germ warfare

This is what I find myself wondering lately...do most children spend their lives in a perpetual boost-the-immune-system state of fighting off one illness after another, or do my children have this little sticky light that says, "Hey germs! Me! Pick me!!!"

Because seriously, I'm so tired of everyone being sick. Constantly. And I'm tired of cancelling playdates, and missing parties, and skipping outings, and being at home...sick. It's pretty sad when I look forward to standing around in the snow at the bus stop--at 6:45 a.m.--because I am out of the house.

Today: last day of pinkeye medication.
Today: three days since our last pediatrician's visit.
Today: day Abigail was diagnosed with tonsillitis.
Today: day I go certifiably insane, from a combination of cabin fever and a brain overload caused by remembering dosages and administration schedules for nine different pills, sprays, and syringe-delivered medications.

I just hope we're better next week, because I have something every single night, plus the first major projects are coming in from both classes. It is, in terms of grading, the hardest week of the entire semester.

Oh well. At least my house is clean. And for sick little monkeys, my children are cheerful, happy, and willing to go along with whatever inane occupation my desperate brain has come up with this time.

and thus we see...

And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God. --Mosiah 2:17

During Family Home Evening this week, we focused on Mosiah 2. We used some little toy people to act out King Benjamin's discourse to his people, and then as a family we repeated verse 17 (over and over and over again) and talked about different ways of serving people in our family (my personal favorite: Abigail suggested, "we can help Daddy do his research!" Would that we all could indeed. Love that kid).

So apparently the lesson sunk in, if not quite in the way we'd anticipated. I think we forgot to account for four-year-old reasoning, because last night Abigail and Neil had this conversation:

Abigail (wanting a mermaid doll Neil is examining intently to figure out at exactly what water temperature it changes color): Daddy, can I have that doll?

Neil: Um...just a second...I'm looking at something...

Abigail waits about two seconds, making a variety of faces.

Abigail: Daaaadddddyyyy...

Neil: Hold on, I'm almost done.

Abigail: Daddy, King Benjamin said to serve your fellow beans. You need to give me that doll, or you will not be serving me, and if you are not serving your fellow beans, you aren't serving Jesus and Heavenly Father. Do you want to be doing that, Daddy?

So there you have it. Scripture interpretation in action, à la Miss Abigail. Better start serving your fellow beans!

a room with a view

One of the features of this house that I'm not crazy about from an aesthetic standpoint but have grown to love from a parenting standpoint is the "window" cut through from the kitchen to the living room. I can supervise playtime while I'm washing lunch dishes or cooking dinner, barricade the kids out of the kitchen while I'm canning and still keep an eye on their wellbeing, and finish up dinner preparations without feeling like I'm totally deserting a roomful of guests.

Plus, on lucky days I'm treated to Juliet's post-meal dance-o-rama. I usually have NPR going in the background, and today Julesie totally cut loose to Franz Joseph Haydn's "Tatrai Quartet" (incidentally, if you tune in right now, you'll catch the "G Minor Adagio," one of my all-time favorites--which actually was introduced incorrectly on NPR, since it's really by Remo Giazotto and based on an Albinoni fragment. There's your bit of musical trivia for the day...but if you haven't heard it, go back and click on that link so you can listen. Beautiful...just beautiful).

This, my friends, is why I keep a camera close by--so I can capture moments of sheer toddler joy like these.

Today I am grateful for:

• antibiotics for pinkeye
• "just" gastrointestinal horribleness rather than appendicitis
• a negative strep test
• friends who babysit Juliet at two seconds' notice
• being inside now = no more falling on icy sidewalks
• that I have a husband who will eventually at some point come home tonight
• someday spring will come again
• that my description of today is in my journal rather than on my blog

just the two of us

Neil and I a week or so after our engagement--climbing into the fountain seemed like such a good photo backdrop at the time. It wasn't--it was just really cold.

In another month or so, we've got an overnight kid-swap planned with some friends of ours. While we were working out all the details, I realized that this will be the first time that we've ever been away from our kids overnight. Translation: it's been almost four years since we did anything crazy like, oh, I don't know--left the house after dark?

