our love is loud

We've had a week of out-and-abouting so I decided we should stay in today. I cleaned the bathtub, the mirrors and one sink, AND did two loads of laundry. I wish I could say that while I got all of this cleaning done the kids were engaged in meaningful acts of service themselves. Or maybe drilling one another on Latin roots. Nope. Helena napped, and Harper and Hudson watched part of "Cars", an episode of "Max and Ruby", and most of "Word World" before I finally said Enough! and turned off the television. We did some glitter, (The key to maintaining my sanity is to use tiny bottles of glue that are only about half full. When the glue is gone, we are finished for the day. It takes around 30 stressful minutes) then I needed to finish scrubbing the tub. Helena was clacking her stacking cups together, Harper was typing on the computer, and Hudson was playing with his cars. Then it happened. I was up to my elbows in Comet and suddenly the soundtrack to Armaggedon (the event, not the movie) began. Hudson had decided he would like a little music so he had turned on the radio, which was set to the classical station, and he accidentally had the volume on max. I think it was Wagner. It took me about 5 seconds to bolt in there and turn it down at which point they were all three wailing in fear and, possibly, pain. I tried to hug all three of them without using my Comet-covered hands. It took about 10 minutes for everyone to stop weeping. Hudson needed his blanket, his thumb, two stuffed dogs, a pillow, and 15 minutes curled up on the couch to recover. I think he will not do that again soon.

Nope, not getting paid.

Nothing makes people get all vaccine crazy like telling them There Won't Be Enough To Go Around!! Is anyone else skeptical of "shortages"? I'm not usually a cynic but it just seems fishy to me. Like a case study in an economics course. Or maybe sociology. You create a demand. Then you limit the supply so people will pay more. Farm subsidies? Diamonds? Cabbage Patch Kids circa 1982?

Helena slept EIGHTEEN hours on Monday. A two hour morning nap, a three hour afternoon nap, and then, from 6:30pm until 7:30 am Tuesday morning. She was very delightful for the six hours she was awake. This is the little shoulder shimmy she likes to do in her high chair when she is about to eat her evening oatmeal.

Product endorsement #1 for which I am not getting paid: I love Huggies Overnites diapers. Thirteen hours and no leaks. They work.

Product endorsement #2 for which I am not getting paid: Maybe it's a coincidence, but the Halo Sleep Sack seems to be directly related to her vastly improved night sleep.

Hudson had some potty success on Monday but I wasn't ready to fully commit. Harper drew a picture of him wearing his Lightning McQueen underpants:That speckled oval is Lightning, of course. I can't remember what she said that was in Hudson's hand, but it was funny and had nothing to do with anything. (I just asked her--it was a bowl of lentils.)

Product endorsement #3 f.w.I.a.n.g.p.: At Whole Foods for a mere $2.49 you can buy a bag of 365 brand ginger snaps and they are very good. A little bit crunchy, a little bit chewy--just what a ginger snap ought to be. I have a hard time closing the handy zippered top. Not because it is hard to close, but because I always want one more.

I think Harper has officially stopped napping. She falls asleep during her in-room quiet time only around once a week now. We made it to almost 4 1/2, which is about a year and a half beyond what I had hoped, actually. Today she stayed in her room for an hour then she came out and together we worked on her very first big kid Lego set--a cute little camper (still not getting paid). I wasn't much for Legos as a kid, and now I understand why. The instructions were embarrassingly easy to follow and yet I still had to tear apart and start over twice. Here's the finished product:
The back opens up and has two chairs, a sleeping bay above the cab, AND a television.

The husband found this Monarch while he mowed the front yard. It held on to Harper's finger really tightly, which pleased her greatly. Then we set it free.

You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table

It turns out that Mr. Kenny Rogers and his tale of The Gambler touches on many Important Life Themes (those caps are for you, Mary P.) I wonder if it's ever been made into a sermon series? This sermon should be about Dave Ramsey and his envelopes. And "there's time enough for countin', when the dealin's done" could be a great intro to try to reconcile the oft confusing ideas of our sins, not in part, but the full, being nailed to the cross and I bear them no more (it is well, it is well, with my soul) with being held to account for our deeds, or lack thereof, at a final reckoning. The lack of structure in that sentence is just ridiculous. You still with me?

I'm giving myself two weeks to decide on a three day window to stay home and finally potty train the Hudson boy. We're already a few months past the age Harper was. We've had some really nifty little underpants at the ready for several months now and I've been talking those up. We've done several trial runs and yesterday, while he ran around in some Mater undies, he stopped suddenly, gasped, and said, "There's a DINOSAUR!" A dinosaur? I asked. Where? "In my UNDIES," he explained, "I need a diaper on." There may or may not have been a dinosaur-like NOISE that led him to believe there might be a prehistoric reptile residing in his undies.

