Four Things

• This week Facebook reminded me how much I love- and have always loved- to torture our children.

Four years ago I took that picture of almost-two-year-old Caedmon, despite the fact that he was getting annoyed with the camera in my hands.  These days, if they do not want me to snap a photo, I desist and find more creative ways to irritate them.  I don't know why I so delight in these kids of ours' angry faces, but man, do I.  Look at his little face!  He's always been something of an intense creature, which probably helps explain my frequent urge to lighten the mood.  If anything, our children should leave this nest someday knowing not to take themselves too seriously.  I have no regrets.  (So far.)

• My pumpkins are finally ripening!

I was so excited by the Long Island Cheese heirloom pumpkins that Adelaide felt the need to make fun of my gourd-inspired jubilation, as seen in the above photo.  I was tempted to respond to her mockery by saying things like, "Nobody appreciates my pumpkin-growing prowess!" or maybe "You're grounded!" but given my previously mentioned delight in poking fun at our children, I really felt like I had no place in disciplining our children for behavior they may or may not have learned from a certain Gourd Growing Queen (long may she reign).  (I am also obviously more than capable of encouraging myself in my gardening pursuits, and can withstand all manner of taunts from certain snarky daughters.)

Hello, beautiful pumpkin plant curlicue-thing!

• My trail half marathon is three weeks from today.  This means that this morning was one of my last long runs of the year, which makes me holler "HAL-LE-LU-JAH" because, as seen in this rare early morning picture of me... 

... I'm not much of a morning person.  

But then I get out the door, and, well, I'm actually still really cranky for the first couple miles.  Things always tend to get a little brighter once the sun comes up, though. (That one's for you, punny friends.)

I know this photo isn't nearly as pleasant for all the farmers who've experienced a delayed harvest this year due to an incredibly rainy September, so- sorry, farmers.  I love your work!  I also love sun over corn stalks, especially since I know that once that corn is gone, winter is not far away.  

• And now, because I always feel vaguely guilty when I have two of our children in one post but leave the third one out, here is a picture of Atticus reading in the van.

The Sights

Sights that fill my heart with joy:

Our children doing chores.  [Insert evil but sincere laugh here.]

Because each of our children are unique, individual human beings, they're each good at different things- including chores.  Caedmon is my go-to mopper, as he's thorough and careful to scrub when needed, something that his two older siblings can't (WON'T) seem to grasp.

Plus his dimple comes out when he's putting some muscle into the job.  If that isn't added incentive to give him this particular task, I don't know what is.

Atticus, on the other hand, is the kid I call upon when I have a mountain of towels to fold.  It's not his favorite chore, but I tell him that not everyone can be a master of the tri-fold.  He is very comforted by this.
He's also my head snow shoveler.

I took this picture on Christmas Eve, after we'd been to church and he'd had to sit still and listen to adults for close to an hour.  As soon as we got home, he begged to go out and shovel, as he had energy to burn.  This had the added benefit of making me look like a monster to our neighbors, sending our seven-year-old boy out into the cold to do manual labor on the night before Christmas, all while I watched in my fancy holiday clothes from within the comfortable warmth of our house.  I thought about making a big sign to hold up to the window: "HE ASKED FOR IT," but I decided there was a faint possibility that could be misconstrued.

::Right here you'll have to fill in your own image of Adelaide taking out the trash or unloading the dishwasher, as she seems to find it insulting when I take pictures of her doing chores while I sip my iced tea and nibble delicately on lemon cookies as I recline in my easy chair.::

Only kidding.  I don't much care for iced tea.

Other sights I always enjoy:

Is this or is this not the most perfect coffee receptacle you've ever seen?  It's from The Awkward Yeti, and let me tell you, if you've ever felt like the only thing missing in your life is a hilarious comic featuring cartoon internal organs, then get ready to achieve nirvana.  I follow him on Instagram, because I am not a fool and I never underestimate the effect of a well-executed gall bladder joke.

