I have given in to the Dark Side.

I am getting a Kindle.

A really good price (available through a friend) and the promise of instantly adjusting font size (to deal with my highly variable and massively annoying eyes) have lured me into a decision I was considering in only the vaguest and most distant sense of the word a week ago.

Having made this decision, I am now getting rather excited about it. Good things I expect to come from owning a Kindle include:

- Freedom from phone envy. I have the simplest, cheapest cell phone I could find in the entire store. I do not regret this decision -- it is all I need, and the monthly fee for a data plan would be far from worth it for the few times a month I might check my email in some random location during a moment of idleness. But there are times when, surrounded by playing children busy with their own society and 3G-phone-checking adults, I can get a bit of phone envy. Now I will have a small electronic device I can tuck in my purse and peruse at such times, without the extravegant monthly fees. The longer battery life is nice, too -- I don't like having to plug things in frequently.
- A wireless Wikipedia connection. The kids often ask weird random questions while we are away from home, and while promising to look it up when we get home will get me off the hook for an immediate answer, we usually all forget the question by the time we actually are home.
- A way to read at least some books, enough that I should always be able to find something I want to read that's available on it, that I can carry with me, on which I can adjust the font size. There should always be something around that's comfortable to read and worthwhile.
- A Bible with a font size I can read that is light enough for me to be willing to carry it everywhere in my purse.

Things I do not expect to happen include:
- This will not replace our adult paper book collection. This is partly a matter of replacement cost, partly a matter of availability -- Amazon has a stated goal of having available every book ever published, but they're pretty far from that still; those books that are available are mostly new or recent releases, or old books no longer under copyright -- and partly a matter of preference. I still like paper books.
- This will not touch our collection of children's books. From my perspective, they have not even started to touch the issues related to children's books. Illustrations are key in children's books, and they have not tackled the issues of color (although I'm sure there are a multitude of scientists and engineers slaving away on addressing this issue right now), screen size (most children's books are much larger, in the 9"x12" range, and the most visually enticing of them utilize a two-page spread in their illustrations), or replacement cost (no way am I handing my Kindle to J). This is not surprising -- text-only adult books, with the occasional grey-scale picture, are much easier to tackle, and so are a logical first step -- but it does mean that while the technology may get there some day, it simply hasn't done so yet.

Things about the Kindle I think are stupid:
- You cannot give a Kindle book as a gift. When you purchase an electronic product on Amazon, it becomes permanently and irrevocably tied to your Amazon account; it can thus be assigned to any Kindles associated with your account, but cannot be transferred onto an unrelated Kindle. This is silly. I can see making a rule that it can only be downloaded by the owner of one account -- no downloading something, and then deciding to give it as a gift -- but there ought to be some mechanism for gifting Kindle books. Giving books for Christmas and birthdays is a long-standing tradition in my family; the inability to carry this tradition over to the Kindle is disappointing.
- Similarly, you cannot loan a Kindle book.

Hopefully, they will fix the stupid things someday. In the meantime, I am not under any delusions that my fun new toy will be anything like a replacement for paper books, past, present, or future, but I still look forward to enjoying my new toy.

Newt

- When infection occurs near the base of a toenail, the nail grows funny. Removing the infection returns nail growth to normal. Both transitions are interesting to observe. The oddities in question should, I think, have grown out by the time sandal season returns; this is good.

- If I am not sleeping well, it does not matter that my toddler is finally learning how to go to sleep and sleep all night. It does, however, really suck that on the one night when I had a chance of sleeping decently, he chose to fall asleep in a non-standard way (in the car, at 7:00, instead of in bed at 9:00) and then sleep poorly all night.

- Passing a cold around the family also does not help.

- Educational videos cannot be made with all age levels in mind at once. Thus, Blue Planet casually drops terms, like "animal kingdom," that children require explanations for.

- Explaining the term "animal kingdom" to children with no prior exposure to the terms of formal categorization of life forms who have been exposed to The Lion King (at least in previews) requires countering certain misconceptions that the term evokes. ("If it's a kingdom, who's the king?") However, this can be successfully accomplished.

- The kids enjoy playing store. All three of them. J gets very upset when other people have money; it's supposed to all be his.

- I'm so sick of dealing with insurance companies, and dealing with doctors' offices who deal stupidly with insurance companies, that I'd almost rather just pay the bills myself. If Chris's company would give us the money they spend on premiums, I think I'd drop the "almost" from that statement. (Exceptions made for catastrophic and/or large unpredictable things, like cancer diagnoses, premature infants, etc.)

- D is able to remember very specific details from The Wanderings of Odysseus. Her selection criteria, however, are a bit odd; she reminded me at dinner last night that Helen gave Telemachus (Odysseus's son) something she had made "for his bride, when the time came," but that Helen had also said that he should let his mother keep it until then.

