Ala Moana in the Morning

So the kids went to bed early last night and woke up early (5:45) this morning. We baked some muffins and bought some snacks at the neighborhood store, and were at the beach by 8:30. Toddlerness took a nap on the beach right away, and the older kids played themselves silly - they probably would have stayed there as long as we let them, but we left around noon. The kids rediscovered the wonder of spam musubi, apple bananas, shave ice, and taco poke. Girliness and I are sunburnt - Boyness and Toddlerness seem to have escaped. Girliness and Boyness are both rashing up something fierce and we're not sure why - hopefully we can figure it out and stop it, because the rashes seem to feel really "raw" and they hurt. Green goo rocks, but they're washing it off almost as fast as I can put it on. Back in the pool with Uncle Marty now, actually.

In Hawaii!

We survived our plane ride to Hawaii with only one toddler tantrum (over having to sit with the seatbelt on during descent). Both Girliness and Boyness had to sit "by themselves" (sandwiched between unfamiliar people a row behind myself and my father, respectively. They did just dandy.

So we spent the better part of the afternoon reaquainting ourselves with Papa's pool.

So Much for That...

I've got a lovely sore throat today, and toddlerness is sounding a tad hoarse. Fuckness.

I am taking a doula client, unless things fail to work out. My first since school started. Birth center birth. Revising the contracts now, actually. I was using the DONA ones before and I actually don't like them very much.

Went hiking with my dad yesterday. Lovely trail, 3.5ish miles, kids did great. Carried a sleeping toddlerness the last mile or so though. Yeah, in my arms. Not so great. The kids had a wonderful time. Forgot the camera, which sucks even more than the usual forget-the-camera situation because 1) we rarely see my dad and 2) I just resolved to take more photos, since we only have like a dozen from last month and for us that is pathetic.

Had Visitors Today

We had a brief drop-in from Aimee and family. Her family is lovely, her children are wonderful, and everyone was happy and got along. Seriously. It was great to see Aimee and she looks happy and healthy :).

My dad is coming in tomorrow and the house is in a state of near-total messness, aside from the kid craft/art/desk/whatever area that I reorganized a couple days ago. Ah, well. We are off to Hawaii sometime next week, for a bit of time with the family. And lots and lots of pictures and happy childhood memories for the kids, I hope. Send us some happy not-getting-sick vibes, since we've had stomach ailments in sequence each time we've visited and would like very much not to keep up the pattern.

Oh Cute Boyness

When Boyness (5yo) woke up this morning, I looked at him and thought "that kid's got some puff to his cheeks still, the cute isn't all lost." He's been a very sticks-spiderman-guns-ninjas kind of kid lately. I'd pretty much decided that the child whose plump little toddler cheeks I used to kiss relentlessly (he loved it) was grown past the age of relentless-kissability.

This morning, as he was walking around the kitchen, I heard him singing something that I couldn't quite make out. He drifted into my vicinity and upped the volume and sang:

I have an apple
It's sweet like mommy
Sweet like mommy
Love my mommy
(mumblemumblesomethingIcan'tmakeout) apple! (BIG HUG)

~L~ calls this the "meat and potatoes of the parenting gig." Those things that give us what we need back from this whole sacrificial parenting THING. Completely random and completely fulfulling.

Happy Fourth/Boring Blog

We had, overall, a great 4th/5th campout thingie at ~L~'s house this not-weekend. Kids had fun, I was happy, Fran got to come and still didn't miss any work.

Toddlerness threw a fit of absolutely epic proportions this morning because she didn't want to wear a swimsuit to the beach. Well, kinda. I think that is what it started out being but it was way not-just-that by the time she was screaming her fucking head off in ~L~s house as we were trying to leave to walk to the beach. After about an hour total of "BURNED, SCARRED, CRUCIFIED, DESTROYED, LIFEISOVER, OMIGODI'MDYING," she suddenly snapped out of it as we walked down the last stretch towards the beach. Little shit. Had normal toddlerness-style fun for the rest of the beach trip.

Anyhow...

Oh, and my tent rocks. I made some very yummy brownies. I am right on the verge of being sunburnt.

Anyhow...

I have realized that my blog has been really, really, REALLY boring lately. This is mainly because life is clipping along in a very happy-busy kind of way, and I'm quite satisfied with how life has been treating me. I've got quite as many hurdles as you can imagine I would, being a homeschooling-SAHM-midwifery-student-type-person. The point is that I've been trotting along through life, hurdle-jump-hurdle, and I'm happy about it. And that, apparently, makes for some very boring blog fodder. I've decided that unless I've got some pics to commemorate something, I'm no longer going to post meaningless summaries-of-a-day just to post *something anything must update.* So prepare for long bouts with silence as I go through a happy summer. I hope.

A Very Unusual Weekend

This may sound like a pretty normalish weekend for other people. Rest assured, it wasn't for me.

On Saturday, we woke up to discover that we didn't really have anything to do. Called MIL, made breakfast, she called us back. "Did you take care of your glasses [since they are breaking and lopsided and about to bite it] yet? Maybe you can do that today and come visit after?" "No, I didn't, but that's a good idea, I'll look it up."

Frustrated by Fran's persistent presence at the computer, though, I did no such looking up of optometrists (my prescription being approximately 5 years out of date), and instead went outside and did lawn duty (weedwacking) for a bit. Came inside, went to set the glasses down, and they snapped. Well, so much for "maybe taking care of that today." Those were already the spares. Kids are brutal on glasses.

So I sit down - covered in grass clippings, sweaty, without my glasses - and look up LensCrafters locations - none in my area - find one in FedWay (home of MIL) and think "well damn, she's psychic again." Call them up. Encounter a potential problem - it is 1:45 and their only available appointments are at 2:30 and 3:00. FedWay is a good hour away and I am in dire need of a shower, and planning to go to a party later.

I somehow miraculously made it to FedWay in time (yes, showered and clothed), had an appointment (opthalmologist was interested to hear midwifery still existed), got a fancy new prescription and fancy new glasses and a fancy new credit card bill, went to the park, went to pick up ~L~, and made it to Louisa's party :).

Had a good time, jumped on a trampoline (that was fun), went to ~L~'s place, slept over there.

Yes, without Toddlerness.

Yes, for the very first time.

Yes, she survived.

On the way home I stopped for groceries, and beat Marie and her boys here by a scant margin. We filled the kiddie pool with hot water and bubbles, set up a net for some undetermined sport that was not quite badmitton and not quite volleyball and not anything like tennis, and Fran pulled out the speakers and his music player, and we had a good time playing. Exept that apparently the lure of chores was too strong. Marie somehow ended up washing my dishes (thank you!) and I ended up sweeping the winter debris off the roof. The NeighborFamily kids came over and played for a while but left in a timely manner as we were getting dinner ready. Tons of fun. Great day to have friends over.