Deciding what we'll do has been a little baffling, to be honest. I suppose my mind hasn't quite wrapped itself around the idea of twenty-four hours without Goldfish crackers and diaper wipes (and also, I end up missing my kids like crazy after three hours on date night, so twenty-four could be interesting...). But rest assured, I'm looking forward to an entire day of having my husband all to myself and doing whatever we want to do, whether it's a little Chicago getaway, hitting up our favorite Mexican restaurant in Indianapolis, or just filling the hours with we-can't-do-it-with-the-kids activities (like sleeping in, or going to see a late-night movie, a loooong run through the woods, or heck, just eating spicy food).

Which leads me to my question of the day for you: what would you choose to do, given twenty-four hours off from your regular life? How would you spend that day?

yay Neil!!

today Neil had his first publication accepted...and he's first author. let me tell you, this is no small cause for joy, because this 40-pager on laser stress hardening has caused a lot of stress around our house. hurray for this big step on the road to the dissertation!! (and he's already been working on another one for the last week.) way to go, honey!

resolutions reporting

Abigail, eight months old. Fat, squishy, and utterly kissable.

One of my goals in the ever-ongoing quest to be a better wife/mother/person has been to spend more time playing with the girls. I'll be honest with you, I have a hard time just sitting there and playing with toys. This is probably a hangover from Abigail's first year, where I would settle her in the hall of the Clyde building with a diaper bag's worth of toys and frantically grade between classes. Or from writing my master's thesis with a chubby-cheeked kid momentarily entertained by a pile of blocks--how many more lines can I write before she gets bored? Faster, faster! What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that I began parenthood by survival-style multitasking, and it's been hard to break the habit. So when I'm sitting there next to the Fisher Price extravaganza, I'm generally returning phone calls, surreptitiously reorganizing toys, folding clothes, or the like.

To be fair to myself, I do read lots and lots of stories, plan fun outings, go on walks/bike rides, etc. where they have my full attention, but I've really felt that I need to spend more time just being with them, if that makes sense. Playing the "let's be Cinderella and mop the floor" game can only take you so far on the quality time guilt scale. Same thing with making dinner together and things like that--I want to have time with them where the only thing I'm accomplishing is just being with them.

So my newly-rewritten daily to-do list (encased in plastic on the 'fridge so that I can cross things off every day and then wipe it clean at the end of every week) includes this entry, "30 minutes of 'floor time' with the girls." Full, undivided attention. No phone calls. No picking up or reorganizing (and no stories, because we have a seperate time set apart for that every day).

It's been interesting to see the results. Less guilt on my part, better tempers all around. And I've been learning the most fascinating things by just sitting there playing with them (for instance, Abigail's preferred radio station is NPR--she loves the classical composers. Good girl! And her dolls speak French.) And it's so nice to know that even though it seems like I spent the morning bouncing back and forth between the kids and the routine chores, a good solid chunk was spent simply sitting there with them, enjoying their sunshiny little faces and imaginative minds.

feeling sentimental

This is Abigail and her best friend, Elise. Since we moved here, these two have been pretty much inseperable.

Elise's younger sister, Eva, is Juliet's favorite little friend in the world. Every morning, Juliet runs to the front door and checks to see if Eva is outside. When they see each other in church, both wave wildly and chortle with joy. Even if they look a little uncertain here.

I love the fact that the girls have such good friends (and it's even nicer that they're sisters, because our playdates rock!), but sometimes I really worry about the shock to both Abigail and Juliet when their friends move, which (sadly for us, but not for them) will probably be fairly soon.



Seriously...what will they do without their inseperable little playmates?

And then I watch Abigail and Juliet playing together, and I realize...that's what sisters are for.
Seriously, my heart just melted this morning watching Abigail trudge around with this sled loaded up with a fat little Juliet (especially when she heaved an enormous tired sigh and said, "Okay Julesie...the ride is over. Time to get off," and then I dumped them both on and we ran around reeree fast). And I love how excited Abigail is for this next baby, primarily because she sees Jules as such a good playmate that she's ready and willing to welcome another one. And I love the fact that Juliet sticks her hand inside her shirt, puffs it out from her body, and walks around saying, "baaay-beee." Love it.

in which I use forbidden words

Abigail in January '07...nothing to do with the post, but really, you would NOT have wanted a relevant picture after you've read down a little further.

