Nine Xs and a Y

January Joy

2012-01-27T15:26:00.000-08:00

I thought being a mother to a toddler and baby was tiring, but it turns out that being a mother to a big kid, a toddler AND a baby is even more tiring. Especially to the poor baby. When is the baby supposed to nap when the big kid needs to get to tennis lessons? And what does the big kid do while the toddler goes to gymnastics? And how do I get the baby to stop finding Cheetos while I read "The Wizard of Oz" to the big kid and the toddler? Whew. I am tired just writing all of that juggling down.

I hear it only gets worse from here. I hear the babies grow into toddlers who need more story hours and more gymnastics lessons, and that the toddlers grow to big kids who go to basketball clinics and Girl Scouts, and the big kids grow to teenagers who ask you for the keys to the car at which point the whole cycle ends because you become a giant baby yourself, curled into a fetal position and CRYING.

It is fun though, when all the worlds collide and all of you have fun together at the same time and no one is thrashing on the floor and screaming that their sleeve is wet and WHY? WHY? can't you GO AND GET ME ANOTHER SHIRT?. The planets aligned last night when we were all at church and Dean and I were watching Molly and Frankie sing praise songs and the baby was cheerily shouting "HI!" to everyone within arms' reach. Our hearts did a little swell to see my big girls linking arms with friends and kicking their legs like Rockettes along with songs that I think mentioned Jesus but I couldn't really hear above the drums and the bass guitar. When you add that the baby was giving out kisses, well, when you take away the sloppy-joe dinner, it was pretty much close to heaven.

Guileless stabs at your ego: Part One

2012-01-26T15:22:00.000-08:00

When I lifted a kitchen stool up over Molly's head to get it out of the way of the highchair, she turned to me and exclaimed happily: "Wow, Mom, you're smart! And heavy!"

Winter is here

2012-01-25T06:04:00.000-08:00

7 p.m., Sukie walks in snow for the first time

7:30, p.m., When shoveling doesn't work out for her, she uses her walker

8 p.m., I find Molly, as usual, in the tree outside the front door

6 a.m., Waking up early to a world made new

6: 45 a.m., Molly's tree in the morning

6: 50 a.m., Looking out the back door

7:15 a.m., Frankie tackles shoveling the driveway

7:30 a.m., Worn out and ready for breakfast

11 a.m., Sukie gets her first sled ride through a sunny wonderland

2012-01-24T13:05:00.000-08:00

Girls,

When I was pregnant the first time, as I thought nervously about what might lie ahead, I asked my dad if he ever regretted having kids. His answer was emphatic: no, not once. Well, girls, I am here to tell you a real and terrible truth. I don't want the haze of distant years and revisionist history to alter what I am about to tell you. I want to face it head on and I want each of you, if you contemplate parenthood someday, to know the whole story.

Girls, I want you to BE PREPARED.

The truth is, you will regret having children almost every day. The days you don't regret having children will be the days that your husband is home and he feeds them and puts them to bed. Or the days when you work an especially long day at your part-time job and come home and find everyone sleeping. Or during nap time, up until three o'clock when Arthur is over and the baby wakes up. Other than those days, girls, you will regret parenthood every evening around dinnertime. As the brown rice cooks and the baby is eating chocolate chips from the floor and your three-year-old is pulling out the Jenga pieces while you try to get your six-year-old to play "A Dog Named Bright" over and over again with perfect piano hands, you will regret parenthood. You will regret parenthood when you step on a stray MultiGrain Cheerio on your freshly vacuumed floor. You will regret parenthood when you have to pretend that you are a bear who is nineteen and you have no friends. You will regret parenthood when you are standing in yoga pants in twenty-five degree weather, helping up snowsuit bound ice skaters who fall again and again but aren't ready to leave.

But here's another truth, girls, and listen carefully. Those moments when you regret parenthood? They will be fleeting, the briefest scent of freedom, quickly replaced by a deep, certain feeling that you only get when you know you've really hit on the truth. Every day, sometimes every hour, you will stop and think THIS, this is one of only a few things I am sure about.

And pretty soon, girls, you'll be all grown up, and this big house will yearn for yells and spills, and when you come to me and ask if I ever regretted having kids, I'll only remember to tell you about the true things and say, no, not once.

Lessons on leaning

2012-01-12T03:48:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things about Sukie, besides the fact that she has is incorrigible when it comes to standing up in her high chair, is that she is a snuggler. She loves to sit in your lap, slouch a little and lean back so that her fuzzy little head is at just the right level to smell her woolly smell. And every time she leans, I am reminded that I, too, have a safe place to lean, a place where the arms are bigger, stronger and, though it hardly seems possible, more full of love than mine around her. And then I start singing and when I come to the chorus, I find myself closing my eyes and singing to all the things around me that would steal my peace. To you, worry, what have I to dread? To you, illness, what have I to fear? To you, future, I am safe and secure from all alarms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear?,
leaning on the everlasting arms
I have blessed peace, with my Lord so near,
leaning on the everlasting arms

Leaning, leaning.
Safe and secure from all alarms,
Leaning, leaning,
Leaning on the everlasting arms

My book on motherhood

2012-01-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

My sister forwarded me a request from her local MOPS group: If you had to write a book about the joys and challenges of motherhood, what would the chapter headings be? While I literally sketch my sleeping children because the sight of them fills me with such overwhelming joy, I am the first one to admit that I put the pencil down and pull myself up by the bootstraps a lot of the time, because being a mom is not easy. Well, being a mom is pretty easy, being a good mom is just plain good old-fashioned hard work.

Chapter 1: Idealization: Knitted booties, white onesies and lullabies on the string guitar
Chapter 2: Reality: Plugged ducts, poop stains and hot water soaks for episiotomies
Chapter 3: Acceptance: Learning to put your back to the laundry while you play peek-a-boo
Chapter 4: Not for quitters: Staying the course when you want to flee to Nebraska
Chapter 5: Just for today: Encouragement when you cry to theme of Curious George
Chapter 4: Discipline for Dummies: How there's no such thing as motherly intuition
Chapter 5: Joy: First steps, first words, first love notes written in crayon with backward letters
Chapter 6: Specific challenges: Getting a newborn to sleep while an older child screams "MOMMY, WIPE ME!"
Chapter 7: The working mom: Finding time for a fourth full-time job
Chapter 8: The homeschooling mom: Just to kick up the crazy another notch
Chapter 9: Mom of many: How adding a third child (or more) means you're really not messing around
Chapter 10: The case for maternal amnesia: How the irrational mind causes repeat conception
Chapter 11: You are still a person: When you feel enslaved to midgets yelling "I want more chocolate milk!"
Chapter 12: Never alone: How to connect to God, your husband, your friends and a good therapist

Loving my kids doesn't mean loving every minute

2012-01-09T05:15:00.000-08:00

My friend Janice and my sister sent me a link to this blog on the same day. This post in particular was touted as "the greatest blog post ever written". And I have to agree.

I'm done lying; being a mom is just plain grunt work 23 out of 24 hours a day. It's hard, hard work. It's the hardest thing I have ever done. Sometimes it takes superhuman strength to keep standing and peeling the kiwis and steaming the broccoli and putting plate after plate of nutritious food in front of three crying individuals who are complaining that they are too tired to eat or want a piece of bread with butter or they don't like chocolate milk even though I'm the only mom around who doesn't make them just suck it up and drink white. There are large parts of me that want to yell "Just forget it! Feed yourself! Forage around for butterscotch chips and help yourself to the Diet Mountain Dew. I don't care. And while you're at it, don't take a nap if you don't want to. I want to bludgeon someone at the end of it anyway because all you did was thrash around and moan about wanting Daddy and you woke the baby up with your shrieking." But the point is that I don't. I pick myself up, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on to shape these eternal creatures placed in my care. And meanwhile, it's shaping me.

Celebration comes to town

2012-01-05T18:18:00.000-08:00

Sukie massively enjoyed the trifecta of Christmas babyhood: readily available Hershey's kisses (wrappers included if desired), newly acquired walking skills, and benign parental neglect.

Me stuffing my face with what I hope is a big mouthful of roasted beets and brussel sprouts, but what I suspect to be a very large buttered crescent roll.

Sylvie, Molly and Frankie taking a bow after a wonderful Christmas program that included expressive reading on Frankie's part, interpretive dance on Molly's part, and a memorized portion delivered perfectly by Sylvie in a hot, red-cheeked and gasping manner.

The odds of getting five children aged six and under to smile at the same time are about the odds that I will get a good night's sleep. Pretty much zero.

Playing checkers beneath Oma's Christmas tree on Christmas morning.

Frankie bought all the children presents from the dollar store with her own money. Sukie opened her book about puppies and received it with great delight. The giver, however, was nearly overcome with gladness.

Opening stockings after spending Christmas Eve at church.

Raising her hands high for the joyous occasion of Christ's birth. Actually, probably more for the York Peppermint Patties at this moment, but she knew what we were really celebrating.

My sister caught red-handed stuffing one appetizer in after another.

Sometimes, when your child least expects it, you just have to snatch them and squeeze them until they scream. That's just your prerogative as a mother.

My deliciously blond-feathered nephew, Jude, examining, probably with fear and consternation, a monster pen in his stocking.

Sukie learned to walk during the Christmas week and celebrated at every turn by stiffly lurching on peg legs holding living room pillows.

Opening presents on Christmas Day, the matriarch and patriarch reign from their sofa perch.

My hard-working husband, probably reclining in his chair complaining of being physically uncomfortable from the amount of turkey he consumed, as is his wont after holiday meals.

Matt and Jude rejoice over a present less threatening to Jude's tender sensibilities.

Aunt Saskia takes the lead in the race for Jude's affections (take THAT, Rebecca and Heather), by getting him this awesome Hot Wheels track that attaches to the wall. He never left this corner for the remainder of the visit.

Cheering for both the Packers and the freedom to have a giant bag of Doritos all to themselves.

Morning Motherhood: A lose-lose proposition

2011-12-17T04:43:00.000-08:00

Early one morning....

Molly, in gravelly sleepy voice: "Mom, where's Daddy? Daddy? I waaaaant Daddy."

Mom: "Daddy's at work, Molly. I'm sorry. (brightly) But I'm here! We can go watch Curious George together!"

Molly, crying: "I want Daddy. I want Daddy. I only want Daddy. I want to go downstay-uhs. I waaaant pop. Where is Daddy?"

A few minutes later, snuggled in front of Curious George...

Molly, mournfully: "I already watched this one. I don't waaaant this one. I already watched this one. I want toast with cinnamon and shu-guh."

Mom: "Aw, Molly, do you miss your Daddy right now?"

Molly, snorting disdainfully and looking at me like I'm slow: "No."

Right now

2011-12-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

Right now....my husband has taken the big girls to cut down a Christmas tree. Just saying "the big girls" makes me realize that I have enough children to divide them into groups. When you can divide your kids into categories, you are in the motherhood big leagues.

Right now...I hear Susannah waking up from her nap. She will be hungry. She is always hungry. Her Opa calls her "bulky." I am hoping that years from now, when she reads this blog she will not be emotionally scarred by having been called bulky. Although, bulky is akin to being called Prim and Proper Saskia Doctor, which bothered me greatly at the time, but I find quite fantastic now.

Right now...the sun is shining and the first dusting of Michigan snow has melted.

Right now...the tub needs to be cleaned from this morning's bath, which found Molly playing intense imaginative games with Strawberry Shortcake and a plastic dolphin ("No, NO, NO! OH, STRAWBERRY! I don't want you to die! If you die I will never see you again! OH, NOOOOOOOOO! AAAH, you are falling to the lions! STRAWBERRRRRRY!") and Frankie trying to read a Junie B. Jones book without getting the pages wet. She is her mother's daughter, for good and for ill.

Right now...I'm going to go hug my bulky baby.

Sometimes the truth is not pretty

2011-12-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

Is it a problem that my youngest daughter makes a phone out of everything and yells "HI" in a eerily grown-up voice? Or that my older two use their pretend phones and say "Uh huh. Uh huh. Really? I know. I agree. Uh huh. Uh huh. Oh, yeah, okay, I have to go now, my babies are all crying."

Dear morning, your mercies may be new, but I still do not enjoy you

2011-12-02T03:35:00.000-08:00

It's five thirty a.m. and I've been up for an hour. The sun is nowhere to be seen and my husband accidentally woke me up, get this, by sliding the bathroom drawers open too loudly. In the bathroom down the hall. With the bedroom door shut. And the sound machine next to my head. With orange foam earplugs in my ears.

As any one of my college roommates can attest (if they are willing to revisit the hateful looks and dramatic mound of pillows stuffed around my face), I have what my family refers to as the Bionic Ear. The real princess could feel the pea, but apparently I can hear lunar changes. You've heard of the butterfly effect? I can hear it beating its tiny, frail wings.