Yesterday was my very first day of clinic. It looks like I won't get to touch people at this clinic (insurance sucks), but they're great teachers and I get to touch plenty of tools, supplies etc and look at plenty of charts and watch plenty of appointments and ask plenty of questions. I saw a couple of IUD insertions, a couple of ultrasounds, a couple of annual exams, and a few other things. All of it was pretty interesting. I did learn that 15 minute appointments (30 for annual exams) are not long enough, as the time felt really full even without a few of the things I think I'd have said/done. It is interesting to see how other people do things and evaluate whether you'd do it like that (yes for a general "I want birth control but don't know which" discussion I heard, no for the education re: the nuvaring).

I am now glad I'm only scheduled to do this 8 days (once a week July/Aug), because while it is interesting, standing in the corner/behind shoulders silently is going to get boring.

Toddlerness has been one big whiny yelling annoying MESS for the past week and it is not getting better. She's gearing up to enter three-year-old territory already, what with the clothing pickiness and the absolute insistence on not doing anything that anyone actually WANTS her to do. *Sigh* she's a handful lately. Well, always, but extra crazy-making lately.

Focaccia Suckage

So, yeah, I bake fairly often. And usually do pretty well at it.

Today it was focaccia for lunch.

After getting the dough right, getting the herbs right, making pesto mostly from stuff in my garden, and assembling four nice focaccia sheets and having them rise perfectly...

and setting the oven to the proscribed temperature...

and the timer for the proscribed minimum length...

It burned.

ARGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGH!!!!!!!!!!

How evil is it that I am making myself/kids eat them in order - most burned first?

What does it say about the how hungry my kids must be that they have eaten a sheet and a half? They're almost totally through the burnt stuff and into the good (not burned) stuff.

That or it's actually not that bad after all, which I refuse to believe since I'm doing my part and eating burnt focaccia, too. They have other food here. I'm just perplexed - why aren't the little buggers whining?

I shall now shut up and be happy that the little buggers are not only not whining, but happily eating burnt focaccia.

From the Past

~L~ sent me an email this morning of something she found from nearly 2 years ago:

I was standing in the kitchen in my pajamas at 12:30, holding a naked baby and a dive stick, trying to put cold taco meat into an overheated piece of pita bread to feed the whining 3 year old whacking my butt with a plastic train, when the thought hit me: If I had a camera mounted in my ceiling, I could take a picture now and my little sister would never, ever want kids.

Niki, who is considering installing a camera in the ceiling.

I had posted that on a message board we were both on.

Funny how little changes over two years.

Feeling Broadsided by Finals

I'm still not recovered from the two-week-onsite-adventure.

Allow me to bitch for a few.

I took three finals this afternoon. Pharmacology, Clinical Skills, and Midwifery Care. Our Midwifery Care instructor, as my fellow SMS students know, has a way of throwing obscenely difficult-to-reason-through questions at you. Nevertheless, MWC turned out to be the most predictable test I took this afternoon.

I'm not sure I took the pharmacology class that the final exam was written for. Seriously, I'm not. Like, really, I'm supposed to track down all the state regulations on homeopathy/herbal treatments/physical manipulation and scope of care, and provide references, and this is 3 points on a 24 point test? With a 2 hour time limit? Um, no? OK, slight exaggeration, not every question was that bad. But it was seriously headache inducing. Like looking up regulations isn't difficult enough without the time pressure.

I'm not sure I took the Clinical Skills course that the final was written for either, but at least they didn't ask me to pick out equiptment. I've had enough groping in the dark about that one, thankyouverymuch.

As if the tests themselves weren't bad enough, Toddlerness decided that she'd had enough of napping, and eating popcorn and watching Blue's Clues wouldn't cut it anymore, and started trying to escape - she was after her sibs, who were playing at the neighbors' house. I kept having to run after the little punkage. After 4 of these episodes I finally got wise and piled stuff in front of the door.

She was so frigging cute though, running out the door wearing *my* tie-dyed hemp t-shirt and nothing else, just so happy to be pounding her way down the path, that I couldn't get mad at her. And the time limit on the MWC test (the one I was taking during these episodes) was long this time around and I wasn't feeling any time pressure, so maybe it was actually a good thing I was up and down a bit.

I Wanna Barf In A Bowl

That ("I Wanna Barf In A Bowl") is what Toddlerness was saying when we thought she was just being difficult and incomprehensible. For two hours. Sitting miserably on the couch (in my lap, in Fran's lap, next to Becca, hugging a pillow...). Until she erupted a huge volume of barely-at-all-digested food dating back 12+ hours. And proceeded to barf intermittently over the next couple of hours until she was dry-heaving and bringing up frothy mini-mouthfuls of bile.

She's fast asleep now, on a nest of towels, next to her bowl.

Poor girlie.

Nuthin

So I'm posting to say that I haven't been posting because if I had been posting I'd just be venting, and at this point there have been so many dead-stupid things said in my lactation education course that I simply don't know where to begin (or end...or what to put in the middle).

Alive. Strangely enough, finding myself really enjoying carpooling into and out of Seattle with some of my classmates. Not finding a whole lot more to get excited about there.

Had a day off on Thursday, went to Mack's son D's party at ~L~s house. Made a cake without sugar or dairy and got my hands (and feet and knees and skirt) stained in fabric dye doing some tie dying with the kids. It turned out GREAT! Or, at least the stuff that I took home did. I hope everyone else's was great too :). It was a beautiful day with beautiful people :).

Buncha Shit

So I was about ready to kill my husband yesterday. ~L~ was here to watch my kids...he got home before me, and man was he ever putting out asshole vibes (grumpy vibes? whatever, he was making a nuisance of himself). Like anyone needed that, eh?

By way of explanation, I offered up that he'd been up late (very, very late, 3ish) coughing up blood after an exploratory mission into the baskets under the bed had uncovered a hunk of moldy old food and he'd inhaled some dust or something from that mold. It was nasty, and damn if that man doesn't cough SO FUCKING LOUD that I was awake until 3am too. But the kids, mercifully, slept through it and had no idea their dad was spitting blood into the sink. Until I was sleep-deprived enough not to think before discussing it with ~L~ in front of Girliness. Who is now like "why did daddy have blood in his cough? Didn't that hurt? When did he do it? Is he all sick? Is he OK?" UGH. I can't honestly answer that he IS OK, either, because it is still possible he'll get an infection off of this. I'm not into lying to the kids at the best of times, and when it might come back to bite me and result in her not trusting anything I say ever.again. If I'd lie to her about her daddy being OK, why wouldn't I lie about whether she is OK, her brother is OK, whatever.

