Teaching Our Children Initiative So They Don't Die

I got sick.  So did Derek.  At this point we're both recovering, as we fell like dominoes, one sick right after the other, but man, it's been a rough few days.

The result of our periods of overlapping illness was that, yesterday morning, when I emerged from my stupor better-ish, but still shaky on my pins, the house was a rat hole.  You know all that stuff I just posted about how much I love to watch our children do chores?  Well, it turns out they only do those things if I'm there to play Chore Maestro.

To be fair, Adelaide mostly took care of her own stuff, such as cleaning up her own dishes, hanging up her wet snow gear, etc, and Atticus wasn't completely disgusting, but Caedmon?  He had the nerve to act like a five-year-old boy with little adult supervision *clears throat* which, I suppose is exactly what he was, but still.

As a result, starting yesterday afternoon we began discussing initiative.  Initiative, as I lectured told my precious sacks of filth darlings is seeing that something needs to be done and then doing that thing.  It's going to throw a container of yogurt away, seeing that the trash can is nearly overflowing with refuse, and not carefully perching the container on top of the pile, nay! but rather, pulling on the magic strings of draw that are so handily built into the top seam of the trash bag, hoisting it out, and taking it out to the dumpster.  It's getting one leftover enchilada out of the container for your supper, then putting the remaining enchiladas back into that big white thing with cold insides that keeps food delightfully fresh for so long, rather than leaving the dish of meat and cheese out on the counter to rot.

We're starting small, as I soon realized that our boys don't even seem to see when some things need to be done.  So I'm pretending they're troglodytes- not much of a stretch today, friends- and leading them gently around the house, adding extra sarcasm-infused syrup to my voice as I ask, "And what is this, sweet boys?  That's right, it is a bowl!  Very good, boys!  And what is in this bowl, sons of mine?  Why, I don't know what it is, either!  Sometimes it's hard to identify food when it's been sitting out for two days, so don't feel bad.  Now, here is the important part, future men of the world (GOD HELP US ALL):  [Insert highly detailed instructions of a simple procedure including water and a sink that I will not put you through].  Now, who can repeat what I just said?"

Just eating my lunch with a wooden spoon because every other piece of silverware was dirty and our children didn't ever see that as a problem.

We have done the same thing with the toilet, with hats and mittens, with snow boots, with the trash can, and on, and on, and on.  Today I'm noodling over what kind of system to put in place (chore chart?  But I don't really like those or think they work that well.  Jar that we fill with stuff or take away from that I'm pretty sure I saw on Pinterest?  I just don't know yet.), that, most importantly, I can follow through on, because in general, the more complicated and labor-intensive a system is for me, the more likely I am to abandon it/throw it against a wall until it shatters in a highly satisfying way.

I don't really have short-term specific goals for this, either, but if I did they'd probably fall between "takes out the trash without being asked" and me no longer having to scrub around the base of the toilet while quietly singing Janet Jackson's Nasty to myself with increasing hysteria.  Somewhere in there.

Bold Jumping Spiders and Bold Jumping Mothers

A couple days ago, Adelaide and I were the only ones home, and we spotted one of those small, thick-limbed black spiders creeping along the kitchen ceiling.

Ooooh.  I just did a little google search on the above vague spider description, and have spent the last 30 seconds looking at spider photos to try and identify it.  My guess is the Bold Jumping Spider (I did not make that name up, but I am thankful for my pre-squish ignorance, as there would have been significantly more squealing otherwise), but couldn't make it past the first search page as I felt too nauseated.

Even without knowing it was a BOLD JUMPING SPIDER (shuuuuudder), there was a little squealing because it was Adelaide and it was me and the smashed spider corpse descended threateningly on its thread after I had snuffed out its life force.

I managed to clean it up and throw it away with little fanfare and without doing that thing that where you pretend the dead bug or spider is still alive and advance quickly toward the cringing person next to you the way Derek always does, because I am not a monster.

Yesterday, however, there was another slightly larger spider of the same kind (you know, just a little spider whose very name says that it is BOLD and WILL JUMP ON YOU), this time on the living room ceiling.  Same thing, except it was just me and Caedmon in the house: Shoe, squeal, squish, shudder.

Right before I squished its filthy guts out, however, I whispered, "Sorry about your wife," because that it what I say before I commit arachnid homicide.  In my mind, I had killed Mrs. Bold Jumping Spider the day before, and now Mr. Bold Jumping Spider is just walking around, wondering where the heck Tina is, when along comes yours truly to make it a double homicide.

