Everything Must Go!

After giving up on the yard sale we decided to try Craig's List instead. We sold all the big stuff for more than we were asking at the yard sale, so perhaps that made up for all the stuff that just went to the thrift store. The table and chairs were stuck out in the rain and looked terrible, so I tried putting them on Freecycle. A couple of people inquired, but no one came by. After a while, out came the sun and dried up all the rain and the dining room set didn't look so bad anymore. We put it on Craig's List for $30 and had to fend off the deluge of inquiries.

I think the moral of that story is that people think that free stuff is junk, but cheap stuff is a bargain.

With all the big stuff gone, we now must deal with the little stuff that is left, and deal with it in a house nearly bereft of surfaces out of reach of the twins. It goes, but slowly. Today I cleaned out the vitamin and candy cupboard. (We keep them together, perhaps in hopes of them neutralizing each other.) By clearing out the cupboards I should have room to put the things that now live on top of the refrigerator. Everything has to move around to somewhere else, where something else is in the way, or be sorted or given back to someone or something. So everywhere is getting cleaner, but nowhere is clean.

There are two basic types of housekeeping activities: tidying and cleaning. These two are not only not the same, they are antithetical. I'm a tidier. Give me a messy room and permission to hide, and I can have it looking . . . unobjectionable . . . in a matter of minutes. Sooner or later, though, all those hiding places come back to bite you. Hence, one must clean, and that makes a terrible mess.

It's a motivator for getting rid of things. Everything that goes out the front door is something I never have to pick up again.

Things seem to be moving agonizingly slowly. This is already the longest we've ever spent on moving. Of course, in all our previous moves, we've just dumped stuff in the nearest boxes and figured it would all turn up eventually. When and if we ever do get the house sold (we're STILL trying to figure out what is going on with that title issue, but the world seems full of incompetent people right now), actually moving is going to be a minor task in comparison.

A Dress from a Shirt

DOB had a Very Nice Shirt that turned up with a rip in the sleeve. I couldn't bear to throw the shirt away but a patched sleeve didn't seem quite the thing for work.

So I decided to try transforming it into a dress for D1. I came across various levels of complication in attempting this, and determined to go with the simplest method possible. I used a simple jumper-type top pattern and just flared gently out from there, using the existing yoke and buttons. I sewed some pink bias tape that had been in a bag of freebies around the neck, armholes, and top of the pocket (which I moved down). I cut the bottom straight across and gave it a rolled hem.

I thought about adding an elastic waistband--I had enough bias tape to make a narrow band--but decided it wasn't worth the trouble, especially when I discovered I didn't have any elastic.

It's a little big at the top, but we decided she can wear it as a jumper this year and a sundress next year. I might have to add a ruffle at the bottom for that.

All told it cost however many pennies' worth of thread I used and took about three hours.

When it Rains

I'm always taking my chances on the weather. I got away with it at my wedding. I've gotten away with it many times.

Today--I didn't. I know the forecast said "strong thunderstorms," but it looked like they weren't really going to move into the area until late afternoon, after prime yard sale time.

We woke up to rain. All the better. It would clear the air and be fine for the sale.

The downpour slowed to a drizzle and stopped just in time to start setting out the stuff. We hauled furniture and boxes and bags. Things still looked iffy, so I made a backup plan. Some stuff could be in the car. Some on the porch. Tarp on hand to cover the rest. We'd be ready for a quick, passing shower and then be back in business.

At 8:30 the early birds started showing up. We sold a few things. Recouped the cost of our signs.

At 9:00 the sky started darkening again.

And then, at 9:30, thunder crashed and the downpour begin. Our rain preparations quickly proved inadequate. Turned out we had an impromptu rain gauge, though.


At 10:00 we decided to give it a few more minutes.

At 10:15 we started loading up the books (which had been on the porch, fortunately) and made a run to Half-Price Books.

At 11:00 and still pouring we returned and met two guys looking for an end table and some stereo speakers. We recouped the cost of the babysitters. DOB helped them haul the stuff to their apartment on the way to take the first load to the thrift store.

Now it's 2:00, raining off and on, and most of the damp to soaking stuff is gone to the thrift store. A few of the nicer large items we'll try to sell on Craig's List and hopefully still get a few bucks out of. A few of the no longer so nice larger items are sitting by the curb hoping someone from Freecycle will take pity on them.

But hey, we got our costs out of it, we got rid of a ton (well, a few hundred pounds at least) of stuff we no longer have to move, and we got blog fodder.

Still, a couple of hundred extra bucks from actually selling some of this stuff would sure have come in handy.

The Lies We Tell

I think the last time we sold a house I vowed to never sell a house again.

(Insert trite response here.)

We went to the hardware store Saturday to get various improvement items. It's important, when selling a house, to make it look a lot better than it did at any time when you lived in it, or at any time when the buyer will live in it. The goal is for them to look at it and think, subconsciously, "Ah, this is a house where the flowerbeds are always weeded and the trim is never chipped and we will live with the austerity of Tibetan monks so that our house is never a mess and yet it will be warm and welcoming and smell of chocolate chip cookies."

Then they will move in and they will have way too much stuff for the space and the flowerbeds will get weeded intermittently and even if they got the house cleaned up in the dead of night within fifteen minutes the living room would be strewn with toys and there will always be a faint odor of mildewing towels. This is the truth. But when we are buying and selling it's best to avoid the strict truth and tell the lies everyone expects.

So we are doing all the repairs and touch-up we never would have bothered with while we lived here. And a few we really should have bothered with, like the counter on top of the dishwasher that fell off the wall. And a few that I hate, like using massive amounts of weedkiller on the beds I'll never be able to keep clean enough by hand.

We're still debating whether we need to repaint the kitchen or whether just removing the carrot decor makes it generic enough.

And we still feel like we should apologize to Wondergirl, because it seems like every time she finally gets us settled in, things up on the walls, (I never get very far at that kind of thing on my own) we decide to move. We made it a year this time at least! And three years in the same place! That's a record for us.

One little glitch that may or may not cause a lot of trouble is that after three clear title searches somebody turned up some misfiled paperwork that clouds the title. And it has to be refiled properly by the guy who messed it up in the first place. We hope a nasty letter on the right letterhead will be enough to motivate him to do so. But we don't know for sure yet, and we can't sell until it's cleared up.

Into the West

Over the past few months--years--the weight of something has been feeling heavier and heavier on us. We thought it was our responsibilities, tied to our backs, holding us down. We trudged up hills and down ravines but never seemed to be getting to the places we wanted to go.

We thought life was supposed to be that way; that once you grew up you stopped doing things you wanted to do and stuck to the stuff you didn't like. That you always had to take the safe, obvious path. We put our dreams in the closet and got them out to reminisce from time to time, but never considered them as a basis for action. That's just wishful thinking. Kid stuff. And once you have kids, you don't do kid stuff anymore.

But then we stopped and checked the weight on our backs and realized it was wings, tied. Doing things the safe way was wearing us out because we weren't made for walking. Maybe we are crazy. Maybe those wings won't carry us. But we need to try. It was time to get our dreams out and dust them off and work to live them instead of to ignore them.

Where is all this going? Well, one dream we'd shelved for a long time was living in Washington state. We knew our health would be better out there; and without slighting family and friends out here, we left a lot of family and friends out there, too. Instead of waiting for someday, we've decided to make that happen now. We don't know when, exactly. We still don't have the house on the market; we still don't have a job to go to. It is, as you all probably know, not the best of economic times for selling houses and finding new jobs. We decided all this just two weeks ago. We're hoping to make the move in the fall.

We are, by turns, exhilarated, exhausted, and terrified. Flying is scary when you've been grounded for a long time and have four passengers. But we're finding ourselves with energy and excitement we had forgotten we had. I'm organizing that community yard sale I always thought someone else should do. We are positively reveling in freeing ourselves from the things we had been clinging to--instead of hanging onto things for "someday" we are letting go of things for "now."

We would very much appreciate your prayers. And if you know anyone who wants to buy a house in Cincinnati, or hire a financial advisor in Tacoma, let us know.

Two for One

In about two and a half more hours, we will all have survived the first year with twins.

The only real difficulty about the first year with twins is that it immediately follows a twin pregnancy and is immediately supplanted by a year with twin toddlers. If I were arranging things, I would have planned a couple weeks off in a mountain cabin between each of those. Plus a night nanny, housekeeper, personal chef, and chiropractor who made house calls. Under those circumstances, I think I could be the serene, well-organized, stylishly-dressed, fun mother I envision instead of the stained and slightly deranged lunatic who seems to actually reside here.

But we survived, and that's the main thing. We can always do better next year.

Parents, "they" say, exaggerate the differences between their children. So exaggerate away. It's how we tell them apart; otherwise we'd be as bewildered by the sea of short tow-headed creatures as everyone else.

