Specificity works! (also begging…). So yay! I got the fancy little slimline Casio Exilim camera that I wanted for my birthday (thank you parents, Hubby, and SIL). It’s teeny tiny so it fits in my purse/diaper bag/crochet bag, has video capture, and it’s even red. So cool!

Apparently if you email everyone who might buy you presents with the make and model of what you want, a picture of what you want, where to buy it, how much it costs, where to get online coupons for it, and that if they possibly might do a group gift, you are much more likely to get what you were hoping for as your birthday present. Who knew?

This is the first time I can remember that I’ve actually had something over about $30 that I’ve wanted for my birthday, so being that particular felt really weird but now I have a cool new camera. Yay! Plus my Hubby bought me this cool new Wireless SD Card that automatically uploads your pictures to your computer through your wireless network.

What that means is that all I have to do is be in the house and turn on my camera, and my pictures get sent to my computer. I don’t have to mess with adapters or any of that stuff. I do have to plug it in to get the video on the computer, but even that is pretty uncomplicated.

Last week Hubby worked 76 hours on site (as opposed to at home) between Monday and Saturday, so we basically didn’t see him all week. I spent most of the week trying to keep the kids nice and busy so they didn’t drive me totally crazy. We went to the park with the wading pool, the library, Grandma’s house, Bunya’s house (Grandma on the other side, the Russian side), and ate half a flat of fresh Oregon strawberries.

Since it is strawberry season, I had to make my favorite strawberry season breakfast that I (and now the kids as well) look forward to all year. See? Strawberry crepes. Just tell me this doesn’t look delectable.

What did you have for breakfast (also known as “neener neener, I had yummy crepes and you had nasty corn flakes”)? If you have only had those flavorless loser California strawberries that they try to pass off as real fruit in the grocery stores, you have no idea what you are missing. It’s worth living in Oregon rain country just to get good berries for two weeks in the summer.

As my son astutely pointed out, Oregon berries don’t have all that white blech in the center of the berry. They are red all the way through. I’m going to buy a whole flat this week so I can freeze half and, well, wolf down the other half. That should probably hold me for another year.

Okay, well I guess that covers this year’s ode to strawberries. I did make one other discovery recently that I am planning to put to good use this summer. As you know, me and mopping do not get along well. So the week before Family Camp I was trying to get the house clean in an effort to not have every ant in the county trailing along the kitchen floor eating all the leftovers my children graciously leave for them.

I asked my charming children who wanted to play Cinderella. The girls all tripped over each other with excitement so I gave them a mop bucket with some soap and each of them a rag, and they mopped the entire floor. Did a pretty good job of it too! Georgie decided he didn’t want to play (!), but would rather be the Wicked Stepfather and go around telling them all that they were having way too much fun. Overall it went very well.

This week I decided that this new game needed to be a more regular event, so they played again on Monday. Georgie decided he didn’t want to miss out this time and mopped as well. Unfortunately, this added an unstable element to the otherwise fairly tame mopping time, and I had to reprimand the children for trying to clean the ceiling by throwing the rags at it, mopping the walls by spinning cloths on them (which sprays mop water all over the house), and doing target practice by dropping rags from upstairs over the staircase railing to bullseye into the mop bucket. Should this behavior occur again next time, mopping will again become a girls only activity. Argh!

So I leave you today with some video of my mopping maniacs (note Faithy’s cute hat that I actually made). The video is about a minute long. Thank you, Mr. Disney!

In case you’re really bored and have 27 seconds more to burn, here is some video of Henry rolling over. It was late at night on Saturday while George was still at work so I was going to take pictures of Henry and fiddle with my new camera. He didn’t seem to like that idea though and immediately rolled over for the first time. I switched the camera to video mode, propped Henry back up (because he liked it so well the first time as you can tell….), and shot this:

Ciao!

So last week we were at Family Camp, and every year at camp they have a dance night (yes, at church camp. We go to a cool church). The dances are always set dances like the Virginia Reel and Scottish Jigs and things like that (okay, I guess my whole “cool” argument has just gone out the window). Half the people love this and the other half sort of wish maybe we could do some couples dances like the waltz or some swing. Nothing too radical here. We’re not talking the lambada!

Somehow this year we finally got to have two dance nights: one for set dancing and one for couples dancing. I think this may have had something to do with the fact that two of the three elders on the elder board are excellent dancers. One of them, my Dad, cuts quite the lovely waltz while the other one does a very energetic swing.