Objects may be closer than they appear *retch*

Then I looked up and saw Caedmon watching me, eyebrows up, smiling bemusedly as I whisper to the spider on the ceiling, which of course he was, because #1: Privacy is apparently against my kids' religion, and #2: If I am doing something even the tiniest bit strange, my kids will find a way to be there, because they like nothing better than to announce the things I do in the comfort of our home to the world at large- see #1.  I can only assume this penchant for mortifying me is a trait inherited from my mother; obviously a gene that skips a generation (because surely I never embarrassed my mother or my children, ahahaha!).  I began to glimpse shiny little glimmers of this realization when Adelaide was almost two years old and an inconveniently early talker, which was cute right up until we were in a public bathroom stall and she announced, "WHY IS THAT LADY MAKING THOSE SOUNDS?" and "I CAN SEE SOMEONE'S TOES!  LOOK, MOMMY, TOES!  REALLY DIRTY TOES!" and "GOODNESS GRACIOUS SAKES ALIVE, WHAT IS THAT SMELL?"  'Goodness gracious sakes alive' being her cry of choice at that age.

While she was making all these lovely proclamations at the top of her little voice, I was thinking that I surely hadn't been this embarrassed since my mom gave a very matter-of-fact and loooong talk about sex and its many colorful facets to me and 200 of my closest friends in seventh grade.  At school.  With no warning- probably because she worried I'd make like a squirrel and dart into oncoming traffic rather than sit there and listen to my mom unfurl her fancy school nurse visual aides because she is an over-achiever, which is great in 4-H, not great when you're praying to go deaf so you don't have to hear your mother say that word again in front of half the school.

What's that?  I've talked about this before?  Not to worry, I'll only be bringing it up for the rest of my natural life, because some things you just don't get over.

You know what I haven't mentioned before?  My mom dressing up as SNL character Mary Katherine Gallagher and once again humiliating me in front of a few hundred of my fellow high school students.  I had repressed that little gem right up until supper last night when Adelaide stage-whispered, "Superstar!" and my body went into an automatic fight-or-flight mode.

She did it with exactly this much panache, too.

My mother is not shy.  Unfortunately neither are two out of our three children, and even the quiet one is not to be trusted.  I suppose this means I need to refine my ability to embarrass others, just out of a sense of desperate self-preservation.  Good luck, children mine, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Flowers Stand Still. Children Do Not.

A couple weekends ago we drove an hour south and visited the charming town of Pella, Iowa, to patronise their annual tulip festival, Tulip Time.

Let me tell you what, Pella is a town that takes their tulips seriously.  The festival is always the first weekend in May, and you hear stories about the citizens dumping beer all over their tulips to speed their growth and wrapping them in fleece to slow their growth and spraying diluted Jack Daniel's to prolong their blooming time all in order to try and get the tulips' blooms to coincide with this one weekend.  I feel like I would fit right in with these people- I didn't see a single rabbit while we were there.  If they're feeding expensive alcohol to their flowers, I wonder what measures are taken against tulip predators?  Something positively delightful, I'm sure.

When we first entered the town, Adelaide exclaimed over all the tulips we were driving by and began saying things like, "We should live here, Mom!" and "This looks like the town for us!"  And that was just over the tulips in people's yards and in front of the Pella Windows plant.  It is exceedingly lovely, and not just the tulips- everything, even the restaurants and gas stations, feature quaint architecture, not a tacky strip mall in sight.  Derek's worked in city government long enough for all this to make him observe that Pella might be a beautiful town to visit, but all the city codes that are surely in place to create this unified look might make owning property within the city limits fraught with red tape.

How about some flowers?

Even with God-only-knows-what-all measures that were undertaken by the city of Pella, there were a ton of tulips that had yet to bloom; our spring has been a couple weeks behind schedule, so I was actually surprised at how many had opened.  There were a ton of people there for the festival, but evidently the city has a steady stream of visitors throughout May just for the flowers.

I think the rivers of tulips snaking their way through the town's parks may have been my favorite part.

Tulip Time also serves as a celebration of the town's Dutch heritage, which means there were all kinds of women walking around town dressed in traditional Dutch garb, pushing their adorable babies in tulip-laden prams:

I love the juxtaposition of the old-timey-wimey garb and her thoroughly modern haircut and sunglasses.

We also saw Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln milling around before the big parade:

I'm not entirely sure what role they were supposed to play in a Dutch festival in Iowa- I know he was raised in Illinois, and Mary was from Missouri, so... sheer proximity?  They were known tulip-lovers in their day?  Perhaps one of you could enlighten me.  I noticed she was all in black and I wondered which of their children she was mourning.  She looked way less depressed than the rumor-mongers would have you believe, but then depressed people are often good at faking it.  I bet Derek was thinking these exact same things standing right next to me.  I just bet.

