Please Don't Be Jealous of My Amazing Life

Listen, I don't mean to brag, but this is what my garden looks like.

And that's not just right now, like I'm having a bad gardening week, or something.  With the exception of the week or two immediately after planting, it always looks like that.  See the squash, and tomatoes, and pepper plants?  Sure you do- they're the ones entirely surrounded by weeds, near the onion that's gone to flower.


Another note-worthy part of my life is the presence of magic.

That's right:  I have magic pantry doors.  I mean, it must be magic, as each of my children swear it's not them leaving the doors open.  Every time I pass by, they're open.  I've checked, and they are capable of being closed.

But then I go upstairs to fetch something, come back down, and...

magic.



Something else that will probably make you hate me in all my perfection?

I know, right?  I'm the kind of person that dries her family's linens outside whenever possible.  It's windy here, though, so they almost inevitably end up in one of the flower beds, possibly negating any cleanliness achieved in the preceding wash cycle.  I do send everything through a quick 15 minutes in the dryer just to kill any bugs that might have nestled in there before re-making the beds, which likewise does away with any energy savings I might have achieved by outdoor drying.  I am killing it, here.


No false modesty, now.  In what ways are you amazing this week?

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.

Things, Three of Them

• Caedmon has discovered the fun to be had in a word search.  He is very intense about them, as evidenced by The Dimple.

• Unfortunately for Target, I don't actually buy anything from their book section, but I do take pictures of newer titles to request from the library, because I love the way Target merchandises their books.  Don't take it personally, Target; I don't buy new books from anyone, really.  I'm more of a used books kind of girl.

Anyone read this one?  Is it good?  I hear Target has it for 20% off.

• Caedmon pulled a book off one of our shelves yesterday, opened it up, and asked me what it was.  "Oh- that's your baby book," I told him.  "What's a baby book?"  "It's a book you fill out about your baby:  Stories about them, pictures of them, how much they've grown, things like that."  "When are you supposed to fill it out?"  "Well... I guess when you have a baby."  *momentary silence*  "Then why is mine blank?"

"Because Mommy sucks, that's why."  "Because you're a third child."  "Because my priority that year was keeping you alive."  I didn't say any of those things, although they all applied.  I gave him a mixed-up, watered-down version of those excuses, and he seemed fine with it, especially when he found the sandwich bag of his hair stuffed in between a couple pages from his first haircut.  I have no memory of that haircut, of putting hair clippings in a bag, or of getting my act together long enough to put it in his baby book for safe keeping.  However!  As we went through the (mostly blank) book, I realized that I could answer most of the prompts within because I'd written about them here, on the blog!  I wrote about how dang happy he was.  I wrong about how dang cranky he was.  It's all on here, buried somewhere in 700 posts, one of which included this picture:

I'm a sucker for angry baby photos.  I feel like I need to print this and put it in a locket, just to watch people flinch when I snap it open after asking, "Do you want to see a picture of my beautiful baby boy?"  That sounds like a better idea than hiding it away in a baby book, anyway.  I'm just sure he would agree, especially now that he's reached the age where he knows enough to be embarrassed by me.  I have the best ideas sometimes.

Calling a Vegetable a Vegetable

Last weekend I made a new recipe.  I'd come across it weeks ago via that Tasty thingamajig- you know, the high-speed videos of dishes being prepared that your mean, mean friends purposely share on social media at the times when you're absolutely starving?  That.

This was a relatively healthy meal, and it looked so good, and simple, and I was just sure that our whole family would find it ever so delicious, and also?  I am a schmuck.

That in itself isn't exactly news, so I'll be more specific:  I am a schmuck who is repeatedly taken in by claims like, "This healthy thing tastes exactly like that other not-so-healthy-but-oh-so-tasty thing!  Pinky swear!"  Then I have the gall to be astonished when cauliflower doesn't taste like fried rice.  Of course it doesn't taste like fried rice; it's cauliflower!  

I knew things were going awry when I was cooking the not-rice in the pan and it smelled like cauliflower.  I thought that perhaps the cauliflower would stop smelling so much like cauliflower as it neared the end of the cooking process, or maybe once I added the eggs and the soy sauce.  I mean, yes, the post was titled "Cauliflower Fried Rice," but the guy says, "Oh-ho, yes!" after scooping up a forkful of the False Rice.  I made the mistake of believing "Oh-ho, yes!" meant "My taste buds are enjoying this!" or even just "This doesn't taste like a bowlful of cauliflower!" because, as we've established, I am a chump.

