sleepless complaining about gravy

It's 6:30 am and I've had two hours of sleep: 1:30-3:30. I'm too anxious about what I have left to do for christmas preparations/gifts/laundry/holiday-video/packing-for-the-trip so I'm up doing laundry and working on the video. It seemed more productive than just lying in the bed with my eyes open. Though the argument could be made that sleepless rest would be better than laundry for warding off the crippling disease the kids have contracted and I'm desperately trying to avoid. I can't avoid it; who am I kidding? I'm fairly resigned to the idea that I will be in the throws of a 103* fever on the flight down to North Carolina christmas eve. Yeah baby.

Last December I had all sorts of plans for activities to do with the kids and I ended up with both bronchitis and pneumonia at the same damn time and nothing at all happened except I lay on the couch, operated the remote, and periodically crawled to the kitchen to put pretzels into bowls for the kids. I had to simply give up my ideas of crafts and baking and holiday fun.

This year it's the kids who have gotten sick. First the stomach flu, followed 10 minutes later by what is apparently The Flu - super high fever for now 7 days running. Frances's fever has dropped to 100 and she says she feels great, thinks she is well. Her yardstick is temporarily broken. Which is as much of a pain in the ass as 103 frankly, because she's up hopping around and wrestling and is also more quick to be defiant and get offended and scream in her brother's face. And she's MUCH more sensitive to physical pain. Having her (very very long) hair accidentally pulled causes tremendous trauma and wailing. I had to remind myself today that this is not the child I usually live with. Thank the lawd.

So, again, not many activities done. We were moving right along with salt dough ornaments and had gone so far as to even make salt dough figures for a nativity scene (very comical and more on that later if you're lucky), but now many are languishing without paint or modge podge or glitter. Some are half done, some just need ribbon for hanging (the ornaments that is). We never got to the gingerbread houses at all (oh I really wanted to do those!). I have one more day before we leave for NC and still need to get presents plus pack: myself, the kids, presents for family members and from Santa too. Dear god I hate christmas.

I've got to get my brain around the idea that none of this is really truly important. Death is important; love; kindness. Having gifts ready is just gravy. Nothing to stress about. Okay, so I know that with my rational brain. Somebody needs to tell my limbic system so I can get some sleep.

hello there!

I don't know why I've been absent here so long. I do have excuses, though they're not interesting enough to share. Mostly, I think, my creative outlets have shifted to material production - like baking the crazy biannual birthday cake. Or these balls I sewed from old sweaters. (Aren't they cute? I was so tired of telling Clark not to throw things in the house and decided he needed something he was allowed to throw. The green and gray one was for him. Then Frances wanted one (left). Hers has embroidery from a kit she was working on while I made the balls. The one on the right is for our favorite 2 year old. She loved Clark's ball when she was here last, and she happens to be having a birthday this week. Frances did the embroidery on that one freehand, and it was her idea to write with a fabric pen on the heart. The little one was just cuz. I'm doing one more for the birthday gift, and I need to find a bell to put in it. I've got one around here somewhere.)

I've been reading old posts, ones like this and this, mostly when Clark was a year to a year and a half, and Frances was 2 and a half to three. It was like living with two wild animals. No wonder I was out of my mind. Things are so different now, calmer, more sane. I can take my eyes off my children to do things like shower or have the stomach flu. A couple of weeks ago when I was horribly ill I even napped while they were awake and playing in the house. A new world!

I've also been reading these old posts to Frances, like this one and this one. She thinks these stories about herself are hilarious. "More, more!" she says. It's the first time I've read any of the blog to the kids; I saw for the first time the weight of this thing in their lives that I've created, this record of their babydom, something they are going to be able to have. Until now I hadn't thought about it much. More, I've thought about the depression and frustration the honesty with which I've written here. I've thought of how I will feel about their reading that. (I feel okay about it, by the way.)

