Last night my husband took the kids to the farm.  All three of them.  When I told my friend Mrs. Y what Hubby was doing she said “He definitely deserves some Daddy Points for that!”  I hadn’t thought of how impressive it is.  But seriously, he does deserve Daddy Points for that one.  Taking two self-sustaining grade-schoolers is sweet, but taking an 18-month-old toddler along, too, is gutsy.  Hubby doesn’t flinch at the thought.  His being outside in the sunshine on his family’s land with his offspring giggling and running around him invigorates his soul.  I’m happy for him that his happy place is so close.

While they were gone I spent my birthday money, even though my birthday is a week away.  Usually with birthday money I over think it and spend some then over think the purchase and return it and a month later I have no idea how much money I actually have left to spend and my husband is tired of hearing about it.  But last night I hit a great window at TJ Maxx and bought new pillows and a new throw for my couch.  My mom says that she measures time periods in pictures by the pillows I have on my couch, haha, but finding the perfect combination of colorful throw pillows that are cheap is elusive to me.  The long bland couch in our living room needs some life in it.  And I think I found it. Happy and not too many and we can lay our heads on them.  So the money’s gone before my birthday arrives.  Happy  birthday to me, sort of.

I also got my hair cut last night.  It’s… short.  Not my style.  When I see pictures of myself with shoulder-length curled hair I recognize me.  That is my style.  But double-processing my hair and flat-ironing and curling has taken a toll.  So right now it’s short so that I can have healthy hair, and from now on I’ll be more gentle and hopefully grow my hair a few inches by spring.  Then I’ll recognize myself again.

Happy new year!  I’m going to watch another episode of Everest or Felicity before my family gets home.

“Holiday gatherings are stressful because you’re forced to face the short genetic distance between you and a completely insane person.”

-Jeannie Gaffigan, with a big hat tip to my sister who found this and let me in on the hilarity.

In Saturday’s column I mentioned that somewhere an easy solution exists to our morning troubles but right now the answer continues to allude [edit: elude me.  why did nobody yell at me over this?  sometimes you're allowed to call me out.] me.  For the past two school mornings I’ve let them watch the clock; they know what time breakfast needs to be over and what time we need to walk out the door.  Friday we were early to school but today they were late.  My husband is worried that they’ll get used to being late and it will no longer be an issue, but right now I don’t care.  I’m tackling one obstacle at a time and the current obstacle is trying not to gripe at my children while they’re griping at each other.  I just want everyone to be serene on the way out the door.  Shiny and happy would be extra nice.

Here’s Saturday’s column, where I tell you about my solution–that really can only happen once in a very rare while–to the morning frustrations: playing hooky.

Lately Miss Daphne has been a bit unpleasant.  She gets up and whines, walks around the house and whines, gets mad at me when the door only opens so far because THE WALL IS RIGHT THERE, and how dare it be in her way when she wants to push the door in a full circle.

I feel like I’m constantly on edge, my body always full of adrenaline in preparation for a fight with her, a fight where she yells and I calmly try to distract her or I walk away.  This stage is hard.

Yesterday after we picked up Gideon and Mia from school we were headed into the house when Daphne ran into the yard.  She didn’t have on a coat or anything covering her legs, but I let her run around anyway.  AND SHE WAS SO STINKIN’ HAPPY.  Giggling and playing with her sister, then her brother and sister, and just running around and being the happy baby I know she is.

She saw me and ran up to me to give me a hug.  She might not have done that for weeks.  I snuggled her and kissed her baby neck and told her how much I love her.  Then I set her down as soon as the wiggles set in and she was off, playing with brother and sister again.

The mailman came up, who we always chat with when we’re outside at the same time.  As he said goodbye Mia gave him a hug, because she is a hugger and loves everyone who is kind to her, and then Daphne gave him a hug.  I have never seen her hug a semi-stranger like that.  But the fresh air and the sunshine poured love into her little body and she couldn’t contain it.  It was just bursting out of her little self.