D4 scooted himself to the top of his bassinet before he'd coughed the fluid out of his lungs. And he's never stopped moving since. Yet curiously he still hasn't taken that first step solo--we thought perhaps he'd be our first to make it before 12 months. Yesterday he was pushing a broken toy shopping cart uphill over weeds. I pointed out to him that walking unassisted was actually much easier, but he just isn't ready to try it yet. His big, toothy grin catches everyone's eye. When he is happy there is no one happier, and when he is sad no one can scream more vociferously. He goes straight from 0 to 60 in the morning and back again when the day is done. Words produced so far include "more" and "tip" (as in "I'm a little teapot, tip me over and pour me out.")

D3 seems quieter on first glance, and yet give her some space and quiet time and she'll crow louder than anyone. (Perhaps it is only us, but we have found our introverted children are far more trouble in church than the extraverts. As soon as everything gets quiet they start chattering.) She is impelled to go up--stairs, stools, couches, pianos. Her favorite place to perch right now is on the toy picnic table, where she sits, back to the edge, two fingers in her mouth--yet somehow never falls off. Her angelic smile is particularly effective at persuading Papa to do her bidding. Words produced so far include "noo-noo" (food of all kinds), "oh, boy!" and "hi, baby!"

Not on the Fourth

Clearly we had the weather scheduled for the wrong day.

Parading in the Rain

I forgot to look at the weather forecast for Saturday. We had two stops, first lunch at DOB's parents, then a large picnic at a friend's home. Before we left DOB's parents', rain was falling--not the usual summer downpour that would clear up in half an hour, but a cold, steady, all-day rain.

This probably should have been our cue to head home. I had not packed jackets or even shoes. (Why waste one's life trying to keep shoes on creatures who will simply lose them? The ducklings do not usually wear shoes from April to October. I usually do if I'm going out in public, but I had had stepped on a bee the day before and thought shoes would be uncomfortable.) But we did not head home.

We arrived at the picnic. The meal was hosted on the upper deck of a simple covered stadium overlooking a Little League field (These people have three baseball fields in their backyard. And a lot of other cool stuff which does not come into the story because it never stopped raining.) We dashed through the mud and up the stairs and then DOB left to try to park the car. The upper deck had a railing clearly designed for keeping parents of Little League players from accidentally stepping off, not for containing inquisitive toddlers. So I devoted myself to keeping the twins alive.

When DOB arrived back, D1 decided she needed to go potty. There was one outdoor bathroom. I dashed across the muddy parking area with her and D3, who needed a diaper change. Fortunately there was an awning under which the line was forming. Unfortunately there were a lot of people who had been swimming or playing baseball in the rain who also wanted to use the bathroom. There were also two portapotties, but of course everyone would rather stand in line for thirty minutes than use them. (For the record, I would have used them, but could not see how to fit three people in one at the same time.)

We all finally met back up with the male contingent of the family, at which time we were perishing with hunger. Fortunately they just then opened up the food line. We were looking forward to the arrival of DOB's family, who would help play pass-the-baby, but we were too hungry to wait. DOB suggested I go through the line alone and get a plate or two to tide us over. But then the older ducklings wanted to come and I figured they could at least carry their own plates, and then D4 whimpered for me, and we wound up all going through the line together. Four kids, five plates, two grownups. We made it as far as the fried chicken and the plates started collapsing and we decided just to give up and find somewhere to sit.

Perhaps for parents whose children also spent a lot of time on the bench, there was a weight bench sitting nearby. We determined to impress this into service as an impromptu table. It had the disadvantage of being at easy baby height and extremely narrow, but it had the overwhelming advantage of being (a) partially horizontal and (b) right where we were standing as we were about to drop babies and food. We lined all the plates up more or less precariously along the bench, sat down with babies in lap and were about to try to eat when observation informed us that D2 now needed to go potty.

There are a few things that D2 does not handle well. Crowds are one, noise is another, and getting wet in the rain is the third. He had already had about enough of the first two, and it took some persuading to convince him to try the third, no matter how urgent the need. By running with him through the mud and rain and by pointing out the excellent opportunity to select desserts on the way back, I was able to persuade him to try it. Fortunately by this time the bathroom line had evaporated.

D2 and I returned with desserts. Of course DOB had been holding two babies all this time, so he had not yet had anything to eat. We parceled out the babies and began the interesting task of trying to hold a plate in one hand, a baby in the other, and somehow feed the baby and ourselves. I managed better than DOB, but my skirt will probably bear permanent testimony to the cost.

At about this juncture DOB's extended family began to trickle in, and we gratefully began to pass the babies about. It's amazing, however, how many adult laps two babies can occupy, especially when the food must also go in your lap. We managed through the rest of the meal, though, until the critical moment when D2 tried to eat his long-anticipated cupcake. For reasons of his own, he felt that his napkin needed to be under the plate while he ate the cupcake, but in the confusion we did not realize what he was trying to do. While executing this operation unassisted, he tipped the cupcake off, icing-down, onto the filthy deck.

This was a tragedy, and it was not helped by the discovery that the cupcakes were all gone (except for a thoughtless person who had taken two bites from one and set it back on the dessert table). I finally persuaded him to take two small cookies instead of one cupcake.

After the meal things were a little simpler, with only three more potty runs to execute, a lot of mud, and, of course, keeping the babies from diving through the gaps in the railing. A good time was had by all, and a good bath once we got home.

I believe Frank Gilbreth once was asked, "Are all these kids yours, or is it a picnic?" He replied, "They're all mine, and believe me, it's no picnic."

Not even when it is a picnic.

Games Smart Toddlers Play

I accidentally clicked on a link to a book entitled 365 Games Smart Toddlers Play, but I immediately went away. I could write a book on 730 games smart toddlers play, since they come up with new ones every day. How about, "Make gagging noises so your parents start running?" Then there's always, "Turn the toy bin over so you can climb on the couch," "Dump the contents of the drawers and sit in them," "Empty the bookshelves and chew on the covers," "Swipe the crayons off the table and run."

Yes, that could be a really full book. But I'd rather not read it.

Another Profound Insight

D2: Hey! The sun is behind the clouds!

QOC (trying to teach directions): Yes. But if you could see the sun, where would it be?

D2: I know! NOT behind the clouds!

It's Really Gone This Time

So, first, I've been trying to wean the babies and have persuaded them, with great reluctance, to give up their morning post-nap-pre-lunch feeding, as long as I have lunch and plenty of it ready immediately. (I feel bad about weaning them because they're clearly not eager to do so, but I'm also not eager to continue feeling like a sow. Nursing two babies is just not very cozy and nursing two squirming toddlers is not cozy at all.)

Anyway, I went in this morning and absent-mindedly sat down and started nursing them. After kicking myself for throwing out two weeks' worth of work, I set out to change their diapers. D3's was hardly wet at all, but I figured since she has a rash I might as well change it while I was at it. I set it aside and put the still-damp-from-the-dryer clean diaper on her. Then I changed D4. When I was done, I looked and realized one of the diapers left over was another damp one from the dryer--in other words, I had put D3's used diaper on D4. I'm guessing nobody else in the world has ever done this.

Birthday Trip

Let's face it, the last thing we need at this house is an influx of more kids making even bigger messes than usual. Hence, instead of a birthday party, we opted for a special just-parents-and-birthday-kid trip. For D1, we went window shopping in a historic area of town, followed by lunch at a fancy tea shop.

The best part of this is instead of being a major ordeal for the parents, it was a fun break for us, too. Only having one kid along is practically a date! And I got inspired by the wide world outside the four corners of our property. We stopped in at a kids' art studio where I got reinspired to help the ducklings use our pretty extensive stock of art supplies. The French import shop--which was in a tavern where Charles Dickens had slept--had some lovely, durable oilcloth that would be a perfect solution for recovering our kitchen and dining room chairs (if one could stomach the import fees). Then there was lunch, too, with scrumptious ham and cheese crepes and scones for dessert.

Then we came home, which was not quite so inspiring. But it was still a fun day.

Five Whole Years

The trouble with being the oldest is that your birthdays are always less about you and more about your parents having been parents that long. It is hard to believe we have graduated to having a five-year-old. Except for when it's hard to believe she's not a lot older.

D1 likes dressing up--especially in ladies' shoes; drawing--especially designing patterns and grids or tracing other pictures; and reading books to D2. She can really read the first four Bob books on her own and she writes little notes to her friends. She is learning to sweep the floor.

We made a fluffy lemon cake in the shape of a crown and in honor of her birthday we're going to a tea room and window shopping. She likes that girly stuff, but she also likes Legos and mowing the lawn. She was definitely born to be the big sister.

One of the Great Discoveries in Life

. . . is spaghetti.

One of the not-so-great discoveries in life is how much your face has to be wiped afterward.

Grassroots Rebellion

She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,

She walks up the walk
Like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
Any pays you back in cream!

