Poor Middle Child

Remember how, in my last post, I went on and on about poor Caedmon, our deprived youngest child (and by "deprived" I mean not deprived at all, as he currently gets more one-on-one parental time than any other kid in our family- although that's all about to change because summer break is almost here thank the good Lord)?  (And yes, I have been to Wal-Mart since that last post.  No, we still do not have any photos of Cade in this house.  I never finish anythi)

Well, forget everything I wrote in that post (that's actually a pretty good rule of thumb for everything I write, because it would appear that I live my life in the same way that I garden:  Try this and that and then something else and then something else else until one of those things finally works.  This means I am learning as I go, which means I am almost constantly screwing up, which is fine, except that I have a blog where I can chronicle those screw-ups without the benefit of hindsight or perspective.  So... yeah.  Take everything I say with a whole tumbler-full of salt, okay?  Super.).  (I'm beginning to think I have an addiction to parenthetical statements.  Some post soon I am going to force myself to not use a single parenthesis, which might mean I get through a post without veering so far off course that I have to go back and see where the heck I was going with this or that particular sentence in the first place.  Today is not that day.).

Okay, new rule for the rest of today, NO MORE PARENTHESES.  Where was I?  Oh, yes- you should be forgetting everything I said in the last post about pitying Caedmon, because I've decided Atticus, our middle child, is the one you should actually feel sorry for.

Saturday we went to visit Derek's parents' to celebrate his Dad's birthday.  We hiked, we gardened, we put up a bunch of fence, we ate delicious ice cream (I KNOW, OKAY, I KNOW- but I just have to tell you that I had cherry limeade soft serve ice cream, and it was so refreshing, so creamy, and while Becky and I were discussing the merits of this restaurant's ice cream, she mentioned that she thought the reason it was so good was because it "isn't too sweet, isn't cloying."  Cloying- does anyone else just love it to absolute pieces when someone uses the exact right word for the situation or feeling or ice cream you're currently experiencing?  Because I so, so do.  Okay, now I'm really done with parentheses.  Really.), then we packed up our dirty, tired, sugar-stuffed children into the car to head for home.

Atticus got stuck in the middle- something that rarely happens, as arriving at our destination with all offspring still in possession of all four of their limbs is one of our family's silly little rules- and about 30 minutes into the drive he fell asleep.

You know what it's like to fall asleep in the car, right?  You either do the horrible head-bobbing thing that cruelly half-wakes you up every 35 seconds, or you ever so slowly lean to the side, because like advanced trigonometry, gravity is hard.  (And if trig is easy for you, just don't even talk to me, okay?  We're not friends.)  Now, you would think, with three- and eight- years of stellar parenting in their respective pasts, Caedmon and Adelaide would do the loving, sweet, supportive thing and actually physically support their dear five-year-old brother as he attempted to rest his gigantic weary head against one of them.

Instead, I turned around just as Atticus began an unconscious lean against Caedmon, and witnessed Caedmon digging one of his elbows into Atticus's temple and angrily driving Atticus away from what was obviously space only for three-year-old's and over to Adelaide's side.

Post-brotherly shove.  Atticus didn't even wake up.

And was there any fond gentleness or mercy to be found in sisterly quarters?

Nay.  Not a crumb of compassion for her little brother.  She even stopped reading her book to avoid being touched, and that book is amazing (Fever 1793- read it, read it, read it).

I won't even talk about how I'm 80% sure that physical touch is Atticus's love language.  

Poor Atticus.

Poor Third Child

The other day I was dusting for the first time in probably a couple years- quick aside: it's not that my house hasn't been dusted in a couple years, okay?  Dusting is one of those chores I long ago delegated to the children, which means I should probably go over the house and dust it myself to get all the missed spots every few weeks, but I don't do that.  I go over it every couple years.  I refuse to be ashamed.

