Balance... Beam of Mashed Potatoes!

If you're thinking to yourself, Gosh, lately it seems like most of Kristy's posts are food-related, well, that's because they are.  Anymore it feels like my biggest chunks of time not spent at work are somehow tied up in food.  Shopping for it, looking up recipes for it, making grocery lists for it, prepping and cooking supper or making school lunches, cleaning up in the aftermath.  These children seem to expect food to go into their mouths every dang day.

Because working my tail off while everyone else goes about their business breeds resentment and makes me act downright hateful, I usually rope someone into supper prep with me.  Most of the time this person is Adelaide.  That is because Adelaide is the easy choice.  She enjoys cooking and baking (except when she abruptly doesn't), she is responsible, and she takes around one thousand percent less oversight in the kitchen than her brothers.  Plus I just like her.  She is funny, and insightful, and fun to be around.  (Except when she's abruptly not.  She's like her mother that way.)

Unfortunately easy doesn't always equal right, especially over time.  I've chosen the easy option for so long that at this point, neither Atticus nor Caedmon have the culinary abilities their sister did at the same, respective ages.  This sucks.

This has all been slowly dawning on me for some time now, but our family has also been in a fairly significant season of change over the past nine months as I went back to work and we all adjusted to new schedules, new expectations, new lots of things.  There were certainly times, especially at first, when this is how I felt when concerned family and friends asked how I was doing:

Getting the boys in the kitchen with me just wasn't a priority.  Heck, it's still a near-daily basis that they ask, "Did you go to the store today?" and my response is, "Exactly when would I have done that, sweetling?"

But now that we've all more or less found our footing in this brave new world, I recently decided it's time to get all the kids into cooking with me.  And because I am sometimes a world class idiot who doesn't consider the wisdom of taking swimming lessons before jumping into the deep end of the pool, last week I panicked and said, "ALL the kids into the kitchen to help me with supper!"  I know there are only three of them, but there's some kind of mysterious transformation that takes place when you put more than one of them into the kitchen at the same time, and by "mysterious transformation" I mean

"I wanted to turn the burner on!"

"It's my turn!"

"Why does Adelaide always get to put salt and pepper on things and I don't?"

"He's stirring way longer than I got to!"

until I turn into an angry panda chef.

We did finally end up with our pork chops with garlic and wine sauce over mashed potatoes, but nothing was hot, nobody was happy, and for some reason I felt slightly ill for the next three days after consuming half of my pork chop.

My takeaway from all this?  Pork chops are only meant to be cooked on the grill by Derek.  If you think about it long enough and allow all reason to vacate the premises, this makes sense.


Also that balance is perhaps key here.  I need to find the proper ratio of kid-to-food.  Maybe 1 Atticus:10 chicken fajitas, or 1/2 Caedmon:2/3 beef noodle bowl.

Anyone else feel like this is making me sound like I'm trying to lure little German children into my gingerbread house?


Then last night I had a dream I was trying to make my way across a balance beam, no doubt brought on by my late night pondering on that whole kitchen balance thing.  But the balance beam was made of mashed potatoes.  In waking hours, I have excellent balance due to yoga, but my dream-state balance was otherworldly, as I made my way across those mashed potatoes just fine.  Jung would no doubt say the mashed potatoes represent civilization's oppression against feet and my incredible balancing act represent my struggles to overcome procrastination or something else completely insane that is nonetheless reprinted in psychology textbooks every year.  I think I just really like mashed potatoes, especially with roasted garlic mashed into them, because otherwise why bother?

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

For the first time in a decade, I don't spend most of my day with the children I helped make.

It's a peculiar feeling.


I think if I hadn't had this new job at the library to go to after all three of our children had the audacity to leave me in pursuit of this strange thing called "an education," that first day of school would not have been pretty.  No sirree.  As it was, Derek and I escorted them to the bus stop, where those kids got on the bus and just... left.  They didn't even try to paste sad expressions on their faces for my benefit; no, they were all smiling and excited, especially the little one.  Yes, I'm aware that if any of them had struggled with leaving that morning it would have made things that much harder for me.  Please don't try to bring rational thought to this party, as it was not invited.

Two happy boys, one sassy girl who gave me this sarcastic smile because she declared herself too preoccupied by the heavy percussion kit on her back to be able to take first day of school pictures.  Hrmph.

As it was, the kids climbed on the bus most enthusiastically, Derek headed off to work, and I walked home, where I sniffled around the house while contemplating blowing off my friends at the coffee shop.  I mean, really, who would want this sad sack around?

Thankfully, I did not, and was incredibly cheered by those same friends who, for reasons that continue to elude me, include my sad sack-ness in their midst on a regular basis.  The mocha latte probably helped, too.

Then, thank the Lord, I got to go to a library run by compassionate women who have been there and done that and/or are being there and doing that, so I was in good company with my all-my-babies-have-left-me self.

That first day flew by despite my continuing feeling of emotional fragility, and it was soon time to meet them as they got off the school bus.

