. But the middle name is giving us trouble.

We'd decided (sorta) on a middle name except that if we go with our current selection, this boy's initials will seriously suck. Our last name starts with an "S," and it's not like his initials will spell "ASS" or anything, but they'll refer to a devastating human disease.

How much does that matter? Enough to change our choice of middle name?

Other children's initials: WMS, ELS, CMS. All totally harmless.

summer knockout

2011-09-06T05:44:00.001-05:00

What's the heck, summer? It's like you dominated the first 11 badass rounds and then in the final 12th Labor Day round you dropped your hands and let yourself get KO-ed.

Boy cousins

Not that I'm complaining. Just making an observation. I fall in that category of folks who write a yearly profession of love to autumn. And this autumn we're all pressed for time to squeeze Annual Autumnal Activities into September, because we're under some false impression that we'll be staying home once the baby arrives. We won't. Because have you met our children? They'd burn the place down by noon on Saturday if we didn't clear the premises.

Cal is doing just fine, thankyouforasking, and is healing up at the speed of science fiction. (Though he did fall while climbing a tree yesterday and bust that knee wide open again. Ick.) Children are amazing. Within 36 hours, his wounds looked so much better that we threw medical advice in the toilet and let him swim in the lake on Saturday. Bacteria be damned.

But then summer caved and it was too chilly to hit the outdoor pool again. So we made our annual pilgrimage to the mini-train.

The boys loved it, as usual. But Willa nearly flipped her lid. That girl loves trains.

And just because I feel the need to point it out: I'm 36 weeks pregnant! And I'm starting to suspect this is going to end with an ACTUAL BABY.

on the DL for the season finale

2011-09-02T19:36:00.001-05:00

It's as if someone took time, in a long crisp strand of paper, and folded it just right so that we are skipping from one big event to another. We're all motion, no space between. No anticipation, no preparation, just constant happening.

Nearly every night this summer, every weekend morning & afternoon, every weekday dinner and weekend lunch has been spent like this:

We practically live at this place. Our municipal pool is a 3 block walk. Our routine is so fluid, there's hardly any thought, minimal effort, invested into the daily (and sometimes twice-a-day) trips to the pool.

I've also been working a lot. So has Brett. If we excel at one thing in marriage & parenting, it's juggling two working schedules & childcare arrangements. (Side note: this kids are now at THREE SEPARATE schools/ daycares! And it looks like this will be the routine for at least the next 2 years.) Brett travels; I work late; we toss the balls back & forth like pros. I don't mean it in a vain way; it's simply one of the few things we're good at.

We're also good at water sliding.

I was due out of work by 8pm Thursday night and SO looking forward to a little wind-down time. I'd gotten home after 10pm that week and I was already anticipating the other late nights ahead.

When I left work & checked my cell phone, I had that sinking feeling. 4 missed calls. 3 text messages from Brett. "Cal fell. Heading to the ER. Call asap."

He's ok.

But he took a dive into the nasty chip-seal asphalt in our neighborhood and got some serious lacerations. His palm has been glued back together and his knee was left unstitched because, in the ER doc's words, "there's not enough skin left to work with." She also said he'll be okay but he'll never be a Knee Model. I think I can live with that. I'd show you pictures but you might pass out. It's pretty gross.

The real bummer is that it's Labor Day Weekend. It's the last hurrah for outdoor swimming across the continent and Cal will be mostly sidelined.

But tonight we stayed home instead of packing dinner & heading out to the pool. Time slowed down and I had the realization that it's now SEPTEMBER. One month to the intro of The Other Brother Darryl (not his real name) and the start of another 18 years of wound irrigation and dermabond.

I'm stocking up on boxed wine.

technical difficulty

2011-08-24T08:05:00.000-05:00

One reason I’ve been blogging less is that I’m out of the habit. But mostly I’m out of the habit because I hate our computer. It’s not just a dinosaur, it’s a geriatric dinosaur. A mean, spiteful, geriatric dinosaur. Brett & I have been “planning” to replace it for about 3 years, and it’s turned more and more degenerate. If I never post again it will be because of this despicable machine. I've got all sorts of unposted photos, too, like this potentially great one if someone hadn't been picking his nose:

We attended some frontier league baseball, which is SO MUCH BETTER than MLB when you've got kids. It's cheap! There was a playground and a bounce house INSIDE THE STADIUM! There's not a single seat that's not on the field!

It was a HOT baseball game. When we left at 9pm, it was still 98 degrees.

But things have been happening! And if I don’t write them down here, well, they are lost forever.

For instance! My sister is also pregnant, due 2.5 months after me. And they found out they are also having a BOY! Two more boy cousins! Which prompted another reorganization of our household hall of fame:

Two new additions.

Emmett went off the diving board for the first time this week. Then he immediately followed up with the next thousand jumps. It’s all he wants to do anymore at the pool. He dances on the diving board, seemingly unaware than anyone (much less, EVERYONE) is watching him. Then closes his eyes tight before he flings himself off. The whole process is pretty awesome.

We seem to have adjusted very nicely to the major routine shift caused by Cal's new schooling. I dread routine changes like I dread working on this computer. But it's been remarkably painless. A major bonus is that my oldest nephew Jack also goes to the same school, and part of the new routine involves Cal & his cousin spending mornings together before school. It's awesome to have some regular time with our favorite Jack again.

Cal had his first experience in the after-school “adventure club” where he was the only kindergartner left and none of the big boys would play with him. When I picked him up, he was the saddest sight I’d seen in a long while. We had some good talks about what to do when that happens, and how it feels, and how he gonna be different when he’s the big kid in the room. It’s just LIFE, etc., etc., but I’m surprised at how badly I want him to NOT EXPERIENCE IT.

The rest of the school experience seems to be going very well. Cal's reported great details about recess and gym class. The other 95% of his days are a complete mystery.

day one

2011-08-16T19:49:00.000-05:00

Mothers crying on the first day of kindergarten is up there in the Top Ten Most Tired Cliches.

Today was Cal’s first day and I’m shocked-- SHOCKED!-- to report that there was only ONE parent observed crying at drop-off. It’s not the low number that shocks me, it’s that the crying parent was ME.

I wish I were exaggerating the lack of tears on the part of every other parent there, because other crying parents would have made me feel less freakish. And I was completely BLINDSIDED by the depth of emotion that came over me out of the clear blue.

I was calm and totally cool with the kindergarten thing! Like, TOTALLY COOL MAN. This boy of mine has attended all-day school since he was 11 weeks old for pete’s sake. He was so excited. We’d been 100% positive about school, and openly discussed how everyone is going to be excited AND scared on the first day.

Me, still all TOTALLY COOL. I'm blaming my emotional faceplant on 33 weeks of pregnancy hormones.

Walking to school. (No bus service in our district.)

What did me in (and it really did me in) was Cal’s own anxiety. We walked him to school. We took pictures. We got in the room, hung up his backpack, and then he turned to me and said “Mommy I don’t know what to do,” as red circles started forming around his eyes and that lower lip quivered JUST BARELY. I absorbed his nerves like a shock wave and I felt my own grip loosen.

I was so grateful to have Brett there that day. I gave Cal a hug and told Brett I’d meet him outside. I exited the building and cried like A Big Cry Baby. Which was exactly what I had not expected.

Cal appears to have done fine today, and I'm basing that on the fact that I found him in one piece at the end of the day. I've gotten exactly ZERO information about the day (every question is answered with, "I don't remember," and may be evidence that he was actually, for real brainwashed) which is enough to kill me KILL ME DEAD. Yet here I am, alive and blogging.

watch out public schools!

2011-08-16T04:41:00.001-05:00

Cal's off to kindergarten!*

*Photos not actually from Cal's entrance into kindergarten.

i'm going on a bender, who's with me?

2011-08-11T20:31:00.001-05:00

I had a moment last night where I felt good about myself. I was folding laundry after having fed & bathed the children, and after the week of single-parenting, and I felt like I was doing All Right. HOW ABOUT THAT?

Here's what I've been up to this week:

-Attending parent orientation for kindergarten. Whoa nelly. I left that school feeling PUMPED about kindergarten. I think I might be in love with Cal's teacher. It's totally platonic. I mean, she's a pregnant lady too. An AWESOME pregnant lady.

-Taking Cal (and tag-along Emmett) to his meet-the-teacher/ explore-the-school event. Tomorrow is Cal's LAST DAY OF PRESCHOOL.

FYI, this is the BEST TOY EVER.

-Preparing eight preschool teacher presents.

-Filling out inexcusably redundant school forms and buying school supplies. Cal would like to announce that he is the proud owner of one Star Wars lunch box.

-Momentarily losing my wallet and then finding it UNDER MY ARMPIT. Phew. That was a close one. I'd taken it out of my purse to pay for something, stuck under my arm, and then kept on searching aimlessly in my purse because I am going slap out of my mind.

-Taking Emmett to the doctor and deciding to (finally) treat his asthma with a preventative.

Emmett has spent too much of the past year doing THIS. It's time to try another approach. Also, the children's human anatomy book we got is a huge hit. Blood! Bones! Guts!

-Keeping the house from burning down and the children alive.

-Taking myself to the doctor, and since I'm giving myself heaps of credit here, I'll note that I also continued gestating.

-Doing this all as a single parent with Brett out-of-town while also showing up to that OTHER full-time job that pays actual DOLLARS.

I'd say that I'm earning myself some serious Goneness Privileges. SERIOUS. And I'd like to actually cash in this time, as opposed to every other time when I've downgraded my own Goneness Credits, resulting in me doing exactly NOTHING that isn't Work or Family in about... a century. In short: I'm considering going on a bender.

