Thoughts while trying to get the kids to bed

Little girls who are sent to brush their teeth need to be repeatedly reminded of why they are in the bathroom. Otherwise, they could spend the whole time playing with their hair in the bathroom mirror and come out without ever having had toothpaste or toothbrush in the vicinity of their mouths.

**********

What does it say about our family when the father of my small children lets them stay up late to watch a really great TV show with him - about the current state of research into interstellar travel? And they're actually interested?

**********

It's amazing how everyone gets ravenous as soon as bedtime is announced. I wish they were this hungry at dinnertime.

**********

Comment from their father on the noise coming from the girls' room: "It's a slumber party in there every night."

**********

The number of excuses for getting back up after having been put to bed is infinite. If not more.

Maybe Not The Best Idea

There's been a discussion on one of my email lists about ways to spend less money on Christmas this year. It's the sort of topic that comes up every year, but this year the tone of the posts has been a little less casual, a little more intense.

One mother shared that, among other cost-cutting measures such as making wooden toys for the children, they are re-gifting some of the children's own toys to them. They are going to buy new batteries for old presents that haven't been played with in a while, wrap them, and let the kids open them on Christmas morning as new presents.

(If you are reading this, S., you know where I'm going.)

My parents did something like that once. Once.

It's one of those ignominious family stories, the kind they hate to have us retell. The kind that elicit mingled groans and laughter from everyone, and the question, "What were you thinking?"

One year for, I believe, Christmas, my little brother S. got a Lite Brite. He and I both* were ecstatic about this, and wanted to play with it constantly. And then the lightbulb burned out, and nobody bought another lightbulb and we couldn't play with it anymore, which was very disappointing. It was put away, and we forgot about it.

At some point the two of us ran across it again, still lacking a lightbulb. I was older, though, and I had a brilliant idea.** I knew where Mom kept the lightbulbs, so I got one out and put it in myself. We had so much fun playing with the Lite Brite again! Until we tried to pull the pegs back out.

Yep. Plastic designed to handle a low watt bulb doesn't handle a 60 watt bulb so well. The pegs and the black pegboard they fit into melded into a near solid mass on the side nearest the lightbulb.

And that was that. The end of the Lite Brite. No-one was very happy with me, including myself.

I don't know when the second Christmas was. In the time distortion of childhood memories it seems like it was several years later, but it might have been just a few months later. (It can't have been all that long, though, because both events happened in the same house, which we were only in for four years.) My dad was trying to get a business of his own off the ground, and things weren't going so well. There had been a great demand for his product when he started, but now demand had tapered off dramatically and our finances had gotten very tight.

As a parent, one who has known a tight Christmas or two myself, I can sympathize with them. As a child, I was appalled, though not nearly as upset as my brother was when he opened a fascinatingly large box to see his old Lite Brite, refurbished, with a new pegboard, new pegs, and new lightbulb.

Our parents, poor things, didn't get quite the reaction they were hoping for.
___________________________________________

*Our younger siblings are much younger than us, so it was still just the two of us at that point.

**I had a lot of brilliant ideas back then. Most of them weren't all that brilliant. Unfortunately, I didn't ever realize that until I was halfway into implementing the idea. That was generally when the unrealized, but very fatal, flaws would come to light.***

***This is why I went around with a large shock of hair sticking straight up from the top of my head for several weeks in 6th grade. It turned out that it wasn't such a great idea to try to deal with tangles and knots by cutting them out. Scissors just don't make a good replacement for hairbrushes.

At the End of the Day

Who would have thought a birthday party would cause so much trouble?

The girls just got home from a birthday party for the Little Girl Across the Street. LGATS knocked on our door Thursday night to give the girls their invitations. There was much excitement and rejoicing (and relief from me that she had invited both girls, not just Oldest Girl Child) until I realized that the party was today. Saturday. Luckily at 4 p.m., because it was too late to go out shopping for a present that night.

I could have taken them shopping Friday night, but my sweet husband and I were planning on going out to dinner with some other couples. Everything got canceled, however, when Youngest Girl Child came down with pink eye. The doctor had assured us that she would be able to go to the party (she would no longer be contagious after three doses of the prescription eye drops), but I was not so sure when I put her to bed Friday night. She was pretty miserable and her eye was looking much worse, even after two doses.*

This morning she woke up with her poor little eye so swollen and red that I was sure I was going to be dealing with a broken-hearted little girl when OGC went to the party alone, but things improved remarkably once she had the third dose.