Her lawn looks like a meadow,
And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
And the Queen Anne's lace!

~from "Portrait by a Neighbor" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

We were not made for suburban living. DOB thinks we would do better in a townhouse with a bit of a balcony; I think we would do better in a remote cabin in the mountains or by the sea. I guess an unkempt suburban lawn is by way of a compromise (and cheaper and closer to work). Our neighborhood is not at all pretentious, but I fear even so we are an embarrassment to the neighbors, and we got tangible evidence of that earlier this spring when a notice arrived that our weeds were too tall and the city would soon be coming by to provide its mowing service for the low price of $75. Which was even more than the neighborhood boys who had been beating a path to our door for the past month.

The stars aligned and the mower was working and somebody was available to push the mower and not occupied on the even more critical task of keeping four small children alive and we actually got the front lawn mowed before the mower gave up the ghost altogether when faced with the back. This, however, was not enough, and a few days later I had to turn the city maintenance crew away at the door with pleas for mercy. (I thought later that I should have told them it was a cultivated meadow of native wildflowers, but I don't know if that would have helped.)

I ripped out the bed in the back most visible from the road and replanted it with real wildflowers--you know, the kind that come in a packet that says "wildflowers" on it instead of the kind that actually grow wild. I hope that satisfies everyone. Also we have ordered a reel mower, which I hope will be quiet enough that I can run it while monitoring the children. (And won't always be broken when someone finally has the chance to mow.)

Today I borrowed the neighbor's mower for a last powered whack at the tall stuff. I found myself feeling like a monster as the spiders and bees scurried out of my way. Where will the bees go for nectar now that I've mown the clover down?

All Settled

D1 (sitting on a stepladder like Lucy in her psychiatrist's booth): OK, sir, what problem can I help you with?

D2 (sitting on a bucket facing her, I swear just like Charlie Brown and they have never read Peanuts): Well, my sisters are out of dresses.

D1: Hmm . . . I am not out of dresses, so can I be your sister?

D1: Yes.

D2: OK, I will pack up my dresses and come with you.

Poetic License Revoked

Poetic license properly should be the ability to get at the real truth of the matter without being overly troubled with factual precision. Facts are such slippery little things; there are so many of them that some must always be left out, and by leaving out different ones you can arrive at entirely different "truths." If we must chose (and with our imperfect knowledge I'm afraid we often must) between facts without truth and truth without facts, I would definitely vote for the latter.

But poetic license too often is taken the right to stick in any word so long as it rhymes, even if it makes no sense grammatically or logically. I was reminded by this when I was trying to pick up some Fourth of July books for the ducklings and came across an illustrated version of "You're a Grand Old Flag." This set me to thinking about the lyrics. OK, "Every heart beats true under red, white and blue"--that's poetic extravagance, but it's a nice sentiment. But "where there's never a boast or a brag?" Bragging is practically an American virtue. It's like putting in a line about how gleefully Americans submit to orders. Just not the right touch at all. The whole problem was putting the word "flag" at the end of the line; there's just not many promising rhymes: Nag? Swag? Rag? Bag? Gag? Francis Scott Key had more sense ending with "wave": we may or may not be brave, but at least we'd like to be brave.

(Oh, wait! I have it! "Every heart beats true under red, white and blue/and our spirits never will sag." Hmmm.)

Do I over think this? Why yes, I do. It's murder to be in my mind during the song service at church. Once I'm done picking apart the lyrics and proofreading the Powerpoint, I can always critique the music, which on modern songs often seems to have been written up to a certain point, whereupon the writer got hopelessly stuck and just launched into a new tune.

Sometimes I wish I could turn off the internal critic and just feel things, but feeling things is so uncomfortable, so perhaps it's just as well.

Random Kidbits

The twins had their nine-month checkup this week. (A bit late, as they'll be eleven months on Tuesday.) They are both now 30 inches tall, but D3 retains the advantage in weight by half a pound. The shots didn't go over so well, and they both ran significant fevers the next day. I tried to remind them that they weren't identical and didn't need to have the same reaction at the same time, but it didn't help. Then I tried to remind myself that a day of fever was better than a week of whooping cough, and that did help. They're much better now, but D3 seemed rather too delighted in the infant Tylenol. Better keep that on a high shelf.

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D1 has invented her first card game; no surprise there that she should partake in the family obsession. However, the content is uniquely her own. Everybody takes turns drawing a card from the pile, and each card has an action attached: For aces, you hug someone and say, "I love you," for face cards you go kiss someone, for tens you squeeze their hands, etc. Definitely NOT the kind of game her parents would come up with.

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D1 and D2 have discovered the mulberry tree this year--not that it hasn't been there all along, but somehow they've never noticed the mulberries before. This year they are Laura and Mary gathering and storing candy for the winter. There are stacks of plastic dishes filled with mulberries all over the house and yard. They don't taste too bad although not quite to my taste, but I'm still not sure what, if anything, I should do with them.

WWBCE?

Or, What Would Baby Carrie Eat?

It seems that these days we have two options for feeding babies--either we can spend a fortune on matching little jars (admittedly useful for all those VBS projects) or we can spend a fortune in time laboriously creating gourmet meals at home. Some sites dedicated to making baby food make it sound like a meal I wouldn't expect to get unless someone gave me a very large gift certificate.

Neither of these options appeal to me. I have always made my own baby food, in a fairly simple manner (cook up extra of whatever plain meat/vegetable is around, puree in blender, freeze in ice cube trays). Nonetheless, with twins life becomes even more complicated and I don't always have the perfect balance of meat, starch, green vegetable, yellow vegetable, and fruit that I carefully fed to the older two.

Then one day the older children were playing Laura and Mary as usual and I asked myself: "What did Ma feed Baby Carrie?" She didn't have little jars and she didn't have a blender or freezer or even a baby food grinder. I bet she didn't even follow the four-days-before-introducing-a-new-food rule. Yet somehow Baby Carrie survived.

The obvious answer finally dawned on me: breastmilk (or good-quality formula) is complete nutrition for babies. It's not enough to keep older babies happy, especially when they see everybody else eating that interesting food, but as long as they're continuing to nurse, they're getting a well-rounded supply of nutrients, and pretty much any food will work to give them practice swallowing and digesting. No doubt Ma simply fed Baby Carrie the mushier parts of whatever meal she was already cooking: hasty pudding; boiled squash, mashed potatoes, pease porridge cooled off.

Eventually babies have more complicated nutritional needs, but by that time they also have more complicated mouths that can chew softish food and have practiced enough on the really mushy stuff to swallow more complicated textures without gagging.

And the four-day rule? For common allergens or if you have serious reasons for concern, this makes sense. (I found out that D3 had an egg sensitivity that way, although I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that she'll outgrow it.) But it occurred to me one day when I was cooking pea soup for everyone else and worrying over the fact that I had yet to introduce the babies to onions, celery, parsley or marjoram, that I had never heard of anyone of normal health and constitution being allergic to any of the above. Babies don't need to eat all their food in bland, limited-ingredient mixes.

I haven't entirely given up on my blender and freezer, because I don't always cook that much mushy food (especially in the summer) and because the babies go to bed before the rest of us eat supper, but I have stopped worrying if I run out of this or that.

(Now there's one difficult question: What about meat? I happen to think meat is a pretty important part of the diet even early on, because of the need for iron--I don't do special baby cereals--and we all seem to have high protein requirements. I slow-cook and then use the blender. I have heard, however, of mothers who simply pre-chew the baby's meat. It's not really that gross--I mean, consider how else you feed them. It just seems like an awful lot of chewing for twins. So I've never actually tried it.)

How to Stock Up on Chicken

Cell Phone Conversation, 12:30 p.m. Saturday:

DOB: OK, I'm at Kroger, what was I supposed to pick up?

QOC (Fending off a crowd of small children with one hand): Um . . . we need to get chicken to take to your uncle's for the barbecue on Monday. Leg quarters.

DOB: What kind is that? You mean like I get at Aldi's?

QOC: Well, sort of. Like you used to get. (More fending.)

DOB: OK.

Dining Room Conversation, 1:00 p.m. Saturday:

QOC: This isn't chicken leg quarters, it's chicken tenderloins.

DOB: That was all they had in the chicken section.

QOC: You were looking in the wrong section. You should have looked in the butcher section, not the frozen section.

DOB: You didn't say that. It's what they had.

QOC: Well, this won't work. Everybody else's meat will have bones in it, and this will cook up too fast. We have to have leg quarters. It's ok, though, I'm sure we can use this another time.

Cell phone conversation, 5:30 p.m. Saturday.

DOB: OK, I'm back at Kroger. I've looked all through the butcher section. They don't have any leg quarters left today; they're all sold out already.

QOC: Well, ask them if they can cut a chicken in half or something.

DOB: OK.

DOB returns with a chicken cut in half.

