LOST A SOCK

Days Gone By

Today marked the anniversary of the day Kevin and I met down at college, twelve years ago. 

Today was Jackson's very first day of preschool, and KJ's very first day of homeschool. 

Late last night the kids and I arrived home from a great road trip to our friends' lake house up in Wisconsin.  (I took a six year old, three year old and an eleven month old on a three day, seven hundred mile road trip by myself without even a dvd player in the car.  I'm going to tattoo that information to my bicep and wear it proudly.  It was really enjoyable, too!) 

The night before, Kevin flew home from a business trip to Texas. 

Just before that, he too was in Wisconsin.  In another part, just before the kids and I were there, visiting a different friend.

The week?  Busy!

The last month?  Has gotten away from me, in part. 

There are some recent pieces that I don't want to skip over, without at least a mention.  It has been a really, really wonderful summer.

There was Baby Day, v. 2.0

My beautiful godson Nathan. 

(I'm sorry Nathan.  You are my handsome godson.)

(But seriously, a beautiful baby, still.)

A summer afternoon spent at Chicago's Point (with Auntie Jenny) is always a summer afternoon well spent.

We were lucky enough to steal Kevin's Granny for a day and a night while she was up visiting from Florida recently (and would you believe this is the only picture I thought to snap?  Geh.)

And while we weren't the technical hosts, we did get to do lots of bonding with Leslie's mom when she came to stay for a week.  Sant & Leslie hosted their first party at their new home (and obviously we split the tables between boys and girls, ha!)

There have been many days spent on swings, and on the beach.  Some of them at the same time.

And I've made good on my promise (to myself) to spend many a day and many an evening at the water, with Kevin, with the kids, with whoever happened to be trapped in my car as I suddenly decided it the perfect random moment to head north.

We visited the Baha'i Temple in Evanston, IL,

and Sue the dinosaur at the Field Museum.

And also, sat on the moon while we were at it.

My three year old son fell in love with Weeping Willow trees this summer, setting us off on a journey to learn the name of every common tree in our area.

And my baby daughter has loved playing in every form of water.  Here, a splash pad.

We visited our beloved zoo once or twice (or twelve times)

and we rested in the soft, green grass at the park, after long summer afternoon walks.

We swam with Kevin's family on that one hot day,

and we played (loudly!) (happily!) (tirelessly!) with our friends near and far.

We jumped!

And watched the sun set some more.

My baby's beautiful blonde hair has grown and thickened.

And more teeth are joining the party!

Jackson, school today.  A little happy, a little sad.  A little thankful that it's only a few hours per week.

And a little going to hell for Homeschooler's Best T-Shirt.

What a time we've had.

Precious Four

In a post written a couple weeks ago, I casually presented the idea that Kevin and I have decided that our family should continue to grow.  It was the post about the homeschool conference, and I planned that the post to follow would include our semi-announcement.  And then this came up and that, and I didn't have a solid chunk of time to sit down and think about what I was going to write about baby number four (you know, with all of these other kids running around, whatever) and by now I've completely psyched myself out about it because I've waited too long.  I should never keep secrets from you, Internet.  Lesson learned.

Back when I was a teenager I always said I wanted seven children.  My oldest girlfriends can attest to it.

When Kevin and I began dating in 1997, I mentioned to him that I would like to raise a large family, maybe seven children.  He thought that was nice, and asked how I felt about two. 

(Which, really, is a best outcome when you mention seven children to your college boyfriend.  Kudos to him for not barreling down the dormitory hall in search of the nearest tapped keg, after receiving that information.)

We sort of left it up in the air after that, until we struggled with infertility while trying for KJ and Jack, combined with the terribly unhealthy pregnancies and premature births.  After that we decided that we should be finished having children, so grateful for the ones we were able to have. 

But every once and a while one of us would say to the other that maybe someday, far down the road, we could adopt.  We were decidedly done, but sort of not, you know?

In January of 2008 we were both shocked and panic-stricken as we learned of our surprise pregnancy that was Marin Ann.  By then our minds were settled into just can't, and we even bought a zippy little Mercedes Benz to prove it.  We were totally caught off guard that winter morning with the chicken craving and the two pink lines, to the point where I vacillated something crazy, for weeks, between sheer terror over how I would manage three young children by myself all day, but also feeling intense hormone-backed guilt, fearful to offend our little surprise sweetheart nestled quietly in my womb.  As cliche as it sounds, it was one of those things that would change all of us forever. 