**This is not a post about taxes. It is a post about nasty children that I still love anyway. And what I learned today.**

So last year I had this whole mess on my hands because I filed our taxes nice and early. And THEN the dumb university mailed us a form, in like March or something, and it was wrong, and I had to hunt all over the university to find the one person who could actually do the corrected form, and they'd messed up so many that we barely filed the amended return by the deadline. So I vowed that this year I would take my time.



Except that as the tax documents trickle in, I've been secretly filling out the forms, even though Neil sternly forbid me to submit them before the middle of February. So today when we got yet another messed-up document from the university, I tried to track down the fix-it person again. And while I waited on hold, I thought about how maybe I should learn to procrastinate a little more, and maybe things would work themselves out, but I just can't stand to not be on top of things and know exactly what's going on.

At this point I saw--or rather, smelled--Juliet pass by. I rolled my eyes, and thought about how unfair it is that she never does this while Neil's home, and about how she had so many stinky diapers on Tuesday morning that Abigail finally looked at her sternly and said, "Juliet. No. More. Pooping." (and I really hate that word, but after decades of avoiding it, I finally had to break down and use it when we were potty training. so apologies for using it on my blog. but on the other hand, Juliet LOVES to announce when she has produced something in her diaper, and she especially likes to yell it at the top of her lungs in church, as in pointing to her diaper, and yelling, "Poo! Right dere, poo, right dere!" It's really embarrassing, but I hope it means potty training will go quickly). And I thought, "I should change her right now...but really, what's going to happen if I wait until I'm finished? Judging from her diapers earlier today, there can't be too much left in her system, and it's not like an infant where it will leak out..."



Anyway, I asked Abigail if she would go grab a clean diaper and wipes, and then I finished up my phone conversation and ran over to enter the new info, write down some more contact info, and tried to do a quick run through the numbers to see how this particular form was going to affect my tax liability if a) it was actually correct b) it was corrected the way I think it should be and c) if it was corrected the way I'm guessing it will be--those slackers, always putting off amending things until next year.

So there I was, all wrapped up in my numerical schemes, when I heard Abigail SHRIEK, and I ran into the living room, and for the first time in my life, I saw a child playing with its own feces. I have no idea how it happened, but let me just tell you, that was a very traumatizing moment for both Abigail and I, and apparently Juliet could not understand why we weren't proud of her ability to correctly (and loudly) identify the newly-fingerprinted little pebble rolling around on the carpet.



And then I stripped off her clothes and repented of everything I'd thought earlier about things not gushing out...because there was gush. And so I changed that horrible awful diaper, and Juliet made gagging sounds the entire time in happy imitation of me and chortled with glee, while Abigail stood by in frozen horror, then took off running to Jules' room and came back to breathlessly say, "Mommy, I got you a clean onesie for Juliet..."

And then I resolved that I will do more selective procrastination of things I really enjoy (tax documents) and I will not procrastinate certain other things that I loathe (changing diapers).

**also, what's wrong with me that I would waaaay rather play with my income taxes than change my child's diaper? do I have defective mother wiring?

what keeps me awake

Last night I had one of those nights where I could NOT fall asleep (as a side note, this is one of the things I don't particularly like about being pregnant--I'm always tired, and I can never sleep longer than about forty-five minutes at a time).

Anyway, I found myself thinking about this trip to Europe that my family took the summer before my senior year in high school, and some of the funny things that happened. And since I wrote a very very careful and detailed journal of our trip, which I of course lost later, I thought I would write up a few of these things before I forget them.

