Bountiful Blessings

I am so blessed.

Seriously? Chris and I and God made these three human beings? We're that blessed? It's overwhelming to think about sometimes!

Teach Me Time Clock

I don't actually have much natural feeling of authority, so sometimes it doesn't even occur to me that I can require something of the children. So, it has been almost five years now that I've woken every morning when the children wake me up. Because, you know, a mother gets up when her children need (want) her--no matter what time!

I discovered only recently that many parents do not let their children come out of their bedrooms until such-and-such reasonable time in the morning. How embarrassing that such a thing never occurred to me! Well, we work with what we've got, given by God and formed by life's circumstances!

Now, our children can't tell time yet, so I pondered the various ways to communicate the time to them before implementing this new plan. On a recommendation, we purchased the American Innovative Teach Me Time Talking Alarm Clock and Nightlight.

John was particularly excited because he had recently had several instances of waking in the middle of the night and thinking it was morning. He'd get dressed and go downstairs, only to discover it was pitch black and I wasn't down there. Unlike Mary, who has no worries about wandering the house alone in the middle of the night (ah, sweet freedom!), doing so makes John really anxious, so he'd ask me at bedtime, "But how will I know when I wake up if it is morning or the middle of the night?" I told him that this clock was on its way in the mail and he was so relieved!

Last night we used our clock for the first time. We set it and taught the kids how to use it. They can push a button to hear the clock "tell" them the time. We changed the settings so the yellow nightlight is on from 7:30 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., and it turns to green at 6:30 a.m. "Green means go! Go downstairs!" When the light turns green, the children are allowed to join me downstairs. I explained that the baby often wakes early, and she's too young for me to force her back to sleep, but even if they hear me downstairs with the baby, it doesn't mean they may come down. Their bodies need more sleep and they need to stay in their rooms, where they may read books or play with toys or go back to sleep.

This morning was a great maiden voyage with the clock. The baby was awake for the day at 4:33 a.m. (and people wonder why I pass out at nine at night?). Soothing her and then proceeding to ignore her in the pitch dark for an hour while she alternated between cooing, babbling, and crying, did not help her fall back asleep, so I waved the white flag at 5:30 and took her downstairs. Normally my stealthy creaking along the wooden foyer floor would cause the children to wake or, if already awake, they would leap from their beds to follow me downstairs. But today they knew they had to stay in bed until the light was green!

I got to have a whole hour to myself, to wake up slowly with coffee. At around 6:20, I could hear the pitter patter of little feet upstairs. Would they stay or would they come down? Chris, who was still upstairs, reported to me that he could hear the children obsessively checking the clock, pushing its "talking" button (as we know they will until the novelty wears off):

six-six-six-six-six twenty. six-six-six-six-six-twenty-one. six-six-six-six-six-six-twenty-two.

And at 6:30, I heard feet pounding down the stairs and they burst into the kitchen, shrieking with joy, "The light turned green! The light turned green!"

I highly recommend this clock. Features are: A light tells the children that they may leave their bedrooms. But if they're still asleep, the light change won't wake them. There is a teaching feature to teach children to tell time, with five different levels of difficulty. John already loves level 1 (easiest). The clock talks to tell the time, plus displays time in analog only, digital only, or both. The clock has an alarm clock feature and serves as a nightlight. The clock has three bezel colors from which to choose: blue, pink, and yellow.

FTC statement: I am sharing this item with you because I really like it and have not received anything from the company.

My Television Interview

On Monday, I was interviewed for a local television story. I had been called as a La Leche League leader the prior Friday. The reporter had left messages for several leaers and I was the one who called her back soonest: lucky me? Who knows. Anyway, I answered her questions over the phone, thinking I was giving her background information from the LLL perspective. Then she asked, "So, great, can I interview you next week?"

"Oh? This wasn't the interview?"

So, we scheduled an interview time. And then, because I'm really slow on the uptake, I thought to ask right before hanging up: "Um, will you have, like, a camera with you?"

"Of course!"

So, I spent the next three days cleaning the downstairs of my home spotless (even sending Chris and the big kids out of the house for several hours) plus narrowing the points I wanted to present and memorizing statistics. Oh, and washing laundry, picking outfits, and wishing I could lose 15 pounds in three days.

And as soon as the crew arrived on Monday, they sought a place to film and suggested we go upstairs to the nursery. My upstairs was trashed and dirty because I had focused all my attention downstairs! The best laid plans of mice and men . . .

Those camera lights really are astonishingly hot.

Chris entitled the above modified photo, "Is She A Mother?"

And what is sad is that those sensible shoes I was wearing are my most hip and cool shoes!

One other humorous moment of the two hours I was being interviewed was upon arrival and setting up the intiaial shot, the reporter asked me, "Do you have any 'nursing bling'? Like a baby bottle?"

I laughed and explained, "I don't bottle feed. I don't have bottles. Besides, how does a bottle represent nursing?"

So she asked, bewildered, if I had any other 'nursing bling'. I told her that one of the nice things about exclusive nursing is that it requires zero equipment. I searched and said maybe I could dig out of the closet my Boppy pillow (she declined).