(Goodbye, little black Mercedes Benz. Goodbye.)

The story comes to now, where every day I care for our three children in ways I once only dreamed possible.  Yes, those early, sleepless, transitioning months were rough, but now the calm has re-settled into my life - one I'd not even known until recent years, and I love what my family is growing into, and how I choose to spend my days.  This group of five we've become is my every happiness, and now we know for sure that we are called to more.

For a few months now, we've been going over the pros and cons of my carrying a fourth baby.  The questionable infertility, though, and the risky pregnancy.  Not to mention the way a fourth c-section is generally frowned upon by the obstetric community.  But another sibling to join our group, with little fingers and toes and a bulky toddling diaper butt, and all the love in the world.  A fuller dinner table, and another homeschooling partner.  He will love our backyard pool with the water slide, for sure.

Our minds began searching elsewhere for precious baby number four, a bit nervous even to bring it up in a serious way for the first time, not knowing exactly how the other would respond to the suggestion.  It's a big deal.  It's terribly expensive.  It's more complicated than nine months to cotton footed sleepers.

But now that first suggestion has long passed, and a sure thing has come into our great picture, we are full steam ahead.  And since we've begun working on the logistics and discussed it with our respective families, I am so excited to share our next step in this awesome journey with you.

Early next fall, just about a year from now, we will begin the adoption process.  We will need a year to save our money and educate ourselves with what we'll need to know, and then provided we are all healthy and mostly prepared, we will apply to adopt a baby from Africa. 

I have always been drawn to Africa, so it was really a no-brainer for us where our child would come from.  There are 4.6 million orphaned children in Ethiopia alone, with another five more added to that number every minute due to the AIDS crisis that is going on there.  Of those, approximately one in six of those orphaned children will die of starvation or disease by their fifth birthday.  We know we belong there, and we pray that someday we will bring our next miracle child home from there.

Maybe it was something we didn't think possible, at one time, because it was simply the wrong time.  Maybe we weren't the right people back then.  But when I think about it now, in the light of all the yes conversations we've had over the last several months, it doesn't make anything but perfect sense.  I am finally so thankful for the infertility and the worrisome pregnancies past, for my c-sections and their limitations, and for everything that has brought us to right here. 

And, whew, I'm so glad to finally have the freedom to talk about it here, and everywhere.

Life lessons I've learned in the last twenty-four hours

1. If you make salmon for dinner, never leave the dishes for the next morning, no matter how exhausted you are.  Find a way.  Pay a neighbor.  Wake a kid.

2. While having a discussion with your standing-at-the-potty three-year-old son, never ask, Where?  He'll turn and show you.

3. While it is both impressive and cute to every mother when her baby daughter bops up and down screaching her new word, Eat! Eat! Eat! do not indulge her wishes for your Super Fiber Oatmeal.  You'll pay.  Possibly in the middle of the inflatable jump playground. 

Everyone needs a hand to hold on to

Once in my younger days, when we tried to become pregnant for months on end with each of our boys, I thought that the two week wait between ovulation (sorry guys -- today we shall address oooovaries) and the green flag for the ol' pregnancy test was the longest, most horrible wait in the world. 

Turns out, of course, that there are more difficult things to wait for.  Like the two little days to find out if you have a return tumor.  That is worse.

The wait for results had never been this bad with my previous three scans.  I watched the ultrasound as I lay on the table and made out what I could of my inner anatomy.  I knew I had a small sliver of ovary left on my right side after the initial tumor was removed, so I normally look for that crescent shape when the ultrasound tech scans my right side.  Three months ago a dark circle sat atop the crescent, and my doctor told me it was nothing to worry about, probably a cyst that would go away on its own.  I accepted that answer.  But then this time again, something was there, larger and visibly different than the first time. 

I knew I would have to wait at least the two days for any kind of real answers, so I decided to best utilize the forty-eight hour gap by diagnosing myself with everything from a cyst with an impressive life-span to full-on ovarian cancer at age thirty, and I did my best to figure out how my husband would fare in raising our three children should I become sick, or dead, or how I would feel putting my kids back into our town's public schools and canceling our long-awaited fall vacation in the mountains.  It was a fabulous couple days.

