Today the Hubby watched The Lord of the Rings.

All of them.

The *extended* versions.

Yes, he is that hard core.  Actually, it’s mostly that he’s friends with folks that are that hard core, and he likes to hang out with them.

A facebook event invite was sent out.  People rsvp’d.  The viewing local?  The social hall of the church (that’s what you get when the pastor is the event coordinator).  Sound and visuals taken care of by one of the church sound techs (something about upgrading projectors so it was blu-ray quality, even though the blu-ray editions won’t be released until April – duh).  Sound tech’s wife (our children’s pastor) set up the comfy chairs and padded pews for those with “sensitive” tooshies.  An area for non-chatters and an area for chatters designated.  My comment:  the only thing lacking was a person live-blogging the event.

Oh, and that other minor detail lacking:

CHILDCARE.

Today, I have been a Lord of the Rings widow, and I would like to say that I have triumphed!  It’s my first day feeding, dressing, shopping for, entertaining (thank you, Michelle, for hosting the widows – our own elven sanctuary), feeding, cleaning, napping, entertaining, feeding, cleaning, entertaining, bathing, feeding, reading to, cleaning, and putting to bed three tykes all by my lonesome.

It’s 9:43:  one tyke is is swaddled and snoring, the other two are “cuddling” under a sleeping bag (well, one has his midsection covered while the other has buried his head) on the top bunk bed.

I’d like to see a Melissa and Doug Responsibility Chart with all my duties, because they’re checked off, and I’d like my sticker now, pleaseandthankyou.

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It snowed yesterday.  And the world ceased to function, at least in the Pacific Northwest.  I can say that in my condescending way because I’m from Idaho where people know how to take care of snow, and because I was not on the roads, and because my husband got off of work early and only had a seven minute commute home.  So we played.

First, we wrap a Boo in a bunting from a GrandMom.  Yes, it’s big, but it’s pretty and fuzzy and red and from Nordstrom’s (I think).

Then we voyage outside:  yes, the bunting has ears.

Oooh, all pretty and white.  We watch as the professionals take to the field.

They survey the territory, assess the situation, take in all the details.

Cold.  Wet.  White.  Yep, it’s snow.

The girls hang by the sidelines, letting the experts get to work.

We make do with snow gear:  pockets are used to dethaw hands.

Time to get to work:  man making.  Small man of snow making, because the women-folk were inside whipping up something yummy and warm.

Watching the mama do her thing in the kitchen.

Pope Boo?

Whatchu giggling at, woman?

No more pictures, Mamarazzi!

When the Menfolk were done with their heavy lifting, they came in to defrost with some made-from-scratch hot cocoa (dude, the IKEA frother thingie is *awesome*).  Oh, and pjs, and later breakfast for dinner, cause that’s how we swing around here.

Making Giant Pancakes for dinner:  a logical choice to match the giant pancake snowflakes.

Some wondered where their hot cocoa goodness was:  all in good time, Little Miss, all in good time.

Some snow bunnies passed out during dinner time.  Literally.

The ferocious snow kitten monitored the situation from his command center.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we deal with snow.

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I remember hearing those dreaded words from other mothers:  “Some day your children will stop taking naps.”

NOOOOO!!!  That time during the afternoon, about 2-4ish, is a time when I had not a lot more to give:  not kind words, not fun activities, not books to read, not coloring books to decorate.  It’s a time for me to rest:  be quiet:  pull myself together for the Second Shift until the kids get to bed.

JJ has not napped in I don’t know how long, and ever since he and Abe started sharing a room, neither sleeps.  They have to remain in their room until Quiet Time is over, but staying in their room seems to be interpreted differently.  Such as today:

This would be my room.

And you know what, I don’t even care what was going through their darling little brains, because they were out.  Simultaneously.  And I have yet to find the lotion in my night table, but hey:  something to look forward to, eh?

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Yesterday I noticed that Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special was going to be on TV, as classic as American Christmas comes (Europe has Handel’s Messiah, and we have cartoon characters reading the Bible).  My brother and I watched this show as kids, along with the slew of claymation/cartoon/oddly filmed seasonal classics.

But then I saw the time:  8pm.