Other than that, I'll say that giving the interview left me disconcerted and discombobulated, as the reporter's angle was different than what she told me ahead of time. It was a salacious angle--salacious about nursing babies? oh yes!--so I felt disheartened that once again the media will probably present God's design for nourishing the species as something weird, immodest, fringe, or dangerous.

After the crew left, I was so exhausted from three days of go-go-go, but I foolishly launched into meal planning for the week and cleaning the upstairs (expecting house guests the next morning), and then took two un-napped preschoolers plus one baby to Costco for a major shopping trip at three o'clock in the afternoon. I ask you: what person in her right mind does that?

Me, apparently. And thus followed a limp rag of a four-year-old and a two-year-old throwing a major tantrum in the busy, dangerous parking lot. I seriously considered packing the crew right back into the van at that point and driving home. But, no, I wasn't that smart and I pushed forward to do our shopping trip.

That means I was that mother wearing a screaming five-month-old while pushing a heavy cart containing two siblings in it who would not stop screaming, hitting each other, and shrieking to me for justice. Try to have sympathy when you see those mothers! I was very grateful to a few shoppers who saw my plight and sympathetically lent me a hand instead of casting dirty looks at me.

I'll let you know if the story for which I was filmed ever makes it to air!

Mary's Heart

Mary (making a goofy face, above) is lately carrying around a little silver heart jewelry box. This box was given to me when I was a young girl and is engraved with my maiden initials, KTR. Perhaps a month ago, Mary asked me for a box in which to store her little bracelet so I dug this out of my keepsakes.

Well! The child has been carrying her heart with her everywhere she goes since then! It contains two precious items: her little floral bracelet and her little crystal angel pendant, given to her by her aunt who is a nun. Mary brings the heart downstairs with her in the morning and keeps it with her wherever she goes during the day, except we forbid her to take it in the car, lest she lose it. At night she carries the heart back upstairs and she even sleeps with it--so carefully that the lid doesn't come off in the bedsheets. A two-year-old hasn't yet lost these tiny items so precious to her and that is saying something!

Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden

Our field trip to Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, as joined by my friend Meghan and her son Matthew: Many lizards and butterflies were sighted, much water was splashed in. Snacks and lunch were eaten, and water bottles drained.

Our Girls

Today was One of Those Days. I thought about writing a humorous blog post about how I was barely on top of my day and constantly reacting to mischief, defiance, and wild antics. Plus messes--oh so many messes! It was the kind of day when the selfish part of me kept thinking, "Are you kidding me?!" so then I'd try to override that by thinking, "All for the love of thee, Jesus!" Thus, I won't write a humorously complaining post, and will simply share some cuteness.

Over the weekend, we were all in the back yard when I witnessed Mary running pell-mell and trip over a tree root and fall face-first into another tree root. I thought she was just fine until Chris mentioned to me, "Um, hey, I think I see blood." Boy, do faces bleed! Blood was pouring down her face in rivulets. Considering how I shriek hysterically and dance uncontrollably in reaction to something like the children placing a cicada on my skirt, it is really surprising how calm and comfortingly cheerful I am in the face of real injuries. Anyway, I kept Mary quite calm, which isn't that hard, considering what a tough cookie she is. She split her forehead skin open, but all it needed was a bandage. She raced downstairs and made goofy faces to show Daddy.

On Sunday, the kids went to a child's birthday party with a Star Wars theme. For a few minutes, Mary dressed up like Yoda. The kids had a blast and some highlights for John were winning a prize for Pin the Light Sabre on Yoda and getting to feed crickets to Uncle Daniel's bearded dragon.

Today was a special feast day meriting a dessert: in the old calendar, the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and in the new, the Feast of the Queenship of Mary. (Good thing I took a photo when I did because next I laid eyes on these chocolate chip cookie cakes, they were wounded with a dozen stabs issued by a certain momentarily unsupervised two-year-old wielding a knife.)


Margaret is five months old now! She is rolling over readily and, in the last few days, rolling repeatedly to traverse the room. I see her yearning with determination to get to a toy and trying to lurch her chubby body toward it, so I bet she'll be scooching soon.

Margaret's daytime sleep is ever more consolidated, although I don't pay enough attention to know for sure. I think that most days now she is taking three naps, often a shortie in the morning and then two longer ones, or two longer ones with a shortie around dinner. Her bedtime sleep is highly regular, as she has fallen into the habit of crashing at seven o'clock and making no bones about informing me that she is tired. She wakes for the day anywhere between 5:00 and 6:30 in the morning, but much more often the former, so I think she might turn out to be a 10-hour overnight sleeper like her two older siblings. Oh, how I yearn for a child who sleeps 12 hours overnight! And in between 7:00 p.m. and the morning, she wakes many times to nurse, but I am accustomed to that after two babies doing the same.

Miss Margaret still hates the car, so I mostly stay home except for perhaps Mass a couple of times, one grocery trip, and one social visit per week. I try to time my outings for when she first wakes from a nap, so she's fresh, and she will now tolerate a short drive when she's fresh and happy, so that is an improvement. And our girl still proves not to be very portable, so if we're caught away from home when she's tired, watch out!

