Despite my last post full of uncertainty and angst....

....one of my kids just said something that has me laughing too much to keep to myself.

So a dirty little secret of mine is this:  I can't remember anybody's actual first word.  There are certain words that each of my kids, as babies, uttered that have stuck in my mind (like Katie saying, "What's that?" but pronouncing it "Whaaaatsssssuuuuuupp?" right when it was a catchphrase due to those commercials.)  So when my kids ask me what their first word was, I just make something up.

Well, this was the topic of conversation yesterday during breakfast.  I told Claire that her first word was "Dup" (meaning "cup" - something she demanded constantly.)  I told Beth that her first word was "jump!" which I actually think might be true.  When Lucy asked me what her first word was, though, I paused for a moment to think something up and instead of waiting she declared that she could remember herself.

"Really?" I said.
"Oh, yes," she said.
"So what was it?" I asked.
She looked at me with her blunt, frank little face and confidently announced what her first word was.
"Beer!" said Lucy.

Evangelizing

We were not having a great morning.

Ruth woke up at 6am and then refused to take a nap, despite her weary red eyes and body-racking yawns.  The older girls had been told to straighten up the top floor, but the situation up there quickly devolved into an unacceptable atmosphere.  Things were confiscated, tears were shed, wails were wailed.

Add to this attractive scenario a front yard that is also devolving, due to the weeds which clearly have a personal vendetta against us and an overflowing recycling bin.  It's been....I can't even remember, weeks?  since we remembered to set the stupid bin out, so it is now more a mountain of trash than an identifiable bin.  I have multiple secondary boxes that I keep in the kitchen, but I tend to keep the milk jugs (which are sealable) and other contained, non-sticky stuff in those while the beer bottles still get tossed outside in the overflowing bin.  In other words, if you looked at our recycling bin right now (which isn't even an official recycling bin, it's just a blue plastic container with a big X duct-taped on the side) we totally look like alcoholics. 

So, to recap:  cranky, exhausted-eyed baby, wailing and crying from upstairs, and a mountain of beer bottles by the front door.  This is the morning the Mormons decide to drop in.

I, being upstairs amidst the crying and wailing, actually missed it.  Chris answered the door, trashy baby in hand, and politely (over the sounds of torture from directly overhead) let the women know that we are already a praying sort of family and that now (you know, with all the screaming) was not really a good time to discuss things further.

The women left without exactly making it clear whether they will be returning or not, but when Chris told me all this I had to wonder:  did they guess we are Catholic?

I kind of hope not.

One of the major benefits of having the older girls in school....

....is that the non sequiturs of Miss Lucy are easier to catch.

WARNING!  The second story in this post is pretty explicit.  I've actually put some thought into ways to clean it up, but there is no other way to convey the horror of that moment but to come out and say it.

1- Daddy's Girl

Not five minutes after the girls left on the bus this morning, Lucy sat down next to Ruth and I on the living room floor and said:

"So, Mommy, did you have to fight all the other girls so you could marry Daddy?"

"Fight the other girls?" I asked, not quite following.

"Yes," she said, "all the other girls wouldn't want to marry that other guy*, so did you fight them?"

I thought about it for a second, then answered,"Yes.  I had to fight all the other girls, and I won."

2- Thank God there were no men at the park!

Later that same morning, we were at the park when Lucy started digging through my diaper bag.
"Hey!" she yelled out, "You have jingle bells in here!"

I was blithely chatting with another mother and nodded in her general direction, not really paying attention, but she persisted.  "Try this!" she exclaimed, trying to get the attention of another little girl, "I can't get it to jingle."

I glanced at her, and then did an exact replica of a cartoon double-take.  I'm pretty sure my eyes literally bugged out of my head.  What Lucy was holding, what she had just unwrapped and taken out of my bag, what she was swinging wildly around and trying to give to other children was....a tampon.


3- Correct assessment of the situation

As we drove home, Lucy noticed a hitch-hiker on the side of the road.  "Is that a policeman?" she asked me, "Or just some random guy?"

