Earring Freedom Day

Getting my ears pierced was one of those things I never got around to doing. I think my mother may have been against it, but I never was interested enough to ask her why. Too girly-girl for me, anyway.

But then I got married, and a few girl things didn't seem so bad. And then DOB got me earrings for Christmas. (That would be Christmas 2006.) My natural inertia still slowed things down, but last August I finally got myself to the mall and submitted to the procedure.

The saleslady seemed quite surprised at having a 28-year-old woman presenting herself for her first piercings--her last client had been a three-month-old. She went through her spiel reassuring me about the pain. I've birthed two kids, I assured her. A little poke in the earlobe does not scare me.

Somehow I didn't realize until I was midway through that not only was pain involved--there was hassle. Specifically, keeping the earrings in at all times and washing the holes out three times a day for six weeks. It felt like a jail sentence, but having put my hand to the plow I resolved not to turn back. Even when I found out I would have to wear earrings at all times for six months.

There was also the trouble, once the six-week sentence was over and I was on probation, of getting the earrings out of the ear. This is a trickier business than you would think when you've never done it before. I finally gave up and asked a friend to take them out for me. Of course, since I had to put them right back in that didn't accomplish much, but at least I knew it was possible.

As of today the probation is over and I can actually take the earrings out and leave them out. I'm free! I'm free!

I don't regret getting it done, but you can be very, very sure I will never sport any more piercings. Anywhere. Nor will I be taking my small daughters in for ear piercings. Surely diapers and feedings are enough trouble without adding ear-washing.

The Ducklings Respond

Maybe they do have some stereotypical gender differences after all:

DOB: And so we found out that there are TWO babies in Mama's tummy. And we will have to get a new car to fit all of us.
D1: Then one of the babies can be mine!
D2: We're getting a new car!

I don't think I like this:

D1 has been paying close attention to some books I've been reading lately on neonatal development. Or at least to the pictures. So this morning I went in to tell them breakfast was ready and found they had emptied out the block bin and filled it with blankets. That was not surprising; it's what they always do with their toy bins. Toys are merely awkward fillers for those cool bins. But I was put off by the explanation.

D1: I had a baby in my tummy and D2 had a baby in his tummy and the babies came out too soon and so we had to put them in the bin and cover them up with blankets.

Do I really want my preschoolers to be running a NICU?

And All That

Were you expecting this? Sort of. The extreme morning sickness did make it seem like something was weird. But I really haven't had a lot of appetite or grown that much yet. (Maybe I'm just subconsciously comparing myself to my last pregnancy, when I was eating for three and one of them was almost a year old.) DOB had a vivid dream last weekend in which I called him and told him we were having twins. On the whole, though, twins are like the Spanish Inquisition.

Anyway, despite my so far non-hugeness, the babies are both a good, healthy size (a pound each at 21 weeks). No doubt hugeness is shortly to ensue.

Do twins run in your family? Not as fast as insanity does.

How did you tell DOB? He can tell that for himself on his own blog. (Where he promises to rant about traffic on a regular basis. Really. He does.)

Were you taking fertility drugs? HAHAHAHAHAHA. We're also starting a company marketing blond hair dye in Sweden.

Are you excited? Indeed yes. I think DOB is looking at it as a strong return on investment. Me, I like to do things that cause other people to shake their heads. Four kids four and under ought to do it.

How are you going to survive? OK, maybe you all aren't asking that question, but I am asking that question. Suddenly all the things that were very simple with one baby are immensely more complicated, from car arrangements (you just can't fit four car seats in a sedan) to sleeping arrangements (where can we put two bassinets in our bedroom?). Then again, this assumes that we will actually be sleeping or going anywhere.

The number one key to surviving with twins, or so I read, is to be ORGANIZED. If moving twice in the same year with two children under two was not enough to get me organized, I doubt twins are going to do it. Organization and my brain are like oil and vinegar: with a lot of effort you can make a tasty complement to life, but let them alone for any length of time and they will separate again. Fortunately the other keys are keeping a sense of humor, accepting help, and lowering expectations. Those I'm better at.

And one other note: Baby B is definitely a boy, but they're only about 80% sure Baby A is a girl. So we shall have to wait to be sure. One of each would be my preference, since I have more experience with boy/girl pairs and since that would make the clothes situation simple, at least. However two little boys would be fine, too.

Duckling Predictions

Every time over the past few months we have asked D1 what she thinks the little baby will be, she has said, "I think it will be a little girl."

Every time we have asked D2, he has said, "I think it will be a little boy."

Today I went to the doctor. It looks like they are both right.

Someone pinch me. Or just send money.

Important question for blog readers: D3 and D4? Or D3a and D3b?

The Ducklings' First Bulk Mailing

This is how one prepares for world conquest. We haven't done much political activity since D1 fit in one of those carseats with the handle, so this was fun to do. And the ducklings were quite intrigued and stuck with it for more than an hour. Next week (weather permitting) they'll be walking down to the city building with me to claim their "I Voted" stickers.

It's Not Working

Here's an article on the value of free, imaginative play. All very well. The ducklings are, of course, experts at free, imaginative play. They can come up with their own games that last for hours involving whatever props come to hand. (Right now they are probably destroying my bed, but they're occupied.) So, it's good for creativity, developing initiative, self-regulation, blah, blah, blah.

Except what intrigued me was to read how they measured the results of imaginative play. One way to measure how self-regulation had developed was to evaluate how well the children picked up after themselves. Apparently children who are good at complex, imaginative play are more willing to clean up their toys.

I wonder at just what age this effect strikes. It certainly hasn't happened here yet.

What's Wrong With the World

Or at least with the weather around here . . .

I've been feeling guilty that I have yet to take the ducklings out to play in the snow this winter. (Not that I am without excuse.) DOB did once--before the foot injury--but other than that they've been stuck inside until the mud reappears.

But the problem is, about 75% of the time when we have snow around here, it's immediately followed by sleet. I thought I would take the ducklings out this morning, but when I opened the door to check on conditions, I noticed the several inches of snow were topped by an inch or so of lumpy ice. Not good for much except a game of fall-down-and-bonk-your-head.

Where I grew up, it didn't snow very often, but when it did it was soft and fluffy and it stayed snow until it melted. None of this ice nonsense. You actually could play in it.

Guess we'll pull out that book of rainy-day activities instead.

It's Been Awhile

In fact, there's a big hole in our files where pictures from the last few months should be. Some things are better not documented. But I finally took some pictures today.

D2 is holding his new best friend, Puppy. (Puppy has been on the blog before during an identity crisis.) DOB decided to permanently bequeath Puppy to D2, and great has been his happiness since then. But Puppy has, alas, gotten a bit dingier. D2 is also wearing that 3T shirt (with fire engines!) I found in the attic yesterday. It's time to move him up. Fortunately he has enough 3T shirts to last out the winter.

D1 is holding her doll. The dress I made this morning (you would not be impressed if you could inspect the stitching) in an effort to give her something D1 could put on by herself. In this picture you probably can't see how well it coordinates with the ink scribbled on her chin.

Snow Day

It's snowing today. Big, fluffy, piling-up kind of snow. School-closure kind of snow. Snowman and snowball kind of snow.

Unfortunately, the ducklings are not here. They are still at Grandma's house (where they go every week for two nights and a day to give us a chance to rest) and will not return until the roads are clearer.

It's very quiet. And lonely. I should do some noble (but non-strenuous!) project while they are gone.

Like filing. Wondergirl has introduced me to the idea of Freedom Filing, which supposedly makes it effortless to keep files up-to-date and purged. I don't think effortless and filing are concepts that can co-exist in the world, but it does look easier to maintain than our current system. Which I almost had updated. Or almost ready to update. Or something. Bother.

Maybe I should go do the dishes instead. Yes. Surely dishes are more urgent.

Nothing like filing to make any other job seem more fun.

8:50 Update: Well, that didn't take very long. Surely I should do exercises before anything else, though.

9:20 Update: Time for a rest now. Mustn't overexert.

9:55 Update: These thank-you notes have been overdue for a long time . . .

10:10 Update: Have you ever seen JigZone?

10:18 Update: Where did the #$*&% file tabs go? Should I get out this 3T fire engine shirt for D2? Why can I never get this attic organized?

10:20 Update: Oh. Here they are. In plain sight.

10:50 Update: Pretty folders! Now to put something in them. Definitely need a jazzier music selection for this part.

12:25 Update: Wow, that was almost easy. Roads are clear and kids are on their way; I still have to come up with lunch and it would be SO fun to get these receipts done, too. Check out my own snazzy invention for keeping the files easily at hand while sorting through the pile:

Grammar Commando Rides Again (with friend)

Peek is a silly-sounding word. So are peak and pique. The fact that they sound equally silly does not make them interchangeable.