• When we were standing under the Eiffel Tower, and debating whether to go up, my little sister Rosalind (who was 8) asked how both elevators got to the top at the same time. My dad told her that they raced, and the loser got smashed, and the winner got to go to the top. She burst into tears and refused to go any closer. Needless to say, we did NOT get to go to the top of the Tower.
• Another funny thing that happened to Rosalind--we were staying at this rustic (very rustic) farmhouse (in England? or Belgium? I don't remember) that had a strip of flypaper dangling from the light fixture. Rosalind asked what it was, and I told her it was the pull cord for the light. So she pulled it, and her hand got stuck, and lots of dead flies fell down all around her. My mom was really not pleased about that one.
• It was kind of a hard trip for Rosalind. When we were walking to the Louvre (and all I saw there was the bathroom, because for some reason I was really sick that day), some crazy lady ran up and kicked her in the back of the knee and ran away. My mom started yelling at her in French and chased her away.
• In Germany, the waitress acted out the menu for us, since none of us knew more German than "vasserfall." Our favorite was when she pretended she was a chicken. She was very animated.
• In Luxembourg, I was feeling grumpy, so while everyone else walked around the town I sat in our hotel room and ate an entire baguette and most of a jar of Nutella.
• We saw almost every catacomb in Europe. It was really insanely hot (they were having a heat wave), and let me tell you, those catacombs were sure nice and cool. Even if they did smell a bit...musty. In every city, we would immediately began pleading to visit the nearest cathedral and then run for the catacombs.
• When we were in Canterbury, we visited this place that was a sort of retelling (with wax figures) of the Canterbury Tales. They gave you headphones, and you walked through, listening to the story (note: it was definitely the uncensored version. My mom made those who had not already read the Canterbury Tales in school listen to the kiddie version). It also boasted authentic smells throughout, so the stable where you started actually smelled like a stable...and it was not a clean stable.
• We visited Warwick Castle in England, which was one of my favorite stops on the visit. The whole castle was full of wax figures (I don't know if they were made by Mme. Tussaud's, but they were impressive) and much of it was redecorated in period styles. My dad and I stood on the upper battlements over the gate and acted out the French knights' scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (you know, "your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!" kind of thing). They also had an archery festival going on, and Mary Beth was really impressed by the guy who was shooting seventy arrows a minute (or something like that).
  
• One of the best parts of the trip was the evening we spent building sandcastles on the shore of the Irish Sea. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen in my life.
  
• Another lovely seaside jaunt: we had a very long, leisurely French dinner on the coast near the Channel (I ate my way through an entire bucket of mussels and drank who knows how much apricot juice). Then we walked along the tide flats and looked over at England across the Channel while the sun set (and then after we all went back to our rooms, Mary Beth and I lay in bed and watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer in French with Swedish subtitles...just because we could).
• And another favorite bit: we hiked through the mountains in Wales (in Snowdonia) munching on meat pasties. The mountains were foggy and misty, just like I imagined they would be from reading Susan Cooper's novels. We sat on craggy rocks and looked for heather and pretended that perhaps King Arthur would come riding around the curve of the hill.

lots more fun things, but those will do for now, because I'm out of time...sisters mine, anything you'd like to add?

inauguration day

The girls and I listened to the inauguration ceremonies today while we ate lunch. I got pretty choked up as I explained to Abigail what we were hearing and what it meant.

I have so much hope for the next four years.

in the kitchen with Neil

One of the great things about being married to Neil is that he not only appreciates great food, but he's more than happy to prepare it as well as enjoy it.

After Christmas, our kitchen was freshly stocked with a few new goodies that made cooking a little more exciting, including a spring form pan and a Microplane zester, among others (small plug: that thing is AMAZING, and many thanks to Mary Beth for being the gifter thereof!) Consequently, Neil spent a good portion of Saturday immersed in a recipe he's apparently been longing to try for ages--a key lime cheesecake, complete with a lime-infused crust and a delicate lime curd topping. And let me tell you--no man has ever zested so many limes with so much joy. The results were delicious.



I also surprised Neil this week with a little appliance love--his very own panini press, since he's been wistfully recalling the paninis we made with the one we gave my parents. He was overjoyed and made himself--and anyone else who would eat one--three paninis within the first twenty-four hours after opening the box (I gave him this cookbook earlier, which has some fantastic ideas and recipes, including instructions for making your own breads, mayonnaises, and chutneys--just to really elevate your panini from fantastic to sublime).