Now all of this would be of no consequence if I were a person who was preternaturally wired for just a few hours of sleep. If I woke up at 4:30 a.m. feeling rested and was one of those creepy people who likes to venture into the cold dark frost of a Michigan December morning and do something wildly insane, like actually trying to run from one place to another instead of ambling leisurely only when the minivan is getting its tires changed, that would be one thing. But I'm not. I'm no Bill Clinton. I am a person who tells herself to exercise and then says "Self, who are you to tell me what to do?." I'm a person of hot baths, long books, warm beds and, preferably trays of prepared food brought to my reclining body. I'm a person whose childhood nickname was Couch, short for Couch Potato.

I'm putting my time to good use. I'm studying my Bible, folding my laundry, drinking Diet Mountain Dew after Diet Mountain Dew and carb-loading to try to keel through the day on a sugar high, but I'm not happy about it. Just ask my husband.

To Susannah Glory as she turns one

2011-11-29T03:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Susannah,

I didn't know a year could pass so quickly. In many ways, it seems like only a few days ago that I was lumbering around, ankles spilling over the tops of my socks and chewing Tums, yet here you are twelve-months-old, standing up in your high chair yelling for more blackberries.

You have changed my life, Susannah. Your presence has brought me joy and brought me to my knees. I have learned this year how incredibly hard it is to be a good mom to three little girls, but I've also learned how indescribably wonderful it is to roll around on the living room floor with a pile of three laughing daughters.

You have made it so easy for us to fall in love. Since you were a few days old, you have always made it very clear that you love to be loved. When you'd cry while your diaper was changed as a newborn, the minute I picked you up, you would calm. And now, when you get up from a nap and Daddy brings you to me, I hear him tell you that you'll see me soon and you laugh and moan "Mama" and throw your head back in ecstatic delight as you catch a glimpse of my face. Who wouldn't fall in love with a baby whose eyes close in happiness at the sight of you and grins a wide gap-toothed smile when she hears your voice?

I'm not the only one who finds you wholly irresistable. Where other babies scream at the sight of a bearded man, you have such a soft spot for your Opa that you flirted with a goateed stranger during dinner in Russ's, stretching your hand out to him. When Daddy comes to get you from your crib, you inhale sharply with delight and kick your fat little thighs with happiness. Oma gets a loud "Hiiiiii," drawn out with joy and the news that your sisters are downstairs is met with low eager chuckles.

Like the valedictorian of babies, you have it all: big blue eyes, rolling meaty thighs, a snorting laugh when nuzzled in the neck folds, and the ability to entertain yourself with office supplies. But though your bald head and rounded back-side say innocence, I know better. That baby face belies a very strong stubborn streak. At a few weeks old, struggling with congestion, you were my only baby to object so strongly to having your nose suctioned that nursing couldn't comfort you. You're my only baby to have to wear the five-point harness in the high chair because saying "NO" twelve times in a row as you stuggle repeatedly to your feet with handfuls of lasagna elicits nothing but a knowing grin. When I tell you to take a tiny toy out of your mouth, you are my first baby to turn your back to me and try to shovel it back in.

You're also my first baby to try to scribble on paper, write on a chalkboard, kick a ball, try on shoes, and push a car before their first birthday. You are my first baby to spend her whole twelfth month of life saying "What that?" and pointing at the tiniest of objects for an explanation. You are the first baby I can't get shoes on, who curls her feet into fleshy balls. You are my first babbler, letting loose streams of nonsense as you use half a banana as a phone. You are my first baby to give herself a nickname, shouting "NANA!" angrily when you see something you want. You are the first baby whose babysitter has called in a panic saying you've been screaming for a half hour because she subjected you to a diaper change. You're the first baby who continued to scream so loudly every time there was a diaper change that you've earned your own electric toothbrush to occupy you while we do it.

You are so full of charm, Susannah. You have made our lives so much brighter and fuller since you blew in with your man-sized appetite and oversized thighs.

I didn't know you twelve months ago, but now I pity anyone who doesn't. I am so glad that God knew you and gave me the most delightful opportunity to be the mother of such an outrageously loveable baby.

Sukie, I'm so glad you're mine.

Love,
Mommy

God is good. All the time.

2011-11-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when you are a child of God, you ask for wisdom and you don't think you are being heard. In the moment, despite the history of God's intimate workings with His people, despite the evidence you hold in your hand, you think that somehow you are the exception, the forgotten child, the one the promises don't apply to.

It's a lie.

God loves every one of His children so much that He knows every hair on our heads. He calls the stars by name and knows when a sparrow falls. He knows every cry of our hearts. There is not one thing that will ever happen to you in all your years that He is not aware of, in control of, able to use and direct.

I forgot that. Or else, I knew it in my head, but I didn't truly know it in my heart.

God reminded me this week that I am His and in Him and in Him only, redemption is found. We still have to deal with the consequences of our choices, but He forgives.

Though my intentions were not sinful, I let work take up far, far too much of my emotional and physical energy. I was trying to be all things to all people and not being wise.

If you've ever owned a cat, you know what it is like to open the door with your foot out to keep it from coming in the house. Metaphorically, I opened the door a fraction of an inch, intending to keep my foot on the cat and shut the door quickly, and instead a grizzly bear shoved its way in. I shouldn't have opened the door. When I took on more responsibility at work, it snowballed out of control more quickly than I could have imagined. It took being physically present while the bank seized and secured all assets of the business to bring me to a halt. It took my husband vomiting continually with the most severe head pain of his life and thinking he might die of a hemorrhage to bring me to a halt. It took depression and illness and back pain and me getting sicker and sicker until I had to concede that I had no control, not over anything or anyone, to bring me to a halt.

Praise God that I learned my lesson and it didn't take the death of someone I love to teach me. Praise God that I am able to redeem my relationships with the people I love. Praise God that I have a husband who stands by me no matter what bad decisions I make. Praise God I have my mother and father who let their own lives and duties fall to the wayside to help me clean up my mess. Praise God for my husband's good job, his health insurance, his willingness to work as hard as humanly possible for his family. Praise God for medicine and money and the luxury of recuperating in my king-sized bed with meals made by my best friend. Praise God for my baby celebrating her birthday and my girls having so many people who love them they don't even notice that I am gone. Praise God.

Top ten reasons I love Susannah

2011-10-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

10. The way she recoils in terror and makes the sign for scared when I show her a pumpkin.

9. The fact that her meaty thighs were made for jeggings.

8. The way she can eat through three pieces of raisin bread and a banana in the time it takes me to turn on a cartoon for her sisters.

7. The sheer fury she reserves for diaper changes or commands to spit out crayon tips.

6. Her wispy, fuzzy, duck-tailed hair

5. The way she buries her head in my neck when I come to get her in the night.

4. The determined way she swiftly unloads her dresser drawers, book shelves, wipes containers.

3. The fact that she tries to muscle her way into every activity and heedlessly ignores the yells of her sisters to stop taking their puzzle pieces.

2. The giant tombstone front teeth that she grins with.

1. The thought that she is mine.

Keepin' it real

2011-09-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

I sometimes come back from browsing blogs and feel depressed because I haven't made vintage glitter crowns and curled up with buttered yeast rolls before a roaring fire reading "Little Women" aloud while my faithful golden retriever, Cinnamon, lolls about being used as a pillow by my clean and freshly pajamaed girls.

Instead, I have seven baskets of laundry in stages varying from stained with poop, freshly washed but needs another round of Oxiclean for the poop stains, left in the washer overnight so the mildew smell is faint, clean but wrinkled from sitting in the dryer, to folded. And my children are uncombed and naked, wearing Darth Vader masks and eating ice cream sandwiches in the baby jumperoo.

Such a sensitive soul

2011-08-28T11:30:00.001-07:00

Molly:   Look, Frankie, I found my tiny little compass!

Frankie: You can't have that, Molly, Susannah will choke on it.

Molly:   That's okay.

Frankie: You can either have that, Molly, or a baby will die!

Molly:   I want a baby to die.

Suke Bottom Blues

2011-08-25T23:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Susannah,

Though you are nine months old and have made only a handful of appearances on this blog, please know that it is not for lack of love, but only for lack of time.

Lack of love for you is certainly not a problem in this household. You are an intensely, jaw-droppingly, sickeningly loveable baby. At first glance, you win everyone over with your giant blue eyes, but, let me tell you, your eyes are just the start of your delectableness. You've got just the right amount of chubbiness and padding. All babies should be modeled after you. Your arms, which I like to show off in sleeveless onesies, are smooth and creamy and and your thighs, my goodness, the delight of those massive thighs.

You are a good-natured little thing 99.9% of the time, content to crawl around and try to insert your chubby self into whatever games are being played by your big sisters. There are resounding shouts of "No, Suke!" all day long as you sidle up and take a game piece or two, or the last piece of an almost finished puzzle and put it straight in your mouth and start crawling furiously away.

Watching you crawl has been the one thing that has brought home the fact that you are made from the same combination of DNA as your sisters. Daddy and I agree that there is nothing about any of you that makes us love you because you biologically belong to us. You could have sprung fully formed from Zeus's head and we would have loved you just because we have gotten to know you as our little Sukie. But when you crawl, there is no denying your genetic tie to your sisters. Your crawling style is part Frankie, right leg back and on the knee the way it should be, but your left leg forward and humping along like a daddy long legs that was stepped on, and part just like your sister Molly,, carrying whatever catches your magpie eye firmly between your gums, like a bone, since your hands are busy.

You are a tremendous eater. At nine months, your big sisters were dutifully strapped in their high chairs a few times a day and tossed a handful of Cheerios and coaxed to eat a portion of squash puree. It was a hobby, a recreational activity to pass the time. They nursed like crazy and nibbled at small slimy squares of strawberries. Not you. You nurse like crazy, too, but you insist on your three square meals. For breakfast, a few muffins and banana, tossed in tiny pieces on your tray and disappearing as fast as I chop them. For lunch, a whole sandwich, a large nectarine, some broccoli, your sisters' leftovers. At dinner, you still have room for two bowls of stuffed shells, impatiently guiding the spoon to your mouth. You don't like peas. That's the only thing I haven't gotten you to consume in large quantities. But you'll eat them in a pinch. Thighs your size don't come without work.

You are my most snuggly baby thus far. You love to have your neck kissed and your eyelids smooched and your belly snuggled. You don't mind if I squeeze you tight and sing looking into your eyes. You are content to sit on my lap and explore my face and insert spit-covered tiny fingers into my mouth searching for my "teeh." You love the cats and yell "KKKKK-y" when you see them. You call Daddy "Da" and say "hi" and try your hand at saying Frankie. You've become a real live baby this month. One we find tremendously amusing and utterly intoxicating.

So, Susannah, if things aren't written here, they are written on my heart, little sweetheart, my favorite baby. We are all so smitten with you.

Love, Mommy

The vagaries of DNA

2011-08-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

Lament for Ellis

2011-06-28T05:05:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law, Matt, is the oldest of three boys. His youngest brother, Tim, and his wife, Rebecca, are the parents of Ellis Timothy Henry, born early this morning and now in the eternal safety of his loving Heavenly Father's arms.

In 2 Samuel, chapter one, when David receives word that Saul and Jonathan have been killed in battle, he took up a lament for them, and ordered that all the men of Judah learn it by heart and all the daughters of Israel weep.

I wish I could legislate that everyone on earth take up a lament for the treasured and beloved Ellis. Weep with Tim and Rebecca for their little boy. Grieve for them because he is gone; not as those who have no hope, but as those who know that this is not how things should be.

Remember him.

I’m famous!

2011-06-27T18:03:00.001-07:00

My favorite frugal blog, Money Saving Mom, published a tip I sent in about finding cheap fabric. Sadly, the above picture is of skirts I made using plain old Joann’s fabric, and not of the things I have fashioned out of bedsheets, but it’s the only photographic example I have of my handiwork (and Carley’s: she made the adorable appliqued shirts with an F for Frankie, an M for Molly and an S for Susannah). And when I say “handiwork,” I mean winging it without a pattern.

In defense of daughters

2011-06-20T18:15:00.000-07:00

I like boys. I love my husband, my father, my tousled golden-haired nephew. But I must confess that when I found out I was expecting a girl, I was thrilled. A daughter was my secret wish. And when I found out I was pregnant with a second girl, I was secretly ecstatic again. Two daughters. A sister for Frankie that would share memories and Frost-N-Glow highlighting kits and a creepily identical sense of humor was my dream come true. When I found out I was having a third girl? Though strangers murmured their condolences, I was delighted. I'd have three girls to tease me about my idiosyncrasies, steer me away from frumpy fashion choices, and pluck my chin hairs in my dotage.

They say that sons love their mothers. But when my grandmother was elderly, it wasn't her sons who were washing her hair and setting the foam rollers. It was her daughter and her daughter-in-law, my mother. When Dean's grandmother gets her bathroom floor scrubbed, you can bet a daughter is the one on her hands and knees.

When I read this article, reviewing a book which chronicles the consequences of the 163 million female babies who have been aborted since the 1970s by parents seeking sons, my outrage was dampened by pity. There are still countries and people who would wish my daughters away. Those 163 million mothers are not only missing out on the magic and mystery of little girlhood, but are literally making the world a worse place to live: "Today in India, the best predictor of violence and crime for any given area is not income but sex ratio." I once read an article about terrorists, and how one of the best ways to take the edge off a young man's political and religious hysteria was to marry him off (presumably not to sixteen wives, where the edifying influence of a woman is muted by the oppression that puts her in that company in the first place). Women perpetuate faith, bind families, create community.

