Trying to Avoid Chaos

She is just so beautiful. And she is fine -- no ill effects from the Weekend of Disasters.

I am looking ahead to the summer, which is going to be here in just 5 days. I have been mulling over this for about a week...how to provide a sense of structure to our days without running myself ragged or relying on countless hours of PBS Kids.

I think simple is probably best. I want the day to have some structure, but not be overwhelming for me or the kids. My ideas are kind of embryonic right now, but the bare bones look like this:

Every day we will do 1) something to improve our environment 2) something to improve the mind 3) something to improve the spirit 4) something to improve the body 5) something for fun.

Sounds ambitious, but improving our environment is my fancy way of saying "cleaning." The spirit refers to something of an artistic nature and also to Vacation Bible School; the mind is just something academic -- reading practice, reading time, alphabet practice, zoo camp (which the kids are signed up for in July) or something sciency from a cool book I found. Improving the body is where I'll slot activities like swimming lessons or time at the pool. And doing something fun is really so that I remember to play with my kids. I am going to expand on these in a later post, just so I can work out what I want them to look like, but just under "improve our environment" my general drift is something like this:

• Monday we mop & take out trash
• Tuesday we tidy (living room and bedrooms)
• Wednesday we dust
• Thursday we clean bathrooms
• Friday we put away laundry

In theory, these are all things the kids can either do or help with in a substantial way. I think I'm going to pick up some kid-sized mops at ToysRUs so they can really help with the mopping. I am in the process of making lists of activities for the other things on my master plan.

I'm also thinking about integrating mind, spirit and body activities in some simple thematic units like oceans, rainforest, gardening. I think the activities will be more meaningful if we have a loose, exploratory framework to guide them. Not at all sure how this will play out...still working on it.

I don't want the summer to be frittered away on TV and videos. There'll be time enough for that when the weather keeps us indoors again.

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

As if I needed another one.

It didn't start out badly; the kids all slept until 7, which is fairly abnormal for them, so we woke up more rested than usual. It pretty much went downhill from there.

Maggie woke up with one eye totally crusted over. A phone call to my pediatric nurse MIL confirmed our suspicions -- she probably had an ear infection. So Tim got the big ones ready for church while I threw on some clothes and took Maggie to the (thankfully open) peds clinic for a quick ear check. Diagnosis: double ear infection. No wonder she's been napping so poorly all week and acting crabby as all get-out when she's awake.

After church, we were trying to get some little chores done around the house before heading to my parents' house -- getting the laundry up from the basement, putting recycling in the bin, that sort of thing. The two older children found some glass jars from the bin and were banging them together to make "music" until two of them shattered in Abby Kate's hands and glass shards went everywhere. She was, mercifully, not cut at all. Grant got a small glass sliver in one finger because he just couldn't resist touching the broken bits, but that was our only casualty.

After we'd dealt with all that, Tim and Iwere standing in the kitchen when we heard a muffled sort of thump thump thump sound. We wheeled around, realizing two things simultaneously: Maggie was missing and the basement door was open. I dashed to the stairs just in time to see her tumble the final half-dozen steps to the concrete floor below.

Two things, I think, saved her from serious injury. One was that she went down sideways instead of end-over-end and that meant she took the brunt of the fall on her torso rather than her head. The other is that she appears to be made out of rubber. She ended up with a bruise on one cheek, another on her forehead and a small scrape on her shoulder. When I think how badly she could have been hurt, it seems clear that God was watching out for her yesterday. And for her stupid parents.

We were pretty badly shaken by that, but since Maggie seemed to be OK, we went over to my parents' for dinner. A baby gate fell over on Maggie while we were there, not hurting her but definitely scaring her and requiring us to carry her around for most of the afternoon -- fine by us. We were just settling into dessert, when we couldn't locate Grant.

The kids had finished dinner long before everyone else and had gone outside to play. Abby Kate came back in to go to the bathroom, but when we called G in for dessert, we couldn't find him anywhere. After a few minutes of slightly panicked shouting, we found him in the downstairs bathroom. He'd been so busy playing outside that he'd ignored the urge to "go" and by the time he actually made it indoors his sneakers were full of pee.

Worse than that, he'd pooped his pants -- something he hasn't done since he was 2 1/2. He'd tried to take care of it himself, which meant there was pretty much poop everywhere. I can't even begin to describe how gross it was. YUCK. He had to be thrown in the tub and his clothes had to be bagged up to take home. Except for the Lightning McQueen underwear. That we sacrificed to the Poo gods. Sayonara, little undies.

Since we had no other clothes for him, he ended up wearing one of my mom's t-shirts -- one that said "Maui Christmas" on it -- and going totally commando under it all.

We got home and put everyone to bed and then just sat, sort of looking at each other. I think we have never been so glad for a day to be over.

Bad Tuesday

Not to be confused with Fat Tuesday, though we do have a lot of cheap, shiny necklaces laying around.

