Coping by Buying Socks in Bulk

I am currently overwhelmed. For some reason Norah has decided to grow up. This is very unfortunate, since my plans for taking care of four children always involved her staying little and sleeping a lot. She's so uncooperative. Today she insisted on being fed at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I'm trying to think of ways to simplify so I can fit feeding myself into my schedule. Because I miss eating.
Ideas:
1. Buy 275 pairs of white socks for each child. This way I never have to match tiny socks or pretend that tiny socks match when they really don't. Why 275? Because, silly, during the summer you don't need socks.
2. Never leave home again.
3. Give up showers.
4. Return to cold cereal as a staple dinnertime food.

I always drown a little when I'm trying to incorporate a new baby into our family. It doesn't matter how many times I've done it before (or how cute and excellent the baby is). It's still hard.
The End

Summer is OVER. GOOD RIDDANCE.

The photo evidence from this summer points to a good time had by all.  Lest someday my harried daughter says to me, "Mom, how did you do it?" And I reply smiling wistfully, "You should cherish every moment. They grow up so quickly. We just did what we did and had a good time." --I am hereby recording the true events of this summer.

My Summer Vacation
by Stephanie C.

This summer we spent much of our time in Fightville, a picturesque little town known for its town motto of "She's _________________(fill in the blank with a verb) me."  We got some bruises and a few scratches and hair pulls as we explored the rocky shores of the beaches there.

One day, after the whole family took a community course on YELLING LOUDLY, we all went to our separate rooms and sulked. I might have been heard to say, "This is the worst summer ever." Out loud.

Another day, we visited Fightville's famous Cry Me A River shop where we found all sorts of things to cry about. We visited this shop often.

Fightville also offered side excursions to famous and ever-enjoyable Whineville and Teaseville. Sometimes on our side excursions I looked out the window and saw a sign that pointed to Lost-Your-Mind-ville, but in some strange time-space warp we were already there at the same time we were in Fightville.

The Fightville community center also offered classes in Talking Back (or how to pick a fight about everything from combing your hair to eating an ice cream cone), and Throwing Fits That Will Make Your Parents Wish to be Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.  They also offered a special class for mothers in Extreme Guilt. I attended that class daily.

We bought souvenir t-shirts that read, "My heart belongs to Fightville." So we can always remember the good time we had there. THE END

Sometimes I pretend to myself that I would like to home school. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Where can I sign up for year-round school. With no breaks. Ever.?

Okay. It wasn't all that bad. Here's the photo evidence to the contrary. And really, when it comes down to it, I guess I don't want to remember what it was really like. I do, in fact, hope to one day look down the long corridor of years and smile with misty forgetfulness about how wonderful raising children was. So here's some pictures of the things I hope to really remember:

Norah's blessing

Ellie's Bday

The Royal Race

Playing out front after dinner

The Ogden Nature Center

Fourth of July parade

Backyard water slide

Swimming with cousins

The zoo

Swimming with more cousins

Playing with neighbors

The Spudman

Bear Lake

Cutest baby ever

"The moon"

Happy Back to School!

Pictures of the Top Bunk Bed Tent and Paltry Instructions

I'm sorry this is less of a how-to build a top bunk bed tent because I didn't build it, Mike did. I constructed the bottom bunk bed tent ("How to Make a Bottom Bunkbed Tent"). I've been bugging him to do a post about how he built this thing, but he's been busy saving the world and rubbing my feet. So here's what I've got; mostly just some pictures that will hopefully help you if you're interested in building your own top bunk bed tent.

There are five cross-bars that attach to the middle bar, made of PVC. The top and bottom of the bed (lengthwise) are open, to let air and light in. The fabric is duck canvas, but any fabric without too much stretch should work. I don't know, maybe stretchy fabric would be awesome (or more awesome). We wanted it to be pretty heavy-duty though, in case someone decided to try and lean on it.  

Another view of the top of the tent. The dimensions were based on how high our ceiling was above the bunkbed. And we gave it the shape of the top half of an octagon (is that an A-frame?) because we have a fan in the room that would have hit it otherwise. 

Yet another view. 

We attached the fabric to the PVC pipe with heavy-duty snaps. We also reinforced the fabric where we attached the snaps with pellon (fusible interfacing, or for those of you, who like me had no idea, it's thick stuff you can iron on to your fabric to make it more stiff and sturdy.) Mike sewed on ties at eight points--one in each corner and two more on each side. 

Here's a picture of the snaps unsnapped. In the top right corner is a little window that I cut out and sewed, after we took the very top picture. 

The door way was the hardest, Mike said. This is where the ladder comes up. I don't even know how to explain it (I'm sorry). He sewed the fabric so it made a pocket for the pole. The gauzy fabric in the top picture is a "door" that I sewed on later because my daughter wanted to be able to close the door. We chose the see-through stuff because we didn't want to block out all the light.  