Cell phone conversation, 9:30 p.m. Saturday

DOB's Mother: Oh, I wanted to let you know not to worry about the chicken for Monday; I picked up some for you guys while I was buying ours.

QOC (aside): Oh, shoot, I forgot to ask her if she was going to get some for us like she usually does.

DOB: *headdesk*

Counting Thoughts

Meredith at Like Merchant Ships is accumulating a list of graduation gift ideas. Reading people's ideas makes me glad I don't know any graduates this year. (Except B6 of course, but really, you don't expect a gift, too, after all we've done for you? Oh, and the grass needs mowed.)

The most popular sure-fire gift is that of laundry supplies and quarters, but there are still the nay-sayers who point out that college laundries don't use quarters anymore--or that they wouldn't have appreciated nasty, harsh chemical detergent--or that all they got when they graduated from high school was laundry, laundry, laundry.

In other words, there is no sure-fire gift. For one thing, a law of inevitability states that whatever clever, unique gift you come up with, seventy-five percent of the recipient's acquaintances will have come up with the exact same idea independently. (It's the same power that causes girls everywhere to grow up dreaming of the really unique, beautiful name they will name their babies someday and then simultaneously name them all "Jennifer" or "Emma.")

We were fortunate in that the conglomerate gifts we got as newlyweds were towels, which always come in handy sooner or later, and large platters, which come in handy pretty often when you have a lot of graduating siblings, store fairly compactly, and also are really excellent for re-gifting. If you were unfortunate enough to have it be toasters or foot massagers, I hope they included receipts. (Another law here states that there will be receipts in all but the least attractive model.)

The truth is, I'm terrible at gift giving and at gift receiving. And at gift requesting, for that matter. It's not so much that I have a mind above sordid greed as that I resent the existence of the physical universe. If you give me an actual *object* I'd have to find a place to put it. And remember to use it. And worry if I didn't like it as much as you obviously intended by the amount of time and money you spent on it. And if I got you an actual object, I'd have to spend actual money on it and then put it somewhere and not forget where I put it and find wrapping paper that wasn't too crinkled and then wonder if it was really useful to you or if all that trouble was just wasted. When I can see clearly that what you need is more time or more appreciative relatives or more sleep at night or a deeper understanding of the mysteries of the universe, trying to pass off a doohickey--or even laundry quarters--seems a paltry replacement.

Some people, of course, dismiss such concerns. These are the ones who pass on the gifts that leave us all blinking in astonishment. We are still trying to figure out what to do with the twenty-inch stained glass window ornament shaped like a jewel-toned fruitbasket. The givers were not people we knew well, but presumably they scratched their heads and thought: "What does every young couple just starting out need? I know! A garishly-colored suncatcher that will be too big for the windows of any house they will be able to afford for a decade!" We haven't the heart to pass it on and have tried to sell it but gotten no takers.

But even the safest gifts are fraught with danger. Someone also gave us a large coffee maker, which would be a very practical gift for many people but we not only don't drink coffee, I can't stand the smell of it in the house. Overnight guests are kindly given directions to the nearest Starbucks. (It was passed on to somewhere it was needed, though, so no waste.)

You know it's inevitable that this will happen. Start giving out scented candles and everyone on your list will develop allergies. Pass out gift certificates to Walmart and they will all become labor organizers. That always leaves cash, but then there are people who are insulted by cash because it shows you didn't care enough to think of something personal, not to mention it leaves no doubt in anyone's mind as to the combined state of your bank account and generosity, which in my case is generally pretty small.

I just don't get the insistence that we must give something because it's the thought that counts. Fine. I thought long and hard about it. I still couldn't think of anything to get you. Happy life! Come over for tea sometime.

Two Odd Things

Odd Thing #1: I have a weird fetish about getting everyone dressed in the morning. Perhaps it's having spent too much of my life stuck at home, sick or exhausted. Pajamas are, to me, a sign of defeat. It's not just letting the difficulties of life get the best of you, it's waving the white flag before the battle begins.

So, in the morning, we get dressed. Everybody. (I am not, I admit, adverse to putting babies to bed in their clothes.) We may have given up on paper plates because we ran out of room in the garbage--we may bathe with the frequency of Elizabethan vagrants--our living room floor may be serving as a model for the next series of I Spy books. But we will get dressed! And then we will probably go take a nap.

Not to the shoes, of course. Shoes are evil.

Odd Thing #2: I cannot sort things. I don't know why it has taken me so many years of vague frustration to realize this. But something slips in my brain between the mental assignment of categories and the physical movement to the appropriate category. It never goes to auto-pilot. Every garment I must stop and think, consciously: "Is this Light or Dark? It is Dark. Where is the Dark pile? It is over there." At the end, there are invariably three black socks in with the t-shirts because at some point I got bored with this monologue and started trying to sort automatically, like I presume every other adult on the planet can do.

This is why I have arranged my laundry in a way that only requires sorting two loads a week. (Mine and DOB's into lights and darks.) The rest of the laundry stays within its own categories (big kids clothes, baby clothes, towels, diapers) and never has to be sorted on its happy progression from hamper to washer to dryer to basket to drawer. Except for when I'm far enough ahead to actually fold, when I find I always end up with fifteen different piles of the same thing because I couldn't keep it straight in my head where they piles were supposed to be. Fortunately the ducklings seem to have this basic preschool skill down pretty well and help me out at times.

This is also why I've been cowering in terror at the thought of trying to tackle the bags and boxes of clothing that had taken over the attic. DOB and Cicero baled me out on the bulk of it this week--it was much easier if I could just look at a garment and shout out a category and let someone else figure out that fiendishly difficult task of actually putting it in the right spot.

The Opposite of a Baby Shower

The most astonishing thing for new parents is how much equipment one small creature the size of a flour sack can require.

The most astonishing thing for no longer quite new parents is how quickly that equipment becomes obsolete.

It's all very well to know in your head that babies triple their birthweight in the first year, but every time you haul a new toddler past a newborn, you are shocked by it all over again. Ten months ago, this was that. And the tripling of size doesn't even begin to cover the mental growth.

Suddenly those arms and legs that waved vaguely in the air have become capable of scaling furniture, opening doors, and toppling you over by grabbing your legs in just the wrong spot. Suddenly this child who you spent hours of labor convincing to get a good suck is crawling into your lap and grabbing at your shirt. You start needing to spell certain words.

So, out with the old. I have no patience with swings and bouncy seats and such, but there's the baby bathtub and two carseats and three bags of baby clothes and the nursing pillows. The mei tais that were in constant use a few months ago only get pulled out for really bad days of teething now, but they'll hang on for a bit longer. The stroller and high chairs and playpens/cribs should last us awhile yet. But not long. Toddlers last a little longer than newborns, but not much.

An Open Letter to Mothers Who I Hope Won't Actually Read This

1. Do not complain that people are diminishing your achievements when people say that you're "lucky" that your babies sleep through the night/you can breastfeed exclusively/etc. Yes, you've worked very hard to achieve that. Other people have worked just as hard and even harder and not achieved it. Life is a chancy thing, and your little program does not have a 100% success rate. So enjoy your blessings and don't brag too loud. Some of us are very sleep-deprived and our tempers are rather short.

2. Do not complain about the way your husband does things with the kids. Do you really think you would get a better deal in the Husband Exchange Program? You would not, because no man would want to be married to such a whiner. If your husband changes a wet diaper and forgets to use wipes, say, "Thank you, you're such a good dad" and reflect on how few children have died because of an occasionally unwiped bottom. (Um, such as those of all the mothers who never wipe after a wet diaper. Not naming any names, of course.)

If your husband still comes home every night even though the house is now full of screaming kids and an exhausted, uninspired wife, then you've got a good man and you should appreciate it even if he never does another thing. (By all means ask him for help when you need it, but do it because YOU need the help and not because 75% of other women's husbands do it.)

*And a note from the Grammar Commando: after careful consideration, I've decided that the word "whom" is dying a natural death, like "thee" and "thou," and I no longer feel obligated to use it.

Open Windows

It's that time of month again! The time of month when I get a free parenting magazine and ponder the strangeness of the world outside my bubble.

Item 1: An article on putting your marriage ahead of your kids. I admit, I just don't get why this is an issue. I mean, the ducklings are cute, but they're nowhere near as interesting as DOB. (Although admittedly more photogenic.) This is probably more of an issue for people with stronger maternal instincts (which I would certainly benefit from) and people who married boring men. But if I had a choice between an excellent babysitter and a day out with DOB and a day with the kids leaving DOB at home or work . . . um, no contest. (Even assuming the latter was POSSIBLE.) Of course, everybody all together seems like a pretty nice option, too.