To encourage people to actually come to the dances and teach them how to do it, they taught a dance lesson for those two dances on the morning of the event. Now, I love to dance. Twirling around the floor is just bliss to me. Unfortunately, my handsome spouse thinks that dancing would be an effective military torture method. Naturally, this disparity of thought has led to much mutual frustration. However, I’ve been scheming for some time now how I might find myself a consistent dance partner. It’s easy! I just need to grow my own. Bwahahahahahaha!

And so my hapless nine year old son is the beneficiary of his father’s refusal to dance. I told the children before we even left for camp that we were going to the dance and that they were all going to the lesson and I didn’t want any complaining!! Naturally that prompted a slew of complaining from my son so I explained that he (and my daughters who were doing no complaining whatsoever) was GOING to learn to dance for three reasons.

1. So that his wife wouldn’t be stuck wanting to dance with someone who didn’t dance (I did omit the possibility that he could be the one stuck with a spouse who doesn’t dance).

2. Because at our church, we dance at almost every wedding plus other
events like Family Camp and in a few years he’s going to decide that hmmm, some of those girls are kind of cute and he might want to dance with one or more of them. The girls will be standing near the dance floor tapping their feet and looking around with big eyes, which is of course the universal sign for I sure wish one of these knuckle-headed boys would hurry up and ask me to dance, and if my son knows how to do it he will feel all cool and the girls will be pretty happy about it too.

By this time Georgie was rolling on the floor laughing. I proceeded to number three, which was of course….

3. So that I CAN HAVE A DANCE PARTNER!!!!

For some reason he seemed to think this entire conversation was funny. I told him to go pack some church clothes for the dance and four minutes later he came out to show me the shirt he was all excited about wearing because it would look very handsome. Odd how when you tell children they absolutely, positively must do something they aren’t really enthusiastic about doing and there will be no weaseling out of it, half the time it takes them less than five minutes to decide that whatever it is they were just railing against might actually be fun after all. Hmph!

So after I got them all mentally prepared for this whole dance thing, I noticed that the lesson was scheduled at the same time as the kids’ Nature Walk, which they all wanted to go to. But I conned sweet-talked my Dad into holding a separate lesson for the kids in the garage of the house were staying at. We managed to wrangle a few other stray children into coming as well and ended up with a nice group.

Georgie wasn’t too impressed at the beginning of the lesson and it took him awhile to really get his feet to move in a box step, but by the end of the lesson he was doing it perfectly and had asked Trinity’s friend Ruthie to practice with him (Ruthie just turned nine). They happily waltzed around the garage holding an animated discussion about the spider that was crawling up the wall and remaining completely oblivious to the snickering adults who were watching. I was pretty impressed that after half an hour he could not only waltz properly but stay on the
right foot and on time with the music while talking. Very complicated stuff!

So that night was dinner, chapel, and then the dance. When I went to go sit down for chapel, he cornered me in the doorway.

Georgie: I did it!

Me: Ummm, okay. What did you do?

Georgie: I went and asked Mr. Dahlin if I could take Ruthie to the dance.

Me (stuttering): You… errr… uhhhh…. you did what???

Georgie: He said I could dance two dances with her and that he would be watching me {here he mimics Mr. Dahlin by pointing two fingers at his eyes and then at me in commando hand gesture style}. He said if I did something he didn’t like, he would give me a big squeeze. I told him my Dad gives me perfectly good big squeezes, thank you very much. He also said that now I have to do something nice for him.

Me: Wow! Way to go, Georgie. That’s exactly what you should have done. How did you know to ask Mr. Dahlin if you could take his daughter to the dance?

Georgie: Well, that’s what you’re supposed to do! That’s what you and Dad said.

Me: Oh… ummm… right… Good for us….

I don’t remember saying that, but hey! I’m not going to argue with a child who says I told him to be polite and then actually went and did it without further reminder. What a good kid! He danced very well with Ruthie and they both looked like they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I danced quite a bit with my Dad, which was a delight. He’s learned some new fancy waltz move that involves a half turn every step. This results in basically swinging and twirling around the entire floor and is wonderful fun (and good exercise!). My husband even danced with me. He
was at the waltz lesson and in the process of helping the kids seems to have become proficient in the box step himself. Hehe!

So phase one of my mission seems to be going along swimmingly, although now that I think about it, I don’t think my son actually danced with me. He danced with his sisters and my mother. Now I feel robbed. Oh well, I have more evil plotting percolating in my brain to advance this whole dancing thing so I’m sure I will get a suitable dance partner out of this yet. Bwahahahahaha!