Then Daddy got home and it was a happy love fest.

I don’t know if it’s my residual high from seeing my baby and my kids loving each other and giggling and just generally being sweet or if she really is different, but I feel like Daphne is a changed baby.  This morning she only threw one tantrum, but she got up happy, she giggled with her brother and sister and didn’t gripe at them when they talked to her.  Even her facial expressions are different.  The scowl has been limited today.

That sunshine is an interesting thing.  And it tells me that this winter I’ll be bundling each of us up in five layers a piece so that we can go outside in the sunshine, even when it’s 20 degrees outside.  I’ll do anything to keep this baby happy.

Sunday evening I’ll be at the ICT Winter Bazaar, hawking goods my incredibly talented sister Hayley made.  Beautiful stuff like this that you can’t find anywhere else.  Come see us and say Hello and listen to the music of Virginia Williams and eat yummy snacks from local restaurants.  I guarantee you’ll find better stuff than you can find at Target, and YOU KNOW how much I love Target.

In a new every-other-year tradition that my husband probably hasn’t yet realized, Hubby goes duck hunting the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  When he told the kids his plans Little Missy looked at me with wide eyes before turning back to her father.  “No!” she squealed. “You can’t kill the baby ducks!”  She never cried, though, not like she did two years ago when Hubby told her his killing plans.  That’s improvement.

This year Gideon even got to go, and he maturedly handled the wind and rain with nary a complaint.  Somewhere deep inside his little body his boy DNA told him that is what you must endure in order to shoot ducks with your daddy and uncles.  It’s hard for me to understand the appeal but he loved it.

When my two very cold men got home Gideon walked right up to me.  “Mommy, I need to talk to you but Mia can’t hear.”

I walked into the kitchen, sat down on a stool and looked him in the eye.  “Okay, what’s going on.”

“Well, we shot a duck but it didn’t die, so uncle Shane had to pull it’s head off and then it’s body still moved after it was dead.”

He looked at me with his serious face and slightly excited big eyes and I tried not to show him my freaked-out face.  I (calmly, I think) said the best thing I could think of.  “Whoa.  That is pretty crazy.”

“Yeah.”

Who knows what Gideon will experience next time.

We rarely eat this well.

steak: courtesy of grandma & papa

marinade: 1/2 c. soy sauce, 1/2 c. honey, 2 T. vinegar, 1/4 t. ground ginger, 1/2 t. garlic powder, 1/2 c. olive oil

onion strings: pioneer woman’s recipe (i found the recipe in the book my sweet friend jessi bought me for my birthday.  she even had it signed for me.)

sweet potatoes: with lots and lots of cinnamon

green beans: something needs to aid in the digestion of all that red meat

One time, when we were eating a delicious meal of salmon, I told Hubby that I have to control myself.  Part of me wants to stuff the delicious-ness in my mouth as fast as possible but I hate looking at the soonly empty plate and wishing for more.  So I force myself to take small bites, put my fork down in between, and enjoy the meal.

My husband looked at me, probably with a mouth full of food, and said “I don’t have that problem.”  He of the It’s Better To Inhale My Food camp.

That story has no point, other than last night I had to remind myself again to eat slowly and enjoy each bite.  Usually hurrying through a meal doesn’t matter.  But when you have a delicious cut of free steak on your plate,  you want to savor it.  The last time we ate steak that delicious was at my parent’s house a few months ago and I almost cried from the sheer joy that night as well.

Casually eating her seconds of steak.

Post-steak entertainment.

Mornings are the worst time of day for me, and by extension, for my kids.  It’s not that I expect Gideon, Mia and I to skip out the door singing Disney songs on our way to school, but I could seriously do without all the, “Quit playing, you need to be eating/brushing your teeth/putting on your shoes.”

We wake up in plenty of time, but the kids will sit at the breakfast and laugh instead of eating.  How long should it take to eat half an apple and one Pop-Tart?  Not twenty minutes, I tell you.