Item 2: The usual beginning of summer article about using more sunscreen. This one finally came out and did the math: Yes, if you follow the current recommendations, you're supposed to be using an entire. bottle. of. sunscreen. every. day. (For a family of four. And there's six of us.) This includes, apparently, the days you spend inside wearing parkas. (Which will make the reapplying it every two hours a royal pain.) Does anybody, anywhere, actually do this?

I can't help but think: if the sun is really that deadly, how has the human race survived this long? Possibly related article: Your children don't need vitamin supplements--except for Vitamin D!

Until they come out with long-range studies showing that people who treat the sun as poison really live longer, healthier, happier lives, I'm going to continue with my irresponsible-mother stance of just trying to avoid burns by applying sunscreen moderately when we're going to be out longer than usual. (I wonder how much of the problem is the way people stay indoors most of the year and then go broil at the beach for a week in the summer? A couple of hours every day most of the year seems far more sensible.)

Kids at Play

D1 has hit the stage where children seek to Establish Gender Identity--or, in other words, they latch on to the most absurd gender stereotypes and enforce them rigorously. Thus, D1 insists that "girls love pink," no matter how many times I assert that I am a girl and I hate pink.

But D2 remains in the more innocent stage before, and thus is quite happy to pretend to be a girl when the story demands it. When we first started reading Little House in the Big Woods, D1 would naturally be Mary and he would be Laura. D3 was Carrie, and D4 played "our good bulldog, Jack." (I hope it doesn't traumatize him when he learns that he always gets cast as the dog. There is something very puppy-like in his expressions.)

After a while, though, they began to switch, with D2 playing Mary. We finally asked them why that was. Apparently they had heard from somewhere that in future books Mary got sick and turned blind. This prospect frightened D1, so she no longer wanted to pretend to be Mary. DOB asked D2 if he wasn't worried about becoming blind. "No," D2 said, "I made another one where she doesn't get blind, so it's OK." No wonder he has trouble in real life when he can't rewrite the story and make it come out better.

But if D2 himself gets to pick the story to play, it's more likely to be St. George and the Dragon. D1 is then Una, the brave damsel who goes in search of a knight to slay the dragon and save her country, and the rest of us get cast as horses, servants, etc. Yesterday D2 took up his sword and shield and arranged two rolling clothing racks to serve as the dragon. After a couple of battles he came to me and said, "I cut the dragon apart!" Sure enough, the racks were pulled apart.

"Is the dragon dead?" I asked.

"No," he said, "I have to fight it one more time." (Because in the book, St. George severs the dragon's tail on the second day, but doesn't finally defeat the dragon until the third day of fighting.) Curiously, I'm still waiting for the reputedly inevitable gunplay to arrive, but apparently he has no stories for guns yet, so he is content with swords.

It is amusing the way different children play. D1 and D2 are role-playing nearly every waking moment. (And probably most of their sleeping ones as well.) This has been true since they were barely old enough to talk and assert that they were each other. The great advantage of predominantly fantasy play is that it poses little danger to the house, at least as long as no one decides that water is needed for the game. D2's young friend astonished his mother by dismantling the baby's crib during naptime--I can't imagine D2 doing this. He might stare at the crib and *think* about dismantling it, and even wave some toy tools in its general direction, but he would never bother to actually undertake the task. (This is why tales of magic are so appealing to people with a particular mental orientation. If only we really could do all these things just by thinking very hard about them, and not subject ourselves to the inevitable frustration of using our hands!)

Will the twins follow in their older siblings' footsteps? Or will they be more experimentally-oriented in their play? Right now they are mostly interested in grabbing as much as possible and biting it, so it's hard to say.

Mother Weighs In

Perhaps it really did work for my mother to ban Barbie from the house, or perhaps being the sort of girl who thought calculating sale percentages the only interesting thing about shopping would have made the result inevitable, but I never went through the agonizing body-image issues that are considered obligatory for teenage girls in our culture. Yes, you can hate me now. I was sure I looked just fine, and if the male portion of the population never appeared to pay me much attention they were no doubt merely cowed by my superior intellect. I didn't obsess over my weight or worry whether I had my makeup on straight or at all.

Then I got married to an intelligent man who assured me I looked much, much better than fine, and all went along swimmingly for a little while. I had a baby, gained a moderate amount of weight, and lost it. Had another baby (and a c-section), gained the same weight again, lost it again, did my stomach crunches and all was well.

Then I had twins. Twins redefine terms like "weight gain" and "stretch marks." Stomach crunches can't heal skin that has stretched beyond all natural limits. I tried to give things time to heal up, but finally I realized that for the first time in my life I was saying, "Ick" every time I looked in the mirror, and meaning it. I weighed at seven months post-partum what I had weighed at seven months pregnant with the older two. My old clothes still didn't fit. Eating less was not compatible with breastfeeding and a brief experiment with exercise demonstrated that I still don't have the extra energy for it.

So I thought I was stuck with just feeling yucky. Not being used to it, though, I didn't find it a very comfortable place to be. And I finally realized I was wasting my energy. After all, who did I want to look good for? For DOB? But he remained perfectly accepting of me and the landmarks of childbearing; not being one to prevaricate he would never have claimed that some things hadn't change for the worse, but that didn't mean that many other things hadn't changed for the better. At the end of the day he'd certainly rather have a wife who smiled and broke out the chocolate ice cream than one who was obsessing over how she looked. (It's like constantly apologizing for your house when you have people over.)

As for the rest of the world, well, who cares? So I look like a thirty-year-old mother of four. I *am* a thirty-year-old mother of four. Why try to hide it? Why would I want to look eighteen again? When I was eighteen, no one took me seriously and I always wished I looked more grownup. Well, now I do. I've earned it. I might as well enjoy it. And get some clothes that actually fit; that helps. My old clothes were getting pretty dated anyway.

This is not to give excuses for turning into a slob, but that's not the issue. My diet is excellent, my activity level good; as long as I'm eating out of hunger not habit and exercising when I can, slobbishness is not the problem. Maybe the weight will come off when the babies wean and I have time and energy for exercise again, or maybe it won't. It doesn't matter. I'm still me and I look just fine.

The Duke Turns 30

It happens to the best of us. And today it has happened to DOB.

We'll skip all the old age jokes, though. Old is always twenty years older than you are.

Here's a meme I copied from Chickadee awhile back, although looking it over it doesn't seem the right sort of questions to even ask about DOB. I was able to answer more of them than he could.

1. He's sitting in front of the TV, what is on the screen? If he must, sports. Or if there's a movie on that he actually wants to see, he'd rather watch that.

2. You're out to eat; what kind of dressing does he get on his salad? Viniagrette, on the side, and hopes they didn't sneak soy into it.

3. What's one food he doesn't like? Unseasoned navy beans. Don't get him started on this one.

4. You go out to the bar. What does he order? Water with a lemon slice. Or maybe a Sprite if he's feeling wild.

5. Where did he go to high school? at home.

6. What size shoe does he wear? Um, I got this right before and now I think I'm going to get it wrong. Nine and a half. Ish.

7. If he was to collect anything, what would it be? Legos. Of the castle variety. And he would display them on top of the china hutch until he ran out of room. Ask me how I know this.

8. What is his favorite type of sandwich? Reuben. (UPDATE: Actually, it turns out reuben is no longer his favorite; the current top would be something involving melted cheese and lots of other yummy stuff from Panera. That's the trick with DOB, he's not one to stick to one boring ol' thing as his favorite his whole life.)

9. What would he eat every day if he could? Fresh homemade bread and butter.

10. What is his favorite cereal? None, really. He's a protein kind of guy. Corn flakes would be all right if you served eggs on the side.

11. What would he never wear? Shorts.

12. What is his favorite sports team? Colts.

13. Who will he vote for? Whoever he thinks is least of a whack job.

14. Who is his best friend? Me

15. What is something you do that he wishes you wouldn't do? Drip egg white on the kitchen floor.

16. How many states has he lived in? Just Ohio.

17. You bake him a cake for his birthday; what would it be? Whatever I feel inspired to make that day, as he will have refused to offer an opinion.

18. Did he play sports in high school? Only ones that involved mice.

19. What could he spend hours doing? Daydreaming.

20. What's something cool about him? He always appreciates what I manage to get done in the day, even if it seems like nothing. He's always supportive.

Well, Duh

Careful observation over the last few months has taught me that young children requesting to "do school" should be treated exactly like young children requesting to "go to the moon" "be firemen" "be workermen" "help cook."

In other words, they want to play. Help him find stuff to play with. And let them go.

How to Bathe Two Babies At Once

I just figured this out, so I'm quite pleased with myself.

1. Go weed in the garden for half an hour. There's no sense wasting all this effort on babies who are only technically dirty.

2. Set the babies in the kitchen to shed large chunks of mud. (Note for next time: it would work better to remove the outer layers of clothing at this point, as most of the chunks of mud are concealed therein.) Meanwhile, empty the bathroom of anything and everything not bolted down.