Maggie won't sleep today. This is a continuation of Maggie Won't Sleep Monday and Maggie Won't Sleep Sunday. It's a trilogy of sleeplessness and I lay it all at the doorstep of church.

Were I an atheist or a pagan, I suppose I would stay home Sunday morning watching real estate shows and NASCAR on TV. Instead, we haul our little brood to church each week, where the littlest one refuses to sleep. Church occurs about 30 minutes into when she would normally be napping, and that nap is usually 90 minutes long, so this is a pretty big interruption of sleep for her. Generally she takes 3 naps a day, but on Sunday she only takes 2, an early afternoon and a late afternoon one. She has been taking 3 naps for quite some time now, but this week she finally decided to give up that 3rd nap, so on this particular Sunday she took only one nap. ONE. This was not enough and despite my rigid adherance to her nap schedule on Monday, she is now veeerrrrrry overtired and napping like caca. It will take until Wednesday, at least, to get her back on track, and she won't really be back in her groove until Friday. Just in time for church to roll around again on Sunday.

This is where I would like to address the people who told me that the third baby is so mellow, so 'along for the ride.' Bull. She is the least flexible baby I've ever produced; not especially tolerant, not happy to be carted around wherever we go. She naps in her crib -- that's it. Nowhere else. She hates being along for the ride, i.e. in the van, and since she has recently discovered screaming, we are all aware of her displeasure. Three quarters of any car trip involve cringing as the screaming crescendos to almost unbearable decible levels.

The only place she has shown any degree of flexibility is in the church nursery, where she is delighted to be left. We think this is because the kids there are gentler than her siblings and she probably feels safer there than in our living room.

Of course, since she was in the nursery 48 hours ago, she now has a cold.

I am typing this, listening to her howl through the monitor because she's had so little sleep today. I am also periodically telling my other two to be quiet, be quiet! BE QUIET!!. It's not really a relaxing place to be today, our house. Thank God they've finally agreed to watch Peter Pan and give me 77 minutes of peace.

How come, if God wants us to go to Church, He doesn't make the way there smoother?

Hair Today, Goon Tomorrow

I am having a bad hair day. A real one, where my hair looks just awful, though I meant it to look much better. This is because I am in the frustrating process of growing out my bangs and I have reached the no-man's land of hair growth where I can't do a dang thing with it. It's too long to style and too short to blend. In a word, it's blech.

I've had bangs my entire life. The rest of my hair has gone from Little Dutch Boy to Mullet to Marcia Brady, but the bangs remain eternal. Until now. This is my first concerted effort at growing them out and they are now just at the base of my nose. My husband mentioned that he thought I should see what my face looked like without the lovely squared-off fringe that has defined it for so long, so I am gritting my teeth and pushing on, though I itch to just whack them off with the scissors.

Secretly I am afraid (and at least partially convinced) that I am one of those people who can't really wear bang-less hair. Even now, at this length, my part looks a little Alfalfa-esque and if I try to part more to the side I get a curtain of hair falling in my eyes about 5 minutes after I leave the bathroom, no matter how much hairspray I use. I can leave the lavvy with bulletproof hair and it still falls gently down in little stuck-together clumps. I am experiementing with clippies, but so far I look like Early Trailer Court. Yummy. I just need a cigarette and a houserobe to compete the effect.

I have made a deal with myself that I'll wait 'til they're down to my mouth before I do anything drastic. If they're still driving me loony by then, it's sayonara.

Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge, Say No More..

My hubby dropped off his fifth "test" sample today, in hopes of finally being declared sperm-free after his vasectomy. A vasectomy which occurred more than a year ago. A vasectomy which was supposed to make our lives more carefree -- or at least as carefree as we can be with 3 kids all sleeping within 12 feet of our bedroom.

The first few times he was tested, the paperwork necessary for dropping off the sample brought him up short. Particularly the little space on the form which asked "How was the sample obtained?"

What are you supposed to write there? As if standing there with a cup of semen isn't humiliating enough, now you have to discuss how you got it? The only thing I can compare this to is when I was having one of my c-sections and the nurse made me carry around a cup of my own urine for 10 minutes before deciding that they did not, in fact, need it at all. Then they just left it sitting on a table top in my room for about 5 hours. It did add a certain je ne sais quoi to the otherwise boring hospital room, but it didn't improve my mood one bit.

So this time, magic number 5, I told him to go right up to the desk and boldly write "PORN" in that little space and then wink at the clerk when he hands over the cup.

'How was the sample obtained', indeed. Sheesh.

Go get 'em baby!

Out of Contention

I am having one of those days.

The kind of day that really started last night, when I didn't get to bed until midnight and am now paying for it.

In a burst of the purely retributive kharma that accompanies child-rearing, the children always wake up earlier on the morning after you go to bed late. Even if you had a good, totally legitimate, responsible reason for staying up.