* I don't know who "that other guy" is, but I'd be curious to meet him.

Horror upon horror upon horror

Remember when a certain member of this family did this awful thing?  And then remember when she did this other awful thing?  Remember, too, this weird episode?

Why is Lucy so feral?  We ask ourselves this all the time.  I don't know the answer.

Things have been on the upswing since she was potty-trained a year ago, and although I still haven't replaced the hall bathroom rug (she sometimes over-shoots her mark if you get my drift, something I was not formerly aware was even possible with girls) I was starting to think that it might soon be safe.  However...

Actually, let me back up.

I sometimes buy Nutella for the girls to have with their morning toast or bagels.  They love it, but it can get messy.  I can only take cleaning up so many chocolaty messes, so it isn't a regular pantry item.  When we do have it, though, I can count on finding chocolate handprints on the doors, streaks around the bathroom sink (where they go to wash their hands after breakfast), all over the counters, the table, the chairs....You name it.

Okay, so back to Miss Lucy.  Can you see where this is headed?

I noticed brown marks all over the shower curtain one morning, and since it was a Nutella day I made the obvious assumption.  I took the curtain down and washed it, and for a few weeks all was well.  Then more marks appeared.  It was another Nutella day, so this time I was lazier (knowing that we had a good three days left until the Nutella jar ran out) and didn't bother taking it down for a while.

Then it happened again.  Only this time, there was no Nutella in the house.  I had a moment of doubt, but then I told myself - the girls had chocolate muffins today, surely it was just melted chocolate chips! It was a busy day so I didn't take the curtain down until the next morning.

That very  morning, with the still-damp shower curtain hanging, it happened again.  This time, though, the door was not closed and I was within viewing range.

I am sure you can guess what I witnessed.    I would really rather not spell out what I saw, if that's alright.  I am surprised that my eyes weren't actually seared blind by the sight.  Let's just put it this way, for those who don't have kids, or for those who have managed to raise their kids with civility:  the shower curtain is right beside the toilet.  Directly opposite the toilet paper roll, easily accessed by anyone sitting on the throne looking for alternatives.

I have heard of this thing happening before, but before it was always somebody else's kid.  I cannot believe that I made it through four girls only to get hammered like this with the fifth.  And I cannot believe that I ever thought a white shower curtain was a good idea.  Although, it does bleach well.  That's actually a pretty major plus, all things considered.

It all comes down to this:  this thought that I have so often, mostly in a joyful way, but sometimes...not so much:  I cannot believe that this is my life.

Seriously.  I cannot believe it.

Interesting start to the week

Yesterday morning was not particularly rough or chaotic.  Mondays always stink, of course, and the girls were a little lethargic but otherwise it was a pretty standard morning.  I decided, sort of last minute, to add a decorative white chocolate swirl to the cookies Beth was taking in to school for her birthday, so I was a little behind on dressing Ruth, Lucy and myself, but that often happens for various reasons anyway.

When it came time to wait for the bus, I sat in the van with the door open, feeding Ruth a banana while Lucy played in the back seat.  Ruth was just wearing a t-shirt and diaper and Lucy was sporting a very old nightgown that is at least 3 sizes too big for her.  I was wearing my pjs as well, an old pair of pants littered with swiss cheese holes and a flimsy t-shirt with a collar that has been pulled down too many times to be public-appropriate but again - we were just sitting in the car, waiting for the bus.

When the bus finally came, it bombed by the house as if we'd never existed.  Beth, Claire and Abbie all immediately began to yell in panic, and then we heard the unmistakable sound of the bus coming to a sudden halt down the road.  I jumped out of the car and yelled, "Don't run out in the road!  Wait, wait!" to the girls, but they were all flailing and yelling themselves and they didn't hear me.  Before I could reach them (they were halfway down the driveway) they started to run - down the busy highway- towards the bus.

I charged after them, with Ruth dangling like a football in one arm and a banana in the other, trying to will the cars on the road to stop (why weren't the cars stopping?) with my mind.  The girls rounded the corner of our neighbors yard, still flailing and hopping around like puppies, and I yelled to them "Stay in the grass!  STAY IN THE GRASS!"