So today for dinner I made everyone eat lentils, as sort of a cheesecake/avocado/roast beef/Swiss cheese/etc. detox. And wouldn't you know it? He gobbled those up too.

He's such a lovely man to cook for. And cook with. (and did I mention he cooked up an exotic lamb dish for dinner on Sunday while I was taking a luxurious late nap?)

oh boy

if my family was suddenly transformed into something else, kind of like in Kafka's The Metamorphosis, I think we would all become fruit bats. just sayin'. this pile hasn't even lasted us a week.

And the first week of the semester is finishing up! I'm glad it's a three-day weekend; it's been an exhausting week. Abigail started preschool two days a week, and she has been loving it (of course!) I've worked my way through a fairly hefty stack of grading, we've all been taking lots of naps with our new super-early schedules, and we've kept up on exercising, family scripture study, and the like. And I had my first rehearsal for this ward dinner theater thing I'm doing--it's a fundraiser to help pay for the camps for the youth this summer. I admit, I'm kind of nervous--I haven't done any acting since my senior year of high school, and I'm supposed to be Cindy Crawford (also, I'm really nervous about being some man-eater character and interacting in said character with audience members while my husband is watching. It will be interesting, but I think the whole thing will be fun, and it's for a good cause. And I never like to turn down church things, even though this isn't actually a calling. But I'm still really nervous).

I must say, I've been proud of both Neil and I for exercising really early in the mornings. Somehow it's so much harder to get out of bed on the mornings when you don't have to be up at the crack of dawn, and especially when it is TWELVE BELOW. It is so cold here. Seriously, it's really cold. Our heating bill was over $200 last month (stupid cruddy insulation on this house!) and we are paying that much money to wear two layers of sweaters rather than three (as I type this I'm wearing two sweaters and sheepskin slippers over my socks. We're even wearing sweaters and socks to bed). I miss fall.

I really have nothing to say, because I am tired and I want to go curl up with my current book (Anna Karenina) and take a nap so I am rested for our date tonight (racquetball and weight-lifting, hurray! And then probably some yummy food to negate all those burned-up calories).

Oh, but I do have one question for all of you. Does anyone else brush their teeth in the shower? I always thought it was a good time-saving idea, but Neil thinks it's a little weird. But I did find out that my brother-in-law does the same thing, but his wife thinks it's weird too. So does anyone else do it? (try it, it's an excuse to stay in that nice hot water that much longer...)

And another useless confession--last night I made jambalaya for dinner, and there were a lot of dishes, and instead of doing them while the jambalaya cooked I made oatmeal-raisin cookies...so that Neil would do the dishes later. And then I ate about four cookies after I finished running. They were really good cookies...like really, really good.

nearly wordless wednesday

It's a good thing we took those family pictures when we did, because this is the latest version of what happens when you say, "Smile, Jules!" (although it's probably more expressive of her personality. my little crazy kid.)

do you want to know a secret?

There's a new baby joining our family in July.

We are REALLY super excited! (and I am especially excited that the first trimester is over, with all the nausea, headaches, and general crankiness. I think my family is very relieved to have the real me back again). And I'm glad that I'm finally announcing this, because I'm terrible at keeping secrets, especially ones that I'm over-the-moon happy about.

Hurray, hurray, hurray!!!

Juliet reimagines the beret

One of my most well-worn pieces is a battered felt beret I bought in Paris from a little shop just below the steps climbing up to the Sacré-Cœur. A winter staple, I pull it down snugly over my ears whenever I go outside--like this morning at 6:40 am when I headed out through the starlit snow to catch the bus to campus. Needless to say, it lost the classic beret shape long ago.

Juliet has discovered it over the past week, and rejoices in running around with it half over her eyes like a little mushroom head.



Don't you just love this kid?