And please join me in praying to St. Anthony to find our camera. It went missing days ago, even though I am consistent about keeping it in one spot on a particular shelf in the kitchen. I am really hoping that I set it somewhere strange (like in the pantry or in a coat closet) and that it is not the case that the worker who was in our kitchen last week stole it. I would be really sad for his desperation and thieving if that were the case, so let's pray it was my own absent mindedness. In the meanwhile, all fuzzy photos are thanks to our cell phones' cameras.

The Green-Eyed Monster

I had wondered if the 28-month spacing God gave us between the girls would make differences compared to the 23-month spacing He gave us between John and Mary. One thing I was particularly interested in was John's jealousy of his little sister that sprung up as soon as she was mobile.

Indeed, right on schedule, I am seeing that emotion anew in Mary of her baby sister Margaret. What I remember from the first time around is that John was so sweet to his baby sister until she hit about six months old and was mobile. As soon as she began reaching for "his" toys, he became very jealous and upset. He hit her every time I turned my back for the next nine months. Boy, those was a rough stretch of time for me!

Then they became best pals!

Now here is Mary and she was nearly half a year older than was John when she became a big sibling. Would that make a difference? I also wondered if it would help that Mary has never known a day when she did not have to share toys and my attention, whereas John had to be unseated from his throne of being the only Prince in the castle. I don't know the answer yet about how all this will unfold, but I do know that Mary's jealousy has sprung up fully formed in the last two weeks.

Margaret is now reaching for toys and starting to "scooch" (not yet fully Army crawling). The baby toys I had brought out of retirement (e.g., rattles, soft balls, jangly things) Mary is now claiming are "mine, mine!" She throws a tantrum if I hand a baby toy to Margaret and yanks it out of her hand. Will the hitting start next? Oh surely I hope not!

I'm not sure what to do differently than I'm doing. Often (at times of non-confrontation), I cozy with Mary and tell her warm stories about how when John was a baby, he played with this little rattle, then when Mary was a baby, she played with this rattle, and now that Margaret is a baby, she plays with this rattle! And we take turns! Big smiles, pat pat, lots of love. I even talked to Mary about all the Big Girl Toys she gets to play with and Big Girl Things she gets to do, and she screamed at me, "I don't want big girl toys! I want baby toys!"

Maybe time is the other necessary balm to this wound!

Update on Liliana!

UPDATE: After a sleepless night watching my gorgeous, fat, healthy baby sleep in my arms and thinking about Liliana and so many others suffering in their cribs, I thought that I also want to point out what a big difference small people can make. For example, the founder of Reece's Rainbow, Andrea, is simply the mother of a child born with Down Syndrome. And she got the idea that maybe she could build a simple website to show pictures of children with DS in international orphanages so that they'd be more likely to be adopted. Hers is not an adoption agency; she is simply a woman who organizes information and helps raise grant money for adoptions. In her first year, she helped bring two children home. Four short years later, she helped bring 153 children into forever homes! She is just a mama with no special training, but a calling from God and a willingness to say 'yes'.

Home in 2010 (153)

Home in 2009 (76)

Home in 2008 (36)

Home in 2007 (16)

Home in 2006 (2)

And Adeye is simply a mother who now helps personally raise money to bring children home. She has done these fundraisers before. And guess what? In one single day, she raised the full cost to bring Liliana home to America! At my last check, only 425 contributors raised more than the $22,000.

That's 425 people. We have more than 300 million citizens in this country.

How many orphans could we bring home through donations to those families equipped to adopt?

Liliana has her money (and, I think, her committed, paper-ready family too). If you'd like to help many others like her, please go to Reece's Rainbow.

Please Help Liliana

My friends already know that I'm a bleeding heart. My parents and my husband know too. Here I go again . . .

I try not to forward things too often, "share" them, "like" them (a la Facebook), or post others' blogs on my blog, but apparently I can't fall asleep tonight unless I post this here. (Thanks, God.)

Please help little Liliana, an 11-year-old girl with Down Syndrome who weighs 10 pounds. She languishes in an orphanage, along with many like her, actually. She is not the only one. Children with Down Syndrome born here (born, not aborted) would receive love, touch, food, and some physical therapy, to grow into happy, fat, bouncing children with Down Syndrome. But children with DS who are put into Soviet-era orphanages as newborns and starve, left not to be touched but a couple times per day, fed watered-down gruel (would they were so lucky to receive true artificial milk formula), well, they stop producing any growth hormone and remain as forever babies with little stick limbs.

A family of ten biological children who are currently adopting such a little "bird" baby (see her daughter: a 9-year-old with DS who weighs 11 pounds) reports from on the ground right now in Bulgaria that these children have their diapers changed once per day. All their food is liquefied to make feeding faster, so the workers pour a cup of food down their throats in 60 seconds. If they throw it all up, then they lose out on food that day. These children never learn to chew or swallow. I don't vilify the workers: how else are 40 staffers supposed to take care of 260 children (and that's during the day shift, as half of them go home at three o'clock, leaving 20 works to take care of the entire orphanage all night)?

And thus money is being raised for Liliana by an adoption warrior: she and her husband have adopted four special needs children and now draw attention and raise money for other qualified families to rescue more. Only one day into her fundraising efforts and--as I type this--$17,000 of the $22,000 total needed for some family to adopt Liliana has been raised.