Peeking is something you do around corners to see if the children are ransacking the medicine cabinet or merely rereading Curious George for new ideas.

A peak is a mountain. (Picture that A as a capital. peAk.) It can symbolically mean the high point of anything.

To pique (a word no one on the internet seems to know) is to arouse, annoy, or intrigue.

So if you succeed in interesting your children in 13th-century illuminated manuscripts, you have piqued their curiosity. Don't say you've peaked it unless you mean to imply that you've taken them to the highest point of interest and they are bored with the subject now. And don't ever say you've peeked it at all, although if they get very interested and start creating their own illuminated manuscripts you might peek at their activities.

Thank you. I am done with my fit of pique.

And now, a note from a distant acquaintance, the fashion police:

What possesses people to wear pajama pants in public?

Pajama pants are useful and appropriate in many situations. They are great to wear while making pancakes on a lazy Saturday morning, when curling up with a cup of tea and a long movie, or while blogging. It is fine to wear them to dash out and pick up the paper or take out the dog. They are always appropriate in case of fire. Some people even wear them to bed.

But if you're going to the playground or school or Barnes and Noble, put those fuzzy ducky pants back in the drawer and get some actual clothes on!

It's not about decency (no garment could be less revealing or enticing than the standard pair of pajama pants). It's about not looking like a slob. Besides, it's cold outside. Put on something warm. Your mother should have told you this, but she is probably still in her pajama pants.

Parenting Help

We experienced (ha, ha!) parents don't need such help, but you new parents out there might appreciate these handy tips on how to interact with your baby.

And in the interest of honest confession, I have done that diaper-checking mistake. More than once. Ewww.

The Closest Book Meme

From Uncle Steve.

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people & post a comment here once you post it to your blog, so I can come see.

Here goes:

"Then the glory of the Lord appeared in the tent of meeting to all the sons of Israel. The Lord said to Moses, 'How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst?'"

We don't keep a lot of books close to the computer. But, since the computer desk is opposite the dinner table, we do keep a Bible there in hopes that occasionally we will remember to have family Bible reading during dinner. (We have discovered this is the easy way to keep the kids quiet during the reading, and at this stage of life, we're all about easy.) It was buried by a stack of tax forms and the box for Mille Bornes, so that's probably not a good sign.

I'm feeling too fuzzy to come up with names, so if you haven't done this recently, consider yourself tagged.

A Morbid Taste for Poison

DOB was a little concerned when he brought home the library stack last week and discovered a book about poison among them. (By the way, online catalogs and reserve systems at the library have to be one of the Greatest Inventions Ever.) I tried to reassure him that my interest was purely academic.

If you also have an academic interest in poison, say because you read a lot of classic mysteries, you probably would also enjoy The Elements of Murder, by John Emsley. I don't think it would be that helpful if you had a more . . . practical . . . interest in poison, and as the name implies it only deals with poisonous elements (e.g. lead, mercury, arsenic) as opposed to organic poisons.

But there's still lots of fascinating stuff in there, old murder trials, centuries-old mysteries, shocking past practices. (Did you know the ancient Romans actually used a lead compound as a sweetener? Makes white sugar look like a health food.)

And you never know, it might come in handy. One difficult poison case was diagnosed by a nurse who commented to the baffled doctors that the patient's symptoms were very like those in an Agatha Christie novel she was reading. So, more power to the academically morbid!

Hmmmm

Ducklings, carrying blankets: Can you put these on us so we can be boasts?
QOC, arranging blankets over heads: Do you mean ghosts?
Ducklings, under blankets: Ha, ha! Now we are roasts!

Luxuries

I've seen it a place or two that the years of lowest marital satisfaction are while raising small children. Aha! I thought. Here is the secret of the unparalleled levels of Duchy bliss. We've never had it any better. Except for a few jet-lagged weeks after the wedding, producing and raising small children is all we've known. And since we lived several thousand miles apart before the wedding, any day on which we end in the same room counts as good. Just think, it might even get better someday.

The first part of the week was the pinched-nerve-in-the-back fiasco that left me whining all day and whimpering all night. Pre-labor was less painful. And quieter. But a trip to the chiropractor and some hot baths seem to have fixed it. Underneath it all I had the feeling that morning sickness had finally begun to drift away, but I was in too much pain to tell, and DOB was back to taking his turn hobbling back and forth doing all the carrying.

So the last part of this week has given me the chance to enjoy a lot of new luxuries. Cooking and eating an entire meal and liking it. Taking the kids outside. Walking a couple of blocks without collapsing. I'm still not able to do all the necessities (our dishes and clean laundry wait for kindly passersby) but at this stage a few luxuries are more important than some necessities. A little bit of new decor. An extra story and game with the kids. Stuff that makes us stop and think, Hey, we're alive! It's good!

Incredibly Boring Post No One Will Read

That's a pretty literal translation of what would be the logical title of this post, something along the lines of "The Mommy Wars Revisited: Women's Work in a Historical and Economic Context." That would make a good dissertation or something, if I wanted to write something that long. But I don't. That's why I blog.

It strikes me that the ammunition on both sides of the Mommy Wars tends to ignore most of history and the world at large. Zooming out a bit gives some thoughts for some more to be said on both sides.

So let's start with the Other Side (from me, that is)--the working mom. Mothers laboring to support their families was not something invented by Second Wave Feminism, as is sometimes insinuated. Actually most people capable of walking have, throughout human history, faced a basic choice of Work or Starve.

It is very traditional for Mom to be out working in the fields while Grandma, too old for field work, watches the kids. If Grandma isn't handy, the kids will probably be helping out themselves. It is also very traditional in many cultures for women to do practically all the hard physical labor. (Though this itself may suggest that the much-maligned distinctions between men's work and women's work may be less a legacy of male repression and more a secret and successful plot by our foremothers to get the men out of the forum/lodge/village square/pub and have them Do Something Useful. In which case it should not be lightly discarded.)

The difference in modern times is that work has, for the most part, been severed from the home and community. Before rapid forms of transportation, pretty much everyone (men and women) except for sailors worked in or very close to their homes. This meant children even of working mothers were unlikely to spend most of their waking hours in idleness supervised by strangers; they were integrated into their parents' world at the first opportunity.

The other difference is that the modern standard of living has risen drastically, making it much more open to debate whether a mother's work is necessary for survival. Few of us are living at subsistence agriculture levels, but then few of us could get away with it without CPS investigating. A job requires a car and houses have to have electricity and plumbing and so forth and so on. But just how much of these things is needed is open to debate, leaving lots of room for guilt-tripping and hand-wringing on either side.

Another thing that is not a feminist innovation is mothers preferring to hand over much of the child-rearing duties to others. Those model homemakers, the middle-class Victorians in their elegant tea gowns, were not raising their own children. They had nursemaids and nannies and governesses. (And in an era before the invention of waterproof diaper covers, one can sympathize.) Throughout history, most people rich enough to hire or buy someone else to change the diapers and wipe the runny noses have done so. Small children are hard, unglamorous work. It's much more fun to show up in the nursery for a couple of hours and tell stories.

Now for some things to be said on the side of the stay-at-home mother. Many of the charges laid against her seem to boil down to her role being unproductive (or underproductive). Even the psychological charges that her work is boring and unrewarding reflect this.

A book on the Middle Ages pointed out that the lady of the manor and the peasant woman both filled their days with activities as challenging and productive as those of their husbands: the lady running a nearly self-sufficient micro-economy occasionally enlivened by defending against a siege; the peasant woman doing essentially the same work as her husband. However, the wife of the emerging merchant class had little to do with her life except spend the money her husband made. How dull.

The life of a consumer only is, ultimately, a boring and unfulfilling life. People were made to be productive. The caricature of a stay-at-home mom is that she is only a consumer, a leach on her husband's productivity. In reality, few of us are rich enough for this to be so. Clean clothes in the drawers and hot meals on the table are, in fact, goods, even if they don't get calculated in the GDP. So, of course, is child care. Their status as goods is not so obvious as when mother spun the thread and milked the cow herself, but the modern mother is in fact providing a luxury level of goods compared to her industrious eighteenth-century predecessor, with multiple changes of clothing and meals that actually vary.

Whether the mother is being as productive as she could be is a rather personal question. Nobody criticizes a man who decides to give up the corporate fast-track to hand-carve trivets, if he values such a life over the more productive (in dollars) corporate job. Surely it is just as legitimate for a woman to decide she would rather produce the goods of her home life herself rather than outsourcing them, that she places a value on time with her children over potential economic advantages, or simply that she and her family prefer a slower-paced life. We are born to be producers, but not to be slaves to the economy.