Willa Mae, going on a cherry tomato bender.

mostly airborne

2011-08-03T11:09:00.001-05:00

It's like we're trying to set a record this summer for Least Number Of Waking Hours Spent At Home. It's mostly great. Also exhausting. And a bit hot, but that's become straight up CLICHE over the past month.

We took an extended weekend trip down to The Lake (as it's known around here) last weekend. The children spent three days mostly airborne.

Willa is determined there is nothing her brothers can do that she can't. (Boy is she gonna be disappointed with how she has to pee in the potty.) She followed Calum and jumped off the dock/ side of the boat, and it's a good 2-3 feet drop down to the water. That girl worries me a bit.

She's what we refer to as "a pistol."

Emmett loves to run and jump in the pool, but he's decided that jumping into the water from heights such as the diving board or boat dock is not desirable. My initial reaction was to push him a bit; perhaps try to bribe him with ice cream or something. But then again it's a relief to have one child who THINKS about things before jumping in.

He's busy THINKING.

Emmett also didn't think that THIS looked like the most brilliant idea. Cal hopped right on and asked to go speedy.

Willa also insisted in riding one of THESE, which seemed like a great activity for a pair of 31-week-pregnant and 1.5-year-old gals.

And in case you've forgotten, Shark Boy (baby #4) is less than 9 weeks away! Or more! Or less! Who really knows?! The madness (otherwise known as nesting) is setting in. I've been up since 2am, at which time I mended holey stuffed animals, fussed over photos, went for a 4-mile walk, and began The List Of Things That Must Be Done before Shark Boy arrives. Things like "wash the floor" and "patch holes in wall" because the baby will seriously give a shit about that stuff.

When Brett woke up and came downstairs at 5am, I informed him of The List. He said, "I think I remember this from the other pregnancies," and his face dropped like I'd just aged him a decade with one sentence.

All four babies

four

2011-07-21T15:20:00.000-05:00

Our Emmett turned four yesterday. Four! I know what you're thinking: we've now spent more time with Emmett than we spent in high school. (What? That's not what you were thinking?)

We don't condone violence in this household. But if you bash Darth Vader's head with a light saber, tootsie rolls fall out! Lots and lots of tootsie rolls!

We had a wet & wild birthday party for him on Sunday, complete with his favorite cousins (i.e., all of them). There were kiddie pools, slides, sprinklers, squirt guns, 115 degree heat index, and even a pinata.

I attempted an ice cream cake at Emmett's suggestion and because I refused to spend $40 to purchase an actual one. And I discovered why ice cream cakes cost so much: you have to pay for a subzero room to put the damn thing together. It tasted good even though it was, certifiably, a Cake Wreck.

Happy with his cake wreck, so long as Kid Flash was running atop it.

Let me tell you a bit about this boy. He's a classic middle child. He's a complete stinker and totally gets away with it. Not unrelated, he's very self-sufficient. For example, when you tell him that no, he cannot have twenty crackers as requested, approximately 60 seconds later you will find him balanced dangerously on the third shelf of the pantry with his paws on the cracker box. Or if you come back 2 minutes later, you will find that he'd dumped out all the crackers on the table to share with his delighted siblings.

Also, when he goes in time out, he will sit there and yell, "Baby!" or "Stinky!" which are the most insulting words he can come up with. And you'll have to walk away because it is NOT funny. Not funny at all.

He's exceedingly aware of his role as part of a group-- a family, a classroom, a team. Last week, I sat with him as we watched Cal dive off the diving board (he's DIVING now!). I said to Emmett, "Let's go swimming over there and we can watch Cal from across the pool. Emmett turned to me and said, "No. 'Cause I don't want Dowlum (Calum) to be by his self."

I was planning my grocery trip last week and wanted Emmett to decide what type of cupcakes he wanted to bring to school. It shouldn't surprise me; it's classic Emmett, but he replied, "How 'bout yellow cupcakes. I want chocolate icing, but some of my friends will want vanilla. Can we make some of both?"

Sometimes, he makes me feel like my heart's gonna explode.

Emmett, 4. Baby brother, T minus 11 weeks.

get away

2011-07-18T15:58:00.000-05:00

I took the boys on an overnight fishing trip this weekend (we also threw a birthday party for Emmett, but more on that later… it was a full weekend) and I’m calling it a resounding success. Therefore I will pepper you with pictures.

I heeded some well-informed advice and started them on simple cane poles. OLD SCHOOL. No reels, just rods, a line, hook and worm. They caught on in no time and each caught a dozen or more fish.

It’s fun to get out with the big kids. On one hand, they seem so EASY. They can pee in the woods all on their own. They can sleep on their cots. They can stay up late, feed & water themselves, and follow simple instructions if they’re so inclined.

But on the other hand, they sure wore me out. It was HOT hot. And humid. And they can’t exactly bait their own hooks. Or remove their own fish. Or be entirely trusted when swinging a line & hook around. I had at least several moments of near panic when I paused to consider that in approximately 11 weeks, these two will represent the low maintenance half of my children.

We caught minnows in a trap. It provided a good hour of entertainment, trying to catch the minnows inside the trap.

Lunch time.

I tried to focus on how it was for them. Everything was new. Everything was exciting: the fish on hooks, the minnows in a trap, the ride on the back of a truck, the pooping in a privy. These boys get more fun as they grow up, and being exhausted frequently detracts from enjoying it. I wish it weren’t that way.

They LOVED this part.

I am looking forward to bringing up another little booger, to showing him everything for the first time, to discovering and re-discovering the whole wide world.
But this weekend, it was a treat to spend a little quality time with my big boys. Before we descend into chaos once again and have to find our way back out.

Collecting mussels.

look smart

2011-07-13T19:47:00.000-05:00

Calum is now in the habit of writing his first and last name on all his school work. More often than not, below his name he writes: “Dad Mom Emmett Willa.” It’s not just sweet. It’s a little bit heartbreaking.

I’ve got poison ivy for what is probably the eleven-thousandth time in my life. And it’s ironic only because last Friday I was detailing my recent poison ivy cases to a coworker and asserting that I’ve gotten poison ivy significantly less in the past two years. Now it’s on my arms, neck, in my ear, and also on my FACE, which is the second most annoying place to have it.

Like many modern parents of young girls, we’re conscious of how frequently we comment on Willa Mae’s appearance, especially relative to other characteristics. My personal tendency is to compliment people on how they look. Until recently, I’d never noticed that I do this significantly more with women/ girls than with boys. While I’ve got no problem saying someone looks nice, we’re also making a concerted effort to comment LESS on appearance—especially with regards to Willa—and find something else to praise. Brett’s most oft-used line these days: “Well, Willa, aren’t you looking SMART today!”

nobody's sidekick

2011-07-10T09:30:00.000-05:00

Emmett no longer wants to be Robin. He's suspected for a while that Robin might not be the boss of that dynamic duo, and he's now abandoned the boy wonder all together. He wants to be Flash. Guess it's time to add another sidekick brother to the mix.

His brow was all furrowed the other morning, obviously thinking hard over one of life's great quandaries. Then he asks me, "Mommy? Do we live in the tummy of the house?" I told him that "Yes, I suppose we do. But what does that make the back door?"

Now that he's an independent swimmer, he took The Deep End Test at our municipal pool last week. He swam all the way across and back with no assistance, only to have the manager say he was pretty young for the diving board and should try again in a few weeks. I felt so bad for him even though he's a very good sport about watching Cal and their buddy Owen jump off the diving board time after time after time. Sometimes it's just hard to be the little brother.

Making wishes-- VERY SINCERE WISHES-- before throwing pennies into a fountain.

Calum's getting dangerously close to actual literacy, spelling out whole words and frequently getting them correct... "Does S-T-R-E-E-T spell street?" It's remarkable to witness Emmett learn from his big brother. He's already writing not just his own name, but all our family member's names too. More often than not, he writes them in a perfect backward, mirror image.

And then there's this one, who doesn't just think she's as big as her brothers, she KNOWS it. She lines up at the diving board and we have to pry her off kicking and screaming. She runs with fearless abandon through the splash yard sprinklers. She climbs up the back of the couch and launches herself over the other side. She roars at dinosaurs, howls at firetrucks, and pops you right in the nose if you cross her.

americana

2011-07-06T06:55:00.001-05:00

We had enough fun on the Fourth to feel the full scourge of resentment toward July The Fifth. Which, seriously, shouldn’t be a real day at all, but something more like a February Saturday in July where all you do is count the minutes till you can go back to bed.

Willa Mae and I braved the carnival heat for about an hour, unlike the boys who closed the place down Friday night. At the time of this photo, it was 6pm, 98 degrees, and 95% humidity. That equals a heat index of HELL.

We did the following over the holiday weekend: swam a lot, bathed a little, rode carnival rides, failed to watch a parade since Willa was determined to be trampled by a horse, and spent lots of time with neighbors and friends playing baseball, throwing snap-its, and getting eaten by mosquitoes (except me... did you know I rarely get bit by mosquitoes? True story. Ticks, on the other other hand, LOVE me), and staying up way too late to watch fireworks.

POP QUIZ! Which boy had the most fun on the carnival rides?

I failed to take a single picture of our kids dressed in their red, white and blue, which is a sincere bummer for everybody because the boys were sporting their Walmart Special American flag tank tops and Willa allowed pigtails.