Actually, I was quite surprised at Georgie’s attention to Ruthie. Trinity is such a pretty little duck that I always assumed that when they got older Georgie’s friends would be eying her. It never occurred to me that Georgie would be eying Trinity’s friends. Duh! Since they’re all under ten, no one is doing a terribly large amount of eying anyone mostly because Trinity’s friends don’t play with Bionicles and Georgie couldn’t care less about Polly Pockets, but I will file this away for
future reference.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about my philosophical rationale for teaching my children to dance (and really, who isn’t dying to know this?), my thinking is that I would rather give my children an organized outlet for contact with the opposite sex that is acceptable and in plain view than wait around until they discover that the opposite sex is oh-so-fascinating and let them come up with their own disorganized, sneaking way of expressing that since they have no appropriate way available to them. Yikes! That’s my big theory anyway. Guess we’ll see how that works out. The problem with child-rearing is that it involves so much thinking (well, that and poopy diapers)!

Rachel

As is usually the case after I deliver a baby, my computer is driving me nuts. I have some brilliant business idea and am gung-ho for a few days. I purchase a domain name, set up a website, and research and install some software (I actually did all of this last week). Then due to crazy hormones, exhaustion, children all boinging around in Tigger-ish fashion, and a general lack of sleep/food/time, my brain goes into a gigantic fuzz and I don’t feel like actually doing anything constructive when I’m online. So after I do my regular computer work for Gymboree News, I digress into general time wasting that looks like this:

First, I will go to Gymboree/Gap/Old Navy/Crazy 8 websites and place several items in my cart where I will not actually purchase them but where they will sit for several weeks until they sell out.

Then I will go to eBay and search for clothes for the kids or myself and place several items on my watch list where I will not actually bid on them but where they will sit until the auctions end.

After that I will hop onto my blog reader which automatically checks for updates on all my favorite blogs. There I will find out that it is James Marsters’ (Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) birthday or that some new Firefly figurine is coming out. These are not actually things that I care about.

My other blogs will tell my that my friends are potty training their children, my SIL is painting their house, and my other BIL & SIL are doing well with my new little Ethiopian adoptee nephew. These are things that I do care about, but they take up a lot of time (much in the same way I am taking up your time by posting about fluff. Bwahahahahaha!).

After I’m done reading all that, I’ll go over to the Drudge Report and read important world news so I don’t sound like a total imbecile who has no idea what is going on if it doesn’t involve things like how many hours a night her new baby sleeps and whether or not she can get her children to eat salad.

Unfortunately the site also has links to insidious entertainment news and I always end up on one of those stupid British tabloid sites like the Daily Mail reading about English rockers that I’ve never heard of and how their legs are too skinny or they got plastered last weekend. Why, why do I do this??? I know; I have no self-control.

So last Friday after spending an hour and a half on eBay looking for a new beanie for Henry to wear to Family Camp next month since obviously babies need cute hats and summer is not beanie season and he is growing out of his current set of cute beanies, it occurred to me that I had yarn, crochet hooks, and a little booklet on how to crochet a hat upstairs in my closet. I do not crochet. Or knit. Or do anything that involves craft or art or making pretty stuff with my hands. However, my Grandmother does. My Grandmother who lives in Arizona.

Last year (or maybe even the year before) I purchased these items to give to Trinity for her birthday. We were going to be with my grandparents around the time of her birthday and I was thinking that maybe my Grandma could teach Trinity how to crochet. Since my Grandparents live in Arizona and we don’t see them more than once every year or two, this would be a good opportunity for her to get to know Grandma better.

Then it occurred to me that Trinity was probably a bit young for this (although she may be getting close now) and that when she came back home wanting to do projects, she would come ask me a bunch of questions that I wouldn’t know how to answer and then she would slink away in disappointment. Obviously that’s no good! And so the supplies have been upstairs in my closet for two years.

In a rush of disgust with my computer and how much time I spend doing precisely nothing on it (half the time I even watch TV over the top of my laptop in an amazing display of wasting time two ways at the same time), I ran upstairs to start my new half-cocked crochet project. I opened the booklet expecting useful instructions and was greeted with this and entire pages like it: “2nd rnd: With B, ch 1. 1 sc in each st around. Join with sl st to first sc.” Since my children ran off with my universal secret decoder ring, this meant nothing to me. The booklet had diagrams and a key to help you decipher all the ridiculous abbreviations, but I was fairly sure that by the time I figured out what I was supposed to be doing I would have too much arthritis for it to be of any use.

What to do? Return to my computer, of course! No, not eBay or the Drudge Report this time. Google! You can find anything on Google and when you type “How to crochet a baby beanie” into the search box, it comes up with all kinds of websites including how-to videos on YouTube where nice ladies with slightly southern accents actually show you how to crochet hats. Perfect!

