This was the girls’ ballet recital from Sunday. You can tell who the big ham is in our family! In case you have seen us for awhile, in the beginning when they all line up Anika (our six year old) is the
teeny tiny one in the center and Trinity (our seven year old) is the
one on the far right who sort of looks like she’s not terribly sure
what she’s doing.

Rachel

Sunday night we had a BBQ and I tried out my MIL’s ice cream maker. OH MY GOSH!!! Well, that stuff is just too good to exist which explains why it had been completely devoured within just a few moments. I’m never eating store-bought ice cream again (hmm, that might be pushing it. Just forget I said that.) Here’s the recipe that we made. It makes 1 to 1.5 quarts of ice cream (pretty much fills a 1.5 qt. ice cream maker):~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups chocolate chip cookie dough
2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream, or whipping cream
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Chop cookie dough into bite-sized pieces. Place in a bowl, cover and freeze. Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in the sugar, a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about 1 minute more. Pour in the cream and milk, and whisk to blend. Add the vanilla and whisk to blend again.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer’s directions. When the ice cream is quite stiff (about 1 minute before it is done), add the chopped cookie dough. Be sure to wait until the last possible minute or the dough will get sticky and unmanageable. Continue freezing until done.

Makes 1 quart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few weeks ago I posted that Henry was a super crabby baby. Well, I think we’ve finally figured out the magic trick to get him to cool his jets. It’s a two part trick, which makes me feel better about it taking me eight weeks to figure out what it was.

First, I cut dairy (except yogurt), chocolate, and coffee out of my diet. That helped a little bit. Then I started making sure I burped the living daylights out of him after every meal. This entails serious whomping on his back for ten minutes to such a degree that when we’re in public people start looking at me like “what is that lady doing to that poor baby??” When I sit him on my lap and he has bubbles in his tummy, he stiffens up so much that I can barely get him to bend at the waist. When he’s all done burping, he’ll sit on my lap all relaxed and happy. That’s the test.

This pretty much clears up whole charming evenings of crying (like evenings at the theater but with more drama) and we’ve discovered that he actually smiles and is quite adorable when he does so. The big downside to all this is that I have to cut half of my favorite food out of my diet, and some days one must eat ice cream, especially if one has just foolishly made it themselves. George helpfully spent all day Monday reminding me that my five minutes of bliss produced twenty-four hours of misery. Thanks, Honey!

Unfortunately, now Henry is trying to come down with another cold so that’s making him slightly crabby. No one here has a cold and I don’t know of anyone at church or anywhere that has one either so I don’t even know where he got this (the last one was from his older sister coughing on his face). Argh! Hopefully it will be gone by the time Family Camp comes around in two weeks.

In potty training news (because I know you all like hearing about poopies and peepees), Faith is doing great with numero uno and disastrous with numero dos. It’s been what, three weeks now? She has yet to get ye old pooper in the appropriate receptacle. This is not a good way to please your mother, father, or older siblings whose bedroom floor you poop on (this was yesterday). Last night George woke me up around 5 am to tell me that Faith had exploded and he needed some help with cleanup crew. Thirty minutes, a bath, and a fresh change of sheets later, we made it back to bed. This qualifies in the mother and father not pleased category.

I hope this gets sorted out soon. This is the fifth child I’ve potty trained and none of the other ones had this problem. We’ve had other problems, such as Georgie not wanting to get off the potty if his poopies wouldn’t come out and one of the older girls (I think it was Trinity) being too scared to flush the toilet afterward. Both of those were sorted out by hitting on a story that helped analogize the problem to something that they were already familiar with. I started one last night with Faith that will hopefully make sense to her. If it does, I’ll publish it in the next post (again, I’m sure you’re dying to know…).

In the meantime, if any of you other Moms out there have encountered this problem and come upon some brilliant solution (or pedestrian solution or any solution), please post it. I’d like to have this sorted out before camp as well if at all possible. I hate potty training!