I plan on recreating the occasion just for photo’s sake so stay tuned for an overly patriotic picture of my kids around mid-August.

that's my blog and i'm writing on it

2011-06-29T09:13:00.000-05:00

The boys' most often dispute these days involves them staking claim to various objects they see such a motorcycles and shouting, "That's my motorcycle and I'm riding on it!" Which really p's off the other one who usually cries and screams about the unfairness of life and that he doesn't get to ride on that motorcycle-- which I don't think I really need to point out-- but NEITHER IS GOING TO RIDE ON IT ANYHOW. Yet the dispute continues daily, escalating to the point that every truck, police car, bike, squirrel, bird, and train is swiftly snatched up in a verbal frenzy of brotherly rivalry, "That's my squirrel and I'm riding on it!"

I wish I were making it up.

It's been a while but we were otherwise occupied at TEH BEACH. We had a (insert expletive here) fanstastic vacation, involving a whole week of nothing but swimming and getting sand ground into young scalps and various bodily crevices.

The morning before we left on our trip we discovered that the fridge had quit working, which was a bit of a stinker. But not as stinky as it would have been if we HADN'T discovered it, so there's that.

How about a dozen photos?

The Gulf. The lovely, lovely Gulf.

Champion hole digger team.

Sand surfing.

More proof that my children are not me: Cal can throw and catch a frisbee as good as most adults. Shamefully, I have never been able to figure out how to do either.

Sand castle sweatshop.

She's figured out how to swim independently with her floatie vest (i.e., she doesn't weeble-wobble over and nearly drown anymore).

Emmett is now swimming with no floatie at all! We finally broke his psychological-emotional attachment to that yellow foam block on his back. He's a real swimmer! (We're very proud.)

We had two highly successful, late night crab hunts.

First crab of the night.

(no words)

Lucky girl. Lucky boy.

Discovery.

Best buddies. (See also: troublemakers.)

The 14-hour roadtrip home involves a critical pilgrimage to Metropolis.

life, lately

2011-06-12T13:17:00.003-05:00

We haven't eaten a meal inside in 12 days. Yet somehow our kitchen table is still trashed every night? We have gnomes. It's the only reasonable assumption.

Cal graduated from preschool. He's in a pre-K program for the summer and this status upgrade has gone STRAIGHT to his ego. I pulled out the duplo lego blocks yesterday and he demanded that "those for PRESCHOOLERS. And I am NOT a preschooler. I need the big kid legos!"

His pre-K program is at the same school, so I have not yet begun the mourning process of his leaving. I know he's ready for kindergarten, etc., etc., but this place has been so great for him (and our family). Good thing we've got... um... a few more years of preschooling left.

Brett's been busily raising money for TASK, and has been more successful than we expected. He's got a few events coming up and I'm really proud of him giving time to this.

The boys got to walk down on the ball field with Cal's little league team before a Cardinals game. Brett got to go too, and I'm certain that the biggest boy of that crew was the MOST excited.

Emmett had a sudden epiphany just before walking onto the field that the world had gone ALL WRONG. From what I hear, he cried loud and dramatic through the whole experience. Brett's photos of Emmett generally look like this:

Which is terribly, awfully, inexcusably funny when you weren't the parent who had to resist wringing his darling little neck in front of 30,000 fans. I laughed little too hard when I saw the pictures at the end of the night. Apparently it was a little too early to find it that funny. But I think it's safe to laugh now.

Besides, the boy changed his perspective once the game started and had another great night at the ball park.

Cal finished up his little league season this weekend. We had such a great first experience with little league, much thanks to the kick ass coach we landed. It's an all parent volunteer league, and we lucked out with a parent who knew a thing or two about how to coach kids and a group of fellow parents who were there primarily for entertainment purposes. Because little league with pre-Ks is HIGHLY entertaining.

hairy

2011-06-09T07:57:00.001-05:00

Willa and I have an irreconcilable difference. You see, I have ONE girl and (soon-to-be) THREE boys. So-- even though I've never been much for these kinds of things-- it's critical that she fully cooperates in occasionally dressing up like a girl.

But this girlchild has LIMITS. She will not let me touch her hair. That one-time pigtail experience? Yeah. It looks like that may turn out to be, in fact, a ONE TIME thing. This week, she's escalated her resistance and every time she SEES a brush, preemptively yells, "Owie owie owie!"

No pig tails. No bows. No headbands. Come to think of it, she advises that you don't look directly at her hair, lest she TURN YOU TO STONE.

I could handle this except that my friend Marcella (who also has two boys and girl, and who I first met in high school down in rural Texas near where she lived, and then didn't see for 13 years, and then randomly bumped into at the park one afternoon to find that she married a boy from St. Louis and they were living two blocks away. How's THAT for small world?) made Willa some beautiful hair clips (called fascinators) that I am dying for her to wear.

And now to make matters worse, Marcella has opened an etsy shop with the most artistic, affordable, and durable (Willa's thrown hers on the floor 300 times and they still look new) hair fascinators you've ever seen. So if MY girl is unreasonably opposed to beautiful hair accessories (hey, everyone needs a cause), then at least I can appreciate all your beautiful girl babes looking elegant.

Marcella's very cooperative model, Heidi
(photo used with permission)

Go. Look. Buy. You can thank me later.

little league wish list

2011-06-01T15:27:00.001-05:00

It was a simple task and I utterly botched it.

I took Calum to get his little league team picture a few weeks ago. We had to get to the picture, then a game, and I tried to squeeze in a grocery trip to get fruit salad stuff for an afternoon family gathering, all before 9am. We were not running on time.

We have never gotten our children’s pictures taken professionally. We’d invested in a good camera, decided we liked candid shots, and tossed the idea of spending money on portraits. But we wanted to buy the team picture for Cal. I figured it was worth $20 (I mean, how much more could they charge?) for a picture I could have easily taken myself.

When Cal & I arrived at picture day, it was absolute chaos. There were teams of kids EVERYWHERE. Not typically phased by chaos, I headed to the order booth. When I confronted the menu of items for purchase, things went south fast. The order form didn’t have a box to check for “Team Photo.” Instead, I had to choose between “ESPN COMMEMORATIVE PACKAGE! Includes faux magazine cover of your Little Star!...” or “ALL STAR VALUE PACKAGE! Includes team plaque and 12 pack baseball cards of your Little Star!” or 25 other seemingly identical and similarly exclamatory options that didn't seem to involve pictures, but rather souvenirs.

I’m perfectly fond of my Little Star! but I frankly don’t have use for a faux magazine cover with his (adorable!) photo on it. I just wanted the damn team picture. And why did the menu and order form involve SO MANY CAPS?! It was distracting. The words and letters swam together. I couldn’t see straight and briefly considered checking the ALL STAR VALUE PACKAGE! box because it had the world VALUE in it even though it cost $65 (“$64.99!”) and I don’t like wall plaques.

Also, did I mention we were late? And the team was waiting? Because they were. So I did what any neglectful mother would do: I walked away and didn’t buy a thing. I took my own child’s photo. I was filled with regret when all the other kids got their team photos delivered to them at this week’s game. Sometimes I am so practical that I am also no fun. On my wish list: more impracticality.

It’s was a weird week. A storm knocked out power for more than a day. Then we lost water for a short time. Also, our street was torn out, excavated through the subsurface (see also: broken water main), and we’re awaiting the city contractor’s return to put in a new street. Lucky for him (slash her?), the contractor is obviously LOW STRESS and not particularly concerned about putting in the new street anytime soon. We haven’t been able to get to our driveway for over two weeks, so we park a block east and walk.

It all sounds terribly more inconvenient than we’ve found it, but our wish list now includes a pony and wagon.

Note the pigtails.

magicicadas

2011-05-25T08:54:00.002-05:00

Everyone seems to like strawberries. We eat a lot of them when they’re in season, like right now. Do you ever eat a strawberry and imagine how it came to be? Years upon thousands of years, strawberry plants pollinated, fruits eaten, foliage attacked by parasites and pests, surviving, relying on-- mutualitistic with-- a range of critters, ever-changing, ever slowly, to evolve into this: a strawberry. And in this passing instant, someone planted and cultivated, picked and packaged, to bring this to you: a strawberry. And you eat it and pull from it manganese and vitamin C, binding to enzymes, fueling your metabolic functions, ensuring your own daily survival, all from this: a strawberry.

Everyone likes strawberries. It’s a easy to marvel and reflect on the complexity of a strawberry.

Cicadas emerged this weekend in awesome numbers, just as I'd hoped. The piles of exoskeletons at the base of my parents’ trees were 2 inches thick. I know he doesn’t entirely appreciate it (and it’s probably damn near impossible to entirely appreciate), but I explained to Cal that these insects are more than TWICE his age, even though their above-ground life is very short. The next time they emerge like this we'll be at his high school graduation party.

What’s so immediately and engrossingly fascinating is what we don’t understand about how they came to be this way. Why periodical? How can a longer life span possibly be beneficial when reproduction happens only ONCE, at the end of that cycle? And this evolves not once, but numerous times? HOW?

She has a bug on her forehead. Just to freak you out.

There are theories, by much smarter and more studious people. Theories, easy to understand, about density and predator avoidance accounting for the large, synchronized emergence of multiple species (there are four 13-year species in our current emergence). And there are theories, much harder to understand, addressing that mysteriously long developmental stage, outlasting the inevitable predator boom that follows a “resource pulse” of large synchronized emergence; theories about longer developmental stages arising (from annual to 3, 7, 13, 17-year life cycles) as a result of outlasting competitors.

What we DO know is mind-blowing, it’s astounding to imagine what we don’t. While this is true of just about every living thing (ponder the evolution of the EYE for a while and you’ll get vertigo), I find this most captivating with periodical cicadas. And I guess that’s why the study of evolution, with all its ugly meanness, all it’s tedious patience and entagled sequels, is for many, a nearly religious experience.

