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. 

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Yep, still pregnant.

Nope, I’m not that miserable, unless it’s 2am, and I have to physically flop from one side to the other before rolling out of bed and hobbling to the bathroom to pee and then realizing I’ll be awake at this time, but for longer periods of time, for many months.  And then despair does sink in.  But not for long:  my bladder holds not-a-lot, then it’s waddling and flopping back to sleep.

It’s not your job to tell me what Abe is doing.

Abe, knock it off.

Boo is due September 19th-ish.  The boys were due around the same day-date, and they came a week-ish early, but she’s a girl, so she’ll do whatever she wants.

Yes, she may come early.  But I’m mentally preparing myself for an October due date.  Stop rolling your eyes at me, Dr.  Tami.

Use.Your.Words.  Howling is not considered a word.

Ow.  Fake contraction, but still:  ow.

No, we don’t have a name.  Yes, that suggestion is great:  I’ll run it by the fam when I get a chance …

No more Elmo At the Orchestra:  Elmo needs a break.  Or Mama’ll need a drink, and she can’t have one of those for a while.

[Shaking belly]:  WHAT’S YOUR NAME?!!!?

Ow:  real contraction.  Sorry.

It’s only 7:30am.  I’m not talking about Screen Time Plans for the day right now.

Please stop smashing the cherry tomatoes into your shirt:  no, it’s not a tie-dye method.

You just ate an hour ago:  I’m not prepared to talk about snack time right now.

Way to poop in the toilet!

Shhhhhh.

You just ate a half hour ago.  I’m not ready to talk about lunch yet.

No, I’m not opposed to pink:  I just think there should be an appreciation of colors *beyond* pink for girls – girls can wear blue, too.

You can tell me I don’t have cankles, but you can’t tell me I don’t have *self-perceived* cankles:  don’t take that away from me.

It was a day.

I’m glad you have room for one more foods in your tummy:  we’ll get that in tomorrow morning.  For now:  go.to.bed.

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If you ask my Hubby what’s going on, he’ll often shrug his shoulders and say, “Enh, not much”.  Even if the servers at his work have all crashed and the organization has completely restructured and his coworker is moving to Yemen and the Red Sox decided to relocate to Fargo.  I’ve learned to ask more “specific” questions if my need for information is to be satisfied.

But I realize I’m not doing that in return.  If you asked me right now, I’d say the same:  it’s so much to say.  Snippets are all you’re going to get.

– We celebrated Abe’s 2nd birthday.  A couple of times.  And he’s OH so two – complete with tantrums, bright smiles, hitting, and bi-polar moods.  Right on target.

– One afternoon while we were fixing JJ’s bleeding toes, Abe slit his head open outside on the bbq.  Nothing like coming outside to see your shirtless child gushing blood from the head.  If I didn’t go into labor then, I’m good until September.   Eight staples later, and we’re back in business.  (Staples removed by Granddaddy because my doctor, who apparently LOVES removing staples, was going to be out of town, and she didn’t want to give anyone else in her practice the pleasure of taking them out, so she sent us home with the removal device.  Good times).

– We crashed at the Grand’rents new digs:  highly approve.  Busted out Unca Matt’s old school legos:  the Black Monarch’s Castle will live again!

– Hubby’s folks came to town:  lots of food and conversation and water tables and sprinklers and baths.

– It got hot:  bloody hot.  But the heat and a local conference coincided.  Correction:  the heat and a local conference with childcare and air conditioning coincided.  Nuff’ said.

– Went to the beach:  cold.  Came back:  hot.  Not good for the preggo mama to try to acclimate that quickly.  Managed fine when living in the heat, but my body moved into autumn mode and is none too happy to be back in sticky summer.  We’re working through it with lots of pudding and crystal light (not-so-much a toxin-free pregnancy for this girl).

– I have no more space in my body for this child.  But her lease isn’t up for another seven-ish weeks.  I feel like the room Alice was stuck in after drinking the bottle and swelling up to be ginormous:  poor room.

– Next week:  VBS for one tyke.

– Following week:  shipping the kids off, going to camp.  High school camp.  That I’m leading some kids through.  And hanging out with.   Until mandatory lights out at 1am.  Then meeting with leaders in the morning.  7ish.  For like 8 days.  No Memory Foam Mattress Topper in sight, but we will have easy access to an abundance of squeaky cheese.  Yeah, we’ll see how that goes.

The other week I told someone that I just have to get through camp, then I can breathe.  They looked at me.  “Okay, fine, so it will be more labor breathing, but whatever.”

For Abe’s birthday Unca Matt got him the latest cool thing/monstrosity on the market:  Broby from Yo Gabba Gabba.  I just checked out the video from the library:  it’s like preschool crack – my children talk about it non-stop.  And they dance.  You’d think I’d relate and enjoy more, what with being the embodiment of a Party in the Tummy, but somehow it’s not connecting while they blast that and I try to drown it out with my current read: “The Hole in our Gospel” by the president of World Vision … I’m sure there’s parallels between the two somewhere ….

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