I discovered all this around 11:00 on Friday night and when I finally found the end of the yarn after half an hour of poking around the skein, I was ready to go. So I crocheted about twenty stitches, got tired, and went to bed. Saturday I worked on it some more, tore it apart about six times, and by Sunday night Henry had a new red hat. Pretty cute one too! Monday and yesterday I made and finished a matching one for Georgie and now I’m working on ones for all the girls. Heehee! Now while I’m wasting time in the evening letting my brain decompress from all the craziness during the day, I can actually make something while I watch TV. Ta da! Plus I can crochet while I nurse. I can also type while I nurse but only when he’s nursing on the left side because I need my right hand to do it…..

So that’s what’s been going on around here. Well, unless you count things like laundry, cleaning, nagging kids (name Georgie) to get their homework done, cooking, and potty training Faith which I started doing yesterday, training children to not “whack” each other (as Faith keeps complaining that Kyra has been doing to her), and all the other super-exciting Mom things that keep me running from the time I wake up until the time I drop back into bed. But really, why would you want to count that? Just because it is pretty much the composition of my actual life….

Rachel

Ahhh, busy week around here. I can always tell when I’m feeling better because the house all of a sudden looks really messy and drives me bananas. Saturday morning I spent three or four hours cleaning out the big kids’ trash trap of a bedroom. Four garbage bags full of broken toys and miscellaneous paper shreds plus a trip to IKEA for shelves to turn their toy box units into bookshelves later, the room is lovely. Yesterday I cleaned out the toy units downstairs that were overflowing with similar detritus. Ahhh, so nice to have all that de-junked.

In an effort to help them remember to keep it clean, I am now charging them for everything that is out of place when I go into to check it every day. Hehe. I feel all evil but since we’ve had to tell them every day for the last two weeks to tidy up their room and it only stays mildly less disgusting for about thirty minutes and is disastrous again by the following day, I’m not overly sympathetic.

Now I just need to do their downstairs bookshelf and clean off the tops of all the flat surfaces (like the piano, kitchen counter, bookshelf, sewing table….) that have accrued paper-y stuff over the last few months as well. Oh, then the kids’ season clothing changeover…. Argh! It’s the neverending project week around here.

Henry sleeps quite a bit in the morning so I try to make sure I get dinner as prepped as is humanly possible, the laundry at least mosly done, and the day’s projects finished before he wakes up and wants me to hold him for half the day. Very sweet, but not conducive to productivity.

So I learned a valuable lesson over the last two weeks about good and bad places to go with six children. The week George was out of town, I ran out of groceries and my usual shopper (the aforementioned Hubby) was working working late on site for a client and had been since he got home from Las Vegas. Milk, eggs, fruit, peanut butter, bread ~ we were out of all this plus most of the other things that comprise our usual diet, and I had used up my babysitting help while Hubby was actually out of town (I was three weeks postpartem and various family members had come over to help out with getting kids to and from school, letting me nap, and things like that. The day I was planning to go shopping with only a couple of kids, my van broke). I had to get groceries, and the only way that was going to happen was with six kids in tow.

Anticipating all the million things that lead to ulcers under such circumstances, the children and I had a pow-wow prior to departure. I held up the list.

ME: This is what we are buying. If it’s not on the list, we aren’t buying it. If it’s on the list we are. I don’t want to hear ‘I want this; I want that’ or ‘Ewww, why are we getting that? I hate that.’”

I read through the entire list.

ME: “You older kids need to help with the little ones and hold their hands so they don’t run around the store. And you all need to be extra well behaved because otherwise everyone will be miserable.”

GEORGIE: Why will we be miserable?

ME: Because if you’re naughty, I’ll spend the whole time yelling at you, and I hate yelling at you guys. Do you like being yelled at?

GEORGIE: No.

ME: No one else does either. It’s miserable.

They all grin. And off we went to Starbucks where I bought the biggest coffee they had and then on to store number one, which is actually a restaurant supply store. For large families, this place works great. You don’t get a cart there, you get a pallet with wheels. I stuck Henry’s infant seat on the pallet, told Faith (age 2) to hold Georgie’s hand (age 9) and Anika (age 6) to hold Kyra’s (age 3.5), and off we went. They actually did remarkably well at the first place. We bought 30 pounds of fruit (which looks like it will last about two weeks) and a few other things before the middle two girls started racing up and down the aisles. By this point, I was nearly done and we made it out of the store before total chaos set in.

Unfortunately, we still had one more store to go to. The second store is a normal grocery store, so we picked out two carts and installed Henry and Faith each in one. I pushed Henry’s and Georgie pushed Faith’s while Trinity and Anika theoretically kept after Kyra. This store was much more crowded and the list of things to buy here was much longer. Everywhere we pushed the carts, people snickered. Of course, who wouldn’t snicker at a six year old hollering things like, “Mom, can we get broccoli”? This did break the no asking for things not on the list rule, but what six year old likes broccoli? How can you not laugh at that?