I'm fine with healthy foods as long as they're marketed as the honest, healthy food they are.  I love spaghetti squash, but I'm not going to tell you it tastes like spaghetti, because it doesn't, because it's not.  It's not pasta.  It's a vegetable, and that is okay.

Thankfully, after everyone had eaten all the steak out of their cauliflower bowls- which Derek manfully polished off, because he will eat pretty much anything if I have cooked it and has since the day we married, because he has the wisdom of Solomon- husband then made the most divine grilled cheese sandwiches I have ever tasted in my entire life.  Now, the man is a superior grilled-cheese-maker (a specific brand of Italian bread + thinly sliced deli Provolone + butter + garlic salt + a dash of Derek), but I think it was the contrast between cauliflower and cheesy, salty, buttery goodness that did it.

The remainder of the Cauliflower Fried Rice was unceremoniously dumped in the trash that evening, but I'm thinking I should've stashed some in the fridge to taste before each meal.  Imagine how good Ranch-Style Chicken would be after a little cauliflower, oh, or chocolate chip cookies!  Our kids are going to love this new family mandate!  I know exactly how they'll react to the news.

I Must Have Missed That Memo

 I recently began to notice that the siding on the outside of our house was looking a little dingy, specifically on the front porch, because most days it's absolutely gorgeous outside right now, and so I sit in the rocking chairs and I read the books and I watch the kids and I notice the siding is filthy.

I didn't think much about it at first, because really:  Is this a thing?  Is washing siding a thing that people do?  I don't remember my mom ever washing the siding on our house.  That's not to say she didn't, but I never saw it, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone else washing the siding on the outside of their houses, so I just decided to ignore the grime.  I am very good at this.  You might even say I have a knack.

After a few days, however, it was all I could look at anytime I wanted to walk in our front door; not Hermione, not my flowers whose beauty I surely need to soak up now that their days are numbered, but the dirt on the siding.  And I began to wonder if this was one of those things that could be filed under my Adulthood Orientation conspiracy theory.

First of all, I have a number of conspiracy theories, and like all crazy people conspiracy theorists, I love to talk about these.  The one pertinent to today's topic is Adulthood Orientation, namely that such a thing exists, and that I was purposely not invited upon entering my own adulthood.

How many times have I been struck by sudden inspiration- You can stuff newspaper in your wet shoes so they'll dry out faster!  Meat should be thawed before you attempt to cook it!  Camping is nearly always a terrible idea!- only to have someone else say, "Well, yeah.  You didn't know that?"

How do all these people know all the things?  Where are they getting this information?  I was a perfectly adequately informed child and adolescent; it's only upon achieving adulthood that everyone else suddenly has all this useful information stuffed in their brains while I'm left floundering:  How is everyone always so organized?  Why can I still not understand the concept of escrow, even after countless explanations by myriad helpful people?  What is going on?  Osmosis?  Simple learning?  Or a class dedicated solely to subjects useful to adults- an orientation, if you will- that everyone but me was invited to? I think we all know what the answer is, here.

Apparently regular siding washing in spots not reachable by rainwater was one of the topics covered, because I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to let the siding get to this state:

Left:  Clean.  Right:  Embarrassing.

At least we'd only lived in this house, ahem, six years before I finally noticed that perhaps, perhaps, something should be done.  You know, by an adult who obviously knows about these kinds of things.

Look, a bucket of water, pre-siding cleaning!  Looking all clean and watery, just the way water should!

Look, a bucket of nastiness!  And this is only a quarter of the way through!  Heavens!

The truly scary thing is that Derek is such a terrifyingly capable adult that he has to have been one of the instructors in these classes.  And yet I was still snubbed?!  What have I married?





Seriously, though:  Escrow.  The first person to attempt to explain this concept to me was an English teacher in high school, and the last was Derek for the fifth time.  My brain simply refuses to understand.  Send help, or maybe a flow chart?  Are flow charts something that could be used to explain escrow?  I wouldn't know.

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 Mannequin, SOS, and Batwing List

• I'm beginning to sympathize with the boy in The Boy Who Cried Wolf, except instead of freaking out villagers, I told Caedmon that mannequins come to life if you squeeze their hands just right.  And actually, it was Adelaide's idea in the first place, I just jumped in to elaborate, making the story more believable and giving it a bit of weight.  In our defense, we were at a sporting goods outlet, Derek was in the dressing room, and we were bored.  Plus Caedmon kept reaching up to shake the mannequins' hands, so the story kind of wove itself into being; Daughter and I just gave it a (slightly whimsical/menacing) voice.  Caedmon didn't even act that freaked out, and I figured he'd forgotten the whole thing until a few days ago when he made a sharp left turn in an otherwise normal conversation and suddenly asked, "Mom, were you just teasing me about squeezing those guys' hands?"  I clarified, asking him if he meant mannequins, which he did, then admitted that yes, I had been teasing.  Mannequins don't really come to life if you squeeze their hands.  (That we know of.)  Caedmon gave me a bit of a talking-to about teasing and how I basically shouldn't do it, then I didn't give it another thought, until I realized today that he's continuing to insist that Adelaide is still eight because he thinks I'm teasing him about her turning nine.  Nothing I say will persuade him otherwise.