Anyway, I was dusting the piano, which was relatively dust-free (good job, children!  And take that, clean-freaks!), but also remarkably devoid of ornamentation.  Sure enough, an inspection behind it revealed three photo frames and one lantern that looked like they belonged in that obstacle course housing the Holy Grail in the last Indiana Jones movie (well, the last Indiana Jones movie that counts):

It was seriously like this, except minus the suspiciously adventurous professor/archaeologist.  I'm not trying to hate on Indiana Jones, I LOVE those movies, I'm just saying 95% of my professors were all way too smart to get themselves into the kind of messes Junior perennially finds himself in.  Oh, yeah, and image via www.indyfan.com.

So, okay, perhaps our children could use another lesson in Dusting 101: How Not To Destroy The Items You're Supposed To Be Cleaning.  This is astonishing to exactly no one who has their young offspring "help" around the house.

After excavating these lost relics and re-establishing them to their rightful positions on the piano, I began to notice something.

We have no photos of Caedmon anywhere in our house.

There's a baby photo of Atticus on the piano, and another photo of him as a toddler on a bookshelf.  There's not one but two photos of Adelaide on the piano.  Anyone visiting our home would assume we have only two chilren.  Whoops.

This is not exactly unfamiliar territory.  I've made note in the past of the detail in which I filled out Adelaide's baby book, followed by the half-hearted attempt I made with Atticus's, and finally the empty shell of a baby book that belongs to Caedmon.  I remember the same problem plaguing my mom with my youngest sister, Steph.

It's not that we don't have any photos of Caedmon.  I have hundreds right here on this laptop, safe and sound where no one can ever see them.  Just yesterday morning Cade approached me while I was eating my breakfast and asked, "Can you take a picture of me?"  For one guilty moment I thought that he, too, had noticed the shameful void that existed in our house where photos of our sweet youngest boy should be.  But then when I said, "Of course, Cade...so, uh, why do you want me to take a picture of you?" he responded "Because I like to look at my face."  There I go, ascribing meaning and guilt where none belongs.  And boy, he does like to look at himself.  I frequently find him dancing in the downstairs bathroom, watching himself in the full-length mirror there.  I do pull him away so he doesn't stare himself to death.

I should add that after I took a couple of photos of Caedmon, he asked for more specific photos that included me:  "Can you take a picture of you and me now?  Can you take a picture of me kissing you?  Can you take a picture of you kissing me?"  After I'd taken all those, he spent a long time staring at our images on the back of the camera and smiling.

Which only makes me feel guiltier.  Because that's what I do.  I swear, I'm finally going to take the whole five minutes and two dollars it takes to order some prints on walmart.com and slap them in some picture frames I already have.  I really am.

Later.

Caedmon always closes his eyes when he does anything remotely close to hugging.  This is darling to watch, but not very conducive to getting decent photos.

This might be my favorite.  

Flowers Stand Still. Children Do Not.

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

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

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

How about some flowers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I also finally got to try a Dutch letter:

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

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

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

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

The one time that day they were still.

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

Tuuuuulips

I have two posts to write:  One a quick photo post of the tulips currently blooming in my yard, and one a probably not-so-quick photo post of our day at Tulip Time.  I will admit I've spent an absurd amount of time debating the order in which to post these; if I post the photos of Tulip Time first, then you're bound to be disappointed by the photos of my tulips the next day, because there aren't thousands of flowers and because there are no dutch pastries in sight anywhere, a fact that saddens me daily.  But if I do it the other way around, then if you're scrolling through past posts, you'll first see the post containing my own tulips, then the Tulip Time post.