For about two thirds of the excursion, the kids did great. Then Georgie starting complaining that pushing Faith around was getting to heavy (hmph! And the groceries were all piled up in my cart!); and even worse, Kyra decided that she had to go potty. Aack! She said she could wait, but pinning my hopes on a three year old’s bladder control seemed risky at best. At this point, our shopping trip sped up considerably as I raced around grabbing things off shelves with no regard to price, brand, size or anything else. Is it diced tomatoes? Good, throw it in the cart.

We blazed through the rest of the store and breathlessly arrived at the checkout line where I tried to bag groceries (yes, it’s a bag your own grocery place) while my children immediately scattered since my eyes were looking at yogurt and cheese instead of blazing holes in the backs of their naughty heads. I turned around and Faithy’s cart was sitting right by the exit with Faith still sitting serenely in it and no other children to be seen. Argh!! Anika came back to tell me that they were trying to get candy and toys out of the machines (by sticking their hands up the slots, of course) between the interior and exterior sliding doors. Oh terrific!

Eventually we made it home, and Kyra had accurately gauged her bathroom requirements so that mess was avoided. Phew!

Last week after George’s work slowed back down, we decided to take all the children to the zoo. It was great! You know, an extra set of eyes to keep track of escapees and someone to watch Batch A of children while you take Batch B to the rest room really improves an excursion considerably. George kept complaining that the kids were being wacky; but after my solo grocery shopping trip, I thought they were great (and they really were well-behaved at the zoo). So groceries alone with six kids = bad; zoo with a buddy (or spouse, parent, hobo in need of $5….) and six kids = good. Just a little child-rearing math for you there. Have a great week!

Rachel

The kids have had spring break this week; and with a new baby around and Mommy not so spry, that translates into an excessive amount of movie viewing. Hook has been a favorite on the menu. And apparently that results in conversations like this one from tonight with Georgie:

Georgie:  Mom, was Captain Hook right?

Me:  Umm, I don’t know. What did he say?

Georgie: He said that parents tell their kids stories so that they’ll fall asleep and the parents can have time to themselves.

Me: Yes! That sounds about right to me.

Georgie: (insert hysterical laughter here). I knew that was a dumb question. You guys would never do that to us. I just had to ask it to get it off my mind.

Me: (dead silence)

Ahhh, so trusting! I didn’t bother to correct this charming faith in our parenting skills. He undoubtedly wouldn’t have believed me even if I had.

Rachel

P.S. Anika finally lost her first tooth on Tuesday, which she was pretty excited about. As soon as I can schmooze my Hubby into downloading the picture from the camera, I’ll post it for you.

Several weeks back my older three children finally got collectively clever enough to pull a prank on my Hubby. Trinity called him into the dining room to “show him something” and when he got beneath the stair railing, the other kids upstairs dumped all the laundry directly out of their hamper and onto his unsuspecting head in one big heap. They were pretty proud of themselves that they actually managed to surprise their Dad and pull this off (we were rather impressed too).

Fast forward two months to tonight. Our typical Sunday evening routine lately has been to have Sunday Night Special for dinner. This consists of a fruit plate, different deli meats, cheese slices, and a variety of crackers. Everyone gets to pick what they want, I don’t have to hear “I don’t like this,” it requires no thought and very little effort for me, and is non-messy enough to eat in the living room while we engage in our other Sunday evening ritual of watching AFV (America’s Funniest Home Videos). Yes, amazingly enough that’s still on the air.

Every week the show has an assignment section where they tell you what kind of videos they want you to send in, and the kids keep laughing and saying they have to try that. Uh huh. So tonight, Trinity called George into the dining room to “show him something.” As he was standing there trying to figure out what he was supposed to be looking at and noticing that she kept trying to reposition him to right beneath the stairs, it became apparent that the children were clumsily trying to recreate their original prank.

Unfortunately, this proved more difficult than the first time around. Georgie was in the living room hiding under a blanket with the camera, thinking that no one actually noticed the giggling fuzzy blob on the floor. The fact that he kept going, “Wait! I can’t get it to turn on” did not improve the stealth factor.

While Trinity was downstairs trying to tell Daddy where to stand and Georgie was in the other room fighting with the camera, Anika was upstairs wrestling with the hamper. Since Georgie was downstairs not filming instead of providing the helpful muscle as he had the first go around, the hamper was too big for Anika and she had to content herself with throwing pieces of clothing over the rail one by one and hoping they actually landed on her Dad. Unfortunately, they landed next to him and the intermittent drifting down of a shirt here and a sock there was not quite such a startling blitzkrieg as having an entire hamper dumped on you at once.