This lady is my kind of people.

• Adelaide has started her own blog.  She's been talking about it for awhile; everyone got the chance to create one in a class at school, but I didn't know if anything would actually come of it until the other day when I passed over the laptop and she began laboriously typing the address.  I'd been a little unsure about letting our daughter have a steady online presence, but once I realized that she wouldn't be posting anything at school, only at home, my fears were more or less assuaged, not to mention the fact that anyone who is funny enough to name their blog "Social Outcast's Spot" has a voice that needs to be heard.  She's posted once, and my only input was to look it over to make sure she wasn't saying things like, "Tender nine-year-old midwestern morsel, here.  Here's my address, here's my favorite kind of candy, and here's the time and place that I'm probably most vulnerable.  Toodles!"  Thankfully she seems to have more sense than to put anything like that out there, but just in case I said the previous sentence to her pretty much verbatim, to which she rolled her eyes and gave me a mini-lecture on how I constantly underrate her level of intelligence.  First Caedmon, then her; I've been getting a lot of dressings down from our children lately.  I can't imagine why.

She gives me this look a lot.

• I received a text message after school today regarding an Amber Alert for Iowa.  I made the mistake of sharing this with our children, who proceeded to ask me ten thousand questions for which the only answers I had were "Dodge Neon.  Two-door.  Blue.  I don't know."  Caedmon refused to come inside for his snack but instead proceeded to sit on the front porch, hollering through the screen every time any car drove by that was not just blue but anywhere on the cool side of the color wheel.  He did the same thing on our walk to the library, alerting the other three of us by yelling, "A blue car!  THOSE COULD BE THE PEOPLE THAT STOLE THE KID!"  Every car to whom his ire and suspicion was directed did, of course, have their windows rolled down.  Not one was a Dodge Neon, or even blue, for that matter.  Still:  Although it was State of Iowa officials who found the missing persons, Batwing was on patrol.

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.

The Whole Christmas Truth and Nothing But

I have a proposition for all those people posting holiday recipes and winter wreath tutorials and lists like "Top 10 Christmas Traditions To Make All Your Acquaintances Feel Completely Inferior," (in other words, half the internet right now):  

You go ahead and post all those crazily photo-shopped pictures.  Tell us what your ornery elf on the shelf got up to last night, show us your gorgeous Christmas carol-themed chalkboard art, and don't forget the close-up of your seasonal designer coffee drink.  People like me eat that crap up.  I love it all.  The only thing missing, for me, is the complete picture.  From now on, my humble request is that you show all the pretty little parts of your holiday season, but then go ahead and tell me the cost.  What's the trade-off?  When you spent three hours weaving that burlap and pine needle swag, what did you give up?  

For instance:  All this charming Christmas book tree cost me is three baths.  Sorry, children, I know it's bath night, but I was too busy stacking books juuust so and trying to get these danged lights to do as they're told.  Sometimes the price you pay for Mommy having perfect Christmas decorations is a reputation for being the smelly kid at school.  You understand.  

"DON'T TOUCH THAT."

How about this tin pail of pine boughs and sparkly berries?  

It's just lovely, makes me happy every time I see this simple little display in our downstairs bathroom.  Any time our boys go into that same bathroom, however, I find myself straining my ears, listening for the sounds of liquid hitting metal, as this is a bucket in a bathroom with plants in it and our boys are like boys everywhere in that a strange, almost magnetic force seems to exist between their crotches and things ripe for peeing on.  Right after I got all the branches and berries arranged with perfect greenery-to-berry ratio I had to take each boy, one at a time, make them face my newest Christmas pretty, and sternly say, "DON'T PEE ON THIS," which made me scrub my hands up and down my face and ask What is my life? 

How about this beautiful Hallmark moment?

For as long as I can remember, my mom bought my sisters and I each a Hallmark ornament at Christmas time.  Now that we all have children of our own, she buys each grandchild an ornament, which means our children all have sweet, growing collections courtesy of their generous grandma.