And of course there are women (whom I applaud from a respectful distance) who also produce things for the GDP--and family cash flow--while at home. This is valuable, not because women should never set foot outside their doors, but because the real problem is the fragmentation of modern life. Children are not just separated from their mothers, they are separated from the adult world entirely. We work with one set of people and live with and among others and often enjoy our leisure with a third set, few of whom have more than the most casual contacts with each other.

This fragmentation, in turn, makes being at home with children isolating to a degree that would be unheard-of in past eras. A lot of the work is really gross, too, and not every mother naturally has her greatest gifts in standard domestic realms. That doesn't mean raising her own children is not essential work, but it can be nice to do something else once in a while. The challenge is finding ways for the mother to remain connected to the world and to work she personally enjoys without simultaneously disconnecting the children from her life.

It is a reconnection of life--of family life with leisure life and work life (not the annexation of all of life by work), of children with the adult world, of mothers of small children with the community--that ought to be the goal. Finding ways to reconnect life will require thoughtful choices on everybody's part, not just on mothers.

Clearly written for students

The sensations described are correct, but around here 3:15 is the end of naptime, and free time is so over.

My equivalent times would be 1:15 and 8:50 (or just long enough after naptime and bedtime to be sure everything has settled down.)

Miscellaneous

It turns out to be a fracture, as well as general smushedness. Quite exciting to get from walking down the hallway. Anyway, now DOB has a new doctor and a cast and a brace and can hobble around brief distances without crutches, which is handy for carrying things.

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A song from D2 (after seeing a newborn at church)

There's a blue baby at church.
There's not a pink baby at church.
There's a blue baby at church.
(repeat indefinitely)

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Really yummy easy curry sauce: 1 cup of yogurt, 1 t. dijon mustard, 1 t. curry powder, 1 t. salt. Serve as a dip or on vegetables or on fried rice.

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There's a long post brewing. I hope I get it out soon, because it's starting to keep me awake at night. Some famous author (I forget who, but definitely male) said that he wrote to experience the same sort of relief that a cow felt when milked. I know that feeling much better than he did, and there is a similarity. Too many words crammed in my head!!!

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I'm reading a fascinating book on the use (not just creation) of technology, but some previous reader apparently spilled soup every few pages. Ewwww. I can't quite be as outraged as I would like, though, because . . . I spilled a little soup on it myself.

What to Expect When You're Expecting: The Duchy Edition

We were half-expecting it to happen. It happened when D1 was on the way, and the circumstances were even more favorable (or unfavorable, that is) this time. We could probably create a formula to predict it:

(id+(n/a))q/h=w

Where i=intensity of morning sickness, d=duration of morning sickness, n=number of pre-existing children, a=average age of pre-existing children, q=one of those magic numbers that makes formulas come out right, h=degree of help available, and w=number of weeks before DOB seriously injures something.

Until we can find a qualified doctor (his old one retired since his last injury and his foot is no place for generalists), we're not sure exactly what is going on, except considerable pain and a dull red mark in a new spot on his foot. But we think it's a torn ligament.

See, usually DOB, in the approved fashion of male chauvinists, comes home from work and sits down (although minus the easy chair, TV, and beer, none of which we have on hand). He, however, has a good reason for doing this, and when life has been such that he can't do it (such as a wife lying whimpering on the couch), we soon find out just how good that reason is. His feet can't handle much being walked on. Sooner or later they go on strike.

Unfortunately for this time's formula, "w" came out to be a smaller number than "d". I am intermittently vertical, but just barely. I still tire quickly, about at the time I've finished thinking of what needs to be done next. And suddenly most things are much longer and more complicated, and we are constantly reminded just how very un-handicapped-accessible this house is.

On the brighter side, the ducklings are an amazing amount of help. They fetch. They carry. They set the table. They clear the table. They put laundry in the basket. They clear dangerous items off the floor. I just wish I could teach them to cook. (I did try instructing D1 in the art of spreading peanut butter. Messy, but edible.)

And it could have happened two weeks ago, when I wasn't vertical at all. Then we would have just had to lay us doon and die, I suppose.

And DOB's shoulders are getting a great workout from being on crutches. I'll have quite the bodybuilder to go out . . . er, stay home with . . . on Valentine's Day.

Equal Opportunity Parenting

A major concern of the modern parent, or at least of modern parental advisors, seems to be raising children in a manner free of gender bias. Thus parents may be advised to encourage their little girls to play with trucks and their little boys to play with dolls.

Regardless of ideology, this seems a little challenging to me. All the parental encouragement energy I have is used up encouraging them not to play with things like my bedding and the toothbrushes. I have none left over to encourage them to play with the politically correct (or, for that matter, the politically incorrect) thing. If it doesn't break easily and I won't have to wash it at the end, it's fair game.

Fortunately there's another way to ensure your child gets a well-rounded playtime free from gender bias: have a child of the opposite gender fifteen months later. (Although honesty requires me to confess that in the long run this is probably not less work.) Suddenly your house will be filled with boy and girl toys, and we all know there is nothing to "encourage" a child to play with a toy like the sight of it in someone else's hands.

The children will, of course, ignore toys of all descriptions and play with their blankets and the laundry baskets.

The ducklings do occasionally both play warm, nurturing games of tucking in stuffed animals. (We only have one doll here, and as it never has clothes on, I think that's enough.) For some reason it's always called "hospital," not "house." Sometimes they play more aggressive games of crashing cars together. But usually they play games of universal appeal to male and female, young and old, like traveling to exotic locations (usually located behind the couch) and eating.

Yesterday they held church services behind the couch, D1 preaching in her most impressive tones with her previously-unknown Scriptures ("Come unto God in the Holy Day of Thunder"). She always imitates the intonation of the most Bible-thumping of traveling evangelists, instinctively I suppose, since she never hears it at church or home.

I wondered whether I should intervene with a discussion of roles of women in the church, when I found a far more pressing issue arising. D2 suffered a minor head bump, and D1 paused her exhortation long enough to comment, "Go tell QOC about it."

"Excuse me?" I said, "I am your mother."

Miscellaneous

You might deduce from the increased frequency and decreased whining of the posts that I am feeling better. That would be correct. Of course, it's all a matter of perspective; this would have been feeling rather poorly in October. But compared to not daring to roll over, it's a huge improvement. Don't look for folded laundry any time soon, though.

Wondergirl has left, having saved our lives in the meantime. I am able to cook again, and even sit up to eat my meals. This is a big step, as for some reason that was impossible for a long time, and eating tomato soup lying down is dangerous to the couch. I wonder how the ancient Romans managed all those reclining meals; I bet they didn't eat tomato soup.

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Nigerian Chicken Recipe

There is an elegant Nigerian lady at our church who is also an excellent cook. So when I was enjoying her baked chicken at the potluck this week, I told DOB that I would have to ask her for the recipe some day, but not right then because I still would rather not talk about food too much.

He came back from a trip for refills to report that he had asked her for the recipe himself. She replied, "I put a lot of spices on it and baked it for a long time."

That's what my recipes usually sound like, too. I'll have to try it sometime.

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Life: The Musical
D1's fascination with making up songs has become chronic. Sunday morning we were greeted with toes sticking under our bedroom door and serenaded with a song about purple and blue socks. D2 joined in on the choruses.

Getting ready to go to church, she sang the Mitten Song (a pre-existing composition) and then composed a lengthy Glove Song, with a verse for each finger. When I found myself singing about the troubles of getting children in and out of the car, DOB said that this trend had gone far enough.

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I thought this article was faintly amusing. It's now counter-cultural to have children before you're thirty--at least if you have a college degree. And people actually feel like they must be too young and inexperienced to have children at that age! The truth is, everybody is too young to have children until they have them.

Then again, thinking about it, most of the couples around here that are our age in fact do not have kids yet. We'd rather get it over with before we're too old and tired to handle them. (And later arrivals will at least have older siblings to chase them.)

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Growing Pains
We had been suspicious for awhile, but DOB measured D2 this week and discovered the shocking truth: he's grown an inch and a half since the end of September. No wonder we weren't having to roll his jeans up anymore. I thought children were not supposed to grow as fast in the winter. It's definitely a bad time for it, as his winter shirts are all starting to get too short, and his stomach is going to get cold.

Poor lad, he still is not reconciled to the idea that he is too big for Mama to carry (or that Mama is too tired to try). We have to remember to give him the choice between being carried by Papa or holding Mama's hand; then he's usually happy with holding my hand.

His speech continues to increase in elaboration and precision. I want to call him Baby Jeeves. "Papa is going to the chiropracor, also." "That would be a good idea." "Yes, I am able to do that." It really doesn't sound that cute in print; you have to see his wide-eyed baby face producing these solemn sounds.

Jane Austen Sews a Quilt

Apparently many persons (unknown and therefore unattributable) upon seeing exhibited a quilt made by Jane Austen have commented that the world would be better off if Miss Austen had eschewed quilt-making and written another book instead.