Since all three of them gave themselves away by laughing, the camera caught absolutely none of this, and George could tell from within five seconds exactly what was going on, the entire fiasco was a clear failure. However, it was funny enough that I did wish we had it on tape (AFV would be proud). Instead, I have to content myself with writing it up here. Yes, I live with a barrel of monkeys.

Rachel

Kyra and Faith often come in when they wake up in the morning (around 8:15 or so) and climb up on me & George’s bed to visit for a few minutes. The other day George was already showered and in his office when Kyra came in to visit with me (she’s 3). Her lips have been a bit chapped and I noticed she had an owee on her lip.

ME: Kyra, did you bite your lip?

KYRA: Yes.

ME: Sweetie, don’t do that. Then it makes an owee and bleeds.

KYRA: But Mommy, I like blood. It tastes yummy.

ME: No, yucky!

KYRA: You know what else tastes yummy?

ME: {No answer. How can I get out of this conversation?}

KYRA: Boogers!

ME: Nooooo, that’s disgusting! Don’t eat boogers. Gross!!!!

KYRA: No Mommy, they’re really good. You should try them.

Okay, well time for a shower now. Despite that very polite invitation to share, I declined the Booger Breakfast. Apparently I’m raising a vampiric snot-eater. Argh!!! Why in the world do children do this?? My son and I used to have similar conversations, although he didn’t try to talk me into eating this new delicacy. Blech! So disgusting.

So there’s the gross-out post for today. I had to write this down so that I don’t forget. As much as I would I would like to forget the entire conversation ever occurred, I am torn by my desire for amnesia and my desire to embarrass Kyra with this story in about ten years. Hehe. Hey, if I have to listen to this stuff now, I think it’s entirely fair to remind them of it later so they can errr, enjoy it to when they’re old enough to appreciate it…. It’s almost as good as the picture of Kyra playing the piano naked (she thinks that picture is hilarious now). I’m sure I’ll be able to put that to good use later.

Rachel

Oh wait, that’s “Resistance is futile.” Well, if they had small children and didn’t live in a cube, no doubt they would agree that mopping is also futile.

My out-of-town cousin and his family (three kids) came over on Saturday for the day, and my parents and my brother & family (one kid) came over to visit with them too (we had a great time). This made seventeen people, eight adults and nine kids. We cleaned up the house tolerably well, but I sort of petered out when it came to mopping my kitchen/dining room floor and just swept it instead.

This happens a lot when I’m pregnant. Mopping sort of drops to the very last thing on the list, you know, like the thing I do if every other thing in the entire house is cleaned, organized, folded, put away, I’ve eaten, the kids are all in bed, and I still have enough energy left to do it….

It occurred to me that mopping right before seventeen people were here could potentially be a stupid idea anyway. I didn’t do it. Then we were planning a family New Year’s Eve party of Monday night (25 people), so I again contemplated moppage but again rejected the idea. After the spill list for the weekend, I was pretty happy that I hadn’t bothered.

Spill #1 ~ Saturday afternoon Georgie drops his cup of orange juice on the kitchen floor.

Spill #2 ~ Saturday afternoon my cousin knocks his cup of coffee on the floor but cleverly manages to miss spilling any on his wife’s white sweater.

Spill #3 ~ Sunday afternoon Faith dumps her cup of milk all over the table and kitchen floor (actually, I think this was Kyra’s milk that she had declined to finish and hadn’t bothered to put on the counter).

Spill #4 ~  Monday morning, Kyra tips her cup of orange juice over onto her chair and the floor. I hadn’t even made it back to the kitchen to wring out the rag when….

Spill #5 ~ Anika dumps her orange juice on Kyra and the floor. Kyra was a bit distraught at this point.

Spill #6 ~ Anika decided that she wanted some leftover mac & cheese for dinner, so she put it in a bowl and microwaved it. Instead of removing her bowl from the microwave to the table, she took it out and dropped it so the macaroni got thrown all over the kitchen (the bowl wasn’t hot).

And the moral of the story is….. if you want clean floors, don’t have small children (or cousins). I figure that after all that, at least half of my kitchen is now clean. Four spills under the kitchen table and two on the kitchen floor got cleaned up, so that’s a good chunk of floor that got wiped down. That counts, right? RIGHT? Okay then. Of course, now that the last of our scheduled company is done, they’ve quit spilling everything in sight.