Where developing countries may bear guilt because of seemingly intractably entrenched cultural beliefs, our country's girls and boys are sacrificed to the more mundane altar of "choice." This is where feminism has arrived. If you defend a woman's right to "choose," you defend a world where baby girls are disposed of by the thousands and not only are babies aborted because they have Down syndrome but, as the article states, they live or die based on whether they are Gemini or a Libra.

I am a different kind of feminist. I'm the kind of feminist that pities men because they won't ever get to experience the wonder of the privilege of creating another human being from the flesh of your flesh. I'm the kind who had a father who told me I was a prize to be won and broke up with boys because I was sure I was smarter.I'm the daughter of a Heavenly Father who didn't condone the systematic elimination of a developing world's girls; He chose to be born by one.

Abortion is morally abhorrent. And here are three reasons why:

Love texts

2011-06-15T06:27:00.000-07:00

We've all heard of texting gone horribly awry. But since I've gotten an iPhone, Frankie has taken up texting her dad when he is at work. This morning, they had the following conversation:

Frankie: "Dad I love you dad and Frankie [ed. note: when she really loves someone she says "X and Frankie. Together."] dad I am ritinge a tekst wen you are at wrk not yesterday but the day be for yesterday I loved my porty love Frankie."

Dad: "I am glad you loved your pizza party. I am happy you are home for the summer. I am off in 2 days and will make you roll up pancakes. I stopped to get gas in my car. Then I will be at work. I love you and Mommy and Molly and Susannah. Daddy and Frankie. Love, Daddy"

Frankie: "Dad I love you dad and Frankie and molly Molly wons to saey sumthing to you she ses I love daddy I love you most of you she ses love Frankie and Molly"

Daddy: "Thank you, girls. I have to go into the hospital now. I love you all. Love, Daddy"

Frankie: "Dad I love your tekst thank you you are goinge to make pankakse I love you and god Daddy and Frankie love Frankie"

Now that's how you use the iPhone, Congressman Weiner.

Seasons

2011-06-15T05:25:00.000-07:00

Me: Molly, Mommy has to go to work today.

Molly: But who will watch over me?

Me: Oma and Opa.

Molly: I want Miss Carley (pronounced Miss Tarley) to watch over me.

Me: Why?

Molly: I don't know (pronounced I-on't-know)

Me: Well, what are your reasons?

Molly (thinking for a while): Um, winter...spring...summer...fall!

Kindergarten graduate

2011-06-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

Today was Frankie's last day of kindergarten. The days are long, but the years are short.

We sent her off with trepidation, but she ended the year reading, writing long epistles, and madly scheduling playdates with her girlfriends without asking me first. One of her favorite little friends, Anna, left before pictures were taken, but they are an adorable pair. Mrs. Nason's one complaint about Frankie all year was that she needed to "loosen up" and not follow the rules so compulsively, but then she seated Frankie and Anna at the same table. They spent the last month giggling and talking when they weren't supposed to. Mrs. Nason told me this with a gleeful smile and actually did a fist pump when she said "I even had to tell them to be quiet!."

Frankie's friend Libby is in a state of despair at the prospect that Frankie may be homeschooled for first grade next year. She asked her mom four times to be sure we had exchanged phone numbers, but I caught them on camera writing it down for themselves. The lack of trust in their mothers is troubling.

Molly will miss her daily rendezvous with her friend, Gus, the little brother of Frankie's classmate Zella. With their blond hair and blue eyes, they look like twins and spent most of the winter trying to access the snow-covered swings. Gus even tried to win Molly's heart by sewing a tiny pillow for Susannah, but Molly is firmly entrenched in her convictions to marry her father.

In spite of my reservations about peer pressure, Frankie seemed to learn mostly good things from the other kids this year. Seeing other kids eager to read piqued her interest, her obsession with drawing and artwork was groomed, and she learned uber-responsibility about her school items. I will miss seeing her frantically stuffing her backpack, double checking with me that she had the right shoes, the right papers, her gloves and boots and purple coat laid out like a wraith on the hardwood the night before ready for her to rush into at 7:30 a.m. though she didn't have to leave until eight. I'll miss hurrying her through episodes of Arthur and peanut butter toast with butterscotch chips while peeling her nightgown off and pulling on her socks.

We could not have made it through this year without my dad showing up crazy-haired and bleary-eyed to pick Frankie up so I didn't have to lug Susannah through the frosty mornings and frighten the other mothers in my red velour robe. Frankie will always remember school mornings with Opa.

Goodbye, my first kindergartener.

Depressed and bored children

2011-05-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

But, Mommy, Frankie only went to kindergarten while you read me books and gave me snacks all morning and then we went to a play for children in the afternoon and then our friends came over and we had suckers and popsicles and then the neighbor kids came over and they had dinner with us while you read us books..... there's nothing to do.

Ten things that make me very very happy

2011-05-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

1. The letters that I receive all over the house. Translated for your ease of reading: Mom, I love you. Do you go to work tomorrow because I heard you talking. Do you work or n....
on the other page I kind of ran out of room because the page was too short. On the page that I am on right now I kind of messed up again on the first line I made my 'J'....
backwards, Mom. On the other page I ran out of room so I put it on this page and I messed up on the 'J' and on this page, Mom. On the other page, I ran out of room to write. Mom, I love you. Mom, I love you again.

2. This face.

3. A Mother's Day picture where everyone is looking at the camera. Not necessarily the same camera. But a camera. Our first good shot as a family of five. And it only took six months to get here.

3. Looking through the garden for volunteers. Any time I see a little plant coming back from last year, I greet them with great enthusiasm and say "Hail fellow well met, I thank you kindly for considering our premises so to your liking that you decided against your little inborn annual seed death command to grace us with your presence once more." So to those Swiss Chard, broccoli and carrots who have re-planted themselves. I say "well done and thank you for returning to our happy abode."

4. The fact that humidity is entering the air and thus humidity is entering the hair. Molly ends each day with a wild mane of blond sweaty ringlets, twigs and other nature sundries twisted in the curls and a beard of dirt off-setting her delightfully puffy lips that beg to be kissed over and over and over again.

5. Rhubarb is unfurling.

6. My shellac manicure has lasted eleven days and counting so that I can admire my short fire engine red nails as I type and text, garden and do the dishes without a chip. It is all part of my new strategy to cause diversion of the eyes to those things that are not encased in baby weight.

7. Edamame. Slightly salted.

9. Embarking on home schooling with a science class with my friend Carley. I call a unit on earthworms a success when only one pupil manages to lose one down their shirtsleeve.

10. A working hot tub. After five long years, numerous replaced, repaired, repiped, retaped, readjusted and reconfigured items, that bubbly bit of relaxation is ours for the taking. Day or night, baby. And, yes, it is usually day, with small children in their underpants, but still, day or night, baby.

Auditions for Scream 4 happening at our house

2011-04-19T11:52:00.001-07:00

Frankie is the picture of docile obedience MOST of the time. There are some occasions, however, where her tiny thirty-five pound French-pigtailed self seems to undergo a dramatic change wherein she is possessed, or at least strongly urged, by a spirit of complete done-gone-wacko-ness. During these times when she is flailing and screaming and otherwise completely unable to see reason, she sometimes becomes so full of fury that she will scratch herself. Once she drew blood across her smooth unfurrowed forehead. This filled me with such panic and anger that I shouted "Don't you hurt my little girl, Frankie! If you do that again, I will cut your hands off!." What ensued, as my husband guffawed from the other room, were screams of terror that had nothing on any personage visited upon by the Headless Horseman in the wee hours of the night. Shrieks of total panic and horror were ripping from her as I tried desperately to calm her down with the loving words "Don't worry, Mommy, will never ever, ever, I promise, cut any part of your body off. Mommy was just kidding. Mommy will not cut your hands off." A sentence I continued to coo as I thought to myself, this, now this, Dr. Phil, is an alltime low.

2011-04-16T18:35:00.000-07:00

Life continues to happen and it seems like things swirl around me so fast I can't possibly grab a hold of any one of them long enough to put it into words. People you love more than life itself get sick, and babies you haven't met get bad news, and friends face heartbreaks and heartaches. For now I've got a husband who leaves me a cold can of pop every morning and three little girls whose faces are so dear to me it almost hurts to look at them, but this life is so temporary, so fleeting. It's nothing to count on or store up your treasures in. So I turn my face toward Jesus, precious Jesus, the only steady Rock: unchanging, unmoving, the solid and reliable lover of my soul in whose hands I can place all that I love and find it safer than when I'm trying to clutch it in mine.

Susannah G., four months

2011-03-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

Sukie in all her creamy and meatball-headed glory.
(The tightness of her knee socks is noted. Will be purchasing new ones specified for wide calves.)
Tired and forlornly refusing to smile.
Eager morning Arthur watching with the sisters.
Dressed for hilarity in jeans and a fuzzy fleece vest.
Tired again and refusing eye contact on Opa's birthday.
Hugs from the wild and woolly Molly JoJo. Notice the French-rolling of the pants for sock adherence.
Getting a bottle while Mom sleeps in. Frankie gets herself ready to go, boots, mittens, etc. at least twenty minutes before we leave for school lest we be late.
Big blue marble-eyes.
Working at her job.

I wonder if she will prefer to be called Frances

2011-03-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

I think Frankie and I will be good friends when she grows up. She's got her father's Polish bone structure and tendency to be tidy (I find piles of the clothes she's not tall enough to hang up in her closet littering my bedroom or the hallway because she can't stand them to be messing up her room), but I still think we'll get along famously. She's the only five-year-old I know with an actual sense of humor. Whenever Molly says something outlandish about wanting to be a spider when she grows up and doing things with her long spider arms, Frankie and I just nod quietly to Molly's face and then raise our eyebrows and make meaningful comedic eye contact. I can't stress the importance of meaningful eye contact. When something funny occurs in a group setting and there is no one with whom I can lock eyes and acknowledge it, a small part of me dies. So I am heartened when things happen like the other day, when Frankie and I were in the kitchen and heard Molly saying to her Strawberry Shortcake doll "That's it, Strawberry, I'm leaving!." Frankie looked me in the eye and said, perfectly deadpan, "Wow. I guess Strawberry's having a hard day."

That's my girl.

Blessings

2011-03-07T05:44:00.000-08:00

Here is Sukie wrapped in the gorgeous blanket that my bosom friend, Crystal, sent her from a world away. Crystal calls it The Tiffany. Having knit an afghan once for my mother, which I calculated based on my hourly rate as a P.A. would have cost me about 1400 dollars, I am highly appreciative of knitted gifts.

The Tiffany got me thinking of how blessed I have been with wonderful friendships with godly women who support me, inspire me, pray for me, love me. There's Janice, who saw me through tumultuous college years and has shared with me in the biggest sorrows and joys in both our lives. There is something about a friend of your youth and as my mother's beloved Miss Read says "No matter how long their partings, on meeting they fell together as sweetly as two halves of an apple." There's Crystal, who thinks nothing of packing up a family of seven and moving to Kuwait and still finding time to send care packages to me. She's preternaturally curious about life and theology and our mutual love of books and bonding over breastfeeding our baby daughters in the church nursery cemented a friendship that withstands thousands of miles of distance and many missed Skype calls. There is Cam, who is moving away from me in the next few months, taking with her the only person who has ever cleaned my toilets other than its owners and a friendship that is deep and solid enough to enable us to ask forgiveness of one another. Though she has thought through a range of people to take her place ("now the interesting thing about her, Saskia, is that she never had a cavity in her life until she got pregnant and then she had seven of them. You can't tell me there's not a connection there, Saskia."), but it is a futile enterprise. And then there's Carley, the unflappable mother of three who bears my burdens while I bear hers and who pours out her love for our family in ways ranging from Cheeseburger soup to insisting an additional three children for four hours at her house is nothing. And somehow I believe her.

There are other friends. There are the built-in, whole-other-can-of-worms-wonderful relationships I have with my mother, my father, my sister. But I am especially thankful for these women because they don't have to love me, by accident of birth or circumstance. But they do. It is no coincidence that each is a believer in Jesus Christ, indwelled by the Holy Spirit. He is the third party in each of these friendships, the One who makes them not just fun to be with, but people who stretch me and challenge me and make me a better wife, mother, friend.

I am grateful. I am thankful.

Cooking with the kids

2011-02-26T16:01:00.000-08:00

The girls and I made a Dutch Baby together ("healthified" by sliced apples on the bottom of it), and after stopping Molly from licking the stick of butter, and Frankie from dipping her fingers in the powdered sugar, I them for a review.

Me: Guys, did you like the Dutch Baby?

Molly: (no answer, only dialogue between Jesse and Woodie and the rest of her Toy Story characters)

Frankie: I loved it, but I don't think we should call it a baby. It reminds me of eating Susannah.

Me: Um, did you eat around all the apples?

Frankie: I didn't like that part.

Me: Of course not. You love bread, dough and sugar. That's all, right? Bread, dough and sugar.

Frankie: You forgot treats.