- Yesterday morning, T ignored repeated instructions to get dressed, and repeatedly met pre-announced consequences with the protest, "But I didn't know you were about to...." (I told you to get dressed by the time I was done brushing my teeth. You knew I'd started; now I'm done. Did you think you could get dressed in the 15 seconds it took me to go from "brushing teeth" to "ready to put you on the stairs?") As a result, he ended up carrying his socks, shoes, and coat to the car, and putting them on there. His protest: "Wet leaves on bare feet don't feel good!!!" My response was singularly unsympathetic.

- The main thing this post at HillBuzz accomplished for me was to awaken in me an insatiable desire to rewatch all three Lord of the Rings movies. If there is ever a time when it is convenient for me to be seized with the desire to spend 12 hours watching TV, which I'm pretty sure there isn't, this most assuredly isn't it.

Newt

Does anyone have any experience, good or bad, with a moving company? If your experience is good and with a company that operates nationally, any contact info you still have lying around would be lovely, but even just a company name and a yea/nay vote would be very helpful at this stage.

Thanks,
Newt

We gave Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons a try probably a couple years ago, before settling on Alpha-Phonics. I really like the way AlphaPhonics introduces words in a straightforward, systematic way, organizing them according to the phonics rules they follow, and I like the fact that by the time you're done with the book, the child is reading on a fairly high level. I also like the flexibility of the program. When I tried 100 Easy Lessons with D, she couldn't get past one little problem -- she kept wanting to put a pause between sounds, which they insisted she shouldn't -- and the entire thing is scripted and insists that the parent should have the child repeat the word until they do it right, etc.; when D ran into the end of her frustration tolerance, 100 Easy Lessons left us no wiggle room. AlphaPhonics gave us the space we needed to circumnavigate the issue, again and again and again, until something finally clicked and she figured out how to combine sounds into words in her own way, and then we were off and running.

But right now, 100 Easy Lessons is what's working with T. He wants progress. He wants a "real" reading lesson. Every. Single. Day. With. Out. Fail. (I originally suggested Monday through Friday. He insisted on adding the weekend days, too. So far, we've only missed one day, and that was because he was acting up so much that he got sent to Quiet Time a little early instead of being given the option of staying downstairs with me for a reading lesson first.) It has the focus on helping the child learn how to combine sounds into words that he needs, in a way that's working for him. The one and only problem with it is that it involves some skill-building activities that, to a child, are not immediately and obviously connected to reading, and which he therefore doesn't always have much patience with; thankfully, the "repeat until firm" instructions almost never trigger the need for a repeat -- those parts are easy for T (boredom with them is likely part of the issue here) -- and I've had the sense to always have his reading lesson at the beginning of Quiet Time, when time in the living room with Mommy and a reading lesson is an eagerly sought reward, and I've been very clear that if he stops paying attention or acts silly during a reading lesson, the lesson is over and Quiet Time starts immediately. So far, that's all we've needed to get past the occasional boredom or silliness.

With the fact that 100 Easy Lessons has fewer lessons than AlphaPhonics and spends more lessons working on very basic beginning reading skills, the child does not have as high a reading level at the end as they do with AlphaPhonics. Also, the copy we're using currently has been checked out of the library. They agreed to give it to me for 4 weeks, instead of the usual 2, and I think I'll still be able to renew it; at the current speed, that gets us through lesson 55 or so. At that point, I'll have a few options; I can beg the library to let me check it out again; I can buy it; I can request a different copy, wait for it to come in, and keep going; or I can transition T to AlphaPhonics, which we own. I'm not sure yet what we'll do when that time comes; we'll see what seems best when we get there, I suppose.

Newt

Today's Goals:
- Schedule 20-week ultrasound. (I'm at 26 weeks right now....)
- Get finances caught up.
- Sort through some of the stuff on the guest bed.
- Have something to serve for supper by the time Chris gets home at 6:30.

What I want to do:
- Take a nap.
- Drink hot chocolate while doing something mindless.

Attempt at reconciliation:
- Lie down for half an hour.
- Make ultrasound phone call.
- Make hot chocolate.
- Drink hot chocolate while doing finances.
- Serve freezer food and leftover veggies for dinner.
- Sort through stuff in whatever time is left after finances before I have to start work on supper, and maybe some after supper.

Not the best of either world, but maybe it'll do.

Newt

J has discovered Closing Doors. It is the greatest game ever. Sometimes you have to push the door to close it, in which case you can get it to make a loud *thud*; other times, you have to stand on your tip-toes and reach very high up and pull on the doorknob to close it. Either way, it is FUN. In fact, it is so much fun that Mommy is not allowed to close a door in his presence any more. "No!" he yells at me every time he catches me doing it, as he runs across the room to open the door to its fullest extent so he can have all the fun of closing it for me. Getting clothes out of my closet this morning was made more interesting by the fact that the door kept getting closed. More painfully, the door to the bathroom stall got closed on my finger at WalMart today; he hasn't yet learned about making sure the path is clear.