To be unaware of your own species impossible complexity, of your simultaneous significance and insignificance, to live without thought of your grandchildren, to live as if the future is wholly irrelevant to you in particular… such is the life of a cicada.

Our first exoskeleton collector jar was too small, so we had to upgrade...

But WE, you and I, can come to know and appeciate these things. It’s a value judgment, saying that our reveling in the complexity of nature-- most emphatically including the smallest and most measly things-- not only matters, but is the most profound part of being human. Being gloriously nerdy, studying and declaring the wonder of such things, is an exceedingly worthwhile task for a human being.

fun fact friday (slash thursday)

2011-05-19T18:13:00.001-05:00

The garden is finally all planted. No thanks to the boys who completely lost interest in the project after the dirt-flinging (manual tilling) project phase was completed. Willa helped me with the actual planting by keeping my trowel clean via licking it every time I put it down.

NOT MY GARDEN. This was part of that prairie project I mentioned in my last post (see Cal, or part of him, lower center). It was the definition of "organized chaos."

We spent a few moments this week mourning three dearly departed Rolly Polys (Polies?). But the grief quickly passed when they were replaced by eight newly adopted ones.

The cicadas are coming! The cicadas are coming! I got pictures on Wednesday of some newly emerged nymphs from about 30 miles south. We’re in the calm before the chorus. I hope it’s epic.

We played hooky this afternoon and took the boys to a daytime baseball game. Cal’s favorite player, Matt Holiday, wasn’t in the game. We seriously considered lying and telling him that Holiday was out in left field. But then someday he’d look back and say, “I remember going to watch the Cardinals with Matt Holiday out in left…” and we’d have to interject, “Yeah. Um. About that game…”

It was raining, so I went to the baseball game and all's I got was this cruddy iphone pic.

Have you seen these McDonalds commercials: "Happy Meals are happiness in a box”? My kids love happy meals as much as the next Child Of The West, but I have to laugh because it’s just a perfect combination of salt + fat + toy in the box, amiright? Or maybe that magic combo really DOES equal happiness.

think tank

2011-05-16T18:37:00.001-05:00

I’ve written similar posts to this in the past year, which I’d forgotten about until I looked back and was faced with the evidence: I tend to repeat myself.

It was a cold and dreary spring weekend. The sky persistently spit rain for 48 hours. We still got out and ran with Cal in his first road race (1 mile! He ran his little heart out. We were very proud). Emmett was feverish and wheezy, but we dragged him along anyway. 50 degree rain doesn’t actually CAUSE sickness; GERMS cause sickness. Right?

The crud weather didn’t keep us home thought. We rode carnival rides at the nearby parish picnic, partyied with some friends at their house Saturday night, swam at the indoor pool, and used the last of our passes at the open-to-the-public bounce house. All weekend, I was reminded and again astounded at how my boys now seem to share a brain. It’s hard to imagine fun family outings without those two attached at the hip (and the brain). It reminds me of something that dog people say about getting two puppies at once: that they’ll bond more to each other than they will to the owner.

Today I sprung Cal from preschool at lunch time and took him along to a (kid-friendly, on school grounds) prairie reconstuction project. (Trying to up my work-related morale... and speaking of which, thank you for the kind and supportive comments on that last post. Blogger deleted most of them when it crashed, but not before I read them and took them to heart.) As is always the case with Cal, he's a completely different kid one-on-one. It was great fun and I'm hoping to do something similar with just Emmett soon.

But unlike Cal, Emmett is pretty much the same kid whether he's one-on-one or in a big group. Which makes me suspect Emmett's actually controlling the shared brain of this brotherly pair.

red level

2011-05-11T16:21:00.001-05:00

My frustration level has been elevated to red. I realize some of this may be… um… pregnancy related. But I am so entirely aggravated by the inflexible, unforgiving, crushing stress (dramatic much?) of our two-working-parent lifestyle.

For a long time, I’ve thought that one great benefit of working is being forced to think about something other than home, than kids, than meals and diapers and discipline and bathtime. Keeping those other, critical thinking areas of your brain alive and active takes effort, just like anything else. While I think most parents do fine in this regard, I fear I'd allow certain parts of my brain to atrophy if I didn't work. Most days, I’ve loved my job but hated working (the schedule, the inflexibility [again], and sometimes physical nature of the work itself).

And lately (more like an extended lately, like for months, like it seems as though this will never pass) I dread the other world of responsibilities, the decisions, the exhaustion, the feigned enthusiasm. I fear that I’m becoming resentful, or worse: cynical. It’s impossible (IMPOSSIBLE!) to squeeze in one more small thing, one more hiccup in the schedule, one more seemingly trivial demand on the day.

So you can see that I’m a bright, warm ray of effing SUNSHINE lately. It’ll pass. Eventually.

Here’s a few more affable items of note:

-We made a countdown to vacation.

Emmett's plans for vacation include picking his nose.

-Willa is an excellently varied eater. She prefers non-child foods, just like Cal did at the same age. I realize this phase will not last and soon she’ll survive on cheese, fruit and yogurt. But for now her favorites include Indian, Chinese, and pulled pork smothered in bbq sauce.

-The boys have developed a deep and affectionate relationship with a rolly poly (a pill bug) which they’ve kept in a jar with soil & water since Saturday. Today I accidentally forgot it came along to drop the kids off at preschool, and I left it baking inside my hot car all day (90 degrees out, parked in the sun). It is still ALIVE? Show some respect to the Rolly Poly, yo.

-At swim lessons last night, the teacher was reviewing pool safety. She asked, “When should you NEVER go in a pool?” (ANSWER: When there’s no adult around.) And Emmett answered, “When there’s a SHARK or a DOLPHIN swimming in it!”

-From the looks of all the pictures I've taken in the past week, my children no longer go about fully clothed.

-We did some of THIS last Saturday:

…which ended in the children bathing in the hose. In the front yard. Of course.

outnumbered

2011-05-03T16:40:00.001-05:00

It appears that our fourth child is a BOY!

We're relieved and grateful that he looks healthy and on track. And of course we're very excited.

As for Willa? Don't worry about her. She's custom made lone-girl-with-three-brothers material. Worry more about this child who will have her as a big sister. He won't have to make a single decision for himself until she moves out. Lucky boy.

it's in the water

2011-05-02T11:31:00.002-05:00

I was only partly joking when I said that the royal wedding made me feel alienated. Because not only did I NOT care, but realizing how much so many people DID care was isolating.

It’s the same feeling I got when I read that the average American woman spends $100/ month on hair, cosmetics, nails, etc. This is unfathomable to me, and I don’t mean it in any judgmental way. It leaves me with a vague sense of being out-of-step with the rest of us, that I’m not trying hard enough. Like I’m not relating in a way I should relate, or at least not having as much fun as everybody else.

I might even feel slightly resentful-- that against my own will I have several hundred neurons devoted to long-term remembrance of what some Catherine Middleton looked like on her wedding day-- but it’s not a lasting sentiment and I’ve spent more neurons on similarly wasteful purposes like remembering lyrics to Christina Aguilera hits.

Instead, I spent about a thousand times MORE of Friday’s waking hours working outdoors, staring at the forest floor and pondering the impending emergence of the 13-year cicada brood due out in the next three weeks. (After scouring old geezer biologist field notes from the past 50 years, I think we’ll see peak nymph emergence ‘round these parts near May 20, and the singing should be loud and clear by May 25.)

I’ve been reading a lot more than writing. I have a world news addiction that has deepened since acquiring an iphone, but I find solace in reading, meaningful relationships in both fiction and non-fiction. If reading has done anything for me in life, it has moved me from a depressive reality (the world is bad) to a tragic reality (the world is complex). Which is a probably oversimplified way of saying that nothing is simple, but which is an fundamentally hopeful, redemptive view.

David Foster Wallace, my all time most beloved author, gave the commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. He began with the story of two young fish swimming in a stream. As the two swim along, an older fish passes by and hollers, “Morning, boys! How’s the water?” To which the young pair look at each other and ask, “What’s water?”

The idea of the story is that the ultimate education is to learn how to think, how to place your own thoughts and perspectives within a context, how to construct an entire worldview by seeing, always and perpetually, the social, historical, and personal in every occasion, in every individual, in every event. To cultivate, as C. Wright Mills coined it, our sociological imagination. This-- our way of thinking-- is the water in which all of humanity swims. So long as we SEE it, have understanding of it, then we can choose compassion, we can choose solidarity, we can choose to embrace a shared humanity even and especially in the face of our ugliest, most sinister forms.

While I would rarely place confidence in violence as a path toward justice, the death of bin Laden is a rare moment of resulting relief, which was my first reaction. A police captain acquaintance of mine memorably compared justice to sausage: “We all like it, but we don’t enjoy watching how it’s made.” My second reaction was hopeful, cautious, that we as a nation and a force of allies, can experience this victory with dignity. The quest for a democratic world, for Kantian “perpetual peace”, may ultimately tragic in nature as well, fraught with pitfalls, frustrations, contradictions. It cannot be fully or ultimately realized, but we cannot abandon a project so noble.

To have peace among nations, you must first have peace among people. Today, celebrate if you must by acknowledging and embracing our collective humanity, choosing to believe in its grand and beautiful possibilities.

if i wait any longer to post these pictures, they'll be doomed to irrelevancy

2011-04-28T15:56:00.000-05:00

I miss the computer. We've been spending lots of time apart and I think it misses me too. It's all quiet and sulky over here in the corner.

So. We did the Easter thing, in our own secular humanist, spring-time-rebirthy, etc, sort of way (the etc. is important). It was fun.