3. Run a shallow tub of water. Get out towels, soap, and a large supply of washcloths. Put everything in that magical place where *you* can reach it, but the babies can't.

4. Bring the babies into the bathroom. If you forgot to undress them earlier, undress them down to diapers now. Remove diaper A and put baby A in tub. Remove diaper B and put baby B in tub. Give thanks if no diapers contain surprises.

5. If you forgot to remove the babies' clothes in the kitchen, you'll have to sweep the bathroom floor now. Don't take your eyes off the babies while you do this.

6. Grab the nearest washcloth and nearest baby and commence to scrubbing. When that one has had enough, do the other. Continue alternating until you're fairly certain you've scrubbed everything in sight.

7. Let the water out of the tub. Leave Baby B in there, stranded but triumphant in finally getting sole possession of the toys.

8. Take Baby A out and apply diaper. Discover the spots that weren't in sight and didn't get scrubbed and scrub those.

9. Take Baby B out and apply diaper.

10. Take both babies into bedroom and dress for the afternoon; read story and put them down for naps.

11. Start a load of laundry. You undoubtedly need to at this point. Replace bathroom furnishings.

12. Take a shower while cleaning out the mud from the bottom of the tub.

13. Take a nap.

It's all about learning how to maximize results from minimal efforts.

Advice On Tap

Once again, I find myself compelled to use a bad example from a good book. Augustine's Confessions is a great book. You should read it. Don't judge it by this example.

Augustine tells the story of his saintly mother, Monica, and her upbringing. He has special praise for her very strict nurse, who would not allow Monica even drinks of water between meals, on the justification that if she became accustomed to satisfying her thirst with water as a child, she would satisfy it with wine as an adult and become an alcoholic. Augustine commends this severe instruction in temperance.

And then, in the very next paragraph, he admits that the young Monica, as soon as her parents gave her the chance to bring up the wine, started right in to sneaking drinks. She was cured of this habit, not by her nurse's admonitions, but because one of the young servant girls made fun of her for being a drunk. So much for careful training.

It seems that in Augustine's mind, obviously the training in temperance by not even drinking water *ought* to have worked, so it *did* work. That the mocking of the other girl actually had the effect demonstrates how God can use unlikely vessels, but it seems to do nothing, in Augustine's mind, to detract from the virtue of the other training. Theory is remarkably resilient to contrary experience.

I laugh at this, but I'm sure I do the same thing. I'm sure I've heard other people do the same thing, many times. An instructive practice, if you know some older parents and their grown children, is to ask what the parents did about thus-and-so and THEN, out of earshot, ask the children how well it worked. The story seldom comes out quite the same. And there's probably some truth to both sides.

That's why I'm very wary of giving or receiving advice. (Not that I don't regularly succumb to the temptation.) It's very, very easy to pass on what we think should have worked, or even what we think worked, except that in fact it was something quite different that had the effect, something that seemed insignificant or obvious or that the parent never even knew about.

On the positive side, most of us turn out tolerably well despite our parent's hare-brained theories, so our children will probably survive ours.

A new thing to be snooty over

Worse morning sickness is correlated with smarter children. Although it doesn't seem clear what it means if you're not as sick with one of the kids. Still, I should have a crew of geniuses on my hands here.

The Sleep Lottery

Lottery isn't the right term. As DOB points out, if it really was a one-in-two-million chance of getting a decent night's sleep I wouldn't have made it this far. It's more of a casino game: every once in awhile you get a big payout, but you know in the long run the house will always win.

Every night I go in, nurse the babies one last time, check to make sure the big kids are each asleep in their own beds, and leave with the suspense: Will it be tonight? Will I really get to sleep all night long? Or will there be wails at 2 a.m.? Lost water cups? Stuffed up noses? Or . . . the 800-lb. gorilla . . . a sodden bed? More irritatingly, will all the kids sleep while I lie awake in the throes of a new idea? (Some people get insomnia from worry and despair, I get it from . . . well, any thoughts really. My brain doesn't like being turned off.)

Sleep is like money in another way. As long as you're racking up the debt, you don't really notice it. It's when you start trying to pay it down that you realize just how big it is.

So Then What Happened . . .

The fan was supposedly fixed over the weekend. It started making funny noises this morning and died just now.

Meanwhile, DOB was running late owing to feeling cruddy and was just about to get in the shower when the door to our room blew shut.

No big deal, except that the doorknob was off. It's been falling off for awhile, but being mechanically declined we have just been shoving it back together and using it as is. This time, though, the doorknob had fallen off and DOB had left it inside the room, which meant opening the door was now impossible. Also DOB's work clothes were still in the bedroom.

We tried anyway, unscrewing anything screw-like on the outside, but it turned out this was purely cosmetic. The inside parts were inaccessible from that side. So were the hinges.

Fortunately the window was open (of course, if it hadn't been the door might not have blown shut, but it tends to shut itself anyway), so with the aid of DOB and a stepstool I was able to climb in from the flowerbed.

(Of course it wasn't burglary; burglary requires an intent to commit a felony. DOB was probably ready to commit a felony, but he wasn't the one who climbed in.)

It would have been really, really funny to watch . . .

Cunning Plot Twist

In an unforeseen development, the broken house fan necessitated opening the windows and running portable fans all night. This, in turn, muffled the sounds of D4's restless sleeping, allowing me to get most of a decent night's sleep.

Maybe this script isn't so bad.

Calling Hollywood

The babies have colds and have been up all night for the past two nights. Now I've got the cold, too. By the Parents' Sleep Index I've been getting about negative six hours of sleep.

Yesterday D1 was trying to set the table and tripped over D4, scattering broken glass across two rooms and cutting her hand. While I was bandaging her hand, D4 slipped on a Duplo piece and bloodied his lip. D3 was screaming on general principles. With everyone overdue for lunch and on the point of total collapse, I called DOB home from work to clean it up while I whimpered in bed, eating macaroni.

I burnt the pan of green beans I was fixing for the babies and left three quarts of chicken broth on the counter all night instead of freezing them.

D4 learned how to climb this week and D3 learned how to unscrew small, chokable caps from bottles.

Early this morning, after being awakened by D4 crying in his sleep for the seventh time, I smelled smoke. DOB and I searched the entire house (DOB just got a whiff, but I kept smelling it), finally deciding it was just dust in the air unit. However, it was by then practically time to get up (and D4 was crying again). We called the A/C man to come, as it was time to get the unit serviced anyway. He serviced the unit this morning, delaying DOB's departure for work.

Now the house fan has quit, so even if the A/C worked it would do us no good. It's going to be 81 degrees today, and I get ill at temperatures above 74.

We're trying to find the script writer for this week so we can fire him.

A Day with D2 . . .

Pondering Ethics:
D2: I played in the sugar!
QOC: (horrified) What made you think that was OK?
D2: You weren't watching.

Doing the Math:
D2: There are sixteen holes between my fingers and toes!
D2: Hey! One worker woman and two worker men makes three worker persons!

Making Threats:
D2 (to D1): I will be mean to you and will not let you be a girl anymore!

(Yes, he does use a lot of exclamation points.)

Oh, the Places You've Been

Taken from The Common Room, but I saw it at the Treehouse first.

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut (?) / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland ? / Massachusetts / Michigan* / Minnesota* / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana (?) / Nebraska / Nevada (?) / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania (?) / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont (?) / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming (?) / Washington D.C /

The asterisks represent transfers at the Detroit and Minneapolis airports, as I don't recall ever being elsewhere in the state. The question marks are states I think I've passed through on road trips but don't positively remember for sure.

I think I need to pay more attention. :-P

Five Things I Like About Motherhood

Sara tagged me for this and at first I thought she'd already covered the best stuff in her post. But I think I have my own particular things.

1. Reading out loud. What better excuse than having kids to re-read all your childhood favorites and discover new treasures?

2. Siblings playing together. I am so grateful I could have more than one child; I really wouldn't have the first notion of what to do with only one. Even though I ask myself, "What WAS I thinking to have four so close together?" almost every day, I love that they'll be able to grow up together, that we have such a great mix of boys and girls and introverts and extroverts to keep each other balanced and make a strong team and have a lot of fun.

3. Watching them figure things out. I love watching the light bulbs go off, and I get a curious pleasure out of it when I wasn't involved at all and it wasn't one of those things that you can pull up in maternal bragging competitions. Last week D1 was sitting on the porch eating lunch and suddenly pointed to the neighbors' house and said, "Hey! We are their neighbors!"

4. The way babies giggle when you tickle them. There's nothing like getting two of them going at once.

5. Naptime. Is it ok to have that on the top five? It's such a wonderful time of day . . .


I tag: Wendy, Carrie, Melissa, Songbirdy, Mary

Duckling Moments

D1 and D2 draw no distinction between poems, songs, and stories told aloud, which is why I can get requested to "sing that one about the three pigs again." It's also why I got serenaded with a rather operatic (and nearly word-perfect) duet rendition of Madeline all through breakfast prep yesterday.