That first day and every one since, Caedmon has reassured me that he loves kindergarten, except for two things:  "I don't like it that all the kids disobey all the time and everyone is so loud."  This is classic Caedmon, as half the things he says would be equally likely to come out of the mouth of a cranky old man.  He is our five-year-old curmudgeon.

Atticus says second grade is "good.  What, it's good!  What else do you want me to say?"

Adelaide is the opposite of Atticus in that she has had lots of things to say about fifth grade.  So. many. words.  Most of them are of a sensitive nature, though, so I won't be repeating them here.  Our daughter likes to talk her feelings over with us, and I appreciate that she's still willing to share such things with her lame-o parents, so if she's willing to talk, I'm willing to listen.  I am thinking of insisting on regular snack breaks going forward, as it will both keep my blood sugar up and me awake (these conversations take place in the evening, and these days anytime you sit me down past 7 PM and expect me to stay awake is no bueno), plus chewing makes it so I'm not tempted to give advice.  We've found it's best if we're doing about 90% listening and 10% advice-giving.  This is tougher for Derek than it is for me, as he is a fixer.  Hmm.  Maybe he needs the snacks.  Something sticky- peanut butter, or maybe caramel?  It doesn't matter that his advice is sound; such things no longer seem to matter.  In all this talking, she gets to work things out for herself by talking it through, and we are getting concentrated lessons in patience.  It's so fun!

Extroverted, Excellent, Exceptional Atticus

Yesterday morning my three gremlins and I visited Ledges state park with Derek's sister and her two girls.

We were there for around two hours, playing in the water and hiking and picnicking and socializing.

Three or so hours after leaving, we were back home, where Adelaide, Caedmon, and I immediately retreated to our respective corners to read and recuperate from all that togetherness.  I mean, we liked the togetherness, but three hours of time with others will always end in a need for recovery time for both Adelaide and I and, I'm beginning to suspect, Caedmon.

Atticus, however, changed his clothes and grabbed a snack and proceeded to ricochet between his two siblings, begging someone to play with him.  Bless his heart, he was trying his best to pick activities and games the other two would enjoy, but they were done, with zero interest in further interaction with human beings.  

"Hey, Caedmon, wanna play superheroes?  You can be Batman.  Or Captain America.  Or any of the good guys."  

"No, thanks."

"Hey, Adelaide, wanna play ninjas?  I can go get your ninja clothes for you- you don't even have to go upstairs!"

"Not right now."

"Hey, Caedmon, wanna play soccer?  I'll get your water ready, and you can start two points ahead.  No, three points ahead!"

"Atticus, no."

I felt so bad for that poor kid, our extroverted, people-loving, utterly baffling middle child.  If it were up to me and the other two children, our summers would be nothing but day after day of staying at home, with occasional forays into the world to stock up on food and library books.  Basically, like this:

But that is not what Atticus needs.  He needs things to do and outside stimulation and people.  Atticus actually seems to believe that adage "The more the merrier"; it has always made me shudder.

So I've been dragging the kids and myself out of the house more this summer than any other.  And yes, Atticus has loved it, but it's also benefited Caedmon and Adelaide who, like me, need the company of other people and often thrive in varied situations, even if we have to force ourselves into it.

We've been going to Lego Club.  (Please excuse Atticus's new camera smile; I am aware that it is creepy in the extreme, but he does not.  We're working on it.)

We attended the water fight with the fire department.

We've visited a couple different historical societies, because it's free and the older two kids and I love that sort of thing.  This is a cross-section of a giant cottonwood that stood in a nearby town for over a hundred years.  Our boys are fascinated by this thing and never miss a chance to run their hands over it when we walk past.

Is all this activity exhausting?  Heck, yes.  But I've also seen the value of having an Atticus in our family, someone who forces the rest of us out into the world, making us have fun and experience things half against our collective introverted will.  He's like his dad in this, and thank God for it.

Eureka!

One of my goals for this summer was to have each kid help me with supper on a regular basis.

Okay, so my original goal went something like this:

Have one of the kids help make supper
every night
one time a week per kid
at some point during the summer, hopefully with some degree of frequency, but let's be realistic, here:  I'll be lucky to have each kid do it once a month.

While I want each of our children to leave this house more or less able to cook without poisoning themselves and any loved ones they may have (side note:  For each of our children, these future loved ones will, according to them, all look very different.  Atticus is very clear that he will be married one day; Caedmon seems to waffle between remaining at home forever over my dead body and living perhaps on his own, perhaps not, as long as gets to go out and do construction work every day, and Adelaide is already naming the many cats she plans on surrounding herself with.  Any which way, I am determined that our children will be capable of making a meal for these companions.), I'm also faced with the fact that any day that our children are "helping" me in the kitchen is a day that can contain little else in it.  The prep work that goes into having our children cook is, currently, enormous.  This is partly because I refuse to cook the recipes found in most "kids cookbooks" because I have a sensitive gag reflex, and partly because if it's mostly me cooking and them doing tiny jobs, I can't seem to hold their interest.  They want to do everything, and this is incredibly time-consuming, but I get it; I don't much care for being patronized, either.