I have discovered Home Cheese Making. It looks like a LOT of fun, and reassures me that if the kids ever do decide to get a dairy animal, we'll be able to find things to do with large quantities of milk. Like gardening, this allows me to dream/think/plan about things I might do in the future that do not require me to do anything right now -- in fact, I have no business doing anything towards either gardening or cheese making right now -- which is nice when I want to think about pleasant things for a while and stop being overwhelmed by all the things I need to do in the next 14 +/- 2 weeks.

I purchased a small notebook today, for the purpose of implementing a very low-tech version of Getting Things Done. I might be tempted to implement one of the numerous computer-based incarnations of GTD, except that (1) then I would have to research which ones are available for PCs (many seem to be Mac-only), figure out which one I liked best, if it was worth spending money on one, etc. etc. etc., and (2) somehow, I still think best curled up on the couch with a pen in my hand. I am well on the way to having a multi-page To Do list, with each page containing multiple tasks, a large percentage of which will be multi-hour tasks. This is rather daunting. However, there is also something freeing in knowing that there are so many different things I can choose to do on any given day, any of which will move me closer to having everything done on time.

I discovered HillBuzz this week, thanks to the authors' article on Mr. & Mrs. G. W. Bush's recent visit to Fort Hood. It's been an interesting discovery in many ways. I have never, in any of my various political/philosophical/religious phases, been a fan of Hillary Clinton; nor have I ever had friends who seemed inclined to attempt making a compelling case for why she ought to be elected to anything. Now, it seems obvious that there must have been such people, must have been people who were willing not only to vote for her, but to campaign for her and build a case for why she should be elected; without this, she could never have been a serious contender for the Democratic nomination. Still, it was a bit startling to run across people who not only were among this number, but who still are. Secondly, they are articulate, seem well-reasoned, and attract commenters from a variety of political persuasions, who are generally likewise articulate, civil, well-reasoned, etc., which is a nice thing to find in any discussion of politics. Thirdly, it is interesting to note that these men, who openly profess their homosexuality, attendance at gay bars, etc., consider themselves to be quite moderate on most issues (although I'd guess they'd admit to being liberal on a few "social" issues) -- and find more to fear in President Obama than in Sarah Palin. I've known for a while now that Sarah Palin is wildly popular among people who are very near me on the political spectrum; this is the first I've seen of support for her from outside that vicinity. I have a firm enough grasp of reality to know that people with exactly, or even very nearly, my beliefs are few enough that we will never elect someone to the White House on our own (nor, in light of our scarcity, should we be able to), so this is a very interesting revelation. Fourthly, this makes me realize just how much of the political spectrum has been missing from my regular reading -- you mean there's people filling in all the gaps between me and my liberal friends?! And fifthly, these people pay a lot more attention to politics, election dynamics, and current events than anyone else I know, and obviously do a lot more thinking about election strategy and so on than I've been seeing anywhere else. They also do a lot more posting than anyone else I read -- which makes sense; the most verbose person on my current regular reading list is a toss-up between patrissimo, who has any number of projects going and keeps saying that he should waste less time writing rants for LJ, and Barbara Curtis, a mother of 12, of whom 6 or so still live at home, including all 4 of her sons with Down Syndrome. I don't know if I'll be able to do more than skim their writing occasionally, and even that may have to fall by the wayside in the chaos that will be the next year. But encountering HillBuzz has been an interesting and broadening experience already, which is good. :)

And now to plan supper and spend some time with that notebook and pen. 14ish weeks left....

Newt

My ignorance is being cast in my face. D and T are playing "Jumping Man" (i.e., SuperMario on Chris's Nintendo DS), and T keeps pointing out all the things I don't know: "Mommy doesn't know how to become FireMario." "Mommy doesn't know how to become Luigi." "Mommy doesn't know...." And indeed, I don't; when D asked me to help her get out of a tight spot just now, I touched the game for a second or so, she suggested a solution I had no idea how to implement, she took the game back and implemented it, and they're off again. Oy. I think I waited until my final year of high school before I did this to my parents; at least, I don't recall it happening until the night I asked Dad for help with my calculus homework.

At the other end of the spectrum, Baby Tetra is attempting to enlarge his/her domain through the judicious application of kick-boxing. This is not a hobby we intend to encourage the continuance of, at least until Tetra is old enough to pay for his/her own lessons, but I am currently powerless to prevent it.