I know, I know:  not all that late.  But see, by 6pm, my goal for the day is to get to 8.  Because at 8, the children are contained in their room (in theory).  Eight o’clock, glorious eight o’clock, when I can have a non-interrupted conversation with my husband, or when I don’t have to have a conversation at all, because no one’s constantly asking me for screen time or a snack or why does Dad drive so much (which I asked him why he thought he did.  Answer: “Because he has to!”  Oh, yeah, that’s it).

So, how to get my children to have some of the normal American Christmas experience?  (which I don’t know if they really should, but enh).  Hulu to the rescue!

Funny thing, though:  they’ve shortened the show.  The not-even-a-half-hour-show has been cut down to 21 minutes.  Leaving in all the instances of saying “stupid” (a word we try not to use so much in the home).  With about 21 minutes of online commercials.  Really?  Really?!!

So then I suggested watching Rudolf.  Dude, that sucker is 54 minutes!  Give them some JJ-made chocolate covered sprinkled pretzels and string cheese, brush teeth, and throw them into their rooms!  Of course, as they were playing football in a box of a sleeping space an hour after we put them “into bed”, I commented, ‘Oh, did I forget to mention that they both took a nap today?’

Oops.

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Man, Mondays are not my favorite.  Why?  LAUNDRY DAY.  Which, I know, I could move to another day.  But my mom always did laundry on Mondays.  Why do I remember?  Because I always had to wear the pink corduroy pants that I HATED on Mondays.  I had two pairs:  when one was being washed, the other were being worn.  And I had piano lessons on Monday, lessons I generally hadn’t prepared for.  So I was doing something I didn’t want to do in clothes I didn’t want to wear.

I’m sure this was only one year.  I can’t imagine that Mom bought me Bright Hideously Pink Corduroy Pants every year that I lived in her house.  But it was That Scarring.

When I was single, I did the ol’ “wear every item in the closet, perhaps a couple of times, before doing laundry”.  I scared a college roommate more than once by emerging from underneath a ginormous pile of laundry on my bed:  my slumbering self blended right in with the mammoth pile of fabric.

When I got married and even had my first born, I still did laundry only in dire circumstances.  I remember the highlight of my mom coming to visit is that I could actually fold laundry after I washed it:  novel idea!  And since I had a child who liked to decorate any surface with the meal he had just partaken of, laundry day meant washing EVERYTHING we owned.  Plus, we lived in a townhouse with on-area laundry machines that required quarters.  In this day and age of debit cards, who has change?!!  Quarters were a coveted commodity:  I’d go to real laundromats or car washes to get them with a harried look in my eye and dried-on-food somewhere on a garment I was wearing.

Now I do laundry on Mondays.  For a while I did a load whenever there was enough clothes to fill the washer, but then my mom commented on how interesting it was that all our white clothes were turning gray, and I thought, “Huh.  They’re not supposed to look that way?”

I actually read a book (yes, I am that much of a geek) teaching me how to do laundry.  It was FASCINATING.  The tags:  you know, those things that itch at your back and curl with repeated washings and are generally annoying?  They have information on them.  Information that actually *means* something.  And makes the clothes last longer and look better.  I had NO idea!  It was revolutionary, like when I watched my first episode of Alton Brown when he explained how when putting honey in a cake instead of sugar that you would reduce the liquid to account for the honey, and it just made sense:  you mean, there’s a reason behind it?  Same with laundry.

The laundry book said to do wash once a week so that enough clothes would pile up to do a full load of whatever washing conditions were required.  So I do.  I read tags, I sort, and I actually find it a bit more interesting.

Tonight, for the second time ever, I made my own laundry detergent.  I know the book wouldn’t agree (she said that laundry detergents were painstakingly researched for the best color-preservation/cleaning-action), but the sustainable side of me says “phooey”.  I figure the reading of the labels, the sorting, the doing laundry on Laundry Day, the not-walking-around-with-crusties-on-my-pants-having-not-washed-them-in-a-month should count for something, eh?