Considering all this, I started our Summer of Cooking Together and Hopefully Not Hating Each Other by the Time It's All Over (SoCTaHNHEObtTIAO for... short?) yesterday with Adelaide.  We had little going on in terms of leaving the house, and as Adelaide is the oldest and most capable of our children, I knew it made it more likely that I would want to stick with this plan for any length of time.  I was afraid if I started with one of the boys the day would end with multiple people not speaking to each other and me with a new tattoo reading something like Chef Boyardee 4 Life or maybe a heart around some ramen noodles.

As it turns out, I am a genius.  Not this kind:

But this kind:

Adelaide did 99% of, well, everything.  She made the meatballs, and the breadcrumbs that go in the meatballs, even though massaging raw beef is not her favorite thing.

She baked shortcakes, and chopped strawberries, and made whipped cream.

Checking for soft peaks, because that is a thing she knows how to do!

What was my 1%?  Dicing an onion to go into the meatballs, because we both agreed that we wanted to eat that night, not two days from now.  Onions are Adelaide's nemesis:  I once saw her take one full hour to finely dice an onion.  We were both in fume- and emotionally-fueled tears by the time she was done. 

When I wasn't spending two minutes chopping, I was sewing new pillow cases for some ugly outdoor pillows I found at a garage sale a full year ago, something I've been meaning to do since last summer.  As it turns out, when I delegate this whole making-supper nonsense to others, I get to do all kinds of fun things!

Velvet with a seventies-shade of orange with fraying sides.  Worth all 25 pennies I paid, because I knew that stripes fix all manner of sins.

Especially when the fabric costs you under $2 a yard.  I've only been eyeing that fabric for a year, pretty much since I purchased the garage sale pillows.  Good things come to those who wait forever for the deep-discount sales.

Perhaps the best part, however, was how tired Adelaide was by the time she was dishing up food onto everyone's plates, not just because I am a cruel mother who delights in the fatigue of her children (although I am that, from time to time), but because she remarked to her father, 

"I am going to be very angry if I went to all this work and anyone here doesn't like it."

Bold, large print, because hallelujah, our children are capable of learning important life lessons.

Welcome to my skin suit, Adelaide.  I hope you find it to your liking.

Look at that- I'm able to ruin even the likes of Harper Lee.  

E(xcellent) coli

A couple weeks ago, I dug out our biggest whiteboard and gathered the children round.  The purpose of this congress was to write down all the things we wanted to do this summer vacation:  Places we wanted to visit, activities and crafts to be done, etc.  Summer tends to whiz by so fast that I didn't want to hit August 1st and panic, realizing I've squandered our time together.

Now, just because I wrote it down doesn't mean it's guaranteed to happen, as I explained to the children.  Some things I refused to even waste the dry-erase pigment upon.  "Go to Disney World," "Make a for-real weapons arsenal," "Eat at Burger King," being three such examples.

One of the very first things they wanted me to write down was "Visit Big Creek."  This one was no problem-o.  It's close, it's free, the swimming area is shallow enough I don't have to constantly watch for possible child drowning.

So, last Friday, we went.  Check one off the whiteboard, make the kids happy, collect my Super Awesome Mom badge.

Yay!

Yay!

But then, Saturday morning, the internet greets me with this headline:

Apparently there are elevated levels of bacteria present at Big Creek, although the article did note that these go up after heavy rainfall, so it was worse Saturday morning, after Friday's nights showers; in other words, our trip Friday afternoon was safe.  Well, safeish.  Also according to the article, there were signs up at the entrances to the park warning good parents who do things like look for warning signs.  I saw no signs, and have made my peace with having my shiny Super Awesome Mom badge revoked.  

The silver lining?  I'm thinking of adding "Expose offspring to E. coli" to the whiteboard, just because I like checking things off of lists.  Is there an "'A' for Effort" parenting badge?  Maybe a "Whoops! My bad!"  Because I've earned a ton of those.

Who Could Have Seen This Coming?

The first week of summer vacation is always interesting, isn't it?

I feel like I've just gone through some re-training.  I mean, yes, I usually spend quite a bit of time with our children, but it's nothing to compared to summer vacation, where with the exception of my daily run, we're together constantly, world without end, amen.

One of the things I had somehow forgotten is just how physical kids are.  Do you know how many times our children have gotten hurt in the past seven days?  A million.  Kidding, it's the only in the low hundreds.  Per child.  Just tonight, at the playground, Atticus came to me crying because he'd scraped up his back.  I lifted up his shirt, and sure enough, there were abrasions up and down his spine.  He explained to me what had happened, and I scratched my head.  You did what, now?  So we went over and he recreated the scene for me, Unsolved Mysteries-style.  I still have no idea how it happened.  I can only think he did a weird spasm and somehow forced his trunk through a narrow space of wire mesh... or something.  Five minutes later Caedmon came to me crying, because it hurts when you drop from the frighteningly tall monkey bars and your ankle gives out because you've forced your exhausted body through that obstacle course eight times in a row.

The skin on Adelaide's stomach is a mess of scrapes and scratches, because that's what happens when you get stuck up a tree.  This is especially true when, once you realize you're stuck, you climb higher up into the branches.  Reads at a twelfth grade reading level; can't navigate herself out of a tree.  This kid is going places.  Like trees, I guess.