But I was up until after 3 and then had to wake up at 5 to go to PEBL - Professional Education in Breastfeeding and Lactation. I learned a whole 2 new things!!! In 9 hours of instruction!!! And *gasp* my two new things aren't even new things that make a difference! Seriously, we don't have lactiferous sinuses - they're just the ducts dilated out during let-down? Whoop-de-fucking-do, you could have told me THAT in 5 minutes, sent me to the Medela website for some nice images, and we'd all be happy. I'm seriously pissed off at this. I am not looking to take the board exams, so all these requirements for didactic hours etc are meaningless to me, and yet, they mean that I'm taking approximately 30 more hours than I really need. What I WANT is for the school to get a qualified instructor to give a short course addressed to midwives, that leaves off all this hospital bullshit, because *MEMO, MEMO* we are not going to be dealing with hospital administration. And HOURS and HOURS of instruction to that effect had (and will continue to have) a severely head-nodding effect on my classmates and I.

I'm away from my family, for THIS. I'm having to arrange childcare and inconvenience my friends A LOT for THIS.

And then, to top it off, Fran found out he DOESN'T work tomorrow (whether he was supposed to know this is debatable according to his workplace, but I have a schedule ON MY FRIDGE that says that he was supposed to work tomorrow), and seriously...~L~ and clan were going to sleep over and miss her husband's leaving for a weeklong work trip, and they really didn't have a choice but to flee and get some family-time before that happened. Meaning she's driving extra and ~L~ had a very dissappointed Girlie on her hands.

My week is SHIT. AND I've had to cause shitty things for my friends.

And Fran just woke up saying he's having "rawness" pain breathing and swallowing and feeling achey and pain-ey. Fuck.

Thoughts on Children and Obedience

So, laying in bed half asleep this morning as my DD yelled and pushed and asked for "nummies" in the most ungracious way possible (not a morning child...), I had a musing.

Children, I thought, do not automatically honor or respect the needs of their parents. The infant does not care (does not even notice) that his mother is quite literally two steps from completely insane when he wakes every hour for a week during his growth spurt. The toddler does not care that her insistance on changing her outfit 50 times before leaving the house is making everyone late. The young child will recognize the feelings of his parents, but still places his own *wants* above his parents' *needs* in his own sensibility. This is a fact, pure and simple. It is not a FAULT, and they cannot be "held responsible" or "programmed out of it." It is developmental egocentrism and purely appropriate for their ages. It is how they are naturally equiped to get what they need in a world that often doesn't want to give it to them.

They do wish the approval and love of their parents, that bit is programmed in. They need not just our physical-needs-met-care but also our cuddles (in a very literal sense, as anyone who has even briefly studied developmental psychology knows). They will do things to get them.

So, to make a long story short, children come factory-supplied with the programming that makes them want to obey us. They do not come with the ability to recognize and yield to the needs of others - this develops over a long period of time.

Hence, children come programmed with the desire to yield to an authoritarian parent, but the consensual parent has an uphill battle to fight against the natural tendencies of their children. In this sense, while consensual parenting seems to be the nicest gentlest most respectful way to parent, consensual parenting in actuality disrespects the fact that children by their very nature want to please their parents. Babes were programmed to get what they need from us from the beginning - hence dependence. There cannot be an egalitarian relationship. There never was.

At some point in the middle, *I personally think,* there is the spot that pulls these concepts into balance. While I have been reading with respect the thoughts of those parents who practice consensual parenting, I have come to the conclusion that I have no respect whatsoever for the concept. It is simply not the natural way that children relate to themselves, their parents, their families, or the world. Children come preprogrammed to find this place and this balance, and in attempting to respect them, we are in fact disrespecting their own natural placement of themselves in the world.

I am heading out the door in a minute here, to go grocery shopping. My Toddlerness will be unhappy, no matter how much I involve or let or employ whatever many million tricks I've accumulated over 7 years of parentood. But I need to get food - I quite literally used the last bits of food in the house to make breakfast. And she needs to come with me. Am I disrespecting her? Well, no, I'm thinking...getting food for her to eat is highly respectful of her needs. We just have to do something she thinks is unpleasant. Eh, that's life.

Pictures of my kids

Have appeared here:

http://mama-hobbit.blogspot.com/2007/06/homeschool-scouts.html

:) The redhaired one is my Girliness, and the green-haired one is Toddlerness. Enjoy my freakish hair-dyed children (who LOVED LOVED LOVED it).

Sleeping Toddlerness

There is nothing in the world that gets Toddlerness to sleep longer and better than a trip to the beach with ~L~ and family.

On the other hand, perhaps it wasn't such a wonderful idea to drink two cups of coffee just to stay awake for another hour. I should have sucked it up and poured cold water on my head instead - I'd have been in bed two hours ago. I guess that using 2/3 decaf beans is simply not doing the trick. And I slept well last night, too, which isn't helping the exhaustion override the caffeine. If anybody out there in the inter-ether-world-net-web-thing ever stays at ~L~'s house, the secret is the futon plus the old mattress pad. More comfy than my bed at home. Come to think of it, both friends that I stay with frequently have comfier beds than I do. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Oh, oh, oh....and my fridge is pathetic right now. We had ribs for dinner. BBQ ribs. Nothing else. NOTHING. Ribs on the table in a pyrex dish with a side-dish of NOTHING. In the fridge? CONDIMENTS and NOTHING ELSE. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. Nothing in the drawers. Nothing on the shelves. We have a gallon container of milk in there, but it only has about 2t that I'm reserving for my next bout with caffeine. No butter. No bread or bread-like substances. No...you get my drift. OOOOOOH, there's a bag of flax in there. That's SOMETHING, right? I just hate shopping lately, is all. Hate it. Can't justify driving so far to do something that sucks so bad.

The Injury Update

1) Boyness doesn't seem to be overly traumatized by his experience. He wants to talk about it a lot, but that seems prety normal. No nighttime screaming fits last night, or reports of bad dreams.

2) After a wound-redressing session this morning on Toddlerness' knee, I'm wondering if it would have been better to take her in for stitches. This is going to be one hell of a scar, and the bandaids alone are not doing the trick in keeping the two halves close enough to prevent a nice wedge of scar tissue from plugging it up. I'm not at all worried about whether it will heal or not. Heck, *I* don't care if it scars, but at some point in the future *she* might care about it, and I don't like that. *Sigh* I am not going back in time to yesterday and taking her to Urgent Care after all, that's for sure, nor am I going to subject her to that repair at this point. I hope that it doesn't scar up too badly - then I won't have to feel guilty about it ;).

Even More Injury?

Well, not me this time. Today Boyness pulled the bookshelf down on himself, getting a nasty lump on the noggin in the process. Just to seal the deal, imagine he's holding up the bookshelf as stuff rains down on him, and it is blocking the door so NOBODY CAN GO HELP HIM. Supremely shitty.

