For Posterity's Sake: Week in Review 116

Last week, Audrey donned her safety goggles before heading out the door to draw pictures with chalk. Safety first. She never told me why she felt she needed the goggles, but I suppose we each prepare in our own ways. This morning, I prepared for the day by retrieving the calendar from a desk drawer to double-check our schedule. What happened next was atypical at best. I began counting days - the number we have left until our due date, to be precise. I don't know what got into me. I won't post the number here. Denial is a procrastinator's best friend. A more practical person might have marched herself straight to the garage to clean out the car and see if that third car seat will indeed fit across the back row (okay, a more practical person would have probably done that months ago). I loaded the kids up and went to the gym, instead. Like I said, we all prepare in our own ways. I do have a mental running list of tasks to accomplish this week - preparations for the events to come. But, what I've found is this: no matter how much we prepare, each of us comes into being and learns to be in his or her own perfect time.

Our cases in point, from the week past:

(I apologize in advance for including this first story. All I can say in defense of myself is that it made me laugh). On Monday, the kids and I were gathered inside and just outside of my bathroom in varying states of readiness. Audrey had popped into the water closet and shut the door. A few minutes later, I hear, "Eww, I smell poop!" As the mom of two little ones and a dog, my first thought was, great, where? As if reading my mind, she responded, "From me, going in the potty." I breathed a sigh of relief. Nathan, playing right outside the bathroom with his sister's dollhouse (a gift from her Grammy, complete with buttons that make noises like a doorbell, washing machine, and toilet) had other ideas in mind. He followed her comment with a toilet flush as if indicating that, perhaps, a courtesy flush were in order to protect the noses of the rest of us.

Tuesday, Audrey was continuing work on an elephant picture she'd been drawing for a couple days. Its details were extensive: a spray of water coming out of the elephant's trunk, a source of water from which the elephant had drawn the water being sprayed, grass, and clouds. She added some worms, rain, a butterfly, and a baby elephant. Then, she pointed to a small pink outline drawn in the grass, "and here is a dead foot. Are you surprised?"

"Where is the rest of the body?" I asked.

"God already took it up." (Naturally).

Wednesday morning, Audrey asked for toast. The toaster's lever sprang up with a bing. "It hatched!" she said.

That afternoon during lunch, Nathan kept trying to pull his bib off. Unable to master the task, he began laughing at himself and his failed efforts. I just love a baby who has mastered self-deprecating humor.

Preschool mornings are always a bit rushed at our house. The kids wake up wanting to play with one another rather than get dressed. Audrey wants to talk or work on projects rather than eat. Thursday was no exception. In a feeble attempt to get Audrey, who was more interested in telling me a story, to eat breakfast, I said, "I'm not talking to you anymore until you're finished eating and we're in the car."

"Okay. I still love you, though."

Thursday evening, Jason was getting Nathan ready for bed. I told Audrey where to find a diaper and pajamas and asked her to take them upstairs to her dad. "Thank you, big girl helper," I said.

"Thank you, big mama helper for trying to tell me what to do."

Friday morning, Audrey asked if she could help get Nate ready. I told her she could try to take his pajamas off of him. She began with the shirt. She kept pushing his sleeves up toward his elbows rather than pulling them down and off. Realizing her tactic wasn't working, she stopped to regroup. She paused for a minute, in thought. Then, she began pulling at her own shirt as she would to take it off, realized her mistake and used her newly-gained knowledge to get her brother's shirt off.

A few minutes later, she told me she wanted two Audreys. She's mentioned wanting a sister several times since discovering she's having another brother. I assumed this was another attempt at telling me how much she wished for a sister. "Do you want a sister or another Audrey?"

"Another Audrey."

"Would she be a baby or be four."

"Four." Upon further questioning, I discovered that she would also look and act just like Audrey. This could be one interesting play date.

Nathan had a new skill of his own to show off Friday evening. As it turns out, he can now blow his nose, which he demonstrated by pulling out and blowing his nose into each bib in the kitchen bib drawer.