The ornaments arrived in the mail yesterday.  After finishing their chores, they were allowed to open and hang their newest Christmas decorations.

Of course I would love it if the moment ended here, with each child enjoying their gifts, perhaps hanging them all on the tree in perfect sibling harmony.  That didn't happen, of course, because children ruin everything.  Maybe not everything, but certainly Hallmark moments.

"I want this branch!"  "I put mine on that branch first!"  "I said I was using that branch!"  IF ONLY THERE WERE MORE THAN ONE BRANCH ON WHICH TO HANG THEIR NEW ORNAMENTS.  "But this is the best branch!"  "Mine's already on there, you pick another branch!"  "Why should I have to pick another branch, I told you this one's mine!"  IF ONLY THIS WERE A MASS-PRODUCED FAKE TREE WITH ROW UPON ROW OF IDENTICAL BRANCHES OH WAIT IT IS.

Salt dough ornaments for their teachers:

Not pictured:  The one with a bite taken out of it.  Caedmon walked right past the container bursting with actual cookies, favoring the hard, dried disk of salt, flour, and water, with some ink for added flavor.  Also not pictured:  The bite of ornament our son spit out on the laundry room floor, three feet from the trash can.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year, isn't it?

An Imperfect Week

Sunday night we got back from our trip south, and checking in after four days away from the internet resulted in me finding out/being reminded of all the things I had going on this week.  They were all good things, but they made me want to crawl in bed and pull the covers up over my head.  I'd just spent the past several days peopling, and I couldn't people anymore.  I spent the week channeling Rabbit and crying, "Nobody!" anytime any of my well-meaning Winnie the Pooh's asked "Isn't anybody at home?"  I would apologize, but believe me when I say it is for your own safety that I recuse myself at times like these.  

Still, stuff did happen this week.


It snowed, which means we busted out the snow boots, which means this happened:

Which means I was like,

Except I most likely won't kill anyone as a result of my frustration.  I'll probably just go buy them new boots to outgrow in another six months.

Derek and I dragged Caedmon around most of the day Tuesday shopping for new appliances (a post all its own for next week- I know, appliance blogging!  Things are about to get cray-zeeeee!), which prompted him to desperately ask, "Are we ever going home?" right around noon and our fourth stop of the day.  I remember being goose-stepped around Lowe's with my parents when I was a kid; I did not handle it as well as Caedmon did, possibly because I did not derive joy and entertainment out of opening and closing and opening and closing and opening and closing washer and dryer doors.  The salesmen loved us, I'm sure.

The above gif has nothing to do with Caedmon, but is instead the way I imagine each of your faces looked when you read the words "appliance blogging."  You guys are hilarious.

Wednesday.  Oh, Wednesday.  

Wednesday I broke the fridge.  Don't worry, Derek fixed it Wednesday night.  It turns out our fridge is like those divas who insist on Evian And ONLY Evian, Do Not Bring Me Any Of That Ozarka or Poland Spring Water, I Can Tell The Difference, except with the water filter.  Or it might be that I'm supposed to pay attention to the giant arrows on the fridge and filter and line them up.  Whatever.

Our fridge after the Water Filter Incident.  Thank goodness our fridge doesn't read this blog, or it would know I went from calling it a diva to a genocidal dictator, and then there would be no living with it.

Wednesday I also forgot our children.  But only two of them!

See, what happened is this:  Every Wednesday the school has an early out, and I spent the morning thinking it was Tuesday, so when a friend called that afternoon, I assumed she was asking me to pick her daughter up from the bus stop along with our kids, but her first few words, "It's Wednesday, and the kids have an early out" had me springing off the floor and freaking out because IT'S WEDNESDAY AND LIKE 15 DEGREES OUTSIDE PAAAAAAANIC, but thankfully she came to the rescue and Atticus and Adelaide were delivered to our front door via the safety of a warm car maybe 90 seconds later, which is better than they would have gotten if their own mother had been on top of, you know, their survival.

It's nice to think that this is the kind of thing I would Mother Torture myself over but the kiddos wouldn't even think twice about, but I can already tell that's not the way this is going to go.  That night at supper both the A's Worst Things involved that day's abandonment (every evening at supper we do Best Thing, Worst Thing where everyone gets a turn to share the best and worst part of their respective days, and oh, yes, the word "abandoned" was actually used).  

The one redeeming part of Wednesday was this book I got from the library:

It's WWII historical fiction whose narrative flip flops between a blind French girl and a German orphan boy fascinated by radios.  I'm about 100 pages in and it's excellent so far.  Thanks for recommendation, Deanna!