By the time she got her fourth dose of eyedrops she was looking only slightly like someone had punched her in the eye. So, thinking everything was going fine now, off we went to the store, all three of us, the YGC, the OGC, and me.

Well, OK, I admit, I am experienced enough by now to know not to expect "everything to be fine." Whenever is everything fine where kids are concerned? But I did at least think it was only going to be the normal quantity of maddening behavior from them.

They started on each other in the car. Truly nasty attacks on each other. Mean tones of voices, harsh words - they were rapidly degenerating to the level of "You're ugly and stupid and nobody loves you!" category of verbal assaults when I stepped in and announced that any further behavior along this line would lead to turning around. We would go home, we would not buy presents, and furthermore there would be no birthday party.

They were quiet after that, except for the crying. Pouting is silent, so I guess that doesn't count. Especially if I avoid looking in the mirror at them.

When we got to the store they went nuts. Every toy we saw they wanted. They weren't looking for a birthday present. We were Christmas shopping! When I finally yanked their attention back to LGATS my little Bobbsey twins settled on the same toy. No, not one from the two of them. The same toy, twice. The only difference was that one toy dog was brown and the other was white.

I didn't like it, but I try to allow them to make their own decisions as much as possible, so when couldn't distract either of them to one of the other fascinating toys I shrugged and took them off to select pretty bags to put the presents in, and birthday cards to tuck in with the presents.

Second verse, same as the first... Identical bags. Identical cards. I'm afraid I lost my temper at that point and insisted they at least have different cards.

And then we checked out and I discovered that the dogs, which were marked on the shelf as $4.88, actually rang up as $14.88. Allow me to emphasize - FourTEEN, not four. Granted, I was certainly unhappy about the price, but the fact that I could use this as a way to leverage getting something different (from each other's choice) was certainly a factor in returning the pups on the spot and getting my money back.**

I decided to have our do-over at the dollar store. I warned the girls before we went in that I wanted each girl to choose something different from what her sister was giving, and gave them permission to choose more than one gift. It took several minutes of trying to drag them away from playing, but we finally walked out of there with five toys each - 10 in total, not one duplicate among them. Except for the two pairs of earrings - one pair came with a pretty purse OCG picked out, and the other came with a glitzy tiara YGC chose. I figured that worked as different enough.

It was getting late in the afternoon by this point, so I was moving a little quickly as we headed out of the mall.*** Concentrating on just getting out and getting home, I was not thrilled to realize the way I was going was blocked by a large group of people. People? No - a parade. A parade? In the mall? Wait a second - what had the guy on the loudspeaker just been going on about? Someone special?

I looked down and saw a red hat bobbing along. It was Santa!

"Hey, look guys, it's Santa Claus!" OGC looked dubious. YGC bounced up and down.

The parade came closer, and I could see the red hat more clearly. It was not Santa. It was a Stormtrooper.

No. No, surely not. If this wasn't Santa what the heck was it? And wasn't this going to be fun - explaining to the girls that Mommy was mistaken and there was no Santa at the mall today?

I looked again. There was another red hat, visible for a moment then gone again. And ... Yes!! It was Santa! Woohoo! Mommy reputation - saved! Disappointment and tears - averted! The whole parade stopped for a moment to let the small brass ensemble change songs, just as Santa drew up opposite us. He looked at the girls and waved at them. YGC bounced some more and chattered excitedly about Santa. OGC looked in the general direction of the floor and scowled slightly, drawing closer to me.

And then the parade moved on and a woman dressed in generically festive Santa Helper clothing gave the girls two paper reindeer headbands to wear, while giving them a sales pitch about coming to see Santa and get their pictures taken. OGC's scowl deepened at this, and she refused to let me fix the headband for her.

Now, OGC has never been comfortable with Santa. She flat out refuses to go near him. She feels the same way about any costumed character. The Easter Bunny? No go. Mother Goose, who was at her school when she registered for Kindergarten? Absolutely not. She wouldn't even go close enough to get the coloring book Mother Goose was giving away. I had to take it for her. So, I asked her if she was still afraid of Santa.

She thought about it. "No. I just feel shy around him."

I suppose that's a little better than being stark terrified.

We climbed in the car and OGC fixed her headband all by herself, which she was very proud of. Then the girls pretended to butt heads like fighting deer, and then YGC reached out and ripped off one of OGC's horns. Then OGC sobbed, and YGC offered to give OGC her own intact headband in recompense, and OGC refused and continued sobbing. I persuaded OGC to accept the offer and the apology, and we made it home without too much further trouble.

