• Each day after school the kids and I have Treat Time, a chance for me to eat sweets and sit and look at my children who’ve been gone all day.  Tuesday I asked Mia if she wanted the store-bought pudding she and Gideon had been begging for or a chocolate chip cookie I’d made the prior afternoon.  She pulled on her lip, looked down and said, “Um… a cookie, I guess.”  I told her that she could eat the pudding if that’s what she’d rather have, but her tiny voice said, “I don’t want to spoil your fun, though, if you want me to eat the cookies you made.”  I convinced her that my feelings would not be hurt in the slightest if she ate the pudding, and so she happily did.
• Every time I send a lunch to school with the kids I write on their napkins.  Mia allows me to write her notes about how much I love her while Gideon barely lets me put the note into his lunchbox.  But that’s a whole other story.  Anyway, Mia always brings her napkins home until I throw them away when she’s not looking.  The other day she told me that her hands were messy at lunch.  When I asked why she didn’t just use her napkin she said, “I don’t want to write on the napkin you gave me, Mama.”  So the next morning I cut her napkin in two: on one I wrote my love note and the other I left blank.  She smiled and nodded her approval.

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.

Daphne and I went to the mall today so that I could buy some blush for myself and glasses for Mia.  I can only tell you that because Mia does not yet read this blog, although she very well could be by next semester.  Last night she read “The Moon in My Room” and a level 1 reader “Bolt.”  The night before she read “Morris the Moose,” then this morning over breakfast she read a couple pages from “Wow Wow Wubbzy.”  She loves reading, that girl.  Takes after her father and a younger version of her mother.

Back to the mall.  I find it very interesting that teenagers love the smell that rushes out the door and up into your brain from Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister.  They must, because Victoria’s Secret is now doing the same thing.  You can’t walk by those stores without smelling like cologne that is all at once overpriced and repulsive to anyone over 19.  My sister Hayley and her husband Todd walked by Abercrombie once and witnessed a sales associate spraying cologne on each and every shirt in a pile.  When you walk by the store you initially think they must do that because of the way the smell permeates every molecule of air within a 20 foot radius outside the door, but then logic says, “No, surely not,” because WASTEFUL, and don’t the children who work there need their olfactory nerves after they move on?  And what about the parents of the children who work there?  I’m guessing they make their kids strip down and shower outside before coming in the house after a shift.

It’s exactly the opposite of the wasp-noise that that store in England discovered.  I can’t find it via Google, but some store owner in England found out that teenagers could hear a buzzing wasp noise that adults’ ears could not hear, so the shop owner played the noise to keep teenagers away.  I was skeptical until the minister at our church in Tulsa played a noise and asked if anyone could hear it.  For a split second I thought it was a joke along the lines of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” but immediately the entire youth group raised their hands, without thinking.  I was only in my mid-twenties at the time, but it was right then I knew I was old.  My ears had already begun giving up.

So apparently teenagers don’t like annoying sounds but are down with pungent odors.  I’m thinking this information might come in useful in the future, I’m just not sure how.

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.