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Yesterday I took D3 and D4 out to play in the grass. D3 tested what happens to cute knit pastel shirts when you drag them across asphalt. D4 alternated between crawling over to the neighbor's yard and trying to climb onto her (parked, off) lawnmower, and crawling over to the porch and trying to crawl up the steps. I tried to figure out whether it was more urgent at any given moment: to pull the tiny rock out of D3's mouth or go chase down D4. It's going to be a busy summer.

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I spotted some fifth-grade girls watching younger brothers at the park a couple of weeks ago and worked up my nerve to ask them if they'd like an after-school job over here. So far it's working out pretty well; they come over twice a week and feed the babies their supper and play with the big kids outside while I try to get caught up on basic housework. The kids are just wild about them, instead of being just wild at that hour of the day. Definitely an improvement.

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I really, truly am getting my garden in. And things are coming up! Maybe we'll even get to eat something out of it. Also I got some flowers started and transplanted to fill out the front flower bed, which has a lovely array of spring bulbs but tends to get pretty ragged the rest of the year. If I can just have a few minutes here and there between rescuing babies to pull weeds and water, it should be great.

Easter Pictures

Definitely an improvement over last year: everyone was healthy, dressed in clothes that had actually been ironed, and the house was clean!
(Of course, perhaps the prospect of resurrection is more exciting when life is the pits, but then there's no harm in celebrating when we can.)
Now to recuperate.

Random Online Behaviors That Irritate Me

Replying to questions with the helpful information that they have nothing to add to the discussion because they don't do anything of the sort but they just can't resist the opportunity to blather on and on about something not really related at all because otherwise how would they get to hear the music of their own keyboards clicking?

Putting half of the reply in the signature (says QOC, who is mystified why people think it's different from just coming out and SAYing whatever it is they want to say, only with far less awkward sentence structure.)

Responding to a request for information on X product or program with a straight thumbs-up or thumbs-down reply rather than any information on why you liked or disliked it--what use is a vague survey of reactions? Perhaps the thing that drove you crazy is exactly what I'm looking for, but I'll never know if you don't give some detail.

An Equation

2 pairs of overalls x 10 snaps x 6 diaper changes a day = 1 mother who will be very glad when t-shirt weather is here to stay.

To See the Cherry Hung with Snow

It's not just a poetic metaphor.

Sigh.

At least I picked most of the tulips yesterday.

Seven Quick Takes Friday

1. Thanks to a very generous person, the babies' early bedtime, the big kids being at Grandma's and Cicero keeping an ear out for the babies, DOB and I actually got out of the house last night! And had a conversation that didn't even bring up the question of, "Why can't we get to bed any sooner?"

2. I think D4 has a complex about being the youngest. Why else would he have the most teeth the soonest, be the earliest crawler, and on track to be the earliest walker? He'll show everyone that those ninety minutes mean nothing!

3. D3 has this weird habit of pulling her own hair while she's nursing. At least it's not D4's hair. He bit her toe while she was nursing this morning. It's never dull.

4. I love rainy days when the big kids are at Grandma's. I have no guilt about not bothering to take the babies outside and can just get caught up on housework and read for once.

5. I love sunny days when the big kids are here. They're so much bigger and noisier and wilder and more full of ideas than they were even a year ago, and they have so much fun outside together. D1 usually has hauled off a stock of kitchen implements and is making some concoction with mud and water and leaves. They race bikes down the minuscule slope in the driveway, or send the wagon spinning wildly out of control, or just stomp in the mud and then complain when I have to scrub their feet. Catching up on the dishes is a lot more fun when they're playing in the back yard.

6. I'm worried that my raised beds are not raised high enough. It's still awfully soggy out there, and the only place to stand to work on the beds is in three inches of muddy water. Of course, it's still very early for planting. Maybe I will still manage to grow something this summer. Or maybe I will just spend all summer pulling dirt out of the babies' mouths.

7. While out last night I saw shoes that looked like I might want them. I didn't actually buy any, of course. But I am getting tired of always wearing ugly (or at best, plain and clunky) shoes, yet unwilling to give up comfort for any consideration. The thought that there might be shoes out there that are cute yet comfortable gives me hope. Unfortunately I can't remember the brand name, but hopefully the store will still be in the same place when I make up my mind that I'm really ready to buy shoes.

More Quick Takes at Conversion Diary.

Eating Books

I read a book that annoyed me. This is always more fun to write about than books that pleased me, so take it for granted that I have read many books over the past few months that were perfectly enjoyable.

The annoying book looked promising. It was called Deconstructing Penguins and it chronicled a parent-child book club started to help children get more out of their reading. Now as far as I'm concerned, the pinnacle of life is sharing books with my children, so I expected to find it delightful.

What they did, in this book club, was tell the children (starting with second graders) that every book is a mystery in which a message is encoded, and that to discover the mystery you must analyze the book to determine the protagonist and the antagonist and the chief crisis of the plot so that you can pull out the message of the book, which we then can summarize and discuss.

Grrrr.

Of course books have messages, like food has vitamins. But expecting children to benefit more from the message by learning to deconstruct the book and tease the message out into a one-sentence summary is like expecting them to get more nourishment from their food by taking it into the lab and determining the exact molecular content.

You get nourishment from food by eating it. You get nourishment from books by reading them and letting the story soak into you. If the Atwaters had really thought children would best learn to hold on to their dreams by being told point blank, "It's good to hold on to your dreams," they wouldn't have bothered to write a whole book about a painter who wants to be an Antarctic explorer.

Children certainly do sometimes gallop through books without stopping to be more than dimly aware of what's going on. There's a time and a place for that and a type of books that properly deserve it. And there is a time and a place (much later than second grade) for learning how a story goes together and debating what the author really means by it.

But the antidote for books that are worthy of greater attention is much simpler: just slow down. Read a chapter. Put it away for a few days. Teach everyone that reading ahead is a shameful and despicable act. Give the story time to digest.

April Fools

The ducklings are quite excited by a whole day devoted to saying silly things with impunity. D1 also entered into the spirit of things by putting on her clothes inside out and backwards, but D2 decided he would rather dress right side out and frontwards--which, since he usually gets at least one garment inside out or backwards, comes out to the same thing, I suppose.

Out and About

I went out to the thrift store on Saturday, a big trip in my little world. As it happened I arrived three minutes before opening and was astonished to find a crowd of twenty--mostly elderly ladies--standing outside the door, swapping addresses of their favorite thrift stores. Quite the happening place.

I found some new shirts for DOB, and confirmed my suspicion that there is no such thing as a decent second-hand white dress shirt. White dress shirts lurk in men's closets until they disintegrate entirely, apparently. Blue is readily available, though. I even scored two hand-tailored ones which I hope fit well.

Then pulling out I saw rows of tagged trees across the road and realized I was right across the street from a nursery. So I stopped in there to pick up some lime for the garden. The only two places I really like shopping are book stores and nurseries: they smell good, they sound good, they're quiet and peaceful.

Unlike here, where someone has awakened too early from nap. We have been working since mid-February to get all the kids sleeping in the same room at night and at the same times during the day. We're progressing, but it's slow and at times painful. DOB's mother will sometimes tell a story with feeling as fresh as yesterday of incidents two decades ago when someone Woke The Baby Up Too Soon Thus Ruining My Nap. Yes, I know how that feels. Fortunately after the first incident when D2 started screaming in the night because he had "heard a small noise" we have not, at least, repeated that one.

A Post for D3

Amongst all the outgoing or just plain loud personalities around here, D3 can sometimes get overlooked a bit, as she quietly examines flecks of dirt on the floor. She's developed her own coping skills. If any desirable person--particularly DOB--comes within her radar she knows how to turn on the cute, with flicking fingers and a smile that goes down to her toes. What's funny is that as soon as she's picked up she generally goes right back to her usual mode of looking at everything else minutely. She doesn't care for too much eye contact, but she does want to know that you're there.

She is starting to scoot forward, both arms at once as if she's doing the breaststroke. Usually she prefers to roll, often pausing to relax on one side like a miniature chubby Queen of Sheba. Sometimes she intersperses this with leg lifts, as if she needed to work that chub off, which you can see from the picture is not at all a good idea.

She can say "Mama" and I think she knows what she's saying, but it could be open to dispute. She certainly knows who she means.

Hooray! I think . . . .

I can still hear an annoying noise that usually cannot be heard by people over 25. Is this a good or a bad sign?

Created by Train Horns

Fairy Tale Life

We are turning into peasants. I think it hit me when I first mastered wearing a baby on my back. With a baby in a cute little front pack you can be a hip urban mom out for a stroll and shopping. With a baby on your back, doing household chores, you're a peasant.