In one day, people.

And according to the adoptive woman on the ground as we speak--I do believe she is speaking about Liliana when she reports that a family is now committed to adopting her.

And four more families have stepped forward to adopt others like Liliana.

Today.

So please don't think that it's not worth donating money because nobody would ever actually adopt such a child, that it's too late. It's not too late.

The family organizing the fundraising adopted such a wasted-away child: a five-year-old with Down Syndrome who could not walk or even sit up. She looked like a starving one-year-old. And she scratched herself bloody from stress. One year later from being bathed with love, she has gained some weight, she has some fat rolls, and she has learned to walk! Plus she smiles and laughs and is full of joy, an emotion she had never known in her whole life. Of course she will always be irreversibly damaged, but she will live out the rest of her life in love.

I'm sorry for being so tearful, so sappy. My mother's heart simply can't take it, especially after I'd been reading about these babies and my own four-month-old woke up for a night nursing. And I responded to her, unlike those other babies who are touched only a couple of times per day and never with love. And I nursed my baby, giving her the perfect food, and I watched her glowingly fat body that grows through clothes so fast, that has fat rolls I have to pry open in order to clean her.

Not everyone can adopt. Not everyone can adopt right now. But many of us can chip in to help.

If you want to help, go here.

Ladybugs

Butterflies--check.

Now, we study ladybugs!

Above is the tube that arrived in today's mail containing 15 ladybug larvae and enough food for them to reach the pupal stage.

Trying to Meet Needs

This introvert-loner mama who has a husband who works from home and kids around 24/7 really treasures the occasional mornings when I get a few minutes alone-with-the-baby before the big kids wake up. But I know how hard it is for John that he always has a toddler sister messing up his Big Boy Games, so when I hear the pitter patter of his feet coming downstairs to join me at 5:30 a.m. (and my heart sinks at my lost sole opportunity for alone time in the day) and he begs me to play chess with him, I can hardly refuse.

But mama still needs respite every so often . . . and today I got it when my baby was napping and the sitter was here for the morning. Instead of using those few hours to do chores like usual, I sat in my van under a shady tree in our neighborhood and read a book, with instructions to be called when the baby awoke. Because you mothers understand me when I say that if I tried to read a book locked in a bedroom or in my own back yard, those children would find me, seek me out, have some need that only Mommy could make right!

Speaking of reading that book, I'm only 32 pages in but already want to recommend The Catholic Book of Character and Success by Edward Garesche, S.J. (Sophia Press--an abridged edition of The Will to Succeed, originally published in 1931). Already I've gotten much good meditation out of this excerpt:

"A successful life is a life that achieves its purpose. Such a life is a happy one, even though its way may pass through suffering and difficulty, because happiness is one thing and pleasure another, and a person may have great pleasure and still be very unhappy, just as he may lack pleasure almost entirely and still be very happy.

"What is the purpose of life? The chorus of all generations of mankind, the general conclusion of history, is that the purpose of life is to do one's duty to God and man, to make the most of one's opportunities of service, to live virtuously, and thus enjoy the happiness here and hereafter that comes from such performance of duty."

Ice Cream Reward

I think that the latest round of potty training with Mary might have been The One! The difference I saw this time was her attitude: she was cheerful and eager--and so proud of her successes!

On Day 8 she succeeded in having no accidents all day, so she earned a trip to Baskin Robbins for ice cream with candy toppings! (The kids made goofy expressions in all the photos.)

If there is a vertical surface, Mary is climbing it and leaping off of it. Here she had taken her ice cream off the table so she could dance to the music without pausing her eating, then she stood on the foot ledge and leapt off of it without spilling her dessert. And that's when I redirected her to her seat!

Bonus pics: Playing Go Fish with the kids

Miss Margaret is rolling over both ways these days, although hasn't discovered that, if she keeps rolling, she can travel across the room.

Homeschooling Juggling Act

I've been doing formal homeschooling with John for about six weeks now. He's not yet five, so we're calling it "preschool."

I am finding it so interesting to learn how to teach. I've been learning a lot through trial and error about how John learns (both as him, and as a four-year-old, and as a boy) and some general tips about how to teach. But that's for another blog post.

Today I was reflecting on learning how to homeschool, which means teaching while managing everything else in the home. It's quite a steep learning curve and I have so much respect for veteran homeschooling mothers!

First of all, I am honing my routine of the day. I don't have a strict schedule per se, but I am finding that the more routinized our home life is, the more kids know what is coming next, so everything flows much better. Instead of kids throwing tantrums because they expected one thing next but a different thing happens, instead they just flow along, knowing that A is followed by B, which is followed by C. I think the general routine that will work well for us at these ages is:

Breakfast
Morning Chores
School Time (starting bright and early when they're fresh, anytime between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., and lasting only 15-20 minutes)
Free Play
Morning Snack
School Time (15-20 minutes)
Free Play
Lunch (all of this by 11:30 in the morning!)

But I am still experimenting!

This morning provides a good example of other "opportunities for learning" I am experiencing (see my positive spin on things?): I have a four-month-old, so her naps are still somewhat unpredictable and I don't know if she's going down for 45 minutes or three hours. So, after breakfast I got her down for nap, me and kids dressed, beds made, and we settled at the kitchen table for School Time. (But often she is awake during School, so she's on my lap nursing.)