Then we counted the minutes until it was time to go to the party and I watched them cross the street. It was wonderful - a child-free house - for about an hour, and then I started wondering when they were coming home. It was getting dark after all. After two hours I went to get them, expecting tears of protest. They greeted me with cries of, "Mommy! Why didn't you come to get us!"

*sigh* That's all I need - the LGATS's dad thinking I'm an irresponsible parent who can't be bothered to pick up my children at a reasonable time. I forbore to point out that the invitation had a start time, but no end time for the party.

Bedtime is in one half hour. I can't wait. After yesterday and today, teaching Primary tomorrow should be a piece of cake.****
___________________________________________

*Accompanied by much screaming and tossing her head around to try to escape us. I had to pin her to hold her still. Even then the only thing that really worked to calm her down enough to actually get the medicine into her eyes was the warning that she couldn't go to LGATS birthday party without taking the medicine.

**Yes, I know I could have insisted they give the dogs to me at the marked price, but I just didn't want to deal with that right then - and I really did want to get rid of the stupid things.

***Naturally I had forgotten where the store was, and parked on the opposite side of the mall.

****My primary class - 10 kids. Equal distribution of boys and girls, but three of the boys are ADHD. It makes for an exciting two hours.

Food Fight

Why is it no-one in this family can figure out what there is to eat? Every single member of this family will come and stand before me when they are hungry and ask me what there is to eat. When I ask them what they want to eat, they all say the same thing: "I don't know!" This is pronounced in a tone of voice that makes it clear that I have taken leave of my senses. How could they possible know what they want to eat? That's my job! I refuse, however, to fall into that trap. If I start trying to list things it will take years and cost millions of lives, and we will still never come to an agreement on what they think will taste good and what I am willing to prepare.

So I pronounce ultimatums.

"You can have an apple. If you don't want an apple, you can have a carrot or a celery stick. We also have bread. Those are your options."

It's amazing how quickly the people who couldn't think of anything they wanted, suddenly are full of ideas that don't involve vegetables, fruit or bread - all of said ideas involving work on my part, of course.

I've got The Boy Child and Husband Darling trained to do most of their own cooking* The girls, however, are still young enough that I don't want them using the stove. Oldest Girl Child is allowed to do some cooking with strict supervision and much trepidation on her mother's part; Youngest Girl Child is not allowed near hot burners yet.** The girls do know how to make sandwiches and similar items, however, and we make cookies once a week (learning about fractions, volume, and that unsweetened baking chocolate is pretty nasty when you try to eat it straight.)

My goal is to eventually have everyone in the family responsible for their own breakfast and lunch. I would only have to plan and prepare dinner every night. Currently, TBC is never home at dinnertime, and Husband Darling is rarely home then, so they are excused from cooking it; the girls, however, are going to be taking their turns at making dinner as soon as they are old enough. My excuse is that this is to teach them to be self-sufficient.*** But now you all know the truth. I'm just lazy.
___________________________________________

*Kind of - The Boy Child is trained. Husband Darling will prepare his own food about half the time. The other half of the time he looks pathetic and starving and too weak to move. Then I rush to fix him something and he recovers very nicely.

**She touched a cherry-red burner when she was two, giving herself a third degree burn on her index finger, and I still haven't recovered.

***I knew a girl in high school who used to brag that she didn't know any traditional womanly skills, in particular cooking. Even then, I thought that was pretty stupid; I have never thought that being able to take care of yourself was particularly demeaning. Neither do I find helplessness particularly empowering.

Eight Random Fact About Me

Courtesy of Cannwin (but I think I will forbear tagging 8 other people, since I don't know that many bloggers that well. Feel free to jump in if you are interested, though!)

1. I have a case of mason jars filled with applesauce and another case of jars filled with spiced apple rings, sitting on the floor next to the loveseat. They have been there probably over two weeks, but I'm trying not to think about that. I need to take them to the basement, but they are heavy, and I keep putting it off.

2. I am very good at procrastinating.

3. Case in point: I put off going to the store Saturday until I was almost too tired to care about the fact we needed eggs and milk, among other things. I hate shopping on Saturday because it's so crowded. I like to shop during the times the store is likely to be fairly empty.