Aren't you so glad I don't keep these thoughts and inner dilemmas to myself?  Isn't that the whole point of this blog anyway, me putting needless information out there about our family?  I still don't think Derek really gets this whole blog business in general- well, not so much our family blog, but more all the other little family blogs I read.  I love to hear all the details of other people's lives, in story or newsy format, which you just can't get on other forms of social media.  Oh, you have a new favorite carpet cleaner?  Do tell.  Your poor old cat is blind and deaf?  Show me pictures, tell me the story.  Your family has delightful Jewish celebrations that are completely and totally foreign to me?  Yes, please.  You're faithfully trying to grow, not kill, tomatoes for the umpteenth year in a row?  Please diligently chronicle your journey this summer.  I love all of this.  Derek doesn't get it.  He probably skimmed this paragraph.  (Come on back, Derek, I'm going to start talking about us again.)

To wrestle this post back on track, let's go ahead and look at the tulips in our own yard first, just so this post doesn't approach Rothfuss-type lengths.

Red and Pink Impression tulips.  This is the best bunch I have this year, as the tulips in closer proximity to both our front porch and back deck kind of got flattened by yours truly while power washing.  Whoops.  (Notice that since I did it it's "whoops," whereas if one of my family members had accidentally done the same, I'd be calling down brimstone over their guilty heads.)  

I take around five photos of these a day.  I just can't get enough of them.  They're one of the first things I see when I walk out our back door.  Perfect.

This is the Orange Impressions' second spring, and while their color was prettier than ever, their numbers were majorly diminished.  Clearly I'm going to have to plant more bulbs this fall to make up for their under-achievement.  Darn.

This is a mixture of bulbs I got from Earl May, and I've been so pleased with the variations in color and height.  The whites appear to bloom later, as there are more of them out there now.

This is the bunch I forgot about and were nearly decimated by rabbits.  I now remember thinking that perhaps yellow tulips weren't the best idea; between the yellow iris and the daffodils, isn't there enough of this color in our yard?  But I must admit, I have loved this group, as they add a beautiful splash of color in this back, often neglected corner of our yard, and makes for a lovely tableau out the window of our downstairs bathroom, should you ever decide to visit that portion of our house in the spring.

An odd red-swirled tulip amongst the other plain yellows.  

In other exciting news, the average last frost date is nigh!  We haven't had a frost in several days, but I'm holding off, just in case.  Probably.  Most likely.  I think.  Although I'm going to town tomorrow, and I have a feeling those tomato and pepper plants are going to be calling my name.  They do that, you know.  They really do.  I'M SERIOUS.

THE STAIN

A couple years ago I decided we needed to stain our front porch and back deck, for practical reasons like protection from rain and snow and to keep the wood from rotting, but mostly just because I thought it would look pretty.  Like all homeowners, however, we have a Home Upkeep List two miles long that is more or less constantly scrolling, so every time you take care of whatever's on top, something new gets added to the bottom.  Then there are line cutters, like burst pipes on Christmas Eve or bats who see you have no animals and decide they would make excellent pets for your family.

Outdoor staining has been knocked to the back of the line several times now, but this spring, we finally decided it was time.  I borrowed a power washer from some lovely friends, somehow started it, used it for right about three minutes before a mechanically-minded neighbor decided he just couldn't take it anymore and marched over to fiddle with something magic on the side of the machine, yelling to me over the noise something about too much gas or something.  I don't think his cigarette ever left his mouth, which Derek later pointed out was a teensy bit dangerous- something about gasoline and fires.  Still, the engine went from sputtering and providing a weak stream of water to roaring and blasting dirt every which way.  Step 1: Power washing front porch and back deck- complete.  (And yes, I know they tell you not to power wash but to instead use a soft-bristled baby toothbrush on your fragile, easily offended outdoor wood.  Or something.  Rules, shmules.)

Before I lost my mind

Next came the fun part: Staining the front deck!  I went out and got a gallon of stain (because surely a gallon would be more than enough, right?  I mean, our front porch isn't that big), then came home and waited for it to stop raining.  I set aside Monday afternoon for the job.  I was so excited.

8 o'clock Monday night found me still staining the railings of the porch.  Do you know how many spindles we have on there?  EIGHTY.  80 fancy spindles that each sucked in noxious liquid like a Hollywood starlet just getting out of her court-appointed rehab.  I felt like I was in that movie Groundhog Day, except instead of reliving the same day over and over I was reliving the same two minutes and Bill Murray was nowhere in sight for some much-needed comic relief.