And finally, despite all my attempts at visualizing a vomit-free weekend, last night was... well, let's just say it was decidedly malodorous.  As of now, this illness has felled 60% of the residents of this household, and although I'm hoping Derek and I will emerge unscathed, given the amount of times my person has waded through a quagmire of germ juice over the past few days, it's not looking good.  So far, though, it only seems to be a 24-hour bug, where it hits its victims with uncalled-for violence, but then more or less leaves them alone to sleep it off and emerge more or less back to normal.  

This morning Adelaide and Caedmon were making up for hours of action last night.

These still count as joyful sights to behold, as the visage of our sleeping children makes my twisted little heart glow on any day, but when they've been sick?  Those sleeping babes make me whisper-yell, "HALLELUJER!" (so as not to wake them, see), because that means it's finally break time, and by "break time" I mean time to wash every piece of bedding or clothing  you can sneak out of their rooms without waking them, lighting candles in every room, and opening any and all bedroom windows, because the outside temp may be below freezing, but at this point, fresh is fresh air, man.

Please note that she surrounded herself with all the things that comfort her:  A bag full of library books, a coloring book and pens, and there under her head you can just make out the little pink pillow I made for her to take to kindergarten.

So!  What sights fill your heart with joy these days?  Do, do share, as I could use a few extra merry sights during this bleak, colorless time of year.

Sledding and Slow-Cooked Bananas and Wishful Thinking

Temperatures soared into the teens this week, which means Caedmon and I dragged our sleds to the bus stop to pick the kids up after school most days this week.  We then enjoyed going down the little hill there over and over and over and over and climbing up the little hill over and over and over and over, fulfilling my real motive of wearing the kids out a bit and burning off any post-school day crankiness before they even walked in the door of our house.  Raise your hand if you've ever asked God to enrich the evil genius residing within you in order to aid in your parenting.

Adelaide affirmed my belief that youngest siblings generally have it made, at least if your eldest sibling is an indulgent sister whose name rhymes with Shadelaide.

His Indian name is Cute But Heavy.  Hers is Dotes Upon Caedmon, which sounds more like the name of an English village, so never mind.


Then we all went home and did the only thing you can do after sledding, which is drink hot cocoa.

Yes, I'm still using my Christmas mug.  I'm also still listening to Christmas music, although only in our vehicle.  I took all those exhortations to "Never change!" inscribed in my yearbook seriously.

Last night I made banana ice cream for the kids after supper, which is always curious, as whipping frozen bananas in my food processor tap dances on just this side of triggering an allergic response in me, despite the fact that I'm not actually ingesting any of the allergen.  I noted this with interest, then got to further my mental notes when cleaning regurgitated banana off nearly every surface of the bathroom later that night.  Apparently seven years old is not the age when you're able to hit the toilet when sick- well, not the inside of it, anyway, or even within a few feet of its easily flushable inside.  Seriously, it was like an episode of NCIS: Vomit in there.  I'm sure if I had the training I'd be able to identify all kinds of things in the splatter patterns.  Good news, though!  Apparently stomach acid "cooks" the banana enough- thereby denaturing its proteins- that even skin contact doesn't elicit a response in this allergy sufferer.  Motherhood is teaching me so much!

After a night like that, I kept Atticus home from school, and although we enjoyed a lethargic morning, he now seems to be back to normal.

Please excuse the mess.  We actually live here.

Balloons have saved our bacon more than once during a long Iowa winter:  They're cheap, after a couple days they do a Roberta Flack and kill themselves softly, and the children lose their minds over them.  I don't know why tag/keep-away/ every single other game is so much more fun when played with balloons, but according to our progeny, this is a truth universally acknowledged.  

I'm going to copy a friend of mine now and attempt to visualize my preferred future:  A vomit-free weekend, laden with running, good food (I'm making a cheese ball!  And crockpot Maid-Rites!  And yes, this is exciting enough to warrant an exclamation point!  It's possible that my life is somewhat sad!  I don't even care because CHEESE BALL!), with a liberal dose of Jane Eyre and maybe some Mancala.  Amen.

Pie Charts and Apples and a Book

Saturday morning's race went well.