I finally spoke with my doctor this morning, struggling to glean the necessary information through his very thick Chinese accent, but got that he was saying, again, that he thought probably a cyst.  Another cyst or the same, or actually a tumor he did not make clear.  He told me to see him back in a month and we could talk further.  Quite dissatisfied with the certainty of diagnosis, of course, I continued to ask questions, reminding him that there was something in the last scan as well, and that just eleven months ago there was a very large mutating tumor living in my body.  And then he cut me off, responding with a, "hold on."  And he handed the phone to his receptionist and told her to make me an appointment.

I was so upset.  Upset that we're still jumping from test to test with only guesses as diagnoses, upset that my doctor was so rude when I clearly had cause for concern, and mostly upset with myself for still not changing doctors to this point.

Back when I finally became pregnant with KJ in early 2002, we were in a very different situation than we are today.  We had crappy HMO insurance with a measly two obstetrician choices for our area, and that is how I ended up with this particular doctor.  My pregnancy with KJ was permeated with high blood pressure, premature labor, bed rest and a premature delivery that came in the form of an emergency c-section.  So when I became pregnant with Jackson in 2005 I figured I should stay with this doctor, because even though he wasn't the best in the field, he at least understood my history.  Wash, rinse and repeat nasty pregnancy with Jack, and by the time Marin came along, I decided again to stay again.

I knew, though, that by the time my third child was safely delivered and this tumor thing happened (eloquent description, I know) I needed a doctor who specialized in something like this.  I am so grateful that recent years have blessed us with out-of-this-world medical coverage that affords us just about any doctor that can be found, and in the same I am so angered by the way our country's health care fails the poor.  If not for our current health insurance, I would still be stuck here, nodding my head to months upon months of untested cyst diagnoses until possibly they were found to actually be a tumor, and cancer.  And then what?  Because I was unable to afford a second opinion? 

Early this year when we were told that Marin's kidney problem was simply a mystery, and instructed to keep her on antibiotics for another solid year until her next appointment, I went specialist shopping without batting my eye.  In no time she was diagnosed, and now just six months later she has recovered from a very necessary surgery and will lead a very happy, normal life.  And so it needs to be with my situation (and should be for the situation of every person who is faced with a scary medical problem, job title be damned).  I will see my own University of Chicago specialist in six weeks (my God the time we've spent at that place this year) (we need a revolving door!) and hopefully gain some peace of mind.  Of course I am hoping for the best outcome, even a simple cyst diagnosis as my original doctor offered.  Just as long as we're a little more sure than basic guesses.

This week at Chez Ray...

We've added new thrills, chills and spills to the Eight Inch Plastic Pool Extravaganza!  Now with trampoline power!

And also, my three-year-old has discovered the glories of Ice Cream Truck purchases.  Powerless to resist the Batman Bar, he was.

(Did I just go Yoda?)

Our sunflowers bloomed while we slept last night. 

I never had any sort of draw to these plants until I picked up a pack of seeds on a whim last spring.  I placed them in damp baggies and taped them to our sliding glass doors so the kids could watch them sprout.  Then we carefully moved the tiny buds to a pot, and then to the ground. 

They've grown to a good seven feet over the summer, taller than our shed and wooden backyard fence even, and I say with much honesty that I have loved watching them grow from nothing into such beautiful somethings.

I'm not the only one who loves them, either.  They've had visitors coming and going all morning.

Also, this one has recently found the childhood joys of being turned upside down.  (Aren't those teeth fantastic?  Six of them popping through!)

Last but not least, I'm in the Wait Zone for test results again.  I had my quarterly tumor scan yesterday, and what I hope I did not see with my very untrained eye has had me on eggshells since leaving the hospital yesterday morning.  I should finally know something tomorrow, or Thursday.

Which falls into the Flexible Parenting category

Back in January when it was time for Marin to move into her own bedroom, we quickly threw out the idea of a child moving into the spare bedroom downstairs, thanks to my ten thousand neuroses worries that one of our young children just couldn't sleep that far away, even if seprate bedrooms meant quieter bedtime routines. 

We purchased bunk beds and the boys were thrilled.

They stayed up at least two hours past bedtime for the first month and often sounded like a herd of caffinated cattle coming through the floor, but they were happy with the arrangement.