In the interest of full disclosure and run-of-the-mill honesty, when I told Derek this story and showed him this photo, his question was, "Wow- how did she get up there?"  I was forced to admit that, um, I had, you know, maybe given her a leg up, then proceeded to help tremendously by staring helplessly up at her and shrugging when she pronounced herself to be stuck.

If this week is a fair indicator of the coming months, I'm thinking "Who could have seen this coming?" might just be the mantra of our summer break.

Bilbo?

Yesterday afternoon I had my act together, and had had it together for hours, when I had the thought, "This can't last.  Something's bound to go wrong."

And I was right.  After one of the children had been grounded, I had lectured all three of them, and I found my hands in my hair, getting ready to pull hanks of it out by the roots, I got out the bubbles, because bubbles fix everything.

Well, maybe not everything, but they do seem to act as a magical reset button for children.  I don't know why this is, I just know that it's true.  Why is that piece of information not in every parenting book?  Instead they drone on and on about potty training and how This is the Only Proper Way to Discipline Your Children and how if you let your baby cry it out you're a terrible parent and deserve to die and how if you pick up your baby when she cries you're a terrible parent and deserve to die.

I'm not big on parenting books.  Give me a real live fellow parent with actual conversation any day.  Them I will listen to.


Aside from bubble meditation, we've been taking family forays to the driving range.

This involves all three male Crislers hitting small balls with metal sticks, and yours truly sitting on benches that I can only assume are there for people like me.  I like these benches.  They provide a perch for me where I can do all my golf course activities, like taking pictures and reading books and not golfing.  Adelaide was absent for this particular outing.  She spent zero hours grieving.

We have a new resident in our backyard.

This started as a regular ol' brush pile.  It has been shaped and molded into a domicile complete with a tunnel running straight through it featuring front and back entrances.  Our children swear they did not do this.  Am I freaked out by this?  YES.  Yes, I am.  The best possible answer to "Who built a house made out of weeds in our backyard?" is "Hobbits," but it's more likely "Grass demon who sneaks out of its creeping Charlie igloo and sits on the chests of our children at night and sucks the breath from their lips."

You know- something like this:

Um, Grandma?  Why did we watch this movie at your house so often?

But seriously- what is living in our backyard?

Munchausen the Gardener

I am terrible- TERRIBLE- at knowing when to keep our kids home from school.

On the mornings when they're lethargic and kind of puny, I send them anyway, because we all have mornings like that, right?  It doesn't mean we're sick... except for all the times I get a call from the school nurse telling me a kid has a temp of 102.1/ is pale and droopy and complaining of an excruciating headache/ has vomited all over the library (all calls I've received just this school year).

When I do keep them home, though, because they weren't doing well the evening before?  They run around like a prisoner who has received a last-minute pardon (which is kind of what they are, I guess), no fever, no lethargy, no pain.  It's like some kind of miracle!  [Heavy, somewhat bitter sarcasm.]

Such was the case Wednesday morning.  Atticus has been fighting a cold, and that coupled with night after sleepless night made me decide to keep him home so that he could sleep in, because that makes sense, right?  He'd get the extra sleep he needed, and a little extra rest to help his ailing body fight this cold.

Except he didn't sleep in.  He got up ten minutes after the time I usually have to drag him out of bed, and was up to joyously wave his sister out the door to the bus.  Forget "Man plans, God laughs;" around here it's "Mom plans, children cackle viciously."

Still, because Atticus loves to help and he obviously wasn't as sick as I'd been led to believe, he got to spend a glamorous morning learning how to properly scrub toilets, clean his own mattress, and plant egg carton seeds.  Believe it or not, he appeared to enjoy all activities equally, although he was a little concerned when he found out that I put one of my favorite cleaning agents in his food regularly (baking soda, so just calm down, DHS).  I tried to explain how I use it in different ways and keep it in different containers depending on where I use it in the house, but he remains unconvinced that I'm not perpetrating a terrible crime against our family.  I think the next time he questions me on it, I'll just shrug and tell him, "Have it your way, bud, but that means no more cookies- I use baking soda in 99% of my cookie recipes."  There's no chance this could backfire like all my other plans.  [Heavy, somewhat bitter sarcasm.]

Somehow I didn't get a picture of the scrubbing or the cleaning, but I did get one of the planting.

What's in our cartons this spring?

Long Island Cheese squash, apparently named (according to the back of the packet) because they look like a wheel of cheese.  I love Seed Savers Exchange, as they're dedicated to preserving heirloom varieties of plant species.  In a perfect world, I would only buy my seeds from SSE, but as I am a deeply flawed human being, that never happens.  I also tell my children, "NoOooOoo, there aren't any sweets hidden in special, precious pockets of this house!"

The sinful, mass-produced seeds that we planted were

because how the heck am I supposed to resist a squash bearing the name "Turks Turban"?  (Although I keep questioning whether or not there should be an apostrophe somewhere in that name, and where.)  Also some sunflower seeds from last year, because I always have a couple different varieties of sunflower seeds tucked away, and then some pumpkin seeds that allowed me to feel extremely superior, having harvested and dried them myself.  