Usually movies are a once-a-month Saturday night thing in our house--I'd way rather spend the time with the girls doing something else. But I'll tell you what--after a night like we had last night, where both Abigail and I were throwing up (and Neil was up until 3 am working on a publication and then has a impossibly full day of work scheduled today), I am really grateful for that little 12-inch screen. Bring on your Disney princesses--we'll be lying here with our blankies, subsisting on Goldfish and watered-down juice (speaking of blankies, when Abigail's blankie was retired to the washing machine last night and she fell asleep with mine, she said she was happy to sleep with it because "Mommy's blankie smells like candy" (specifically, like Christmas's Ghiradelli 60% dark chocolate)).

excuse me--I have to go bargain with Abigail over what we're watching next. I want Beauty and the Beast, she's holding out for Cinderella. Juliet just wants her head rubbed.

multi-tasking

Best way to get things done (quickly) with small children?

Hands-down, to occupy them in something else. Yes, I do try to do things with them, like making bread or folding laundry, but when I discovered strategic planning, motherhood-style, it made my life so much easier, and so nice to get things done in half the time it would take if doing it with the kiddie interruptions. Case in point: I clean the bathrooms while the kids are splashing rapturously in the tub (I use "green" cleaners so I'm not worried about the fumes affecting the kids). And washing the dishes after dinner? That would be my kids over there at the table, painting happily away (note: do this on nights when you're already planning on mopping the floor and giving baths).

a jam for all seasons

Today as I was creating a new folder on the computer for this year's pictures, I suddenly found the disappearing pictures from last Christmas. Including such gems as this.

Anyway, on to the real post. Yesterday I was looking through some old pictures, and dreaming about spring again--right now everything is drizzly and icy and wet--as Abigail said, it's a yuck day. But then again, even if we can't actually pick blueberries for lunch...



...isn't it nice that there's such a thing as homemade jam in the world?


It makes those yuck days so much sweeter.

the best-laid plans

Here is what I planned to do today: get up and run before the kids were awake, and then spend a pleasant lazy day doing some laundry, reading lots of stories, bundling up and going outside to play on the swings, etc. and finish up the pan of orange rolls I made yesterday, and have boiled eggs in the shape of bears and rabbits for breakfast.

Here is what I've done so far: called the pediatrician before I was even out of bed, jumped out of bed, woke up the kids, and had everyone dressed and fed half an hour later so we could catch the lone super-early appointment of the day (which, as you know if you have small children, it's pretty much a super-human feat to go from asleep to out the door in half an hour), sat at the doctor's for an hour feeling totally numb and wondering a) why Juliet is always always always sick, and if her nasal passages, ears, and adenoids are so deformed, what else might possibly be wrong that we don't know about and b) how I am possibly going to hold her down for 15-minute nebulizer treatments three times a day. In addition to the five (yes, five) other medications she is currently taking.

Then I went to the bank, to the pharmacy, to the grocery store, back to the pharmacy, picked up three prescriptions and was told to come back later today for another, came home and put away the groceries, folded a load of laundry and started more, realized that the kids were playing happily and spent a frantic half hour at my desk paying bills, answering emails, doing some stuff for my calling, and finishing up my course websites, since school begins next week.

A very productive morning, but somehow I feel utterly drained and like I barely accomplished anything, because I didn't actually do anything that I wanted to do, and I had zero fun time with the girls, even though I was with them all morning. Just feeling sort of blah and grey. And now I need to go cut up cantaloupe for lunch and fold some more laundry.

plus now I have to run during naptime instead of curling up with a book...and I still have to go back to the dang pharmacy later. argh!

just a little note

Today has been perfect, and there's still long lovely hours to come. Breakfast with Daddy before he left for work, a long morning playing with toys and reading books together, little hands eager to put away their own folded laundry, a lunch full of stories and laughs, and Abigail telling me every few minutes, "Mommy, I just love you." A refreshing run while the kids napped, dreaming about repainting my bedroom, and musing over my resolutions for the new year. Debating whether to make gingered shrimp or curried chicken tonight. Reminding myself that after dinner I promised Abigail paints and a parfait (her word choice). Realizing that there's a whole long lovely weekend ahead of us. Thinking about how lucky I am to have this little family.