As devoted as a fan as I am--as delighted as I would be to find a new book--and as correspondingly uninterested as I am in her sewing--I cannot find myself agreeing.

I'm quite certain that the world would not be a better place if Miss Austen had given up tedious morning calls, country balls, and gossiping with her sisters in order to devote herself more completely to literature; I'm not at all certain that a decrease in quilt-making would have been any more helpful. Who knows what plot elements were pieced together while she sewed?

Even if it were helpful for astrophysicists or musicians to devote themselves to their genius to the point of eccentricity (which I doubt), surely a novelist is the last person who can afford to become less than a whole person in the pursuit of Art. A novelist is in pursuit of life; they have to live in order to write. (Although they should not take it to the extreme of the one who is said to have deducted all his expenditures on his income tax forms.)

Besides, isn't six books enough? There are many authors who are both great and prolific, but there are very few who didn't say all the really important things they had to say in six books (or, if very given to padding, in the equivalent of six books). More might be fun to have on a rainy Saturday, but more are not particularly helpful to the state of the world. Genius might as well not be spread too thin.

The trouble about protesting where this or that person wasted their genius in something else, or had it stunted through some suffering, is that it's quite impossible to tell where wasting was occurring and where inspiration. Even dissipation provides its own peculiar inspiration; as have blindness, sickness, exile, and nagging wives. Surely we can allow a small place for quilting.

Sometimes I have heard it suggested, to young people trying to find God's Will for their life, that they should consider what one thing they do uniquely well and devote their life to that. The trouble is, I am fast approaching thirty, have tried many things, and still have no idea what that one thing might be. I have found many things I do quite well, many things I enjoy doing, and many, many things I need to do whether I like it or not.

Fortunately I can figure out God's will on most of these things without undue soul-searching as to whether this or that is worthy of my whole life's endeavor: Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. I know there is a place for eliminating useless activities from life, but in the modern obsession over priorities and specialization, there also needs to be a place for just living.

I hope Miss Austen worked hard at the quilt while she was making it. I will now go work hard at lying down and reading Dickens (because I finished rereading all my Austen books last month).

Questions

Do small children have a sensor, similar to that of wild animals who can sense fear, that lets them know when you are bored stiff with reading a particular story and therefore causes them to clamor for it over and over?

What is the use of baby bathrobes, except for taking cute pictures? If a child is dried off, who would delay the diaper? And once you have the diaper on, why not just put on the pajamas rather than leave the child to get tangled in a robe? (And why can't I bear to part with any of the cute baby bathrobes that have fallen into my hands, even though I know I never use them?)

Why do they put lights in the restrooms of public places that make you look as if you had an advanced case of leprosy? Do they want to scare you back into your hole so you never come out in public again?

The Morals of Galileo

Galileo Galilei (the Man with the Unimaginative Name) has been cropping up a lot in my reading this year, because I have been on a medieval/renaissance kick in preparation for studying the time period with the ducklings in four years or so. (Overanalyzing is my maternal hobby. I don't scrapbook.)

Books on the Renaissance for grownups do not have as much chronological snobbery as they used to, but books for children still are pretty commonly dedicated to the proposition that the world languished in darkness until a few Italian fellows came up with the bright idea of Questioning Authority and discovered those patently obvious ideas that we all know today.

Exhibit A, of course, is Galileo, a bright little morality tale about the forces of Science versus Organized Religion and Modern Thought versus Superstition. Young children like morality tales, of course--if you do not tell it as one, they will demand to know who the Good Guys and Bad Guys are. But although I recognize this as a necessary stage of moral development, I am not quite content to tell the story so simply.

For one thing, it minimizes the challenge of discovery in the first place. The only reason it is obvious to us that the earth goes around the sun is that we have been told it from childhood; in short, because we have taken it on faith. All the patent evidence goes the other way. Even Galileo's proofs of it were not so good as he thought, and before Galileo there was no real proof of the idea at all. Reluctance to accept an idea that contradicts most evidence and lacks definitive proof is not medieval bigotry; it's just common sense.

For another thing, it reinforces a quite unjustified sense of superiority over those medieval bigots who just accepted so many things unquestioningly. Never do we stop to ask what things we accept unquestioningly that our great-great-great grandchildren will laugh at. We do not ask because we could not answer; it takes an exceptional genius to spot even one or two of those things. But we should always keep it in mind that those things exist.

Even if medieval people were overall less inquisitive and less open than we are, it might do well to remember that they were accustomed to being overrun by barbarians, famine, and plague rather often. Catastrophe concentrates the mind wonderfully, but leaves little time for esoteric debate. Scientific discovery is a luxury item. (The Middle Ages did, in fact, contribute considerable amounts in practical advancement, only when and how is lost, so we cannot write the thrilling biography of the man who developed the improved horse-collar or spread the news about crop rotation.)

When it comes down to Galileo's personal story, too, it is very little a case of Science versus Religion or Modern Thought versus Superstition, on which we can look with modern smugness. Much more it is a case of Old Science versus New Science, and that is a battle that is fought over and over in every field, with no more profound motives than the egos of the people involved. When you have devoted all your life to teaching X as true, as agreed by all your respected colleagues, it is understandably annoying (not to mention absurd) to have some young upstart pronounce that X is false.

Most times the Old Guard cannot bend the Pope's ear and pull the Inquisition into the act, but then simple ostracism can accomplish consequences quite as severe as Galileo's forced retirement to his country villa.

We can still take away the lesson that the forces of church and state should not be placed behind a scientific orthodoxy (but that is a moral that cuts both ways); we can also take away the lesson that more humility on all sides would be beneficial and make us look a tad less ridiculous to our descendants.

The whole controversy, however, seems a little complex for the world of picture books and the minds of children still obsessed with Good Guys and Bad Guys. So I was pleased to find at least one book that told about Galileo's great discoveries as something astonishing and even fun; one that gives the spirit of science without smugness. It's called Galileo's Journal: 1609-1610, by Jeanne K. Pettenati.

On a totally unrelated note: carrot panpipes.

Unraveling

Four years ago, in a surge of nesting hormones or something, I decided to crochet a baby bunting (that's a little baby-sack sort of thing with arms) for the impending arrival of D1.

Three years ago, I pulled it out again and worked on it a little longer for the impending arrival of D2.

When books began to pall this time around, I took it out again. I remembered why I never finish this sort of thing. First I crocheted several rows, then I discovered a three-year-old and dozens-of-rows earlier error that required ripping out the entire front side. I crocheted along for a few days, got almost to the previous ripping-out point, and discovered another error about two-thirds of the way down the part I had just repaired. Meanwhile the ducklings have discovered the joys of poking spare crochet needles into balls of yarn (and dropping them and seeing them roll across the floor).

The only consolation is that it's really easy to pull out crochet stitches. There is a reason I never attempt cross-stitch at all.

Getting better is like that. I feel better one day, try some grand venture like sitting up for a half-hour straight, and find myself fighting all my meals the next day. I really am feeling better, but definitely not to the point of dancing around like people in pharmaceutical commercials. (On the other hand, I've gotten thus far without pharmaceuticals. I don't care how safe they are. I do not like putting strange substances into me, especially not when there is someone else in there.)

Wondergirl has very wonderfully agreed to stay on an extra two weeks, in hopes that I can rebuild my strength enough to reclaim the helm by then. I am doing my exercises and taking my vitamins and trying not to worry.

A Brief Rant

I was working on a post about my resentment of bureaucratic prying into my life in the form of endless questionnaires unrelated to actually given birth ("Has anyone hit you recently?" "No, but I did suffer a rather painful toe-smashing at the feet of a booted toddler."), bright little pamphlets advising me that babies do cry and that rocking and singing to them is more appropriate a response than shaking them to pieces, and chatty ladies from the insurance company with no discernible information calling up to see how I am doing.

I don't want strange ladies with unclear motives and no apparent intentions of dish-washing calling me up to chat about how I am doing and if I have enough help. I don't want (even at the lure of a $50,000 grand prize) to fill out a little card that says I now know that it is normal for babies to cry, as if to admit that before I was a nincompoop and potential child abuser but have been redirected by their pamphlets onto the straight and narrow path.

Surely elderly ladies at church (who after all have no unknown but potentially sinister powers behind them) are enough for a reasonably competent mother to endure. And while I do not deny the existence of incompetent mothers in the world, I somehow doubt their habits are changed greatly by little pamphlets and calls about their bad habits. They would probably do better with a few nosy elderly ladies in their lives, but it's hard to come up with a good corporate program for distributing those.

Well, I guess I just wrote it.

Miscellaneous

We went to the doctor for the first time this week. (I know, I know. Should have been two months ago. But I always procrastinate.) It is nice to hear the heartbeat and be reassured that it is, in fact, a baby, and not a two-month case of food poisoning.