T got a new blanket recently to replace the comforter that got stolen from his bed for J to use. It is the sort of blanket that comes with a ribbon tied around it inside a zippered plastic bag. The plastic bag was quickly converted to toy storage, and the ribbon to a toy. As I came downstairs from letting J out just now, the following conversation ensued:

T: (holding out the long, sturdy fabric ribbon) Mommy, can you tie this around something that's way way high up off the floor?
M: *blink*blink* Why? [This is a very important question. Never leave it out when confronted with odd requests.]
T: So I can climb up it.
M: (looking at the dining room chandelier) I don't think we have anything that's way high up off the floor that will support your weight.
T: Why not?
M: I don't know. But most of the things in this house that are designed to support your weight are called floors.
(pause)
T: (looking around the room consideringly) You could tie it to that floor (pointing at the living room ceiling) if you attached a railing to it with some space bebove* the railing.
M: I could, if we attached the railing to the ceiling really strongly. But I don't think we're going to do that.
T: Why not?
M: Because it would look funny, and because I don't know how to make it sturdy enough.
T: Oh. (pause) I have an idea! We could tie it onto a branch on a tree outside!
M: We could! That sounds much more plausible.

T is now concocting plans involving ladders and trees. When I explained that I am not a good shape for climbing ladders right now, he volunteered that he is very good at climbing ladders, which is quite true. He is not, however, very good at tying knots yet. This sounds like a plan that will need a Daddy for implementation, if the idea lasts that long.

Newt

* Bebove: One of the few T-isms from his days of learning to talk that still survives. Equivalent to "above."

J is doing much better today. He woke up fairly normally, asked for nursing, milk, and food, and is now playing independently. And quietly enough that I ought to check to see what he's getting into, now that I think about it....

T was supposed to clean his room yesterday, same as every afternoon. He didn't. He played instead. After supper, he again played instead of cleaning, and scurried into his jammies at the last minute. So I told him, no breakfast this morning until he cleans his room. (It should be a five minute job, at most. His room's not really that messy, it just looks like it because he has several large things spread out to effect maximum floor coverage.)

He seems to be determined to test me on this.

Do I dare go take a shower, thus leaving the kitchen unguarded? Interesting question....

He and D seem to be concocting some game to play; D just came downstairs, asking if I knew the location of an empty round white laundry basket. I informed her that there would be one in T's room as soon as he finished putting his clean laundry away. She seems to think that this will not be soon enough, and has instead opted to put her own clean laundry away and get one that way. I have to agree, doing something yourself is always faster than getting T to do it these days.

Newt

For the past couple nights, J has rubbed the back of his neck at suppertime. (I know this because I observed him doing it last night, and the state of his hair after supper testified strongly regarding this behavior the night before.)

For the past couple nights, J has rubbed his eyes a lot at supper. (This could be because he had buffalo wings -- not very spicy ones, but still, enough sauce on them that I could imagine that rubbing his eyes once could lead to the felt need to rub them more afterwards. At the time, this was certainly what I attributed this behavior to.)

His nose has been dripping since sometime Friday.

He hasn't been sleeping well, waking up repeatedly between 2:30 and 4:30 for the past several nights. Last night, at around 3:30, I sleepily concluded that he wasn't going to fall deeply asleep for a while, and wasn't going to be content being not-deeply asleep unless I was next to him, so I moved him to our bed, so that I could have a hope of sleeping decently myself.

Waking up this morning was an excrutiating, hours-long process that involved much fussing, crying, and nursing. He also showed a distinct preference for low-light conditions, hiding his face and fussing whenever he was around lights of even moderate brightness. (For those of you who knew me junior and senior years of college, this was worse than the worst of my light sensitivity during those years.)

He also tugged at his ears a lot this morning, which led me to think ear infection, which led me to schedule a doctor appointment. We got one for this afternoon. (In the process, I had to verify that the last lead I had on a possible primary care doc for the five of us does, in fact, take our insurance. They do. They had an appointment available today. They were willing to give their last same-day appointment to a sick first-time patient. There is yet grace and goodness in the world.)

Then I mentioned the eye-rubbing, hiding-from-light symptom on Facebook, which led Chris's aunt to comment, and when I didn't respond immediately, to call me, with the story of when her son (now in his late teens or early 20s) got meningitis when he was 4. That was the primary symptom that distinguished his case from cold/flu; he went mis-diagnosed for several days, until she demanded a second opinion in the ER, after which he was tested, admitted, given IV antibiotics, and narrowly saved from death. This made me very grateful that I already have an appointment for J this afternoon, and that he isn't running a fever -- at least, not yet. But neck pain is a possible symptom (thus my mention of him rubbing the back of his neck, which I hadn't thought to have any significance before talking to her), and the light sensitivity is one she remembers vividly (and which I have never seen before, either in J or in either of the other two).

And then we get to this afternoon, when he spent about an hour playing with Duplos in the bright kitchen quite peacefully, all by himself, sounding enough like his normal self to make me doubt the earlier evidence.