Oh, for you RCCers who are going to Family Camp and are looking for cheap croc knock offs for your children to destroy (those are the foam plastic clogs that you see everywhere you look), I priced them out all over and have the results posted on my new shopping/sales blog here (there’s always some good reason to start a new web project, right?). If anyone else is interested in coupons/codes, feel free to take a look. Only a couple of posts are there right now because I just put it up last week, but if you stick your email address in the form on the right hand sidebar, you’ll get email updates for new sales.

Rachel

So as you know, I’ve been having ice cream dreams what with the ice cream maker on my birthday list and everything (unfortunately now I’m off dairy so I can’t actually eat ice cream ). My MIL had an ice cream maker in her freezer that she’s never used so she sent it home with me when we were down there on Monday. Now I can cross it off my list! I’m going to the store this afternoon and hope to try it out tonight.

While I was looking for frozen yogurt recipes (which I can eat because dairy has live cultures that will make the dairy so it doesn’t bug Henry), I came across this amusing site on how to make ice cream with children instead of an ice cream maker. This looks like something my kids would love to do on a hot day. Plus, it has a whole explanation of the thermodynamics of ice cream making so it could qualify as a science project (did you hear that, Dad???). Here’s the link: Homemade Ice Cream Maker. Let me know if you try this out (and naturally I’ll do the same if/when we try it). Looks like the site has all kinds of other neat science toys and things you can do with your kids too.

Rachel

You know how some babies are easy going all the time and barelycomplain about anything? Well, Henry isn’t one of them. He’sdisturbingly like his older brother was when Georgie was a baby ~ fussy all the time and cries if you put him down for three minutes together. Kind of makes me worried, not for his general health or anything but that he’s going to be another high maintenance kid. Argh! That would make how many now? One, two, three, four…. Argh!

I was under the impression that when God blesses you with another baby that you weren’t planning to have, some unwritten code exists whereby He gives you a really sweet, mellow child so you can spend lots of time bragging to all your friends about how now you couldn’t imagine life without the charming new wee one and God really did know what He was doing. Silly me! I’m sure God really does know what He’s doing; however, I think the memo detailing the plan to me got lost in transit somehow. The Angel Delivery Service (ADS, sort of like the
heavenly UPS) is apparently slacking off on the job. Hmph! Maybe Henry will cure cancer or something. Yes, in lieu of further communication, I’m just going to assume that’s what the plan is.

The midwife was over yesterday, and I mentioned this to her (of course, he was charming and perfect while she was here as he normally is with company). Now I get to delete milk, chocolate (*sob*, my truffles, *sob*), and coffee from my diet for a few days and see if that helps. You know, all the things that make taste buds worth having. Blurg! I’m hoping this helps. Anika cried all the time when she was a new baby. She wouldn’t go down well for naps during the day and then was miserable when she was awake because she was over-tired.

When Anika was six weeks old, I came down with a terrible case of mastitis the night before we were supposed to leave for the beach with George’s family. The next morning we zipped up to the doctor, got some anti-biotics, and headed for the coast. At least there I would be able
to lie around and there would be more people to help with the kids. Unfortunately, the antibiotics made me throw up everything I ate so I was thoroughly miserable for the next 24 hours until I gave up the drugs. By that time they had worked well enough that my body was able to kill off the rest of the mastitis by itself.

During the afternoon that first day, my MIL went to put Anika down for a nap. She walked in, ten seconds later she walked back out, no crying came from the bedroom, and Anika was sound asleep. George and I both looked at her. Ani had been flipping out completely when we put her down and wouldn’t stay asleep for anything. Apparently Mom had swaddled Anika (yes, we too had done this), turned on the fan and off the light (yes, good), laid her on the bed and then left. Being the thoughtful parents that we were way back then, we had been trying
to….. comfort her and walk her around and cuddle her.mWhat dumb ideas! That was the problem alright. We immediately adopted this new streamlined bedtime routine and were promptly rewarded with a happy baby.

I keep getting the feeling that there’s some simple little key like this that we’re missing with Henry. He does almost exactly the same thing ~ crummy nap habits and super cranky which I think is related to being over-tired, all of which I think may be related to being gassy (hence the dietary modifications for Mommy). I hope it gets sorted out soon because I’m really getting tired of listening to him cry (and so is everyone else). Plus, when he’s happy, he is sooooo cute! I prefer the cute. I know most people like wailing babies better, but oh no, not me. I like the cuteness. Okay, well he just woke up from the little snooze he was doing next to me and is now fussing, of course, so I’m off to go do baby stuff. Ciao!