4. I like being a stay at home mother because it lets me arrange my schedule so that I can do things like avoid the stores when everyone else is there.

5. The biggest factor in favor of home schooling, as I see it, is that I could arrange my whole family's life so that we could do everything when no-one else is. Sightsee in one of the Big Cities near us, travel to visit family, go to the library or the park.

6. The truth is, I'm just an antisocial hermit.

7. No, really, I am. I think it's part of the whole too-shy-to-say-hi-to-a-friend-in-the-street thing that I have going on. My personal hell would be being famous and having complete strangers walk up to me in the street, saying, "Wow! I know who you are!" And then I would have to be friendly and say, "Hi!" and pretend that I wouldn't really rather melt into the nearest wall to hide my shy self.*

8. Long hair is really good for hiding from the world, if you wear it down around your face. You can pretend other people can't see you if you can't see them.** Unfortunately, I am officially too old for long hair anymore. It accentuates all the recently developed downward drooping lines in my face and makes me look older than I think is fair. So I now have a short I-am-a-middle-aged-woman haircut, which looks OK on me. I guess. I miss having long hair, though.
___________________________________________

*Heaven, on the other hand, would ideally consist of getting to hang out with the people I know and love, in a big, quiet room, with lots of books and interesting conversation. Kind of like an unofficial family reunion.

**AKA "magical thinking".

Pretty Bucket

I ran across the Jitter Bucket pattern quite a while ago and salivated over it for months. I even asked for it for my birthday. (With no luck. I don't remember what I got instead, but it wasn't the bucket pattern.) Then my local JoAnn's held a pattern sale (I love to get patterns at 99 cents each!) and I ran across a very similar pattern.

I was happy, happy, happy! Until I got home and tried to make sense of the directions. Oh, my.

Now, I have been sewing for nearly three decades (and boy, doesn't that statement make me feel old.) I even have a degree in Home Economics.* I know my way around a pattern. In fact, I don't even bother with a pattern 90% of the time anymore. I just measure and cut, eyeballing where necessary. Because I know how to sew.**

But I couldn't figure this pattern out. I have never run into worse directions in my life. I couldn't make heads or tails out of it. So I did what I should have done months before. I made it up. (If you don't like my way of doing this, or if you want an actual pattern, you can find a free one here.

I measured the height of the 5 gallon bucket I was planning on using, doubled the result and added a few inches to allow enough fabric to cover the inside bottom and overlap the outer base. Then I decided to add enough fabric to make a pocket on the inside, too. (I can't give you the actual numbers - sorry - because I made this awhile ago, and can't remember anymore. And I really don't feel like measuring everything again. Besides, whatever bucket you use will be a different size anyway.) I measured around the bucket, then, and (adding an inch for two 1/2" seam allowances) used that as the measurement for my width. I wound up with a large rectangle. (Yes, the bucket tapers. I ignored that. If I had tried to taper the fabric I wouldn't have been able to pull this over the top, which is wider than the bottom. I wanted to be able to wash this, so I made it fully removable. There is a little extra fabric at the bottom, but it's really not an issue.)

The first thing I sewed was a row of elastic that was meant to tuck under the base of the bucket. Then I did some more measuring and decided where to put the outer pockets. (I did all of this on the flat piece of fabric.) I made the pockets out of some leftover fabric scraps and ribbon that I had.

As you can see, I used tucks to form the pockets on the bottom row, and gathers for the upper row of pockets. The pink row of ribbon is hiding a length of elastic that I placed to fit into the top rim, where the lid would ordinarily have snapped on. I wanted something to hold the slipcover up, and help keep everything in place even when the bucket was empty. (If you click on the picture you'll get a better / larger view to see how I stitched everything.) I sewed the bottom of the pockets first, then did the stitching between the individual pockets.

I measured again, and folded up my base fabric to stitch the inner pockets. (I goofed a little on my measurements there, as I found when I went to figure out just where to stitch the bottom.) Then I sewed up the side seam, forming a tube, matching the pockets and ribbon as I went. And then I finally got to put what I'd done so far onto the bucket and gloat! (Always my favorite part of sewing. It's still amazing to me how you can take a 2 dimensional sheet of fabric and construct something so very three dimensional.***)

The fabric didn't exactly meet at the bottom (oops), so I wound up using more of the pink ribbon to make up the difference. I pinned it in place, then pulled the fabric back off the bucket and wrestled the whole mass onto my sewing machine, where I stitched around the edges of the ribbon with brown thread, kind of making it up as I went. (I think it turned out reasonably well. It's at the bottom anyway, so who cares?) As you can see, I arranged the fabric on the bottom so that the seams went from one corner to the other. The idea was to have them make an X shape. Ah, well.