Eleven days into Project Boys Room they asked to have a sleepover, where KJ joined Jack in the bottom bunk.  I thought it was cute.  Even snapped a picture:

Seven months later the sleepover was still going strong, only by this point they were waking at five and six in the morning, yanking blankets from each other and arguing noisily over who was taking up too much space (and who was going to wake the baby gaaahhhhhhh sssssshuuuuuushhhhhh).  Each time I suggested that one child relocate to the, er, empty spacious bed on top, they formed a weeping, pleading chorus of NOOOOO's, and I felt pity in my heart. 

Albeit less pity than I would have felt, say, had we not just shelled out several hundred bucks to replace the perfectly functional set of twin beds they already owned.

Last week I waved the white flag.

No more crying over separation, no more fighting over blankets before the sun came up.  I spent an entire afternoon deconstructing bunk beds.  I arranged them in such a way where the toy box fit perfectly in between, and then I scrapped that idea, positive that twenty-eight inches of space would have one or the other sleeping in the wrong bed again that very night.  I smashed the beds together and called the boys upstairs.  They threw up their hands and shouted with glee that they had one giant bed.  That could be jumped on, even. 

Write that one in the Very Thick Book of Parenting Things I Didn't See Coming.  Also, so much urine.  And vomit.  I never saw those coming either, for the record.

What about you?  What took you by surprise?

FaceSuck

Once upon a time there was a mother of three who had twenty-eight forty-seven million heaping baskets of dirty, smelly laundry waiting for her, bills to pay online, lessons to plan for homeschool and, oh, right, children to care for.  And although normally when all of these things come to a head the mother runs straight to the protective arms of Bloglines or Google Finance to hide for a while, one day she thought she might try something new.  And she joined Facebook.

I'll just log in here and find my best gal pals.  And my blog buddies, the mother said to herself. 

But then she found that her friends were friends with other friends and old friends and far away friends and maybe a couple people who weren't exactly friends, but hell, she really wanted to see their pictures and they became friends for the sake of just that.

And all at once the afternoon was gone and the children had appropriately destroyed the living room (and the kitchen!) and familiarized themselves with the ins and outs of early Full House episodes (and the mother's heart sang for that.)   

(Culture, people.  Historical American culture, I give them.) (And a timeline using Uncle Jesse's hair.) 

(And parenthesis, I give you.)

The mother made dinner and all of the other things that (the law) says are important to supply children with, and she shooed them off to more Full House or bed or something and raced back to the computer to continue her own historical dig. 

By late that evening the friend confirmation emails were rolling in like high foamy tide and people were writing on walls and generally overwhelming the poor mother who thought so innocently, early that day, that she should look up an old gal-pal or two.  To put off laundry for another thirty minutes.  All in one day it was like re-meeting damn near everyone she'd ever met throughout her lifetime, and she couldn't stop clicking to find more, just around the corner.  She had been sucked in.

Holy hell. 

Are you there too?

(For the record, I've spent the better part of Facebook's existence with my nose in the air swearing to the four corners of the world that I would never go there.  Until yesterday.  And had I thought I would ever actually dedicate a blog post to it?  I'd have sworn something or other about that, too.)

Another which involves my dying mid-way through. Am nothing if not overflowing with new ideas.

Recently Kevin and I attended a Chicago-based homeschool conference together.  I am a lover of conferences, I should say, all the way back from my days as an Elementary Education undergrad.  So as soon as I learned of this one, I thought it the perfect opportunity to immerse my willing husband a bit deeper into the world of education, and homeschool, to boot. 

First thing in the morning we were pitched in the gigantic ballroom with everything from gummy vegetable vitamins to foreign language programs to (booth upon booth of) anti-evolution literature.  We found a handful of really great companies and invested in several outside-the-box books, split a terribly overpriced cheese danish and scurried off to our schedule of sessions that we carefully planned the night before. 

One that we were most excited to attend that morning was the Large Families discussion, where we imagined that we could get a glimpse into our future (heh, planning more children after all!) (but more on that later).  We even left the earlier session a smidge early to ensure that we would get good seats for this one.  I wanted to know how a family of seven created a routine and how they orchestrated homeschool every day, and field trips, and dinners in quiet restaurants, and what they all drove to get there for the Love of Pete.  I wanted to hear about budgeting woes and successes, sibling rivalry and how everything would turn out absolutely fantastic in the end with gigantic family Christmases and brilliant, happy grandchildren running everywhere.

So after sneaking out of the Multiple Intelligences session with time to spare, we were not at all surprised to be the very first people to the Large Families room, and we sat and waited for moms and dads and long trails of ducklings to begin filing in at any moment.

