Gideon was still playing with age-appropriate trains and toddler toys when we took a walk around the neighborhood and he pointed his “boom stick”–a tiny curved tree limb, barely in the shape of a gun–at objects and made the sound of them exploding as his arm jolted upward from the imaginary recoil.  I’m still not sure where he got the idea for that.  The most violence he’d seen up to that point on TV was when Thomas the Tank Engine ran through the buffers and oil splattered everywhere as his eyes spun in circles from the surprise.  Obviously this was well before his love for Spider-Man and Transformers..

Friday afternoon Neighbor Boy called and said he had a surprise for Gideon.  We stopped at Neighbor Boy’s grandparents’ house on our walk and Gideon was gifted with a very nice, homemade pretend gun carved from wood, made by Neighbor’s Boy’s grandpa.  It even came with a holster.  Then Neighbor Boy and Gideon fought off the bad guys in the neighborhood with their matching guns to protect Mia’s heart.  Very cute.

Saturday morning Neighbor Boy ran to our house and brought another very nice homemade pretend gun carved from wood, this time for Mia.  So Sunday afternoon I asked them to make thank you cards for Neighbor Boy’s Grandpa.  They made the sweetest cards, told him he’s “awesome,” with people at the bottom of the page, smiling as they point guns at each other.

I don’t think they understand guns yet.

Last night the kids and I went to the new antique mall west of town in order to almost finish our Christmas shopping.  I don’t remember when we’ve been this last-minute on the present buying.  Once in college a family friend asked if I’d started Christmas shopping and I was like Noo, I didn’t know people other than my Mom (who shops all year long) even thought about Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.  But as we drove in her car that first weekend of November I learned something new.

This year Hubby and I budgeted money then set it aside for presents.  That seemed like a mature start.  So we mentally patted ourselves on the back and left it there for too long.  A couple weeks ago we were like Oh yeah, maybe we should start spending some of that money.  Our mature start had morphed into a time lapse without our notice.  So we sat down on the computer and TOTALLY ROCKED IT with presents that arrive neatly in the mail for Gideon and Mia.  But baby Daphne got pushed aside.  We knew what to get her and the stuff is readily available so we accidentally put it off until today, which means Hubby is out this afternoon finding a few more things.  Then tonight we’ll sit with hot chocolate and wrap and be done in time for baking treats tomorrow before we’re off on a few days of driving and sleeping and eating and opening presents.

I had a hard time walking around that antique mall last night.  When they first opened I thought Yeah!  Stick it to the Andover Antique Mall because those people are ruuuuuude.  I’m not sure why you look a customer in the eye as she enters your store and then don’t say hello.  I’m also not sure why you periodically follow said customer, as well as her mother and sister and brother-in-law, around the store while they shop.  If those four are the only customers in your very large, very expensive antique mall, maybe you should be extra nice with a cherry on top.  Don’t scare away the paying people.

But I’m also not sure why Justin Bieber gets so wrapped up in his rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” before Arthur Christmas that he almost has to tear off his overly-decorated coat a few times, but never completely do so.  So there are a lot of things I don’t understand.  I also don’t understand Justin Bieber.  Can the tweens please bring back the Jonas Brothers?  Them I understand a little better, girl jeans and all.

Anyway, last night I finally realized Paramount is probably sticking it to Pigeon’s Roost on State Street because it’s closer in proximity than it is to the one in Andover, and I hate that.  The people at Pigeon’s Roost have always been nice to me and nice to my kids; they never freak out when Gideon and Mia walk around and look at little treasures.  I hope the new place doesn’t put the old place out of business.  I’m rooting for both places to survive because the people at Paramount were awfully nice as well.

And I need as many places as possible to do that last-minute Christmas shopping.

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.

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.

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.

• Do not assume that your daughter–the only (non-baby) girl in attendance–is the one with the high-pitched screams.  Otherwise you’ll look her in the eye and tell her to cut it out as that same shriek simultaneously erupts from the other room.
• If you allow one of the guests to chase two of the other boys with a golf club, make sure it’s a NERF golf club.
• Video games, while not normally ideal, sure come in handy.  Oh sweet electronic bliss, bring on that mind-numbing virtue we parents usually abhor.

excitement is about to burst through their calm demeanors.

In today’s column I celebrate my son.

My sweet little man when he was two days old:

Beautiful little baby.

And my handsome boy at age seven:

He is a joy.

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.

Things I don’t want to forget:

• At dinner the other night I was telling my family about this MONSTER fountain drink you can get from the Presto station for only $.99.  The kids were like, “Get it!” And I was like, “Not without Daddy, cuz there’s no way I could drink that much pop.”  Gideon said, “I could!  And Mia could, too!  Come on, Mommy, you can buy it for us.  It’d only be one dollar and ninety-eight cents.”  (Emphasis mine.)  I looked at Hubby as he looked at me with a shushing hand movement.  After dinner he said that he refused to be astounded by him anymore.
• After we got up from dinner, Hubby and Daphne played in the living room when she took a tiny tea cup and gave some to her baby, because she loves to share her food with those she loves.
• A couple days later Mia didn’t come down from her bedroom after she woke up.  Usually she sits on the couch and stares at the TV as her body slowly adjusts to no longer being unconscious.  That morning she blasted tunes from her re-discovered bedroom CD player.