JoJo, I love you

2011-02-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

A few generations of motherhood ago, there were no disposable diapers or five dollar Little Caesar's pizzas. There were no gummy vitamins or baby wipes delivered to your door with one-click Amazon ordering. I am quick to see the blessings. But it seems, from what I can tell, that there was also a smaller helping of the biggest curse of motherhood these days: guilt.

I sometimes feel consumed by it.

One of the biggest sources of guilt I have is not adequately capturing my daughters' childhoods for them. Despite a blog, a journal apiece, a baby book for each, countless hours of video, and conservatively a few thousand photographs, I still feel like the snippets of their precious lives are slipping away, as the Cure lamented during my college days, "like falling sand. As fast as I pick it up, it runs away through my clutching hands."

[side note: Who reading this remembers the suh-weet subway poster of Robert Smith I had lurking over my bed?]

So rather than letting day after day pass because I can't compose a cohesive blog post, here are some random snippets of memories about the child I am currently (and it rotates daily) feeling the most guilt about: Molly.

Except for the guilt I feel about not capturing a really good newborn stretch of Susannah's on film. But mostly I blame Dean for that.

Here are some funny things she has said recently:

"When I grow up, I want to be a man, and a spider."

"Aunt Molly, can you go in the basement with me? It's dark and I need to get a gun to shoot Frankie."

"I wore that dress in a wedding, Mommy. Back when I was a little boy. Last morning." [side note: She has never been in a wedding and everything past tense is "last morning." She has also, despite a persistent recollection of it, never been a little boy.]

"I WON'T wear this, Mommy. This [sweater, shirt, pair of pants] is Daddy's." [side note: Daddy may be of average height, but one would think she wouldn't mistake a pair of her pants for a pair of Daddy's]

A few recent conversations:

Me: "Molly, you are getting so big."
Molly: "I know, Mommy. I getting bigger and bigger and BIGGER."
Me: "Could you stop growing please?"
Molly: "I can't Mommy. I getting BIGGER."
Me: "Will you stop?"
Molly (resignedly): "Oh-tay. But I have to grow sometimes."

Me: "Molly, what's your favorite food?"
Molly: "Snow."

Me (at bedtime, rubbing her face): "I love you, Molly. I love how sweet you are when people get hurt. I love your beautiful smile."
Molly (sleepily, whispering): "And I have my own lunchbox."

Molly is also stubborn as a mule. She is a recalcitrant picker-upper of her toys, insists on wiping herself (badly), and will insist she has brushed her teeth when the incriminating odor of Ranch Wheat Thins is on her breath. But, she is also, I realized, an encourager. "Good job, Frankie!," "I love your socks, Daddy," "You can do it, Mommy. I knowed you could do it, Mommy." She is quick to praise and compliment and also quick to forgive. This morning, Frankie drew on the page Molly was coloring. This is an infraction that, were the roles reversed, would result in much wailing and gnashing of teeth and accusations of being a bad sister. But Molly's response, without any prompting, since I was in the other room, is "It otay, Frankie. But next time, try to be more careful." Is that a forgiving spirit, or what?

I love this kid.

Irrationality

2011-01-23T18:11:00.000-08:00

I am in love with a bald, twelve pound creature who interrupts my sleep and routinely throws up down my shirt and hers. She regularly indulges in the indignities she has visited upon my family room carpet. She's got cradle cap on her head and in her eyebrows. Her neck folds are feeding grounds for fungi. Her tiny hands, fisted so tightly, waft an offensive sweaty foot odor whenever she unclenches long enough to wave them past my face. She roars with fury over diaper changes.

But I cannot get enough of her. I cannot seem to soak up her blue eyes and her rounded, taut tummy and her delicious creamy cheeks. I can't get my fill of her tiny body curved around me, head resting in my neck. I crave her when she's gone from me. I long for her in the middle of the night if she's sleeping too long.

I adore her.

Six weeks

2010-12-25T05:43:00.000-08:00

Everyone can collectively roll their eyes right now, but I am feeling sad that my baby is growing up so fast. She seems like such a big girl already, ten pounds of tiny thigh rolls and double chin.

Susannah stays awake now for much longer periods and spends her time widening her big blue marbles at me and giving me small grins that I have to work overtime for. If I'm really lucky, and have added eyebrow-raising at her to my performance, she'll lift her eyebrows, too, crinkle her eyes and let out a little kitten-like "gaaa." That means "I love you." I'm sure of it, the same way I am sure that frantic "HEH HEH HEH HEH" means "What could possibly be taking this waitress so long to bring the warm milk?."

At six weeks, she continues to be a very content baby when she is awake. The only time she cries for me is if she is hungry, or if she needs to burp up large amounts of the breast milk she has overeaten, or possibly let out one of her man-sized gas releases. Sometimes they are so loud and so robust, they sound as though they couldn't possibly have come from something ten pounds and curled so innocently with her chubby cheek resting on her fist. I'm considering having a button made that says "It really was her."

The only problem with her contentedness to stare and coo at me, is that she enjoys being awake and cooing at me in the middle of the night. Whereas Frankie was awake and furious during the night, arching away from me and rubbing her face madly on my shoulder in a frenzy of overtired madness, Susannah simply passively allows herself to be swaddled tightly and then stares unblinking, her big eyes wide and her double chin resting lightly on the top of the swaddling cloth. Even when it's 3 a.m., I try to remember that she is likely my last baby, that someday I will be willing to give away all my earthly possessions just to smell her fuzzy head one more time.

It helps, to think that way. There may be plenty of time to doze in my wheelchair someday, but the nights are few when I will sit in our old pink-cushioned rocking chair in the dim glow of the nightlight singing "Silent Night" to the wide eyes of my very own baby girl.

Awake baby

2010-12-15T16:09:00.000-08:00

I love, love, love this baby. She constantly looks like she's seen a ghost, with her big blue eyeballs, and I could just eat her alive.

A Baby Story, only unlike the TLC version, mine contains words like "pee"

2010-11-24T12:01:00.000-08:00

November 10, 2010

4:30 a.m. Up for the day. Is that pee? Peeing myself would be the newest in indignities this pregnancy has brought, but nothing would surprise me. My feet look like Shrek's and my calves are at least twice their normal size. So, probably pee.

7:30 a.m. Getting girls ready for BSF and school. Feel a little gush. Am I peeing myself? Or could that be my water breaking?

8:10 a.m. Send girls off, Frankie to school, Molly to BSF. I resolve to stay home and solve the conundrum: pee or not pee.

11 a.m. The "pee" seems a little pink. Pee should be yellow. Maybe this isn't pee. Call Dean and tell him maybe he should come home. Just in case. No contractions, though.

1 p.m. At previously scheduled OB appointment. A few contractions in the car, as usual, but these seem to start a little lower.

1:30 p.m. Relaxing on the table waiting for Dr. Buck to come in. Yeah, that's definitely not pee. Dr. Buck checks me. I am 4 cm and 90% effaced.

2 p.m. In the car on the way to Labor and Delivery, contractions start. They are low and hard, but no closer than three minutes. We debate whether to drive to get a burger but I chicken out since I worry the L & D people will be calling Dr. Buck wondering where I am and I'll have to cop to scarfing a Whopper Junior and some fries. Call my mom and ask her to cancel her dental appointment- just in case. Oh, and bring a Whopper Junior when you come.

2:30 p.m. The OB clerk doesn't look up, just mutters "name." I sit and periodically clutch the arms of the chair while she chats a foot in front of me making calls and asking "Where does the girl who ruptured go?." That's me. Dean and I listen to the alarm that means a baby is missing off the unit blare for ten minutes before a second OB clerk notices it and turns it off without a glance. I'm starting to wish I had opted for a hospital in Grand Rapids. The first clerk is busy trying to find me a room without having glanced at me. I shoot daggers at her with my eyes every time a contraction comes.

2:45 p.m. In a room, changed into a gown. Contractions hurt. A lot. Wow, they really hurt. Dr. Buck comes in to tell the nurse that I'm 4 cm dilated. I bring to everyone's attention the fact that Molly's delivery was pretty fast and the epidural didn't really take and I wonder if maybe we could talk about calling the anesthesiologist sooner rather than later.

3 p.m. Can't talk about an epidural until an IV is started.

3:10 p.m. Third try is the charm. IV is flowing.

3:25 p.m. Can't talk about an epidural until the admission paperwork is done. Dean is occupied answering questions about whether we have well water while I grip the sides of the bed and cry between contractions. My mom tells me it's "good pain." I'm not in the mood to differentiate.

3:30 p.m. Can't have an epidural until labs are drawn.

3:45 p.m. Nurse can't figure out how to order labs.

3:50 p.m. Dean, at my behest, asks for the anesthesiologist to be paged without the labs being done since I'm declaring the pain intolerable and weeping into my mother's shoulder. If this is 4 cm, I am certain I will die by 10 cm.

3:55 p.m. Anesthesiologist comes. He tells me without labs being drawn I'm at risk for bleeding if my platelet count is low. I assure him I don't care if I am permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Seriously, this is 4 cm? Maybe women should get a gold medal if they do this without an epidural.

3:59 p.m. Anesthesiologist tells me it will take 15 minutes for the epidural to work. He slides the tube in my back as I have a contraction that feels like it's tearing my hips off. At the same moment, I feel a sliding sensation and I tell the nurse, who has finally given up on trying to order the labs, that I have to push. NOW.

4:04 p.m. There is a flurry of activity as the nurse lays me on my back and sees the baby's head. Dr. Buck, a resident, a medical student and two nurses join us. Guttural, primal moans are ripping from me. Screams, too. I apologize after each one, only to be gripped again by an unstoppable urge to push and yell.

4:11 p.m. One last scream and Susannah Glory bursts forth.

4:15 p.m. After the placenta is delivered and I am stitched, I start to feel my legs go numb.

Thoughts about Susannah Glory

2010-11-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

Susannah smells like a boiled egg. Even when her diaper is clean.

There simply is no more delicious sight then a freshly nursed baby, red-faced and cheek-creased, stretching with their butt in the air.

I love babies. I don't like being pregnant. I need a surrogate.

Nursing is a full time job with my babies. This is the third one that doesn't want to gain weight the way she should. Maybe I should stop worrying and just accept that they like to do it slowly. Maybe three makes a pattern.

I love little girls. I love my little girls in particular. I love Susannah especially, right now. Her breath smells like an angel.

Nearing the end

2010-11-10T04:10:00.000-08:00

Today I am 38 weeks pregnant. Frankie came at 39 weeks. Molly came at 38 weeks. That means this baby is overdue. That's just plain Logic 101, people. Wheaton College taught me that.

Truthfully, as uncomfortable as I am, I am getting more nervous about labor and thinking perhaps in is better than out. It was that kind of thinking that kept my nephew Jude in ten days past his due date. My sister was very happy to keep him ensconced in the womb and not wreaking havoc out and about on terra firma. And maybe she was on to something. I keep thinking that my sleeping could not possibly be worse with a newborn than it is right now, but then my mind flashes back to Frankie, sleeping 4 out of 24 hours, and those only directly on our chests, and I wonder.

I'm also experiencing intense jealousy on my behalf of my daughters. I watched them run ahead of me on a walk yesterday afternoon, two tiny heads bobbing up and down clutching stuffed animals, and I wanted to weep with the fullness of gratitude I felt. Surely my heart can't accomodate a third, I thought, but remembered how hard I cried when my water broke with Molly, positive that I would never love another daughter like I loved Frankie. And how I cried the next day because I thought I loved Molly more.

Waiting for labor is an exercise in patience that I don't naturally possess. Every evening, the contractions come and I keep the phone near me, ready to call my parents into action. And every evening, I'm left alone as they peter out, like a tired guest hiding behind the curtains at a surprise party shouting "SU....oh" as the cat or the mailman shows up at the door instead.

Come on, baby sister, you're overdue.

For Aunt Molly

2010-10-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

Three days before Frankie was born.

Two weeks before Molly was born.

Three, two, one weeks before Baby X. That mean expression I have? It pretty much reflects my comfort level.

Jude, already two

2010-10-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

This has to be one of my favorite pictures ever of Jude. It makes me happy to know that he not only rejects my physical overtures of affection, but also those of black-eyed Susans.
Happy Birthday to my little sweet nephew, lover of all things Lightning McQueen. May the Lord bless you and keep you.

Parenting lowpoint #278

2010-10-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, during what was soon to be an aborted attempt at quiet time, I was summoned upstairs to find two small girls weeping hysterically and rolling around the corner of Molly's room in paroxysms of grief and anger, taking wild swings at one another. The source of the conflict, you ask? A shared desire to hold a small piece of paper on which Frankie had written one word: POOP.

Week 35

2010-10-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

This has not been an easy pregnancy for me. Or Dean, who is kicked out of bed at 2 a.m. because I need to turn the light on and read for the next four hours and then am ready to go to the bed for the night before the children are. Or my parents, who get up at 6 a.m. to let me sleep a few more hours or make us supper which I am often too nauseated to eat. Or sister, whose own major goings-on in life are ignored while I list a long litany of pregnancy-induced miseries. Or my friend Carley, who patiently endures details of GERD, my rubber leg, my nausea, my raging insomnia, my fear that my stomach skin is going to explode.