So it was lovely, reading to her. She was a funny (and intense) toddler. One of the posts mentioned something about a 'stage', and Frances asked what a stage is. I answered the question, then told her some stages are good and some are not so good. Then she said, "I'm in a really good stage right now, right Mama?" "Yes, that's true. You're really fun to be around right now," I said. "And Clark's in not such a good stage," she said. "Also true," I admitted. You can't argue with the girl.

creative me

I've had a revelation about craft projects with the kids.

Recently I've spent a fair amount of time perusing mom/craft blogs and ogling the projects of these energetic and creative women. (Blogs such as this one, and this one, and this one, and this one.) It's exciting for me; I have an art degree, after all, and want to be creating things myself, and what better excuse than to do it with my kids? Thing is, once I get past being inspired to try new projects, these lovely blogs end up having the same effect as parenting books: they make me feel depressed. Supermom I am not.

I used to attempt more craft projects but they made me crazy. This was about the time I was envying all my friends who parent only one child. These projects, rather than being a creative outlet for me, seemed to be only about setting up paint and brushes and glitter glue that my kids then flung around for about 10 minutes before running off laughing and wrestling. Then I would wipe paint off the walls and the chairs and the dog. Wrestling was much more the activity of choice, for sure. So I gave up for a while.

Clark is a sensory creature rather than a visual one, which means his love of art materials is limited and his love of wrestling is not. He does like playdoh, feels good on the fingers, and he can stick with that for a good while. He's not much for crayons or markers or drawing in general; he scribbles on the appropriate paper for about 20 seconds and then either dumps the crayons/markers/colored pencils on the floor because he thinks dumping boxes of things on the floor is glorious fun, or he turns the coloring implement to his skin or the wall. What I need, and I'm serious, is some warmer weather and a project that involves painting one's own body. Perhaps while we potty train this summer. Ha!

I thought for a good while about why these lovely blogs had me so turned around. Where did these moms get the energy? Why didn't I have it? Where did they get the time to come up with the projects, go to Michaels and Kmart and the hardware store for materials, set up the project, photograph it in process, and blog about it???? Maybe other things are falling off their radar; maybe their houses are a mess. Maybe they have a family who take the kids from time to time. Probably they don't wrestle with migraines three days a week.

One of the blogs in particular impressed itself on me. (You'll just have to stroll through my Creative Parent Blog List and speculate on which one.) After coming back to it several times I realized something. These, for the most part, didn't appear to be kid projects; they were projects that the mom built and that the kids could enjoy in finished form. Perhaps the kid could help in process - sort of - but mostly it was a creative outlet for mom.

Oh my. Was I allowed to simply create? Was I allowed to create things for the kids without inviting them to help??? Could it be?

So. I got online and immediately ordered some peg people for me to paint. And yesterday while Frances was outside behind the garage moving rocks into a circle for her 'campfire', I built (out of cardboard) and upholstered (with scrap flannel) a barbie couch for the barbie house I am going to put together.


I'm having so much fun!!!


It's possible you will never see pictures of these things, but maybe...

siblings and cakes and stuff

I'm feeling kind of lost on this sibling rivalry thing. As an only child, I just don't get it. I don't know when it's healthy, how to steer it, when the flags of warning have been raised. It all sounds like blaring horns of warning to me, signs that my children are headed down some path to antisocialism or sociopathy or eventual addiction and homelessness. Okay, maybe not that bad, but still.

I have no examples to give right now. Or at least no energy for the tedium of the examples I do have.

Moving on.

Clark's third birthday party is tomorrow. I was going to order a cake, since it's been winter here for decades and we're just now entering into Rochester's most unpleasant season: gray sky and mud. (We have six seasons here; bet you didn't know that. They are: Summer - Fall - Winter - Ungodly Amounts of Snow - Gross Mud - Spring. Winter through Gross Mud takes up 9 months of the year.)

Then my helpful husband, teasing me, said something about how Clark is getting the cake shaft after the castle cake I made for Frances. Dammit. Now I had to go and make something ridiculously time consuming for Clark too. At first I was going to make a Rocket cake (it looked like the party was going in a Space/pirates/Diego combo theme direction) but it has turned out to be a Diego cake. Party theme simplified. I'm quite pleased with it, and it was lots of fun. Will post a picture here soon.