As for how things are going, I suppose they are going better. It's all in what you compare it to. Last week I couldn't move or keep anything down, and this week I can keep most food down if I don't move and breathe deeply and think Beautiful Thoughts and no one asks me about the grocery list. It's good practice for labor. Wondergirl is doing everything, for which we are so deeply indebted we shall never be able to pay her back.

We had a very nice Christmas. D2 got a lot of cars, so he was happy. D1 got to wear her black and red dress and open lots of packages, so she was happy. DOB finished the presents he was writing (a complete history of Burgundy), so he was happy. Wondergirl got everything done as planned and took many pictures of small children, so she was happy. I didn't throw up anywhere embarrassing, so I was happy.

Weird pregnancy dreams continue. Last night's involved porcupines that turned into stray children and a trip to play golf in Florida with the president and my late grandmother.

Merry Christmas!

"Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether he likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be some savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God."
~G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Deficiencies in the Christmas Story

We have been enjoying reading The Christmas Story with illustrations from the Metropolitan Museum of Art for our family devotions. Alas, it does not seem to be readily available. Too bad it is not one of the library books we have lost.

Anyway, D2 was quite entranced with the picture on last night's page, studying it in great detail, especially the hillside behind Bethlehem.

"Where is the car?" he kept asking, "I have to find the car."

"There aren't any cars," DOB kept explaining.

"Why don't they have any cars?"

Clearly the Christmas story could do with a few more motorized vehicles.

Duckling Quotes

D1 (while coloring): Are you watching us?
QOC: Yes, it's my job to make sure you grow up into decent and responsible human beings.
D1: I'm not a bean, I'm a person.

***********
D2 (swathed in blankets): D1 is Mary and I am Joseph.
QOC: And where is the baby?
D2 (triumphantly): In your tummy!

Some Important Information

• The twelve days of Christmas did not start yesterday. They start on Christmas. We're still in Advent, folks. Don't jump the gun, or the party will be over too soon.
• There is no "e" in Santa Claus. A clause is a sentence fragment, and will not bring you presents no matter how good you have been. (However, if you treat your sentence fragments properly, the Grammar Commando, in the spirit of holiday cheer, will refrain from slaying you with a red marker.)

Poetry

"It is things going right," [Syme] cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars--the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick." --G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

I must agree with Syme here, and therefore admit that there is not much poetical--or bloggable--around here right now. I am too brain-dead even to read books worthy of comment. (I started The Canterbury Tales, and found it much easier going than I expected, but it got lost somewhere on the Table of Doom, or perhaps below on the Floor of No Return.) I am counting down the days, with the dreary knowledge that there is no guarantee of feeling better at twelve weeks, or thirteen weeks, or fourteen weeks.

The good thing is, this always makes the newborn phase seem like a piece of cake by contrast. I'd rather be up with someone else's empty tummy than my own.

Drastic Simplification

Christmas is going to have to be very simple this year. This will not be the year of clever handmade gifts, or complex cookie trays, or elaborate parties. In fact, we won't even be attending any parties. The only company we will be having for awhile is the kind that will clean the house when they arrive, fix and serve the food, and then clean it all up. (We do know some amazing people like that.)

What we do have, though, is quite enough:

The Tree: I have to have a tree. A real tree. Having grown up in the rural Northwest, I find it as much a piece of home as a piece of Christmas.

Even our first Christmas, when I was sicker than this and we lived an apartment so overcrowded with furniture for a house that you need never touch the floor, we chopped the bottom three feet off the tree and put it on the coffee table. (This turned out to be cheaper than buying one sized for the task.)

This year the tree is standing (thanks to that helpful company) full-sized on the floor. It smells wonderful and not at all like food. We left off a lot of the ornaments, but it still looks lovely.

Music: Even I can handle popping a CD in and pushing play once or twice a day. We can also sing Christmas songs.

Advent calendar: We have the felt one from my childhood, with an animal or person from the nativity to turn over each day. The ducklings also have a set of nativity blocks made by my siblings. They like to rock the sheep and Baby Jesus. So far no one has turned up the nativity set proper, but maybe someone will before the month is out.

Presents: This is not a great year for presents on the time or money angle, but there are enough things picked up here and there that I'm sure the ducklings will have a great time on Christmas morning. (Although wrapping is still in doubt.) Everybody else will have to content themselves with pictures.

Christmas Cards: I'm still hoping to get these out before the new year. I just lack the address labels now.

Some things we won't have that I will really miss:

Christmas play: We've had to give it up. I would be lucky to even attend it, much less rehearse or perform. And DOB is simply having to spend too much time on his feet. Maybe next year; and then D3 can star as baby John the Baptist.

Advent devotional box: This is entirely my fault. If I had just put it all back together properly when I put it away last winter, it would be ready to use. But it's not, and it's not going to be. I'm going to try to do something simpler and shorter with a lovely book we got from the library that has the Christmas text mingled with gorgeous Renaissance art prints.

Gifts from the kids: I really love having the kids make Christmas gifts for people. Alas, there are very few crafts that can be done successfully by a 2- and 3-year-old without any preparation, supervision, or clean-up.

If I felt well enough to miss Christmas cookies, I would feel well enough to make them. If I felt well enough to miss parties, I would feel well enough to attend them.

Another Odd Symptom

Now this one I've never heard anyone talk about, but it has applied consistently to me. When I'm pregnant I frequently have violent dreams. I'm always beating someone up, usually one of my brothers. (I have four of them, and they are all much bigger and stronger than me and and definitely not people I would even THINK of fighting.)

Last night it was my oldest brother, sporting a full head of hair (which he hasn't had in twenty years, I'm sure). I was trying to roll out cookie dough on the floor of the front porch (despite it being covered in dog hair--eww), and he kept stepping on it. So I beat him up.

What does it all mean? Maternal protective instincts coming out? Or is it just that I'm getting restless at a life limited to eating and sleeping? I have no idea.

You know you're pregnant when . . .

. . . you find yourself tearing up over an article on urban planning and demographic shifts.

Readability

When this test was first going around, I suppressed my results in embarrassment. Then I read one person who had tested a blog of C. S. Lewis' writings and found that it was at the elementary level, and one of Chesterton's was at the high school level. (Chesterton himself said that if you could not say what you meant in words of one syllable, you didn't really know what you meant. Though he did not so restrict himself in his own writings.)

So why be ashamed of being readable? Why hang my head when I have merely realized the goal of endless re-readings of The Elements of Style?

I admit with some embarrassment that the deciding factor for me to post my score was coming across a poorly-written blog proudly sporting a badge that said it was a "genius" reading level. (Indeed, there are a lot of blogs out there that would require more than a genius to decipher. This does not mean that they took a genius to write.)

So, the Duchy. Clear, direct and readable since 2003.

That or maybe my first thought was correct, and I devote too much of my content to quoting the ducklings.

Prepared

This time, I knew what to do. This time, I was going to be prepared. D2's first trimester had gone better than D1's and this time I wouldn't even be nursing. I had meat and bread and cookies prepared in the freezer. For months in advance I took all the wonder vitamins and herbs that were supposed to forestall nausea. I did all my exercises.

In a worldwide deluge, I suppose having an inflatable life raft and a couple of boxes of crackers would seem helpful for awhile. But we are beginning to feel very much adrift. Apparently the illness experienced during D1's pregnancy was not a fluke caused by unpleasant living circumstances. If anything, I'm rather worse this time; only this time, instead of just having me to drag through the day, I also must supervise two very busy ducklings.

I have tried to remind myself that other women undoubtedly have it worse; that some women throw up for all nine months, or throw up so much that they must go in the hospital and get fluids through IVs. Somehow other people's misery does not diminish mine.

Besides, in the hospital, one would not have to cook food. Or smell food cooking. Or think about food. It's astonishing how much time, on average, I spend thinking about food. One meal is not done before I must think of what must be done for the next one, or two . And I have discovered that the only way for me to keep a meal down is to lie down for several hours afterwards and, with all my might, NOT think about food. (How am I writing this post, you ask? It's before a meal right now, and I find it helps to do what must be done before the meal. I don't feel any better afterward, but the muscles are often tired enough to give me a break.)

Other people are very kind and helpful and come in and do the dishes now and again or watch the ducklings for awhile, but nothing, alas, relieves me of the duty of thinking. DOB has a thorough training in most of the household arts, but he needs orders (and can only stand on his feet for so long). Even ordering out (which I am loath to do--why pay so much for something unlikely to be digested?) requires a decision.

The ducklings are doing their best to manage the house on their own. Yesterday D1 had complete Sunday outfits for both of them laid out before I arose; D2 was trying to put his Sunday pants on, upside down over his pajamas. The house has reached a sort of level of chaos where everything that can be dragged out has been dragged out, so at least it's not getting much worse.