And now, because I'm too lazy to find a way to tie the end of this post up with a bow, here is a picture of Caedmon I took mere minutes ago.

Pretty sure we were talking about superheroes, as that is his superhero stance.  This hero's genesis story would no doubt talk about the tragic loss of first his parents, and then his neck.

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.

What, This Happens Every Year?

You know you're falling down on this whole parenting thing when someone comments on the fact that your kid's birthday is in a week and you're like, "What?"  Then they have to convince you that yes, your son's birthday is in seven days, and oh, yeah, doing something to celebrate that birthday would probably be a good idea.

So, yeah.  This kid.  His birthday is on Friday.

His face when he was tiring of regular photos and Derek started shouting, "You're fierce!  You're a tiger!"  Because of course I can't just put a nice smiley photo on here.  I just happen to prefer this kind.

Luckily he has a father who is on top of these things; apparently we are going bowling and having pizza, as per Atticus's request.  I mean, I remember having a bowling-and-pizza conversation with our son at some point, but I also remember thinking that his birthday was a long way off, as in, Well, at least I don't have to worry about that until October.  But as it turns out, it is October.  Right now.  Please tell me this is shocking to someone else, as well.


Thankfully, after this birthday, I don't have to worry about missing anyone else's until my own in December.  All we have before then are a couple tiny little holidays called Halloween, which is basically a two-week long exercise in managing our children's expectations, and Thanksgiving, where I get to make and consume mass amounts of pie.

This photo is scary because all I can look at are those hats and mittens hanging up to dry in the background.  If  Pie Season is creeping up on us, then cold-winter-snow assuredly is, too.  Blargh.

And best of all, since Adelaide successfully made that pecan pie last Thanksgiving, she's already planning what kind of new and different pie she wants to make this year.  This definitely puts her in the running for Favorite Daughter, a joke she rolls her eyes at every time I say it, which means I repeat it all the time.

Dog Days

We're closing in on the final couple weeks of summer vacation, and I'm a little blue.  I always have trouble letting go of our kids in the fall- school just takes up so many hours of their day!  It's one of the few ways in which I am thankful to be a muggle:  At least they're still living at home!  They could be going away to school (um, somewhere- Rowling never addressed exactly where or what the North American school of magic was.  It would most likely need to be somewhere remote, right?  Wyoming, maybe?) until Christmas, so I suppose I'll console myself with the fact that I still get to see them everyday at 3:20 pm.

I've learned to accept that I panic a bit every August:  Where did the summer go?  Time to do aaaaallll the fun summer things I put off in June and July, packing the zoo and Reiman Gardens and pancakes for breakfast and one last trip to Big Creek and late nights watching meteor showers (this one's not my fault, as I have no control over the Perseids...yet) into three short weeks, the hopeful effect being our children will be good and sick of me come the first day of school, and eager to jump on that school bus and march into those classrooms where they will, naturally, be star pupils.  (You are welcome teachers- also, please be advised this little fantasy of mine does not apparently feature my own children.  I'm as sad about this as you are.)

In addition to the manic We Will Have Fun or Die Trying activities, we still have to do our back-to-school shopping.  This is a gauntlet that does not end, as you might believe, when every item on a myriad of lists has been checked off, oh no:  It's over when none of our children are speaking to me and I have made at least one cry tears of rage and/or self-pity.  Because, as it turns out, the lack of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-themed backpack in one's life is totally worth crying over.  Thankfully I have a titanium-plated heart (at least according to one of the more dramatic of our children, i.e., ALL OF THEM) and cannot be swayed by tears or begging.  At least I don't have any pillows to make this year.

I therefore have two specific sets of instructions for you all:  Internet companions, if it seems like I've become one of those irksome parents who does All The Things, filling each day with a precious something-or-other for our offspring; and Real Life companions, if you see me at the store- any store- with heart-broken children; to both of you, all of you, please realize that it is simply August, and this is how we do.

A Measured Response

Earlier today, as I was cleaning out a cupboard, making yet another pile for Goodwill, Adelaide looked around and dropped this bomb:  "You know, what we need to get rid of are a whole bunch of these books."

I don't really recall what my response to this was, exactly.  There was definitely sputtering.  Indignation in spades.  My arms may have cartwheeled around my body as my psyche received this unexpected blow.

I eventually collected and calmed myself enough to bellow, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'WE NEED TO GET RID OF THESE BOOKS?'  I realize that parenting styles are more difficult to categorize than most self-help books would have you believe, but I'm quite sure my own could easily be defined as "Grace under pressure."  Obviously.

After that I yelled a few more things, Adelaide rolled her eyes, I gesticulated wildly at a Jane Austen here, a Jane Austen there, Daughter asked, "Is that the monkey lady?"  I snaked my fingers into my hair and tugged, hard, and through my teeth informed her that "You're thinking of Jane Goodall, DARLING."  Then I got a grip and plucked a book off the shelf, placing it in her heathen hands.

