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.