I got the two-year-old involved in a project (two options at the table: lacing beads and her own "writing"). There: now she should be occupied and within eyesight (lesson having already been learned that it is not good to let the toddler wander the house, entertaining herself, during School Time).

John was having a particularly wiggly day. Some days he's deeply engaged, some days he's a wiggle worm. Today was the latter and I quickly saw that I was going to cut School Time short after our reading lesson, but in the meantime I redirected him repeatedly.

We made our Morning Offering prayer and read about the Saint of the Day (St. Liberatus and six monks--a dramatic event of holy men who would not bend to the Arian heresy, so were sentenced to be set in a boat at sea and burned alive!).

Then the toddler wandered to the bathroom, as she is potty training and doing so very independently. That was great except that then I noticed as I kept teaching that she was gone too long and the water was still running. So I had to leave John to investigate, and found Mary doing messy water play, so now the bathroom and her clothing were soaked.

By the time I got back, of course, John was distracted and I had to "gather" him again--trying always to be cheerful and inspiring, but it's hard. He was almost done reading the long story part of his reading lesson when I heard the baby waking up ('ah, so this is a 45-minute nap'). I knew how hard it would be to focus John to finish his story later if we stopped now, so I tried to push him through the rest quickly, while hearing the baby crying harder and harder upstairs. So, that's another lesson and experience for me, as I would never have let a baby cry when I had, you know, just one of them to take care of.

So, then I had to interrupt our lesson to scoop up the baby (after about three minutes of crying). This meant making sure I collect up all pens (did you know that white board pens stain permanently when written elsewhere than a white board? I do!) lest we go upstairs and a child escapes my notice to go back downstairs and find unsecured pens. Then I march us all upstairs because I don't know how long I'll be up there with the baby and I don't want to leave the kids unsupervised for more than a couple of minutes.

The baby is retrieved and we all march back downstairs. I settle the baby in her Jumperoo. I settle the toddler with writing: but then ensues a tantrum because she wants to do something she's not allowed to do, and my dealing with every two-minute tantrum is one more time I've lost the attention of my four-year-old, who now has to be "gathered" again.

We settle back down and finally finish the reading lesson. I tell John that I'm happy to cut School Time short today since he is so wiggly, and that he may play. But, no: disappointing the teacher, John says he actually wants to continue and to do our Nature Reading and Poetry. 'Really?' (I am so tired!) 'Okay, honey, let's do it.' So, we read about Camels, learning many interesting vocabulary words along the way, and we read a poem about Noah's Ark, and we talk about all the rhymes in the poem. (And in the midst of the poetry, the baby suddenly needed a fresh diaper, which I delayed changing because we were so close to being done and I couldn't stand one more interruption.)

Classroom teachers have many of their own distractions to deal with and manage--some very similar, some different. I may be dealing with different ages of kids, but I'm not dealing with six three-year-olds or 15 Kindergarteners or 30 second graders. It sure is interesting to me to be learning this aspect of homeschooling management (plus add in various things happening in the background, like the laundry machine going, or the dish washer repair man showing up--as if I could compete with that excitement!).

It's an refreshing and challenging time for me, and I am glad that this year is sort of a freebie. (Even Kindergarten is basically a freebie!) If I crash and burn right now, and even if I must do a lot of experimentation, this year of schooling should be a-okay.

Feast of the Assumption of the BVM

The Assumption of the Virgin Altarpiece by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

Monday was the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, which I learned is the Blessed Mother's highest feast day throughout the year and is a national holiday in something like 40 countries . . . although not in ours!

We celebrated the Vigil by having some new friends (with kids ages 5, 3, and 11 months--so similar to ours!) join us for a bonfire Sunday night. Apparently a bonfire is one of the many festivities associated with the Assumption. The kids adored it and roasted marshmallows for s'mores in the flames. Because, as you know, you've always got to have dessert on special feast days!

Then on Monday we attended 7:00 a.m. Mass, and the kids learned more about the Assumption during school time plus colored some lovely pictures of Mary, and then they got to have dessert again (just what random things I had on hand: strawberries, Nilla wafers, canned whipped cream, and chocolate chips!).

Best Playmates

Even though I break up and negotiate many sibling contretemps in a day, John and Mary really are best playmates. It warms my heart to witness. Today Chris took John on an errand and, while out, bought him a little frosty at a fast food restaurant. Later, John asked if they could go back and buy one for his sister at home (which they did do): making sure she has the same treat he has is something I've seen him do many times. I enjoy listening to them talking to each other as they fall asleep at night: tonight I was walking down the hall when I caught John getting out of his bed, but he did so just to cross the room and kiss Mary on the nose, then go back to bed--and I couldn't scold him for that sweetness! 

Hiding in a new toy box Daddy assembled for the sun room: It's all fun and games until one sibling climbs in and the other siblings closes the lid and sits on top.

The thumping sound you hear in the background of the video is the roofers replacing our neighbor's roof.