Dying eggs with these two without splashing dye on every stainable surface within a 20 foot radius is A Notable Achievement. It's one of those activities I seriously consider instructing them that they can only watch me do it. But my Little Voice tells me that's wrong. Or at least that they'll hang it over my head in another twenty years.

Easter baskets! I made them! It only took me FIVE YEARS OF MOTHERHOOD to do so! Contents: Coloring book, markers, toothbrush, chapstick, bandaids, and a two-pack of chocolate Peeps (marshmallows, coated in sugar, dipped in chocolate... now THERE'S the Easter spirit!)

Willa didn't even fake enthusiasm for the egg hunt. She was busy. Yes, she still takes a bottle. But it's so convenient because I never even packed up the bottles, and now I won't even bother. I'm all about efficiency over here.

Willa: what're they hollerin' about this time?

One benefit of not writing much is that time flies and this coming Tuesday is our ultrasound! And we should hopefully get a healthy baby scan and find out the gender. And then of course we'll tell the whole world. Because that's how we roll.

I strongly, STRONGLY suspect it is a boy. So does Brett. I tend to be wrong (like, just about ALL the time) in baby gender guessing. Though that also means I'm bound to be right soon; it's 50/50, so odds are with me (not mathematically, but in my own mind). Neither of us have any opinion whatsoever, e.g., wanting one or the other. More than the other four of us, the outcome will dramatically color the childhood of Willa Mae. Three brothers, or a little sister? It seems a very different story one way or the other.

Just because we're heathery over here doesn't mean we miss out on dressing our girl up for the occasion.

speaking of which

2011-04-21T19:58:00.000-05:00

Good to know that most of you are not grossed out by ticks. So would you like to hear my story about the time I fished a bot fly larvae the size of my pinkie finger out of the cheeky backside of my friend upon returning from a far away land? You would, wouldn’t you? Parasite stories are SO FUN. And I’ve got some really great ones, mostly about OTHER PEOPLE’S parasites (the best kind). But those are not my stories to tell.

But speaking of larvae! I can feel the baby move on a daily basis now. I’m 16.5 weeks and started feeling it about a week ago. Now I eat, sit down, and 5 minutes later it’s all pow-pow-pow! I feel like pumping my fist in the air. Way cool.

Speaking of pow! We frequently describe Willa as The Most Assertive Baby You’ve Ever Met. She’s talkative, occasionally loud, frequently physical, and always opinionated (and adorable, obv). That girl’s got some…

… confidence. (What did you think I was going to say?)

Speaking of balls! Cal’s first baseball season is in full-swing. I was never a big fan of team sports. They seemed complicated with all those rules, and I was never excellently coordinated. I thought team sports were an overemphasized time-suck. But being Calum’s mom, I now see that certain kids truly shine in a team environment. Not only does he have a decent arm, but the kid’s kind of a slugger. Not that I particularly care about his skillz, but he’s in his element and it’s a joy to watch. Also, his team name is The Jedis. That bit of news nearly caused his head to explode.

blood sucker

2011-04-14T18:58:00.001-05:00

I woke up itching and scratching at 3am. Before I was entirely awake, I knew it was my first tick of the season. I knew because this happens to me about a half-dozen times a season in the middle of the night. I CHECK for ticks, change my clothes, take various precautions. But those boogers are sneaky and flat.

So I get up, go into the bathroom, turn the lights on, yank that blood sucker out, flush him down, clean my hands & the bite, then go back to bed.

At which point Brett still feels the needs to mutter (he should know better by now to NOT ASK if he doesn't really want to know), “What were you doing in there?” And I tell him, “Tick.” And he replies, every time without fail, “You’re disgusting.”

I told this same story last year to some other parents and staff at the boys’ preschool. It was too late when I looked at their faces and saw that I’d grossed them out. Like, deeply grossed out. And I realized this was the wrong audience for such a story. Sort of like right now.

bunked

2011-04-13T12:40:00.001-05:00

We bunked the boys’ beds following much hand-wringing on my part. We’ve had the beds unbunked, lower to the floor and thus less probable as a source of broken bones, because… have you met my boys? It is only a matter of time before one boy tosses the other off the top. If you’ve experienced them in real life, you know this is fact.

With three rough-housing aged children in the house, we have instituted a few basic rules for physical contact: no broken bones, no poking eyes, and no two children can gang up on the third without permission, which we occasionally grant just to demonstrate that we’re fair and open to suggestion.

The bunking of the beds required a Safety Sit Down and a discussion that went roughly like:

“Boys. BOYS. BOYS! Look at me Cal. Emmett, look at me. Bunk beds are very dangerous. We have special rules for bunk beds. No pushing, no punching, no kicking, no leaning over the top, no grabbing the person on the top who breaks the rule and leans over the top, no jumping, no somersaulting.”

“No pooping!”

“No poop poo peeing!”

“Boys, I’m serious. You could break your collar bone, or break your nose…” (these are things they identify with due to experience.)

“Or break your BUTT! Or break your DOO DOO!”

My point was to scare the pants off them about wrestling on the top bed and I didn’t think I’d accomplished the objective. I had visions of them waking up at 2am when we were unaware, and effectively self-destructing from the top bunk.

But since the safety talk, Emmett has flat out refused to climb the ladder and it’s been two weeks. He’s got good sense, that boy.

chi town

2011-04-11T19:35:00.001-05:00

We made our biennial trip to Chicago this past weekend to visit our dear friends. We’ve traded off annual roadtrips with them for years now, so that we each make the trip every other year (other documented visits: ’07, ’08, ’09, ’10). It’s a pretty great system.

Again, Cal and their lovely daughter Siena instantly hit it off, as they have since the two were just toddlers. Cal doesn't generally play with girls, but Siena is a clear and absolute exception. Cal adores Siena.

Emmett kept up no problem with the big kids, and Willa hung with their son Jack, her newest big boy buddy.

The boys played their first ever video game. Cal LOVED it, and it confirmed all our previously held notions that we can’t have video games in the house. Cal pouted much of the afternoon that he had to be OUTSIDE instead of playing the game.

We learned that Willa is an excellent roadtrip companion. She doesn’t try to gnaw her way out of the carseat like the boys always did (and still do). She watches out the window and talks then falls asleep. Repeat.

We went to a place that ONLY SOLD CUPCAKES. Beautiful, beautiful cupcakes.

But travelling with boys also has its advantages, as we learned to recycle old juice bottles to keep the wheels turning and avoid potty breaks every 20 minutes. Gross, you say? I say EFFICIENT.

spring, sprang, sprung

2011-04-05T13:48:00.002-05:00

This pregnancy has zapped my energy in a way the others did not. That's not intended as a complaint (because I am really, no shit, HAPPY to be pregnant. REALLY), but just a statement of fact.

I do realize that I am... ahem... OLDER than I was with the other pregnancies, and also that I have three young children to care for. But-- news flash-- you know what's probably more tiring than being pregnant and mothering three children? Mothering FOUR children.

I'm finding it a great challenge to muster enthusiasm for anything outside the basic daily functions. I'm trying to remind myself that this is exhaustion, not burn-out. Though it's a thin line sometimes.

But spring has sprung, and I'm feeling some motivation about certain projects like CRAFTS and HOUSE DECORATING. You know, urgent and useful stuff. Whatevs. I'm going with it.

five out of six ain't bad

2011-04-01T13:18:00.001-05:00

We sent Willa off to daycare yesterday with one shoe on her feet. And it’s not like the shoe fell off in the car or something. It was at home, under the table. Which means that she walked out the front door, got shuffled into the car seat and then dropped at the babysitter's without anyone noticing the overlooked foot.

I’d like to say it was an especially crazy morning. But it was a normally crazy morning.

I’d like to say that she’s still a baby and so shoes are mostly irrelevant. But she is a fully bi-pedal toddler.

But I will say five out of six feet ain't bad. That’s just how we are over here, working hard to lower the bar on parenting since 2005.

The neglected, dog-food-eating, one-shoed baby sister.

it's these little things

2011-03-28T13:08:00.004-05:00

A week ago, the kids were all finally on their way toward normal functioning digestive systems. It had been a rough week of sleep deprivation and major clean-ups, and you can just use your imagination to envision three small children with the stomach flu. Last Monday night, Willa was down without a peep at 7:30pm. The boys were down with relatively few peeps at 8pm. The smell of a full night of sleep was all through the house; Brett and I were giddy.

At 3am that next morning, the battery in Willa’s smoke detector ran out, or low, or otherwise became possessed by a demon, and it began its loud chirping on a 30 second interval. Serves us right for not changing batteries when we changed our clocks. But who’s grand loyalty to safety prompted us to have a smoke detector in a baby’s room anyway?

How we entertain ourselves on a snowy spring weekend.

Making snow ice cream!

Tomorrow is Emmett’s first day of speech therapy. Over the past few months, we’ve worked our way through the Special School District machine and got spit out with a “speech impaired” label. This was fabulous because Emmett will really benefit from some extra help from someone who knows a thing or two (i.e., not me). Also, the therapy happens AT his preschool DURING school hours, which means it has zero effect on our previously scheduled programming. I met with the therapist assigned to him and fell in love with her. She’s been doing this for decades but was still so excited about the various exercises and genuinely interested in getting to know Emmett.

Then she says this to me, “You’ll need to take these papers and keep them in a folder that will come to school with him each day he has therapy. I’ll leave your homework assignment in the folder. Each assignment will require five minutes a night, and this should be a time set aside only to work on the homework with Emmett. You should not be doing other things during this time.”

At which point I hyperventilated into a paper bag. Because: a FOLDER?