Fortunately the ducklings seldom lack for ideas to amuse themselves; most of these involve piling all bedding, toys and clothes available onto the couch, though the name of the game may be "airplane," "hospital," or "fire engine." Then they jump on top, sometimes singing D1's Toddler Power Song: "We are toddlers, and we can jump on the couch!"

All that happy little advice for morning sickness--"crackers!" "frequent snacking!" "lemon water!" is starting to read like common cold treatments when you have double pneumonia. I try to read to keep my mind off food, but it's astonishing how often the people in books eat. And seem to enjoy it, too. Jerks.

In the interests of counting my blessings, a few notes:

• I'm in no danger of dehydration or malnutrition. In fact, I'm gaining weight at an alarming rate.
• We can keep the heat on here. (We couldn't at our apartment when I was pregnant with D1; it poured second-hand smoke.)
• I never *have* been sick all nine months, and while there may be a first time for everything, I think I can still be reasonably optimistic that by New Year's I may be able to contemplate a meal before I eat it.
• Wondergirl is coming in three weeks and two days. I hope she can get the door open when she comes.
  

And Baby Makes Three

And then think how long it will take to get a decent family picture . . .

Outside

Even though we still have some luxuriously warm days, and the fall colors have lingered late this year, making up for having summer stretch into October, the shorter days have compelled us to give up our most delightful outside activity. We had thought of many ways and times to go out with the kids; we had made many resolutions. But some things must wait until they just happen.

And what happened, and happened, and happened again was that we could pack up a supper on our chiropractor night and stop by a park on the way home. Somehow if we were already out (and the chiropractor is a sacred appointment with us), stopping somewhere else was not such a burden as the thought of packing everything up when we were already comfortably at home. We tried city parks and county parks, parks with bridges, parks with forest trails and parks with teeter-totters big enough for the whole family.

When it was too hot to eat out (I tried it once at ninety-five and was ill the rest of the week) we went to United Dairy Farmers (which D1 persists in calling Nine-Ten Dairy Farmers), ate our packed supper at their tables and then split a double-scoop ice cream cone to thank them for their trouble. When it was too hot or too dark, we went to the library and played at the train table. By fall, D2's legs had grown long enough that he could handle most of a mile hike, though he persists in the fear-of-slides stage.

I was full of good resolutions this spring to keep the ducklings outside for at least three hours every day. I have fallen far short of that except on the rare occasions when a very beautiful day has coincided with me feeling unusually good. But we have had a lot of fun outside this year. Our own backyard is getting more entertaining--it has some lovely dirt piles now, and a little hole that holds a pond after rain, and increasing areas of it are being converted into vegetable garden. Although I am not fond of the concrete pad left from a torn-down garage, it does make a handy place for riding bikes and cooking imaginary meals.

I never have figured out what to do about the mosquitoes, though. They continued unabated until frost, even though there was a drought and no standing water anywhere where they could be breeding.

D1 ponders the animal world

Last week I was recounting to D1 her prenatal adventures, and I explained to her that she lived inside me in water.

"Yes!" she said, "And I played with the ducks and the geese!"

I don't remember those. Maybe that explains the nausea.

Over the weekend we visited a history museum depicting life in early West Virginia settlements. D1 duly inspected the sheep's wool piled up for spinning and weaving. In the next building someone had left out a pile of bright pink installation.

"Look!" she cried, "It's pig's wool!"

Civics Quiz

You really should try out this civics quiz by ISI; we were quite impressed with the caliber of the questions. They ask things that are actually worth knowing. I got an embarrassingly high score, but then, it's my subject. Then if you like stressing over the degeneracy of society, you can read about how college students fare on the test. I hope my former class would have done better than average, but I am always plagued with doubt. I certainly tried.

Eight Random Things

I don't think I've actually done this one, even though *everybody* has. But now Amy has tagged me. So. Eight random things about me, plus eight people to tag (if I can come up with that many who have not just been tagged.)

1. One of my lifelong dreams is to live in a remote, quiet seaside cottage on a northern coast, taking long walks, wearing tweedy woolen sweaters, and writing Profound Things. Since I now live in a noisy house in a midwestern city, only wear cotton sweaters (and those seldom), and my writing perpetually declines in profundity, this dream seems rather hopeless right now. (I still take long walks whenever I get the chance.) But I refuse to give up hope.

2. I hate shopping. I hate spending money; I hate making decisions; I hate finding things in a big crowd of Other Things; I hate finding new places to put things. I really, really hate shopping. Even online. Every once in awhile I find a fabulous deal on something I desperately need (I usually have desperately needed things for a long time before I even go looking), and then I feel moderately tolerant of it, but I can still think of a thousand ways I'd rather spend the day. The only thing fun about shopping is mocking the things available for sale, and other people seem to frown on doing this publicly.

3. So far I've shown no sign of having wisdom teeth.

4. DOB and I are trying to further our cultural literacy by watching Star Wars for the first time, but we're finding it painful. The plot is so predictable! The dialogue sounds like it was written as a group activity by the freshman composition class! The acting is terrible! The science so irrational! The philosophy so absurd! Harrison Ford is the only thing that makes it remotely bearable. That and . . . it's fun to mock.

5. I've had two multi-year bouts of chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia type illness, but nothing in recent years. Just normal having babies and toddlers and never getting enough sleep fatigue, which doesn't count.

6. I attended "regular" school for one day in fourth grade and, though I had no particular interest in attending school before then, that certainly was enough to commit me to homeschooling for life. Sitting around waiting for some arbitrary declaration that it was time to move on, long after I had finished filling in all the right blanks, did not impress me as a good way to spend my life.

7. I love cooking if I don't have to stick to the recipe, teaching if I don't have to stick to the curriculum, and writing if I won't be graded on it.

8. I've only worn nail polish once in my life, and it was silver glitter.


And now I tag Carrie, Rose, Wendy, Melissa, Devona, Birdy, and um . . . I'm running out of untagged names here, but if you haven't done it (or you have eight MORE random things), feel free to join in.

D1 does the math

QOC (to D2): How many mommies do you have?
D1: I have five mommies!
QOC: Oh good, then one can fix lunch and one can go get you guys changed, and this mommy can go take a nap. . . .
D1: That's only three.

Don't worry, D1, I'm sure I can come up with enough work for any number of mommies to do.

Because the Memory Card was Full

The ducklings and their two best friends. I don't know what they are playing. But it was fun.












One bad hombre and his sidekicks.

Bright Moments in Capitalism

It is time for the toy catalogs to appear, which means it is time for me to mock the ideas toy manufacturers come up with in an effort to keep people coming back for more.

Actually we get a few toy catalogs which contain a fair number of toys that even I could see some sense in, given an unlimited budget and space. (Feeling at my capacity for Seeing Toys Get Picked Up, though, I'm not that wistful over them.) There is still always something to mock.

In one catalog, for $9.99, you could purchase for some eager young crafter, ages 3 and up, a paper chain kit. That's right, in case you couldn't guess, it contains paper strips and a glue stick. You don't even get to cut out the paper chains yourself, so no scissors are included. That would probably make it too dangerous. Although there is still the peril of paper cuts--perhaps the edges of the paper are sanded?

It does remind me that D1 is starting to be interested in scissors, and would probably enjoy making a paper chain some rainy day. I already picked up some glue sticks, for fifty cents or so at the back-to-school sales. Now all we need is some colorful paper. I think I have just the thing.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

Lately D1 has been quite intrigued by the intersection of physics and eschatology, or more precisely, by the idea that everything on earth will fall apart but we will go to heaven where everything will last forever. I forget why I brought it up, but I told her that our house would fall apart someday but Jesus was getting one ready for us in heaven.

D1: "What about our car?"
QOC: "It will fall apart, too."
D1: "But we need our car to get to heaven!"
QOC: "Jesus will come and get us."
D1: "Oh, does Jesus have his own car?"

Sometime later that day I heard her trying to convey this idea to D2, who was not interested. She finally called out to me in frustration, "Mama! D2 doesn't want to fall apart or go to heaven." Perhaps, like the child in the old joke, he was concerned that she was getting up a load for tonight.

Today while getting changed she commented, "Pretty soon we will have no house and no clothes."
QOC: "Why not?"
D1: "Because when our house falls apart it will smash our clothes."

I tried to assure her that nothing was going to fall apart any time soon, not that she seemed at all distressed at the prospect. Meanwhile D2 would rather put a blanket over his head and be a monster, until he runs into the furniture. Perhaps the thought of being eternally secure against a bonked head would render him more interested in his future state.

Revenge of the Clothes Boxes

My last post was the thousandth. I should have thrown a party. Or given something away. Anybody want an 18" suncatcher of a bowl of fruit in primary colors?

We had a fabulous weekend of hiking, canoeing, and generally enjoying the absolute pinnacle of beautiful fall weather and colors.