See, there’s two theories on mopping: One, you could mop before company comes and dazzle them with your shiny, sparkling floor for the five minutes before everyone dumps their drinks and crumbs on it; or two, you could mop after company comes so that you can enjoy your sparkling, shiny floor for the five minutes before your own family dumps their crumbs and drinks on it. That’s it. Those are the only two choices when you have five children under age ten. Well, that’s not true. You could just do neither of those and procrastinate mopping as long as humanly possible and just not mop until you can’t stand it any more. Hmmm, tough decision….

Rachel

My son wrote a Spiderman story (his current theme of choice, which is a departure from last year when virtually all of his stories involved giant Venus flytraps devouring buildings and people) this week, and upon re-reading it discovered that he had omitted the period at the end of one of the sentences.

“Oh no! There’s no period at the end of this sentence.” he exclaimed, “I’ve committed wrongdoing!”

He’s nine. So I responded with

“Not the grammatical malfeasance!” which is, of course, the proper response when confronted with punctuational panic. For some reason he thought that was funny. He also told me later that evening that he had taken something I said to him literally. I don’t think he quite knows what that means, but he was not too far off on his usage so he must have some idea. What a great vocabulary! I think it’s from listening to books on tape that are several years above his reading level.

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Tonight the house looked atrocious as it does at least every other day before clean up time (I can’t figure out how they can demolish a home so quickly. The government should use them for enemy scare tactics or something.). I told them to go clean up everything off the floor and then they could go watch the SpongeBob Atlantis show their Daddy had nicely recorded for them. Trinity and Anika found their new gloves with fingers on the floor while they were tidying and decided that instead of putting them away, they could be pressed into a much more interesting service.

So naturally they put them on their…. feet and walked around the house making gorilla noises and screeches while they were cleaning until I couldn’t stand the racket and hollered at them to quit making weird noises (I say this at least once a day, usually to Anika who is the wacky noise queen). They left the gorilla feet on and contented themselves with proclaiming me as the GorillaMom, which is how they addressed me when they kissed me and headed up to bed. No, I have no plans to put gloves on my feet tomorrow just in case you were wondering.

Rachel

So apparently Georgie asked his Dad yesterday if we’re supposed to be scared of God. George told him that it’s like with parents. If you’re obeying, then you don’t need to be scared. If you’re doing what you know is wrong, then you’re in trouble. Plus, God can see everything!

This whole conversation was relayed to me over dinner last night when George mentioned that Georgie had asked an interesting question earlier in the day. Georgie still remembered the answer at dinnertime and managed to successfully explain it back to us.

I asked Georgie what had made him wonder this in the first place and he responded that it was something Trinity had said. I turned to Trinity to ask her what that had been, but she before I even finished she nonchalantly replied,

“I have Godophobia.” She’s seven. I looked at her. Then I giggled. A lot. You see, Trinity is the one who spent most of her car rides this week making up songs with titles like, “O God, O God” (which I at first though was either a mutant hymn title or perhaps a George Burns movie I had forgotten about) that is basically eight minutes of singing to God all the things she’s thankful that He made: the trees, the birds, cars, spring even though it rains all the time because it makes the flowers grow, electricity (electricity!!), a house to live in so we don’t freeze in the winter, rockets, bugs….. Did I mention the song lasts from the time we leave the house until we arrive at our destination (or one of her parents goes nuts). Spiders are pretty much the only item from the natural world that is absent from her list. I’m fairly certain that Trinity does not have Godophobia.

“Trinity, why do you have Godophobia?” I asked her.

“Well, God is everywhere. {okay fine I’m thinking}. He can be anything {ummm}. He can turn into a spider!”

What??? I was so stunned by this logic that I don’t even think I returned any sort of cogent answer unless you count sputtering (which doesn’t count). Well, I did manage to tell her that I was fairly certain the Bible doesn’t mention God turning into a spider. Hmm, come to think of it, I was busy all day today and still haven’t straightened out her peculiar theology yet. Guess I need to put that on my To Do list. God turning into a spider! Sheesh.

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Last Friday night was the lovely, I mean haunting, Halloween party that Steve & Angie (BIL & SIL) put on every year. After a lot of hemming and hawing (mostly hawing), I decided to put the bridesmaids dress I wore for Kathy’s wedding to good use and went as a beauty contestant, Miss Conception. Handily, I was exactly as far pregnant when I wore the dress the first time as I am now. Phew!

And here’s George, who went as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, and his brother Steve who was Cardinal Biggles from the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition sketch (which is pretty funny).

They’re singing karaoke in the garage.

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So, it occurred to me today that I should probably find out what this baby is that we’re having. Lizard? Panther? Well, boy or girl would probably be helpful to know. Tomorrow morning we’re off to the ultrasound! All the kids are coming too, and somehow I suckered George into coming for the first time since I was pregnant with Georgie.