As I have always feared, I am not an inspiring disabled person.

But, it's temporary, even though, in the wee hours of the morning for the eight month straight, it starts to feel strangely permanent.

I forget that there is a baby at the end of this road; she has become lost in a haze of fatigue and nausea and lack of ankle definition. Only lately has it become more real to me that there is a tiny daughter in there, wreaking havoc, but soon to abandon her proclivity for sitting on my sciatic nerve and instead to take up residence in my arms, milky-breathed and intoxicating. It's impossible to ignore her reality these days as my belly contracts and her vacuum-packed shape becomes solid and clear, a huge rump emerging on the upper left side. She inserts herself into conversations with strangers, tiny feet stretching my belly and tracing wide arcs so obvious that eyes are drawn there nervously and there are soft wondering comments, "I can SEE her kicking."

Only five more weeks, little girl. Sooner, if you keep making my blood pressure climb. I'm getting ready for you, starting to expect you, edging toward eager for you.

Happy 4th Birthday, sweet Sylvie

2010-10-04T06:31:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday to my much loved little niece, Sylvie Evangeline. You have grown from a pizza-faced baby with preternaturally strong eyebrow muscles to a nightgown-loving kind little girl. We are so proud of you and love you so much. May the Lord keep His hand on you all the days of your long life.

Love,
Uncle Dean, Aunt Saskia, Frankie and Molly Jo

How about this face? And those sunglasses? And the jewels?

2010-09-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

Outfits, hairstyling and photo shoot all done at the hands of, wait for it, their FATHER.

Does this face kill you, or what?

2010-09-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

First born vs. Second born

2010-09-19T19:28:00.000-07:00

When I was talking to Frankie about snack time after her first day of school, she told me "Some kids had water, some kids had plain milk, and a lot of kids had chocolate milk." I asked her which she had and she said she had plain, because "I didn't know if you'd want me to have chocolate milk."

The second day she wanted to know if I'd sent a note to her teacher that she was allowed to have chocolate milk.

Meanwhile, Molly continues to cut a swath through life asking no permission and helping herself to candy with her mantra "Nother piece, no people 'round."

Frankie's first day of school

2010-09-18T19:00:00.001-07:00

The night before school started, I asked Frankie what she wanted for a special back to school meal. Her reply was: "Um, rolls. And broccoli, because I should have some broccoli. And mushrooms and onions. With, um, some sausage and maybe rolls sprinkled on top?".
Dean provided his usual specialty- very calming and relaxing pre-bedtime activities designed to wind the children down.
Here is the big kindergartener on the front porch in the morning. This picture reminds me of when we were playing "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down" in the bathtub and Molly said very enthusiastically "Diarrhea- THUMBS UP! Poop- THUMBS DOWN!." Personally, I tend to feel the opposite.
Here she is in her new back to school outfit that Oma bought for her. Oma and Opa also pulled in the driveway right about now, unable to keep away from seeing her go off for her first day. Frankie basically has four parents that are heavily involved in her happiness and welfare. I am routinely called "Oma, I mean, Mommy".
Look at that face. Just look at that almost-five-year-old-going-to-kindergarten-away-from-her-Mommy face. That beautiful little face takes my breath away. That God would be so incredibly kind, so gracious to give her to me, boggles my mind.
To Dean's great relief, the teacher wrote her name as "Frankie" and not "Frances". He was really, really troubled by that possibility.
As we walked away, I turned to Dean and said, "That wasn't so bad." And then promptly burst into tears.

The Patient with Patience

2010-09-05T18:17:00.001-07:00

There we were, eating dinner peacefully, when Molly asked "I be 'cused, Momma?" and pranced away from the kitchen stools to execute one of her patented life-endangering jumps from the kitchen down the two wooden steps to the family room. This is a move she has performed lo these many months and while it always makes a mother's heart skip a beat, this time it made a mother cower in the corner fearing to see whether her youngest offspring's eyeball was still intact as there was much wailing and a large pool of blood where her right eye should have been peering mischeviously up at me. Thankfully, the Lord provided for me and I didn't have to witness any smooshed eyeballs. Dean was home again and mopped up the mess and got a good look at her while I was praying out loud for her eyeball and her future as a girl with a glass eyeball trying to find suitors. Turns out it was just a nice big deep laceration through her eyebrow. Dean tried to convince me to just glue it at home, but since it was her FACE, her beautiful little FACE, I was insistent on the ER. I prayed someone good would be there, someone who knew how to handle children and who didn't have a significant hand tremor that would result in her eyebrow being lopsided for life and people saying "You know, Molly Kendziera, the girl with the pretty blond curls and the crazy brow?". And once again, prayers were answered, my boss, ER whiz Pete Kamhout, who knows just how to deal with little girls, having one himself, and whose other career is in aesthetics was there to put seven perfect little stitches in and put things to rights. The best part was the patient herself. That is where the word patient, in fact comes from, if you look in the dictionary it will show a picture of Molly JoJo watching the iTouch and succumbing to the deep deep sedative effects of Curious George and holding still and being patient in a pretenaturally calm way for a two-year-old. There's just something about this kid. I wish I could swallow her whole.

Frankie finds her camera

2010-08-25T05:40:00.000-07:00

Self portrait.

Left to right: Frankie's bike- sans training wheels you'll notice, Molly's bike- pedal falls off about once per bike riding session, but she fixes it herself, friend Jake's bike- Frankie borrowed when we realized that without training wheels she couldn't put her feet down and so would have to hurl herself onto the grass to get off.

Posed portrait #1- Chester the bear and Shamu.

Opa.

Self-pedicure.

People, that's a SIX months pregnant belly. And a SIX months double chin. You can bet you won't be seeing a NINE months pregnant belly.

Notice the small flying creature in the background, caught in the furniture-jumping act.

Self-portrait #2, serious version.

My mom's neighbor gave the girls each a nameless Gumby-like flexible man that I was sure would be discarded the instant we got home. Instead "the Guys" are a favorite toy. Here Molly cradles them with the beatific expression of a new mother. Notice, underpants! Only a diaper at night.

"The Guys," posed in embrace.

Tracey, Jay-Jay the Jet Plane's cohort.

JoJo doing a puzzle.

2010-08-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

I've got so many things to post, but we got a new video camera and I can only document with one form of technology at a time, thank you very much.

This summer has been hot and humid and difficult and fun and eventful.

Most pressing is the need to decide on a girl's name. I think we have one, but then I keep running in to other names I love. I knew Frankie and Molly's names as soon as we knew their gender, although we didn't intend to call Molly by her first name now that I think about it. Somehow we ended up with the Southern-ish Molly Jo. She was supposed to be plain Jo.

I need suggestions.

Frankie wants Rose.

Molly wants Sally (or Sawwy- as she pronounces it).

Dean vetoed Cecilia.

My mother tried Maatje.

This is probably my last baby. The pressure is on.

The perfect is the enemy of the good

2010-07-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

Here's how my thought process goes:

I can't make the bed because the sheets really need to be washed but there's a load in the dryer that needs to be folded first which I can't put away because there is already a basket in my room that needs to be done.

I can't make dinner yet because there are leftover corn cobs to be boiled with old carrots and a chopped onion to make homemade corn stock for the homemade corn chowder that I can't bring myself to eat when I make it because I'd rather have pizza instead.

I can't write that quote down in Molly's baby book because I stopped writing in it in July 2009 and I can't remember what else happened in the last twelve months which I need to catch up on before I write the other thing down.

I can't weed that square in the garden because then I'll get to the basil that needs to be harvested and made into basil dressing which I can't do because I'm out of apple cider vinegar and the girls need a bath before they go to Meijers.

Warning: Intense adorableness contained in this post

2010-07-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

I was not a believer. I rolled my eyes when I heard Dean suggesting it. But twenty minutes later, they were both asleep and when I saw they were also holding hands, I almost passed out from the crushing weight of the cuteness.

Cozy time

2010-07-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

Frankie has somehow evolved from a child who preferred waking in the pre-dawn hours when only garbage men and vampires are roaming the street, to a child who sleeps until at least eight o'clock. Now before we have high-fives all around, lets not forget that I have another child. Another child who has an internal alarm clock of six o'clock. At least the sun is rising by then and you don't have to make cinnamon toast while faced with the specter of your kitchen windows displaying complete blackness. But there is one upside, and that is the time Dean or I gets to spend with Molly Jo one on one. We do puzzles and talk about the dreams she had ("Butterflies. Were flying. Catch them. My hands."), make breakfast requests ("Toast. Peanut Butter. And honey. No jelly. No peanut butter. No honey. Jus' bread.") and snuggle, as above.

Ten days and still getting along

2010-07-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

My sister and I love nothing more than to buy matching outfits for Frankie, Molly and Sylvie, but this time it was totally accidental. It turns out that we just have preternaturally similar tastes because we both purchased these pink dresses at WalMart several states apart.

Now these matching nightgowns, on the other hand, were totally intentional. Can't you feel the love between cousins? Except for the times that Jude slaps Molly, or Molly slaps Jude, or Frankie refuses to play what Sylvie wants to play, and Sylvie doesn't want Frankie to drink from the hose....

I can only hope my brother-in-law is not reading my blog, because he would not be happy to see his son in a nightgown. But poor Jude was feeling left out of the matching action and wanted to wear one, too. We couldn't resist. It was only belatedly that we realized that a good cousin shot was rendered unframe-able because of the cross-dressing. Though he looks quite beautiful, I think.

And, Matt, if you are reading this, we tried to take it off him, but this was the result.

Aah, now this is summer

2010-07-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

We spent a beautiful, hot, lazy day with our generous and wonderful friends Ed and Carley at Carley's parents house on the lake. Our day was filled with kayaks, pontoon boats, water skiing, swimming, large amounts of food and blazing sunshine. It also included a game of Mother May I in which one of the participants, and I am not going to name names except to say that her nickname is Lion King, broke free and began running with abandon and without permission round and round the trampoline, much to the "Mother"'s dismay.

Molly Jo entertaining the world's most easygoing and handsome baby, Sammy. At least this time she is offering him a toy and not putting a pushpin in his cheek. Not that she would ever do that.

Ed, captain of the speed boat, buyer of pizza, eliminator of nausea.

Dean, looking grumpy to be caught, as usual, with his hand in a snack bag. I'm only surprised there is not a spicy meat stick in his other hand.

My mom, expertly navigating the dangerous waters.

Jake, Claudia and Frankie waiting for everyone to get organized and get on the boat.

Mom and Dad, beatific.

Sylvester, after her fourth cupcake. That's what aunts and grandmothers are for.

My sister lamented that she had a hard time protecting her face from the sun because, really, you can't wear a visor around. Oh, but Molly, this, my friend, is how a visor is done.

Catching a glimpse of a big fish.

The pink-hatted person is poor Jude, who spent most of the afternoon napping and the rest of the afternoon being outfitted in drag by his mother.

Dean tries to cram in all the fun and all the people he can.

Carley, who looks so good for having a four-month-old baby that I have vowed in the future to only befriend short chubby people whose bodies actually bear evidence of child-bearing.

Trouble with a capital "T." I have to relate this, though it didn't happen this day, because it pretty much sums up JoJo. She, Jake, Claudia and Frankie watched a little golf cart parade in which a variety of candy was thrown that they each collected. As the other kids dutifully negotiated how many pieces they were allowed, Molly quietly took her bag to another corner of the yard where I heard her, hand deep in saltwater taffy and Dum Dum suckers, say quietly to herself, "'Nother piece. No people round."

Matt keeping the paralyzing injuries at bay.

Jude, the world's most misanthropic baby, made an appearance after a four-hour nap to hold this cupcake for about 45 minutes and scowl at me and the humankind that I represent.

Sammy: Portable, smiley, good napper, chunky. Baby #3, take good notes.

This never fails to crack me up. It's like she went from 4 to 47 as soon as she sat down.

Nine Xs and a Y

2010-07-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm the mother of three little girls.

Admittedly, one is tiny, but it's as though she has asserted herself since she was made known to us by ultrasound, my belly no longer caught in the stage where a stranger would wonder, but proudly, roundly, undeniably full.

Keep your sons to carry on your family name. I'll take hairbows and sisterhood and the duty of setting my iron-gray nursing-home curls divided three ways.

My heart is as full as my belly.

For the record

2010-07-08T18:31:00.000-07:00

How much prouder can one mommy get than to read this? And for the record, Carley's kids are totally delightful.

Morning gratitude

2010-06-30T05:51:00.000-07:00

This morning I am thankful for:

A husband who got up at the crack of dawn to wash the kitchen floor, vacuum, scrub bathrooms and whip up a stack of "roll-up" pancakes while he was at it. All so I don't have to.

Cabbage worms. They give my life purpose.

Sisters who greet each other with a big morning hug and walk off hand in hand.

Nutella on sourdough alongside a pound of fresh blueberries.

My first baby

2010-06-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

It seems like Molly JoJo has gotten the lion's share of blog attention from me lately. There is no good reason for this other than that Molly gives me so many naughty things to document and she is in that just-learning-to-talk phase that provides such ample fodder for laughter (this morning she was very incensed when I poured her some Raisin Bran and insisted that I remove all the "beans" from it "No like beans. Only cereal.").