Oh yes, each little one comes into his own or learns to be in her own good time. And no amount of time, no matter how well-prepared she might think (or hope) she is, is enough to prepare a mama to watch it all unfold before her, which might just be one of adulthood's great gifts. That, and a self-cleaning car. Where do I get my hands on one of those?

Practical Stitches

This space has been a little sparse in the project department lately. It's not that projects aren't in progress, I just haven't had much time to record them. But, like most things of the last month, these projects lend themselves towards the practical. My knitting needles were feeling a bit rusty last week. I was about to hop into the passenger seat for a fifteen minute ride with my hands empty when a household need (and project that's been on my get-around-to list) popped in my head. I grabbed a couple needles and a ball of garden twine and hustled to the car. Several months ago, I ran across this blog post giving instructions on how to knit a dish scrubber using garden twine. Our dish scrubber had seen better days. We had garden twine (okay, I had just purchased garden twine a month ago with spring and this little project in mind). I had a weekend with a couple of car rides in the passenger seat and a few spare moments at the kitchen table with the kids. I had idle hands but a mind too busy to focus on a project of much complexity. All told, I had the makings of a perfect rustic rectangle - and it is: rough around the edges, glitz-free, but getting the job done. It's a little like us right now. I kind of like it.

For Posterity's Sake: Week in Review 115

Do you remember the scene in Pretty Woman where Vivian finds herself staring down a plate of escargot and a line-up of forks that seem completely inappropriate for the task?

"Where's the salad?" she asks.
"Uh, the salad comes at the end of the meal."
"But, that's the fork I knew."

Some days, I worry that I've set Audrey up for such a scene, she desperately counting tines, trying to remember what their numbers mean. It's not that we're an etiquette-free house. I'm simply partial to the salad fork. It feels better in my hand (for those of you picturing me with dainty, smaller-than-average hands, you'd be mistaken), or perhaps, I like that due to its shorter length, I have the illusion that the food has a shorter distance to travel before reaching my mouth. Touch or semblance aside, when Audrey sets the table, I ask for a salad fork. Every time. Our table is a mish-mash of cutlery, toddler-sized forks for the kids, a salad fork for me, and your standard dinner fork for Jason. Audrey doesn't stand a chance.

I could make this simple and change my fork. But sometimes, regardless of etiquette or principle or want, you use the fork that fits. Those have been our weeks of late. As I have spent my sleeping hours up with a teething toddler and my waking hours trying to prepare for the next baby (or recovering from missed sleeping hours) this space has been a quiet one, lying fallow until energy returns and this ground is ready for a fresh turn of the fork.

In the meantime, here are our moments to savor from last week, the ones that filled us up, no utensils required:

Sunday morning, Audrey was running around the family room with a ball "doing tricks" to make Nate laugh. With each new laugh, her tricks became more elaborate. "When he laughs, his face is brand new," she said.

Nate likes to play peek-a-boo. Sunday, he added a little twist to the game, covering his nose with his hands rather than his eyes and smelling his fingers before tossing both arms out in a "ta-da" gesture.

As I'm able, I try to make it to the gym for a workout, which at this point involves pushing Nate around an indoor track in a stroller while Audrey plays or does crafts in the children's area. A couple months ago, no one took note (at least verbally) of my belly, perhaps thinking I simply hadn't lost the baby weight from Nathan. Now, well into my third trimester, note has been taken. On Monday, a man stopped me. "Is that what you call walking for three?" he asked. I believe this same man asked me a little over a month ago, "Is that what you call walking for two?" That day, I almost answered that I was actually walking for three. When I relayed the story to Jason, he informed me that no, when I'm walking to take care of myself, I'm really walking for five.

Tuesday evening I had plans to meet up with two of my favorite ladies. Both celebrate their birthdays in February, but we were finally able to coordinate schedules to honor the occasion in March. Audrey saw me preparing a couple little gifts Tuesday afternoon. She wanted to include a little something of her own and asked me for a couple of blank cards that she could decorate. I struck up a deal. I opened the kitchen cabinet that serves as her art storage. A ream of loose-leaf paper fell at my ankles. "Pick out ten sheets of paper for me to recycle and I'll give you two cards," I said. Audrey agreed. She picked out six. She began bawling. She asked me to photograph one picture for posterity's sake. I snapped a shot and told her she had four more papers to go. "I want my Daddy!" she said.