Yesterday we made our yearly pilgrimage to the St. Luke's pumpkin patch. When we got there we realized that the camera, which had been put into one of the velcroed pockets of Hudson's cargo pants (when you are a small boy, sometimes you need to be convinced that your pockets are useful so that you can be persuaded to wear pants) had not arrived with us. The husband went to get it out of his pocket and Hudson informed him, rather cheerfully, that he'd taken the camera out and left it at home. Since we have no actual pumpkin patch pictures, here's a picture of Harper painting a picture of a pumpkin:

Know when to run

I got a call from my friend Seana last week. She had a little story to tell. She and her husband Dave live in the southern part of Florida with their three kids (who are, incidentally, the same ages and gender as ours). It seems that when you live in a relatively undeveloped part of southern Florida, you might just step out into your front yard with your children to play, as you've done hundreds of times before, and instead of a neighborhood kid there to greet you, you might just find something else. Something REPTILIAN. Something like An Alligator. And not a small one. Seana kept her cool, ushering the kids quickly back inside and calling the Alligator Guy (because there actually is an Alligator Guy) to come and use his cool alligator trapping tools to capture the uninvited guest. Seana, understandably, has been a touch rattled since she's had this little Discovery Channel episode play out within a few feet of her small children. I'm fairly certain I would NOT have handled things this well. I'm fairly certain I would have RUN. I'm not generally apocalyptic in my thinking, but I have wondered before when I'm out with the kids by myself, that if for some reason I had to gather them up in my arms and get away from something (a tornado, a charging rhino..) whether or not I'd be able to do it. Maybe I'll start doing push-ups or something.

We went to the zoo today. This giant candy corn received more attention than any animals we saw. As you can tell from her stance, Harper is, I am certain, saying something like, "Hudson, come and enjoy this giant candy corn with me, please!"

I let Harper have the camera for a little while and she took an array of blurry shots and a few good ones. Our friend Izzy (who has made it very clear that she someday plans to be a part of our family in the role of Hudson's wife) and her doll:
Another shot of the candy corn:
And I thought this one had a certain something:

Know when to walk away

There was a little boy, who had a little curl

right in the middle of his forehead.

We were at the park two days ago and there was a gaggle of girls, about 9 years old, I'd guess, who were sprinting and squealing, as only a gaggle of 9 year old girls can, all over the park. Harper ignored them and went about the business of digging in the sand. Hudson stood very, very still and watched them flitting about. They were playing some sort of very shrill, silly game of chase which involved all of the slides and other equipment. After approximately 5 minutes of quiet observation, Hudson decided, when the girls had seemed to alight for a moment on the other side of the playground, to go down his favorite slide. He moved quickly, sensing that at any moment he could be overtaken. He was standing at the top of the twisty slide when it happened. One of the girls, a sturdy red-haired lovely, came charging, apparently being pursued by a dragon (who was a boy of around 6 who was someone's little brother). Hudson realized what was about to happen and he flung himself down the slide, his face expressing equal parts terror and exhilaration. I rushed over, expecting him to be in hysterics by the time he got to the bottom. He came flying around the lowest curve, the little red-haired girl in hot pursuit. But he was not crying. His eyes looked a little wild. He landed solidly on his feet, whipped his head around and took off running, not enjoying himself exactly, but not sad either. Welcome to the world of girls, my son.

Know when to fold them

Three days in a row! It's like one of the lower base camps for the Everest that is the annual December Blog-a-Day Challenge. On with the show.

Does the top of your dryer look like this? I actually really enjoy every step of the laundry process (with an especial fondness for folding) EXCEPT for the putting away. I usually put the kids' clothes up right away because 1. they each only have a few things that fit AND are seasonally appropriate at any given time, so they need to be at the ready, and 2. there is ample space for these few things in each of their rooms. With my clothes and the husband's, it's an entirely different story. Some things have a place, and if I were more efficient in my storage strategies, there is probably ample room for everything. I have very few things that need to be hung. Most of the things I wear on a daily basis (t-shirts, jeans, skirts, cardigans) are folded and stacked in my closet on this shelving unit that the husband has had since college, I think. It works pretty well unless I need something on the bottom and there is a landslide. Plus I have, prematurely, it turns out, gotten out my sweaters and long sleeved t-shirts, which are now in a heap on top of the ironing board because it is around 80 degrees here today. The husband has this nifty chest thing from Ikea that, hypothetically, was meant to house his t-shirts, undergarments, and other folded things. But it quickly gets disheveled because, inevitably, he will need some pair of shorts that is on the bottom of the stack and then when I go to put clean clothes in, I get overwhelmed with the mess and then someone needs their diaper changed or their bike untangled from the kitchen chairs and so instead of being put away, the neatly folded clothes go back to the top of the dryer.