But I am doing such a disservice to Frankie by not writing enough about her. She is, plainly speaking, a delight. Seriously, I don't know how to say this without sounding like I am trying to take the credit for it, or that I am speaking through a mother's rose-colored glasses, but she is just such a really really nice little kid. Oh, she has her moments, don't get me wrong. When she's overtired she can be counted on to start aggravating her little sister until the latter has no recourse other than to turn and bite her on the scalp, which is frankly no less than she deserves. And sometimes she melts down and becomes intensely unreasonable and cries louder and louder the more you try to yell above the din "Just tell me what is WRONG!," but for the most part, she is a really really nice little kid.

I think one of the things I like the most about her is that she has the most tender little heart. Even when she's in the middle of a meltdown, half of the reason she's crying is that she's upset that she's making you angry and so she's wailing "Mama! Mama! MAMA, I'M JUST SO SOOOOOORRRRRY!." How can you not like a kid like that? She's also one of the most unselfish people that I know. If you're out with her without Molly and you give her a sucker, she wants another one to bring home to her sister. If she and another kid both want something at the same time, she can be counted on to back down and say "He can go first." In contrast, Molly Jo will polish off her cookie and take a large bite of Frankie's when Frankie isn't looking. Maybe it's just the age difference, but I don't think so. I think God has given Frankie a gift of being thoughtful to others. And I want her to know that I see it in her.

There are lots of other things I like about her, too. Too many to write down, but here are just a few:

I like that she prefers whale sharks to princesses.

I like her two french braids and her big brown eyes and crazy eyebrows, that it turns out are EXACT replicas of my own childhood eyebrows.

I like that she is such a nice big sister and tells Molly things like "Molly, do you like that I can teach you to know about things? You know how I know so many things, Molly? Because when you're getting older, you can hear people talk about things and then you learn about them. Did you know that, Molly? Molly? MOLLY? ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, MOLLY?."

I like that she works so diligently in her "office" (her desk in her closet) during quiet time, producing drawing after drawing of sharks that she asks to mail to "everyone that I know."

I like how her upper lip forms a little beak when she's proud of herself.

I like that because her fish had babies she refers to herself as a grandmother.

I like how her fingers get really tan just like her dad's.

I like that when I go to work for a grand total of five hours a week, the next morning she wants me to read a book to her instead of her dad because "Mom hasn't seen me in a really long time."

I like you, Frankie Pau.

Repentance

2010-06-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

Me: Molly, you're in time out because you disobeyed Mommy. God wants you to obey Mommy and Daddy. What do you need to say to Mommy?

Molly (eyeing me sideways, remorselessly): Sorry.

Me (hoping for the next correct answer, which is "Please forgive me") : What else do you need to say to Mommy?

Molly (very thoughtfully): Um..... have popsicle?

Frankie: HAH! That was a good one, Molly!

The ups and downs of fertility

2010-06-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

Well, our house is finally officially up for sale and that means that maybe, just maybe, I can stop constantly using my time wisely and get back to frittering away life on the computer and come up with some blog posts. While I am glad not to be checking Celebrity Baby blog as frequently as usual, I am sorry that I am missing out on documenting some of the best months of my children's lives. And when I say best, I mean the ones that include finding seventeen pieces of gum in my two-year-old's throw up at the park. That kind of wonderful.

The other night I had a burst of euphoria looking at my sleeping girls next to me in bed. Their poor father was outside working on some interminable exterior project or another and granted, it was ten o'clock, they were both in our bed, having rejected their own, and I had just finishing uttering the words "Now lie down or so help me...," but then they both succumbed to Morpheus' embrace and, in an instant, I was overcome with such a sense of blessing.

That moment of joy was tempered by the low point of the weekend just a few days later. I found myself in the distinctly unenviable position of arbitrating who got to kick Frankie's stripped-off underpants around my parents' backyard. I sat there thinking that this, this right here is what my life has come to. I am saying "You get another thirty seconds" to not one, but TWO people, whose idea of fun it is to play soccer with a pair of dirty underpants. This is truly the nadir.

And those two instances, I think, pretty much sum up the vagaries of motherhood.

Aunt Molly, this post is for you

2010-06-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

MJ, terror of West Michigan

2010-05-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

I love these pictures of Molly (and Frankie, ones focused on you will be forthcoming, love), especially because Molly looks just like a Cabbage Patch Kid in the second one. When she is asked to smile, there are a variety of strange expressions that emerge. This one is one of the first without the raised shoulders that normally accompany her camera-ready smile.

Molly, in the last few days you have:

1) Carefully spread peanut butter all over a dish towel yesterday morning.

2) Colored the brand-new bathroom tile grout with a blue crayon.

3) Given yourself a forehead welt on the edge of a patio chair, fallen head over heels down the inside stairs, slipped on the patio and given yourself welts on your butt, and put your finger under a moving wagon wheel.

4) Pooped on the bedroom floor while yelling "NEED DIAPER!!."

5) Poured a whole glass of milk on the family room ottoman.

6) Appeared in the back yard while supposed to be napping.

7) Eaten 7 cheese sticks in a row and then asked for Cheetos.

I love you despite things and maybe, just a little bit, because of them.

An excuse, and really, it's a pretty good one

2010-05-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

For those loyal few, and I do mean few, who read my blog regularly, I feel compelled to make this announcement: I am not, in fact, dead! I am just pregnant. And really sick. And mind-blowingly, bone-crushingly tired. And I puked up pickles last night.

The fourteen-week mark is looming and I am hoping that with it comes a lack of nausea and surge of energy. Maybe even enough energy to cook dinner for my family instead of offering the children a choice of Ragu or Raisin Bran (please, please choose Raisin Bran because Ragu involves noodle boiling and that sounds like A LOT of work). And can I tell you how thankful I am for TiVo and Curious George?

I felt the baby move today. And the obstetric community may scoff and tell me it's not possible, but after enduring five first trimesters, I am convinced that the walls of my uterus are so paper-thin, translucent really, that I could feel a cricket twitch its antenna. So you can take that explanation and smoke it, scientific world!

Besides pickles (which I don't think I need to explain that I am heretofore NOT interested in), I have had intense cravings for ice cream sandwiches and Cheetos. I am hoping that my prenatal vitamin contains enough nutrients to cover many dietary deficiencies and that the old adage that the baby will just take what it needs and leave me depleted is true. Because at this point, I am probably a mere shell of a human and my skin is just a husk around dry, empty bones. The only redeemable craving I have had is for cherries, which thankfully are coming into season and their $4.99/lb price tag is slowly dropping. Every night I eat about $8.64 in cherries and I am just glad that soon upper Michigan will start producing those little red gems because I don't care if they had to surf into town on an oil plume, I want my cherries.

Please, second trimester, come quickly.

2010-04-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

BSF had an awesome Home Training lesson a few weeks ago about how to pray for your children. There was a list of 12 things that they suggested you pray for your children regularly and it has been so helpful to me. It is interesting to me that the happiness of my child does not appear on the list. Nor does her comfort or her pleasure or her financial security. Of course, I would love for my child to be happy, but I know that if she is a follower of Christ that trouble will come her way. No, what I want most is for my child to be holy. Happiness does not always find holy people. But holy people find life in Christ and that is what I want for my little girls.

A medical mystery

2010-04-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

Molly took a four hour nap yesterday. When I was home. This was my first clue that something was amiss. The second clue was when she woke up at 7 a.m.. On a day that Dean works. Fortune smiling upon me? The stars aligned? No, she's sick. She woke up from her nap (which she took again, for me) flushed and feverish and thoroughly pathetic. She asked for water and when I took her downstairs and set her on the counter to get it, I turned around and she was lying down. She got jam on her pajamas.

Me: Poor Molly. Does something hurt?

Molly (woefully): Yeeeeessss.

Me: Does your head hurt?

Molly: No.

Me: Does your tummy hurt?

Molly: No.

Me: What hurts then?

Molly: Mah pickle.

Me: Your pickle?

Molly: Yeah. Pickle hurts.

I may be a physician assistant, but this was the first time that a patient complained that their pickle hurt. Especially a female patient. As may be no surprise to hear, she was unable to pinpoint the location of her pickle. A dose of Motrin seemed to clear up the pickle-woes and her fever, but my curiosity lingers.

Soccer

2010-04-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

Though it should have been obvious, I learned a lesson about motherhood this week: my child is not me.

Thank heavens.

Frankie started soccer practice this week and I spent most of the week fretting about it. We thought she was going to be the only girl on her team and we knew she was going to be on a team consisting of mainly the children and nephews of the coach, all of whom had played soccer before. I put myself in her shoes and was struck with terror and intimidation. I had flashbacks of Little League, standing in the outfield, jeans cinched tight around my skinny waist, hoping against hope that no ball would come my way, that I could shed my mitt and exchange it for my well-worn copy of 'Heidi.'

I envisioned her standing with her fingers in her mouth as small determined boys circled her and occasionally kicked her in the shins.

Instead, she marched in, determination on her face, and gamely tried her hand at dribbling, stopping the ball, kicking it toward the goal, with a little grass throwing at a teammate tossed in for good measure.

She's not me.

I love this kid, too

2010-03-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

Miss Cam, the Sunday School Teacher: " Our story is about a man who was a Roman centurion. Does anyone know what a century is?"

Frankie: "I do! My Opa was in the hospital for one on his back."

And so we finally celebrated Molly's birthday!

2010-03-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

A little happy birthday hug between sissies. Molly is sitting on Frankie's lap and they embraced for about five minutes, with Frankie rubbing and patting her back. Could there be anything cuter? Maybe kittens cavorting on clouds surrounded by naked babies encircled by rainbows. But maybe not.

So proud to be two. Please do not tell her that she has been two for nearly a month.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the loss of the purple flower balloon when Frankie asked to take it outside to "fly it like a kite." Despite my dire warnings that no good could come of that plan, no more than could have come of her plan to play water balloons in her bathing suit on the porch in the snow the other day, she chose to forge ahead.
Not with the bathing suit plan, but with the balloon-as-kite plan. I know I celebrate my child's birthday a month late, but my bad mothering doesn't extend to frostbite.

It looks like she is blowing out candles, but I guess my mothering is subpar because I don't think we every actually remembered to put in candles.

First glimpse of the coveted Jay Jay the Jet Plane birthday cake.

Does anything say party like some hanging flowers made of colored lunch bags? I think not, people.

Opa reads his favorite Richard Scarry book to the birthday girl.

Jay Jay, mostly crafted by my husband. I love that Dean gets just as enthusiastic about our insanely labor-intensive cake-making tradition as I do.

It was actually a triple threat birthday party: Molly, Dean and my father. Dean, despite having made the Jay Jay cake, would not deign to actually eat a piece of it. Oh, no. Only Ryke's buttercream for those discerning 42-year-old taste buds.

I love this kid

2010-03-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

On a lighter note, I just need to document, for all of posterity, how much I adore Molly's strange and fluffy hair. My mother likened it to cotton candy and I must agree. It holds its shape just like cotton candy; the more you brush it, the larger it gets until it is a soft and feathery golden halo. I am considering dyeing it a very soft and lovely shade of pale pink in time for summer carnival season.

My writer's block

2010-03-20T05:40:00.000-07:00

I've had a hard time writing on this blog since we got back from Florida. Though I can come up with no logical reason why the two should be connected, capturing moments of my children's lives here remind me of the night in Orlando when we rushed Molly to the emergency room and I was scared she was going to die. Maybe I think if I don't write small paragraphs summarizing her existence then there won't be any way that those paragraphs could ever be all I have left of her.

Dean and I were at a movie and my in-laws were with the sleeping children when Molly woke up from a dead sleep struggling to breathe. By the time we walked in the door, she was lying on my mother-in-law's lap, raggedly inhaling, too focused on getting enough air to be crying. I took one look at her and yelled for Dean, who immediately took her out into the thirty degree night air. We knew it was croup, though she hadn't been sick, but she was well past the barking cough stage and straight into severe stridor at rest, a medical emergency. She was struggling. I saw legions of croupy kids in my pediatric practice and nothing has ever scared me like this. Even Dean, used to crisis after crisis on the pediatric ICU, knew she needed to be in the emergency room. Now.

I think Molly could sense my terror. She refused to go to me, preferring to lie limply in Dean's arms, so it fell to me to find out where the nearest children's hospital was and how to get there. We were sure she would be admitted, concerned she might be intubated and wanted to go to a children's hospital if she was going to be staying somewhere.

Dean held Molly in the backseat of the car, not wanting to risk obstructing her airway further by making her cry if we strapped her in her carseat. Her loud painful inhalations were slow and widely spaced enough that I continually cried out, terrified, "Is she still breathing?." At one point she coughed and vomited, and there was a long pause before she could take another sucking noisy breath, and it was all I could do to keep my hands on the wheel as I just pleaded with God to keep her breathing long enough to get to the emergency room. I knew if we could just get her there, she would be fine, they could intubate her and all would be well. But in that twenty minute drive to the hospital, it seemed that every breath was more constricted than the last and all I could do was envision the terrible silence if she didn't take another one.