At first I hassled myself for putting on so much pressure to make a fancy shmansy cake. I thought about how we overdo things, buy too many toys, spend ridiculous amounts of energy on parties they won't remember. But, really, the cake is for me; it's a creative outlet, fills a space that I so desperately need to fill with regularity in my life. For now, it's the cakes. At least their birthdays aren't close together.

finally

I'm well! Everyone's well at the same time! (knock knock knock on wood) School started back up this week after February break! Things can return to some semblance of normal routine! Oh the excitement! AND the sun is shining!

Really, how much more can you ask? I do have this fantasy about my whole house being clutter free and organized all at once. I also realize this is indeed fantasy and nowhere near the realm of possibility. I'm okay with that.

Right now the kids are both at school and I'm getting ready to sew. I've got a bunch of sewing projects stacked on the table, have had them stacked there for some time now. I keep thinking I'll sew in the middle of the day during down time, quiet time for the kids, while Frances draws beside me. (She draws all the time right now, digs the crayons or pencils out by herself.) I haven't been able to figure out why it isn't happening. I think I'm just so mentally wiped at 3pm that I can't think about creative things. Instead, I think about getting dinner together, I lie on the couch, I straighten up from the tornado that's run through in the morning. Or maybe it's just because I've been sick, and I certainly didn't have the energy then.

But I'm going to quit this post and go sew, get some creating done. I'm doing some placemats and napkins for the kids, and I'm going to do a bunting banner like this one. Plus the zillion things I need to mend.

Off I go!

pictures!

Christmas is here. Right here.

Our graham cracker houses

Cut out cookies

Our frozen ornaments, hanging on our teepee. 

Aaaand, finally, the tree is up!

I love a silver tree.

Plus, as a bonus, the cutest picture of Clark and Milo ever

here comes christmas, ready or not.

Well, my christmas tree is not up and I've done almost no shopping. How did it come to this? And now anxiety has gripped my throat so that I can't breathe deeply. It seems I believed making graham cracker houses and chocolate dipped pretzels and cut out cookies were more important holiday activities than shopping. Which, come to think of it, they are. Except now it's December 21st and in 4 days I still have to have gifts for kids and parents and in-laws. Cousins and nieces are simply going to have to receive their boxes after the holiday. Same for the video card I'll be sending out electronically..... there's no way for holiday cards to find themselves done and addressed and mailed. A simple impossibility. Perhaps I'm learning to acknowledge my limitations.

I hope I have pictures of the projects we've been doing. One of my favorites is the outdoor ornaments Frances and I made the other day. The idea came from this blog, and they used cranberries; I didn't have cranberries, and getting to the grocery is yet another activity that's falling off my list, so I used limes which are green and celebratory, I figured. I did use the Artful Parent's learning curve--for example, I put one lime slice in the muffin tin and then water just to cover it. I froze those for a while, then added the yarn and another lime slice, then water to the top, then froze all. Don't they look lovely?

Note that I said Frances and I did this project; I've started to leave Clark out of some of these activities, and without much guilt. He was part of the graham cracker houses (in retrospect, I should have just bought the damn gingerbread house kit since I was not going to commit to baking the gingerbread myself. The graham cracker houses were not as easy as I expected) but I spent a good bit of time saying, "Clark, sit down. Please stop shaking the table. Okay, only one more piece of candy. Don't sit on the table, Clark. In your chair. Could you please stop moving for a moment?!" Man, he makes me nutso sometimes. Constantly in motion, constant activity, constant throwing of things. Constant, constant. In the end I just released him: "Clark, go. Go play over there. Legos. You want legos?" and I finished his house.

Good enough parenting. That's the aim, remember?

what is there to fear?

Boy, I'm really having trouble these days getting to the blog. Part of that is because in my free time I go to the attic, to my new painting studio, with which I am in love. This is a good thing, of course, but I also need this blog; I need it for for me, for me to process and record and extrapolate, to make some sense and order of the disorderly world. And I apologize to those loyal followers who check back often: YOU! You are some of my favorite people, the ones in it with me.