And just to round out the week:

This guy's spent the week in his snow pants, foam sword tucked into the back of his shirt, princess wand safely in a belt loop for easy access, running around the house yelling, "Fierce!  Fierce!  Fierce!" while brandishing the bedazzled wand at imaginary foes.  This makes me collapse in helpless laughter, because really, Fierce + Glittery Wand Accessory can only equal some sort of Project Runway Superhero and I know this is the very antithesis of the effect he's going for, especially when he tells me the wand shoots dragon fire at bad guys and BURNS THEM TO DEATH (emphasis his).  

How I see Caedmon this week:

How he sees himself:

The end.

And Then I Accidentally Set Myself On Fire

Last night I was doing my usual supper prep tango, the back and forth from the stove to the sink to the counter to the stove, stepping over children and crayons and homework, just me making a giant tray of loaded nachos, when I smelled something burning.

I shuffled back over to the stove to see if some kind of food had fallen too close to the flame, but that wasn't it.  What the heck was creating that smokey smell?

Oh!  It was me!  My clothes were on fire!  What was my first clue, you ask?  Only the flames dancing in my face, licking their way up my scarf.

I shrieked, told Atticus to GET BACK GET AWAY I'M ON FIRE HERE, slopped some of the boiling water from the pot I was holding onto the floor, finally got myself together, man, heaved the pot in the sink, yanked the scarf from my neck, and threw it, flaming, to the floor.

I did a quick check to make sure nothing else was en fuego- sweater, hair, flesh- but I was mercifully fire- and burn-free.  It was then pretty quick work to put out the pretty little fire eating away at my scarf on the kitchen floor, suppressing the errant cinders hopping onto the rug in front of our sink.

An hour later I couldn't figure out why I still smelled smoke everywhere I went in the house, 'til I took a sniff and a close look at the collar of my sweater; the fabric was melted and scorched on either side of my face.

Let this be a message to all you hippies out there:  SYNTHETIC FIBERS SAVE MAYBE NOT LIVES BUT DEFINITELY FACES.  And the bonus is that my unflinchingly shapeless and unflattering but oh, so warm sweater now gives me that cozy campfire smell whenever I don it, Mr. Rogers-style, moments after walking in the door.  I should have set myself on fire months ago.

"A Cry For Help Unless You're Busy In Which Case I'm Good"

A few months ago, Derek signed up for a work conference up in Minnesota.  Between then and last week, he would occasionally mention aloud about how it would be great if I were able to go with him, and I would agree, but we were already taking our big ten-year anniversary extravaganza trip to Charleston over the summer, so it just wasn't feasible.

Then about a week and a half ago, Derek decided that he would go ahead and ask his parents if they would maybe perhaps possibly be willing to come stay at our house for four days to watch the kids and all around hold down the fort, but hey, don't be afraid to say no, just thought I'd ask, not a big deal if you can't/don't want to/whatever.

Derek can do this because he is not afraid of asking for things.  His philosophy seems to be "you don't know if you don't ask," whereas I hate asking people for anything so much I could literally be on fire and would still shuffle timidly up to my closest friends and family to say, "Hey, I don't want to bother you, but the flesh seems to be melting off my bones, so if you were already going to get some water for yourself, maybe you could get a tiny bit for me, but I mean if you weren't then don't even worry about it, it's not that bad.  Actually, you know what, never mind, I'm completely fine!  No really, I'm good!"  My personal version of hell is asking people for references over and over for all eternity.  I feel nauseated just thinking about it.

Anyway, they said Yes!  Don't remember what I was talking about?  Neither do I!

Derek's parents, who just watched our three favorite vortices of pure energy for a week in July, said that they would absolutely come to our house and feed the children and dress the children and get them on and off the bus and help with the Kindergarten homework and quell the squabbling and go to the storytimes and do all the exhausting things so that I could go to St. Paul with Derek for four blissful days.

I wrote down a blog post everyday in my little notebook while I was there, so I have a lot to catch you all up on.  Next week:  Derek and Kristy Take St. Paul!  (Subtitle:  Derek goes to conference sessions and does legitimate work while Kristy spends half the trip hiding in their awesome hotel room just because she can.)

Those are photos of two people who simultaneously can't believe their good fortune and are trying to get a good shot of themselves and their gorgeous hotel lobby.  Hotel 340, we miss you already.

Dead Clumsy

Every once in a while I catch sight of someone's smooth, scar-free knees and I think, What, do you live in a bubble?  Where are your hard-earned battle wounds? but then I realize most likely they're just a person who doesn't fall down walking across a flat surface every other week and it's more like, Oh.  Okay.  What's that like?