While I drove and prayed and wept, Dean kept her calm, rubbing her wild hair back from her face, softly singing 'Be Thou My Vision' like he does every night with her before bed. When we finally pulled into the emergency room, we bolted from the still-running car, and took her in while she vomited again. And just like that, as she threw up phlegm and pizza, she was better. She still had stridor, but it was mild. I tried to sign her in, but I was shaking too badly to write her name.

She got steroids and X-rayed, but the crisis had passed and she was fine. Thanks be to God, she was fine.

But even though she was fine, I still can't shake the memory of that drive down an Orlando highway where my life as I knew it was balanced so precariously between mercy and disaster.

Ode to Daylight Savings Time

2010-03-15T05:15:00.000-07:00

Oh, daylight savings time, how I love thee in the spring. Even though I know it is really 6 a.m., the fact that my digital clock says that it is 7 a.m. makes a world of difference to me. You wily thing, you, daylight savings time, if only I had deceived myself earlier and saved myself so much angst. If you could only coordinate your deception with the sunrise, then all would be well!

March evening

2010-03-04T18:00:00.000-08:00

It's night and the house is quiet. The dishes are washed and there are two little girls tucked safely in their beds. The rooms are warm and my husband is near and the sun was shining today while my daughters splashed in mud puddles and made snowballs. There was homemade soup and freshly baked bread, a swimming lesson and a stack of library books, a pair of fleece pajamas and a warm bath.

I know it could be otherwise. I know it could be and may be different. But today I am simply grateful.

Her royal highness

2010-02-28T17:09:00.000-08:00

Me: Frankie, do you want more cereal?

Frankie (holding up hand imperiously): If I hold up this hand, that means "yes." If I hold up the other hand, it means "no."

Me: OK, then. Would you like me to read a book to you while you eat?

Frankie (right hand in air): If I hold up this hand, that means you can read me "Finding Nemo." If I hold up the other hand, it means I don't want to hear you read.

To Molly Jo, Big Girl

2010-02-22T11:06:00.000-08:00

To my girl, Molly Johannah, on her second birthday:

I saw you today, lying face to face with the cat, and noticed that you have the body of a little girl now. You are long and lean and your blond curls reach to your shoulders. But then you turned to smile at me and I saw your chubby face and your blue eyes and you were my baby again, just like that.

You'll always be my baby girl.

The night you were born I could not have imagined how much I would love you. Loving you has always been easy. No matter how many walls you write on, or times stare me down boldly when I call to you, or wild slaps you throw to your sister while yelling "DO THAT!" instead of the correct "Don't do that!," I have to stifle smiles because I find everything you do delicious. It's hard to get mad at you and impossible to stay mad at you. One look at your mop of riotous curls and every knot of frustration comes untied.

You have grown fiercely independent and opinionated in the last few months. When we put your coat on, you wrench away the zipper and yell "I do it!" and run to a corner to wrestle with it until you, indeed, do it yourself. You think you are capable of anything. I find you standing on the counter, trying to help yourself to another serving of your gummy vitamins. You insist on flossing your own teeth. You want to pour your own milk, wash your own hands, buckle your own car seat, put on your own shoes.

But you are also tender and loving. It is pure joy to walk into a room and catch your eye. You will smile, stop what you are doing and come hurtling across the room at ninety miles an hour to launch yourself in our arms. You are troubled when Frankie is upset. "Wrong? Crying?," you'll query. Even when Frankie hurts you and is forced to apologize, your tender heart gets confused and you'll interrupt her amends, your eyes squinting with regret, and cup her under the chin, tilting her face to yours so you can croon "Torry, Fankie" and lay your head on her chest, arms tight around her waist.

I love listening to you talk. You have a delightful habit of replacing an S with a T, so you talk about the moon and the "tun," you're curious what made that "tound," your cousin is "Tylvie," and you want to "Eat tumting." You no longer call me Mama, but Mommy. If you need my attention, you say "Mommy? (small pause) Mommy? (small pause) MOMMY! (sudden authoritative shout)." You also copy the little vocal nuances of adults. When confronted with a puzzle piece that doesn't fit, I'll hear you mutter "Huh" in a surprised tone. At the first bite of a piece of pizza, you let out a short "Mmm" and nod to yourself with pleasure. If I tell you we can't watch your beloved Jay Jay, your faces screws up in disappointment and you'll let out a long, undulating "Aaaaawwwww." Sometimes when we are riding in the car, and your patience is at an end, you start moaning requests: "Popppppp. Eeeeatttt. I' creammmm. Peeezzaaa. Tuckerrrrrr. Treeeeeeatttt. Poppppicle."

It is a joy to my heart to watch you and sister grow to enjoy each other more and more. Frankie will go tearing through the house yelling "Molly, come on!" and you will come flying on her heels shouting "Comin'!." She tries to teach things to you gently. "Molly, can you say Cookie Monster? He's on your diaper, isn't he? Isn't he, Molly?." "Yah!!," you reply, "Mahyee's diaper!." "Molly, do you want me to step on Cookie Monster?." "MMM-HMMM!," you enthuse. Much uproarious laughter ensues. I hope you will love each other the way your Aunt Molly and I love each other.

Your dad and I are so proud to be your parents. Our eyes constantly meet above your little blond head and I know we are both thinking that we are so blessed to have you we can hardly stand it.

I love you, Molly. I love every single thing about you. I am so grateful that God gave me the incredible privilege of being your mother, the monumental and wonderful task of raising you to be a woman who loves Him.

You are my beloved baby girl.

Love,
Mommy

While the cat's away, the mouse will hack into her blog...

2010-02-21T12:27:00.000-08:00

This is Saskia's sister, Molly, taking over the blogging helm with an uninvited guest post. Saskia was in Florida for 10 days (no doubt she will soon regale you with tales of 35 degree weather, trips to the ER, and other such tropical vacation delights), with no access to the internet. She returned home from such a luxurious getaway only to get up the next morning at 3 a.m. and head off to a weekend-long Bible Study Fellowship retreat. Last I checked, Dean and the girls were engaged in their typical mom's-away activities: pizza + pop + animated movies on the parental bed.

I would hate to have her readership flail in these long & dark days without a fresh post. Thus some sister pictures that I found this week on an old CD. Would that I had electronic versions of our later bespectacled & permed years.

Saskia (circa age 4) with her little leprechaun, er, sister. I wonder who got the short end of the outfit stick.

I'm not sure Saskia's suspenders really needed to have hiked the shorts up that far.

Saskia's forlorn look says that I am likely tagging along while she tries in vain to taste sweet freedom from her little sister. Whatever Saskia did, I did. Although now that I think about it, this mostly worked to her advantage, like when we would play school and she got to be the teacher, lounging at her desk reading a Nancy Drew, while I dutifully did math problems and practiced penmanship.

More big-wheel fun. I think I see where new-and-improved Molly gets her shoulder-scrunching camera pose.

I sure loved my sister (still do). Notice the strange culinary combination of salad & ice cream.

We must be in a hotel room, because Saskia & I have almost no memories of watching TV when we were younger. We were occasionally allowed to stay up and join my parents for a show that they deemed educational or culturally edifying, although one has to question whether the scene where King Lear's eyes are gouged out by his daughter is, in fact, all that instructive for the 8-and-under set.

A rare photogenic moment, at least where our feathery locks are concerned.

2010-02-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

How to pass an hour:

1) First, apply purple glitter eyeshadow.
2) Fill bath with tepid water.
3) Add bowls of Cookies and Cream ice cream (as a side note, please tell me if there is a mother on earth who does not own these IKEA bowls...)
4) Distribute four bottles of roll-on body soap.
5) Keep half an eye out for drowning, but mainly sit and read a magazine by the side of the tub.

Hyperbole

2010-02-05T04:38:00.000-08:00

In three short days, Lord willing, we leave for Orlando. I am really looking forward to a chance to be in some sunshine. On the rare, and boy do I ever mean rare, occasions when the sun peeks through the everlasting cloud cover of Michigan winter, I run to the windows, shove the cats out of the sunbeam they're basking in and soak it up. Every winter around this time I ask myself WHY? WHY DO I LIVE HERE? And the only thing I can come up with is that during the winter I can use the garage as a giant outdoor refrigerator. My Diet Mountain Dew stays crisp and cold and when I make a pan of baked ziti I can't fit in the kitchen refrigerator, I've got the whole of the outdoors at my fingertips. Take THAT, California.

2010-02-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

It's "nap time" at our house right now, and I put that in quotations because I hear a great deal of rumbling and crib shaking above me from one room and the sounds of Legos being stacked in the other. It will remain one of life's great mysteries to me why children who are dead-tired fight off naps. Because they can't afford the time away from their to-do list?

Speaking of to-do lists, I am currently ignoring mine, despite the fact that I leave for work in an hour and the dishes from lunch are languishing on the kitchen counter, right next to the dishes left from breakfast before we left for BSF.

But it's snowing gently and the pictures I took yesterday after I abandoned hope of achieving "nap time" were calling to me. So to-do list, I'll do you later.

She added the skirt

2010-02-01T14:29:00.001-08:00

Christmas 2009

2010-01-24T05:38:00.001-08:00

It's Sunday morning and instead of worshiping in church (or crying in the corner of the nursery, whatever your preference may be), the girls and I are home watching Curious George. Frankie is on day seven of her illness (though we are seeing the light) and Molly was up half the night barking like a seal. I have finished my stomach ailment and moved on to Frankie's upper respiratory infection. Dean, despite having to sleep with the barker and be up at 4:30 a.m. every morning, remains healthy as a horse.

I thought I would take this opportunity to post some very belated Christmas photos.

Molly still thinks that when I say "SMILE!" she should shrug her shoulders.

They are both wearing new Christmas pajamas. Frankie got the pig nightgown from her Grandma and Grandpa, but always accessorizes it with summer capris. Molly got the monkey pjs from her Aunt Gina. She calls the monkeys "ooooots," after the sound they make. Molly, can you say horse? Neigh. Can you say dog? Woof. Can you say monkey? Oooot.

Christmas day lunch was provided by the bemused woman in the apron.

Jude, practicing his "I'm cool on a motorcycle" look for when he is a teenager. He's got some work to do.

Molly and I went all over Muskegon in search of the Snuggie. It was THE hot gift of 2009.

I am guessing there is a rousing nude round of "My God is so big, so STRONG and so mighty...." going on here.

From Molly's delighted look, I can only surmise that she just had some really good insulting remark for our father.

Sylvie has always had worried muscles in her forehead that are not delineated in human anatomy books.

This one snuck in because I can tell she is shouting "SEEE!" as she has sprung from where I posed her next to her sister in order to run to the camera to see what the picture looks like.

Yes, that is my hand spraying "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" directly into my child's mouth. That is how we do things here.

85-years-old? SHUT UP.

I don't know where Frankie is in this picture. Molly strolling with Frankie's new double doll stroller? I'm shocked I don't see a blurry snarling form hurtling toward her.

Formidable shula competitor.

I don't know who let Little Orphan Annie into the Christmas celebration.

Two keys to peaceful cousinly co-existence: Ice cream and an interesting iPhone app.

We were so glad that Opa made it here for Christmas, even if he didn't bring his hair or his off-color jokes with him.

Taking a time out from being super fuzzy to give her mom a hug. I need a haircut so badly. As soon as I start putting it up in the style that my late grandmother told me made me look like a rooster, I know I need an appointment.

Matt and Sylvie taking a break from the chaos of opening presents for two solid hours.

It's the best we could do people.

This shirt gets worn every night under the pig nightgown.

I must have given them something containing high fructose corn syrup.

See the extra forehead muscles? The second set of eyebrows made entirely of muscle?

Were they the wrong color?

I still think Jude could've pulled off one, too. The girls are happy because they are drinking what I labelled, a hideous mistake in retrospect, "wine that little girls can drink." I hope Sylvie didn't go to preschool and talk about Aunt Shushkia and the wine for "lil' goils".

Modeling Molly's new set of princess shoes.

Molly hops on Jude's toy, giving a backward glance laced with at least a hint of self-awareness at her crime.

The moment of shame over, she proceeds away whistling Dixie.

The house under quarantine

2010-01-20T09:42:00.000-08:00

I feel like I have been time-traveling. I have just flashed forward over the last three days of my life, one moment slicing chicken and making vinaigrette for a salad, the next waking up this morning and getting ready for Bible study as usual. The three days in between? Lost to high fevers, a little vomiting, a lot of body aches, and a whole lot of.... I'll let you use your imagination, but suffice it to say I am seven pounds thinner than I was Sunday evening.

This is how sick I was: I can't finish the book I was reading during the few moments I wasn't writhing in agony or passed out unconscious on the bed. It make me nauseated just to look at it.

Molly and Frankie both had fevers Sunday night but Molly has rebounded to her free-wheeling, marker-seeking self, although she did spend most of the morning at BSF lying slumped in a corner weeping while the teachers tried to wheedle her out, while Frankie continues to spike a fever as soon as the Tylenol wears off. Thankfully, she has been spared the digestive symptoms (a true answer to prayer as she has very few extra pounds to spare), but traded them for a sore throat and a barking cough. She is so pathetic when her medicine wears off. She starts to get more and more sluggish and more and more snuggly. Frankie is never more lovable than while febrile. Suddenly, all my motherhood dreams come true and I get to do nothing but cuddle her and rub her hair and kiss her face. It makes one almost understand Munchausen-by-proxy.