It was a lovely morning, cool for August and overcast, but not a lovely run.  I mean, the course was fine, but some days when you run you feel invigorated and your breathing is easy and natural and your step is bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, fun-fun-fun-fun-fun... and then other days are more like Saturday was for me.  It wasn't awful, but it was ugly.  My breathing was all heavy and ragged, my feet were slapping the ground, and I just kind of threw myself forward for 10 kilometers.  Still good enough for third place in my division, which I will take any day of the week and twice on Sundays, as they only handed out medals to the top three in each division.  Medals are disturbingly important to me.  They don't even have to be actual awards or placement medals; finishers medals are enough for me.

Honestly, it's a good thing I'm not good enough at pretty much anything to qualify for the Olympics; I'd be that person that gets medal fever and loses all scope and perspective of what's universally important.  There would also no doubt be a lot more tears and snot in my life.

We also went to the local parade, where my kids gathered candy for me.  They may not have known it was for me, but it most certainly was.

"Now, run out in front of that firetruck and get me that strawberry Laffy Taffy.  I am not even kidding, son."

And yes, that is my race medal hanging from my neck.  I wore that thing all day, including the forever we spent at the cell phone store because Derek is dragging me into the 21st century:  I am getting a smart phone.  It should arrive in the mail tomorrow, but hopefully not too soon before the case I ordered for it, which I am 99% more excited about than the phone itself.  Just wait.  You will either love it or roll your eyes at it; I will love it and squeal in excitement and croon over it.

Before that, though, there were bananas.

I... I'm not real sure just what moment Derek managed to capture here.  Perhaps I'm questioning why I have three bananas in my hands at a parade and zero Laffy Taffy?  I just don't know.

Derek's parents not only joined us at the parade and the Place Where Time Ceases to Exist (cell phone store), they also brought us a bucket of apples.

I did the right thing and turned them all into cinnamon apple sauce.

This had the added benefit of creating extra chores for our children, which I always approve of.

FCA:  Future Composters of America

Then Caedmon and I went to book club, where we discussed this book:

If you enjoy historical fiction, or strong heroines, or Civil War-era books, or books about women who are midwives but want to be surgeons but can't because they have committed the crime of lacking a Y chromosome so instead answer the call for nurses for the war, then this is the book for you.  Every year my book club devotes one month to reading the All Iowa Reads book selection for the year, and to be perfectly frank, they usually suck, like, insanely suck, to the extent that when I discovered just today that My Name is Mary Sutter was an All Iowa Reads book I was a little shocked, because this book does not suck.  You'll want to wash your hands a lot and reach into the book to strangle a couple characters, but it was great, and sparked healthy discussion today.  I definitely recommend it.

Water Not-Babies

Today I went out back and discovered that I have real, live zinnias growing (not to worry, though; there's still plenty of time for them to wither and die for no good reason), and a mess of wild Crislers frolicking amongst the fading hollyhocks:

Neither Derek nor I want to fuss with even as much as a tiny wading pool, and for me, turning on the hose for a sprinkler is like watching our progeny run and splash through sprays of money.

I fill a big bucket of water, hand them each a cheap water gun, and walk away.  One bucket buys me nearly an hour of time, as they know that once that bucket is empty, water time is over.  This usually works out perfectly, as the last ten minutes of that time generally devolves into tears as they exhaust themselves and will no longer tolerate things like errant sprays to the fact or one of their siblings looking at them.

For awhile, though, all is well.

More or less well, that is:  There are many, many wonderful things that come with living in Iowa, but the insane number of mosquitoes we're plagued with each summer is not one of them.

Caedmon in particular pays a heavy price for daring to play out of doors in the Rightful Realm of the Mosquito.

Our four-year-old's extra sensitivity to bug bites hasn't swayed him, however, from jumping on his newly ready big bike any chance he gets.

Maybe five minutes after Derek had the training wheels properly adjusted Cade left his tricycle in the dust.  He's been waiting on a bike for some time now; there's something about being the youngest child that makes you just a bit more sensitive to being left behind or seen as babyish in any way, and according to Caedmon, nothing says, "baby" like a trike.  I'm also not allowed to use terms like "cute," and definitely not "adorable;" I instead have to save it for here:

LOOK AT MY BABY!  ISN'T HE ADORABLE?