This will be the sixth ultrasound I’ve had and the second he’s come to. I’m delighted about that, and the kids are going to love it, especially Georgie. We’ll drop them off at Amy’s on the way home. Ahhh, the joy of semi-homeschooling. This will be a good field trip, I think.

I’ve been a total snail about getting going on midwife appointments and everything this time around, partly because I’ve been miserably sick and partly because this is not exactly new stuff for me. All the first several appointments consist of is peeing in a cup and listening to the heartbeat. If anything goes wrong in the really early stages, not much can be done. I can pee all by myself without having to tidy my house while I’m sick so the midwife can come over and not find a war zone. After five healthy pregnancies and one miscarriage, I’m pretty familiar with how things are supposed to go.

I’m nineteen weeks along and not so sick anymore, the baby is big enough to determine sex, I’m far enough along that a few more things can be done to prevent a later term miscarriage if problems do show up, and in a few more weeks the baby would actually have a shot at surviving outside the womb if delivery were unavoidable. So far the youngest surviving baby was born at 21 weeks 6 days gestation!

Amillia Taylor was born at Baptist Children’s Hospital in October weighing only 10 ounces. She was slightly bigger than a pen.

Anyway, It seemed like it was about time to see the midwife. She’ll be coming over Monday for our first appointment (same lady who delivered Faith).

This weekend is our annual card weekend in which me and my card group buddies disentangle ourselves from reality and escape to the beach from Friday to Sunday for a weekend of staying up late to play cards and shopping at the outlet mall. It occurred to me today that I may potentially want to do a bit of shopping for the new squirt and it would be helpful to know if I were girl shopping or boy shopping. I have exactly no boy stuff anymore, so if it’s a boy I guess I will need to do a lot of shopping. Gee bummer! If it’s a girl, not quite so much with the shopping…. I’m reasonably sure I could dig up one or two things for her to wear if I have to.

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And lastly, Amy who is my friend both from church and from online business stuff (she runs JournalModiste. Not the same Amy who does school with the older three kids) tagged me today; and since this is my first tag, it seemed like maybe I should actually do it.

Rules for the tag…
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

1. When I get nervous (which isn’t very often), I tend to get really quiet, slightly bug-eyed, and say “I’m fine” when asked if I’m ok. Usually I don’t actually look nervous and my husband is often the only one who can tell.

2. I hate being pregnant. This wouldn’t be so weird if I hadn’t done it so many times…. Duh!

3. I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was 30 and even then it was frappuccino, which I consider more of a coffee-flavored milkshake. Yes, I’m a coffee wimp. I admit it.

4. The reason I didn’t drink coffee all those years was because my Mom drank strong black coffee the entire time I was growing up. Then she would eat cheese. Then she would put me to bed. Do you know what coffee & cheese breath smells like? Well, it will put you off coffee for 30 years, I’ll tell you that! Oddly, I’m ok with cheese. (My Mother is going to kill me now….).

5. I have one sibling, a brother, and was pretty much the only girl my age on our block. My Mother has one sibling, a brother, and was the only girl on her block. My Mother’s Mother had one sibling, a brother, and was the only girl on her block (she told me once that all the guys on her block used to entertain themselves by standing in a circle and spitting!). All three of us are rather bossy and unintimidated by men. Now you know why!

6. I had super straight, stringy hair the whole time I was growing up. When I got into junior high and high school, I permed it once a year, which both made it look much better and lightened the color. After I got married, I quit perming it so it got straight and darker again (I cut it short so it wasn’t so stringy). When I was 27, I got pregnant with baby #3 and my hair decided to be wavy. It has stayed that way ever since! Now it has the same color and wave as my brother’s and my Dad’s (or what color his used to have before it turned all grey). Much nicer. And free!

7. I’m a humongous Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. I own all seven seasons on DVD, two music CD’s (one from the musical episode and one of music they play at the Bronze, which is the club the kids hang out at on the show. My Hubby bought me those for Christmas last year), the new Buffy Season 8 comics, the Angel Season 6 comics (well, they’re on pre-order and I don’t have the Angel DVD’s because Angel wasn’t as good a show as Buffy), and a trivia book. Oh! And a 2007 calendar. Hmmm, I guess I need to get a new calendar for next year. Hehe.

One of these days when I get completely sick of Buffy, I’m going to lump all this stuff together and sell it all on eBay, where I’m expecting it to make some money eventually (like in ten years).Yes, me nerd, I know. Shhhh, don’t tell.

Okay – so I’m only going to tag 3 people ’cause I’m too lazy to find seven (I have no friends). Also because Amy only tagged three and I’m practicing being a sheep today.
Bethany
Karen
Elly