It is too hot to do anything but this...

...so this is all we are doing.

Happy 4th of July!

We had some friends and family over for a little cookout yesterday, and it was a lot of fun! The kids all converged on the pool, the adults lounged (and sweated) on the deck, and then we wrapped it all up with a little fireworks display. It was shorter than the fireworks last year (which went on so long the kids actually got bored) but much more impressive.

Here are some videos - the kickoff, and then later on when the guys were really warmed up.

Cranky musings of a pregnant whiner who does not appreciate nature the way she should

Every hour spent working in the yard confirms to me how much I hate working in the yard.

When we are done, sweaty and tired, itchy and achy, it might help if I felt a sense of accomplishment but I don't. What I feel is a sense of despair, that we will never have enough time, enough money, enough energy, enough willpower, enough know-how to ever transform this potentially beautiful yard from the white trash dumping ground of the dead and dying (except for the prickly weeds, which are flourishing nicely) that it currently is.

Chris and I recently saw a t.v. show where drug smugglers offered to landscape the yard of an elderly lady for free, so that they could secretly grow marijuana in the corner. They did good work, and her yard looked great (aside from the plot of weed - although, to be fair, that also was well-maintained and looked about as nice as a garden of illegal drugs can.) Is it wrong of me to be jealous of this scenario?

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.....

Summer In My Eyes

This is Katie, the oldest daughter. I am currently 10, about 4 months until new baby and my 11th birthday. I have finished Elementary (congrats to other family members who have graduated in some way, I will not say names) school on June 17,2010. The ceremony was about 1 hour long!! I enjoyed my last time teasing there, though it's ALWAYS hard to say goodbye. I have (naturally) been having dreams taking place in Middle School. Here's the funny thing, though: In 4th grade, I had a dream where I was at some school but didn't belong there. The kids were all older. This year, though, I visited the same place, but I belonged there (but of course, forgot my book bag) !!! Isn't that ironic? This summer we've worked on the pool, organized the craft room, and cleaned. My friend has been at the beach, and therefore I am slowly crumbling inside. The pool should be ready at the end of the week, there's the 4th of July and fireworks, and summer has only just started. While the girls play Violent polly pockets (burning houses, murders, psycho person), Mom exercises, and Dad changes from his work clothes, I feel contented. Oh, and I got straight As again, but there's summer homework!!! Boy, summer is good.

5 steps to achieve peace (not the political kind, but still nice)

I have discovered the secret to summertime peace and happiness!

Here are the steps, they are very simple but require a decent amount of stamina in the beginning.

1- Make a big, special breakfast and while the children are snarfing it down declare that today is a Cleaning Day.
2- Write detailed, very specific, very long lists for every child - even the ones who can't read.
3- Commence cleaning, circling around every once in a while to point out the things the children have done half-heartedly, and make them do it again.
4- Every time someone claims to be done, inspect the work closely.
5- If it isn't perfect, make them re-do it. If it's okay, give them something else to do.

At the end of this you will have two things: a sparkling house, and complete peace and quiet as the children are all afraid that making eye contact with you might generate more housework.

Ahhhhh.

Sumer Is Icumen In

We have declared today the first official day of summer for our family!

Due to the insane amounts of snow this winter, the girls were in school until Friday. However, the teachers gave up somewhere around the end of May and the weeks left were basically nothing but a collection of parties, picnics, field trips and more parties. Add to that Katie's elementary school graduation (pictures and video will be forthcoming), the yearly birthday-party-a-thon that ensues among Beth's friends, who for some reason were all born within two months of each other, and various other getting-ready-for-summer activities ....and you have one worn out family!

This morning, Katie and I got up early and took a nice long walk. Later on today the girls and I are going to run to the store for milk and then finish organizing our new "craft room." These are the day's activities. We are chilling, man.

Our annual hot weather life of leisure has officially begun! Ahhhhh. As soon as I get around to making lemonade, I'm going to enjoy a nice cold glass of it.

Making the case for having more kids

I wish that there was a way to use an embedded link during actual, face-to-face conversations. It would make responding to people who are clearly puzzled by the size of our family so much easier! I could just say, "Here- read this. We aren't as crazy as we look."

The Breeders' Cup from the WSJ. Read it, there's some cool stuff in there.

Overheard

Katie to Lucy, "Don't pick your nose!"

Lucy to Katie, "I'm not picking, I'm just cleaning it out."

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.