We're still going to the doctor; there's a very real chance, in my mind, that we're in the early stages of something, and that J's naturally cheerful disposition is leading him to ignore it sometimes but give into it whenever he's otherwise not at his best -- right before naps, for instance, or upon waking. I can only hope that the doctor will listen to me and take my concerns seriously, and not simply look at my smiling, bubbly little boy and assume that everything's fine and I'm just paranoid. In a way, it'll be a bit of a relief if he gets tired and cranky around appointment time -- like taking an occasionally-misbehaving car to the shop and hoping it'll act up for them the way it's been acting up for you all week.

Except that now he's rubbing his eyes and fussing a little bit, and I'm thinking, "I didn't really mean it! Not really!"

Newt

ETA: Doctor's conclusion: J probably has a cold. For now, we should treat it like a cold (push fluids, etc.). We should also monitor for fever, dehydration, refusal to eat, and general worsening of condition; if we start noticing danger signs (and apparently, a fever that develops after several days of congestion is a major danger sign, where an initial fever at the start of a cold isn't), we should bring him back. But she thought I was right to bring him in, in spite of the difficulty we had keeping him from climbing all over the exam room long enough to actually examine him.

Our biggest concern with having T and J share a room was that T might wake J up. We discussed the rules with him first, and the importance of being considerate of the other person's sleep (with emphasis on the fact that this was something anyone sharing a room had to do -- Mommy and Daddy do this for each other, etc.). The first morning, we had to remind him. There's been one other morning this week in which he looked in J's bed, didn't see him there (small toddler, big mattress, winter blanket -- it's pretty easy to miss him), and so thought that turning on the light would be OK; he's now been instructed to assume that J is still in the room asleep until he sees him somewhere else in the house. But otherwise, it's worked out fine.

Just now, I went to take the baby monitor transmitter out of T's room to move it to the room where J naps. T wanted to know why I was doing this, and so I explained that I needed it to be in the room where J was sleeping, and J couldn't sleep in a room where T was playing. T volunteered that when he was napping, I could move J back into his room. "In fact, I'm tired right now. I could take a nap now and you could move J in here."

"And you'll lie still and quiet with the light off for the entire rest of quiet time so that J can sleep?"

"Yes!"

We've had Quiet Time almost every afternoon for the past 3ish years because nothing I could do would motivate T to lie down quietly in the afternoon and wait for sleep to overtake him. Having J nearby seems to be a very powerful motivator. I did not in any way expect this result. But so far, only silence is coming through the baby monitor. I'm going to hope for the best, and take a nap myself. I wonder if this will ever happen again.....

Newt

Gestating. That's a nice, active-sounding verb. That can be my main task for today, right?

How about resting? After being woken up four times last night by a toddler who refused to be carried back to my bed, resting sounds like a really good idea.

Napping. Napping sounds even better. If my Friendly Teenage Helper can't come this afternoon, I'm taking a nap. Maybe I'll take a nap even if she can come.

But none of these tasks get us any closer to being ready to move. So I have let the kids play, given them breakfast, made them get dressed and do their chores (T is having real trouble adjusting to having to do chores again, so consistency there is important), and have read them the first few chapters of The Wanderings of Odysseus. I even dug out all the Greece-related children's books we have, and have put them on the shelves. And now, while I let them play and wait for them to get hungry for lunch (breakfast was rather late this morning), I'm going to do some research on the Internet. I've never investigated Craigslist before, or investigated moving companies; those sound like good things to get started on.

And if I get a nap this afternoon, maybe I can do actual productive things tonight.

Newt

( Blow-by-blow description of J's non-verbal approach to getting breakfast this morning. Needlessly detailed from most people's perspective, but I think we're going to switch communication styles soon, as J becomes more and more verbal, and I want to remember what this stage is like. )

Newt

The Random:

Apparently, 24 weeks is my line between 2nd and 3rd trimester. Chris is still talking to his bosses at work, figuring out the details of our move in the spring. I, at this point, am the world's worst negotiator, as I just want everything settled, so I am keeping my mouth firmly shut. I am annoyed that everything in my house is not put away where it belongs. I am annoyed that I have no place to put the random things that we know we want to move but don't need before we move. I am very annoyed that I keep running out of time/breath/energy/back tolerance[1] before I get everything done. I am trying to resign myself to being annoyed by these things for the foreseeable future. *sigh*

The Dangerous:

People keep posting recipes for cinnamon rolls. I am out of cinnamon, and very low on brown sugar. This will be fixed, and soon. (The resulting cinnamon rolls will be dessert, not breakfast. I have no desire to lose an entire morning to bloodsugar problems.)

Also, Ebay has Playmobil. (I will not buy anything more on Ebay before Christmas. I will not buy anything more on Ebay before Christmas. I will not....) (More Random: One piece of art I saw in the Minnesota Art Institute modern/contemporary exhibit as I was trying to find my way from the exit from the Louvre exhibit back to some place I recognized was a canvas on which was written, in cursive, "I will stop making boring art. I will stop making boring art. I will stop making boring art. I will stop making...." This continued for the entire extent of the (thankfully, not very large) canvas.)

