I'll just carry it with the monogram on the inside

I bought James some new curtains the other day and as a result of those clearance curtains I bought with a gift card, I now find myself in need of a new quilt to match them. Nothing fancy, just a navy blue quilt for his future big boy bed. And maybe some matching shams with a planet motif. My budget for this project is about $40, so I have been combing Craigslist and Ebay, with no luck. Today the kids were bored, so I suggested we go to Tuesday Morning, where not only could they be bored, but I could look for a new quilt at the same time.

I bribed them with a hot chocolate on the way home and we got out of the house so early that we got there thirty minutes before the store opened. I didn't want to wait, or get them their treat early, so I drove to the next block and pulled into the next best thing, the Goodwill/Salvation Army Shopping Center of Thrift. I do so love it there.

There were no quilts, but that left plenty of time for browsing and reminding the kids to look with their eyes as I touched every single thing that caught my eye. I threw a skirt into the basket, and a plastic bin for Legos, picked up and put back a stack of traffic cones that might have been fun for bike courses, and THEN, I found the PIECE DE RESISTANCE.



A HUGE L.L. Bean Boat and Tote IN MY SCHOOL COLORS. FOR $5.99!!! And it was practically brand new! It had some initials monogrammed on it, but it didn't bother me. IT WAS PERFECT! I bought it without a moment's hesitation.

I used it to buy groceries on the way home. I wondered about the person who would donate such a beautiful bag. I mean, I've been wanting one just like it for a couple of years, but haven't wanted to spend the $40, considering I have a perfectly serviceable (if not pretty, clean, or in good condition) pool bag already.

It was so awesome to carry in the whole load of groceries with one hand. Everything fit inside easily. I gazed at it lovingly as I stirred the butter into the kids' macaroni and cheese. I felt like one of those effortlessly stylish women we see in Maine, heading into the grocery store with their boat and tote over arm. Why would someone take something so wonderful to Goodwill, I wondered again.

And then I gave the monogram a second look.



Does that say...pus?

Oh dear. It all made sense. Someone must have ordered it online, just as I excited as I was to find it. They typed their initials in as they ordered their tasteful embroidered monogram, "PSV". A week later, the package arrived and they eagerly ripped it open and pulled their new bag out, turned it over and thought "PUS?!!!!!??"

I think that makes me love it even more.

Just a Virus

I think everyone is finally on the mend after the first big cold of the season swept through the house. We all got it, but I think this guy got hit the hardest.



He can't help but smile when he sees the camera, but don't let it fool you. He was miserable. Prolific drooling, a hacking cough, and fussiness with a capital EFF. OMG. I have a constant twinge in whatever it is that connects my arm to my shoulder from the neverending holding. I've stirred spaghetti sauce holding a baby, chopped broccoli holding a baby, folded laundry holding a baby, and gone to the bathroom with a whimpering ball of misery sitting on the bathroom floor. I don't mind too much, though, because this guy is a SNUGGLER. All he wants is to be held and then he buries his face in your shoulder. It makes him all the more pitiful.

He woke up at 5:30 this morning, screamed his way through breakfast, then fell asleep in the car on the way to church. This is good, because he hasn't been napping either and I was beginning to think he'd forgotten how. It's been really special hanging out with everyone for twelve straight hours every day this week too. Special, special bonding time. I think we were both happy for the break on Friday when I went to school, considering he spent the two hours in a dorm room surrounded by the entourage of college women he attracts whenever he goes to campus.

Anyway, when we picked him up from the nursery today after church this is what we found. They put him down after a diaper change and he rolled over and went to sleep. He stayed asleep all the way to the car, went back to sleep after getting buckled in, and slept for two hours at home.



Then he fussed and refused to eat all afternoon until his incredibly perceptive parents finally gave him a nip of Motrin and he turned in to MISTER! HAPPY! BABY! Until dinner when he imploded again. Ryan gave him a forty-five minute bath so we wouldn't have to put him to bed before six.

Apparently, it wore them both out. Judging by all the sleeping, he should be good as new tomorrow.



In other-kid news. I naively took everyone to see some military aircraft the other day in an outing that shall henceforth be known as "IS THAT A GUN? IS THAT HOW THEY SHOOT THE BAD GUYS? WHERE DO THE BAD GUYS LIVE? AND WHAT DO THEY DO WITH THE BAD GUYS ONCE THEY GET THEM?" And also, "The time we asked that uniformed soldier where the potty was."

Freewheeling!

Yesterday, just seconds after James learned to walk with a walker, Charlie asked me to take his training wheels off. I told him we should wait for Papa. You know, so someone could stay home with Wes and James while I drove Charlie to the ER. It turned out to be a lot easier than that:




Too many milestones are happening!!! My shrieks of excitement were heard all over the neighborhood. He's so stinking cool.

He is so proud. And so am I.

Wednesdays

8:30-9:00 - Drive Charlie and Wes to preschool, drop them off, run frantically back to my car with James


9:00-9:45 - Drive to my school, schlep James, the diaper bag, my work bag, my purse, my coffee into my office.  Today I happened to park next to our department chair and he carried my coffee and diaper bag for me.  Wes walked behind us (home sick from school) carrying his backpack and his own hot chocolate.  He looked like a little, three-foot tall, student.