The other morning we were moving along at a good clip when all the sudden we were about to be late and Mia had on a skirt with no shorts underneath.  So I told her to go upstairs and grab the shorts SHE’D WORN THE VERY NIGHT BEFORE while trick or treating and put those on underneath her skirt.  She hollered from upstairs that she couldn’t find them.  But that would be difficult to not be able to find shorts that she’d worn a MERE 11 HOURS EARLIER.  Especially when she’d spent ten of those hours sleeping.  Did she look on top of the dirty clothes?  Cuz they couldn’t have been buried that deep.

Frustrated, I hurried up the stairs to find her in front of her vanity–which houses no clothes–PUSHING THE DRAWER CLOSED WITH HER TEETH.  When we were about to be late.  When she was supposed to throw on a pair of shorts for modesty on the playground.  I looked at her and asked, “Are you kidding me with this?” then rushed past her to her closet.

She was surprised by my frustration.  That girl had honestly forgotten what she was supposed to be doing.  With apologetic eyes she took off her skirt to put on the pants I was handing to her (because she hates pants and I was giving her a consequence for disobeying me) and tried to mime to me if putting that skirt in the basket next to the door was okay.  It was her way of saying, “Sorry,” trying to do just what I wanted her to do.  But the annoyance at being late plus having to complete a simple task for her clouded my brain plus reacting harshly to her playtime prevented an appropriate response from me in that moment; it wasn’t until I’d brushed her off with a, “Yeah, whatever,”  that I even realized she was trying to make-up to me.

In the truck on the way to school I tried be sweet and give them good kisses with encouraging words before they into school.  “Remember Mommy loves you!  Don’t go the whole day thinking your Mommy is mad at you!”

I’ve thought about us waking up earlier, but dragging Mia out of bed at 7 a.m. is already difficult enough, and the kids go to bed at 7:30 at night.  I don’t want to eat into our evening together any more than I already do.  The past two nights they’ve had to lay out everything they’re wearing the next day–down to their socks–before they go to bed, but this morning Mia didn’t hear my rule that they had to wear pants and so she stomped up the stairs when I told her to go put on some long pants underneath her skirt.  She came back down the stairs wearing a pink and sparkly Hannah Montana shirt, a purple Hawaiian skirt, and blue/pink/green butterfly leggings with her light-up tennis shoes.  Not a thing on that outfit coordinated with another item, but I let her go to school in it.  Usually I would have tenderly convinced her to wear pink leggings, because then at least two items would have semi-matched, but this morning I just let it go.  She looked crazy but at least she was happy.

What I’m definitely going to do is copy my friend Chrissa, who bought a cheap analog clock from Wal-Mart and shaded the clock with the different things her daughter should be doing at different times.  Say, from 7:00-7:10 you’re getting dressed, then from 7:10-7:25 you’re eating breakfast, etc, culminating with at 7:45 backpacks, coats and shoes are on and we’re ready to leave.  I want to take my bossiness out of the equation and let the clock rule their morning.

I get them for a precious few hours a day.  I don’t need those hours filled with frustration.

Monday the kids had ANOTHER day off from school.  Which again, I love, but SERIOUSLY with the days off.  Out of the four full weeks in October, my kids are only attending a five-day school week two of those weeks.  Same for September.  How do the parents that work deal with all the time off of Augusta Public Schools?  I’d like to copy the Bluestem school district that has four-day weeks.  Or even better, I’d like to copy the school my husband’s cousin sends her child to, where kids only attend two days a week and then parents work with their children on the off days.  I would love love love that.  My kids would get to meet friends at school and learn music and run around in P.E. but I’d get to have them home and see their brains grasping new concepts.

Anyway, for this day off Hubby planned long in advance to take Gideon and Mia to Papa’s Vet Clinic and shadow him for the day.  Daphne and I hung out with Grandma; we ate pecan rolls downtown and shopped at cute little stores.  More my speed than getting cow poop in my hair.