I have been trying (not very strenuously, obviously) for around 4 years now to figure out a system for housekeeping. A few weeks ago I started jotting down all of the jobs that need to be done and I thought it might make for easier remembering if I had some alliteration. Mopping on Monday, for example. Floors on Friday. But doing all of the floors in one day is too big a job, really. So then I thought I might do a room a day. I think this might work, if I could just get started. I know there are all sorts of web-sites out there to help me with this. There's one where the first thing you are supposed to do is get your sink to shine. I have tried, oh, how I have tried to get my sink to shine. But it is a 55 year old sink that was once white and is now a grayish hue with rust stained accents. It will never shine again. So, I got dejected and never got any further into what is, I'm sure, a really good template for success.

Here is the promised picture of Twinkle:

Know when to hold them

When I was pregnant with Harper I was a teacher at M.D. Anderson. I had around 15 students in grades 6-12, and they all had cancer. Cancer of the brain. Cancer of the blood. Cancer of the bone. Some of them got well and are now, I hope, living normal lives, their bout with childhood cancer a distant memory. Some of them died. Neil, DeAnna, Kaitlyn, Jeronimo, Graden, Josue. Toward the end of the school year, when I was great with child, Jeronimo (he was Colombian, hence the spelling) got very ill and could no longer get up to come to the classroom. I would waddle to his room to check on him and to do some sort of little lesson, a tiny glimpse of normal--a charade, really, that he might get well and need to know about the stages of mitosis or the symbolism in Number the Stars. Mostly he would sleep and his mother and I would talk quietly about motherhood. One day I went in and his mother was curled up in bed with him, this 13 year old boy who, when I'd first met him was tall and straight, with startling blue eyes and a propensity to boast about all of the motorcross motorcycles he had back in Colombia. He looked so small at the end, and she looked small too, all wrapped around him. I quietly turned to go, not wanting to disturb them, but she heard and motioned me over. She had tears running down her face, and she reached over and put her hand on my enormous belly. "You should sleep with your baby," she said, "as long as you can." Jeronimo never woke up again, and died a couple of days later, his mother lying in bed beside him.

I did not sleep with Harper, except for the few times when I fell asleep nursing her. In fact, in hindsight, I didn't really hold her very often. I read in some book that if a baby wasn't nursing or fussing, they should be put down. And that I should never rock her to sleep because then she would never be able to go to sleep on her own and I would have to go away with her to college to rock her to sleep every night. I think with your first baby it's easy to get overwhelmed with how much isn't getting DONE when you are tending to them. Instead of realizing that the tending itself is a significant doing. I have never been one to label my parenting style, but I suppose I've come closer to "attachment parenting" with Hudson and Helena. We don't co-sleep, but when they are awake, I have tried to hold them (not Hudson much anymore--he has gotten heavy) as much as I can, whether they are happy or sad. My arm and back often ache at the end of the day. My floors are not clean. The laundry is not put away. The dishwasher needs to be unloaded. Some day I will figure out how to get it all done. Until then, I will err on the side of holding. Because our days are numbered and we know not their end.

Glory days

I'm going to try to write something every day this week.

We spent last week with the Grandparents Pate and had our usual delightful time, even though we didn't get to play outside much because of the Plague of Mosquitoes (which, I think, comes right after locusts and just before frogs) that had descended upon Port Neches. Harper and I went to the homecoming pep rally (or 'pepperoni' as Harper pronounces it) at my old high school on Friday. I got a little choked up when the drums started pounding out the first beats of the fight song to get things started. It wasn't that I was nostalgic, per se-- my life now is so much richer and deeper than it was then. I just can't wrap my head around the reality of so much time having passed. It's been twenty-one YEARS--and I still remember all of the words to the songs and all of the steps to the dances (though the back-handsprings and splits would, if I attempted them today, land me in the ICU). Will the next 21 years go as quickly?