Whistling While They Work

Our kids' final day of school was last Friday.  Because Derek was out of town for the weekend, I packed everyone up and we headed south for a whirlwind trip to see aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and pigs and cows.  I'll be telling all sorts of fun stories about that excursion soon, but today we need to discuss something far more pressing and exciting:  It's summer vacation.  And do you know what 'summer vacation' means to me?

My work force is back.

Listen, we do not live in a particularly giant house, nor do we live in a particularly fancy or fussy house, but there are five people living here, and it takes a lot of elbow grease to keep this place from descending into a quagmire of nastiness.  Summer vacation means four extra elbows here all day to help keep entropy at bay and do all the fun summer things like clean the windows and mop the floors and wash the towels.

Me with my three favorite scrubbers.  Look how excited they are to clean for their mother.

This does not, of course, mean that they aren't going to be doing fun things with their time off of school.  There will be many library visits and trips to the public garden and maybe even an afternoon or two at the pool for those days when I'm feeling up to keeping three children from drowning for three straight hours (read: rarely).  But our kids are, well, kids, and while fun things during summer are in order, I've spoken at length in the past about the word "bored" and what its utterance means around here.  I am not my children's camp counselor, nor am I their activities director, so unless I want them to grow up into useless slugs, I will not allow them to spend their collective childhood as useless larvae.  And if you think this is an overreaction, let me tell you about that time a year or so ago when a sweet college girl approached me at church about volunteering in our children's department.  I handed her the exceedingly simple application, and in return she didn't so much as reach for a pen, but instead looked at me with a facial expression so vacant I expected to see a buzzing motel sign advertising the same right there on her forehead.  It turns out her mother had filled out every application and piece of paperwork that had ever dared to drift into her precious jewel's path up until then.  I had to teach a nineteen-year-old girl how to fill in basic personal information.  I don't even want to talk about the reference section, which took up twenty minutes and 90% of my patience.

Oh, and before you go thinking that perhaps I was being too hard on her, perhaps her mental faculties are of the sort that she will always need help filling out applications?  Let me reassure you that the charm oozing out of this girl before she realized that I am immune to fluttering giggles and wide-eyed smiles told me otherwise.  I was nowhere near rude, but instead just as firm as I am with our children, and hey- she now knows what a reference is.

As for our kids, they cleaned out from under their beds today, and two kitchen drawers have been organized.  Tomorrow Adelaide gets to clean all the kitchen cabinet fronts, Atticus will be vacuuming upstairs, and Cade gets to help me clean out the art cabinet.  Then I'll make popsicles for all to enjoy while listening to Hank the Cowdog audiobooks because that is their current idea of a dream summer afternoon, and I'm not completely heartless.

SUMMER VACATION!

A List for Friday

• Signs your children are growing up in the age of technology:

Caedmon loves to draw pictures, but he will often ask if you want just a picture, or a picture and an audiobook.  If you go the audiobook route, it means you are possessed with infinite patience and/or have twenty minutes of your time to sacrifice to a meandering story about super heroes and lightning coming out of fingertips and hot lava.  There is always hot lava.

Recently when he posed this choice to me, I went the audiobook route.  I don't really remember why I did this to myself, but I'm fairly certain guilt was involved.  Caedmon drew his picture full of swords and lightning and stick figures with disturbingly large fists.  He wrote a bunch of random letters and a few short words on the reverse of the piece of paper; this was the audiobook portion.  Then he brought the paper over to me, allowed me to view his masterpiece, then flipped it over and prepared to recite a tale of lava and derring-do.

Before he began, however, he said, "Oh, wait, there's an Ad before the audiobook can start.  But you can Skip it if you want to."

Methinks we've been watching too many YouTube videos.

Caedmon loves audiobooks, but will still deign to listen to a paper version.

• Signs your children have fantastic teachers:

In Atticus's kindergarten class they have this thing called "magic words."  There is a list of a few magic words every week, and every time the kids hear or use one of these words, they are to tug on their ear.

Atticus thinks this is pretty much the greatest thing ever.  I think this is pretty much the greatest thing ever, because it has him using words he didn't previously, all while wiggling his earlobe with his fingers and looking meaningfully at me with a smile:  "He is such a RASCAL," *smile wiggle wiggle*, or "I was FRIGHTENED the frisbee was lost," *smile wiggle wiggle*.  