As I was rounding the corner myself, I heard a shriek of terror coming from our yard.  Poor Lucy didn't understand what was happening; all she knew was that we were sitting in the car one moment, running wild and screaming the next.  I looked around my neighbor's hedge to see Lucy, looking exactly like Newt from Aliens,

crying in terror and running directly for the road, where she must have assumed we'd gone.  "No, Lucy, stop, STOP!" I started to yell, torn between guiding the older girls along the road towards the bus (which, to be clear, was nowhere near our house) and turning back to bodily stop Lucy's panic-stricken progress towards the road.  In the end, realizing that traffic had finally, finally stopped for the bus, I shouted a last instruction to the older girls and then turned back to Lucy, who ran to my side, shaky and teary.  The older girls made it onto the bus without further incident, and as the bus door hissed shut and I breathed a sigh of relief it finally dawned on me what sort of picture we presented to the many, many cars who were now stopped on the road, giving them ample opportunity to take in the sight.

With as much dignity as I could, I got a firm grip on my banana, pulled Ruth's shirt down to cover her belly, put my arm around my little wild-child and, hoping against hope that the holes in my pants were not where I thought they were, turned my back to the gaping onlookers and returned home.

The trouble with living in the fake country

I like to call where we live "the fake country," a place where your neighbor might have, in their otherwise perfectly suburban yard, a goat pen.  Or, more inexplicably, a horse.  A place where the waitress at your local diner might tell you that working through her 3rd trimester hasn't been that hard at the restaurant, it's milking the cows on her farm that is really killing her.

Most of the time I love living here.  It's the best of both worlds, where I can stroll past the horse farm during my walk (not to be confused with the suburban house, where there is only one horse) and drive less than 15 minutes to get sushi (and it's good sushi, too.)  Sometimes, though, it can make life a little awkward.  In places like story-time, for instance, that mecca for stay-at-home suburban moms who are willing to do anything to get out of the house, even if it involves the public humiliation of dancing to "head, shoulders, knees and toes" as if it were actual music.

The theme for Storytime last week was mice.  All the books featured friendly, adorable mice doing things like having tea parties, making cookies, and playing hide-and-seek.  We played a game involving matching colored felt mice to colored felt clocks and sang songs about how you should never, ever, scoop up the field mice and bop them on the head.

Settling in to read the sequal to "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,"* the librarian asked the kids what they would do if they saw a mouse in their house.  One little girl said that she would have a tea party (inspired by the book we'd just read), one little boy claimed that he might keep the mouse as a pet.  Lucy looked over her peers with that blunt, straightforward way she has and then loudly (so loudly! I really cannot emphasize enough how loudly) yelled out over the other children, "I would put the mouse in a trap!  Then throw it in the garbage!)

The librarian chuckled, and the other parents looked at me in horror.  But what can I say?  Twice a year when the field in front of our house is plowed, we actually do have mice visiting our house, and when they do.....we kill them and throw the trap away.  Although the mice we get can be kind of cute (they look exactly like the Frisbys from The Rats of Nymh, tiny little things with a habit of hopping more than scurrying and standing on two paws instead of all fours) my girls are not at all sentimental about them.  All the books in the world might anthropomorphize mice, but when my kids see a mouse they see something that is a pain in the neck anywhere but outdoors, what with all the pooping and eating of chocolate chips that they do. 

Oh, well.  We luckily weren't going for the "most sheltered" award at the library anyway.  I do wish Lucy would learn to control her volume a little better, though.

*Am I the only one out there who thinks they are starting to milk the "If you give a..." cash cow to death?  I love the "Mouse...Cookie" book, I was on board with the Pig and her pancakes, we even own the one about the Moose and his Muffins...but it's all starting to feel a little done-to-death, isn't it?  I mean, there are only so many overly-pushy animals in the world.

It has cascading rhinestones

The cable guys just left, after having been here for half an hour or so. As I shut the door behind them, I brushed my hair behind my ear and made a horrible discovery.