Rachel

Okay, my birthday is coming up next month (June 20) and I know you’re all dying to know what to get me. Usually when people ask me what I want, they get a deer-in-the-headlights stare in reply, but this year I actually have two things I reeeeeally want but would never get around to actually buying myself because they seem too splurge-y.

Anyway, here’s the list in order of most important first:

1. Casio Exilim 7.2 Megapixel Camera ~ Red This is $135 on sale at Circuit City plus they often have coupon codes that would get it down even further plus free shipping. Other places carry this too for similar prices so thereCheck here for codes. George has his big, fancy camera but he has to do a bunch of monkeying around to get the pictures off of it and formatted into something I can post here on my blog, which he never seems to get around to doing when I’m ready for them. I WANT PICTURES OF HENRY (and probably some of those other kids once in awhile too)!!! Blurg. This camera here not only takes pictures but a few minutes of video and it’s tiny enough to fit in my purse (plus it’s red, which makes everything better). Nifty!

A case for this camera would also be nice. Here’s one for $14 on Amazon:

And an SD card for $6 on Amazon:

2. The other thing I’ve been looking at for several months now is an ice cream maker, but a slacker one that I don’t have to do anything with (like crank or mess with ice or salt). This is the one I would like: Cuisinart ICE-30BC 2-Quart Automatic Ice Cream Maker for $80 but Bed Bath and Beyond carries it and they have 20% off mailer coupons regularly. There is also a 1.5 quart one that comes in red, which is of course very tempting since it’s red, but this one is bigger and we have a rather large-ish family (you may have noticed). Here’s a list of other places that carry this item. Some of them may have discounts and things as well.

And the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Cookbook to go with this would be quite fancy ($10 on Amazon). Plus, when you come visit me this summer, I’ll make you home made ice cream. YUMMMMMMMMYYYYYY!!!

3. Lastly, I’ve been looking at the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day cookbook for $19 on Amazon. I have two excellent artisan bread recipes that I make regularly and love so I’m looking forward to seeing the variations that this has. So cool!

Okay, so there’s my pathetic birthday begging. That stuff is probably all out of price range for whomever might be buying me presents. Maybe a group gift…..??? Okay, well I’m glad I’m done with this. Now I feel all ooky and weird. What’s wrong with me?? How hard is it to make a birthday wish list??? Sheesh.

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

Yesterday I spent a large portion of the day upstairs communing with my laptop and catching up on deskwork. The older children spent at least half the day cleaning their bedrooms (cleaning in this case is a relative term) and the downstairs and then messing both back up again in a successful effort to irritate their father into near insanity (he was on kid duty while I was upstairs).

The first two days of this week were just sort of a write-off, you know? The kids were all wacky and I was too tired or too busy catching up on all the things that slid while George was gone to really de-wackify the kids. Makes for lots of teeth gritting all around.

Today was much better. Although Henry slept lousy last night (my fault; I was busy working and didn’t pay close enough attention to the fact that he basically slept all day) and I didn’t really start moving around until 9:30, I decided we just weren’t going to do crazy house today.

I set the timer for the kids to clean their room back up and presto! Twenty minutes later, clean room. Ditto the downstairs. After such diligent work, I let them play the wii and goof all while I cleaned the fridge, which is one of my least favorite jobs but needed to be done because it was belching toxic fumes at us whenever we opened its door. So rude! As far as attitudes went, the kids were still a bit on the grumbly side.

My Mother has been coming over on Wednesday to help out for a few weeks while Henry is a bitty blip, and it has been sooooo nice to be able to rest a bit or get a good nap or whatever. She was here today, which was good timing because I was taking my friend Amy out to lunch for her birthday (yay! Out of the house with an adult and not six children…). When I got home, I finished up the fridge and made dinner.