The Horrifying:

This. (We had to explain to T, while in MN, why some people might find it offensive to be around him acting out, in his play, airplanes crashing into buildings. The fact that his voice remained happy and cheerful throughout his play did not help the potential for painful misunderstandings at all.)

Newt

[1] Back tolerance: Somehow, my pregnant belly has crossed the line into "large," such that bending over can cause me to be out of breath for a minute or so, and standing, walking, and doing lots of bending over for extended time periods can make my lower back most unhappy. I am trying to balance the need to maintain some activity to hopefully strengthen my back muscles (and live my life) with the need to not do too much, and am learning to delegate some of the "pick up everything on the floor" type tasks to the kids more.

(inspired on the way home from my midwife appointment by the sight of a man smoking)

T: Why does smoking feel good more than it hurts?

Biology of addiction ==> The Sound of Music (D: There's only one thing that bugs me about The Sound of Music, and that's that there's someone in it who smokes. M: Why does that bug you? D: Because you're not supposed to. (spoken in a tone of great offense and righteous indignation)[1]

The Sound of Music ==> early 20th c. European views of class (D: Why didn't Captain von Trapp want his family to sing in public?) ==> survival tactics under an enemy regime (D: Why did Captain von Trapp change his opinion on his family singing so much that he became a part of it?) ==> World War II ==> D-Day ==> sacrifice and heroism ==> honor (M: And that's why we honor the memory of anyone who participated in D-Day. T: What does "honor" mean?)

A lot of topics to cover in a 15-minute drive; we ended up sitting in the car for a little while to finish the conversation.

Newt

[1] This response is very consistent with D's rules-oriented approach to the world, and in direct contrast to the view I had been trying to impart immediately before her comment. I had been trying to impart the wisdom that the long-term harm of smoking far outweighs the short-term pleasure, that it is difficult to stop once you have started, and that you therefore (1) should not start and (2) should have some sympathy towards and understanding of those who, once started, continue in spite of the known harm. It's an interesting balance to walk; the kids have relatives in the extended family who do smoke, and while I want to encourage them not to emulate these relatives' smoking habit, I also don't want the kids saying rude, hurtful, or offensive things to them about their habit. I've obviously accomplished (1) with D, but (2) is still a ways off.

We are home! We have slept in our own beds -- my back does not hurt! It is amazing! wondrous! oh so very pleasant! We have done laundry in our own machines, without hunting for quarters! We have cooked! We have a fridge that not only will not freeze all fresh veggies we put in it, but actually had some non-frozen fresh veggies in it when we got here![1][2] We have gone grocery shopping at a familiar store! We have been to our own church and reconnected with people we will see again next week! I can request books from the library!

And we have a lot of work to do to get the house back in order before we can start thinking about getting ready to move. Things are in very weird places right now -- there is, for example, a box of band-aids in the bin of homeschooling supplies (perhaps appropriate to T's approach to learning, but still odd), D's library card is under a dining room chair, and most of T's toys are stacked on top of his train table[3], for just three examples out of an estimated 1539 things out of place in this house.

But the first order of business this morning is the post office. Usually, when out of town, we put a hold on the mail and come back to an overflowing mailbox, so that the only thing reassuring us that they did in fact hold the mail is the fact that it's all been rubber-banded together into large multi-day packets. This time, we apparently were gone too long for that; we came back to a very small note, telling us "Mail too much for box;" in the column of descriptions of the type of mail we were to come pick up, there were check marks next to "letter," "large letter," and "parcel," with ses manually added after each of those. It should be an interesting trip back to the car from the post office. However, the interesting part only starts there; the really fun part will come next, when I frantically dig through the pile to find the property tax bill. Property taxes are usually due Nov. 1; they made an exception last year, since Nov. 1 was a Saturday then, and I'm hoping they did the same this year, but either way, I'll likely be heading straight from the post office to the bank to pay the thing, and hopefully not spreading the mail out all over the van in the process of finding it.

There's nothing like being gone for a month to make the trials of home ownership seem worth it, even if it would be nice to have the home ownership without the trials. :)

Newt

ETA: Turns out, property taxes are due Dec. 1 this year. WTH? Why the different due date? Oh well, it's paid now, one less thing to think about. Now to find a livable living room!

[1] My SIL stocked our fridge for us. One can speculate on whether this was all kind consideration on her part, or part desperation -- usually, we take 2/3 of the CSA box and they get 1/3, but we've left them with the whole thing for the past month -- but either way, it was lovely and wonderful and I have an amazing SIL.
[2] The mini-fridge in our hotel room was very reliable about freezing fresh veggies before we could eat them, but not quite reliable enough about freezing everything to allow me to confidently buy ice cream. Worst of all possible temparture ranges.
[3] It was the quickest, easiest way to get them off the floor when we moved a mattress into his room for J. Our sleeping arrangments in MN convinced us that (1) we had gotten J used to sleeping in random, not-the-spare-bedroom places, and should capitalize on this to put him where we wanted him to sleep long-term, and (2) T could, in fact, sleep through any middle-of-the-night wakings J might continue to have. So they are now sharing a room, at least at night; J still sleeps elsewhere for naptime, since T needs to be able to play in his room during that time.