There was the discussion leader, and a woman.  And then eventually a clock at the top of the hour.  No large families, no small families.  Crickets, I do recall.  Chirping crickets.

I thought for a moment about the backup session we'd picked- ha! in case this one was full! - which was something about Educating Children Who Would Rather Be Off Building Forts, and just as I leaned over to suggest it to my husband (over the chirping crickets, that is) the discussion leader placed a tiny silver hook in my mouth and reeled me to the front of the room, directing the four of us to organize our chairs into a circle.  We were going to have a small but helpful discussion, just the few of us, she said.

I believed her for a very short moment as she introduced herself as the mom of seven grown children, and when the mom beside me said she had five, with a sixth in the works.  I thought it might still be okay, this hour and a half session.  But then our bold leader spoke again, outlining what we should talk about first and second, which were laundry and cooking.  She zipped from zero to sixty, suggesting right off the bat to the mom and myself and my husband, that people really hate to give useless gifts anymore, and that we should try hard to think of someone in our lives who might be willing to pony up large capacity frontloaders for the mountains of dirty clothes that come with having a large family, if we didn't already have them.

(Like a washing machine sugar daddy?)

My thoughts immediately shifted to Scooby-Doo speak, and I scratched my head and distorted my face.  Joining the circle of chairs was a mistake, I realized.  But digging deeper for the silver lining I thought I might interject that even with my relatively small family of five, I have cut my utility bills beyond belief by hanging our wet laundry outside in the breeze all summer, and how helpful that is to the environment, as well.

But she wasn't finished, and I was placed on hold.

She went on to say that she understands the difficulty that is keeping track of all this clothing that children are forever outgrowing, and that it can be terribly stressful to organize it all into bins in the garage for later use, and that we should just allow ourselves to pitch it and buy new for each child, each season, to lighten our work load as mothers.

Stressful? is what I was thinking in my Scooby Doo voice when the mom beside me nodded her head and agreed aloud that, yes, it was stressful to box up children's clothing.  And then the leader actually responded by saying, We live in a disposable world anyway.  (Shaggy?!)  This was the very first time that day that I thought I might kill myself before the session time was over.  It was the first time of many times I had that thought.  In fact I didn't even have that thought earlier in the day when we were chased down by no fewer than three separate middle-aged men waving pamphlets about devotions and turtles and Darwin, because really, there's plenty of room for all of us with all of our beliefs to agree and disagree quietly as long as we have not corralled others into a very large room for a very small discussion about piling landfills with a large family's worth of barely-worn clothing.

Just as the first drop of my frontal lobe trickled down my face in the form of a tear, another mom entered the room.   It was a long walk up the aisle to the front, and she looked very kind and innocent.  I tried to shoo her away, warning her like you might warn the oncoming traffic on an interstate that the county sheriff is clocking speeds right over that yonder hill, flashing your headlights once or twice or wildly, in this case.  I was blinking and coughing and jerking my head to the right, and signaling to get ouuuuut while she could! 

But it was too late.  She sat down beside me, unaware.  And then somewhere between our leader's story about utilizing a fair amount of homeschool time for all seven of her children to have sock matching races for the exciting reward of a solitary m&m (oh Internet, I could not make this shit up) and complaining how, of all people it was her teenage dauuuughter falling behind on laundry, the new mom innocently spoke up.  She explained that she, too, involves her five children in household chores and asked the group how they respond to the kids complaining about it. 

And without so much as a moment's hesitation our fearless leader directed her, for next time, to say something like, Well I am sorry you got me as a mother!

I waited a second to not be the first laugh in the room, like what a funny way to respond to your child!  But she continued on, about telling your child you are Just! So! Sorry! for the hardship he must bear in his life, and that he should just go right out and find himself a new mother because apparently the one he was paired with was off her effing rocker just miserable to live with!  And she was saying it all in syllables, just like you'd imagine, with a very serious, ill look upon her face.

I leaned over and popped Kevin's lower jaw back onto his skull, and then jotted down in my notebook, Always Be Passive-Aggressive With Children.

Twenty minutes went by. 