I am aware of the irony here that I just announced that I will be responsible for FOUR small, dependent humans by the end of the year. I left the meeting really, truly wanting to do a good job at my end of the speech therapy, but also feeling utterly overwhelmed by the thought of (a) the folder, and (b) five minute assignments.

I have the folder sitting out on the counter right now, ready to for tomorrow's deployment. This CAN be done.

fun fact friday!

2011-03-25T05:00:00.000-05:00

First of THANK YOU! For all your excitement about our Fourth, hereafter called Tater. And for all your caring and supportive comments about our scare with Emmett last week. Social media can be really awesome.

We were also surprised about Tater, but of course we’ve known for a while now and thus moved past being stunned. We’re just excited (slash teetering on the edge of insanity).

This will make four children under the age of six, for those of you keeping score at home. More precisely, Cal will be three months shy of 6; Emmett will be two months past 4; Willa will be one month short of 2.

Do you think we can teach our 3.5 and 5-year-old to shower themselves? Do you think they can be trusted to actually use soap and shampoo? This would make life with four youngsters much easier. But keep in mind the specific 3.5 and 5-year-olds in question.

I strongly suspect that Target knows every time I get pregnant. They start sending me coupons for newborn supplies exactly 2 weeks after I find out. Same thing happened with Willa's pregnancy. I bought the pregnanct test at Target. Sneaky little giant.

I plan to keep on working even though for the next few years (until the boys enter first grade) it will cost MORE to work than not. But my job is not the type you can quit and then find something else when you’re ready. Fortunately, Brett is very much supportive of me working. In fact, he’d be as sad as I would be to quit my job.

Besides exhaustion, I’ve been feeling good. Four first trimesters and I never had more than a vague hint of nausea. I know it’s not fair but I’m TAKING IT.

The boys are pumped about the new baby. They’ve started drawing him/her into their family pictures.

Willa has discovered dog food and acquired a taste for it. When we feed the dog, she begs for “tees? tees?” (treats?) wanting a kibble of her own. Brett and I disagree over whether or not it’s okay to feed her dog kibbles. Since I don't necessarily want you to take sides, I'll protect our identities. But one of us says, "One kibble a day isn't going to hurt her. Besides, it's Purina!" The other of us says, "It's a fundamental rule of parenting that feeding the baby dog food is unacceptable." What say you?

one potato, two potato, three potato... FOUR!

2011-03-22T19:24:00.002-05:00

Our fourth potato is due October 4! (Last potato.) (For REALS.)

dread & gratitude

2011-03-21T13:16:00.002-05:00

When I hear ambulance and fire engine sirens, I have a moment of muffled fear that they’re heading for one of my own. I’m certain I’m not the only one; it’s more of the standard worried mother bit. It’s not some paralyzing panic, but a mere second when I realize the sirens are heading in the direction that Brett just drove off with all the children. Or on the way to school to pick up the kids, and the flashing lights have made the same turn in front of me. And I wonder briefly, on the brink of prayer, if my own children are safe at that moment.

It had been a rough week already, with Willa and Calum puking, feverish. After much practice over the past five years, Brett and I transition into our Vomit Remediation roles without a hitch. I am the Child Remediator, cleaning up and comforting the plague victim. Brett is the Materials Remediator, cleaning up the various (always, ALWAYS upholstered or carpeted) affected surface areas. We’re pretty good that way.

So whatever. The stomach bug blah blah.

Then came Friday at noon, when I got that phone call from school that every parent dreads. Emmett had suddenly turned unresponsive, pale, white lipped. They’d called the ambulance. Did I have a preference on hospitals?

I’ll tell you right away that he is FINE. But the whole ordeal made my heart pound, ache in a way that I haven’t felt before.

I bolted from work and headed right for the school. The only thing I could remember was to stay calm and pay attention to the road. I pulled around the corner toward the preschool and saw the flashing lights, and my whole chest tightened because this time I knew: they were there for my Emmett. And at that time I didn't know if he was going to be all right.

He’d had a basic fainting episode. He went pale and unresponsive for a good 15 minutes, scaring the dickens out of everyone. He seemed perfectly healthy and chipper that morning, but turns out he had slight case of pneumonia, double ear infections, and was on the verge of a night of vomiting as well. Enough to cause vasovagal syncope in just about anyone.

This middle child of mine will yell and cry for hours about the injustice of sharing his spacemen toys with his brother. But he’s so sick he PASSES OUT, and there hadn’t been a hint of complaining. Just 24 hours prior, he was doing this:

While this was one of those dreaded instants in parenting, I’ve got to say that it also makes us enormously thankful. It can’t really be overstated, as you turn on the news and glimpse the magnitude of uncertainty and suffering half a world away.

So we are grateful. For Emmett’s teachers who tended to him quickly and calmly. For my sister and parents who jumped in to help with my also sick Willa Mae. For access to immediate emergency response. For our health care coverage and the doctors and nurses who cared for him that same afternoon. For the relative stability of our own little world, no matter how imperfect. For our home where I can stay up all night holding my vomity children in the safe and quiet. And grateful-- so grateful-- that our boy is ok, that he was outisde riding his bike in jammies two days later.

hit or miss

2011-03-15T18:55:00.002-05:00

As I was saying, we currently have a work week schedule that is working for us, at least theoretically, on the 50% chance that our week runs mostly as expected and we're not running Emmett off to the doctor after school because of an asthma attack. Boo.

I’d like to know: what’s working for you lately? No explanations necessary if that complicates the question. Just wondering.

Here’s other things that are working for us lately:

-Willa’s bedtime routine.
-Baby boy shoes on a baby girl. CUTE! It doesn’t work as well the other way around though.

-Frozen dinners or no defined dinner at all.
-Laundry. I’ve been staying on top of it, so long as you don’t count towels and sheets. And please. Who counts those?
-Making ewok houses. Like this one:

-Emmett learning write all sorts of actual WORDS. Who’s teaching him such things?

But let's be honest. It’s way more fun to talk about what’s NOT working for us. Again, feel free to share and it’s not necessary to explain. But I do wonder if you feel like you might be able to fix these things, or if certain things aren’t working because there’s nothing you can do about them.

Not working for us lately:

-Willa and going down stairs. She took TWO major bonkers on the head on Saturday due to stair error (slash parental neglect).

See Bonker The First in the upper right corner

-A used, piece of junk bike I bought for Calum off craigslist.
-Housework. All of it.
-The boys’ bedtime on the days where Calum takes a nap at preschool.

-Our backdoor storage bin system for catching daily personal items (backpacks, diaper bags, hats, gloves). They’re all overflowing with out-of-season crap and no longer functional.

-Containing the sheer volume of shoes in the house.

field notes on cretin behavior

2011-03-10T19:13:00.000-06:00

This week I’ve found myself trying to explain, upon request, our work week schedule to several different people. It took me a few tries, but I figured out that I needed to preface the explanation with, “It sounds complicated, but it’s simple to us.” And it’s working. Mostly.

I’d be interested in YOUR weekday routines too, if you feel like sharing. I’m always curious as to how other people manage to get from home to work and back again on a daily basis.

I need to take more pictures because this is the only new one I've got. Last night the boys decided that the hardwood floor was no good for wrestling, so they needed to "cover it with soft stuff." They're THIS HELPFUL all the time.

It took us about 6 months to figure out a schedule that works for us following Brett’s job change. We’ve finally landed on something and while it’s not perfect, it is definitely better than anything else we can figure out.

It goes like this:

Two days a week, Brett leaves for work very early, around 4:30am. I get up, get ready, then get the kids up and ready, drop them off, then go to work. Brett gets to run on his way into work, and I take those days off running. On these days, Brett also gets off work earlier than me, so he picks up the kids and we all meet back at the batcave around dinner time.

One day a week, I get up around 4:30 and run, then Brett leaves right when I get back home. I get ready, get the kids ready, and drop them off. Brett also gets to run on this day and he picks up the kids on this day too.

Two days a week, we sleep in—sort of—until 5:30, which is when Willa usually wakes up, followed shortly by the boys. Brett and I both help get them ready for school and out the door with Brett, who drops them off. I run after they leave and then go to work. I also pick up the kids on those days.

This allows both of us to run five days/ week (Sat, Sun, and three weekdays), and no one has to do BOTH pickup and drop off of the kids, which minimizes their time at school.

Like I said, it’s working but it has it’s down sides too. Like the fact we go to bed embarrassingly early to alleviate long-term sleep deprivation. And on certain mornings, I’m in such a huge hurry to get to work that I commit categorically blockhead manuevers. Like deciding that it will be more efficient to move our large, 55 gallon trash can to DIRECTLY BEHIND THE VAN, instead of pulling it all the way to its final destination. Because OF COURSE I’ll remember it’s there as I’m leaving for work in a frothy rush, and OF COURSE I’ll complete the inherently one-step task that I’ve now divided into two steps and I’ll move it before backing the van right into it and busting out the tail light which will cost a week’s worth of groceries to repair.

Of course, rarely do we have a week that actually goes according to plan. It seems there’s always a doctor’s appointment, or someone’s got an early meeting, or some cretin generated a necessary car repair and it throws off the whole system.

when I claim he's high energy, i'm not messing around

2011-03-07T20:55:00.000-06:00

Calum wanted to "run some laps" around the inside of our house tonight. We were about to head up to bed, but we figured he probably needed to work off a bit more energy first.

117 laps later, he was ready for bed. 117 laps without stopping. We counted. Only he's still not tired. Instead, he's up in his room, leading Emmett in a loud and enthusiastic rendition of Darth Vader's theme song.

habitual

2011-03-04T19:50:00.000-06:00

All the kids get warm milk at night as they get into their pajamas. Willa gets hers in a bottle because SHE’S STILL A BABY OK?