My mother and I have been sharing a chuckle over an odd thing recently. One of my mom's friends asked her how my pregnancy was going; Mom blinked, and commented that there had been so many other things to talk about recently, we hadn't gotten around to discussing it. This can, of course, be viewed as a commentary on both the current craziness of the rest of my life, and on the fact that my pregnancy is going along just fine, thanks; if anything were to go wrong in that department, it would instantly gain all my attention. Also interesting is the fact that being pregnant actually gains a lot more of my attention than it does my discussion time these days; wee kicks in the middle of the night and the resemblance of my abdomen to a Mexican jumping bean any time I lie on my back pretty well guarantee Baby Tetra some attention from me, as do two interested older children and my appallingly small wardrobe. (Can I carve out a wee smidge of sewing time in the next month or so? Hmmmm.... What if it counts as "cleaning out my sewing corner?")

I have read a number of online discussions, forums, etc., in which the participants were mothers with large families. (Definitions of "large" vary greatly from person to person. My definition probably starts at around six or seven children, although I have found myself having a bit of an odd, "Wow, we're actually doing this, that's weird" reaction to this pregnancy, which implies that my psyche is confused as to my personal definition of "large family." Regardless, most of these conversations have featured mothers of 8-10+ children.) Some of these mothers have to deal with relatives who are less than understanding of their choices, some of whom can be downright mean or nasty in their comments. I remember, in years past, seeing some of them mention that they simply didn't discuss new pregnancies with certain relatives (including, in some really sad cases, their own mothers) until it was time to send out the birth announcements, and wondering how that worked. Didn't pregnancy pretty much demand discussion and celebration? Not that they were missing out on celebration via this tactic, that was clear, but how did you "simply not discuss" something so major? Now, I know: You have a busy life. When there are nine children outside the womb to discuss (or three and a major life decision), the completely normal and expected antics of the one in the womb may quite reasonably not make the discussion list.

Ruminations on this, plus a comment by someone I was talking to recently, have led me to wonder: What would it be like to have the sort of life in which the two-sentence summary did not automatically lead people to make comments like, "Wow, you have a lot on your plate right now!"? Would I even want that sort of life? I suspect the answer is a resounding, "NO!" (Although I will admit that if you were to offer me a magic wand of Get the Moving Done With No Effort, I'd probably take you up on it; I'm not really a masochist, I don't think. And yes, one of the tasks on my checklist is to explore moving companies, whereby I understand that money can be converted into varying approximations of such magic wands, or into really big headaches, depending on who you choose.) (The comment, BTW, came from a woman who is currently homeschooling two teenagers and a pre-teen while attending midwifery school. We avoided any hint of competing for who had the most going on, and had a very pleasant and understanding conversation, including lots of swapping of birth stories (midwifery school and all). It was, overall, a very pleasant conversation.)

Newt

We've gotten into a pattern here of bringing J into our bed sometime in the middle of the night. It started because when the hotel turns the heat off (which they do at what I consider to be a rediculously low temperature, and no it's never dangerously cold inside, but it can be uncomfortable sometimes, and we may end up complaining to corporate about it because really, this is rediculous), the corner room where J sleeps, which has floor-to-ceiling windows along its curved exterior wall, can get pretty cold, which makes it understandably hard for him to fall back to sleep in the early morning hours. But it had crept from bringing him into our bed in response to that, to him expecting to come to our bed anytime he woke up, which was starting to affect our quality of sleep. (For an hour or two, he's fine. If he's with us for half the night, he gets wiggly at some point, and ends up putting his feet in places we find uncomfortable.)

Sunday night at bedtime, I informed him that he was going to sleep in his bed all night long. We discussed it a little bit, which is to say that I talked, and he occasionally said, "No;" it wasn't obvious if he was declining sleeping in his bed all night, or sleeping at all, although once we were into the falling asleep routine, he went along with it pretty readily. He woke up once in the middle of the night, nursed briefly, and went back to sleep happily, all in "his bed" (a blanket on the floor).

(Of course, I should probably mention that his room got cold again last night, and so I ended up bringing him into our bed around 6 or 6:30 this morning. We'll see how things go from here.)