This is what I'm doing today:

Around midnight last night I woke up fighting for air, an asthma attack catching me by surprise.  I managed to wheeze my way down to a hive-free, relatively open-airway existence about an hour and a half later, only to have Atticus scream his way through a night terror just as I was falling back asleep.

I had my alarm set for 5:02 am so I could go on an easy-paced four-mile run, and as I finally laid back down to hopefully get some sleep at who-knows-what-time (I never look at the clock if I'm awake in the middle of the night; I'll only torture myself calculating exactly how much time I have to sleep if I fall asleep RIGHTNOW, making rest even more elusive), I promised myself that if I got up and did the run, I could have a quick nap during Cade's nap time this afternoon rather than writing a blog post.  

I got up at 5:02, shrugged on my garb, and headed out the door, munching on toast during a walking warm-up.  

I'd been running for all of two minutes when, in the darkness between pools of light cast by street lights, I misjudged the placement of the sidewalk, my foot fell where the edge of the sidewalk meets grass, my ankle rolled and down goes Frazier.  (<----Just for yooouuuu, Derek!)

You probably don't remember that the last time I sprained my ankle was when, a couple months after Caedmon was born, I decided it was time to start running again.  I laced up my shoes, headed out the door, and fell down the front steps, badly spraining my ankle, forced to walk around in that crappy brace for a month.

This time, at least, I'm hoping it's just kind of, I don't know, wrenched or something, as it's hardly swollen, just hurts like a mother any time I try to do things like walk or go down stairs without the brace.  No big deal, right?  Right?

I wish I could blame the injury on the sleepless night, but most likely it's just a sad combination of lack of coordination, poor depth perception, inability to gauge little things like This is a sidewalk and This is grass- PICK ONE, NOT BOTH.  

I have sprained joints and broken bones just trying to walk from point A to point B on this earth, which, well, sucks, obviously, but the one good thing to come from all this chronic clumsiness is that I know how to fall.  I was set to fall hard right on the concrete this morning, but YEARS of practice have taught me to instinctively curl inward and roll upon impact with my inevitable opponent The Ground.  I should have a lot less skin than I do right now; instead I have a (PLEASE GOD hopefully fast-healing) wrenched ankle and sore knee, and that's it.  (Do me a favor and pretend to be terribly impressed that this is a skill of mine and not mildly horrified.  Thanks so much.)

I'd been hoping none of our children would exhibit any of these tendencies toward klutziness (the week before Adelaide started kindergarten I sternly warned her, "Do NOT try to jump rope off a curb," which was my virgin foray into the Land of Sprains, and it was a doozy), and so far, all has been more or less well. 

Then last week I got a call from the elementary school nurse.  Atticus ran face first into another kid in P.E.  The worst part about this was that when the nurse first called, she described the injury and told me he had an ice pack on it.  There was silence for several seconds and I said, "Okay, well, feel free to send him back to class when he's feeling better!" because I'm a terrible mother with a dwarf-sized sympathy organ, but then she said, "Um, you may want to take him to the doctor to get his nose x-rayed," and I was like, "Oh, you want me to come do something with this child who is, in fact, my very own son."  I went and got him and he was freaked out but holding it together, and yes, the bridge of his nose was swollen and bruised, but there was no way I was just going to take him to a physician who is well-versed in the healing arts; no, I instead called my mom who had me do a couple simple tests to make sure he didn't have a deviated septum- he didn't, so she said ice every other hour for 20 minutes and some Tylenol.  Boom.  No doctor required.  (He still has some bruising between his eyes and nose, so if any of you I know in the real world see him, that is apparently what happens when you high-five someone with your face.)

Aaaand today the nurse called again:  Atticus fell going up the steps to the slide and split open both lips.  There was blood.  Quite a bit, I gather.  (Like my mom cheerfully told me anytime my sisters and I sliced ourselves open above the neck:  "Head wounds bleed a lot!")  But he was pretty calm by the time she called, once again with an ice pack to his face, and she said she'd send him back to class soon.  

I'm not worried.  He'll learn how to properly fall soon enough, and I've had lots of practice treating injuries, in the meantime.  Silver linings, friends.

Family and Books and Apples

My house smells incredible right now.


The kids and I spent the holiday weekend shuttling from Iowa to Kansas and back again.  My family was celebrating my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary, so we headed on down for fried chicken and farm visiting and chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting and multiple stops at my great-grandma's and my maternal and my paternal grandparents' houses.  Our boys had trouble keeping track of all the great's and which person was mother and grandfather to whom.  It was fun, nonetheless.