Now it is raining, and raining, and raining. Which means I must face my promises to take the ducklings up to the attic and--shudder--organize the clothing boxes. Somewhere I read advice to the effect that you should just consider the thrift store your attic and donate all your children's outgrown clothes there, and then go buy others when you needed them. Whoever said that could not have had (or planned to have) very many children. That, or they must have loved shopping.

I hate shopping. Even worse than I hate organizing. It takes a lot of time and hassle to assemble a decent-looking wardrobe from hand-me-downs and my very, very occasional forays into second-hand shopping. I certainly don't want to throw it all out as long as there's a possibility I might need it again someday. Truly, if I had tons of money I would just mail-order them a few basic pieces that could all coordinate with each other, and donate them when they outgrew them.

Since I don't have tons of money, I keep piecing things together. This is a messy process. Especially when the boxes have been moved a few times, and winter clothes were shoved in random spots by one fleeing from the summer attic heat, and seasons never change all at once, and children never outgrow an entire set of clothes simultaneously, and the ducklings' very favorite game to play is packing for a trip, and one very foolishly asked certain younger relatives to move the boxes without making it clear that THROWING them was not the proper method.

I sort through the debris and wonder why clothing manufacturers cannot get their act together on children's clothes sizes. Just when I've figured out that 18 months is the same size as 12-18 months, NOT as 18-24 months, and when I've figured out how many pounds that is, some other manufacturer decides to throw an "extra-small" at me. Every once in awhile a European garment shows up to completely throw me for a loop. I can excuse the Europeans, but not the Americans. There is no excuse here like there is for adult clothes, where they must all compete to make us feel as skinny as possible. Toddlers Do. Not. Care. what number is on their clothes. Just set some industry standards!

Furthermore, long experience has taught me that dresses should be put in a size down from what they say, or they're likely to be too short when they come out; and on my kids, at least, pants probably belong in a box up. So um, this is a 2T dress, which means it goes with the 18-24 month clothes, but this 24 month dress needs to go in the 12-18 month clothes while the 24 month pants need to go in the 2T box . . . and meanwhile somebody has fallen down and gotten stuck in an empty box and somebody else is wanting to help by moving things from one box to another, just like Mama!

I got the main sorting done this morning, and if it can just stay sorted until I can get back to it, I'll go through and weed through the clothes until I can easily close the box (paper boxes DOB brings home from work), one box per size and gender. (It seems to me only fair to allow a summer and winter box once they get old enough not to grow into a new size every season, though, so I'll probably keep two boxes of D1's most recent size.) This is when I can get rid of anything with yucky-feeling fabric, or anything that long experience has taught me is too much trouble to put on. Sometimes I look back at things I picked up before D1 was born and wonder what I was thinking. I got a little too desperate when the first few yard sales I hit didn't have much good. I should have just been patient.

So here's my hard-earned thoughts on children's clothes. These are all buying recommendations; I will temporarily take hand-me-downs that don't quite meet up if I don't have enough clothes to rotate in a particular size.

1. Only get 100% cotton. Anything with polyester will feel yucky really, really fast, if it doesn't already. And 100% cotton is not hard to find anymore. (As to whether you want to pick up wool things, I leave that to your dry cleaning bill.)
   
2. Choose a color scheme for a child. D1 pretty much gets pink and purples, D2 pretty much gets orange, red, or sometimes green. (These are colors they like and look good in, for the record. I hate pink.) They both get denim, which goes with everything, right? The more I do this, the fewer odd garments they have that never seem to go with anything and clash horribly with their coats and shoes.
   
3. If you're buying an isolated garment, as opposed to a set, make sure it either is neutral (jeans, khakis, simple solid or striped tops) or will go with a readily-available neutral. You are never, ever, ever going to find clever matches in second-hand clothes if they don't come together. For little girls, denim pants or jumpers with a little mixed-color trim can usually be matched to something, so I count them as neutral.
4. Don't get things you don't like. Children may have clothing preferences when they are old enough to earn their own money and drive to the store. OK, maybe a little before then. But while you can give them choices, you're the one who has to look at it and pay for it. Personally, I shudder at TV characters on clothes, so those always go straight out.
5. From birth to four months, look for how easy it is for you to put them on. Snapping all the way down the front usually works best for me. Slipping a newborn head through any neck hole is a challenge. Fussing with elaborate fastening procedures on someone who spits up at every feeding is just not worth it.
   
6. From four to eighteen months (more precisely, from rolling over to walking very well), look for mobility. Long, loose garments are going to tangle them up and slow them down. Shirts that snap underneath are perfect, since their tummy stays covered and their legs are free. I try to avoid long dresses for girls at this age, except for Sunday morning. All-in-one outfits should be cut pretty tight or have elastic around the waist, or they'll get tangled in them.
   
7. From eighteen months on, avoid those snaps underneath, and anything in the overall or coverall line. Not only will you be ready for potty training whenever it occurs, but I've always found it much easier to dress a wiggly toddler standing up than have them lie down long enough for all those snaps.
8. All clothes for two year olds and up should be purchased with an eye to how easy it will be for the child to learn to get them on and off by himself. I try to stick to wide-neck knit tops and elastic-waist pants, plus over-the-top dresses and jumpers for girls. It is a happy, happy day when your child can dress herself. Don't delay it by stuck zippers and tiny buttons.
9. Make sure you hold onto a few less-than-perfect things sturdy enough for playing in the mud.
   
10. Don't count on sizes--hold the clothes up to each other and make sure they are close. Some manufacturers consistently run large or small. (Unfortunately, I can never remember which.)

Gnus and Other Creatures

Last night I was getting the ducklings' jammies on them. (Actually D1 can now do this almost entirely without assistance, an event whose import of joy on both sides you could only understand if you knew my skills at child-dressing. When I first visited my family after D1's birth, with six months of mommyhood under my belt, my siblings all came down and lined up on the couch while I was changing the baby, not because they wanted to see me or the baby, but because they wanted to be there for the show. They were not disappointed.)

For some reason something reminded me of a snatch of song from an old British comedy duo and I started singing:

"I'm a g-nu, I'm a g-nu,
You really ought to k-now w-ho's w-ho."

Unfortunately that was all I could remember. And according to DOB, I was butchering the melody even on that part. But the ducklings were delighted and insisted on hearing it over and over.

Now, singing the same two lines of the song repeatedly, and getting even those wrong, gets frustrating after awhile. So when everyone was installed in their jammies, I went to Google and hunted up the lyrics. That was all well and good, but my attempt to sing them required me to make up half of the tune, and believe me, I'm no composer. D2 was satisfied, but I was not.

Then I went back to the Google results and great was our joy to realize we could watch the entire thing on YouTube. The ducklings were satisfied, except of course they wanted to watch it a great many more times than was reasonable, what with it being bedtime and all. How did we survive before Google and YouTube?

The gnu featured in a lengthy discussion D1 and I had today on mammals, or rather, Which Animals Drink Milk from their Mamas. Pretty much any topic we approach comes from the food angle. Earlier this morning we counted buttons into bowls and they became soup. On Tuesday we made an apple pie and saw the world. I should just make alphabet soup to round out the course offerings.

Random Thought

Not to slight anyone's denomination, but it struck us while driving past the Deerfield United Methodist Church that if you're a United Methodist, it must be pretty tough to come up with a church name that doesn't have lousy initials. Clearly more thought should have gone into naming the denomination.

Think of the possibilities:

Southern Cincinnati United Methodist
Greater Louisville United Methodist
Boston United Methodist

How Cool

I've been meandering my way to the Norman Conquest, even reading a novel (OK, a YA novel) on the Bayeux Tapestry, and behold, yesterday was the 941st anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.

This is too much fun. I can't wait until the kids are old enough to do all this with me. Of course, the things that interest them already amaze me--we got a globe at the thrift store on Saturday, and it has further fed their obsession with all things geographic. They love finding where they live, and then hunting up random spots and asking who lives there. (In Chad? Umm . . . maybe lions and giraffes?) D2 was initially upset with the idea that he lived on a giant ball, but he seems to have gotten used to it.

A Few Things

Fall did come, at last; in fact, the high temperature dropped over thirty degrees in two days. We went straight from mosquito bites to chapped lips. But I am by no means complaining.

Their Majesties came by briefly on Wednesday, perhaps bringing the cooler weather with them from Washington. They were en route to see my youngest brother graduate from boot camp. (He used to be called Rocketboy online, but since he's going into helicopter maintenance and flight, perhaps he needs a new name. Copterboy?)

Wednesday morning I naturally still had considerable house cleaning and cooking to do, but I awoke that morning with an idea for the church Christmas pageant--something that has perplexed me for weeks--and not just an idea, but the entire pageant, every scene, nearly every word, raging through my mind. Naturally that had to take priority over a few gray splotches on the kitchen floor, although in due time nearly everything was done.