Eating spaghetti dinner al fresco

List Mania

Now that I am four months into motherhood of three, I am still clinging to routine like a lifeline. I have a feeling inside of me that is almost manic in trying to create a routine or chart or list for everything in my life. It feels like if I can just get everything organized, I can stay on top of it. On one hand, there is truth in that. With more children comes more demands for the homemaker to be diligently on top of things. But there also is a pathetic hubris in trying to control everything: we all know that joke: "If you want to make God laugh, make plans!"

These days I am living by lists taped up all over the house:

 There is my Routine of the Day.

And my meal plan (plus my grocery list, organized by store--not pictured).

I am updating John's Chore Chart, and above is the current draft in progress. He's going to be learning some new chores and we're going to try having Family Chore Time for about 20 minutes every afternoon!

I'm keeping track of school time each day with the wonderful white board . . .

. . . and with a list of this month's curriculum plans, as well as a calendar recording what I actually achieved in school that day.

Then there is also our family Gmail calendar (with different colors for his, hers, ours, and gardening), the liturgical calendar on the wall, the family to do list on the refrigerator, and my list of prayer intentions upstairs.

Sometimes I worry that God will find a way to take away all my lists. Really, it makes me shudder.

Anyway, I think about how different women would respond differently to a new stress, like now having three little ones (which really is not many compared to my community, but it's the most kids I've ever had!). I'm reacting by exercising more and more control while others might react by being more and more relaxed--all depending on factors like temperament of mom, temperament of her husband, age and spacing of her kids, circumstances in home, and myriad other things I can't think of.

Perhaps I could make a formal list of those factors right now and tape it up somewhere . . .

Playground

Playing at the cathedral's school playground after 7:30 a.m. Mass: a healthier treat than a doughnut!

Margaret in the Jumperoo

Margaret is our first baby to like the Jumperoo-type baby devices. She stays in it only 20 minutes at the longest about once per day, and shorter times the rest of her attempts, but she is enjoying it more each day.

Problem Solved

Every morning for just about forever, John comes down to the kitchen, while it is still dark outside, and blinks and complains about how It Is Too Bright. He goes around dimming all the lights that can be dimmed, but always has further difficulty when it comes time to wash his hands in the bathroom because the bathroom light cannot be dimmed.

Today he stood there, eyes closed, and said, "Give me my sunglasses, please." So I did, he donned them, and he was able to wash his hands in the bright lights without the daily complaining episode.

Unwelcome Guests

Do you see that little brown stuffed animal horse stuffed into the left of the cupboard? We found Mary's horse! This was a horse her Daddy bought her when he was on a business trip in Texas and there have been many tears shed in the last few weeks over the lost horse. At several bedtimes, Mary was crying in bed over her horse while Daddy and I searched the house for it. It turns out that the horse had been stuffed by said toddler into this cupboard of mine that obviously I do not open very often, as evidenced by it containing my pasta maker and fondue set! (Those were both gifts, which is why I own such esoteric cooking devices. I do love pasta and fondue.)

So, what had me opening this cupboard, you ask? It all started Monday morning . . .

No, no, it started earlier than that. It all started the prior Friday when Charlotte experienced a deluge and serious flooding. We received seven inches of rain in six hours and at least one person died (see here for dramatic flooding photos). Apparently during those kind of rains, the highways and byways of little rodent burrows we don't see underground get flooded out and where do you think those fuzzy vermin head?

For dry land!

So come Monday morning, my dear children are returned from their travels and I am making them breakfast (their favorite oatmeal and brown sugar pancakes to welcome them home). I ask John to get out the children's plates, which I keep in a lower cupboard so they can reach them themselves. I wasn't looking at my child when he asked innocently, "Mama, what are these black dots on my plate?"

Cue Mama screaming.

Those black dots were mouse droppings. Because my family had been out of town all weekend, I hadn't cooked and so hadn't opened any of my lower cupboards since Friday morning before those rains. Indeed, mouse droppings were found in all of my twelve contiguous lower cupboards, on both their upper and lower shelves.

Which leads us to the state of affairs we are in today . . .

I have emptied the now contaminated cupboards and have begun running all my belongings through the dishwasher. (The contents of the cupboards aren't even fully tallied in this photo, as there were still some cupboards stuffed full, the dishwasher was full, and I had covered my window seat with more items.) The dishes on the counter top have been cleaned. The dishes on the floor have not yet been cleaned--but I can't really clean them now anyway because I have no more space to store them for now. (Although it has occurred to me to devise a temporary storage system for clean dishes using perhaps paper grocery sacks or cardboard boxes in order to have counter space.) I had lovely plans for my Monday, but this is what we call in domestic home management A Change of Plans.

The plan is to leave the cupboards empty until the mouse problem is "resolved", as they say. Then I will clean the cupboards (with bleach?) and stuff every miniscule hole with steel wool. (FYI: mice skeletons are more like cartilage than bone, so if a mouse can get his nose into a hole, he can squeeze his whole body through the hole.) Then I will replace all my clean dishes. In the meanwhile, I don't have much of a functioning kitchen (although certainly far more functioning than someone without a kitchen at all! I am grateful).

Our handy dandy and very trusty pest control man came out by one o'clock on the Day of the Discovered Droppings. (My father owns a pest control company in California, so I have a fondness for pest control men and the duties they perform!) That is how I learned of a new federal law (cue ominous music).