Wednesday afternoon, Audrey came to me carrying a big plastic pig. "Mama pig has a big snot," she said, pointing at the pig's nose.
"Snout," I said.

That night, Nate and I had a bit of a late night party when he awoke at 4 am, crying inconsolably. I brought him downstairs and spent two hours trying everything I could think of (changing him, feeding him, giving him Tylenol) to calm him down, until he passed out at 6 am and began laughing in his sleep.

Of course, the Law of Averages states that if your youngest child stays up well into the night whittling away at your energy, your oldest will awaken bright and early with energy to spare (okay, the Law of Averages states something entirely different, but in my very scientific study, n=1, the outcome is completely accurate). Audrey began Thursday morning by asking, "Mom, are there fish farmers?"
"Yes."
"Can you teach me about them?"

We spent the morning perusing the Internet, looking at pictures of shrimp farms and catfish tanks and learning what tilapia eat (for those of you wondering, tilapia eat ANYTHING).

"Can we build a fish farm in our backyard?"
"No, honey," I said (followed by a brief explanation of what an HOA is and that our particular one would most definitely not allow a fish farm in our backyard).

By complete happenstance, twenty minutes later a couple of our neighbors walked past our fence carrying fishing poles toward the retention pond. Audrey raced outside to badger them with fishing questions. I saw it as the perfect window of opportunity to sneak Nate upstairs for a nap. Unfortunately, the window wasn't wide enough. Audrey came inside, and unable to find me, began shouting through the house, waking her brother. Wide awake, he skipped his nap until late afternoon, right as we pulled into the grocery store parking lot. As I carefully maneuvered him out of his car seat, Audrey discovered a spare handmade Valentine tucked under one of the seats. She carried it into the store. Hoping to give Nate a much-needed nap, I carried him through the store, maneuvering my cart with my spare hand and asking Audrey to walk right beside me. Five minutes into our trip, she brushed past a potted orchid, knocking it to the ground. As I turned to pick it up, a store employee stopped me and said she'd take care of it. We walked away and I leaned down to Audrey, "I know it was an accident, but can you go tell the lady you're sorry?" I asked. Audrey headed back, talked briefly to the woman, and then bent down placing the Valentine on the ground next to the overturned flower. "I gave her my Valentine," she said, "because she told me it was okay."

Back at home, Nate still safely strapped in his seat sleeping in the garage, Audrey ran upstairs to change into some dress-up clothes. She came down wearing a pair of clown pants - and nothing else.
"Why don't you go put a shirt on under that?" I asked.
"No, my dance group told me this was one without shirts."
Just as I began wondering how she'd gained admission to a topless club at age four, she criss-crossed her straps in front of her, creating a zig-zag pattern and began performing superhero poses.
"I'm a superhero clown!"

Rested, and ready to show off some super moves of his own, Nate practiced spin moves against me, lowering his right arm to the side as he does when dancing, to juke away from the Tylenol dropper - my weapon of choice for lowering his fever.

Saturday morning, Jason had planned to play an online video game against a friend. I was hoping to keep the kids at bay long enough to let him finish uninterrupted. I hoped Audrey would forget it was the weekend and would assume he was already at work. But, she raced downstairs asking where he was. "I want to look for him," she said, pausing by the basement door. "I heard 'ding it!' (dang it) so I think he's downstairs."

I don't remember the last time I wore a cocktail dress to dinner. I've never learned to drive anything other than an automatic, and know about as much about a car "cornering like it's on rails" as I do about aquaculture (actually, after last week, I know more about aquaculture). But Vivian and I both know something about dealing with a week of unlikely circumstances. Sometimes, you just have to stick with the fork you know. Or, when all else fails (or life throws you a plate of "slippery little suckers") just dig in with both hands. And enjoy the ride.

For Posterity's Sake: Week in Review 114

Sunday, the family was loaded into the car, headed to spend an evening with friends. I was telling Jason a story from the passenger seat when a voice piped in from the back, "Mom, don't talk forever. I have something to say."