Then there's our diet: bread or porridge and eggs for breakfast (OK, rich peasants); potatoes for lunch; soup and bread for supper. Easy, cheap, filling, and nutritious. I haven't quite resorted to packing raw turnips in DOB's lunch, but it's only a small step.

The ducklings run about outside barefoot in all kinds of weather, usually with a fair spattering of mud. Our back yard is in transit between a patch of mown grass and a wild jumble of garden and mud. Those scenes in the movies where the lady from the Estate visits her humble tenants--the ones with the baby screaming in the background--are starting to look familiar.

We're not about to add animals to the mix. I refuse to wear peasant blouses. And I'm not giving up electricity voluntarily. But I think we should keep a sharp lookout for visits from witches and the Big Bad Wolf.

Duckling Moments

QOC: And so God is going to make a new earth with everything good in it and nothing bad.

D2: Let's still live in our same house!

D1: Except on the new earth it will be cleaner.

D2: Yes, because all the toys will be picked up.

*****************
It used to be that the babies when nursing would reach out and hold each others' hand as they nursed. Then their arms grew longer. Now they either try to scratch each others' eyes out or arm wrestle as they nurse. Somehow it's just not as heartwarming.

*****************
D2 has been in search of a generalized complaint. He tried, "I'm so tired," for awhile, until he discovered that tired people got to spend ten minutes resting in bed. Then it was, "I'm so hungry," which produced whatever food he had turned up his nose at during the previous meal; then, "I'm so lonely," which we pointed out was a bit ridiculous in a room with four other people.

So for a while he was reduced to standing in the middle of the house, saying, "I'm so . . . so . . . so . . . so . . . so . . . so . . ."

The other night he finally found a way to end the sentence. "I'm so . . . goopy."

Goopy he may be.

Coping

My sister-in-law once made fun of me on a visit because I was rummaging in the pantry for candy. "QOC has become a normal person at last," she said, "She needs chocolate."

Maybe I held myself to too tight of a standard when I was younger. Maybe I still do. Self-control was always my point of pride. I could, and did, make a microscopic bag of M&Ms last a month. If I decided that rising at 4:30 in the morning every day was what needed to be done, then up at 4:30 I would be. I didn't need to indulge myself. Don't get me wrong--I could always enjoy life, including M&Ms and sleeping in--but not in a needy way. I always had to feel that I could do without it. I never wanted to need a crutch.

Now--well, I understand a little more. Food still doesn't affect me that way and probably never will, but I understand the desire to binge. The need to do something, anything, that will quiet the noises in your head and maybe even hurt a little because the real pain is too much to deal with. Food is a handy thing for some people. Sleep for others. I can't eat when I'm upset and suffer from insomnia, so those don't work for me.

The irony is, there's nothing wrong in my life. Nothing bad. Just too much of good things. But that can hurt, too. If I were to make a list of the type of activities that I find difficult, and a list of the activities that I absolutely must do in the course of a day, the overlap would be almost total: following routines; emotional interactions; monitoring my surroundings; crisis management. There is simply no time or energy or need for the things I am good at: spontaneity; abstract interactions; detailed analysis.

What I do to cope is read. It sounds harmless enough. And it's not that there's anything wrong with reading. Nor am I distressed at the books I read, mostly light fantasy, as being evil. I just don't like to need them. I don't like that I'm always, always, looking for an escape from my real life and my real duties. But I am.

And it seems wrong. Shouldn't it be enough to be assured I'm doing the right thing? Am I saying that God and the Bible aren't enough to pull me through my daily tasks? I've tried to find ways to rearrange my life to work from my strengths and--they're not there. There's only so much improvement a housekeeping plan can take. Do something fun and spontaneous and I wind up regretting it amid piles of laundry and dishes for the next three days. I can sit down and pretend I'm planning for future years of school, but I know perfectly well I'll scrap it all and start over when the time comes, so what is the point?

There is no room for anything but diapers meals laundry diapers laundry meals diapers meals laundry (none of those done well), and if there's a momentary pause I'm too exhausted to tackle the sort of housekeeping projects I might actually enjoy, too mentally frazzled to even communicate with another human being (some evenings DOB comes home and I literally cannot speak to him)---so, I read. Serious books require too much mental effort and housekeeping and mothering books just depress me. I don't need more ideas about how to do things better; I have read all that before. So I read fantasy. As if I were drowning, grabbing at twigs and hoping they will hold. Or, if my hands are full (as they often are), I click refresh a hundred time, looking for messages.

I turn to words like some people turn to drink. And if I can't make my own words I have to go hunting for someone else's.

I think I should interact with the children more, but the more I interact early in the day the less likely I am to still be able to speak to them by dinnertime. I think I should do something that had some value for someone else or even for myself, but I can't come up with anything that wouldn't push me over the edge. Taking a walk used to be my favorite way to relieve stress, but I can't do that now.

So I just . . . read. But I don't like it because I'm not reading for fun so much as I am reading to cope, and I don't like that I need to cope. I ought to be stronger than this. I shouldn't need something. Or maybe I should. Maybe I am not supposed to be as tough as I would like to be.

Epic Battle

I'm going to try a trick I learned from the Zoomlians.

This afternoon I will attack . . .

the dreaded laundry monster of DOOOOOMMMMM!!!!

Yes, that feels better already. I wonder if D2 will loan me his sword?

Doing Things

Sometimes I wonder if I want the wrong things for my children. Being me, I more often wonder why everybody else does. One time I came across a blog where a mother recounted how she would train her children when the ship was getting a bit too loosely run, and one of the things on her list to retrain them in was to ask permission before doing anything.

Maybe that was just a temporary measure in response to running too wild. But I was still struck dumb at the thought. I'd probably survive about five minutes of that much decision-making. More than that, though, I don't want my children to have every choice they make subject to my scrutiny. I try to set things up so they have a wide range of things they can do without even consulting me (although if it involves poison, fire, or considerable heights I hope they'll check in first). Maybe it's just for my own sanity. But maybe there's something more to it.

Another thing that would bother me, that doesn't seem to bother (in the sense of thinking it ought to be otherwise) many mothers, is children who have trouble finding things to do. Most parents of schooled children complain about the difficulties of summer and the need to plan for it, and many parents of homeschooled children complain (or boast?) that their children soon find life dull without lessons and are eager to start up again. I do plan to start lessons one of these days, but if it comes at the cost of my children losing their astounding ability to teach themselves, I doubt they would be worth the trade-off.

Sometimes people talk about the virtues of developing initiative in children, but it usually seems to be defined as "doing what I think they need to do before I get around to telling them to do it." It seems to me that children are born with a huge stock of initiative. Maybe too much initiative. And perhaps that's the trouble. Perhaps parents wind up training or entertaining that drive right out of children, replacing the desire to do things, explore things, try it out with the willingness to sit still and wait for something to happen to them.

I do want my children to obey me; I do sometimes resort to "Everybody sit down with a book and DON'T MOVE." But I hope in the long run that my instructions are always an interruption or at best guidance for a full life, not a relief from the tedium of existence.

Then again, while I was pondering and writing this post, the older ducklings arranged a considerable quantity of toys, blankets, and small items of furniture in my closet, and when I pointed out that it would need to be removed protested that it was their house and they finally had it exactly how they wanted it. So perhaps there's something to say for passivity.

What I Can Accomplish While Keeping the Babies Quiet and Out of Trouble

Moving Colors

Posts have been infrequent owing to the frequent lack of one or both hands and the challenge of coming up with something that doesn't relate to bodily fluids, screaming, or cabin fever.

We're all doing amazingly well, considering. This is the worst time of year for me. I need out. Need out need out need out. And it's still terribly cold, although warmer weather is promised soon. (Sixties this weekend! I will be dancing in the street!) But I haven't completely lost my head yet, nor have I taken off anyone else's.

Last week we decided it was time to move the babies out of our bed, owing to D4's new-found fascination with climbing on our pillows at 3 a.m. in order to peer out the window. Co-sleeping is lovely and cozy while it lasts, but when all the grownups must leave for the couch it is time to call an end to it. The transition has been a bit rocky, but we're down to one meal for D4 in the early morning and I am starting to learn to sleep again. D3 seems relieved to no longer be kicked in the head and sleeps like a log. The big kids are sleeping in the living room until the babies have settled down.

In the shifting kaleidoscope of family life, this change means the big kids must be ready for bed before the babies go down, and the babies are taking fewer daytime naps and ready to go to bed sooner, and DOB gets home later, so it makes sense to put the babies to bed first, then have supper. This, in turn, has made supper a far more relaxing meal, makes it much easier for me to do the dishes since I can start immediately after supper instead of an hour later, and gives some time with already-jammied kids to play or read stories before bed. It works for this week, anyway.

We bravely ventured out to the downtown library on Saturday afternoon, viewing a visiting Lincoln exhibit and a marionette display but mostly visiting the elevators, staircases, and pedestrian bridge.