And then quite shortly afterwards, Toddlerness came up from an average-looking fall with more-than-average crying, but wanted to get back to playing. "Why is her foot red," NeighborGirl yells. Oh, shit. Don't read the following blockquote if you are blood/gore sensitive:

She had such a gash on her knee that the only thing that kept normally-very-level-headed me from running to the ER (and I'm sure they would have stitched it) is the fact that it washed out nicely (though not without even-greater-than-typical Toddlerness drama) and stopped bleeding promptly once I'd reunited the edges of the wound and gauzed and taped the whole deal. That was a lot of blood. Holy cow was it ever. But Toddlerness has some super-coagulating blood-of-wonder or something, I swear - it was coming out dark and thick...sticky even before it had a chance to sit around. The wound that soaked foot, slipper, dress, and assorted rocks and gravel in the driveway didn't even overcome a band-aid (or three...) once I'd washed it and pulled it closed. I think the only reason it bled so much outside is that she was walking around and kind of *milking* blood out of the wound as it opened and closed.

It is like we were saving up for this week or something! Crazy, eh? Stars aren't in our favor. Must hide somewhere soft and cushy.

2 New Ways to Injure Yourself

In case you were wondering.

Grass can cause cuts - similar to a papercut, but worse - and this situation is especially interesting if you shake your hand and resume weedwacking only to realize the extent of your injury when blood has lubricated the handle enough to make it slip from your hand.

If you have been steam cleaning your carpet, and your feet are all nice and soft and steam-cleaned-like, and you then walk into the kitchen where one of your children has dropped a corn chip, corn chip fragments can indeed penetrate the nicely-softened skin. They feel much like glass going in, but coming out are messier and far more likely to cause infection.

I Might Have a Practicum Placement

And I am TERRIFIED.

Did I mention that just LAST NIGHT I woke up in the middle of the night stressing about how I was going to handle practicum?

And then today I get set up?

UGH. Stress-out city.

Bubbles!

Apparently, if you take Palmolive oxy concentrated dish soap and baste it on the inflatable pool to find a hole, and then fill up the pool without wiping it, you get a LOT of bubbles.

And your kids love the bubbles.

And, scary chemical stuff that Palmolive Oxy is, the fun lasts ALL AFTERNOON!!! And your kids come in cleaner than, well, ever!

The best part was when they decided they were going to get their heads full of bubbles...by bending over and running circles around the edge of the pool. Little butts circling in a sea of bubbles. It was hillarious. The second-best part was when Tony freaked about bubbles in the eyes (over the eyes, more like, nobody got hurt...), finally got them clean, and then about 10 seconds later Becca NAILED him with a well-intentioned bucket full of clean water.

No pictures, unfortunately.

I, on the other hand, spent my time outside sweating like mad, alternately sitting all floppy-like in the shade and chopping wood. I came inside stinky and sore. And made spaghetti for dinner. Don't buy whole wheat pasta by De Cecco. It has that nasty-ass aftertaste that I've always associated with whole wheat pasta. The sauce was great, though, and that made up for it, 'cause we just drowned it.

Park, Beach, Missed Dad

We decided to meet up with ~L~ and crew for some glorious-day fun yesterday. We went to the park!

(where's your nose, toddlerness?)

We went to the beach!

He's so excited he's LEVITATING!!! OK, so seriously, I did not edit this photo. Click for larger version.


We went to the zoo (and didn't take any pictures!)

And I missed my dad being in Seattle, 'cause I wasn't expecting him to be available and I'd just driven an hour and a half and didn't think it would be quite fair to load the kids back up in the car for another long trip, especially as they'd just started to have fun with their friends. That was a bummer, but at least we didn't misconnect and then have a shitty day or something. It was an awesome, glorious day. And hopefully my dad (and the rest of my family - I miss them all) will be able to come and spend a couple of glorious, awesome days with us soon.

Today is another lovely day. We've already done some beading (Becca and Naomi) and reading (me - "Healing Passage, a Midwife's Guide to the Care and Repair of the Tissues Involved in Birth" - a book which curiously combines the clearest advice I've read so far with a tendency to use words like "yoni" rather than "vagina" and, particularly snort-inducingly, "clitorotomy" instead of "episiotomy"). More fun to come, I'm sure.

Cool Stuff...

http://science.discovery.com/fansites/howitsmade/videogallery/videogallery.html

http://www.howstuffworks.com

Wild Toddler Spotting (and other pictures)

We spotted a wild toddler through the window:

While the kids put together a LEGO RC car.

View from just outside my front door, the garden in front of the house (Tomato, cabbages, a couple kinds of lettuce, broccoli, onion - that's the blank-looking area - and you can kinda see the apple/nutmeg scented geranium at the bottom):

Even the storm wreckage looks pretty:


Boyness goofs off:

OK, so it doesn't look pretty, but I SWEAR that letting the chickweed grow around the tomato and pepper plants - once the plants are taller than the chickweed will get - keeps the ground from drying out. And I SWEAR that there are tomato and pepper plants in there. And in the second partition, there are strawberries (there I don't let the chickweed grow). In the round thing on the right, there is a ton-ish volume of mint.

Girliness:

Toddlerness:

I swear there's a garden in there, just have to pull it out...there are beds around the edges, and I planted in them (lavender, curry, oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, potato, cantaloupe, watermellon, cucumber, squash, pumpkin, onion) but they're hiding behind the summer overgrowth of the regular forest-clearing flora.

Holiday Weekends SUCK

Fran had Friday off. Great, I thought, there are a billion things we can go do!! Um, no. The rest of the world had the day off too.

I love going places while nobody else is there (or relatively few anybody-elses are). Antisocial, whatever, I just don't like dealing with the masses. I'll take that parking spot right next to the zoo entrance and the picnic lawn to myself, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, I felt grounded this weekend. We went off to have some fun with M and her family, and helped friends move, and I misconnected with Aimee (which I feel really bad about, my fault for not calling early enough). And I'm still grounded today. Suckage.

Meanwhile, I have been procrastinating my schoolwork, and then Fran reformatted the computer and now I can't finish it off and turn it in. It's there, I just can't open it until he figures out office - but with all the friend-moving and such this weekend, and dinner scheduled with his mom tonight, it is not getting done. I am not fond of writing assignments in Notepad. And can't get the half-done ones open anyhow.

Whine, whine, whine!

But on a much, much happier note, I was semi-awakened (we were laying around in bed half-awake) by a very happy, very newborn-inspired phone call this morning. YAY new babies! I can't wait for the whole story :). OK, I can. Enjoy that babymoon, mama :)

A House For Toddlerness

Well, she calls it her house anyway. This is what we did with the space underneath the bunk. Toddlerness is pretty much beside herself. She understands that the big kids get to sit in there too, but has decided that since her bed is under there, it is HER territory.