I am wearing a sparkly, bedazzled blue hair clip. Lucy insisted that I put it on this morning, and I forgot all about it. Until just now, of course, when it's too late.

Fusion Pilates for Pregnancy, opinionated audience edition

Overheard while trying to follow an exercise video this morning:

"This looks too easy!" "That's because you're not pregnant."

"You look like a doggie, Mommy." *

"Why are you breathing like that?"

"You don't look like the lady on the t.v."

"Why do you always use the wrong side when they say 'left' or 'right'?"

"I can do that! I do that all the time, anyways!"

"Why are you sweating from stretching out?"

"Will I have to do this, too, when I am pregnant?"


*I don't know if that comment was because I was on all fours, or because of the panting.....

When "suffer the little children" means actual suffering

I like to think of myself, ten years and soon-to-be six kids into motherhood, as a veteran parent. I don't claim to know a whole lot about a whole lot, but I know my kids fairly well and we have finally reached a stage where I have confidence in my role as their mother. This isn't to say that I am never overwhelmed or frustrated or at my wit's end, but at least I have finally realized that I just need to ride the crappy times out, and things will work out. Where my "veteran" status shows, in my opinion, is in public where the girls are almost always mannerly, sweet, calm and collected. Although it used to happen more than I would like to admit, I can't remember the last time I found myself overwhelmed and in tears in a public place.

Actually, I mean the last time before today.

Chris got up early and went to mass alone this morning, as he had stuff to do and the rest of us couldn't go to mass until noon, once we had returned Katie's friend after a sleepover. Taking the kids to mass solo isn't a huge deal anymore. Chris did it all the time when I was working, since I usually had to go to the too-late-for-the-little-girls Saturday evening mass, and he never had a problem.

It just wasn't my day, though. Lucy tripped and fell on her way out the door, and although we had bandaged her bloody knee, she never really recovered. She was whiny and demanding from the get-go at church, and the deck was stacked against us as it was a bilingual mass, which to the girls just means twice as long as usual.

At one point, I hauled her to the back and discussed rather vigorously where her behaviour had gone wrong, and what she needed to do to get things back on track. We seemed to be in agreement, so back into the church we went.....Five minutes later, I was staggering under the weight of her squirming 3 year body as I beat my way to the back again while she screeched at the top of her lungs, "I am really mad at you!"

I had to take her outside, because she was too loud even for the back of church. There we stood, my screaming toddler and I, as my eyes filled with frustrated tears and I felt like I was 3 years old myself.


Lesson learned: there is no such thing as a veteran parent. I may have a better idea of what I am doing now, but all that really means is that I have a dim flashlight as I still grope my way through dark territory. I don't think there is a point at which I will be able to sit back and congratulate myself on having it all figured out. That's probably half of the point of having kids in the first place: you teach them, they teach you. I am finding their "humility and growing patience" curriculum to be pretty effective.

backsliding on the potty training....

The title of this post can be taken literally, unfortunately.

I do not deal well with excessive amounts of uncontrolled feces in the house. (By "excessive" here, I actually mean any amount whatsoever that is not in a diaper or in the toilet where it belongs.) I don't do well with it. I recognize this in myself.

I'm afraid that recognizing my shortcomings does not always translate into....uh, controlling them. So, long story short: the hallway bathroom is now really, really clean but I was kind of a jerk while making it so. And nothing makes you feel more lousy that realizing that the person you were being a jerk to is three years old, and still wants a hug when you calm down.

Parenthood: mortification in every way possible, combined with the constant reminder that you need it, you idiot.

The other "stuff"

The two younger girls and I went to Target this afternoon.

The corner counter top in the kitchen has been bugging me lately, because it tends to be the dumping ground for all sorts of junk. Chris has a habit of scrawling vital and irreplaceable information on little pieces of scrap paper and then dumping them on the pile of junk mail, and after accidentally pitching a few important scrawls I have washed my hands of the pile altogether. This means that the mountain of scrap paper (interspersed with business cards, surgical tidbits, and reciepts) grows and grows and grows....and takes up the entire counterspace. I have tried multiple times to impose order via various wicker baskets, once I even tried a bread drawer, but the pile always ends up overwhelming whatever container I was hoping would...contain the stuff. So naturally I have come to the conclusion that I just need a bigger container.