9:45 - Hand James off to Kate (babysitter, not her real name)



10:00-10:50 -  Teach my class



10:50 - 12:00 - Office Hours



12:00 - 1:30 - Eat lunch (takeout from dining hall!!), prepare lab stuff, make copies, work on other research projects, respond to emails



(1:00 My dad picks up Charlie and Wes at preschool, they hang around together, usually at a fast food restaurant that has good coffee and a playground, until 3:00, when they get dropped off at my house with the babysitter)



1:25 - Facilitate transfer of child(ren) between Kate and Kate (both our babysitters have the same name) so Kate I can go to class.  This might mean taking James to the beginning of class occasionally, I'm not sure how it will work out.



1:30 - Lab begins



2:30 (?) - Kate gives the kid(s) back to the other Kate, Kate takes them to my house


4:00 - My lab ends, clean up and take everything back downstairs


5:00 - Arrive at home, sling some food at the kids


5:45 - Ryan arrives, I leave with Charlie for children's choir



Any questions?

With thanks to Ryan, who did everything else with the house and the kids and everything

I spent my whole weekend in this chair:



And yes, most of that time was spent in my jammies. What's your point?

Ryan took this picture when Wes, straight from a bath, figured the only way he was going to get some mama-time was to climb onto my shoulder like a parrot and help me work.

That was not my plan for the weekend, but Saturday afternoon I really hit my stride on this paper I had FORCED myself to work on. And I do mean FORCED. As in forced myself not to ctrl+dlt the whole stupid thing after the most recent round of questions from my coauthor. But it was going really, really well. I worked Saturday night until I found myself typing nonsense with my eyes closed. Embarrassingly, that happened a little after 11:00. I used to be able to push myself until two! And still get up in time for an eight o'clock class!

After a couple more hours this afternoon, and a couple more mugs and glasses on the teetering pile of nervous eating on my desk, I have two-ish chunks left to write up, and I honestly don't think they will be that hard, and then I'll have a draft ready. Considering the fact that I started this paper when Wes was an infant, it's about time.

If I can get this one off, that will only leave the NSF proposal (draft due the week before Spring Break) and the conference paper (April 25) and all the nonsense problems I've been having with that one. Then there's my class. And the lab. And and and. Should be no problem, right?

And they're napping now so I should really go straighten up. Oh what's the point?

You guys. I was not prepared for the level of chaos a fifth person could unleash on this house. Sure, I was prepared for a third baby. A cute little passive thing that would sit in a swing or on a blanket. Sure, they're demanding and make a lot of noise, and you don't get much sleep at night when you have a newborn, but at least they stay in one place when you put them down. They don't get all King Kong on their brother's block/Lego/Magnatile creations, they don't eat dog food, and they don't crawl out the back door and into the yard while you're taking out the trash.

James has been mobile since this summer when he learned to roll. Then he learned to army crawl, but he still was only interested in looking out the front window and sucking on the remote control. A few months ago came honest-to-goodness crawling. And then he got FAST. In the last few weeks he's taken an interest in the Big Boy Toys and that is when the real trouble began.

Cooking dinner has become an Olympic event--if the decathalon required athletes to perform all ten sports at the same time, that is. Put the water on to boil, get James out of the dog food. Get the meat out of the fridge, take the food processor bowl away from the baby. Spend the next ten minutes trying to find the ground beef, find it sitting on top of the dryer where it was dumped hastily in a spastic rush to keep James from putting the food processor blade in his mouth. Notice the water boiling, open the pasta box, help Charlie fix his Lego house, move James back into the kitchen, attempt to engage his attention with the basket of plastic cups and bowls in the cabinet. Put pasta in water, hear splashing, nearly kill myself tripping over useless overturned baby-entertainment basket as I rush to get James's hands out of the toilet.

Level of inappropriate language the kids have heard in the last two months: HIGH.

Then he gets locked in his booster seat with a handful of Cheerios even though dinner is a good thirty minutes away and I feel guilty for not letting him "free range" like the books tell you you should do. I get the sense that those authors have ONE CHILD. Who is in college. And possibly a prescription anti-anxiety. By the time it's time to eat he is full of Cheerios and DONE with the booster seat. He usually lasts about fifteen minutes then goes to bed.

And where I used to fold a load of laundry or two while the big boys watched a show, I now spend the whole thirty minutes repeatedly getting James off the stairs and reopening the TV cabinet doors he so loves to close. You can imagine how dire the laundry situation has become.

The pinnacle of all this interruption and confusion occurred yesterday. I changed James, then went to shake his diaper out in the bathroom. As I came out of the bathroom I watched in slow motion as he stuck his little hand out the back door just as Wes ran out into the yard. I dropped the diaper and ran to save him from getting pinched. HOURS later, when the babysitter was here and I was about to start making dinner, he crawled around the far side of the kitchen table with something stuck to his hand. I sniffed the something. Uh huh. It was poop. I'd left he poop diaper on the floor all afternoon and he had been playing with it. I forgot to add the onion that time, the soup was a little bland.

If any of you comes to my house between now and June, when James turns 18 months and gets a little bit more sense, I hope you will forgive the mess. But do tell me if there is poop on the floor. That is below even my standards.

Moment of Triumph

He's been working on this since he was Wes's age. He only began hitting the backboard about six months ago. He keeps getting soccer balls stuck up high in the gym at school because he practices ALL the TIME (I know because he points them out to me when we go up to church for dinner. See that soccer ball up there stuck on top of that doorway? I did that!).

It all came together today.



I may have shown this to everyone I passed on the way to the car. I'm a little proud.

Update: He says "SIX POINTS!" at the end. I think it was the sixth basket he made that morning.