In the fall/ winter/ spring, we swim at the indoor Y pool on Friday nights. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to get us there and back-- packing snack dinners for the car, wrestling small children into suits, swimming, showering, wrestling small, (damp) children into pajamas-- but we’ve come to really love it. It’s one of my favorite times of the week. And the kids all sleep great on Friday nights.

On Saturday mornings, the boys play basketball at the Y. We like the Y. It’s too expensive, and we’ve cut way back on any non-essential monthly expenses, but we won’t cut the Y membership.

I’ve been hesitant to let my guard down on Emmett’s skin problems (Part 1 and Part 2, for background), but it seems we finally have it under wraps. This winter we have fallen into an every OTHER night bathtime routine. I prefer this GREATLY over the every night bath.

The boys have been sharing a room for a while now and the moment we close their door every night, the insurgency begins.

They empty their closet and drawers, putting on five pairs of pants and four shirts. They sneak to the bathroom and steal the stepstool, put it by their dresser so they can climb up high. They grab their toothbrushes and toothpaste, brush their teeth in bed and then hide the evidence under their pillows. All this involves a great deal of wild laughter and immunity to consequences. We’ve half a mind to re-separate them, perhaps make one of them bunk with Willa. They bring out the maniac in each other but they’re adamantly opposed to being separated.

other days

2011-02-28T19:35:00.000-06:00

Some days are just easier than others. Some Mondays I can’t wait to drop the kids and get to work where I think about various non-child related topics and have (somewhat) adult conversations. Some workdays, I easily shrug off guilt. I don’t cycle through doubt about our decisions. I feel good about what I do, how I do it, and the ways we manage to get from day to day.

Some days are just harder than others. Some Mondays I watch Calum’s expression slump when he asks if he has school today. My throat tightens as I fake a cheery expression, take him into my arms, tell him that I appreciate what he does every day for the family. I look in the rearview mirror and see the three of them, dressed for the day, bags packed and strapped in their seats. The day is barely dawning; it’s 6:40am.

Some days it seems like too much to ask of such small people. They should be kids, not diligent little proletariats. They should stay in their pajamas until 9am, dripping cereal on the floor, watching too many cartoons, fighting all morning over who gets the dump truck, making me want to pull my hair out. Some days I think that, if I truly cared about what I do at work, I would hand the job over to someone less distracted, less conflicted, someone able to rank work higher on their priorities.

Some days I am confident that my children are where they need to be. They go to great schools. They DO get to be kids all day because they have wonderful teachers. They watch minimal television. They learn to share, to make friends, to resolve conflicts.

Some days I can envision a whole other life they could be leading. Some days I wonder, all defenses set aside, if I’ve chosen poorly, selfishly. Some days I lean heavily on Brett to hold us up until tomorrow, to remain unwavering . Some days I cannot stop my heart from aching, though it’s been hours since I pulled away from the preschool parking lot, Emmett standing in the window, waving happily, even after-- I am told-- I’ve turned the corner and I can no longer see him.

Some days I realize that this simply doesn’t get easier. Because they grow and that price is paid, non-refundable. Little by little, inch by inch, it gets harder.

the perfect gift

2011-02-24T19:45:00.000-06:00

Next time I am invited to a baby shower, I am going to bring a stack of incontinence pads.

Each time we added a baby, a pair of these thick, quilted, washable, 3 foot by 3 foot beauties came home with us from the hospital. They are, far and away, the most useful tool in parenting I can offer. We use them on the boys' beds at night to catch run accidents. We line the floors and couches when the stomach bug hits. I lay them by the front and doors during the snowy weeks to wipe dirty paws and house drippy boots. They're more blanket-like than a towel yet also, mysteriously, more absorbent.

It's a wonder they don't sell these things at Babies R Us. All I can figure is that it's not fun at your baby shower to be confronted, by the appearance of incontinence pads, with the reality that your tiny blessed bundle will piss and vomit on every carpeted and upholstered surface of your home.

But I'll put a pretty pink or blue or light green bow around them, so they'll look cute for the occasion.

semi-annual slothfest

2011-02-21T20:51:00.000-06:00

I was going to run this morning, and then I just didn't. It was raining and 46 degrees. I ate golden grahams and headed into work.

My energy levels have plummeted lately, likely for several reasons, all of which cause me severe exhaustion to speak about.

BUT BECAUSE I KNOW YOU'RE SO INTERESTED:

1. We've committed to getting Calum OUT of nighttime pullups. This involves changing his jammies and sheets in the range of 1-4 times per night. But we're COMMITTED. Dammit.

2. I'm having my semi-annual fit of despair over the finite amount of time and energy there is to DO everything. The housework is like quick sand. I can't even figure out which foot to put forward first, because I'm SINKING. And I have hourly realizations that mine is NOT such a sad sob story, but these lovely little flashes of perspective don't actually cause any work to get done. Boo effing HOO.

3. Ear infections and feverish coughs. When we found Emmett's ear infection, it felt like a big prize, cause we got to cash in our prescription for The Pink Goo. We're on the mend now, but Emmett had this look in his eyes for most of last week:

But his hair still looks AWESOME even at 101 degrees.

Then there are weekends like this one, which kicked some serious February ass, and suddenly we are cured. Temporarily cured, because today I am planted firmly back in slothdom.

Tomorrow I will run. The whole day will feel better. Gotta dig deep for the last mile (+/- 2 miles) of winter.

like weeds

2011-02-16T19:35:00.000-06:00

Change is a constant in life with small kids. And lately, I feel like all three have changed so much, so fast. It's like they're responding to increased daylight and warming soil temperatures and BOOM.

Changes in Willa are most obvious. She's all over the place all the time, bonking her head and faceplanting on the concrete on a daily basis. She's extremely opinionated and assertive and WHOA NELLY are we in trouble.

At least that's what we were thinking (that she was becoming LOUD about her opinions) until this evening as we left the park because she was having a drop-down drag-out tantrum for the AGES. And as she contorted herself into an impossible position, I got an odd angled look inside her ear and saw BLOOD. And PUS. And then I died a little bit.

Emmett, perhaps following Willa's lead, has also become much more assertive lately. He's always been our easy child, the one who you can count on to just roll with it. Then he woke up sometime last month and decided he needs to be part of The Decision Process. It's possible that I sometimes lose sight of the fact that this is a good thing.

I snapped this photo JUST as Emmett threw a snowball at his sister's back. I shouldn't laugh. And yet...

But CALUM. Oh Calum. He's the one who really seems to be growing up suddenly and drastically. He works hard and long on "projects," like writing in notebooks or drawing exactly 23 people on an airplane.

He can be trusted with small responsibilities. When I pick him up from his preschool room each day, with two younger siblings in tow, I can ask him to watch his baby sister while I sign him out and collect various school papers from his file. This seems so SMALL, but it is not.

He tries hard to teach his younger siblings lessons. Last night, Willa had climbed into a chair and was teetering ominously on the arm. Calum looked over and said, "Come on Willa. You gotta think about the hazard!"

This weekend we took a trip to the zoo. Our zoo is free, but the boys always want to ride the carousel which costs money. We are mean and cheap, and our standard answer is that "we don't have that kind of money right now. You gotta work hard for that kind of money."

Calum started up a verbal list of things he could do to earn money. Like cleaning up Willa's toys, clearing the table of piles of plates and toys each night, and turning the lights off when we leave the house (that last one seemed like a stretch).

I turned to Brett and said, "Are we really gonna make our five-year-old earn his own money for a carousel ride?" We both shrugged and thus have redefined the meaning of STINGY.

bathtub zen

2011-02-14T21:33:00.001-06:00

We bathe all three of our kids in the same overcrowded tub. It's fun, messy, and highly efficient. Emmett is always the last one to get out, and he likes to take a few minutes to stretch out on his back, ears under the surface. He mostly talks unintelligibly to himself, but occasionally stops to look at me and shout, "I nan't eeer neeeew!" (I can't hear you!).

I think it's as close as he's ever gotten to zen in this house.

you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both

2011-02-12T09:16:00.002-06:00

I've observed this particular phenomenon for several winters. The bottle of children's ibuprofin sits on the kitchen counter, next to the coffee maker for weeks on end. I don't dare to put it in the cabinet because the next morning someone will run a fever. True story. It happens every time.

I was waiting to write until I had some thought in my head other than cursing the curse of the cursed ICE that will not melt. You know you're not alone with your five-year-old cries in the morning because "Oh mommy! The snow is NEVER gonna melt!" But we've got 50 degree days in the forecast and it makes me want to kiss my neighbor's ceramic lawn ornaments that have been buried under snow drifts since Christmas. I'm gonna kiss them right on the lips.

Calum’s been repeating some of my favorite lecture points, trying to teach his brother life’s great lessons and generally making Emmett want to pop him in the nose. He keeps noting to Emmett that, “you don’t NEED that toy, Emmett, you WANT it. There’s a difference.” This typically reduces to a screaming match of “WANT!" versus “NEED!”

Then the other night, Emmett was tantruming at bedtime over something-or-other that was simply not going to work out the way he’d hoped. Calum got right in his face, raised his eyebrows, and stated, “Change your attitude, change your life, Emmett. That’s what I do.”

It was one of my most victorious moments of parenting.

february was so long that it lasted into march

2011-02-02T14:23:00.000-06:00

The children have been blissfully peaceful throughout our 48 hour lockdown due to inclement weather. They've read quietly and sang songs the entire time, without a single harsh or loud word spoken. We've been farting rainbows since the start of this ugliness on Monday night.

In other news, I might have just googled, "home installation of padded room with sound-proof locking door."