I love the way he says these words in an announcer's voice, enunciating each consonant, but there was the week I learned I overuse the word "finally"; I worried our son's ear was going to fall clean off from all the tugging he had to do.

Atticus also has a fantastic coach, although it isn't his ear that sees plenty of action during soccer- it's his tongue, which evidently must bask in the light of day for him to successfully kick the ball.

Click to embiggen all these to see his Soccer Tongue.

Two Soccer Tongues!

And here's Atticus and Derek, looking very... coachly.  I say if "kingly" is a word, "coachly" can be, too.

• Signs your family has faces more suited to those strange mugs with faces than to a glossy magazine cover:

You know, this kind:

Looks like a Crisler

These are the faces our family makes whilst playing mini-golf together:

Neither Adelaide nor I are able to remain composed when we make a bad putt.  And when you ask Caedmon to make a "pirate face," because we were playing at Pirate's Cove?

The Bounty of Spring

This has been an odd week.  Not because of odd happenings, but because I've caught some kind of bug that has made my head an odd place in which to reside.

Normally when I'm sick, all of my emotions are flat.  I can't summon the motivation to care about much of anything, and all my senses are dulled.  We've all been there, right?

This week has been different.  I've had some kind of bug that several people in the area seem to be likewise suffering from- nothing major, just mild, persistent nausea, nagging headache along with aches and pains, and a general feeling of malaise and run-down-ness.

What makes this bug special is that, at least for me, it has included heightened emotions.  And no, I am not pregnant.  Just so we're clear.

Case in point:  Last night, while gathering ingredients for the supper I had in mind, I couldn't find the ground ginger.  I tore my spice cabinet apart and found THREE containers of thyme, but no ginger.  I even found a small pot of sage, which is completely useless to me, as I can't stand the smell or taste of sage.  But ginger?  None.

Is this worth crying over?  It almost was last night.  I really wanted beef noodle bowls.

Once I got over the devastating ginger-related loss (my life is so hard), I decided to make quiche.  I was refreshing my memory on how to make PW's pie crust, and her instructions included not the usual phrase involved in the making of pastries, "combine until it resembles coarse meal," but "gradually work... until it resembles a coarse meal. (Emphasis mine)"  Just the inclusion of that little article "a" filled my brain with images of a plate containing asparagus and maybe chicken telling me dirty jokes and inappropriate stories.

Naturally this filled me with such mirth I laughed until I was almost too weak to wield the pastry cutter.  I didn't think much of it- everyone laughs at the jokes their brain tells them, right?- until Caedmon came over, laid his little hand on my arm, and asked, "Are you okay, Mommy?"

It's possible I've come across as a trifle unbalanced this week.  Is it possible for a germ to generate symptoms of mild manic depression?

Episodes of feverish hilarity aside, there were plenty of high points this week.  My peach hyacinths bloomed:

The tulips are also beginning to open up:

I also finally got my lettuce in, the only cool season veggie I plant.  I turned the compost heap and it produced a prodigious amount of beautiful, black, hearty compost to nourish the garden with this year.  I went to my first garage sales of the season and came back with nice garments for Adelaide and Atticus both, including tennis shoes for Atticus for just a few bucks that should work for school in the fall.  I had no idea how such nice shoes could possibly have so little wear, as any shoes our six-year-old tromps around in look like they've been through a wood chipper after a mere three or four months of use.  The very nice lady who lived in the McMansion where the sale was located swooped in to explain, however, that she had bought them for her son, who refused to wear them because they weren't the exact right shade of blue.  I said a prayer of thanks for her kid's brattiness and its indirect benefit to our kid, who was pleased as punch with the shoes.

Germs, flowers, and garage sale finds:  It's finally starting to feel like spring!

A List

I had decided not to write a post today because I was in such a determined state of grouchiness, but now it's thundering out and there's a light rain to water my hard-working spring flowers.  Few things cheer me up like a healthy thunderstorm, so I'm feeling much better now, thank you.