We laughed. I finished my story. Audrey took her turn. I was reminded of just how much four-year-olds do have to say. And how much they know, especially about themselves:

Monday, Audrey came inside from a successful bug hunt. She placed her captive on the kitchen floor to observe what he would do. Unaware of her plan, Gomer* came by and stepped on the bug, killing it in front of her. Audrey cried the rest of the evening, wailed over her plate of dinner unable to eat, and finally stopped at bedtime long enough to say a prayer for the bug.

The next day, her school received a "Silly Safari" visit. A man came with his bunny (Foo Foo), skunk, baby crocodile, turtle (who wore a diaper), bag of fleas, and bird (who pooped on the floor). The bugs (that Audrey said were fleas) the man pulled out of his lunchbox. They were in a ziplock bag that the man told the class had contained his sandwich for lunch. Audrey found the sandwich-eating bugs rather funny and told me they were her favorite. She then proceeded to tell me that the bird had pooped on the floor and that was her favorite part about the bird.

"Audrey, I think you could be a zookeeper," I said.
She thought this was a good idea and asked just how she'd go about becoming a zookeeper. "I want to be a zookeeper, a farmer, and a mother," she said. "Can I do all that?"
"Audrey, if you want to do all that, I think you will find a way," I said.

Audrey also had an opinion about the things the adults had to say last week. Saturday, Jason and I were talking about Butler's latest win. "I think you should stop talking about that," said Audrey, who is not allowed to use the word "butt". "It sounds like a bad word."

I'm what you'd call an indecisive adult. But, I don't think I was always this way. As a first grader, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. (I don't remember who posed the question, but I believe it was my teacher, Mrs. Montgomery, who never scolded me for doodling in the margins of my worksheets, but wrote comments about how pretty the pictures were, instead). I replied without hesitation, "a writer and a mother." Time passed, and by fifth grade my answer to this question changed as I gained new interests and discovered my friends' interests and heard the suggestions of adults. I was going to be a figure skater, then a friend and I were going to open an optometry clinic, followed by my claim that I planned to become an architect. I entered college with every intention of following the path to become a counseling psychologist.

Within three years, I had all the credits I needed to graduate with a psychology degree. But I stayed in school one more year, racking up English courses and sneaking in a couple creative writing classes for good measure, leaving college with the academic mark of an indecisive woman - a double major in English and Psychology. I meant to attend a graduate clinical psych program, really I did. I had excellent grades and recommendation letters and horrible GRE scores. The handful of programs I applied to rejected me. Then, this boy I knew, asked me to marry him and I found myself, once again, answering a question without hesitation. We moved to a small town near a college campus where I took a job to take advantage of the employee benefit of free college courses, and snuck into as many graduate creative writing courses as I could (where the legitimate MFA students wondered who I was). Four years later, the day before packing our car to move to Virginia, I told Jason he was going to be a father.

Today, I am a mother. Every day, Audrey asks me to make up stories as we travel in the car or eat breakfast. Every once in a while, I check into this space to record pieces of our days. And, while I wouldn't call myself a writer, I will tell you that I've never met an indecisive four-year-old, or first grader. When one tells me she wants to be a mother and a farmer (I won't hold her to the zookeeper since I brought that one up), I'm not surprised that she seems to know herself so well. Those four-year-olds have a lot to say, if we only silence ourselves long enough to listen.

*Some names have been changed to protect the not-so innocent.

As for Nate, our man of precisely a few words, he seems to communicate just fine, pointing to the refrigerator when he wants some milk, shaking his head to let us know what he doesn't want, and jabbering like a talk show host rescued from a deserted island at his last doctor's appointment when he realized that talkative sister of his was nowhere to be found.

Feels Like Spring - at Least on the Inside

According to the latest weather report, spring is taking her sweet time. I can sympathize with her drip-like-molasses nature. But the children of this house are springing forward, with or without the weather's blessing.