(Photos are from the brief visit from dry, above freezing weather this past weekend. I could have sworn it was a dream, but damn if I don't have photographic evidence of it.)

sick day

2011-01-30T20:28:00.005-06:00

When I close my eyes and see my childhood home, this is the first image to come alive.

I was laying on the blue and brown plaid couch. Our big tubular television sat inside the family room cabinet, and I can instantly recall the smooth, final click of their magnets as you closed in the set for the night.

The doors were open today as I watched Little House on the Prairie reruns sideways from my horizontal position on the couch. I was home sick. The bucket was on the floor next to me, along with a small cup of 7-up and the phone, a corded one with the big ear and mouth pieces, it’s long tail pulled out from behind the furniture to make the stretch to the couch. I could call my parents if I needed anything at all. With siblings off at school and my parents gone to work, the house was humming with silence. I could hear the ticking of the wooden framed clock in the kitchen.

I was old enough to be home alone on a sick day and I savored the moment, even through the fog of nausea. Yet I was looking toward noon, when my mother would call home to check on me. She’d ask, “Are you sure you don’t need me there? You don’t want me to take off and come home?” I’d feel competent, proud as I reassured her I was fine. I hadn’t thrown up again, but no, I didn’t want to eat the saltine crackers she’s put on the table.

I hadn’t yet discovered books. I read, but not by choice. I read because I was terrified of failing at school, but I hated every moment of being forced in front of words. I was purely interested in what was going on around me, on being a part of whatever that was. I was what researchers call a “reluctant reader.” Discovering books as a teenager was one of my few truly transformative experiences. It happened without warning, I’m embarrassed to admit, with a Steven King’s Thinner, and then—as if to make up for it-- Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls, which remains my all time favorite book and only partly because it marked a turn for me. It's a straight-up masterpiece.

When PBS finished up their two hours of Little House reruns, there was nothing interesting aired for a young child on any of the four channels we received. Since I didn't choose to read, I’d stay put on the couch, compulsively analyzing the pattern on the countrified kitchen wall paper. Rooster, flower vase, farm house, rooster, weather vane, farm house… each time I seemed to land on a pattern, I lost it again.

School would let out at 3pm, and the house would be noisy again. I’d get my school books delivered to me thanks to a classmate, along with a special cover sheet detailing the lessons I’d missed, and what I’d have to make up along with my homework. I’d work on it at the table tonight, wearing the pajamas and socks that I’d stayed in all day. I hoped my friend Katie, and maybe my friend Stephanie, would leave me a note on the sheet too. Right now they’d be in Science, right before lunch. I wondered if any other desks were empty today, or if I was the only one being missed.

a code that you can live by

2011-01-27T17:34:00.000-06:00

I had a conference this week with Calum’s primary preschool teacher. I came away with a renewed sense of being the parent of an awesome child, one who is both genuinely appreciated for who he is and continually challenged by his teacher.

We have been extremely fortunate with preschool teachers so far. We are consciously grateful for this. I have tremendous respect for Cal’s teacher (and Emmett’s too), which rises from more than a basic appreciation for this someone who helps my child learn to write letters, take turns, wash their hands with soap AND water.

These things are important, of course. But my experience with Calum’s teacher has taught me what an education partnership can be. She is perhaps our greatest resource and ally for helping address Cal’s biggest struggles, for helping us understand him better, for making us better parents. She provides both reassurance and practical suggestions on addressing problem behaviors. Immediate consequences, small responsibilities, short one-on-one moments that will add up over the years.

More than all that, she takes her job seriously.

And I don’t mean that she acts serious all the time; I mean that she believes and acts like teaching preschoolers is a job for professionals, that it actually matters. I’m certain this is a critical ingredient in the makings of Great Teachers.

now is the winter of our discontent

2011-01-20T10:00:00.002-06:00

I was openly a big fan of Shakespeare when I was in high school. This, next to my inexplicable insistence on wearing a hideous pair of old uniform shoes for all four years, was a determining factor which kept me from reaching my full coolness potential.

The opening line from Richard The Third runs through my mind a lot in January, that soul-sucking month of snow and sickness. Even though, literally, my own use of it represents a misinterpretation of the line, in which Richard is remarking on his family's recent upturn in fortune. And now you see where I lost footing socially as a teenager.

No, Mom, I did NOT eat the blue marker. Haha! Silly Mom. (How does she KNOW these things?)

Today is another snow day. It's our first justifiable one, since we got 7 inches over night and it's still snowing. That marks A Significant Weather Event 'round these parts.

It was fun this morning to tell the boys that school was closed. It was EXACTLY like I remembered. They were groggy and whiny, making me wonder why in tarnation they still insist on getting out of bed when they're obviously too crabby to be awake. But when I said, "It SNOWED and school is CLOSED!" they came instantly alive and excessively giggly.

Then I made a triple batch of Swistle's Mint Brownies for breakfast (one's for the neighbors, but the other two are mineALLmine) because being cooped up at home with small insane people isn't enough; I must stuff them full of chocolate and sugar.

skillz

2011-01-15T13:05:00.001-06:00

I can fold three loads of laundry while standing, holding 20 pounds of crabby baby on my hip.

I could be woken up in the dead of night and be able to tell you with 95% accuracy how much milk is left in the fridge, how many days until we'll need more nighttime pull-ups, and the quanities of the three top family food items (bananas, pickles, string cheese) left in our house stock.

I can tell you the location +/- 10 feet of my children's top 50 favorite toys. I know at all times whether Cal's favorite shirt is clean, dirty, or in transition. I can match assorted sippy cups go with their correct lids because this matters for some ungodly reason.

I cannot remember a time one of our bathrooms ran out of toilet paper. I'm THAT good.

Too bad these skills have no useful outside applications.

the envelope please

2011-01-11T10:55:00.002-06:00

Every day for the past week, Calum has come home from school with a set of envelopes, painstakingly marked with each of our names. (Well, most days he remembers each of us. Sometimes he forgets Dad. Mostly he forgets Willa. Then he smacks his palm on his forehead like, "Doh! You! Of course, there's also YOU." Then shrugs it off, like, "Hey, better luck next time.")

He's burning his way through the preschool's envelope supply, and I'm certain they'll need a mid-year tuition hike to cover the expense. So we're saving junk business reply envelopes for him to use, and I can't even express how tempting it is to simply mail those puppies. It makes me happy to think of some bored mail clerk at a questionable credit/ loan company opening up hand drawn pictures of Robot Batman or Frankenstein and his Black Kitty Cats.

We have to wait until everyone is home, at which point the boys run wild hollering "ENVELOPE TIIIIIIME!" Very much like "t-shirt time" on Jersey Shore, and don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about because that season premiere just fetched EIGHT MILLION viewers so I am CERTAIN at least a few of you get the reference.

We open our respective envelopes, exclaim about the fine work of art inside, and then the boys proceed to tape every last picture to the walls of their room. Also, above our bed. And Willa's crib.

This picture was taken a week ago. Since then both walls have been filled in. I'll spare you the picture of Brett's & my room; it looks the same.

So it's a good thing I never got around to decorating after I painted two years ago.

memory, mystery, manners

2011-01-06T19:00:00.000-06:00

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about our complex human brains is that they forget most of what ever happens to us.

Memories of my daily 2010 are not memories at all, but a coagulation of the medians, a compilation of the general daily flow. The dark mornings of wrestling children into car seats. The running late. The taste of coffee. The smell of crayons in preschool classrooms. These are markings of too many days to illuminate any distinct memory. There’s nothing unique to hang them on, nothing to spark the glow of a distinct episodic recollection.

The days of 2010 that I remember are marked by something:

One: the morning my niece was born, the thrill of finding out she was a She, sitting in my work truck, looking out the front windshield at the landscaping stones enclosing my workplace parking lot. Feeling so happy. Overcast gray steadily thinning, dissolving to blue. Clear as day, I can light up the whole memory just by thinking of that particular parking spot.

Another: the day Calum broke his collar bone at school. The wall of thunderstorms we’d dodged by a quick trek south early that morning at work. Goose feathers stuck to my sleeves. Feeling, as we watched the dark clouds pile up north of us, that we’d escaped something ominous, just as my phone rang and the teacher reported that Calum had fallen from the monkey bars. The song, American Idiot by Green Day, that I’d played loudly in my car on the dark drive to work that morning, and which started back up, loudly, as I rushed back home to care for my child. If you asked me to free associate from “American Idiot,” I’m certain I’d say “broken collar bone” first.

I have to tell you, I’ve contemplated quitting this blog of late so I can focus on another writing project. But don’t want to stop blogging altogether because then I will be left with mere memory, which is untrustworthy at best, and fraudulently careless with details at worst. I regret the public nature of this blog on many occasions, and yet I also cannot deny that its openness is what keeps me posting, keeps me recording. This blog is much more than a distraction to me. The written record is closer to the truth than our memories will ever be. While I can barely remember a single ordinary day, I can click backward and relive my own words. I’ve learned to rely on myself mightily this way. Brett has learned to rely on me too.

What I’m reading at any given time can be immediately influential on how I think and how I write, and this is a substantive concern. But I have never been so focused, so motivated, so… (happy is not the word)… myself as when reading, writing, communicating within an imaginary world of fiction. I shouldn’t be surprised, as some of my most meaningful, richest, most awakening dialogues have been imaginary ones with authors.

The stuff of great fiction is, as Flannery O'Connor defines it, of mystery and manners. How we avoid or confront life’s toughest, hardest realities is the the current of all human experience (mystery). How we get through our daily lives while managing to avoid or confront these realities (manners)—these are the details of anything worth reading.