By pure happenstance the title I had handed her was Etiquette Every Child Should Know.  I've talked about it before, but this was Adelaide's first foray into the world of 1930's expected manners, and she proceeded to spend the following hour reading me the parts she found most entertaining:

"'There's the napkin, which has definite rules for furling and unfurling, and which is a necessity, not a stumbling block.'"

"'In using the napkin, do not scrub your lips with it but touch it lightly to your lips.  Always use the napkin in this way before taking a drink from a glass.'"  

"'Sad experience on trains makes one realize that the great mass of American travelers are constitutionally opposed to fresh air.'"


She derived such enjoyment from this random book I assumed she had realized the error of her ways and repented, but when I asked, "So, Adelaide:  Did Etiquette Every Child Should Know change your mind?  Do you see now why we have all these books, do you see that each one contains something useful and interesting?" her sad reply was "Not really," at which point I attempted to wrestle her into the Goodwill pile, because priorities:  I have them.

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!

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.

Adelaide and the Old Testament

We go to one of those churches where the kids go into age-appropriate classes where they play and have a snack and learn a lesson while the adults go into the sanctuary for the regular service.  This has generally worked well for our family, but I've been looking forward to having our kids in the service with us as they get older, which Adelaide now does, being in third grade.

Adelaide can sit still and focus for long periods of time.  I've seen her lounge, unmoving on the couch for hours at a time, reading a book.  Because of this, I assumed she would have no trouble paying attention in church, where we're standing during the music at the beginning, sit for thirty minutes or so to listen to the sermon, then stand again for a couple songs at the end.

But Adelaide hasn't been sitting still.  She's been wiggly and wriggly and restless while the pastor teaches, and when I ask her afterward what she thought of the message, I get some variation or other of a shrug and a monosyllable.  "Fine."  "Good."  "Grunt."

Well, as of a couple weeks ago, I'd had about enough.  If she was going to sit in the service, then I wanted her to get something out of it, and besides, I know she's capable of listening and understanding most of what's taught in there.

I'd seen these printable papers on Pinterest where kids could take notes during the sermon.  "Brilliant," I thought, "maybe if her hands are busy it'll help her brain focus and her body be still."

The first one I found required a subscription and a fee paid to the website in order to print it off, so Adelaide and I consulted the almighty google to find another, free, version, because for the record, she was completely on board with this.  We ended up finding that one up there, which I know is fuzzy, but that's about as clear as I'm able to make it on here.  It's a free, printable PDF, and you can find it right here.

Honestly, of all the Sundays for me to be on the ball, this was not the one.  Because this little piece of paper worked, all right.  Adelaide was scribbling all kinds of fun vocabulary words in that "Words I don't know" section, words like "prostitute," and "explicit" and "seman [sic]".  In the general "Notes" section she wrote "I don't understand what this story is really about but it seems really weird," among other things.  Yes, indeed, Adelaide focused extra hard on the Sunday featuring the sweet, sparkling story of a girl who pretends to be a prostitute and sleeps with her father-in-law, only after she's slept with one of her brothers-in-law, all in an effort to merely survive in the patriarchal society that existed in early Old Testament times.

After the service, of course, Adelaide wanted to have an in-depth discussion about what all those words meant, but I had had enough.  I had once again dipped my toe in the pool of over-achievement, and look where it had landed me: in a boat with a dirty old man named Judah and phrases like "spilled his seed on the ground" that I now had to explain to my 8-year-old.  I told her we'd go over the whole thing tomorrow or pretty much anytime that wasn't today, because I was done for today.

I should note that the pastor warned everyone about the subject matter before he began teaching, and said that he realized there were kids in the service.  He also said he had no problem with them being taught this lesson, because don't kid yourself, children are hearing about sex elsewhere; shouldn't they be taught correctly within the context of the family and the church?

Our daughter handled it fine when we went over her notes a couple days later, and we talked about how all the people- save one- in the Bible were all just, well, people, human beings who were flawed and sinful and about the subsequent need for a perfect Messiah, so it all worked out fine in the end, as it generally does, but still.  I don't think I'll ever be able to hear the words "Please open to Genesis, chapters 38 and 39" again without flinching.

Lies I Tell My Children

• "I don't know what happened to the rest of the cookies."  Truth:  I ate all those cookies, children- every last morsel.  They were delicious.

• "Sorry, kiddo, I don't know Frank's mommy so I have no way for you to invite him over."  Truth:  I could sleuth out the contact info for Junior's parents inside five minutes, between social media and living in this small town- I just make it a policy not to invite budding sociopaths and the architect of a poor teacher's nervous breakdown over for milk and cookies.

• "Of course Daddy still loves you when he's watching the Vikings!"  Truth:  Daddy's love for us can be directly correlated to the score of the game.  So right now?  No, he doesn't.

• "Honey, I know it seems like Amy's good at everything, but you have just as many talents as she does- they're just different!"  Truth:  Darling, nobody's as good at pretty much everything as Amy is because Amy is a freak.  I feel insecure around that girl.

• "Daddy and I like to go on dates because we love spending time together."  Truth:  Yes, we do like spending time together, but mostly it's to get away from you.