Not that she'll sleep on her bed or anything.

And yes, that big ugly thing on the wall is a heater. A gargantuan, ancient heater. Inside, it has, like, a toaster element that had a pituitary tumor and grew to unweildy proportions. If you actually run it, it smells precisely like what you might imagine a toaster element that had a pituitary tumor and grew to unweildy proportions would smell if you stuck it in painted sheet metal, left it unused for 5 years, knocked into it a few times, and then decided, on a whim, to see whether it worked. It blows hot air, all right. But if you have to open all the windows to get the god-awful smell out of your nose, how much good does THAT do?

Rambleness

On Thursday, Fran had to work after all. Surprise! They called him as he was getting ready to go and asked him to go to a different store for the day. Despite the fact that he has been a humongous stress-case about starting the new job, he actually managed to take the change of plans really, really well.

I gathered up random stray children that were wandering around my house (I just happened to have grabbed ones that I gave birth to, what are the odds?), boiled eggs, steamed artichokes, packed a cooler, and headed off to Luther Burbank Park on Mercer Island (ok, this park rocks, go there people-who-are-nearby). We spent 6 hours at the park. Only the first hour and a half or so was spent at the playground-kinda-thingy (all 80s looking and cool). The rest we spent exploring - rolling down the hills, walking the trails, checking out the old dairy barn...we even managed to fit in some swimming! As we were leaving, toddlerness gave me a handful of yellow flowers and toddler-ran off, turning to say, "mama, I a happy face!" Everyone was tired and ready to go at the end of that 6 hours, but still happy. Summer-day-at-the-part UTOPIA! I didn't get any pictures because I couldn't find the camera. Until we got home. When I found it in the bag I'd been lugging around all day. Crap.

We came home sunburnt and tired (ok, I was tired - the kids had slept in the car and were ready for round 2, of course) just as Fran was starting in on the dinner project. Awesome.

Today, we had a big fire, and burned a lot of the stuff that was blocking the path to the 'clear play area' thing on the far side of the driveway. Not all, but a lot. When Toddlerness fell asleep for her nap, I grabbed Girliness and we headed off for some us time. Soft pretzels on a picnic bench, Starbucks in Target, way too many purchases on Girliness-discretion...including an inflatable pool with inflatable slide that the kids spent much of the afternoon on. Fran made pizza over a wood fire on his grill, and it is coming out pretty well. I'll have to encourage this him-making-dinner thing, because we'd fallen into a rhythm where I was doing it most of the time and I kinda like this him-doing-it version better.

Oh, Stubborn Toddlerness!

It seems like her express purpose in life is to annoy me.

Clothes? We don't need no fucking clothes! Who wants to wear a diaper?! Who CARES how long the car ride will be, or whether I'm scared to death of public toilets? What gives? Can't I just wear my little sundress? Yeah, 50 degrees, whatever. I was made in Washington, remember mama? Cold? I laugh at your concept of cold. Silly you, trying to get the house up to 70.

NOOOOOOO I can't wear that shirt. It isn't "princess" enough.

Or that one. "don't likeit the square ona front"

THAT DRESS, IT BURNS US!!!!! I can't wear THAT one!!! Can't you TELL I can't wear that one, mama!!! OWWWWW, it BURNS US, GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF!!!!

Oh for fucksakes, just get some damn clothes on so we can go to the store. Drama queen.

Not that we go to the store well, either. Because apparently, it is ALSO boyness' express purpose in life to annoy me. It is apparently HILLARIOUS to run around like a little madman in Trader Joes, because mama doesn't like yelling in the store so we can get away with a little more. OMG I was ready to strangle him. If thoughts could kill, there would be a chalk outline on the floor of TJs right this moment.

At the same time, Toddlerness is heavily invested in trying to escape the cart. And Girliness is asking me a ZILLION AND ONE QUESTIONS and begging to be given cash so that she can pay for our groceries.

Hu-yup, Fran will be doing the grocery shopping for a few months, or hanging with the kids while I do. Not that this will fix the fact that I can't keep clothing on Toddlerness for more than 15 seconds (unless of course that particular outfit was entirely her own idea, which of course never happens when I want to leave the house, and if it does it involves a little sundress and coincides with 40 degrees and rain). It seems to work to wait until everyone else is ready, speed-dress her, and strap her into her carseat before she can take anything off (she can't get clothing off around the carseat straps).

*ugh*

In other news, the Trader Joes brand whole wheat pasta agrees nicely with Fran's blood and insulin and shit (ok, not sure about the shit...), which is great because it is also quite cheap and tastes quite good, without that cardboard feel that you get off of some other whole wheat pastas. Big thumbs up on that one. Yay for small changes making big differences.

Triple bunk

I decided to triple bunk the beds. Yesterday I pulled half of creation apart (ok, so I just moved beds around, but that is one hell of a job in my house - anyone who has been here knows that there is no simple way to do it). There was a surprising amount of shit underneath the bunk, including a couple of banana peels, one of them stuck to the wall. Yeah, the kids aren't supposed to eat in that room. Ew.

Anyway, I got the bottom bunk moved to the middle position, and then we realized what a truly rockin' clubhouse we had on the bottom - Toddlerness can walk right under there without even ducking. Toddlerness is honestly not showing any inclinations towards WANTING to move out of my bed, and we might be able to get a toddler mattress in there sideways and still have room for a rug and a lamp, which might be really cool. We'll see. I know that I am NOT going to put the full-sized mattress under there the way I intended.

I'm cold.

I need to study for an exam and really don't want to. Anemia. You'd think it would be relatively simple, but noooooo, it has been tougher for me to understand than anything else we've covered so far. Maybe it is the fact that so much of it is about numbers. I can manipulate numbers pretty well, but suck at memorizing them. Example - I got through physics because if I understood a concept I could make up a formula. I'm not sure I ever flat-out memorized a formula.

Untended

I think I left that last post untended for too long.

I am not despairing my abilities as a parent. Nor do I think that if Fran had primary kid-ing responsibilities he would keep up the pace of last week. Or maybe he would. He kept up a ridiculous pace while I was in my 13 weeks of morning sickness and he was also still working. 13 weeks is a pretty long time. I am not talking "I'm 13 weeks gestation today!" I'm talking he spent an actual 13 week time frame running the kids all over creation as well as making breakfast, lunch, and dinner (because I was useless, he'd premake stuff for our day so that everyone still got fed).