I sewed some little pockets on the inside so she could store her things. She also liked to put things in the fold of the fabric on the sides. I say "liked", because since little Norah was born, we've had to switch things up a bit and the bunkbed tent resides in pieces in our garage. :(

Hopefully this will give you some more ideas on how to build your own. Good luck! Feel free to leave a comment, with your email address, if you have any questions and I will respond as best I can. Also, if you make one I'd love to see it, so send me pictures! 

5 Things I Irrationally Hate

I am all about being irrational. Because logic is far too difficult to wrap my mother-adled brain around.

1. Honey--Oh sure it has nutritional value and is all-natural and delicious, but has anyone ever found a good way to store it? Or get it out of the storage jar? I will wipe off the table, sit down to enjoy a good book and find my elbows sticking to the table. And my shorts sticking to the chair. Arggh. Sticky everywhere.
2. Rice Krispies--Little tiny devils that when soaked in milk and allowed to dry become impossible to clean off the floor. The other morning Ellie, otherwise known as the Messiest Eater in the West, had a bowl of these which she managed to spill all over the table. When I came out from feeding Norah, tiny, wet Rice Krispies were scattered across the whole table. In an attempt to stop them from permanently bonding to my table I tried to wipe them up. They clung and shifted worse than my dress on a hot summer day. It took forever to wipe them up, and they hadn't even performed their superglue feat yet.
3. Joannes-- I already feel extreme stress when I enter this fabric/craft store. I want to sob every time I approach the fabric cutting counter, "No! I don't know how many yards I need. Just sell me the whole bolt." But I am far too cheap for that. Then after I stand in line, sweating about how many yards I need to finish some nursery curtains that I am never going to sew, I have to stand in line again to purchase this fabric. The second line is always at least 20 minutes long and winds through a slot canyon of candy and other junk that I continually tell my children not to touch and no I will not buy them the wooden frog they have always wanted.
4. Plastic Step stools- Specially designed to trip you or scratch your poor feet and legs, especially when wielded by a toddler.

Well, I guess that's it. I have a lot of things that I rationally hate, like war, disease, and broccoli, but I can only think of four irrational things right now. I'll have to add to the list later.

Four Kids is the Bomb

Seriously, the bomb. You know the kind that explodes and leaves detritus, food and clothing strewn randomly around? That kind of bomb. And just to mix metaphors a little bit, let's pretend my house is a submarine that has been hit by this four kid bomb, so then you can know that I feel like I'm drowning. [Insert laughter-- tentative, shaky laughter, bordering on maniacal, in an attempt to let you know that I'm fine. Fine. Everything is just fine.]
While the sleep schedule has vastly improved around here, and the combat nursing has quieted to an uneasy Cold War, I can't seem to get it together. I told Mike that the first line of a mythical book that I'm going to find the time to write will say, "It was the laundry that finally killed her." How does laundry manage to mulitply like rabbits? I swear I leave it alone for one day and the next thing I know it's baby's baby's are having brightly stained babies.
Everything else we own is busy making homes in the middle of the floor, on top of the piano and on the couch where we used to sit. I need my boppy riot shield just to walk through the house without breaking my ankle.
I'm struggling to survive this four-kid thing. And it makes me feel even worse when I think how much I am struggling and this doesn't even count as a real trial. It's supposed to be a blessing. And I'm not allowed to complain about the struggle because it's a blessing, right?  And there are so many wonderful things in my life too. Norah is an angel. She sleeps well, is predictable and smiles sweetly. Ellie is potty training (I have a new idea for ways to convince teens to remain abstinent, or to torture insurgents. Have them potty train a two-year-old without losing their temper, only clapping and dancing happily every time the child manages to make it to the toilet). Hannah is learning to control her temper. Mckenzie is learning independence (this is a euphemism for 'yelling at me all the time and not wanting to do anything but sit around'). So things are good. And now I feel guilty for even complaining.

Dear Mothers who are Happy that it's Summer time and you get to spend every waking hour with your precious children-- What are you doing that makes it so happy? We are having small issues with adjustment to a new schedule of chores and piano practice and "don't-get-stupid-this-summer" worksheets.  Do you just forget the house and chores and worksheets and do fun things all summer long? Do you send them to summer camp all summer? My philosophy has been "Work first, then play." But this has turned into "Work First. Fight Always. Get Grounded and Have No Fun." I would just give up and go sit on the couch, but the couch is currently buried in a pile of laundry.

What it's like to breastfeed a baby while caring for other children

It's like trying to conduct a symphony with your arms tied behind your back. Sure the violins basically know what's going on, but those dang violas and that percussion line? They need a lot of direction. And don't even get me started on the french horns.

So, it's slightly difficult. I always complicate things by having preconceived notions about how it's going to go. For some reason breastfeeding a baby looks like this in my head:
I am sitting in a comfortable rocking chair, that was whittled out of a maple tree from one of my great-grandparent's farms, bathed in a glow of soft light, quietly suckling my newborn. Quietly. No one is banging out various minor variations of Mary Had a Little Lamb on the Piano. No one is yelling from the other room, "Kenzie! THATS MINE!" while sobbing hysterically; And no one is trying to climb up onto my lap to "Kiss! Kiss!" the baby while simultaneously trying to gouge the baby's eyes out.