• "Oh- yes, please, more hugs!"  Truth:  MUST WE TOUCH ALL THE TIME?

• "Gosh, I don't know where the three hundred pictures you drew of a car just yesterday are."  Truth:  They're in the trash.

• "Gosh, I don't know where all those papers from school are."  Truth:  They're in the trash.

• "Gosh, I don't know where all those kid's meal toys are."  Truth:  They're in the trash.  Kid, if it's yours and it's not bolted down, it's in the trash or at Goodwill.

• "Maybe next time."  Truth:  The only way you're getting anything in the checkout aisle, be it candy, toy, or chapstick, is if you're with someone who might actually fall for that faux-pathetic look on your face and doesn't have to drag you through this gauntlet of kiddie temptation the next hundred times we're here.  Translation:  NEVER.  You are NEVER getting any of the trinkets parent-hating marketing moguls place at child-eye level, because putting your groceries in the cart, locating your wallet, keeping the baby from crawling out of the cart, and paying aren't enough things to have to do at once; we should also have to pry crappy Made In China treasures from our toddlers' determined little fingers.  

Failed Duplicity

Caedmon has been getting himself into a bit of trouble lately.  Nothing serious, merely small naughty-isms that he must perform half a dozen times apiece before he learns that Oh!  Maybe I shouldn't do that anymore.

The wonderful thing about these daily rituals is that he appears to be utterly lacking the gene for slyness.  I can always count on being alerted to his dealings outside the (Crisler) law by two things:  Running and Declaration.

Yesterday morning, exiting the bathroom, I watched as Caedmon Ran wildly out of the kitchen and Declared, "I didn't drink your coffee!"

A few days before that, I came downstairs after putting away some clean clothes upstairs, only to have Cade Run up to me and Declare, "I wasn't messing with Adelaide's pens!"

One day last week he Ran into the living room just as I was walking in and Declared, "I don't know where the chocolate chips are!"  His face was much darker than usual, perhaps because it was covered in chocolate.

It is (almost) always so, so difficult not to laugh when he does this.  I'm usually able to keep my composure, however, because my favorite part of this little play we perform is when I kneel down and say, "Caedmon, I know it was you who colored on the floor," "Caedmon, I know you were playing with my makeup," "Caedmon, I know you ate a sucker without asking."  The look on his face is pure astonishment tinged with not a little dazzled amazement at the Mommy Magic I must be employing to bring about this parental omniscience.  I know that worldliness is creeping in and, too soon, he'll learn more devious forms of disobedience.  I like to think that this simple innocence, present even in his three-year-old deceit, is compensation for all the hard parts of parenting littles.

Now if only he'd keep this practice up through his teenage years (although, I'm not gonna lie, I shudder to think what his Declarations would sound like then).

Oldest Vs Middle Vs Youngest

My coffee maker has me thinking about birth order.


This coffee maker is a hand-me-down from a grandparent- I don't remember which- who, a few years a go, didn't need it anymore.  We took it because I wanted to be able to serve coffee to any java-loving guests who might accidentally stumble into our home.

Over the past few weeks, I've started making coffee for myself, two, maybe three mornings a week.  I have 3/4 cup, which doesn't sound like much until you take into account how much Thin Mint creamer I add (holy. cow. that stuff is crazy good), but I can't even drink down my whole cup.  Whole 3/4 of a cup.  Whatever.

Because I don't like to waste perfectly good coffee and because he's just so darn cute when he asks, I've been letting Caedmon have the last few sips of this coffee.  (DON'T FREAK OUT ON ME HERE.  These are literally sips I'm talking about, and it's, like, a quarter creamer, which makes it healthy.  hahahahaha  Oh, and nobody tell Derek coffee stunts your growth, because he's already super paranoid about Caedmon being the midget amongst Amazons- which yes, is looking more and more like his fate, but not because of me!  Well, yes, because of me, but because of my genetics, not my coffee, okay?  I'm so glad we had this talk.)

A few days ago, after I fed our three-year-old fully caffeinated coffee, I decided to educate the both of us on what this whole "What does the fox say" business was about, so we watched that video on YouTube, then Cade wanted to watch a Lennon and Maisy video, so we watched that, then I realized I had become a terrible parent.

When Adelaide was little I was completely and totally neurotic.  That child had zero sweets before her first birthday.  The only tv I allowed her to watch was sporadic VeggieTales DVD's, and only the ones I thought were particularly biblically educational.  When I was pregnant with Atticus, I decided that it was imperative that Adelaide be able to identify all her letters before her second birthday.  I couldn't have told you why, even at the time- it just felt monumentally important, and probably had something to do with an obscure article I read that featured some kind of claptrap about what Asian toddlers could do vs American toddlers.  (I really don't remember anything about the article itself, just the mental image it gave me of fat, pasty American children lying on the floor eating cake and staring vacantly at brightly colored lights while their young Asian overlords glared at them in disdain as they solved complex mathematical equations and honored their elders.)  The library was our home away from home.  I read books to her in Spanish.  I used insanely advanced vocabulary around, refusing to make anything easy.  In short, I was the most annoying person on earth.