We spent our last night at my sister Kelli's house.  Kelli has an apple tree behind her house and a cranky neighbor next to it who has had the gall to passive-aggressively question just why my sister, a woman with an 8-month-old and a two-year-old and a job and a husband who's been working insane hours for the past couple weeks because the harvest has begun, why on earth she hasn't picked and peeled and processed and made delicious old-fashioned home-cooked delicacies out of those apples.

Because I couldn't go next door and beat up an old woman up for my little sister, I instead gathered as many apples as her husband Aaron and I could reach and carted them home to Iowa.  I'm selfless like that.


I woke up this morning and pulled on jeans and a jacket, because it's September and chilly in the mornings.  Now, I'm not usually one to help summer out the door, but today I felt my autumnal urge to go out and buy some books.  Falls arrives and I'm like Aesop's Ant, scurrying around and gathering, well, not food so much as books to surround myself with in the cold months to come.  This works out well because just the other day Derek looked around and said, "You know what this house needs?  MORE BOOKS."  (I may or may not have just savagely broken the ninth commandment.)

Although I dearly, dearly wanted to, I did not deviate from our grocery list, did not go to Firehouse Books so Caedmon could cozy into a bean bag chair and look at old Little Golden Books and I could find some worn paperback gem I couldn't live without, and I only cried about it a little bit, because I am a Real Live Adult.

When we got home I consoled myself by peeling all those apples and throwing them into my pretty red dutch oven with some water and brown sugar and red hots and making myself a big old vat of applesauce.  This allowed me to pretend I have my life together for one whole hour- I just made homemade cinnamon applesauce, for crying out loud!  Never mind that I forgot today is picture day at Adelaide's school and I put her on the bus looking like she's homeless.  Never mind that there's a dead mouse stuck in a trap in the bottom of the pantry.  Not my jurisdiction, Husband.  Never mind that my children decided to bid adieu to my sister and her girls yesterday morning by spending an hour acting like they'd been raised by the Lord of the Flies rather than an actual mother and father who believe in actual discipline.  (Guess who had to spend six full hours sitting silently in the back of a van, riding home to Iowa, with nary a movie in sight despite two functioning portable DVD players staring them in their hedonistic little faces?)

But right now, my house smells incredible, and that is enough for today.

Under-Achieving Moms Anonymous

Do you know what I spent my Saturday doing?  Paying for a mistake I made three years ago.


August of 2011, and Adelaide is getting ready to enter Kindergarten.  She is anxious, positive that she will have no friends and get lost and be bored and not entirely sure why I'm abandoning her to the cruel whims of the United States public education system.

Included on the exhaustive supply list was a required 12x12-inch pillow.  They use this for the post-lunch rest time, which five- and six-year olds need so they can get ready for some afternoon learnin' and I can only assume the teachers need because they spend their days in a cramped room with 25 small children, in return for which they receive a pittance of a salary and, ahem, "feedback" from parents even more irrational than their "genius" offspring.  ("Genius":  the second most overused word in the English language, right after "surreal.")

Because Adelaide was having such a hard time with the idea of going to school and being away from me, I wanted her to have something at school that would be familiar and comforting, and so, rather than a generic pillow, I cut up one of my old shirts in her then-favorite color- pink- and made it into a pillowcase,  embroidering her name and some multi-colored flowers on the front, because I am an idiot.

I knew better.  Or I should have.  I do not scrapbook.  I do not throw lavish birthday parties.  I do not celebrate arbitrary holidays created by vast corporations with a product to push.  I set the bar as low as possible the first time around, because I know that each time I do something and label it a tradition, as far as our children are concerned, I am signing a blood contract to forevermore execute said tradition in at least as exciting a way as I did the first time.

I understand the impulse to over-celebrate the crap out of every tiny milestone that comes your child's way, and I am not saying you shouldn't make your child feel cherished and loved to absolute pieces on a daily basis.  What I am saying is that every time you're in the store and you see that simply darling last-day-of-summer-vacation pinata or you're on Pinterest and All The Moms are making four-course breakfasts for their child's first day of school, the question you need to ask yourself is this one:  How much do I hate myself?

When you're doing that extra-special kid-centered thing you've gotta realize that you should be taking the time, money, and energy spent on it times the number of years they're going to live in your house times however many children you have, because even as I was hunched over Atticus's Kindergarten pillow embroidering his name into a scrap of some old corduroy pants of mine, Caedmon was mouth-breathing in my face, "When am I going to get a special pillow with my name and a picture on it?  Can you make it out of this?"  He was touching and asking for the actual shirt off my back, and three years too late, I realized this is the price you pay for over-achieving even once.