Why didn't we just dash out to the store to buy some D-con traps to "resolve" these mice? Because they are now illegal!

1. Second-generation anticoagulants in loose form are now illegal, so that includes Brodifacoum (e.g., D-con). First-generation anticoagulants are not very effective.

2. Scattering Brodifacoum was standard practice in places like crawl spaces under homes (where pets and children did not go--and it's a good home owner's responsibility to keep a crawl space boarded up so cats don't wander in there!). Now the only option is to hire a pest control man to build special bait stations (big, heavy) that he places in there, that are not as effective, and cost $30 apiece (so one crawl space might cost $200 to treat).

3. Minimum purchase of second-generation anticoagulants in the proper form for residential use is now one pound--when the need is only a few ounces, so the price is going to be very high.

Can anybody guess what is going to happen now that managing a rodent problem is going to go from costing about $10 to a couple hundred dollars? How many families are not even going to bother treating? How many more vermin will populate and disease spread because of this?

All of this new EPA law is supposedly because there were 15,000 ingestions (not deaths) of "pets and children." Isn't your first question (as was mine) how many children versus how many pets? How many dogs got into an unsecured crawl space versus, you know, the baby? Does it really take a political sciences major to figure out why the government lumped pets and children together (as if they are equal)? The pest control man told us just how many grams it takes to kill a 21-pound dog and, while I forget the number, it was a very large amount, difficult to find and consume. And that's killing the creature, when a slowly-getting-sicker-for-days creature can easily be given vitamin K as an antidote. Not that I'm all for unintended poisonings, but look where this hypervigilance is getting us!

Now the standard treatment for mice is snap traps. Seriously? Do you know what a hassle snap traps are? (Our pest control man does: he just had to lay out 300 snap traps in a 30-story high rise downtown. How easily do you think those are going to be monitored for dead rodents?) Plus snap traps are not as effective at killing many rodents. Each trap has the potential to kill one vermin. Our pest control man has had a long-term contract to keep down vermin in a fenced-in empty lot (down the road from us) owned by a developer whose hotel plans fell through. The owner still pays $300 per month to have the rodent population kept low in that field so the vermin don't overrun the nearby grocery store, restaurants, and high-end homes off the nationally known golf course. Of course, this is done effectively by scattering granularized anticoagulants. But no, that is now illegal so the huge field will be treated with snap traps. These snap traps will be visited once every 30 days. So, even if dozens of snap traps are placed (have fun finding those in a field with chest-high weeds!), they have the maximum capability of killing dozens of rodents, while rodenticide has the capability of killing hundreds or thousands of rodents. Do you really think there are only dozens of rodents living in one gigantic field? Oh no, my friends. And soon the nearby homes, restaurants, and grocery store (where I shop, thankyouverymuch) will meet those many-more-than-dozens of rodents who will now overpopulate that field.

Truly, most of these new rodenticide laws are about "being green." Don't get me started or I'll write even more words than I've already written.

Recently, certain companies (perhaps Raid and D-con among them) have said outright that they refuse to comply with the new EPA laws, which means they simply will no longer manufacture and sell residential rodenticides. They're not going to bother selling ineffective products.

In the meanwhile, retailers are allowed to sell any stock of the good stuff (e.g., Brodifacoum) until their stocks run out. The law went into effect June 4, 2011, so run to your nearest hardware store and stock up! As long as the poison stays dry, I don't know of a reason it will go bad.

And, yes, I see that one of our snap traps caught one nasty little vermin overnight. ("Good morning, dear husband!") How many more are there? I've never heard of a little hermetic mouse living in solitude. I was advised to wait until I see no more rodent activity for three to seven days, and then I can reasonably go ahead and replace my dishes into cleaned cupboards. How I'm supposed to function in my kitchen until then, I'm not really sure!

I'd better put away my soap box for the morning now and get to my children, who are waking up and pitter-pattering downstairs! At least, I hope that is the pitter patter of children's feet and not mice!

My Weekend (Almost) Alone

This weekend, my husband took John (4-1/2) and Mary (2-1/2) to Atlanta while the baby and I stayed home. Of my children, I'd been apart from only John, and only on two occasions, and each for only one night with his daddy. We wouldn't have done this except that this was our family's very special annual "grandparents' weekend" in which all the grandchildren are in Atlanta at the same time, and all the cousins get to see each other. But our baby still screams bloody murder in the car and, after our experience just a few weeks prior in which she cried four hours each way, we just couldn't do that to the baby, nor to the driver (Chris) again!

I got the kids packed up, and noted how easy it was to pack two children only instead of packing myself, two children, and one baby (Chris packs his own suitcase). I put specific outfits (one for Mass, one for the family photo shoot) into individual gallon plastic bags so Chris would get all the items together. I wrote many notes about child care and the kids' routines. And then I prayed to their Guardian Angels!

I was quite gripped with fear about losing most of my family. I don't have fear when I drive around with the kids because if we are in a fiery crash, I'll die with them. But if my husband and kids are out and about without me . . . well, I can hardly type the words! Obviously, this kind of overwhelming fear is not very Christian of me: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear: but of power, and of love, and of sobriety." (2 Timothy 1:7). Perhaps it is time to begin my nearly perpetual reading of "Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence"!