You know how there is a "weekend schedule?" The way the house runs when both parents are home/it is break time/whatever - when you are doing minimal house upkeep and maximal fun. This didn't feel like that. He cleaned under the couch. There was no kid-hand-off when I got home. You know what I mean, right? Most SAHM have experienced this. You have a "mama day out" or whatever, and when you get home it's "thank god you're back, here, have a kid, what's for dinner?" Didn't happen.

But anyway, I think I'm a perfectly decent parent. Maybe better than "perfectly decent." I feel pretty good about how well things hold together under the strains we've got (my school, homeschool, my internet addiction, you know, strains). And yeah, it takes a couple of years after a new kid to get up to what, in my mind, is complete dad-ability, cause he lacks boobs. Well, not entirely. He lacks FUNCTIONAL boobs? Something like that. I'm sad about not being able to rearrange things the way he would like, despite the fact that I think he really would make a capable SAHD. But I'm not, like, depressive about it, or thinking that I'm a less suitable stay-at-home-parent.

Fran started his new job yesterday. He looks good in all black (new uniform) with real dress shoes (also new), even though the dress shoes are pretty damned uncomfortable. He's been doing minor exercises every morning and I think it shows in his posture, if not yet in his weight.

Anywho, some pictures from while I was at onsite and Fran took the kids everywhere:

Bloody blog, House Husband, SAD

Onsite is over again. I've got a million and one thoughts rattling through my brain, so I'm just going to ramble a bit. I know that there is at least one person reading this who has needle issues, so I'm going to block-quote until I'm done with the needle talk (just skip down to where the margin shifts back to normal...)

I started IVs today. And at last onsite. These seem easy to me. There is something about the feel of it. About how you can just FEEL when you have gotten to the right spot and you're (almost) home free from there. I'm still a little messy about it, but I picked up a great tip from the RN in the group about how to keep things a little neater. On the other hand, I seem to be non-competant at drawing blood. I am not sure why I find the IV *cannula in particular* so easy to feel, but have no similar "just feel it" going on with the blood drawing. My instructors think that this is peculiar (not the instructors for this particular course, who are wisely -IMO- not critiquing this disconnect just yet), as not only are the ideas so similar but most people have it the other way 'round.

I have a bruise on my hand that is there by no fault of my classmate. I am mightily impressed that she got an IV running on the back of my hand, in a vein that looked and felt to me little larger than the IV cannula itself. I got saline and electrolytes. My dehydrated body loves you, Classmate.

We also took a look at some real lab slips, and that was awesome. The learning had been ridiculously abstract.

I still don't have a preceptor and am feeling...irritated. I am essentially in home turf for SMS, and them asking me for a list of midwives in my area makes me feel...how shall I put this nicely...oh I can't...like they're fucking with me. *breathe out* *release tension in shoulder muscles* *you didn't want a clinical placement yet anyway, you TOLD them you wanted to ease into it slowly and that delayed was OK, it is unfair of you to freak out about it now*

*sigh*

In other news, my husband has been having a grand time with the kids this week. They have met up with other papas, they've met up with his brother, they've gone to the zoo, and to the park. He has kept them clean and fed, bathed and played and happy. He CLEANED. The house is far cleaner right now than it normally is while I'm watching them.

He shows no signs of being stressed out about all of this. When I got home at 10 last night, he was putting the polish on a full day and totally happy about it. This reminds me of those times when I have been forced (not in a prying-it-out-of-my-hands kind of way, but in a "I can't jump in and just do it" way) to hand over large chunks of parental responsibility in order to preserve my personal integrity in the face of hyperemesis (morning sickness) or early postpartum. My husband has by and large simply jumped in and taken up the vast majority of what REALLY comprises the heart and soul of parenting. The tear-wiping, the park-going, the storm-drain-watching, the patient teaching, the kid-nurturing HEART of parenting. I've never needed to ask him to do any of these things, he has just seen the kids' needs and filled them.

He wants another baby.

I think that *he* could handle another baby with the way we live. But I don't think that I could. It makes me sad to tell him that I can't do it now, it really does, because of all the things that midwifery school has caused us to give up, this is the biggest saddest one. Not that we are giving up having another baby entirely, but that it feels so unfair to ask my husband to make all these huge sacrifices and contributions to something that is essentially all about *me*...and then I am, on top of that, telling him that while I can hear him and feel his pain and longing for another child, I just can't do it. And it is largely a CHOICE, a lifestyle CHOICE that I made when I decided that now was the time to do this crazy midwifery education thing. A choice that was all about me. I am important. It is my body, and my life that is overrun for the first good-long-while of a new child's life. So I stand rather comfortably by that choice as the best one all around. But it hurts to see my husband hurt, and to know that what I have chosen has largely caused that. Not that he doesn't have choices, too, and not that his hurt is ruining or overshadowing our relationship/family/whatever. Not that he is perfect and such a stellar person and father that I feel like I'm denying him this one-last-piece to his perfect life. It is simply a sad, sad thing.

But I am also, simultaneously, realizing that I suffer from some variation on SAD (seasonal affective disorder) that is kind of like a Seasonal Kinesthetic Disorder or something. My mood does not become depressed, but my body does. I was sick on and off all winter, and got so tired so easily and for so long. When the days are longer and I am spending time in the sun, I can get far less sleep and still be happy and healthy about it. I do think that there was something chemically, physically different about my body this winter, and I do think that it is because of the weather. What to do about that, if anything, is a different question entirely. At the moment I am simply relieved that I'm not feeling the 7 consecutive nights of less than 6 hours of sleep in the same way that I would have a two months ago. When we get around to next winter, perhaps I will devise some sort of management plan...even if that plan is simply to be aware of the fact that my body has set these limitations, and in order not to drive myself into sickness, I need to accept them.

Out of Context?

You guys are just going to trust that the context surrounding this quote was exactly what logic leads you to think it is, because you're almost certainly right.

I have to rest in the fact that my husband will seek God for council and then answer to God for his decisions. I will answer to God for how I submitted to my husband.

This has been bugging me since I first read it, plucked from a homeschooling discussion board, about 5 days ago. Bugging me in a "does not compute" kind of way.

Marriage is not a free pass out of hell. Christianity (you'll have to trust that's the context of this, 'cause it is) is not about passing off your own responsibility. It is really about some curious mixture between personal accountability and Jesus, in most versions of the religion.

And frankly, it scares me that there is even one woman out there who hangs her hopes of eternal salvation on how well she submits to her husband. That's not Christianity, that is husband-worship. I've read the Bible through and through no few times, and I've never seen THAT advocated. It could also be, in my opinion, a rather cowardly attempt to assign blame for one's own damnation on another human being. Isn't your soul worth more than that to you?

*Phew* monkey off my chest, I do hope.