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Tonight at Book Group, we did not discuss a book; we watched “Lars and the Real Girl” and ate cookies.  A dear woman I knew passed away this evening, and a scene in the movie seemed so relevant (minus the fact that the girl in the movie was made out of plastic, but hey:  it’s symbolic):

Sewing Circle Lady 3 – Hazel: Well that’s how life is, Lars.
Mrs. Gruner: Everything at once.
Sewing Circle Lady 2 – Sally: We brought casseroles.
Lars Lindstrom: Thank you.
Lars Lindstrom: [Lars looks around the sewing circle. The three ladies are knitting and doing needlepoint] Um, is there something I should be doing right now?
Mrs. Gruner: No, dear. You eat.
Sewing Circle Lady 2 – Sally: We came over to sit.
Sewing Circle Lady 3 – Hazel: That’s what people do when tragedy strikes.
Sewing Circle Lady 2 – Sally: They come over, and sit.

Someone commented on how that’s not done a lot anymore.  Maybe we should do more of that – just coming over, and sitting.

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[Conversation from this afternoon.]

“What did you do?!!”

“Huh?”

“The toilet.”

“It’s white.”

“I know!  How did you do that?”

“I read a blogger’s adventure on how she cleaned her toilets.  She lives in New Mexico and has all this hard water build up and *nothing* would remove it, so she resorted to using a pumice stone.  And I thought, ‘Ah ha!  Good idea!  I should do that!’  And never got around to it.  Until just now.”

“So it doesn’t damage the toilet?”

“But I don’t *care.*   ….  What are you doing?  Are you googling if it hurts the toilet?”

“I’m looking up porceline toilet pumice stone.  Oh, it’s spelled porcel*ain* – interesting.”

“And?”

“And it looks like it’s okay.  You’re supposed to wet the stone.”

“Yep.”

“Don gloves.”

“Meh.”

“Scrub gently to remove stains, not to hard as to scratch.”

“Sure.”

“Flush to admire your work.”

“Multiple times.”

“And touch up any places you missed.”

“Check.  By the way, why does one care if a thing that deposits (we’ll use the word ‘excrement’ rather than the more graphic descriptors spoken – my parents do read this blog) is ‘damaged’?”

“Uh, well, it could get scratched, and then residue buildup occurs, and …”

Blank stare.

“Right.  Well, it sure is white!  Nice work!”

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It’s hard to be obsessive-compulsive and a perfectionist, especially during the holiday season.  In some ways it’d be easier to be a bear and hibernate rather than see all the possibilities of being in the celebratory season and not know which thing to do, which songs to sing, which traditions to pull off, which decorations to use, which foods to make, which clothes to wear, which tv specials to watch, which way to make everything so wonderful and magical and beautiful while feeling so not that way inside.

I know I don’t have to do that:  it’s self-made pressure.  And after reading this post, I’m following suit:  “I’m not getting organized for Christmas this year.  I think I’m just going to show up for it.”  Actually, realistically, I’ll take steps towards this, because being an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist means that I would throw out all the decorations, eliminate all holiday festivities, and lay like a sloth on the couch being thoroughly uncelebratory until the New Year; and somehow I think the kids already have enough fodder in their few years to support a future psychiatrist for quite a while.

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It’s nice to know that I’m not the only person who can’t control my children.

Case in point:  today while sitting in the sanctuary during Bible Study worship time, a friend came up and whispered in my ear:  “Guess who I found downstairs looking for a snack?”  Honestly, my first thought was one of the grounds caretakers that we both know:  I mean, who wouldn’t want to raid all the yummy treats that inhabit the Fellowship Hall on Thursday mornings?  Yes, we come to worship, but we also come for the food … and the drinks … and the adult time (ah, adult time, where there should always be food and drink).

I laughed at my friend and turned around.  Then she whispered, “I asked him if he was supposed to be down there and what he was doing.  He looked at me and yelled, ‘NO!’”  This behavior didn’t seem typical of an adult, and it sounded familiar, so I started to wonder …

She continued, “I asked him if I could take him back to his room.  He took off running, in the right direction like he knew exactly where he was and how he wasn’t supposed to be there.  The childcare workers were looking for him and said they had even checked the doors because he’d been trying out the locks earlier.”

Yes, yes, that would be my second born son.  And those locks on the doors that he got around?  They were installed because of his older brother, who busted out of two nurseries three times in two weeks.  Awesome:  totally the legacy I dreamed my family being known for.