Harper decided a few weeks ago that she wanted a stuffed star. And she thought it should be pink, because that is her favorite color. She kept bringing it up instead of forgetting about it, as she does with many of her whims of fancy. So, I tried in vain to find a stuffed pink star, found none, and decided I would make one myself. I don't have a sewing machine so I sewed it by hand and had her stuff it. His name is Twinkle.I'll try to post a picture of the finished product tomorrow. Twinkle is already beloved by Harper, who doesn't seem to mind his uneven points and crooked stitched smile. She's sweet that way.


I finished Peace Like a River and it is a good yarn, well-told. The character development is exquisite and subtle and just what it ought to be.

We are finally having some coolish (and by 'coolish' I mean still wearing shorts but not sweating quite as much) fall weather for doing this:We spent this morning celebrating our friend Abby's third birthday at the park:
Harper, as you can see, is in a celebratory mood. Hudson, as you can see, has even fluffier hair when the humidity dips below 90%. Helena, as you can't see, wore jeans for the first time.

Joyful, joyful

*Results NOT Typical*

"The government wants to make it a little harder for bloggers to shill products online for fun and profit."
From an article in today's (oops, actually yesterday's--'news' is a relative term around here) Wall Street Journal about the FTC's attempt to restrict gifts to bloggers who then write favorable things about the products on their blogs. Apparently the FTC thinks we poor little lamb blog readers need the government to protect us from bloggers who try, for example, to get us to drink more Crystal Light without expressly telling us that they are getting some sort of compensation from Crystal Light. Good grief. Am I the only cynic who automatically assumes that someone is ALWAYS getting paid? And I don't care! Good for them. They also want to make celebrity endorsements more transparent. So, for example, if Brooke Shields goes on the Oprah show and raves about how Crest toothpaste is to thank for her gleaming white teeth, she will be required to look at the camera and say something like, "The good folks at Procter and Gamble just paid me a cool 2 million dollars to say that, y'all!" When I read stuff like this it just confirms my Libertarian leanings. I think that people who buy things just because some celebrity (or mommy blogger) tells them to deserve all the Cindy Crawford furniture they can stand. I did want to add a caveat about my book list over there. I am going to put an asterisk by the books that I would actually recommend until I can develop a better system. Right now, I just wanted a central place to keep a record. **I am receiving NO monies (or gold) from the Ayn Rand Institute. Or the estate of Ezra Jack Keats.**

Eight months

Look what Helena decided to do to assuage the unpleasantness that was the Backyard Photo Shoot, Take Three:

She started clapping! For the first time! While I was taking pictures! And then Harper and Hudson started showing her how to do it and encouraging her in the sweet, high-pitched voices they use with her and it was Extremely Cute.

Then the fun wore off and it was time for the solace that only this can bring:
Hudson was so pleased with the clapping that he forgot to be pitiful. He was also fresh off of a three hour nap, which is helpful. We did lots of going this week--the zoo, the park, the Museum of Fine Arts (free on Thursdays!) AND the Children's Museum. The weather started to feel ALMOST autumnal, which in Houston basically means that highs were in the mid-80's and humidity was slightly less than 90%. The glory days are coming soon. We will exult accordingly. A few more things about the baby girl, since this is decidedly her only "baby book":

EAT: She has eaten, and enjoyed, sweet potatoes and bananas several times. I remember about every third day that I should probably give her something. Maybe we'll do peas this week. She's still nursing every three to four hours during the day.

SLEEP: She still goes to bed between 6-6:30p and has started waking up somewhere between 4-5am for an early morning feed, after which she falls back to sleep. She wakes up to start the day between 7:30-8:30. She takes a good morning and afternoon nap if we're home. She doesn't sleep much when we're out, but neither does she get fussy, which is so nice.

BE MERRY: She has gotten really good at entertaining herself. As long as she can see one of us, she will play happily in her little play yard for extended periods of time.
When she's ready to get out, she does this:

Changing her diaper and getting her dressed gets increasingly difficult. She actually stood on her HEAD at one point tonight as I was trying to get her diaper on after her bath. I was holding her legs and she managed to upend herself and get completely upside down, while holding on to the changing table with an iron grip. When she crawls she uses one knee and the other foot to propel herself forward. She can stand up in her crib, even while encased in a fleece sleep sack. She isn't much of a talker yet, but she says 'dah-dah' pretty often, and sometimes when she is actually looking at the Daddy. I carry her around lots. Because I like to and because she only weighs 13 pounds. That will have to be all for now because it is late and I am tired. A side note: I've started keeping a list of the books we've been checking out from the library over there in the margin. I was keeping a list in a notebook until Hudson found it and colored over it with a black crayon. I might start a separate list of books that we own and would recommend.