I finished our second-born's pillow, then made a gourmet lunch of popcorn, raisins, and granola bars, which I wouldn't even allow them to eat in the house because I was just done.  That pillow used up, like, a three-day supply of motherly patience and creativity.

The one upside to my anti-Martha Stewart parenting practices is that our children are in awe when I make the slightest effort.  I made them each a little book to write in out of squares of white paper I cut up and stapled together.  You'd think I'd felled the trees to create the paper, mined the iron ore from the ground for the staples.  Their mouths were literally hanging open at this wizardry.  So if one of our children shows you one of their "books" they've written, do me a favor and act astounded at this creation.  Maybe throw around terms like "Best Mom Ever" and "Luckiest Child Alive."  Also don't show them all the incredible things you do for your own children.  It takes a village to keep expectations this low.

Learning To Ride Bikes, Only Almost Died Once!

One of my goals for this summer was to teach Adelaide and Atticus to ride their bikes without training wheels.

I knew Atticus would be an easy sell, as he's been begging to have his training wheels taken off his bike for some time now, but Adelaide... well.  Eight year old Adelaide feels the same way about bicycles that eight year old Me felt about them, in that we each looked at our mothers like, "Hang on, so you want me to climb aboard this two-wheeled metal contraption that can't even stand up on its own unless you're pedaling hard enough to make it travel so fast that a slight bump can cause serious injury to my person?  My gosh, woman, you still haven't let go of that whole body-writhing pain experience that was my labor and delivery, have you?  Will the paybacks never end?"

I spent one evening running alongside giant Adelaide on her giant bike, trying to keep the pair of them- who were just about as big as I am put together- upright and not brain-damaged, getting whacked in the face every time we ran past our neighbor's cursed tree whose limbs extend over the sidewalk at a height of right about five feet.  As much as I loved providing that day's entertainment to all our neighbors and random passersby, by the end of the night I was literally pulling leaves out of my hair and mouth and Adelaide was no closer to riding on her own.  The next day we packed up the bikes, went to the high school parking lot, and within about two minutes of unloading, Atticus was cruising easily across the pavement, biking like he's been doing it his whole life.  It took one extra day and a smaller bike to have Adelaide riding unassisted, and I still don't think she ever would have seen the need to master bike-riding if her little brother hadn't caught onto it so easily and had the nerve to out-perform her.

Over the past week, they've been riding quite a bit, getting the hang of riding on narrow paths such as dead end streets and sidewalks.  Atticus, again, has taken to it all extremely well, while Adelaide has been more timid, but still working on it, steadily improving.

Sunday evening, Derek and Atticus were out golfing, and so Adelaide decided to take advantage of her brother's absence and work on increasing her own two-wheeling skills.

At one point, I went inside to get Caedmon some water, came back out, and didn't see our daughter.

I looked up and down the sidewalk, but couldn't find her.  I did, however, see a large truck driving slowly in front of our house, almost like they were waiting for an obstruction in the road to move.

Right about then, Adelaide came from around the lilac bush and into sight, walking her bike onto the sidewalk, crying a bit wildly, blue eyes huge.

As she came closer, she dumped the death trap into the grass and told me that "The bike tipped over and into the street and I couldn't get up right away and then there was a truck coming right toward me and it was about to hit me and I almost died!"  (Insert near-hyperventilation every third word.)

Remember how I have this thing where I laugh at extremely inappropriate moments?  Like when I'm telling people someone's died, or conversely, when our daughter is telling me she almost died?

I could feel it coming on.  I had to fight to keep the smile from spreading across my face as soon as she started talking.  By the time she was done I was trying to turn the escaping laughter into a sympathetic, "Oh, Adelaide, I'm sorry."  I had the merest inkling that I'd failed because of her quavery reply of "STOP LAUGHING AT ME!"  This sent me completely over the edge, and I dashed inside to try and catch my breath, I was laughing so hard.

Of course our neighbors were outside.  I can only imagine what we looked like:  young girl crashes into the street, truck comes down the street, mother nowhere to be seen, girl has to pick herself up lest she be crushed, girl appropriately traumatized, limps out of the street and recounts the horror to her reappearing mother, mother laughs in her face, girl wails, mother flees back into her house gasping and guffawing, all while impressionable 3-year-old brother watches.

As I told all this later that night to a shaking-his-head Derek, I mused, "I really don't know how you leave me alone with these children."

"Neither do I."  Poor Derek.  He's probably ready for school to start again, just so he knows his children have some kind of sympathetic adults nearby, because Lord knows they don't here.