Tuesday I got to finish the spindles, although not before some pretty specific fantasies about taking an axe to all 80 of them.  I was afraid if I did that, though, their resultant spindle-splinters would come to life and pour buckets of water all over me 'til I drowned (no, the fumes were not getting to me; I just watched The Sorceror's Apprentice so many times during my childhood that I have very strong feelings about axes and broomsticks).

Wednesday I finally got to do the floorboards.  Wednesday is also the day I began to lose my mind.  I chose a reddish-brownish-colored stain for the porch, and while it dried just about the color advertised, when it went on, it looked pretty red.  I began to wonder if passersby thought I was perhaps painting our front porch with blood.  I wondered if they argued amongst themselves, "It can't be blood, it's not bright enough," "Well, it's obviously not arterial blood, Charlie; she probably picked a couple gallons up from the blood bank in Ames."  Except instead of wondering these things in my head, it turns out I was muttering these imaginary conversations aloud as I was painting with not-blood, so perhaps our neighbors weren't discussing the paint so much as the painter.

Wednesday afternoon, though, I was finally done.

After: The deck is stained and my mind is gone

It took one more gallon of stain, two more days of work, and 99% more of my sanity than I had anticipated.  So just about right for a home improvement project.


Next up:  The back deck.

I am unable to look at this photo without whimpering.  Oy.

Do They Still Make Smelling Salts?

Mothers always get the shaft, don't they?

It's like they can't do anything right.  Work while your kids are little, and you're neglecting them.  Stay at home, you're coddling them.  Send them to public school, your kids are gonna end up heathens.  Home school them, they're gonna be weird.

I absolutely believe that a fair portion of all this finger pointing and blaming is done by other parents and just about anyone who sees any little thing a tiny bit differently, but the majority?  The majority is done by us, the mothers, to ourselves.  The guilt.  The second-guessing.  The inner conflict.

I don't even think my husband knows what second-guessing is.  It is a completely foreign concept to his brain.  When he makes a decision, BOOM, that's it, that is his new reality.  He also doesn't worry about what other parenting philosophies might have to say about our style of discipline or how we spend time as a family or anything else because he just doesn't care.  Like, not even a little bit.

Me, though?  I worry.

For instance:  a couple weeks ago, we decided to order pizza for supper.  Derek suggested Adelaide be the one to make the order over the phone, which is good practice for a relatively shy kid who could use some practice interacting with the world at large.  She agreed pretty readily, which surprised me, but also used my written script as a crutch (yes, I made a script of how the conversation would probably go- this was to help prevent any over-the-phone panicked pizza crying, which might throw whatever teenager was on the other end of the line a bit).  She did great.  The pizza was ordered.  There was no panicking.  But as soon as she hung up the phone, Adelaide buried her face in a pillow and didn't come out for five minutes, no matter what we said.  She just needed a few minutes to have her delayed social interaction-induced freak out and its subsequent recovery.

I worry:  Did I make her this way?  Is it because I stay at home with her and her brothers?  Did she not get enough time with other toddlers when she was teeny?  Did she inherit this shyness from me?