So everyone was pretty much awake by 6:30. Except me. I don't officially wake up until at least half of my morning coffee has been consumed. I am actually reaching a sort of zen stage with early rising, wherein I can make breakfast for the kids without being strictly conscious, per se. But not this morning. This morning I had yelled at everyone by 6:45 and by 7 was wondering whether it was possible to actually drown myself in my coffee mug or whether the heat would make me pull out prematurely.

I opted to drink it instead and the caffeine rush carried me through lunch. But now it's what Douglas Adams used to call the "long dark tea time of the soul"-- those last 2 hours before Daddy gets home and I am no longer a single parent. And Tim just called to tell me he might be late, so my personal twilight zone may last longer than anticipated.

This was not welcome news.

It doesn't really help to know that if I'd just gone to bed earlier, I'd be in a lot better shape than I am now.

I'm gonna write and withdraw my nomination for MOTY later today. At least I won't have that pressure hanging over me.

Overheard...

Dad: What did you do at Grandma's today?

Grant: Had a 'nack.

Dad: What did you have for snack?

Grant: Not doughnut holes.

Dad: Why didn't Grandma give you doughnut holes?

Grant: She not payin' attention.

Brace Yourself

Today, I visited an orthodontist. An orthodontist. I haven't seen one since I was sixteen, so that's about....well, a long time ago. I experienced a mild sensation of recoil watching a few teenagers get their braces adjusted, but on the whole it was less intimidating than I remembered. And the actual orthodontist was vastly different from old Dr. S---, who perpetuated untold tortures on my poor mouth.

Dr. S--- was a Big Game Hunter and his waiting room was filled with the stuffed heads of his various trophies. He had obviously been on safari a time or two, and judging by the giant moose head on the wall, the Great White North wasn't unknown to him either. Everyone in his family drove a Mercedes and he sported a wristwatch made of little nuggets of gold. Doncha wonder how he paid for all that? Hmmmmmm.

Worst of all, in the middle of the treatment area, clearly in violation of some health code somewhere, was a big, wrought-iron cage with a scarlet macaw inside. An unhappy scarlet macaw. A macaw that felt the need to shriek its displeasure periodically in a way that made the orthodontic assistants jump. Since this often happened while they were tightening my braces, the macaw wasn't the only one who was unhappy.

Why today's visit didn't give me flashbacks of my last gruesome experience with braces, I'll never know, but Dr. M--- might have been the reason. She was nice; she spoke to me instead of around me, and she didn't charge me for a consultation, which I thought was jolly decent of her.

Unfortunately, she did use the "B" word, and that made me go all crawly inside. Yes, it would be short term, yes, it would be only a partial set, but braces are braces and I don't know if I can face them again.

Certainly there are worse things than mildly crooked teeth. Being trapped in a cage in an orthodontist's office springs to mind.

I guess this is where I decide how vain I really am.

Drowning in Laundry

I managed to hurt my back a couple weeks ago when I rather stupidly tried to lift two laundry baskets at the same time. As a result, I couldn't bend or lift for more than a week, which meant I couldn't do the laundry even if I'd wanted to (I didn't). While I was out of action, the laundry accumulated to tsunami-like proportions and I am still trying to wade through it two weeks later. Sadly, nobody gives you pain medication for excess laundry. But they should.

When my kids grow up, I think they're going to remember that I was always doing laundry. There are 5 of us, so the fact that we have a lot of laundry isn't exactly breaking news, but I am so swamped with it right now, I'm starting to wonder if the kids cloned themselves when I wasn't looking.

It certainly doesn't help that one kid wet the bed 2 days ago, soaking the sheet, quilt, and pad, so that bedding had to be added to the backlog. And my eldest has a nasty dust mite allergy, so all of her bedding has to be washed every week -- including the quilt and the Hello Kitty pillow she can't live without. Any time bedding is in the mix, the laundry queue slows way down. At least it does at my house. Then there's the baby who can't finish a meal without smearing Gerbers all over whatever isn't covered by bib, and there's the boy who goes outside and rolls in the mud (and if he can't find mud, he makes his own), and there's the 5-year-old diva who needs a complete costume change 3 times a day or her psyche will be irrevocably shattered. Add to that the husband who wears one outfit to work and changes into another for the evening and the piles really start growing.

I remember with a certain amount of incredulity the days when I really liked doing laundry. When I bought my first place -- a little condo with its own laundry alcove-- I was tickled to bits to be able to do the wash without leaving my house. No more laundromats! When Tim and I were engaged, I actually volunteered to do his laundry. I must have been in love, 'cause now I regard that as a period of temporary insanity. I would never under any circumstances volunteer to do someone else's wash now. Heck, I wouldn't do my own wash if I could find a way to get out of it that didn't involve me either a) paying someone, or b) going naked.

The really awful thing about it, though, is that while you're doing it, people are wearing clothes and getting them dirty. It's an unbroken stream of dirty shirts, jeans, onesies...the Mount Never Rest of being a mom.