Then came Atticus.  My standards didn't slip so much as avalanche off the parenting cliff.  I was still really weird about television, but hey!  The rest of us are having ice cream, why shouldn't the baby get some?  And those Spanish board books?  Please, I could barely remember higher-level English at the end of most days.  (Although let me just point out that the only Spanish words Adelaide can now speak with any fluency center around food, probably because those were the ones I used the most in everyday conversation- she was a really early reader, so when I could no longer spell out things like C-O-O-K-I-E to the other adults in the room, I switched to galletas, which only resulted in Adelaide knowing the spanish words for her favorite foods and the adults having no idea what I was ever talking about.)

And now we're to Caedmon, who gets coffee and YouTube videos rather than flash cards and whatever other things on-the-ball parents do for their children now.  I do read to him all the time, but that's not so much my doing; he seems to think that anytime I sit down is Read To Caedmon Time, never mind the novel, laptop, or bowl of cereal I have in front of me, and I swear Atticus's ears are specially tuned to the sound of the pages being turned in a children's book; I'll turn maybe one page and he'll just materialize at my side.


I'm now going to use the guilt writing this post has generated to clear our children's rooms of all but a few toys tomorrow- I don't remember exactly why, something about fostering creativity blah blah blah a culture of gratitude blah doing more with less blah blah.  I'm hoping what I've lost in parental coherency I'll make up for with blind luck.

The Tao of Parenting

I don't like parenting books.


There's just so many of them.  I can go to just about any section of a bookstore and feel perfectly at ease, right at home.  I can nearly always find what I'm looking for, or at the very least something I wouldn't mind plopping down and spending the next couple hours absorbing its text.

Science Fiction.  Medicine.  Fine Art. Cooking.  Electrical Code and Repair.  I can handle all of them.  (And I say all of those with confidence because you can't test me on that last one; their manuals are usually plastic wrapped and can't be opened until you've bought them, which I would never do, because they're expensive and I'm clumsy, clumsy, clumsy, a quality I'm guessing your average homeowner does not look for in their electrician.)

The Parenting section makes me twitch.

Just one book with Jenny McCarthy on its cover and off goes that adorable little tic under my left eye, like it's trying so very desperately to communicate to the rest of my body via morse code: "FLEE NOW.  DANGER IMMINENT.  IDIOCY ABOUNDING."

I cannot handle parenting books.  I've started dozens, but I get a couple chapters into "Your child is a precious, precious gift from God that you should treasure and snuggle and hold hands with them all the time even when they're teenagers and you're warping them for life" (paraphrasing here) and I'm throwing the book across the room with more enthusiasm than any PE teacher was ever able to wring from me.

I usually can't even finish the books that I know are really good.  Dobson's Bringing Up Boys?  I couldn't do it.  I just couldn't.  50 pages in I'm sitting there, reading, reading, reading, thinking Wow, this is really good, I'm so glad I'm reading this, I should get some kind of parenting merit badge for reading this, Oh crap I'm not focusing, I haven't taken in anything he's said for the past three pages, Oh screw it- Where's that Lee Child book I picked up from the library yesterday...?


Enter Dr. Kevin Leman.

First of all, he has the credentials: Doctoral degree in Psychology, Family psychologist in private practice for umpteen years, regular guest on television and radio programs like The Today Show, Oprah, Focus on the Family, and most importantly to me, successful father and raiser of five perfectly sane children.

I read one of his books a few years ago and enjoyed it, but nothing like his most recent book:  Parenting Your Powerful Child.

Why do I love this newest book so much?  Here's a fine example:  After listing a bunch of very frustrating and very plausible traits of powerful children, he asks, "Do any of these sound familiar?  If so, you of all people can understand that there's a reason some animal mothers eat their young."  And that's just the Introduction.

Saccharine, lovey dovey parenting advice?  Booooo.  Animal moms eating their babies?  Yaaaaaaaay!

Basically, if you have a powerful child in your life, this book is an excellent resource.  You know who I'm talking about:  The one you can't predict.  The one that drives you crazy.  The one who's fiercely independent.  The one who's just like you.

If you're looking for squishy sentimentalism, this is not the book for you.  If you're looking for straightforward advice that's very applicable to your family but will also make you laugh?  You should definitely pick this one up.

It's not just me that loves it, either!  Hours after finishing it and setting it down, I went upstairs to help put the kiddos to bed.  There was an open book on the top bunk- Adelaide's bed- which is certainly not out of the ordinary, but this one looked a little different.  I asked our daughter what book she was reading, and she held it up and answered, "Parenting Your Powerful Child."

She was almost halfway through it.  At my raised eyebrows, she defensively said, "What?  It's good!"

I'm not really sure what she makes of chapters like "Raising Attila the Hun" or "The Quiet, Shy, Sensitive, Walk-on-Eggshells Manipulator," but she carried it around with her for a couple days and giggled frequently while reading it.

So... this book is recommended by 30- and 7-year-olds alike, I guess.








Note:  I'm not reviewing this book for anyone but myself.  I'm not getting paid or compensated in any way for this review.  Dr. Leman does not know I exist.  I just liked the book.