(I finished the pageant today, and it's at the stage where, as Pooh said, a thing that was very thingish in your mind turns out to be not so much when it's out where people can look at it. But I shall have DOB look at it and see if it is still thingish enough for him to produce.)

With the cooler weather on Thursday I had to make good on my resolutions to spend more time outside, so I grabbed whatever was in the fridge (one stale hunk of bread, four cheese sticks, and a partial bag of baby carrots) and we went to the park all morning. We got home quite tired, and after brief stories I put them down for their naps and headed downstairs to switch the laundry.

Something smelled funny. DOB's sister (who I think will have the name Cicero on here--pronounce it with the traditional soft C and you will see why it's a natural nickname for the only girl among six boys) was in the attic studying, and I called her down to get her opinion, since I still feel very inexperienced in matters of poisonous vapors getting pumped into the house. She also thought it smelled suspiciously like gas. So we called DOB and he, never one to pooh-pooh dangers, ordered us all out of the house. Immediately.

I woke up D1 and got up D2, and tried to explain to their mystified faces why we were putting on jackets and heading back outside instead of taking naps. I did have them grab their blankets, with vague ideas of setting up camp outside if necessary. That proved to not be necessary, as I saw the neighbor and she kindly let us stay in her living room. D1 was very sleepy but pleased with the idea of a progressive nap, while D2 was wide awake and terrified at the strange house. No sooner had we gotten them settled than D2 fell sound asleep, while D1 wiggled on the couch for the entire time.

I left Cicero with the kids and waited for the gas man. He went in and said he didn't smell anything. However, the machine finally revealed a tiny leak around the water heater, which he resolved by tightening a screw. He still remained skeptical that whatever I had smelled could have possibly had anything to do with that, but I say I just have a more sensitive nose. (And our first landlord said he couldn't smell any smoke in our apartment. Mm-hmm.)

So that was an exciting yesterday. Today I smashed my toe on the closet door frame. I'm not even sure why I was in the closet; it's not a walk-in. And not a walk-out, apparently. The toe is purple and swollen and we spent our outside time in the back yard, which the mosquitoes have happily abandoned.

But, the air is cool. The ducklings are looking very adorable in their slightly-too-big and not-yet-stained winter wardrobes. And life is good.

How to Politely Drive Your Mother Crazy

At the lunch table:

D2: How was your day, D1?
D1: No, thank you.
D2: How was your day, D1?
D1: No, thank you.
(Repeat without stopping until lunch is over.)

Misery Loves Company

Things that are Miserable:

1. 90-degree weather in October.
2. Teething toddlers.
3. Reorganizing the personal finance files.

Since I can't do anything about 1 and 2, I might as well throw 3 in and get a lot of misery over with at once. Supposedly it's going to rain and cool off tomorrow. And since I can see two-year molars coming through, perhaps D2 will be done with teething altogether soon, putting an end to the ever-flowing river he's had since five months old, and he won't have to spend next winter dressed like this:

The Fairer Sex Heads Afield

In my quest for things medieval this year, I decided to pursue the stories of Charlemagne's knights, who don't get out as much as King Arthur's anymore. To my surprise, although Charlemagne is a more historical character than Arthur, his knights are just as legendary, and their adventures are, if anything, more fantastic. All that battling the Saracen gives them a more international flair, and their adventures include trips to or visitors from India, Cathay, and the moon (where everyone's lost wits are kept in tidy little vials).

My guide on this quest has been Thomas Bullfinch, who wrote up a lengthy volume with all the mythology he thought it might be useful to anyone to know. Although he's not the most enthralling storyteller in the world, he does passably well, and it's handy to have everything in one volume which (Bullfinch being a good Victorian) can safely be left within the children's reach. I will definitely be watching for my own copy at Half-Price Books.

One surprising thing about Charlemagne's knights is that some of them are girls. The most prominent is a doughty maiden named Bradamante, who falls in love with a Saracen knight named Rogero. She spends a lot of time rescuing him from various enchantments of his foster-father, who is trying to keep him in idle seclusion from the dangers of battle. Rogero's a good fighter, but not much against enchanters.

In due time it is revealed that Rogero was in fact the child of Christian parents who were slain by the prince he is now serving, and he eventually sees his way clear, despite knightly codes, to abandon his past creed and commander and convert to Christianity, join Charlemagne's forces, and, not incidentally, marry Bradamante.

Trouble is, while Bradamante has been riding knight-errant around the countryside, her parents have been more-or-less betrothing her to the son of the Byzantine Emperor. They don't think a landless knight is an adequate substitute. Upon hearing this news, Bradamante proves she really is a girl and goes to her room and cries. Rogero rides off to challenge Prince Leo himself, but when Leo saves his life, Rogero winds up vowing to serve him. Prince Leo, who, though he means well, is a poor fighter, finds in his anonymous new friend the perfect champion to secretly substitute for him when Bradamante vows she won't marry a man who can't beat her in a fair fight. And Rogero is too much the loyal knight to refuse the request.

It's an exciting and complicated tale, and all ends happily, which is a rare ending for Charlemagne's knights. Another girl, named Fleurdelis, is always following the knight Florismart around, but since she's no fighter she always has to beg some other knight (once Bradamante) to rescue him from the trouble he gets in. When he dies, she thinks regretfully that if only she had been there, she might have screamed at the right moment. There's a moral in there somewhere.

The curious thing is that of the few girls who are knights (Rogero's sister is another), nobody seems to make a big deal about it. Clearly it's not common, but neither is it treated as shocking or improper by anyone. Of course, none of the bad guys are too thrilled when they find out they've been beaten by a girl.

Yet again

Anne Shirley once reassured Marilla that although she made many mistakes, she never made the same one twice, and therefore would have to come to the end eventually.

I lack that consolation. I make the same mistakes over and over. At least some of them. I never have confused the salt and sugar in sweet bread again, but then you have to have an awfully large container of salt on hand to do that. And I did finally, after many years of stinky yellow biscuits, stop confusing the baking soda and powder. Or rather I just gave up on having both in my kitchen.

If there is a saturation point on mistakes, I still haven't reached it on leaving the salt out of bread entirely. It is disheartening to come to the end of a hard day's work and realize you have wasted your labors and the last of the honey on a half-dozen loaves of tasteless bread.

The bread is not entirely ruined. Having made this mistake many times before, I also have many alternative uses where salt can be sneaked in through other ingredients: french toast, creamed tuna, bread pudding, breakfast strata, breadcrumbs. But that was not the goal. No little grain of wheat aspires to grow up to be a breadcrumb.

A Year's Difference

Almost a year ago I tried babysitting three other small children, plus the ducklings, for a few hours. At the end of the day I was reduced to a mass of quivering jelly, and actually had to order pizza for dinner. (That is not something we do at the Duchy, unless we just moved. I was very much moved.)

This week, I've had two of those small children over twice for three hours at a stretch. It was lovely. I read, did housework, gardened, and had fun playing with them. We'll have to do it more often.

Some of the differences are mere flukes. Our thermostat is still stuck on August, so we played outside for a couple of hours in the morning and ate lunch on the back patio: move the table and let the squirrels clean up the mess. And, of course, four children is a power of ten less than five children.

Still, it was amazing how much of a difference the increased age of the kids made. Everyone who was still being potty-trained last year was done this year. (And fortunately nobody else has given up diapers yet.) Everybody could move under their own power. Everybody could communicate enough to alert me to any serious problems. Everyone's movements and grasp of rules were predictable enough to allow me to dash inside for a Kleenex.

The girls (3 and 4) could keep themselves busy for hours with little intervention, writing with chalk or cooking or playing some incomprehensible thing that involved scarves on the heads and climbing over the couch. The boys (2) could keep themselves busy tagging along or just riding bikes back and forth.

I like this growing-up thing. So far.

God of the Teeny, Tiny Holes

I'm reading a fascinating book called Rare Earth on how the precise combinations of everything necessary to sustain complex life appear to be exceedingly rare in the universe. I was rather amused, though, to come across the following line:

"If some god-like being could be given the opportunity to plan a sequence of events with the express goal of duplicating our 'Garden of Eden,' that power would face a formidable task. With the best intentions, but limited by natural laws and materials, it is unlikely that Earth could ever be truly replicated."

Now I realize this statement is just trying to express the uniqueness of earth, not attack God. But while intelligent design theories are frequently (and inaccurately) being ridiculed for creating a "God of the gaps" who does the stuff too hard for us to figure out, it amuses me that these authors seems to think that the design of the universe is too complex even for God to handle.

If you are going to bring God into the question at all, you ought to at least hypothetically let Him have the attributes He's commonly claimed to have. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being is the 200-lb gorilla of the universe: He can do anything He wants.