Sometimes I feel like all I do it try to get breathing room. Each art activity, trip to the park, sitter I schedule, space I declutter, are all done with the goal of feeling calmer, more organized, revived. I can't seem to revive.

But it occurs to me that there is no point in revival, just like there's no front of the line of traffic on the highway; there's always more traffic, and always more space to declutter, sweaters to mend, laundry to fold, dinner to cook. There's never going to be a time when it's all done and I can sit and read my book (or write on my blog) while feeling free and relaxed.

There are things I want to do with the kids--projects--but it's like I can't get myself rested enough (emotionally, physically) to put them together. If I wanted to make excuses we could talk again about my headaches... And it's true; much of the time I'm so depleted from the migraine and hangover after that I'm a success if I get people fed.

I feel like I'm waiting for the storm to pass, hanging on. But the truth is that there is no storm, and there is no passing. It's just life. Instead of hanging on and waiting, I should be letting go--falling falling, and enjoying the wind and rain.

the little things

Who knew how much enjoyment could be provided by a construction paper balloon on a yarn string?

We were unpacking (finally... I know...) the stuff from Frances's school at the end of the year, and in the bag was a construction paper balloon with her name on it that decorated the classroom door. Clark nearly lost his mind with excitement about it and Frances got very upset because she didn't want it torn, so I got out the construction paper and let him pick a color for his own balloon. We taped on some yarn just like the school balloon. Frances wanted another one of her own so I made a second and they ran around with them for something close to an hour. For a while they flew them in the fan wind, and then dragged them around outside behind their trikes. Sometimes I feel like there is a secret book of tricks like this to entertain them when it's late and they're hungry and waiting for dad to come home. Where is that book? It took me all of 30 seconds to make these balloons. (I waved aside their suggestion to help me cut it out, though I suppose that could be a project in itself...)

Summer here is fabulous. Have I said that before? Really really lovely. We can be outside all day, every day, very few bugs, not too hot but hot enough for the sprinkler or kiddie pool. And cicadas. I missed them out west. They make everything sound like summer.

only kid blues

Would you look at this child's art space?! Officially jealous. And trying to remember that a year from now I will not only have children old enough to do projects without pouring the paint on their heads, but also a couple of days a week when they're both in school to organize such a thing. Gotta give myself a little slack and try to keep my story in perspective.

That said, we've done a couple of fun things lately--Did this art project a few days ago. We only had a few minutes to fill and so just did the muffin tin, not the pie plates and other larger items. I painted the paint on the back of the tins (she told me where to put which color) and then I had her draw in the paint with Q-tips. She made some pretty nifty designs but some of them were lost when we did the print.

We also did this art project with coffee filters, markers, and the rain. I loved it and so did Frances. It was particularly fun because it was multi part (meaning we colored the filters, then waited days for it to rain, then left it out and watched the colors run, then had to wait for them to dry)--it sort of kept the fun going. Will post a picture of the result soon.

Note that I did the above things with Frances alone.... while Clark was napping, or playing with his trucks.

While I'm here I might as well bitch a bit, because I do that so well. SO MANY of the art activities in the blogs linked above would be SO MUCH FUN if I only had one kid. Really. Much of my life, in fact, would contain less stress. I sometimes imagine my days would be filled with patience and connection and love and sunshine. I know it's ridiculous. And I know why I had more than one kid--it was on purpose, and because I'm likely to fall into some of the traps of the parent of an only child. (None of my friends with only children are likely to do this, of course.) I fear I would attach too firmly, unhealthily. I suspect I would put even more pressure on myself for the child's success in whatever area. I am an only child; I know the burden. 

So I've got a little of the wish-I-had-only-one-kid blues. My friend D (who ironically desperately wants more more more but her husband won't have anything to do with that idea) is spending the summer with her 4 year old son, going to farms and playgrounds and swimming pools, having a great time. I'm refereeing screaming toy ownership and trying to keep people from dashing out in front of cars in parking lots.