It didn't help that the previous day I'd had a little panic attack of my own.  Derek had suggested I go to my favorite restaurant with some friends, which I wasn't about to pass up, so I invited a group of friends, expecting one or two to say yes, given the short notice.  Perfect for my small group comfort zone.  Instead, the affirmative replies kept trickling in.  And honestly, I was excited with each "Yes!"  Because by themselves, these women aren't scary.  These are my friends!  They are kind and lovely and funny.  My first thought was, "Eight!  Oh, how fun!"  And I may have performed a dramatic rendition of the theme song to Eight is Enough.  But as the day ticked by, my anxiety levels started to climb.  I felt nauseated.  My heart was beating so hard is felt like it was trying to launch my blood outside of my poor body, not just do its good old-fashioned circulating.  An hour before everyone was supposed to meet at my house, my fingertips were numb, and I was in my room, flapping my hands and engaging in some lamaze-style breathing exercises.  Fortunately for me, Derek is used to this kind of thing, and folded me into a hug for longer than 30 seconds (I recently told him about an article I read stating that research shows one of those feel-good neurotransmitters is released when one is held in an embrace for 30+ seconds.  He has since been very dutiful about hugging me for the prescribed time, possibly because he knows I need all the help I can get), petted my hair, and only half-patronizingly said things like, "You're okay, everything's going to be fine."  And everything was fine.  The food was delicious and the company wonderful.

Because of all this, I wonder if I'm consigning Adelaide to a lifetime of anxiety and nerves, even when it involves her own friends and she's the one who invited them out in the first place.

Ah, but then there's my mother.  My mom is social and has always had a gaggle of friends (whoop, whoop, Big and Louds!).  I can no more imagine my mom panic-jogging in place in her room and reaching for her inhaler before a social event than I can imagine me writing a post without a single parenthetical statement (isn't gonna happen).  She threw parties all the time when I was growing up.  Most of them were Crap Nights, but every once in a while she'd have a theme- OH, like the Miss America party!  That was one where a bunch of her friends would come over not to just to watch the Miss America pageant, but also dressed as a hilarious parody of their chosen state.  Food was eaten.  Contestants were made fun of.  Kansas was rooted for.  Strangely, the only costume I can remember with any clarity was Debby's; she dressed as Miss Arkansas, and I'm pretty sure she wore cut-off denim overalls with just a bra underneath and she mussed and tousled her short dark hair.  And she blacked out one of her teeth.  And spoke in a charming Ozark twang.

So if my mom, Miss Party Central, could produce me, Flaps Her Hands and Hyperventilates (that's my Indian name, you know), then perhaps there's hope for Adelaide after all.

A Plant and Ballet List

Let's break up all this Waste Not business with a list, shall we?

• I transferred my seedlings to their own little peat pots last night.

Upgrading seedlings from their nascent egg carton home to these temporary little pots is kind of like watching your children participate in an elementary school's graduation ceremony:  fun but meaningful only to the most sentimental of parents.  And with this I'm also whispering "Don't die don't die don't die don't die" while disentangling their fragile little root systems.  Hopefully I won't find myself doing this when our children actually leave grade school.

Right now they're enjoying (the seedlings, not our children- why on earth would I talk about our children when there are plants to talk about HAHAHAHA) their first beautiful spring morning out of doors:

No, the makeshift cold frame probably isn't necessary- I mean, it is 50 degrees out there, and I'm only leaving them out there for a few hours to start hardening them off- but I'm a bit of an overprotective gardener, especially since, as I was placing the little pots on the back deck and covering them up, I pictured each little plant as an elderly person I wheeling toward a window so they could enjoy some sunshine.  

I'm not sure why I insist on this constant anthropomorphization of my plants.  It's just a thing I do.  

• Atticus (see, we do have children!) is still a weird sleeper:

His knees are hooked over the green side of the toy box there (I just accidentally typed "boy box" which made me snuffle and chortle), effectively folding him in half.  I continue to maintain that Atticus would make a great ballet dancer: He's got a lean build, is crazy flexible, loves music, and really loves the female half of the human race.  I think I'll start calling him "Misha."  We'll see what happens.

• My first tulips bloomed!  Unfortunately, their prime blooming time fell during the five days and nights of near-constant rain we had over the past week, so I really only got to enjoy them when pulling into and out of the driveway.  It did save me from taking a million pictures of them, however, so at least you're spared that.

Look at that!  I can cross off the first thing on my list for today ("Bang out List post"), so it's time to get ready for the day; we're leaving for Pella's tulip festival (my first time!) in about an hour.  Huzzah!