When the family first drove off, the baby happened to be napping, so I was really all alone. I felt utterly unmoored, like a ship floating lost at sea. I wandered around the house, room to room, staring. I'd sit in a chair, get up, move somewhere else, sit down. I'd stare. I'd wonder what to do. I always have a list a mile long of both short-term tasks to do and long-term projects that are goals, but I was too emotionally empty that evening to do anything productive or even enjoy myself.

Thankfully, by the next morning, I felt a bit more alive. I enjoyed eating breakfast. Note in the photo above, the sad wide open space at the table, it not being crowded with little ones. I ate my blueberries in peace, without a two-year-old snatching as many as she could to stuff in her little cheeks. I took my vitamins without the daily conversation of the two-year-old asking me what they are, clarifying that they are grown-up vitamins, not children's vitamins, and--just like every day--no, she may not have any. I was able to read the newspaper because my four-year-old was not sharing his stream of consciousness with me. And why did I put a rubber band on my water glass that morning, as I normally do to indicate that this water glass (that I leave out on the counter all day) is mine. There was nobody else in the house to drink my water. Breakfast was peaceful, but lonely.

On Saturday I attended an all-day local Catholic homeschooling conference. The day was an absolute delight! I felt educated, inspired, and revived in this aspect of my vocation. I met some really neat ladies and the speakers were excellent. I pointed out to my husband oh-so helpfully that, due to the great discounts at the book sale, I "saved" him a lot of money with my purchases.

Margaret did fairly well at the event. At four months old, she is not very portable and, while my first two babies would have simply snuggled into my sling and slept away the hours, Margaret slept only two 45-minute stretches all day. (It's as if I can hear her pleading with me, "Please! Just set me on my tummy in the dark with my pink blankie so I can go to sleep!") By the afternoon, she was stretched far beyond her limit, so I missed a good portion of the final two talks because I was outside pacing a fussy baby. I left without attending the Rosary, Confessions, and Mass at the end because I would have been merely continuing to pace outside with a fussy baby. After the 30 minutes of a screaming ride home, Margaret was tucked into bed at five o'clock and (except for wakings to nurse) she slept till seven the next morning! Fourteen hours is a lot longer than her more typical ten.

A gigantic, live cockroach awaited my husband's return under this plastic Easter egg. I don't deal with these things, if I don't have to. (For my friends on the West Coast who may not know this: the humid South teems with these vile insects, so here they are, to some degree, inevitable cohabitants in homes, unlike in the dry West where they are more often an indication of a problem.)

Due to the invigorating conference, I--once again--reorganized my school supplies. Cookbooks have gone back onto a shelf in the pantry. The homeschooling closet now contains supplies but not books. I had noticed too often the kids pulling out the school workbooks, which they're not able to do independently. A few times my two-year-old actually got out pens and did some "work" in them, which ruins that page since she is just scribbling on it. So, school books are now up on my kitchen shelves, both so the children won't pull them down independently and so that I will have better access to them. How I do love organizing. (I am not kidding you when I say that since childhood I have thought that I would enjoy as a retirement job stocking shelves at a grocery store.)

Getting prepared for Mass on Sunday morning was refreshingly easy. I slept in till 6:45, then moved rather slowly, but still was able to get dressed and do my makeup and hair in eight minutes, leaving at 7:30 to get to Mass on time. Trust me when I say that I get up much earlier and work much harder on normal Sundays to feed and get ready three children plus myself! I felt so relaxed driving to Mass in contrast to normally feeling like I've just run a race.

Do I know my Mary well or what? In my reviewing with Chris tips on taking care of both kids all by himself all weekend, I asked him always to double lock the hotel room door. I noted that even the latch wouldn't be foolproof at keeping Mary inside because she would soon enough just push over a chair to the locked door and unlock it (which led to another tip that he should shower while the children were asleep so he wasn't leaving them unsupervised while awake--aack!). Indeed, on Sunday morning Chris woke up to the sound of the door rattling over and over again. Mary had woken silently, slipped out of bed, and stealthily padded her way to the hotel room door, where she was trying repeatedly to open it, which would have let her loose into the outside world (since this was a residential hotel with doors opening to the outside, not to an interior lobby). Thank God (and thank husband!) that Chris had latched the chain and heard Mary before she figured out how to open the chain (which, knowing her, would have taken about one more minute of alone time). Next time I'll add the tip: "And shove a heavy hotel chair up against the bedroom door so that you'll hear the toddler trying to pull it aside and you'll wake up!"

The family arrived home safe Sunday night and, after tumbling and shrieking and hugging, I did their bedtime routine with them. After John had me read him a science book about bees, he asked me:

"Mama, what kind of feathers do people eat?"

"Feathers? Um, I don't think people eat feathers."

"Yes, they do. What kind of feathers are they?"

"I really don't know what you're talking about. I don't think that people eat feathers."

"Mama, there is a restaurant in Atlanta that sells wings."

I managed not to burst out laughing and I explained what "wings" are and that they are not feathers.

Having my four-year-old back with all his questions made me feel like everything was right with the world again.