The Before of Biztown

I am Katie,10years old, in 5th grade. There is a field trip that we have . It is called JA Biztown. You have a job and a company. It is like a mini town. There's a mayor, even. The companies are City Hall, Restaurant( Papa Johns), Financial Planning, Tech shop(Best Buy), T.V. Station, Insurance, Bank, Utilities, Newspaper, UPS Delivery & Supply Center, Science Lab, and Radio Station. First, we had to decide what job we wanted. I couldn't decide between radio or newspaper reporter. I decided radio reporter in case my friend got her job. Then we filled out resumes and application sheets. Then, parents came in and we all had an interview! I had a dad, he really liked me. Especailly my sisters. Also, I was his last interview, so he might have remembered me better. Then in 4 days after that(we got interviewed on Friday) we got our result. Almost no one got their first chioce job. I guess that made me feel better, because I got my job!!!!! My friend didn't though, but at least she likes her job. Then we got together with our group( I have the best group ever!!) and had meetings. We made ads and prices . Our name is the Around the World Radio, or A.W. Radio. Our slogan is: Listen! Do you hear that sound? It's our radio station travlin' the whole world round. We go THIS MONDAY, JUNE 7!!! Any questions, please comment. I will say how it was after we go.

The slip and slide was defective....

...but they worked it out! Here's the before and after videos!

disturbing. disgusting. weird.

We've finally found potty-training nirvana.

Lucy hasn't had an accident in almost a week! She is using the bathroom for everything and hardly ever needs reminders to go. She is also using the big potty (hooray!) and doing all the clean up (both her bottom and her hands) on her own.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!

The only thing is.......... she names her poop. Late last week, as she was cleaning herself off, Lucy looked into the potty and declared to me, "That one looks like Bob!"

"Who is Bob?" I asked.

She pointed to a specific hunk of poop. "That is Bob," she said.

A few days later, as I was toweling her off after her bath, she noticed a piece of construction paper that had been left on the floor, and was covered with wet splotches.

"That one looks just like Bob!" she declared.

"Who is Bob?" I asked again, really curious.

"My poopie," she said.

Today, as she was cleaning up after using the potty, Lucy glanced into the bowl before flushing it. "That one is not Bob," she said.

I have no idea where this is coming from. At first I thought - maybe Bob the Tomato? But, ah, the specimen she specifically said was not Bob was the only one that looked even vaguely tomato-ish. Bob the Builder? We really don't watch that show, though. ( Handy Manny has totally left Bob the B in the dust.) My father's name is Bob....but I'm pretty sure Lucy doesn't even know that.

It is an absolute mystery. A really gross mystery. But intriguing nonetheless. (Maybe that's just me, though.)

It's a girl! (Again!) (Of course!)

My thoughts:

1- Wow!

2- What are the odds? (Actually, pretty good and getting better with each girl that comes down the pike. It just feels like we are beating them. )

3- My Father in Law is an actual, honest-to-goodness prophet!*

4- It makes me sad that so many people are going to assume that we were "going for a boy," and will feel sorry for us. It's never been about that as far as we are concerned. People tend to think that having more than the standard amount of kids is crazy, so I guess they look for things to explain it to themselves in a satisfactory way. They ought to realize that we just happen to embrace the craziness, and feel some things (like having 6 kids in 10 years) are worth doing even though it might be hard.

5- I was not actually scheduled for a sonogram. The doctor, after an agonizingly long time searching for the baby's heartbeat, sent me over to the hospital for an emergency sonogram. When the nurse asked him what the sonogram was for, and I heard him quietly answer "viability," my heart lodged into my throat. During the 45 minutes between realizing that something may have gone horribly wrong, and seeing the baby's gorgeous fluttering heartbeat on the screen, I had nothing but time to reflect on how very, very desperate I was for this baby to be okay. The big news during this sonogram was not "It's a girl!" It was, "She's alive and well!" and nothing else mattered. Nothing.

6- A part of me secretly worried that, should we have a boy, I might lose my identity. That's ridiculous, right? It is. It is. Still, having a family of girls has been such a part of my life for so long that I couldn't help but wonder if I could hack a change this late in the game. I guess I don't need to worry about that right now!

7- I do mourn the potential to name this baby "Zeke," even though we knew that we would be accused of naming the baby after our favorite coffee. Zeke's may make the best coffee in the world, but that has no bearing on the fact that it is also a supercool name! I don't think a girl could pull it off, though, so the name is a moot point.