In the lower left corner of this picture you can see poor Norah's head. Ellie's favorite activity while I am nursing is to pull over a stool, place its sharp, cutting surface directly on my feet before I have a chance to move them, and then climb up onto the Boppy to give Norah kisses. She also likes to observe intelligently, while pointing to Norah eating, "Belly Button. Belly Button." We're all about correct anatomy at our house. (I did try to explain it once, but gave up when I figured that it was really more socially acceptable to feed the baby from my belly button.)  

Kenzie and Hannah like to make me nervous by hovering close by and making mother-hen noises. "Oh, little baby Norah," they sing-song, pushing the chair I am sitting in into the newly painted walls and stepping on clean blankets and my feet as they trip headlong into Norah in an effort to rub her little head.

"Don't touch the baby while she's eating. No. Seriously. Let her eat. Okay, guys. I'm feeling a little claustrophobic here. Don't touch her. ALRIGHT. EVERYONE OUT!"

So instead of Norah getting this wonderful quiet mother-bonding time, her eating is punctuated with a series of violent blows and resonant yells. I call it combat nursing. The Boppy should come with riot shields.

I try to be discreet about breastfeeding, but while I am no breast-brandishing La Leche League card-carrier, I do think it's ridiculous to have to throw a blanket over my baby's head while I'm in the privacy of my own home. (Privacy is such a funny word for a mother of four.) Here's how that particular scenario goes:  "Mommy, what's under there? Why are you hiding Norah?" says Kenzie peeking under a corner of the blanket, uncomfortably close to my chest. Hannah wanders over and tries to lift up the blanket, which attracts Ellie to the scene. "Peek-a-boo!" She says pulling the blanket off of me and the baby and then throwing it back violently where it somehow manages to catch Norah in the eye.

Shutting the door results in horrible fights, bloodcurdling screams and crashes which I am sure signify certain death. So I don't do that either.I just pretend that breastfeeding is normal and natural. Because, well, IT IS.

While it's easy (okay easier) to distract the seven and five-year old with a movie, or other activities, I don't have a solution for occupying Ellie (21 months) while I feed Norah. I know the experts recommend reading a book to your other kids while you nurse, but these so-called experts must be people who have never tried to shield a newborn's head and her delicate eyes from the paper-cutting, corner-poking potential of a book in the hands of a toddler). Or they recommend setting up a toy or toys that you only get out when you nurse.  Does anyone have an easy to set-up and store toy, that requires no parental intervention and that absorbs their toddler for 40 minutes? Yeah. Me neither. 

Mostly, Ellie wanders around happily as long as I've made sure she's fed and as long as I let her climb up and maul me and kiss Norah's head once in awhile. I'm hoping that if I don't make a big deal out of it, she'll just get bored of the whole situation. In the meantime I'm on a countdown to March 2013. If Norah and I can make it that far, she's sure to be well on her way to winning Survivor Season 354.  

This is your brain. This is your brain on motherhood.

Normally I am sharp as a tack (snort).  Okay, but I can generally manage to use adverbs correctly and utter socially acceptable responses in polite conversation. Mostly. But when I am waking up twice a night (three if you count 5:30 a.m. as night), blinking dazedly, half awake and half asleep, fumbling groggily to feed a floppy baby with a ginormous head, my brain doesn't function normally.  My already struggling social graces take a dive into, "Is that woman all there? Something seems a little off" terrirtory. I find that nodding and smiling is one of my best defense tactics during these looooooong months that sleep (or a lack thereof) occupies all of my brain cells. But sometimes people want me to respond. To answer coherently. To speak as if I have been processing the conversation and have something to add. They're not asking me to weigh in on the moral and social implications of foreign policy or asking me to solve difficult algorithms, but they might as well be.
Example:
"Hey Steph, how are you doing?"  I smile blankly. And then when it becomes painfully obvious that an answer is required, I scan my brain nervously, thinking, "I know I have answered this question correctly before. What is the answer?"
"Nothing!" I blurt. And then I realize that I have mistakenly substituted the answer to the Other question that people ask each other, "What's going on?" Then my milk comes in and I mutter something about "keeping the baby alive" and leave. Or I rush off to rescue Ellie (the toddler) from certain death.

Ellie has become really good at "certain death" activities, or "horribly mutilating" activities. In fact, we started off the second week of new motherhood with Ellie bashing her nose into the bottom cement stair on my parent's porch. It swelled to the size and color of a small plum. After a quick trip to Instacare, where they told us a CAT scan would need to be done if we thought it was broken (no thank you), and that it was rare to break your nose when you are so young, she began recovering nicely. Then, right when the swelling had gone down and the color subsided to a nice yellow, she bashed her eye climbing up onto a chair. It was a small gash, but she has another black eye. Poor thing.

And our cat is shedding a lot.

(Did I mention I have trouble focusing?)

Anyway, please forgive me if I respond like a homeless cat lady. Hopefully when I start sleeping again I'll at least be able to answer simple questions.