Ahhhhh

So, yes while I am in a state of generalized consternation about the origins of Mothers' Day and the current form in which we celebrate it...the kids are too damned cute. And I do love my mom and did give her a call today.

And I have a rockin' husband who doesn't expect me to be housekeeper-then-wife-then-mother-THEN-person. See? And yeah, he did invite his mom over this afternoon. But we had a pretty decent time of it. She actually seemed to LIKE helping the kids make "leaf soup" in their humongous stump aka "the house."

Fran did something else that rocked today, too. He and Girliness continued their togetherness kick by cooking together - while Toddlerness took her nap they prepared the teriyaki marinade. As usual, Fran was far more patient than I usually am and by this evening - after several more daddy/daughter learning experiences - I overheard Girliness telling him "Some kids learn in school. And some kids have home school. And some kids learn because they do things every day and their brains work and they figure things out." Followed by a lengthy listing of things she'd learned today (everything from dividing a recipe to figuring out which sticks are dry enough to start a fire).

So this evening I am experiencing a more-than-anticipated warmth and happiness with my family.

I still think the holiday is a sham. And if we have to pretend that it's about celebrating our mothers, I'd much rather have done it with my own than with Fran's. And I do have flowers slowly withering and dying on my kitchen counter, courtesy of MIL. *Sigh* at least they're pretty. I wonder how many tons of glass make it into the landfill courtesy of Mother's Day vases, though.

Happy Mothers' Day?

It seems odd that I, a mother, dislike Mothers' Day (and yes, the apostrophe IS supposed to be after the "s").

Some history, may I? Under the guise of legitimizing what is basically a holiday intended to celebrate women who have remained happily in "their place," numerous versions of the history of mothers' day exist.

In my personal favorite fiction, Mother's Day has been celebrated since before recorded history, in the guise of worship of feminine mother-deities. Sorry, no. While such deities have certainly been celebrated, it's a pretty awesome stretch to say that mothers were thus celebrated and therefore we need to buy things from Hallmark. There is no straight line (nor even a curvy dashed one) between the two.

Mothers' Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

And yet, it is the saccharine Anna Jervis version (a pale shadow of the Mothers' Work Days that her mother, Anna Reeves Jervis, promoted and celebrated) of the holiday that made it into the hearts of the (male, durh) lawmakers. By the time Mother's Day had (apostrophe appropriately moved) made it just a few years, even Anna Jervis who said: "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit," was more than a little sickened by what was developing. Which isn't even why I dislike Mother's Day (although I certainly don't like the commercialism).

So why do I dislike Mother's Day? I dislike the celebration of ideal-woman-as-domestic. I am passionate about the FACT that women deserve respect. How is this respect? This tradition of a pat on the head and a few flowers and a "job well done!" congratulations for "all that woman-type work" we do?

Well, damn, I'd rather have my husband hand me a martini on the way in the door every evening. And keep the kids quiet...I've worked hard and need my rest, after all. Dinner should be warm too, in appreciation of the hard work I've done.

You see? SEE how it comes down? Men get this respect. Women get a breakfast in bed once a year. Little hand-scrawl-imitation greeting cards showing stick women with vaccuum cleaners. And doesn't every woman love watching flowers slowly wither and die in a vase on the kitchen counter?

Give me a fucking break.

~L~ Made Me a Pretty

Nature Toddler

The big kids spent the morning planting with me. Becca planted all of her flowers all by herself, after I showed her how to do the first one :). She even came up, on her own, with a method of measuring the distance between them using a long stick so that they are now spaced evenly and take up the whole border of our longest planting bed. I planted the other lovelies I got from Molbaks, and the flowers from my MIL. The big kids ran off to play on the waterslide again, and I got to follow her royal toddlerness around with a camera as she got progressively dirtier and more tired.

The Day Was Fun (But Toddlers Still Suck and Bugs Can Hurt)

Yesterday, on the way to meet a newly-van-endowed ~L~ at Molbaks (great place!), I decided to stop for crackers and cookies for the little buggers. Um, bad idea? Holy shit, the bad behavior! And Toddlerness at the head of the group! Stay in the cart? Oh HELL NO. She can undo the strappies...and cast herself right on out of that seat. Yes, cast. Or climb. And if she's not busy doing that, she's busy taking stuff off the shelves. Never fear, if I let her out, she just grabs more stuff from lower shelves. As she runs out of my range. With reckless abandon. Into the paths of other carts.

The whole grocery store shenanigan took over 30 minutes. To get two bags of groceries worth less than $20. I left my house when ~L~ left Fife, and she BEAT ME TO WOODINVILLE. What the hell.

Molbaks was a similar toddler-chasing shitstorm. Got out of there for $20-something, (oooh, maybe less, because I had to go back and get refunded for an overcharge), especially remarkable considering the whole tray of flowers I got *just for Becca* (who was very thrilled with that whole idea).

~L~s family then came to my house, where kids played and had fun with surprisingly few incidents, and mamas drank coffee and watched kids flow in and out with surprisingly few incidents. At 6 I suddenly realized it was, well, 6, and started making dinner. As I was completing that prep, GirlieG (Girliness' similar-age bud) came SCREAMING up the hill.

Of course I immediately blamed Boyness (in my brain), but the true culprit was yellow jackets...and that had hurt so much she'd gone barelling straight into the stinging nettles. Poor girlie! A bath, lots of vit. c (she chewed the not-chewable tablets! And didn't even complain! Like a particularly reliable message board participant had said, they know when they need it and just eat it, even though it's nasty), some salve, and she was well enough to sit and eat dinner. Which surprised the crap out of me, because she'd been stung on the lip. And it was quite swollen. I do believe I'd have been curled up in my bed with a handful of ice, clothed full body to keep from irritating the nettle stings, feeling sorry for myself.

Boyness got stung too, on his chest, and some sting gel seemed to help him enough that he forgot about it rather promptly. This is a relief, since the gel doesn't work worth shit on nettle stings, so it's good to know it is useful for something.

The Diabetic Husband

So Fran has been diagnosed with diabetes. We were going to hold off until he had insurance with his new job, but he talked to his doctor's office about it and they pushed through all the fun stuff he'd have gotten then anyway. He's got the monitors and the strips (free, no payment portion for us, cool eh?) and since he's off the plan shortly, they gave him a boatload of strips. They told us that this wouldn't be a problem with his new insurance unless he was going to go self-employed; any employer plan would cover him, and the stuff they'd balk at getting him was what the office gave him yesterday. So yeah, they'd better be right about that.

He was feeling rather depressive about all of it on Tuesday, after talking on the phone with the nurse there about his test results, but after his half-day appointment/counseling/etc session yesterday is actually feeling really good about everything. He had nothing but glowing, wonderful things to say about the nurse that did his counseling, actually. I was kinda worried about the poor soul who would have that task. Fran tells me that she reminded him strongly of my own mom, because she has an issue (my mom's is breastfeeding, this nurse's was dietary control of diabetes), and simply knows everything about it and tells you exactly what you need to hear about.

