• Why not start things off with my column from two weeks ago, wherein I discuss the competition between me and my daughter.
• And then follow up with my nearly-stopped-wavering on the More Kids issue.  Because I think there is this spectrum, with Individual Attention for Each Kid at one end and My Alone Time/My Alone Time With My Husband at the other.  With each additional child something has to give.  You’re either going to take time away from one of your existing kids or you’re going to take time away from you and your spouse.  For our family, I think we’ve just about hit the right spot on the spectrum.
• I never dug her bits about beauty creams or fashion at the end of each Lucky issue, but I really like her bits now in blog form.  Makes no sense to me, either.  Anyway, one of my new favorite blogs.
• Bet you didn’t think of all these as you raise your kids.  Especially #3, to which my husband is a testament.  That boy is not oogied out by germs.  One time he told me that as a kid when his grandparents would make him wash up for dinner he’d think, Why?  Because, as his youngest brother pointed out on a different occasion, he’s pretty sure he rolled down hills of cow-poo as a kid and had the best time.  Hubby’s grandparents knew their farm held germs, and said germs should be washed away before dinner.  But Hubby didn’t adhere to that kind of pesky germs-cause-problems hoolabaloo.  AND my husband never gets sick.  Which is only a bit of hyperbole.  Because really, he does not get the flu or colds.  Maybe he’s sick once every couple of years?  Anyway, long paragraph to say that #3 in the above-linked Cracked column rings true with my husband.
• Finally, read this.  Then put away your computer/iPad/iPhone and take Heidi’s challenge to write some handwritten notes.

Because usually I don’t.  But today Mia was home from school and she made sure Daphne stayed out of the street while I buckled in Baby W.  Such a happy day for a walk!

The littles don't show it, but they really are happy to be outside. I think they're just shocked at this point.

And… Mia is out of school.  Again.  Yes, Spring Break was just last week but she is out today and tomorrow due to Kindergarten Round-Up.  Then next Friday she and Gideon will be out of school for Good Friday, then the next Monday for a Teacher Development day.

I love my kids and I look forward to when they’ll be out of school.  But why don’t we just officially change Augusta schools to four-day weeks?  A friend at Bible study joked that’s what they’d already done but decided to quietly take out random days of the week so nobody would notice.

At Bible study I hurriedly counted up the weeks and I was incorrect.  The actual number is SIX, not EIGHT.  But in the six weeks stretching from Monday, March 5th to Friday, April 13th, Mia will have been in school a full five days for only ONE of those weeks.  That means the week of April 16th is going to be cruel.  Oh so very cruel.

In Saturday’s column I wrote about our ten year wedding anniversary because I am so proud of how far we’ve come.

And, like every year, I have to post this e.e. cummings’ poem. I love you, Mr. Fox.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

--e.e. cummings

Yesterday three of us got showered before school and the other child took a long bath immediately after returning from dropping her big brother and big sister at school.  I unloaded the dishwasher, made breakfast for four of us, lunches for two, wrote checks for school pictures, played on the floor with Daphne, wrote a blog post and completed one load of laundry.

I did not load the dishwasher, make the beds or put away any clothes.  Not making the beds is one of my triggers to a bad day.  But the biggest trigger, I’ve realized, is stressing about getting a certain amount done around the house and then trying to work around my kids to get that stuff done.

This is in my head a lot–A LOT a lot–trying to find the balance between taking care of my children and my husband and myself and my house, and because it is in my head a lot I also blog about it and a lot and I’ve columned about it at least once before.  But I wrote about it last week and the week before because I sort of feel like I’m just now getting a good handle on maintaining a clean home while being sweet to my kids.

So: Shifting my focus and then taking my own advice.

I’m still here, but Daphne is at a stage where she needs constant interaction.  This makes sitting at the computer and typing nearly impossible.  I sat down and had a little talk with myself about how she is only this age once and I need to soak in the times that she wants to sit on my lap and shut the dryer door for me while I’m in the middle of doing laundry and sit on the counter next to me while I cook.  But the pep talk didn’t work and I continued to get frustrated over the fact that I couldn’t sit by myself and type one line of an email before a certain Baby Chickadee was sitting on my lap and commandeering the keyboard.  Then I prayed about it and my heart was changed.  Now Daphne and I giggle while she pours canned peas over the eggs that I’m frying on the stove.  Messy yes, but pretty hilarious.  And Daphne was awfully proud of herself for helping Mama cook.

I do still write for the Gazette most every week.  They pay me.  And aside from Christmas break and a few sick days, every week I write for them.  Last week I wrote about my time at the gym: The conscious effort to politely ignore.  The week before I wrote about my new reading plan with my husband: Yes, I’d love to analyze the particulars with you.

So I’m still around, just not on the computer as much as I once was.  Daphne and I are eating eggs and spilling peas on the counter and laughing the whole time.

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.

I have never been an activist.  About six or nine months ago my sister showed me information that Hershey’s unabashedly uses child labor to harvest its cocoa pods in Western Africa.  While other chocolate companies are fazing out this practice, Hershey’s refuses to do the same.  And so I stopped buying Hershey’s products (no Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, no Cadbury’s Easter Eggs, no Kit Kats).  I figured that I might as well use the rest of the Hershey’s Cocoa Powder sitting in my kitchen cabinet since I’d already bought it, but the first time I made a mocha at home I could not get the image out of my head of sweet childrens’ hands on the cocoa pods.  I poured that mocha down the drain.  Later I found out that most of those children have been stolen from their homes and work 12-hour days for no wages.  NO WAGES.  It’s not just that seven-year-olds are working instead of learning at school, but they’ve been forced into slave-labor conditions.  Their parents get paid when they are returned home, but if they’ve been stolen from their homes, their parents do not get paid.  The kidnappers do.  And that’s assuming they get to put down their machetes (their means of cutting cocoa pods from the trees) and leave the cocoa farms.  That knowledge makes it much easier to forgo Hershey’s products.  A tiny bit of the activist gene in me was ignited.

You can see a little bit of the BBC documentary that explains it here:

Then last week I read an article about the practices of a research company that Pepsi contracts with and now I’m boycotting Pepsi.  You can read my thoughts on it in my column for Saturday’s edition of the Gazette.

Also, some of the articles I read can be found here:

Aborted Baby Cells Used as Research Base for Flavoring

Are Aborted Fetus Cells Helping to Make Your Diet Pepsi Sweeter?

Pro-life groups call for Pepsi boycott over aborted fetal cell lines

List of Products from Corporations that Use Senomyx

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.

Two weeks ago I completed my first-ever 5k.  Hubby and I are currently on the lookout for more races to run.

The poem that I referenced in my column:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

–e.e. cummings

I think Mia is an awesome little artist.