Twenty minutes where I did not say a word.  Another unknowing mother joined the circle, another unknowing mother silently kicked herself in the head with all her might.  The leader instructed us to cook a large hunk of meat each Sunday and feed the family from it the rest of the week (or block of cheddar, I suppose, for our strangely planet-conscious family) and she graced the world with the very new idea of buying apples and oranges in bulk.  And slicing fifteen of them before dinner because our children, too, will ask in awe just as hers once did, Oh Mother! Who is coming over for dinner tonight with this wonderful spread!?  And also however it was she stuck in there the piece about having the freedom to throw our knives away once they begin to dull because they're so cheap now anyway, and disposable society, bang head, bang head.

I sat there mulling over exactly how rude it would be to up and leave the room when the leader was already probably feeling pretty crapped out over such low attendance in the first place.  (Though now that I think about it, was there some sort of message the first-year conference attendees missed out on?  That only these few people joined the room in the first place?)  But after a while I knew for sure I could not sit there for another second. 

So just after my phone vibrated with a text message from my sister Sant that, Yeah! All is well! We're having fun! Just went to the video store for free kid movies! I stood up and grabbed my bag and my dying husband, sadly explaining to the group that my sister had my baby and she needed me.  It was all I had.

We ran out and died on the marble foyer floor, not three steps from the doors. 

Thankfully, the rest of the conference was better.  For the most part session descriptions made it pretty clear which talks were to be avoided, and we did, and by the end of the day we had a much clearer picture of what it was we were shooting for as we begin the school year. 

Seeing our kids the next day, I couldn't help but try out a tiny slice of that sage advice we received back in session three, and I nudged a large basket of clothes towards my six-year-old son and told him if he folded it quick he could have a whole m&m I'd found between couch cushions.  You want me to do all of this for one tiny m&m? he whined.  And then I gave him a terrible sob story about being the worst mother in all the world and handed him three hundred bucks for a psychiatrist.  Ten percent of which he wisely deposited into his savings account and the other ninety he spent on fifty pounds of m&m's.  And new clothes for Jack next season.  And Hefty bags.  The end.

On Pooh

Once upon a time way, way back, oh sometime last week when the boys were off at a sleepover, a mother dragged her baby girl on a massive grocery shopping expedition.  From store to store they roamed, buying cartful upon cartful in order to re-stock empty cabinets and to feed the growing, starving masses.

This is boring, the little princess baby girl complained to her mother.  So the mother took a quick jaunt down the nearest toy aisle looking for something that might entertain the princess all the way through frozen foods and fresh vegetables alike.

The little baby princess girl laid eyes on the Pooh and squealed and kicked her feet and waved her arms about, and the mother knew she'd found the perfect entertainment, to be later stuffed on a random shelf in the checkout lane, of course.  (Heh.)

The little girl happily squeezed and hugged and loved the Pooh, which was quite the interesting thing for this mother to witness, having only little boys before now, who would surely have pounded the Pooh, turned the Pooh into some sort of warring soldier and tossed him from the cart to his death in the cereal aisle by now.  But the little girl with all of the love in her little princess heart went right on bonding with the Pooh. 

Then the time came for the checkout and the ceremonial stuffing on the shelf, but the little baby girl pleaded with the mother to please not take her Pooh. 

Eight fifty, read the half-eaten price tag attached to the Pooh's ear, and the mother placed a nitro tab beneath her tongue so as to prevent heart attack right there in the aisle as she contemplated shelling out three hundred dollars for groceries, plus thirteen cents for the Chinese-woven fabric and cheap stuffing, and eight dollars and thirty-seven cents for the name on his shirt.  All this, of course, for what could very well be only four more seconds of sheer delight for the little girl until the Pooh might be forgotten, and even scorned, buried in the underbelly of a toy box and sold years later in a garage sale for an appropriate thirteen cents. 

Sir Guilt, the always-near friend of the mother, stepped into the aisle, dressed in head to toe in black and gray, taller than the tallest of men, and dark, and he whispered in a deep whisper to the mother that the little girl needed the Pooh, and that possibly the mother might consider all of the fun Brothers One and Two were having at their sleepover while poor neglected baby girl was being toted from store to store with only the entertainment of random strangers to rely on, and the millions of germs on cart handles as her dinner.  

The mother wept bitterly for her sweet, deprived child, and quickly handed the baby-slimed Pooh to the cashier, who was somehow less than grateful for that, and she called back to the toy department for another Pooh, for this one had only one third of the bar code left.  (The other two thirds were well on their way through digestion, of course.)