Oh yeah, and to enter a drawing for a kids craft book giveaway, I'm linking to the post on Paint Cut Paste about using bubble wrap to do ocean themed prints, which is pretty cool. We've done bubble prints before, but not used them as ocean or any other specific thing. This is the same blog that did the coffee filter flowers above. It's a GREAT source for art projects, my new favorite. That one and The Artful Parent (where the post about the fabulous kid art space came from) are where I get most of my kid art ideas these days. 

There are a lot of blogs out there with great ideas about things to do with your kids, and I love reading them. They give me great ideas, but they also produce a good bit of I-should-be-doing-more-with-my-kids guilt. Then it occurred to me that--I'm pretty sure--every single one of these blog moms has only one kid. Or they have one kid with whom to do the projects, and one baby--at least 4 years apart. Why didn't anyone tell me about having them close together? 

Okay, enough of that. It's what I've got, and it's got its plusses too. And everyone says the plusses grow in number as the kids get older. I'm holding onto that idea with something akin to hope. 

clean mush=good mom

Did a new project: super successful. Usually with these projects, after a time, the kids lose interest and run their paint covered hands over their head, or wander off, or try to eat the materials. But this one! The directions tell you to use a big tub with a lid so "clean up is easy" and I didn't have any idea what that was about until I did it. What they mean is that the kids won't ever want to quit playing with this shit and when they get hungry or near naptime you finally have to pick up the tub and just carry it out of the room. Which is where the lid would come in handy.

So here's the project: it's called Clean Mush, and I did it in the water table. I got it from this book which I checked out from the library called First Art which also has all kinds of other great ideas.
You unroll three rolls of toilet paper (great fun on its own and takes up quite a bit of time) and put them in the water table. Add a bar of ivory soap you've previously grated with a cheese grater, plus 1/3 cup borax, and enough warm water to saturate it all. It takes more water than you'd think. Then you plunge your hands in and mush mush mush it. This part is enormous amounts of fun and you can do this for ages. Use scoops and spoons, plus little plastic thingys they can hide in the mush. Then! If you want to, add food coloring. I ignored the tiny bottle of green and used only red, blue, and yellow so we could mix the secondary colors ourselves. One reason this project is so great is that I had fun playing in the mush too. My hands were all pruney after.

After a while I squeezed the water out of some and put it on newspaper to mold like clay, but that wasn't so successful as Clark kept wanting to add wet unsqueezed mush from the table, which made quite a mess. Warning: the whole thing is rather messy. The little bits that splash onto the floor dry to a crust, and cleaning out the water table was not so easy either but it was definitely worth it. Bits of it got in Clark's hair too but at least it was soapy and clean, though he might still have blue food coloring on his nose. Today, the very day after we did this, Frances said, "You remember last week when we did that project with the toilet paper? Let's do that again." We will do it again, but not so soon.

Doing these projects makes me feel like the best mom in the world. I haven't thought too hard about why that is, because I don't care. I'm going with it.

art for the new year

It went pretty well, all considered. We made stained glass stars for the new year to hang in the window by grating crayons into separate cups (I used a cheese grater and red, yellow, and lime green crayons) and then sprinkled the crayon on wax paper. Then I sandwich the crayon shavings with another piece of wax paper (actually, I used a big sheet of wax paper folded in half and had them sprinkle on one side, then folded it over) and ironed them. For the ironing I used the lowest setting and put the wax paper between newsprint because I feared it would bleed a bit, which it did. They cooled pretty quickly and I drew stars on them and had the kids cut the shapes, which didn't work out so well so I ended up cutting them. They loved it though. A couple of things I learned: there should only be a little bit of crayon shavings on each piece of wax paper because otherwise it will squish out the sides and besides it bleeds together too much. Less is more. Also, the red sort of overwhelmed the two other colors so I will think through my colors a bit more next time, and maybe add white crayon too. But don't they look lovely?