At lunch we all met up at the Mexican restaurant.  Mia couldn’t sit down before telling me about their day, “Papa got to feel the babies in the mama cows tummies and he STUCK HIS HAND UP THEIR BUTT!”

It’s called preg checking.  OBs do something similar with us pregnant ladies once we know we’re pregnant, but large animal vets put on gloves that go up to their shoulders and manually find out if a heifer or cow is pregnant and how far along she is.  Although gross, it seems easier than asking the cow to pee on a Clear Blue Easy stick and then making her wait three minutes for the results.

Other highlights: looking in a microscope, getting food from both of the housecalls (if that’s even what Papa calls it) when Papa preg checked more cattle (I don’t know if Papa is always so well-fed on his calls, but that day one family [a Mennonite family, so you know that stuff was delicious and homemade] brought out sweet tea and treats for Papa, Hubby and the kids; at the other stop they shared candy and pop with the boy who lived there.  They got spoiled.), seeing a tazer (or cattle prod).

And now for the pictures!

Yep. Stinky.

Standing in front of a mama cow.

The last time Gideon saw Papa neuter a dog he whispered to Grandma post-surgery, "When is Papa gonna put those back?"

Looking at microbes.

My other budding scientist.

After all the treats and the microscopes and the cattle prod from the day prior, Tuesday morning as Mia got ready for school she once again told me about Papa sticking his hand up the cow’s butt.  I wonder what part of her day off she’ll share with her friends.

The middle of last week Hubby asked me if I minded him taking a guys’ night Saturday night.  He figured that if I was at a ladies’ retreat all day and he was home with the kids then he might like to hang out with his friends after that.  I didn’t mind so he set the plan in motion.

Friday night our friends Matt and Chrissa stopped by for a little while after watching a movie at the theatre down the street.  I told them how funny it was to me that Hubby would need a chance to unwind after a day at home with his kids, because being with his kids is just so stinkin’ hard.

Hubby quickly spoke up.  “Now I never said that.”  Which he didn’t.  But I like to read between the lines.

Matt jumped to Hubby’s defense, and really to the defense of fathers everywhere.  “You see, you girls do it all the time and so you KNOW what you’re doing.  We don’t do it as often and so we’re just not as good at it as you are.”  To which Chrissa and I laughed and rolled our eyes and congratulated him on his attempt to butter us up.

Saturday morning came and I rushed to get out the door.  At the same time I was leaving, the rest of my family was also leaving, they for Gideon’s flag football game.  I saw poor little Daphne being carried to the car in the exact same clothes she’d worn the entire day before and then slept in.  But I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to have to change her.  And really, pick your battles.  The little dirty baby was at least being loved on.

The retreat was supposed to end at 5 but ended ahead of schedule at 4:15.  The other girls at my table  and I  sat and chatted for a while.  Then a lady there giggled and pointed out that it was all the young moms who were staying around til 5 when the rest of the moms had scattered.  I looked around and she was right.  But by golly, we all had until 5 before our husbands expected us to leave, and why rush home to dirty noses and dirty bottoms and being hung all over when we could sit and drink coffee in our own personal space, surrounded by good conversation?

I walked in the door of my house at 5:05 and found the toys cleaned up in the living room, the clean dishes put away and the dirty ones in the dishwasher, dinner cooking in the Crock-Pot, the floor swept.  Upstairs I found Mia and Daphne’s bedroom rearranged (After we got the big kids’ loft beds I rearranged Gideon’s room completely but only the girls’ room to a point.  I was stuck with where to place their furniture, and as a result their room was constantly dirty.  Poor girls.), cleaned, and decorated.

My husband had a Rock Star Day.

Hubby, Gideon, Mia and Daphne came home about ten minutes after I did, happily holding Sonic drinks in hand and telling me about riding bikes at the park.  Yes, Hubby’s Rock Star Day did not end at home, but he trudged three kids and two bikes to the park after the football game, showers, cleaning and cooking.

But Daphne was in hour 36 of wearing the same clothes, so he’s not perfect.  Just close to it.