Yesterday, we grabbed spring by her indecisive bootstraps and pulled her inside. We began our little planting project outdoors (mama thinking this would be the cleaner option), but the wind felt like puffing his chest and warning everyone about the coming storm. Dirt was in the air and our eyes. So after filling our little toilet paper tubes with seed-starting soil, we took our project indoors where Audrey added a couple broccoli seeds to each tube (and accidentally showered the rest of the miniature peppercorn-looking seeds across the brown rug).



A sprinkle of water and one labeled tongue depressor later, and our makeshift seed-starting cells were set - for whatever spring has in store (or at least for the laundry room counter).


*I found the directions for the toilet paper roll seed-starting cells in Gayla Trail's Grow Great Grub.

While We Could

We ignored the list of indoor projects (and mama's need for a shower) and set out on a little adventure today, while the sun was shining enough to warm our faces. Audrey stopped along our bike route to collect a handful of sticks. When I told her I thought she would have to leave them behind, she insisted otherwise. These sticks were for a project (what that project is she didn't say). While I had my doubts, I've learned to never underestimate the willpower (or abilities) of a four-year-old. And, never take a sunny day for granted (did I mention it's now hailing outside).



*The sticks, the bicycle, and the four-year-old all made it back to the car safely, where the sticks still sit, piled on the floorboards of the backseat.

For Posterity's Sake: Week in Review 113

Last week was a week of goodness. The week began with goodness - the sigh of relief kind - when word was received that friends, who I'd lost track of after their move home, were safe and doing okay in Japan. Much time was spent sending and receiving emails from other concerned friends as we tried to find out if this family might still be in need of some support, because one imagines that "safe" and "okay" be rather relative terms when watching your direct neighbors experience absolute devastation. Goodness continued - the planned kind - as I made preparations for a breakfast pitch-in I had volunteered to host for my mom's group on Friday. This was followed by goodness of the impromptu kind, when I received a message that my best friend could come up to spend the day Friday and ten minutes later got a text from Jason that his best friend and son would be coming up to spend the weekend. And so, frenzied cleaning (of everything down to the basement - where I've stashed all of my former craft room supplies as it becomes Nate's room - once a guy's game night got scheduled for Saturday) ensued. The weekend was spent with friends and food and nonstop activities from which I'm still catching my breath and hoping to (someday) catch up on sleep. But for today, I will simply catch up on the events of last week - our rather tardy Week in Review, and let those of you wondering just where we've been that we are all safe and okay, in the very best possible way.

Our moments from last week:

Okay, this first one is actually from the Thursday prior (I know, I know) but somehow it got lost until now. Audrey had just injured herself for the third time in an hour (I can no longer remember the injuries, but all were your run-of-the-mill preschooler specialties).

"Audrey, what's the matter? You keep getting hurt," I said.

"I don't know. I think I'm falling apart."


Monday morning, Audrey found Jason's lost house key. Upon retrieving it from the back of the coat closet she said, "It's a pleasure! I'm going to find more pleasures (treasures) and then you'll be excited when I give them to you."


During lunch, she asked me to tell her about Tarzan. I told her he could climb trees really well.

"I remember he could swing from branches. I can't do that," she said.

"Me, either."

"How cool is that?"

"It's pretty cool," I said.

Apparently, I wasn't enthusiastic enough. "No, how cool is that, seriously?"


That evening at dinner, Audrey was discussing the size of dinosaurs with Jason. She was telling him about one in particular.

"Was that the one whose head was as big as a surfboard?" he asked. "Is your head as big as a surfboard?"

"Hm, we'd have to measure that," she said.


Monday, before bedtime, Jason and Audrey invented a new game - an investigation game. He would pose a question such as "where are elephant and giraffe?" Audrey would then ask questions to different witnesses (in this case other jungle animals) and collect clues until she could guess what had happened to elephant and giraffe. Upon questioning a worm, she might find out that he had been scooting through the jungle toward the river until he fell into a big hole shaped like a foot. A monkey might tell her that he was showered with water while playing in a tree near the river even though it wasn't raining, etc.

Tuesday, she suddenly asked, "Mom, what happened to the broken bridge?"

"It broke."

"No, we're playing the game like Daddy last night. You have to ask questions."