• The first hyacinths have bloomed:

I planted these a couple years ago, but for whatever reason they didn't bloom last spring.  When it started to look like they might actually flower this year, I got excited about the peach-colored hyacinths I was just sure I had planted in this spot.  Well.  These aren't peach.

They are, however, a beautiful purple-blue color, and I'm pleased as punch with them.  The first flowers of the season are always so exciting.

• We celebrated a lovely, low-key Easter with church and golf and gardening.  I have all of three photos of the kids in their Easter finery ("Easter finery" in this household equating to whatever nice-ish clothes I could cobble together three hours before the church service, as I stopped spending money on holiday clothing years ago), or maybe it was four, and right around 100 photos of the kids and Derek golfing.  I will not be forcing you to look at all 100+, but fair warning:  There are going to be a large amount of pics on here this week.  Some will be sweet:

Derek and Cade golfing.  Caedmon looks a bit waif-like in all the golf photos, as he's wearing one of Derek's hats and one of Atticus's shirts.  I did not notice this until we were on the course.  Oh, well.

Some will baffle:

I took this photo of Adelaide during the Easter egg hunt, and I'm still not sure what's happening here.

But in precisely zero photos will everyone be smiling.

Caedmon's "Lollipop Guild" face

• I was going to have a third thing here, but I can't remember what it was.  This is a problem because I cannot let myself have a list with just two items.  So... fill in your own third item.  And make it clever, would you?  Or perhaps heart-warming, or funny, or something?  Thanks.

Thanks, Atticus

Lately Atticus has been a little impatient with my style of parenting, whatever that may be.  Is there an opposite to helicopter parenting?  Hang on, let's ask google... HAHAHA!  According to the wise old internet, "No Rescue Parenting" resides on the pole opposite Helicopter Parenting, which sounds just about right, as I can't tell you how many times our children have tearfully called out to me for help because they were stuck in a tree and my response has been, "You got yourself up there, you can get yourself down."  If they're pretty far up there or really panicking I will deign to coach them from the ground.  The emotional scarring from all this appears to be nominal as they still seize any chance to monkey up a tree.

Where was I?  Right.  Atticus.

A few weeks ago when enough of the snow had melted to get the bikes back out, Atticus jumped on his and raced off without a wobble in sight.  Bike riding has always come naturally to him.

Adelaide hovered around her bike, she walked it up and down the sidewalk, she did everything but ride it.  When she had finally mustered the courage to mount her trusty steed, she complained about how it was too big and how she was going to fall and how she missed her old, little bike.  And how dare I expect her to ride a big bike when she had only just learned to ride without training wheels late last summer?

I told her to take it up with her dad; she didn't get her height and gangly limbs that necessitated a bigger bike from me.

For a half hour she loitered in front of the house, trying to get me to run alongside her on her bike.  I gave her a firm "NO," as we've both gotten hurt that way in the past.  Atticus, who is evidently softer-hearted than I am, was swayed by her tears, as he incredulously told me that, "Mom, Adelaide needs help!"  I told him that SHE'S FINE, he glared at me and took matters into his own hands.

He stayed with her like this for half a block.

After some coaching from her little brother, Adelaide gained the confidence to ride on her own on the big bike.  It took her several more days to learn to trust the hand brakes; at first she said they were just too difficult for her hands to work and instead steered for a patch of grass to tip sideways onto every time she wanted to stop.  She did not jump off, or catch herself with her feet, she stayed in bike-riding stance, feet on the pedals, hands on the handlebars, and just... just fell all the way to the side.  On purpose.  I swear she looked exactly like those fainting goats, and I never failed to collapse into laughter every time she did it, which did not help my image of Mean Mother.

Atticus has since expanded his purview as back-up Parent from bike riding to Advice Giving.  Yesterday he and Caedmon decided to color.  Atticus chose an Easter-themed coloring sheet to decorate, which Caedmon looked at with derision and declared, "That is a pretty coloring page, and I don't color pretty things; I only color cool things."

Atticus took this opportunity to educate his younger brother:  "Cade, I have lots of girlfriends.  When you have lots of girlfriends, sometimes you have to color pretty things for them.  You don't just get to color cool things anymore."  Caedmon took this as the sage advice that it was, and they continued coloring in harmony, pretty and cool things alike.