Marching bands are always one of my favorite parts of any parade, but the Pella Middle School marching band was especially fun to watch clomping along in their red clogs.

I also finally got to try a Dutch letter:

Derek kindly holding a Dutch letter for me, all the while knowing it was going straight on this blog.  He's a keeper.  (Not a quidditch Keeper, I mean one to be kept.  Just so we're clear.)

Since moving to Iowa, I don't know how many times incredulous natives have asked me, "You've never been to Tulip Time?!" and "You've never had Dutch letters?!"  Or, if they're locals of our little Norwegian immigrant-settled town, "YOU'VE NEVER HAD KRINGLA?!"  Well, now I can claim knowledge of the first two.  For the record, the Dutch letter was delicious: thin layers of light pastry interspersed with almond paste.  I do wonder what the "S" stands for, though.

We also tried yet again to get a few family photos.  Our children are much less compliant than tulips when faced with a camera.

Click to embiggen and see that Cade would rather poke his own eye out than smile for a family photo.

The one time that day they were still.

The weather, the flowers, the town, our family: everything was delightful, and I can't wait to go back.  

Bravo, Mothers of 4+

This is my first week without baby J.

Remember him?  The baby I've been watching for the past six months?  Well, he finally got into a local daycare center, which means I only have our three kiddos to watch over.

Mothers of four or more children, how do you do it?

I cannot even tell you how productive I've been today (in part because it would feel too much like bragging, but mostly because I'm afraid I'd put it all out there and you guys would be like "Um, I get that much done before my morning coffee every single day of my life.  That's completely average person productivity."), with just one kid in the house this morning while Atticus was at preschool, and then only two chilluns for the past couple hours.  I mean, all five members of our family are going to be sleeping on clean sheets tonight at the same time.  That hasn't happened since around early 2006.  (I've talked to you about my low standards before, right?  Just so we're clear.)

And we only had the baby during the day, four days a week, which means I had evenings and three other days to get stuff done.  It was still overwhelming.  Seriously, mothers of four or five or God help you six, how?  Have you simply made your peace with insanity?  Do you have some sort of strange coping mechanism they secretly tell you about at the hospital or... wherever you go when you adopt?  Do you automatically qualify for membership to some hidden and unbalanced but deeply supportive cult when you get the fourth?  What?  Because I know you can't be going it alone.  It's just not possible.


Yes, I froze in panic around thirty times this morning because Oh my gosh I haven't heard baby J in a really long time and I haven't even checked on him and holy crap I bet he's not breathing but then I remembered I hadn't heard him or checked on him because he's not here.  And yes, two of our three children have shed actual tears over the past few days because they don't get to see the baby or play with him or haul him around the house like the surrogate younger brother he's become to them.  We miss him already, and the thought of me seeing him in a month or so and him not recognizing my face kind of kills me (why do babies and small children have such short memories?  Oh, so they won't remember the fifty bajillion ways you screwed up with them?  Oh, okay.  That makes sense).

But I did get to have breakfast with this guy:

You didn't know Captain America likes Raisin Bran, did you?  Or that he's dragged those Batman jammies out of the dirty clothes hamper so many times he is seriously starting to stink.  But at least his sheets are clean!

I also- in another fit of our-youngest-child-has-been-educationally-neglected- played a game with Cade involving flashcards and letter sounds.  Turns out he knows all his letters and their sounds.  Who knew?  Not his mother.  When I called Derek and told him this, he said "I know, that kid's got a big brain; that's why you've got to keep challenging him," and I was like What?  We're not done once they know letter sounds?  You mean I have to keep teaching them things?
Sometimes I think Derek's a better stay-at-home mom than I am.



In other news, and because I can't think of a good way to wrap this post up:  It's still winter.  I don't understand why.  Somebody fix this.

Cabin Fever

It's cold outside.  Our average temperature has been anywhere from ten above to ten below for quite some time now (with the exception of a couple glorious days when my mom and Mark were visiting and temps were in the 40's- I've come to believe they bring warmer temperatures with them when they venture north), and while this isn't enough to keep some people inside, it is for me.

For our children, this means they'll be minding their own business, playing somewhat quietly, when suddenly they'll surge to their feet and begin sprinting through the rooms of our first floor, doing lap after lap of the circular floor plan.  Their energy is literally uncontainable.

This cabin fever manifests itself a little differently in me.  Rather than running mindlessly through the house, I mindlessly throw things out of it.  The more time I spend within these walls, the more cluttered our home seems, no matter how much I clean and organize.