This is the completed bucket. I gave it to my daughters for their multitudinous Barbie dolls. Unfortunately, the Barbies never seem to actually get put away in there, and there are still far too many weeping sessions over not being able to find various essential Barbie clothing accessories. Shoes especially. (I obviously am much better at sewing than teaching my children to be organized. I didn't even have to empty this out to take pictures of it. I just retrieved it from where it was lying on its side, half-buried in toys.****)

___________________________________________

*Yeah. My secret shame. I actually took two years out of my life to get an Associate's degree in Home Economics. It all happened because I thought, when I graduated from high school, that I had to make a decision right then about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. My dad always said that if you made a career out of what you were good at you'd be happy, and I knew I was good at sewing, so... It wasn't until a few years later that I realized I was good at other things, too. Like writing. And scientific research. And designing print layouts, and eyeballing distance / proportion, and estimating job costs, and typing, and organizing everything but my own home. Many of them things that tie into the same skills that make me good at sewing. Only I was young, and too dumb to realize that. Hence the Home Ec.

**Ironically, in all the things that I have learned over the course of my life, the things I have found most useful were things I never expected. Sewing is one of them. Sewing is, hands down, one of my top three useful skills. Especially now that I have little girls, and I can rarely find them clothes at the store that don't seem to be designed for streetwalkers.

***Once, years ago, I was trying to understand topology and I ran into something called a Klein bottle. It's what you get if you take a Moebius strip and add a dimension. Now, being as this was back in ancient times, and there was no such thing as the Internet yet, I couldn't find a picture of one to help me wrap my mind around the concept. So I made one out of fabric. It was very helpful and I was able to grasp the concept immediately. Unfortunately, that was as far as I ever got in understanding topology. While I still think it's all very cool, my brain is simply not equipped to handle that kind of higher math and if I try to push myself melted stuff starts trickling out of my ears, which is very messy and hard to clean out of my hair.

**** Note to self: Find a way to reduce the number of toys in this house, without triggering hysteria. Vitally important not to trigger hysteria. Remember that.

Because Kipling was just plain cool.

Diane Duane quoted Kipling in her blog recently. OK - a month ago today. I forgot I had her bookmarked until I tripped over the bookmark while looking for something else, and while I was catching up I found the Kipling quote.

I thought the poem she quoted was remarkably apropos of the current U.S. economic situation. (Go - read her post. Follow the link above.)

She already posted the poem on her blog, but I'm going to post it here, too, since I am currently in a state of mind where everything I write is obvious garbage and even a one word sentence, like, "Hello," is clearly the worst thing anyone, anywhere, has ever written, and I should burn all my pencils, delete all my files, and flush (page by page to avoid destroying the plumbing) every spiral-bound notebook whose pure white pages I have ever profaned with my words.*

So it seemed like a good idea to put something up here that is absolutely guaranteed to be fantastic writing.

Jennifer's fantasy of the week: Tattooing the complete poem on the bodies of every politician, banker, and CEO who contributed to this mess.

"we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things" Sheesh. Words fail me, they really do.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

. . . . .

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
___________________________________________

*Actually, I'm not even going to post this. It is going to join the multitude of drafts I have created in the last couple of weeks, which were all utterly trite, meandering, pointless, and stinky, smelly garbage. You are not reading this. It is all an illusion.

Ever since I became a mother, all I dream about is sleep.

Daylight Time to Standard Time - it's a good thing, right? This is the time change where I get to sleep in an hour. This is also the time change when I put the kids to bed at the same time according to the clock, but their bodies think it's an hour later, so they fall asleep more quickly and easily because they're so tired.

Right? Right?

So why have I been dragging around all week? I'm exhausted. And the girls are not settling down. If anything, they've been more giggly and silly at bedtime than usual, and taking longer to quiet down and go to sleep.

If I had three wishes they'd all be for more time to sleep.

Well, maybe one for Helen of Troy-like beauty. And another for limitless wealth. But then, sleep. Definitely.

What I really need is a way to stop time. I could be up and working 24/7. Sleep would happen when time wasn't moving forward. I could sleep all I want without disturbance, and still have more time on my hands than I've ever dreamed.

Yeah. That would be my third wish.