8- There is a different dynamic between mothers and daughters and mothers and sons. The same goes with fathers - it is just a different ballgame between boys and girls. Do we sometimes wonder what it would be like to experience that different dynamic? Sure. Do we regret that we haven't? No. In case you haven't noticed, we are take-things-as-they-come kind of people. We'll take the largish family, gladly. And we'll take the girls, just as gladly, though we may not have planned for either.


8- This is my nephew after only an hour or so at our house. He is an extremely boyish boy, too! He's always pointing stuff out to my girls for their edification - things like grills, dump trucks and helicopters. They smile politely at him and then look over at me with confused faces. Why would he care about these things? They ask me. I do not know. I do not know.



*I thought that I had posted before about "The Prophecy," but I looking through the archives, I see I haven't. Waaaay back, when Katie was just 8 months old and we had just discovered that I was pregnant again, Chris's Dad had an extremely vivid dream in which we had 6 girls. We laughed heartily at the thought, and then dismissed it. His family has always believed in the dream, though. When we couldn't determine the sex during our 3rd pregnancy, we felt positive that we were having a boy. Chris' Mom, however, went out and bought three dresses for the Christmas following the baby's birth. Those dresses have now been used many, many times!!! And now, nine years after the fact, it has become clear as can be that the dream was indeed prophetic!

Time to visit the Chiropractor

The joy of the sixth pregnancy: your body is falling apart around you, and the punks who began the destruction are old enough to mock you for it!

Perhaps a litter box is the answer?

How goes the potty training? Well, there are two distinct way of looking at it.

On one hand, it is going almost perfectly. Lucy never wets herself. We were out and about all morning, and worrying about whether she might wet herself or not never even entered my mind.

On the other hand, however..... it's not going well at all. She poops her pants just about every afternoon. At first, she just held in it. As the days passed, however, I started to worry about her little belly so I began spiking her orange juice with laxitives. It worked like a charm...but not in the potty. We've had some pretty horrific messes, to put it mildly. I've now stopped the laxatives, but that has only translated into firmer loads in her underwear. In fact, Lucy is sitting in the bathroom at this very moment, as filthy as can be, while I am trying with all my might to compose myself here in the living room before confronting her.

The killer is that she is predictable in when these incidents occur, but not too predictable. It's never in the morning but while today she pooped her pants at 7:45, two days ago when we stopped by a friend's house, she had her "incident" at 3. There is never any warning - in fact, she seems to be capable of waiting and watching for a chance to sneak off privately. Usually, it happens when I am distracted by something - dinner is burning, or someone has an urgent problem with homework, or I run the garbage outside....I've tried keeping her on the potty for long periods of time - but thus far nothing has worked.

I am at the end of my rope, and I really do not know what to do about this except ride it out, and hope that she eventually gets it.

So, there we are. I have planned to go into Pittsburgh for a quick visit this Saturday, and as the days tick by my concern about this whole potty-dilemma increases. I hope my family appreciates the hell that I am potentially about to walk into.

I hate this stage. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

I really hate it.

Self esteem is not a problem

Abbie was playing near Chris the other day, and in a reflective moment he happened to look over at her.

"You have very pretty hair, Abbie," he said to her, "Do you know that?"

"Yes," she said, tossing her golden locks over her shoulder, "I do. I don't even have to brush it!"

Yardwork from Claire's perspective

Yesterday, Chris' Dad and brother kindly came over to help him saw up a tree that had split in half over the winter. Today, after mass, we mobilized the girls to help clean up the carnage.

As I passed Claire, who was hauling twigs up the steps to the woodpile, I asked her how she was doing.

She blew a strand of hair out of her face and said, "I'm feeling completely dominated, here."

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.

Why did you give that to me?

Chris was snacking on Jalapeno Pepper Doritoes yesterday when Lucy sidled up to him.

"Daddy share his chips!" she chirped, optimistically.

"No, Lu," Chris told her, "these are too spicy. You won't like them."

"I will like them!" she insisted, "I like spicy!"

She continued to hover around him, noting that the chips smelled good and repeatedly reminding him that she "likes spicy!"

Finally, tired of being harassed, Chris gave her one small Dorito. Lucy immediately gobbled it up and smiled at him, but as the heat kicked in she began to gag.

She spit the chip out and gave him an accusatory look, "Why you give that to me?" she wailed.

If you ask her what happened with Daddy's chips now, she will tell you: "Daddy made me eat too spicy!"

She's very convincing.