The obvious answer is to purge, purge, purge just about anything that's not nailed down, no matter how much or how violently my family cries things like "But that's my favorite toy!" or "But how will I brush my teeth?" and "Won't we need that in the summer?"  I don't care.  I just want it out of my house.

Some of it's good.  Like the old clothing I had saved (alright, hoarded) that no longer fit but was made of pretty fabric.  Past, optimistic (and somewhat idiotic) Me had thought that surely I would find a use for it someday.  Pillow covers or quiet books or whatever.  Present-day Me is realistic and merciless; I now have major piles of my stuff destined for all kinds of different homes (how my past self would have cried!  How my current self doesn't care one teensy tiny bit!).

Then I have other piles of stuff.  These are the things that our children have objected to with protests that generally follow along the lines "But I'm going to start playing with it!  And besides, that's my third-favorite monkey/elephant/completely useless plastic toy!"  Unfortunately for them, Winter Mom is completely devoid of compassion.  (I know this because Adelaide informed me so just the other day: "Mom, you have absolutely NO COMPASSION in the winter!"  This was not due to my purging, but instead because I won't let our kids eat graham crackers in the winter.  I don't know if you were aware of this, but graham crackers are the crumbliest, crumb-iest, most maddening food in the world if you like walking through your house without every step being accompanied by a nasty crunch, crunch, crunch, so I only allow graham crackers when it's warm enough for them to eat outside.  The winter ban on graham crackers apparently means I'm heartless.  Please pray for our children; their lives are just so hard.)  If the toy doesn't have some sort of sentimental value (according to me- Adelaide will attach sentimental value to the sticks she finds in the yard), isn't well-made, isn't a favorite and frequently played with, or doesn't have some sort of capacity for teaching our children, then it's gone.


Listen to how hard-line, how intensely reasonable I sound!  I think I'll wait 'til tomorrow to tell you about the utterly foolish toys Derek and I suggested our parents get for our kids (Hint: one feels curiously like thumb tacks when you step on them, and the other encourages violence between siblings).

Why Not Dad?

Summer vacation has begun.

We're only two days in, and most of it has been fairly predictable.  Our living room floor looks like a library exploded on it.  I'm perpetually astonished by just how much three children eat all at the same time.  The kids are outside right now because "you can come back in when I'm done writing this post, now get away from that door or so help me I will lock you out!  Again!"

The one slightly jarring note exists during their imaginative play time.  I say that like it's a set time of day:  First we eat a hot, nutritious breakfast that I arose early to prepare, then we practice math drills lest our brains turn to sludge, then we engage in Imaginative Play Time.  (I hope you realize that every single piece of that previous phrase is so ludicrously false that I giggled madly the entire time I typed it.  "Imaginative Play Time" is code for Get Out of This House Before I Kill You All, I refuse to prepare anything more complicated than cereal before 10 am, and math drills?  I don't think I even need to explain the joke in that one.)

In general, Adelaide is in charge of any imaginary play.  If the boys are pretending to eat mushroom stew, it's because Adelaide wanted to play Indians.  If the boys are following her around, yipping, it's because Adelaide wanted to play Dogs (although she did let them choose their own names; Atticus chose Ruffy while Caedmon went for the slightly less conventional Hay Bale), and if Adelaide is sulking it's because the boys found their spines and revolted.

Whatever the game, there's one constant that runs through them all:  At some point, usually toward the beginning, while they're still setting up the basic parameters, one of my three darlings will dramatically turn toward the others and announce, "And let's pretend the Mom's DEAD."

This stipulation is, without fail, met with grisly satisfaction from the two other siblings.  It's also said louder and with more emphasis, almost like they want to be completely sure I hear that one detail, even if I miss everything else.

"Hey, let's pretend we're Indians, and I'm the medicine woman, and you're a warrior, and Caedmon's a papoose."
"And let's pretend the Mom's DEAD."
"Yeah!"

"Okay, I'm the nice robot, and you're trying to fix me, but we can't find all the right parts."
"And let's pretend the Mom's DEAD."
"YES."

"Let's all pretend we're cheetahs, and I'm the fastest so I always get all the prey."
"I'm tired of playing that game."
"And our cheetah Mom is DEAD."
"Oh, okay."


I've tried to stuff my ears with feeble explanations like "Well, I'm just such a constant in their lives they can't imagine life without me so the fact that their favorite game is pretending I'm dead is clearly just evidence that our level of familial bonding has reached a new and higher level in the basic hierarchy of human needs."  Which is such a serious crock you'd almost think Freud had come up with it.

Don't worry, though; it may bother me a little bit now, but give me another couple weeks of summer vacation and I'll be begging them to play the "Mommy's Dead" game, so long as they do it outside.