So when I feel like I’m a bad mom because my oldest seems to think of the boundaries of the front porch (as in, you can wait on the front porch for your father to come home) to include any cement coming in contact with our front porch so he’s running up and down the street yelling at every car going by like he’s a bizerko puppy; because I’m helping the eldest upstairs and come down the first flight of stairs to find the littlest person laying right there on the floor when I had left her in on a playmat in the room at the bottom of the next flight of stairs; when the middle child won’t choose to wear either his Bob the Builder or dinosaur pajamas so he spends most of the night without any pants;  when the husband has no socks because the load of whites has been sitting the dryer since we don’t know when; when I spend twenty minutes looking for the library Elmo DVD the boys were *just* watching, thinking I’ve lost my mind, finally finding it shoved underneath the 1/8th inch space between the entertainment center and the pedestal holding up the tv (along with a Tiger Woods Wii game which I’d given up being bothered to find) …

I can say, at least I’m not the only one who can’t keep track of it all. 

Boo’s new happy place

An Abe boy in Dad’s shoes

Oh, he looks like his dad.

Ready for the holidays … or college.

Happy times on the couch (although someone seems to be keeping her eyes on the heavens – either out of praise, or petitions for safety ).

Hope this satisfies the picture requests. 

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Most of the comments I hear throughout my day:

• “When are you due?”
• “Wow:  you still haven’t had that kid?”
• “Any day now, right?”
• “Geez:  you sure are stickin’ out there.”
• “You must be *so* ready to be done with this.”
• “Wow:  she’s about to pop!”
• “And you really don’t have a name picked out yet?”
• “Mon-kee!  Mon-kee!” – which is actually Abe asking me to read a Cookie Monster book to him.  For the fifth time in a row.

So yes:  I’m still waddling in my neck of the woods, and I’m actually quite fine with that.  At night, when I’m having contractions (both wimpy preppers and the real take-my-breath-away-aw-crap-this-is-gonna-hurt ones), I may think, “Hmm:  tomorrow would be a nice day to have a baby.  Then I won’t have to …” [insert:  do laundry, grocery shop, make dinner, clean up the ever-present crumbs, deal with preschool orientation, take one more deep breath while dealing with my toddler].

And every morning I wake up and realize:  “Hmm, it’s not today.  That’s okay, now I can …” [take the boys to the Coffee Cottage for a play date, get dressed up for Bible study, clean and organize and clean some more, enjoy more hours of consistent sleep than I will for a while, not have an excruciatingly sore bum].

I’m not surprised that she’s not here, honestly.  True, the due date’s September 19th/20th:  a week + to go.  If she followed the ways of her brothers, she would’ve come today, though:  Abe – 11, JJ – 12, Hubby – 13.  Makes it easier for me to remember birthdays, although months and years get tricky.    No, see, Hubby and I know this one is our free spirit:  she’s a girl, she’s the youngest, and she’s going to do just whatever she wants (methinks the bossing will come from the youngest up).  The boys felt ready to come:  pushing and stretching and making me really uncomfortable.  So far Boo and I have worked out a mostly-agreeable symbiosis (minus the sciatic pain:  nothing like the feel of randomly touching an electric fence shoot from your bum to your toes):  I have occasional bouts of insomnia, I have only recently had to pee every hour, I’ve been able to sit without feeling like I needed a lift to get my stomach out of my lap.

I haven’t hit the miserable point yet, and until I reach that, I don’t think she’ll come.  I remember sitting in Abe’s room, in the rocker, looking over at the stocked closet and the cradle all ready to go, praying, pleading, “Pleeeease come!  Please!  There’s no reason to stay in there!  Outside has so much more room!  And look:  you have presents!  To use!  And play with!  Come play with them already!”  Part of me would like to hit the miserable point so she will maybe recognize, “Uh oh:  pushing the host a little to far.  Vacate before she gets drastic!”  But then a real contraction hits, and putting off labor another day doesn’t sound so bad.

This tune may change as I see the forecast for this weekend, and if she doesn’t want to comply, then maybe we’ll just try a “practice run” of labor.  I’m sure the Birthing Center wouldn’t mind. 

Boo Blatherings, Daily Drivel, Mama Musings | 2 Comments »