The other project we did was with cornstarch... I added enough water to make a cornstarch goop, then added food coloring. We used watercolor paper and drizzled the cornstarch stuff over the paper with baby spoons. I thought Clark would have more fun squishing the stuff in his hands but it turns out he didn't want it on his hands at all. I had a tub of soapy water for them to clean their hands off which was great and turned out to be as much of an activity as the projects themselves. They loved just swishing their hands around in the tub. I took a picture of the cornstarch paintings but had to throw the paintings out afterwards because when the cornstarch hardens it flakes off and makes a big mess. But it was fun at the time, and the process is what it's all about now anyway, right?

THEN Frances wanted to paint and I thought that since I had them in smocks already (old t-shirts of mine), why not? So I got out the paints and brushes and when they'd smeared the paint all around I showed Frances how to make a mono-print off her painting just by laying another sheet on top. She really liked that.

It was fun though clean up was kind of labor intensive, but worth it. Besides, it's clear to me now what kinds of things to do to make it less so. Now I have a whole list of things to get for future projects. I want to try this with rubber cement and watercolors, and also this glue batik project. Yay!

year of old, year of new

I have a wire basket on the kitchen counter holding the materials for two art projects--corn starch, food coloring, wax paper, crayons, paper--plus the iron and ironing board set up, and a note reminding me to go on a nature walk through our enchanted forest and see what it looks like in the snow. I've been reading the blog The Artful Parent, specifically the Getting Started page which has ideas for very young ones, and I'm all fired up. It's a new year! (and a new decade, which does seem particularly weighty). Yay me! I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm specifically eager for the kids to get a tiny bit older so they can actually do these projects rather than just smear their torsos w/ cornstarch paste as I'm sure Clark will. That, of course, has its merits also, but is much less fun for me. I'm on some line these days, a sort of balancing between two places: round-sweet-warm babydom, with which I'm very familiar; and the-next-thing, which I can hear up ahead but isn't yet in focus. Because I tend to fear change in general and mourn things passing I've been sort of wallowing in the babyness. Then I get glimpses of what having a four and five year old (for example) will be like, which strikes me as less round-and-warmness, but oh the shimmer.

Sweet Old Year! Happy New Year! Moving forward.....

projects

I have all these projects in my brain that I want to do but I can't seem to find the time or the energy or the two together. I can't figure out if I'm just a lazy ass or if everyone with a two and a half year old and a 13 month old is in the same exhausted place. I recently read a quilting blog that said this is what she does during naptime. And she wasn't just quilting, remember. She was taking pictures of it and blogging about it in addition. What the hell? All I can do during naptime is take a short nap myself (20-30 minutes and something I really really need) then straighten up the kitchen. Sometimes I read about 5 pages of my novel (which right now is The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant and is wonderful). I'm glad I'm reading these days; at least I'm doing something that's just for myself. I think that's essential in the exhaustion/meltdown battle. Do these other people just have more energy than I? Are their kids spaced further apart so that during baby waking hours they have 8 or 10-year-olds to help? Do they have parents that live with them? Maybe they're only 24 which would explain some of the energy thing. (I now fully understand why it is that we are meant to have kids in our early 20s rather than mid to late 30s.) Do they drink 8 cups of coffee a day? Maybe that's the real issue--if only I could drink caffeine, just imagine the things I'd accomplish! It's a thing I mourn regularly.

Then there's the evening time. You'd think that I could work on these projects in the evening. But after we've gotten the kids in bed and the dishes done and counters wiped and toys put away and coats hung and laundry folded, I just don't want to. I'd rather sit on the couch and watch bad tv, or lie on the floor and listen to music, or get in bed 30 minutes early and read my novel. Lazy? Maybe. I just can't tell.

Still my head goes on making plans for these projects. There are so many! Some are fix the house things, painting and new hardware and steaming off wall paper and getting art on the walls; but many more are quilting, or sewing big fun flowers on Frances' t-shirts, or painting a landscape on the inside of the closet in her room. I need to mount a mirror her height in the bathroom and want to paint a low kitchen cabinet with chalkboard paint. Perhaps the exercise of imagining these projects contains some of the satisfaction as following them through. You think?

Or maybe, a year from now, when the kids are bigger and need me less, I'll have time and energy for these things. I hope.

inner calm.