Dinner has been a rather frustrating endeavor at our house for the last couple of weeks mainly because my older son has been loudly proclaiming every night that he doesn’t like the food, doesn’t want to eat it, it looks weird, etc. This makes Mommy want to shout at him, and in a terribly unsuccessful effort to model good behavior to my children, that is exactly what I did tonight. After barking at Georgie to shut UP and I don’t want to hear ANY MORE about how much you don’t want the food, I went to go actually feed my younger son who was also complaining loudly but this time because he wanted his dinner. Urgh.

Typically I don’t yell at my children to shut up, so I spent the time that I was feeding Henry in the other room (the quiet, unpopulated other room, I might add) thinking about this lovely new home dynamic we have here and how to best return it to the happy, not-quite-so-deranged one that I prefer.

After dinner was finished (which Georgie ate an acceptable amount of with no further complaining of any sort), Georgie and I were the only two left in the kitchen. He was unloading the dishwasher and I was clearing up the dinner mess, and I decided it was a good time for a little instruction.

I explained to him that it takes a lot of thought and planning to make meals for everyone. It takes time for me to sit down and plan what we’re going to eat all week and figure out something healthy so you kids can grow strong. It takes time to make the shopping list and for Daddy or sometimes me to go shopping and buy all the food. At this point he interjected that it was probably expensive too. Yes, it is! He was thoroughly shocked when I told him how much we spend on groceries every week. Of course, anything that costs more than an underwater Bionicle is overly expensive to him.

I continued on and told him that after all that, then it still takes time to actually make the food and I really do not like making it for little boys who are ungrateful and I wasn’t going to do it anymore so next time he complains, he’s going straight upstairs with no dinner, dessert, or anything and will remain there until bedtime at which point he will be going to bed (duh!). This applies whether it’s Family Dinner Night (which means no Doctor Who with Grandpa and Uncle Jonathan and everyone else) or not. He seemed a bit concerned about that.

Then he asked me what ungrateful was. I told him that as soon as he was done with the dishes he could go get a piece of paper, look the word up in the dictionary, write down the definition, and bring it to me. He started to complain about that so I told him that now he could also do the same for the word “obedience.” That took care of the griping. Hehe.

He followed through on his sentence with a remarkably cheerful attitude. I told him that if I had to send him upstairs for complaining, I would be sending him with a dictionary and a Bible and he would be spending the evening writing out things I tell him to numerous times. He seemed quite happy by the time he went to bed.

With Georgie’s success, I started thinking about Trinity who has taken to scowling like a Doberman when we ask her to do something she’s not keen on doing and, I learned today, has apparently been doing this at school lately as well in addition some other overly grumpy behavior (helps having the teacher be your best friend; makes it much easier to gang up on the kids when they misbehave).

After Trinity finished her evening chore of loading up the dishwasher, I had a little chat with her. Lately chats with her have ended in a shower of tears on her part, but tonight she was all smiles. Come to think of it, she was cheerful and obedient most of the evening. This seems to have started about the time I yelled at Georgie….

Anyway, we had a discussion about attitude and we talked about a few Bible passages relating to a cheerful heart. I told her she would be looking up and copying down dictionary and Bible passages as well if her crummy attitude continues. She looked downright thrilled to get to sit up her bedroom and read the Bible and the dictionary. Knowing the tender heart that Trinity has, this will probably have the same end result as it will have with Georgie but for a completely different reason.

Anika got a brief talking to after picking a fight with Georgie, and this new strategy with the older kids won’t work with her yet so I’m going to have to keep a close eye on her tomorrow. Kyra and Faith were both in trouble several times today (Kyra for lying to me and then for pushing Faith out of a closet; Faith for too many things to remember and keep track of) and duly reprimanded. I’m hoping that if I keep at them for the rest of the week, they’ll be back down to just maintenance level discipline by the weekend. We’ll see.

When the older three kids came to kiss me goodnight this evening, I told them that tomorrow there would be no TV, no wii, and no computer and that they would have to use their imaginations and find something to do. This was directly on the heels of all of their other chats and they were apparently all trying to show what wonderful attitudes they were capable of displaying because all three of them enthusiastically responded that they had excellent imaginations and could do that (that was Anika announcing her excellent imagination).