Eternal security

2010-01-17T03:59:00.000-08:00

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast,
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palm of my hands."
Isaiah 49:15-16

The Day of the Blue Marker (that followed The Day of The Red Marker that preceded The Day of The Black Marker)

2010-01-16T05:03:00.000-08:00

These are just a few of the places I snapped pictures of after Molly cut a wild swath through the house of blue marker. Add to these the front of a dresser, the seat of the couch, the hallway wall, the play plastic kitchen, each of our stairs, the sides of kitchen drawers, etc. The picture of the cat, Gage, was taken a few days post-marking, so I imagine the original damage was worse. And while I am impressed by someone who would write on a cat, my personal favorites are the insides of the measuring cups and my winter boots.

This is a child who is very lucky that she is cute.

Where I've been

2010-01-14T10:43:00.000-08:00

This week has been a whirlwind of socializing and starting the BSF under-two program. We had dinner with friends Saturday and then had friends over for dinner on Sunday and then I have lost the last three days of my life to making wee name tags, training new leaders, and securing enough sippy cups and cheese crackers to keep six toddlers happy. Turns out that if you keep their mouths full, they can't chew and cry for their mothers at the same time!

It was JoJo's first day of BSF, too. She did a lot of weeping, but only when she saw me. The minute I step away she turns off the waterworks and gets down to the business of riding large plastic alligators. She was in a classroom with five other toddlers, all between sixteen and 23 months. Trying to get all of them to sit in a semi-circle to listen to a story, I thought, would be a study in futility, but they actually listened. I even asked Molly on the way home who the Good Shepherd was, and she answered, unprompted, "Jeez." Now it could have been she was saying cheese, but for once, totally against my character, I am going to embrace optimism and conclude that she was saying "Jesus." Ordinarily I would take this as proof of her intellectual acuity, but I am still toying with the idea that she has some grave mental deficiency because of her total inability to learn that we don't write on surfaces other than paper. I ask you, who with a normal IQ thinks to write on a fish tank?

2010-01-06T17:25:00.001-08:00

Her hair has really come quite a long distance.

Irreverence noted, corrected, but had to be recorded

2010-01-05T16:46:00.000-08:00

Me: Frankie, is there anything you want to pray about tonight?

Frankie: Um, is anybody sick or something?

Me: Well, Papa is in a wheelchair and has a hard time getting around.

Frankie: Pray about.

Me: Pardon me?

Frankie: Pray about him. Whenever I say, "pray about," you can pray about that thing. If I say "look-a-dook," then don't pray about that thing. Go ahead.

2010-01-04T14:11:00.000-08:00

Riddle me this: why is my house such a mess when I spend my whole day cleaning?

I found the answer when I read my friend Janice's blog, whose son peed in his underwear, rinsed them, rolled them and put them on the counter. Children have a special knack for creating work for you where you least expect it. Who really starts their day thinking they are going to clean up rolled pairs of peed-in underpants from the counter?

I take one step forward and two steps back. I washed and folded and put away two loads of laundry; Molly took thirty seconds to take five puzzles and dump all of them out on the floor in one jumbled pile. I made grilled cheese and strawberry slices; Frankie dropped her orange juice glass on the floor where it sent shards spinning into the next room and stickiness climbing all my kitchen cabinets. I bathed two children; they dumped a basketful of toys in the water along with a handful of oatmeal. I started to pack up Christmas ornaments; Molly and Frankie emptied colored pencils, markers, glue sticks and watercolors all over the kitchen floor in a fantastic kaleidoscope of color and chaos. I take a minute to blog; I hear Molly pulling a stool up to the kitchen sink and the water go on.....

Watch, Mommy, watch, Mommy, watch, Mommy! WATCH! (insert obscene hand gesture from almost-two-year-old)

2010-01-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

This is a Sunday afternoon in the Kendziera household, girls stripped of their Sunday finery down to just tights and undershirts (so as to prevent ham and cheese stains on their dresses), Dean at the computer frantically researching and researching and researching new cars (so as to prevent being stuck on the highway during his daily commute by our 17-year-old car which is an amalgamation of muffler glue and wire), and me, postponing housework and laundry and dinner making (so as to enjoy the fleeting joys of toddlerhood).

There's always next year

2009-12-30T05:08:00.001-08:00

Frankie, first thing in the morning: "Mom, you know what's really sad about the Merry Christmas we had? We didn't make a ginger-yummy-house."

2009-12-27T17:29:00.000-08:00

For a good time:

Take three small girls, preferably cousins. Add one Hot-N-Ready Little Caesars pizza, one DVD of The Lion King, and three thermoses of, what else, Diet Mountain Dew (caffeine-free, my parenting isn't that bad, people.)

Cover bed with large beach towels.

Wait for fun to ensue.

Comfort for me, a mom of four

2009-12-25T18:12:00.000-08:00

The Christmas story has always been wonderful. The news that the Son of God, creator and sustainer of all things, able to speak the heavens and earth into existence by a word, took on the frail, fragile cloak of humanity as a newborn baby is so awesome, so utterly selfless and incomprehensible to our human minds we can't help but marvel and wonder.

But since I have become a parent, the nuances of the story have become even more poignant. I felt something in common with Mary, pondering and treasuring things in her heart. I pondered and treasured as I grew my own babies, the world receding to the background as the stirrings and rumblings reminded me like a delicious secret Morse code that a real human life was emerging. To imagine that you were carrying not fallible human life, bound to disobey and disappoint, but the true God incarnate, Word made flesh, the Ancient of Days. It boggles the mind.

But this year, I found new wonder in the Christmas story.

After the angel Gabriel came to Mary, it says in Luke that Mary went a few days later to visit her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant already with John the Baptist. When Mary arrived, the baby leapt for joy in Elizabeth's womb, recognizing the "mother of my Lord."

It never occurred to me that Mary was merely days pregnant when the baby leapt in Elizabeth's womb, recognizing he was in the presence of the Lord. An embryo only, not even, just a cluster of cells not even implanted in Mary's uterus by then, but the Lord nonetheless. Do you understand what this means? A pre-embryo, but the Great I AM.

I lost a baby this week, an embryo only, in biological terms not much, but in God's eyes and ours a real person, a real life, a real baby, a real grief. I knew this, but the Christmas story reminded me.

Boss of the world

2009-12-23T05:50:00.001-08:00

Coming upon Molly on the kitchen counter, pouring herself a glass of Diet Mountain Dew from an open can:

Me: "Molly, who told you that you could have some of that?"

Molly, dismissively glancing my direction: "I do."

2009-12-16T11:05:00.000-08:00

I haven't had the heart to blog lately.

But still, there are lots of good and wonderful things happening around the Kendziera household and if this blog is one of the ways I can remind myself of that, well, I better get to it.

One of the good things happening around here is that Christmas is almost here and my sister and her family will be here on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, my eighty-five-year-old grandparents, whose year has been a lot rougher than mine, will arrive, too. We are hoping for many snacks and coziness and cousins who share and snow. Yes, this is the one time I will willingly invite snow into my life. But the day after Christmas, please, snow, go away and don't come back. Not that you will listen to me until April.

Frankie has completed her Christmas wish list and it includes the following two items: a beach ball and lots of candy. When I reminded her we already had a beach ball, she told me "Well, we can always use another one."

I like a girl with simple tastes.

Luckily, she has parents who know what she would actually want to have if she were only insightful enough to know it. And that is a double doll stroller. Of all the toys in the house, perhaps only second to the train table, the strollers have gotten the most use. And when Frankie was introduced to the delight of a DOUBLE stroller at her cousins' house, she couldn't believe such joys actually existed. Two seats to fill with various stuffed animals with dad's neckties tied tightly around their necks as leashes? Heaven!

Molly, of course, doesn't know up from down enough to have a Christmas list, but she does have one love in her life (besides suckers). Videos of Jay Jay the Jet Plane. I am ashamed to admit that my one-year-old loves nothing more in life than to sit in front of the TV on a stool and watch Jay Jay the Jet Plane. She loves it so much that when she occasionally cries out in the night, she doesn't call my name, she actually moans "Jay Jay." If that is not a sad insight into how important it is to keep small children from watching TV, I don't know what is.

A dollar short

2009-12-05T06:18:00.000-08:00

Molly, counting for Hide and Seek: "Two..Five...Eight...Nine...Yellow...White...."

A pictorial

2009-12-03T04:22:00.000-08:00

When Dads are in charge, you get a Healthy Choice frozen entree, in bed, in front of a movie, and you don't even have to pick up your fork yourself.

I love how Frankie is holding her kitty (Snowy, Whitey, Cat Jumper or Baby Lover, depending on the day) and trying to look perfectly demure while Molly is also attempting her most winning smile.

I wonder how we got her to smile like this. I am thinking it involves me yelling "Poopie!Poopie!" or something else that thoroughly delights toddlers.

It is so nice that Frankie is old enough to cooperate with attempts at Christmas photos. You can see some fuzz in the bottom left corner that represents angry Molly peeling away from the camera at a furious pace.

Close, but no cigar.

My nieces have an extensive collection of Bitty Baby dolls and their accompanying tiny delectable outfits and shoes and little books and accessories that make you want to stab yourself with pleasure. Frankie especially enjoyed the double stroller to strap in her twins "Jude" and his sister "Judranne."

"Please don't interrupt my nightly running time sans clothes. There are places this fuzzy head needs to go and pieces of furniture my bare behind need to soil."

Our niece, Anne-Marie, who gamely played trains and baby dolls and whatever else Frankie commanded her to do.

Could there be a cuter face? Could there? I challenge you to find it.

My brother-in-law Chris and Dean play a Packer themed cornhole game. How did I manage to marry into this elegant family?

Again, close, but no cigar.

I don't know if Frankie's happy face is because of Anne-Marie and Emily's company or the bag of Cheetos. If I know her as well as I think I do, I am going to go with the Cheetos.

You won't find me playing cornhole games, you will find me reading my book. Wherever and whenever you look, you fill find me trying to read my book. Please, do not interrupt me reading my book.

Our niece Emily tries to match flexibility with a four-year-old. Impossible. Four-year-olds are preternaturally twisty and bendy.

How I wish Anne-Marie lived with us so that she could occupy my children on a permanent basis.

Frankie very rudely called Anne-Marie and Emily "that big girl and that really big girl" the whole vacation, despite full well knowing their names.

The Fayetteville Children's Museum, where Molly tried to steal carts from other small children and whenever Frankie tried to check out with another child as a cashier, she would be chatting away and then look up to find the other kid had left.

Why does overtired as an adult mean droopy and lethargic while overtired as a child means "I'm going to run a half-marathon in 7.2 seconds"?

Oh, how I wish that this picture wasn't blurry so you could really see the delightful details of Molly's expression. I caught her mid-theft of one of Frankie's trains. Frankie is screaming in the background and Molly has a very determined look that says possession is nine-tenths of the law.

There is nothing that warms the cockles of a mother's heart like when her children play nicely together so that she does not have to be involved and can instead catch up on slow-cooker recipes in Woman's Day.

While Frankie glues and colors and creates, Molly glues herself, colors herself, and creates a giant mess.

I'm not two, but I have a major attiTUde

2009-12-02T12:56:00.000-08:00

Tidbits

2009-11-28T05:32:00.000-08:00

Well, we have safely arrived, thanks be to God, back from our week in North Carolina, and it is good to be home. Though we had a good time, I am glad not to be sleeping in the same room as JoJo, since I would awaken to find that she had crawled out of the Pack-N-Play and was sitting upright next to me, fuzzy curled, asking frantically for "MIL-T! MIL-T!."

Molly is quite proud of herself for adding endings to her words, but instead of "k" she adds "t" to everything. So in addition to asking for "milt," she also wants to read a "boot" before bed. She also loves to chew "dum" instead of gum.

Molly: "MAMA! DUM! DUM!"
Me: "Please don't call me dumb."
Molly (getting right in my face and enunciating slowly): "DUM"

The flights to North Carolina were long and delayed on the way there, but blessedly on time and relatively manageable on the way home. When we first arrived at the airport and my brother-in-law Chris picked us up, Molly had been up for fourteen hours without a nap and she was at her wits end, disobedient and rolling around on the airport floor pretending to be a "woof" and going completely limp when you tried to guide her in the right direction. In the car she started screaming at the top of her lungs and wouldn't quit. Frankie was trying to talk to my mom on the cell phone, to tell her we had arrived safely, but given the racket she very calmly announced "I can't hear you, Oma. Sorry. I'll have to call you back when Molly's done screaming. Goodbye."

I would love to relate more about our trip, but while I was blissfully and ignorantly typing this, I heard Molly practicing spelling her name "M- O- Y- E!!" but failed to realize she was actually practicing writing it in black marker on the wall. Time to go discipline someone who will refuse to look me in the eye and will smile happily all the while I berate her.