I asked questions. I discovered that one animal found a white and black spot; that according to the monkey, it was snowing; that according to another animal (I think it was a sheep) it was actually sunny and the monkey, who likes to joke, was an unreliable witness; that one animal smelled something purple and another smelled salad. So, who broke the bridge?

A shark.


Nate and I clocked several late hours together last week as he cut another tooth. Tuesday night, as I tried to snuggle him to sleep and recover from the day, I turned on the television to find an episode of "What Not to Wear." I thought Nate would lose interest and close his eyes. I didn't think about the show's end-of-the-episode big reveals. Nate heard the friends and family members of the newly-made-over woman screaming and clapping and began to clap and cheer with them.


Wednesday, Audrey began a serious conversation. "We're going to be serious after the baby is born. You, me, Nate, and the baby will all be serious, and we can move the world!"

Nate laughed. "You'll know what it means when you grow up, Nate," she said.


While in the car, I play age-appropriate CDs for the kids. A couple weeks ago, Audrey asked Jason and I what the word "mossy" meant. We told her. When we asked where she had heard "mossy," she said it was in one of the songs. We couldn't think of a song on the CD where mossy would make sense.

Wednesday, while driving to the gym, Audrey yelled from the backseat. "Mom, did you hear them say "mossy?'"

"Honey, they said, 'beautiful one my soul must see,' but yes, it does sound like 'mossy.'" I found myself trying to explain the concept of enunciation to my four-year-old, while thinking of another song, one sung by Leann Rimes in which she means to ask, "How do I live without you?" But, what she really asks is, "How do I live without chew?" (Which I imagine would involve nicotine patches or some sort of 12-step program).

Later, Audrey asked me to play a rhyming game with her in the car. I gave her the words "truck" and "can" and asked her to find rhyming words. She gave me "Harriet" and "mailbox." Ahem. (In case you're wondering, I came up with "chariot" and "cell blocks," and was more than slightly thankful when she didn't ask me what a cell block was).


Last week, Jason introduced the children to some of his favorite Weird Al songs, including one in which a family loads up into their decal-covered car and heads off on an adventure to see the "Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota." Wednesday evening, Audrey asked me where I would like to go if I could go "anywhere in the whole wide world." I told her that I would like to take her dad to Italy or Switzerland since he's never been there before, or I might like to go to Australia and see some of the places her Aunt Ashley has visited. "Where would you like to go if you could go anywhere in the whole wide world?" I asked.

"The biggest ball of twine in Minnesota."


Thursday afternoon, I thought I had Nate down for a nap. He was snuggled against me at the kitchen table, his eyes closed as I perused some library books. Just as I thought about standing up to take him to his crib, he opened his eyes, sat up and started clapping. Then he put his head back down and closed his eyes. He was still a moment. Then he opened his eyes and gave me a wave. He put his head back down and closed his eyes. Once again he bolted up, this time performing the ultimate sign of Nathan affection - vigorously rubbing his forehead against mine. I gave up.


We don't watch much television at our house. I think boredom is creativity's greatest gift (and, while I haven't read any biographies and have absolutely no proof to back this up, in my mind I envision Einstein the child at home bored out of his mind, sketching inventions and such, while his neighborhood chums played with their version of that day's iPad). In order to watch television, Audrey has to do chores (acts of service as we call them) to rack up enough stickers (5) on a chart to get a family movie night. She averages about a movie a week. Having said that, I've been wanting her to watch Leap Frog's Letter Factory DVD because Audrey learns easily through songs and I was hoping it would help her with her letter sounds. Thursday, she asked "Mom, can I watch a movie today?"

(There were three stickers on her chart). "Actually, today you can. I've been wanting you to watch the Letter Factory movie to help you with sounds, so you can watch it."

"I can? Why am I getting a movie! Why am I getting a movie!"

I may have just ruined the sticker chart.


The weekend is over and we're slowly shifting back to our normal routines, thankful for being blessed with an abundance of goodness and thankful, too, for the quiet that follows. A quiet during which I must go hunt down the microwave user manual. It seems one can't have too much goodness without her microwave going bust. After all, it's all about balance, isn't it?