I was browsing the "storage" section, looking over the baskets and canvas boxes, when Abbie asked what I was looking for. I heard her right away because she tends to speak in an only slightly subdued yell whenever we are in stores.

"I'm just looking for something to put Daddy's stuff in," I said.
"Oh," Abbie responded in her signature screechy-yell, "You mean beer!"

Back to School (or How Anne of Green Gables deceived me)

Sorry for the long silence. It has been a busy few weeks, but here I am to report that the first week back was a resounding success! The girls all seem to enjoy their respective teachers and classes, and we're off to a smooth start.

Yesterday, though....

Yesterday was a different story. It was the official Back-To-School Night, where the parents get to sit for hours listening to things that could be communicated in the span of three minutes, and the teachers get to learn where all the annoying habits of their students come from. I joined the "hospitality committee" this year, which is a fancy way of saying I bring food. Since all baking these days must be used as preparation for my sister's wedding cake in November, I decided to make cupcakes decorated in the school colors, with tiny roses on top.

This is where Anne of Green Gables let me down.

I grew up loving the series. Loving it. I loved the way Anne did things just like me, forgetting things and having crazy things happen to her....I was never responsible for having a mouse drown in cream, but I did once leave the garage door open, leaving me an easy scapegoat for the mouse that appeared a few days later. I also never fell through a roof, but I routinely ran out of gas while driving my grandparents' boat around Deep Creek, leaving me (and my passengers: Kelli, Julie, Shannon, Ange - I'm sorry) stranded at the mercy of strangers. The awesome thing about Anne, though, was that as she grew older she grew out of her ditsy ways. By the time she was a mother she was gracious, relaxed and serene. I felt confident that my future would be the same.

Fast forward to yesterday. I began decorating the cupcakes around noon, thinking that I could drop them off at the school right before classes let out and surprise the girls with a car-ride home. It wasn't to be, however, because I am incapable of gauging time correctly. By four o'clock I was frantic and the kitchen was covered in frosting, and I was still not done. To make things worse, Chris came into the kitchen and immediately burst into laughter. He was laughing so hard he couldn't tell me why, he just directed me to the bathroom mirror. I went in and looked at myself. I looked at my lips, then my teeth, then my tongue. They were all a deep, violent shade of blue. I should not have licked that spoon.

I brushed my teeth like mad, to no avail, then realized that I was just going to have to accept the fact that I was about to face an entire school full of judgemental parents...with a blue mouth.

I packed up the cupcakes and asked Katie to help me load them into the car. Despite my blue mouth (and, actually, green fingers -- the cupcakes were blue with yellow flowers), I felt proud of the cupcakes. They looked cute, and I congratulated myself on cleverly decorating them in the school colors. I said as much to Katie as she helped me out, and she looked at me with a puzzled expression.

"Um, Mom, " she said, "The school colors are blue and red."

Oh. So, as it turns out, I decorated the cupcakes in visually unappealing colors and covered myself in bizarre stains for no reason at all. I was all set to really impress the PTA crowd.

Anne Shirley would never have done that. Where did I go wrong? Is this my fault, or is it the fault of Mrs. Montgomery, who should have known that flighty little girls grow into flighty little adults? I'm going to blame Anne. And hope that the parents of my kids' friends don't hold it against them when their mother can't pull herself together.

Nothing keeps you humble like kids

Abbie to Chris: "Daddy, you're not a very fast runner but you are a fast reader!"

I don't like to think of it that way

The girls were talking about age as I cleaned up the kitchen tonight, and Claire asked me how old I am.

"Thirty-two," I said.

Her eyes sparkled and grew big as she gave me an excited hug and said, "Wow! You're almost 40, Mom!"

You know you're officially old when....

Getting carded just amuses you instead of making you angry.