Then a funny thing happened, the next day and the next.  It left mothers everywhere scratching their heads and marveling at this rarely-seen occurrance.

The little princess girl liked the Pooh, even the next day.

She taught him about nature and the outdoors, and about big brothers who spray hose water into the house again and again, accidentally, despite their mother's protests.

 

And she taught the Pooh how to create the best screen holes, to rip and pull until the holes were large enough for an entire mosquito population to enter while the mother spun in mad circles with make-shift fly swatters, grumbling nonsense about West Niles and Viruses.

 

The little girl told Pooh secrets (in his belly)

 

and she beamed with pride as the Pooh did exactly as she had instructed, plush paw through screen.

The little girl really, really loved the Pooh to all infinity.  Even to the point of sacrifing her own safety as she used the Pooh to bash her mother's special camera lens.

(And that, my friends, is love.)

The end.

I tried to be chill, but you're so hot that I melted

My three year old has been walking around singing this Jason Mraz line for days. 

Except he sings, I tried to beat you, but you're so hot that I melted. 

And he refuses correction.

(Batman suit in July?  Ebay.  Nine bucks.)

**

(Baby's favorite meal?  Junk mail.  Free.)

**

The kids came in from the yard yesterday with proclamations of a caterpillar in our tomato plants.  Which I sort of half-heard, until later in the afternoon, while hurrying to grill pork chops and pull laundry down before the baby woke up, I stopped dead in my tracks, totally grossed out by What Thee Hellll was in the tomatoes.

And there were six of them, at that! 

Yeh caterpillar? 

I quickly dialed Kevin's aunt, who is our Resident Tomato Person (who has subsequently always wanted a title just like that one) to pick her brain.  She laughed and told me to yank them off and kill them, because they're tomato worms. 

Except over the phone she could not see them, these four inch long creatures who I am sure might feel being killed, and I couldn't do it.  They were, after all, just doing what they do with their little green lives, hanging on tomato plants.  ...And Kevin and I are always telling the boys that they can kill insects inside our house, but never those outside in their own homes, because doesn't every one and every thing have the right to its own life?  

...So I poked one with a pen and the little s.o.b. made clicking noises, and spit at me. 

And the Resident Tomato Person laughed like hell on the other end of the phone, stopping only long enough to ask if I would click and spit at someone if they were dragging me out of the Cracker Barrell against my will.

Then I stopped to notice that this tomato worm and his five large brothers had demolished three quarters of our tomatoes and had shat everywhere, and I was no longer quite so friendly about him living his life as he willed.

The boys and I settled for snapping off the branches where they clung, and we placed them just outside our back gate.  I have yet to check on them today, but I hope they took their bagged lunch and left.

(Are you cringing too?  Blech.)

**

So we finally, finally planned a vacation for this year. 

Last year we had to cancel based on the fact that we had just finished bleeding our veins in order to carry two mortgages for nine long months, and hey! a baby on the way!  This year it was whether Kevin could get the time, should we spend the money, yadda yadda yadda, and then last week I realized we were teetering on the edge of the August page and we needed to just decide already.  

Later this fall?  Ten fantastic days driving from Northwest Indiana through Chicago, Illinois, through Des Moines, Iowa, looping Omaha, Nebraska, somehow clipping the southwest corner of Minnesota and resting a few days in Rapid City, South Dakota.  Moving westward, then, driving something like five hundred miles through Wyoming down to Denver, Colorado for more resting, more fun.  Then aaaaall the way across Kansas and Missouri, back up through Illinois and into Indiana.  

Kevin and I love road trips down to the soles of our shoes, even with many small children.  One of our life goals is to set feet in each one of the fifty states together, and this trip will bring us to twenty-two, almost half way there!  (States which we visited as kids or without the other do not count.) 

It has been two years since we've been on a cross-country road trip, and I feel us long overdue.

Atlanta 2007, should you recall toddler poop in Olympic Rings.  Yikes.

This vacation will also take our homeschooling skillz out for a spin as we take school on the road with us.  Or, wherein the road becomes the school, which was the whole point in keeping kids home in the first place.  (Leading me back to excitement in the shoes, one more time.)

**

Even though I am probably the last person on the planet to link to it, I have been watching the wedding entrance video every day, because it makes me smile.

**

We will celebrate my baby daughter's first birthday in just one little month.  Hoooooly where did the time go, Batman?