So anyway, if I knew who this mysterious nurse was (and she was the touchy-feely sort), there would be many hugs and kisses and expressions of utmost gratitude. Because I sure as hell don't have it in me to be any sort of inspirational or uplifting or anysuchshit, and he is taking this so very well after that talk.

His doctor thinks that the nurse (another one) rather overstated the severity of his disease over the phone, and it is highly likely that he has many more years of small dietary changes being plenty, and may never actually need to be on insulin. Given that he has several uncles, an aunt, and a grandmother on insulin, and that he has already exhibited peripheral neuropathy, I was surprised to hear this, but his doctor seems to think that the problem is not hugely abnormal blood sugar readings so much as minimally abnormal readings over a long period of time.

I was also relieved to hear that he won't need to make a huge overhaul, at least not at first. I'll change some of what I buy and make, of course, but the doctor doesn't seem to think that he needs to take such extreme measures as not eating bread or rice any more (as was the case with his grandma) - just switch to the whole grain (I'd already started this) and halve the carb portions and see what happens first. This is a whole lot more palatable to me than the diet I've seen his other family members on.

So we'll see, eh?

Nettles, Waterslides, and Tricycles

This is what it looks like on both sides of the path down to the neighbor's house. Cute, eh? In case you don't recognize it, that is stinging nettle. These, erm, lovely plants hold acid on the undersides of their leaves. Acid that they fling at anything that happens to touch (brush against, think about) them. The kids refer to them unaffectionately as "the stingies." They feel like some mesh between a bee sting and a burn. I have just decided that the next unwary friend to come to my house will find her children covered head to toe and battling the nettles. I have some uses for the plants, but not for that many. Luckily, they don't just compost "well," they are stellar composters, actually heating up the compost mixture (speeding the process).

Here are some kids going down the "watersliderslipper" (term courtesy of some random neighborfamily kid), which - yes - consists of a kiddie slide and about 40 feet of plastic sheeting - and OMG the fun. Yes, that is Naomi climbing the slide at the top of the photo, and yes, she thought it was GREAT. After a few rides down the hill she decided she was sooooo cold, but wasn't willing to come home with me for new clothes/towels, and curled up on a piece of sun-warmed plastic until she got bored and went to ride her tricycle in the driveway with the other too-cold children. Becca, of course, milked every last second out of the availability of the waterslide coolness, and came home with a sore rear end long after the other two had given it up.

And here are a few photos of the warmer-in-the-driveway fun:

Playing, Barbeque, and Baking Happiness

Yesterday was glorious. By 10am, we'd hit 60 (and when our little shaded spot here hits 60 that early, you know the rest of the world is having a nice warm day). So I threw some beef ribs in a marinade (prep for dinner - go me!), fed the children, and off we ran to Pine Lake Park. We spent 6 lovely hours there (wow, the 6 hour theme! That must be my kids' wide-barrel attention span or something). The kids spent entirely too much time quizzing the people on the dock about all things fishing-related (except for the older couple from Belarus who couldn't understand the kids too well, they all seemed happy with the curious kids).
We ended up meeting the neighbor kids there entirely by accident in the last hour we were there. This could not have thrilled the little buggers more...but there were 8 kids altogether and I'm afraid they descended back upon the playground, newly excited, like a plague of overlarge locusts. When the neighbor family had to take a bathroom break, I seized the opportunity afforded by the temporary friendlessness of my children, gathered up my (thank GOD it's only three) little monsters and ran for it.
The park was entirely too pretty yesterday. So was our own "yard," though. When Fran came home I set him to the grilling and the kid-supervising, and worked on my own half-finished baking projects. And cleaning projects. Because thanks to Toddlerness, the house smelled like fennel. A lot of fennel. Underfoot, it crushes a little like dried lavender - not in that it smells at all the same, but in that as you step on it and grind it into the carpet it creates a smell-aura. Added to the heat of the day finally catching up with my (very insulated) house, it was actually pretty hot. Pretty hot plus fennel-mess. Ew.
Anywho, they played outside and barbequed ribs and I did all my baking (and a goodish volume of school reading and carpet vacuuming), until Fran poked his head in the door "hey Niki?" "yeah?" "is it really 8:10?" "errr...YES! Yikes!" "Ok, we're coming in!" And this is when I admit to rambling a bit so that the pictures fit into the blog better. I'm tired of rambling now and hopefully have filled enough space for it not to look funky on your screen. So I'll talk about bread now.

Last week I did an experiment, making a dough with half white/half whole wheat flour...and then leaving it to rise until it collapsed. I wanted to see just how far I could push it, you know? At the end of the experiment (it collapsed between 4 and 5 hours) I had some yummy, but very dense, sourdough bread. So yesterday I made the same recipe, this time with maximum rise in mind. It worked! I mean, not that you can really tell in the picture or anything. But it is light and fluffy and wonderful inside. Just like my previous attempts at whole wheat/blended bread haven't been. We ate it with soft cheese, along with our (very messy) barbeque ribs.

I also made angel food cake. I lacked quite a few necessary implements, though. No beaters (not even hand-cranked ones!), no sifter, no tube pan. No "cake flour." Thank goodness for healthy local chickens making healthy eggs with hard-to-break yolks, because my first egg separation ever came off perfectly. The cake was a little too dense, as I simply didn't have any more whisking in me by the time I got to "ok it's kind of making a peak," but it was of recognizeable taste and texture and was excellent with strawberries and ice cream. And yes, that is a picture of the inside of my oven.

By the time we had eaten barbeque ribs, bread with cheese, peas, and then our strawberry "shortcake" kinda thing, it was 10. At 10:30 I read stories to the kids. And now at 8:30 this morning, it is looking like another glorious day and the big ones are still sleeping. On the list for today? Laundry, a decidedly indoor task. Damn.

I Bought TIME!

Ok, well, just as good!



I've been wanting to get a marble run for a long time. For a while I was stuck on the really expensive wooden ones, but this fantastic set was just $15 at Target, so I broke down and bought it. I was gratified to find, once I got home, that I simply couldn't have gotten the same set online for any less, although the same company makes a really cool transparent set as well as a humongous set, both of which are on the future-purchase-or-present list.



And yesterday, for 6 GLORIOUS hours, I did homework and studied and Fran caught up on his sleep, all to the wonderful clack-clack-clack-bump and vocal quietude of happy-busy kids.

In Which the Kids Have Way Too Much Fun

Birthday party at Odyssey 1 in Tacoma. Pretty much the awesomest place ever for kids. All three of them had a BLAST.