In a fit of chivalry, Georgie asked if we could do that for the rest of the week (!!?????!!). Naturally I did what any self-respecting Mother would do and said yes! He only looked mildly confused as to how the conversation had ended up where it had. A minute later when he realized what he had done, he sheepishly mentioned that he had actually been sort of planning to watch Mythbusters tomorrow. This is his usual Wednesday evening ritual; but since was looking up dictionary definitions for me tonight, he didn’t get to watch his show. I told him that if he was really well behaved all day, I would let him watch it tomorrow.

Yep, the post-dinner portion of this evening went pretty well. And, I’m expecting tomorrow to go much better in terms of attitude. They’ve all been zombified into TV goons for the last few days, so they’ll probably be a bit rowdy tomorrow while they reboot their brains. Who knows though. Maybe they’ll go upstairs and have a birthday party for Draco or someone instead (Draco is Georgie’s six foot long stuffed dragon; they throw birthday parties for their stuffed animals and/or dollies with some regularity). Hmmm, I’ll have to keep that in my back pocket and remind them of it if they get to weird and don’t come up with it themselves. That will just leave the younger ones to straighten out plus of course, Henry to look after. No problem! (And would be the sleep deprivation talking there….).

Henry is napping next to me so I am going to go soak in the tub and give myself a facial for the next twenty-five-ish minutes and then I will either go fold laundry and watch the rest of my Hubby’s lame movie with him if it’s still on or head for bed and blow off the laundry until tomorrow (stupid laundry is eating my couch alive as usual).

Good night!

Rachel

After the chaos that comprised the entirety of last week (George got home from Vegas Wednesday and then worked all day and into the evening on both Thursday and Friday and then from 2:30 to 8:30 on Saturday), this week is looking blessedly slower.

It’s throwing George all out of sorts after working all hours for the last few weeks, but I’m getting to catch up on some atrociously overdue rest. Plus, Henry’s cold is finally getting better after two weeks and counting, and his nighttime sleep habits have started to improve again the last few days. Naturally, this makes a humongous difference in my nighttime sleep habits as well. A few more days and I might feel like some rough approximation of a normal person. I’m looking forward to that!

Since I’ve been in a giant, sleep- and husband-deprived fog for the last two weeks, my children have gotten all behaviorally sloppy again. Georgie has taken to pouting every time we ask him to do something, Trinity has mysteriously gone deaf under the same circumstances, and Faith has turned into a total maniac. She spends half the day crying that she’s not getting her way and the other half fighting with the bigger kids (usually this is at her instigation).

Plus, as soon as I sit down to nurse or mess with Henry, she makes a beeline for the pantry or whatever is on the counter that she’s not supposed to be in (such as Angel Food Cake or cookies) and starts wolfing it down before one of her parents or siblings discovers her malfeasance. Argh! She’s driving me (and every one else) nuts!!!

The only one I’m not contemplating jettisoning from the house is Kyra. Considering that only a year ago she was the biggest troublemaker in the abode, this is quite the surprise. Plus, she keeps her bedroom clean (she’s three! What three year old is obsessive about keeping their room picked up??), amuses me with virtually everything she says or does, and obeys and helps out immediately and cheerfully upon request. She seems to be wearing this age well. At least somebody is charming to be around.

On the other hand, now that Daddy is back and Mommy is shedding her zombiness and returning to human form, it shouldn’t take more than a few days to get all these other kids straightened back out except for Faith, who will probably take about a year of sitting on. I think the only reason that children survive being two without their parents choking their little heads off is because they come with those cute chubby cheeks attached. Cuteness. Pretty good safety feature as those things go. Anyway, this will probably be another long week, but overall a tremendous improvement over the last two. As my favorite saying goes, “The Beatings Will Continue UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES.” Hehe.

Hmmm, I need to take some more pictures of Mr. Henry. He’ll be a month old on Thursday. I’m fairly sure there’s been some sort of rift in the space-time continuum or something, which is obviously the only logical explanation for how fast the last month went. Don’t you just hate those? I’ll see if I can’t get some pics taken and up in the next day or two.

Rachel