On Thursday last week, I gave T a bath. T and I have had a post-bath pattern for a while now in which I can wrap a towel around him, and he can curl up under it for 15ish minutes, finally decide that he's dry, start playing, and then I remind him to get dressed (with varying levels of frustration in my voice, depending on what I was planning to do next and how urgently it requires that he be dressed and how many times I've already told him about it), or I can dry him off, in which case he yells at me angrily the entire time, I hug him when he's dry, he takes half a minute or so to calm down, and then he goes and gets dressed. His yelling has never been articulate, and I have typically assumed that the issue was a tactile one of not liking to be rubbed with towels, and so I've tried to rush through it as much as possible, get it over with, and help him move on to the next step.

This time, he actually yelled words. "You're making me cold! You're taking the water away from me and making me cold!"

Huh?!!?

It turns out that he had noticed that in baths, pools, etc., it's when you are not in the water that you are cold. Thus, quite logically, he had concluded that water made you warm, and that lack of water made you cold. Getting him out of the bath makes him cold to begin with; the idea that Mommy would then do something to make him even colder was very legitimately upsetting to him.

So we had a talk about evaporation, and the fact that the water leaving his skin had to take a bit of his energy with it in order to leave, which made him colder, but didn't happen when he was in the bath because then the evaporating water could take that energy from the rest of the water (which I should have but forgot to mention makes the rest of the water a tiny bit colder, but the effect over the course of a bath is usually too small for us to notice, especially compared to the overall effect of the bath water coming to temperature equilibrium with the rest of the room, but that last clause might have been too much for him). He listened, and understood, and giggled through my demonstration of molecules holding onto each other and losing their grip on each other with added kinetic energy, and generally had a very different attitude towards the whole thing by the end.

So, science saves the day! Yay! He's no longer angry at me for toweling him off!

Newt

Playmobil is a toy I totally didn't understand until T's therapist started using it in all his sessions with us. I looked at Playmobil and saw figures and toys that did nothing, from which you could not build anything, and was confused as to what purpose they served and how children enjoyed them. Children, however, look at Playmobil and see a bunch of props they can use to tell a story. And, since it's a set of props centered around toy people, the toys prompt them to tell stories about social interactions, which is good for any kid, since it allows them to process whatever it is that they're learning about or dealing with in their social interactions, and is important and therapeutic work for kids who need extra help figuring out how social interactions work. The kids have been very enthusiastic about playing with the Playmobil toys at Dr. Z's office; we've been slow to start our own collection of them -- they're not cheap, and we already feel that we have a lot of toys -- but they'll be on the Christmas wish list for the kids for this year.

Playmobil has a younger line of toys for little kids who can't have the small pieces. J got some of these for Christmas last year, all vehicle-themed, and has very much enjoyed them. For his birthday, we got him a couple zoo/safari-themed sets, which have been a huge hit in the hotel room. Today, I bought him the last available set with this theme, which features a vet with supply bag, a lion, and a couple other animals. I haven't handed it to him yet, but I anticipate that it will be met with joy.

And then I took a look at the older kid Playmobil sets, to see if there were any worth buying for D and T for Christmas. There were a multitude of sets I thought they would enjoy, any of which I would unhesitatingly recommend to generous grandparents. But one set particularly caught my eye, and I decided I had to get it. The set was obviously intended to be a children's bedroom. It features two children, two beds (which can be bunked or not), some simple furnishings, some books, and a few toys for the toy children, including an ark with several miniscule pairs of animals. I'm sure that keeping track of all the animals will require various precautions and occasional searches in all the corners. But the recursive natures of toys that have toys was just too much for me to resist.

I'm hiding this one until Christmas; if you see the kids, please don't mention it. :)

Newt

1. Dart into the parking space I had my eye on -- the last parking space in the lot, near the entrance to the mall, clearly marked "Reserved for Expectant Mothers or Customers with Small Children."

2. Jump out of your car and dash into the mall, revealing yourself to be (a) male; (b) not pregnant; (c) traveling alone; and (d) in perfect health, with no reason to be unable to walk from the large parking garage nearby.

It was the weekend, so Chris was with me, so I did not get really peeved. Had the situation arisen during the week, however.....

Newt

This morning at about 6 (i.e., half an hour after I finally got back to bed, an hour before the alarm, two-three hours before I expected J to wake up), I heard him calling for me. "MAAAAAA!" I lifted my head off my pillow, but the call did not repeat; exhausted, I put my head back down, hoping that he'd gone back to sleep on his own.

In that moment, there was a knock on the bedroom door.

I opened it, to find a small figure in footy pajamas, who emitted an excited chortle: "Eh-heh!" I debated, very briefly, the merits of insisting that he go back to his own bed, but laid him down in our bed between us, where he snuggled down and promptly went back to sleep.

In other news, we are not going to get to check out a homeschool co-op today after all; this makes me sad, but getting the H1N1 they've been passing around lately would make me even sadder. Also, it has just become obvious to me that the precipitation falling outside right now is snow; nothing is sticking yet, but I think staying inside is sounding like a better idea today.

Newt