I have to say, ever since I decided maybe two kids is enough I've been enormously relieved. Relieved. I do want to revisit the idea again later, when Clark's a few months older, but for now it seems pretty clear what's right for me. Relieved that I'm 9 months through the worst of the heavy lifting; relieved that things will only get easier (physically anyway); no longer tortured about how we'll possibly travel, or go out to dinner, or keep up with the laundry, or afford it, or ever have any time to ourselves again. The truth is that I function better when my living area is in a certain amount of order. If there are stacks of papers on the counters, piles of laundry to fold, and scattered general crap, I am agitated. And what I want to be in my life is calm. This is a major goal of mine, in fact: calm. There are some people who can stand in the middle of the tornado and feel inner calm, but I am not one of them. What I feel is frazzled and in a hurry to do all the things that need doing. Also, I have to do these clean/straighten up things before I can start any kind of creative project, which means that if things are a mess I never get to the creative stuff. For my mental health I HAVE to have a creative outlet even if it's just sitting on the couch and knitting or writing on my blog.

Relieved. And although we will talk about this again this summer, I feel 80% certain the decision then will be that two is enough. I'm rather sad I won't be pregnant again, however. I do like being pregnant. Two things about our lives that would change the decision for me, were they different: one is having family nearby to help and the other is my age. It's not that I'm worried about the genetic stuff--more it's my energy level. I'm tired. And every time I carry both kids up the steps at the same time I feel it in my knees. In fact, I understand why we were meant to have babies when we're twenty. The lack of sleep would be nothing--I didn't sleep in my twenties as it was and I could function just fine.

My house has been overrun by kids toys, btw. Tent in the family room, play kitchen in the dining room, swing and slide in the basement. Baskets of toys in the living room, our room, family room. Interestingly, it occurs to me now that there are very few toys in their own rooms. Hm.

how many hours in the day?

I'm behind with the blog. I'm behind with a lot of things in my life. I keep looking (glancing very briefly in the two minutes I have after kids-in-bed-clean-up-kitchen-put-away-toys-collapse-on-sofa-and-moan, and before bed) at these crafter's blogs and they depress me. Some of these people have kids too, and where on earth do they find the time to not only sew scraps of fabric the size of my thumb into life size sculptures of Barack Obama, but take photos and blog about it? Seriously. Mitch said these folks and olympic athletes make you realize there are a lot more hours in the day than you're taking advantage of. So here's my short I've-already-cleaned-up-the-kitchen update:

Mitch finished his dissertation! And defended it! And passed! Oh it's a good life. It's been a long long long time, and though it's his PhD, I will take any congratulations offered. It's my success too! I suffered! Tomorrow one of the neighbors is having us and some other folks over for a surprise celebration--how sweet is that? (It's a good thing Mitch doesn't read my blog :) I got a Duke-colored ice cream cake today and stashed it in the neighbor's freezer.

The anxiety is okay for the moment, as is my patience level. Today we played hooky from Music Together class simply because I didn't want another day with a schedule. Instead we went to the post office where Frances said she could carry the big package because she was a "big girl". Then we went and bought some green rain boots with turtles on them. While she napped I put the baby on my back and raked the yard.

When dad got home things deteriorated but that's not new--maybe I'll write about that later. She's in a real needy phase and wants dad's attention when he comes home; she hit the baby while Mitch was changing his diaper. After her time out she couldn't seem to get it back together and it was meltdown after meltdown until bedtime.

I've got the baby going to sleep on his own!! Used to be that he had to be rocked to sleep (I'm well aware of the mistakes we made early on) and now I've retrained him. We have a whole (short) bedtime routine that involves putting on his sleep sack, turning on the sound machine, reading the very same baby faces book and holding his bunny. He cries for about 60 seconds and then passes out. I'm so proud of myself.

That's all I can do for now. I want to write more exploring this motherhood thing; I think a lot about it and talking with my counselor is helping enormously. He pointed out recently that it's hard to feel successful about it since their needs are bottomless. Good point.