Yeah, I still get carded from time to time, but it doesn't go to my head because I know full well that "young looking" does not equal "good looking." Heh.

So, Rach, the next time you harass me about dying the grey streak in my hair remember this. It's funny when I'm by myself, but to walk into a place with five kids, all calling me "Mommy" and have the people there think I might be under 21? Not so funny.

Spaghetti with chicken

Is there anything more gratifying than spending over two hours* cooking a dinner tailored specifically to your children's tastes and then watching your three year old hold her nose and gag when you serve it?

Humility: served daily in the Mlinek household.

*It should take 30 minutes. I was only able to do actual prep and cooking in five minute spurts, however, due to milk spills, garbage-dumping, homework emergencies, argument interventions, and toddlers determined to drink out of the dog's bowl. Whenever I make a truly time-intensive dinner I generally have to start it directly after breakfast.

We bring joy into the world

At least that is what I am going to assume, as no less than 4 individuals burst into laughter at the sight of the girls and me navigating hardware stores. We were, perhaps, not exactly in our element. But I'm going to assume those people were all just very joyful.

However, I'm excluding the cashier at WalMart who later literally yelled, "Oh, holy God!" when I affirmed that the girls were, in fact, all mine. That was a first for me, and I wasn't quite sure how to answer her. I think I just gave one of my standard replies, even though it didn't exactly match her remarks. (I said something like, "It's a lot of fun!" Lucy was sick to death of shopping and getting fussy and I was really off my guard: the cashier was going on and on about how terrible it must be, and I just couldn't think of anything better. ) I'm not exactly angry - she was just a stupid teenager running off at the mouth without thinking first - but I do wish it hadn't happened in front of Katie and Beth. They definitely noticed her horrified reaction.

It doesn't usually bother me when people express disapproval of our family size. I think I hit my breaking point somewhere after Claire, and I just don't care anymore. The funny thing is that I get fewer negative comments now, when we have five kids and I don't give a damn what anybody thinks, than I did when I only had three and was kinda sensitive. It did bother me to see the older girls so surprised, though. But only a little. We may be following a different drummer than much of the world, but you know what? I like our tune. It doesn't matter so much when some twit at the register doesn't get it. I was worried that Katie and Beth might be upset, but they weren't at all. They like our tune, too. What's ironic is that I feel like I've been trying to say with my life the exact same thing the cashier was saying. I'm not going to act like I've been successful, but I'm trying. The inflection is totally different, of course, but we're absolutely trying to say the exact same thing: Oh Holy God.

It is a good thing that I am not married to Henry VIII

Today was the Big Sonogram. My sister Rachel was positive that we are having a boy. Katie was countering that, logically, given the number of girls we already have (4) compared to the number of boys (0), it is most likely another girl. Chris thought, for the first time since Katie, that a boy was at least a possibility. I think it's safe to say, though, that his family believes that we are destined to have all girls.

.......I suppose a drumroll would be appropriate...........



It's a GIRL, of course!

So, are we obligated to name the baby Therese? Or maybe I should draw from my literary background and name the baby Lydia. (If you've read the book, this is obviously a joke!) In any case, I guess we're in good company.

And at least I don't need to buy new baby clothes. :)

You know the meal you've prepared is not a winner when....

....your 21 month old daughter says, "I don't like this! I need to throw in garbage."

The brutal truth

The girls and I were talking about grandmas tonight over mac-n-cheese. We had a friend over, so while he and Chris grilled some steaks on the porch, I boiled up the good stuff for our less discerning children.

We began talking about the wine glass I was sipping out of, something I cherish very much as it came from my Grandma Niccoli. (The glass, not the wine!) They were confused to hear that I had a Grandma Niccoli, someone other than their Grandma Niccoli, and this led into a discussion about generations, marriage, the passing on of names, and, finally, nicknames. The girls sometimes refer to their grandmothers as "The Grandma who sews" and "The Grandma who doesn't sew," and as we discussed this I jokingly asked them what their kids would call me.

Not missing a beat, not missing a beat! Beth responded, "Grandma Lazy Bum."