This afternoon, I realized I hadn’t seen YoungestBoy after his arrival home from school. I called his name and when he didn’t answer, I began to search. I found him in the bathroom, standing over the toilet. Blood covered his face and dripped into a scarlet red toilet bowl. He was sniffing and snorting the dripping blood into the toilet.

Blood drops led from the laundry room into the bathroom. Blood spattered the walls, the toilet rim, the floor and my boy. Sticky blood coated both hands. I’m surprised he didn’t need a transfusion. He looked like a murderer or a victim of violent crime.

He said, “I have a bloody nose.” And I said, “You sure do. Here, press this on it.” I handed him a washcloth and noted the newly stained yellow shirt he wore. The last time he wore this shirt, which was the first time he wore this shirt, he also managed to bloody it. Hydrogen peroxide removed the stains then. The shirt may be beyond salvage now. Blood splatters cover it now..

I directed him to sit down with a cloth on his nose and he said, “Don’t worry. I’ll clean it up.” As if!

While he sat and bled some more, I cleaned up the scene of the nosebleed. I hope that’s the closest I ever come to a crime scene. Mopping up his blood was a gruesome task. I am just thankful there was no corpse.

And he’s fine. Occasionally, he just gets a little rough with his nasal passages and has a nosebleed. That was the first time he’s ever bent over the toilet and let his blood dye the toilet-water crimson, though. I hope it was the last.

(Oh, and speaking of shirts–at noon, I received a phone call from school. He’d spilled chocolate milk on the same shirt, and because it was Picture Day, they asked if I could bring a new shirt to school. I couldn’t, but my neighbor came to my rescue and delivered a shirt. Apparently, after the photograph was taken, he put his stained shirt back on, which became completely blood-splattered upon his return home. That shirt is just destined for destruction.)

Babygirl has launched a new career. Well, maybe it’s just a hobby, but she could make it into a career. She is perfecting the art of throwing a tantrum.

This morning, she was happy to see DaycareKid arrive. She invited him upstairs to play in her room. Soon after, they came traipsing downstairs. She put on her yellow rainboots and DaycareKid put on his sneakers and I helped them with jackets and they went into our fenced-in backyard to play.

The mornings have been chilly, though, so they were quickly ready to come back inside. Babygirl came through the patio door and decreed that DaycareKid must stay outside.

I overruled her decision and she revved up her engines. By the time I had her jacket off, she was screaming and stomping. I gave her a choice (stop or go upstairs to bed) and she screamed more. So I carried her, still wearing the rubber boots, up to her crib where I deposited her without ceremony.

I closed the door.

Eventually, she quit screaming and I retrieved her.

Fit number two came when we layed down for a nap. I was so tired–5:20 a.m. comes so early for this nightowl. She began to cry and worked herself into a frenzy, complete with kicking her feet and banging her head into the pillow. I ignored her first, then mimicked her, but that had no effect, so I went back to ignoring her. She must have carried on for a good thirty minutes before she settled down. It took her another thirty minutes to actually fall asleep.

She woke up and launched right into fit number three. When I heard her wake up, I hurried to the room, but she was already in the throes of irrational crying. I gave her a few choices, which she completely rejected. Then I carried her to her own room and plopped her into her crib. This time I turned on a Winnie-the-Pooh video, so when she stopped, she could watch.

The fit lasted long enough for me to wash all the lunch dishes.

When my older children were her age, I used to reason, threaten, even spank them for tantrums like this. Now, I just ignore fits.

The moral of the story: As they say, if you can’t change the behavior, change the location of the behavior.

For the most part, we are homebodies. Partly by choice, a lot by circumstance. The school-at-home thing ensures that we are at home on school days, doing school work. The daycare babies means I have to be on duty, taking care of little ones from 7:15 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. I’m not one of those grab-the-kids-and-go-go-go kind of moms.

But yesterday, Friday, DaycareKid was at home with his mom. CuteBaby left at 3:30 p.m. The twins were with my husband, visiting the Washington State History Museum and its traveling exhibit of 9/11 artifacts. I’d been wanting to take the kids to Point Defiance Park. We go to the zoo occasionally, but have never hiked the trails in the 700 acre park.

So, off we went. We tramped on the muddy trails and I exclaimed over all the huge trees and took pictures.

[Zach and Grace (caught mid-cough) in front of an enormous old-growth tree.]  

We wound our way down a meandering trail until we found ourselves at the beach–well, six feet up from the beach. The final feet were impossible for Grace to traverse and so we sat on the exposed roots of a giant tree and watched Zach scamper down to the water’s edge. A blue tugboat chugged past us, pulling a huge barge as if it were made of styro-foam. The wind tousled our hair.

At last, I convinced her we needed to go–she’d be happy to sit near the beach forever, I think. Back up we went. My morning walks have done me good. The steep climb did not leave me gasping for breath. About halfway back to the top trail, Grace abruptly turned and headed back down. “I go this way!” she said.

I cajoled, I bribed and finally, I waved bye-bye and continued walking up the trail. She began to cry, but followed me. Then she wailed and walked until we reached the car, scaring wildlife and annoying the rare fellow-hiker, no doubt. I’d reach my arms out to her and ask, “Do you want me to hold you? Do you want a ride?” and she’d stomp and yell, “No!”

When she realized we had reached the parking lot, she was furious. I had to chase her and plop her into her carseat. She screamed even louder. She carried on until we pulled into the Dairy Queen drive-through. Then she said, “I want ice cream.”

And that is why we have a policy of never taking two-year-olds in public. (A policy which is broken all the time, but still.)

(I use a film camera, so the pictures of the fit–of course I took pictures of that tantrum–aren’t available yet, but you can be sure I’ll add them!)

I’m having a bad hair year day. Alert Oprah. I need a makeover.

I’m not saying God made a mistake, but somewhere in the DNA hair warehouse, someone made a boo-boo and went hog-wild, inserting way too much genetic code giving me this ridiculous, curly hair. And no, I’m not thankful for it, so all you naturally straight-haired girls can just slap me.

Stylists always gather it into a thick rope and comment. “Wow! Look at all this hair!” The last stylist admired the curls and said, “This is exactly what a perm is supposed to look like!” But, a-hem, this is not a perm. And perms aren’t even in style anymore. And why are my bangs suddenly curving in a backwards “C” on my forehead instead of curving straight down? They’ve suddenly decided to swarm to the beat of their own drummer and I am not amused.

I need bangs, obedient bangs which will frame my haggard face. I’d do away with them entirely (OFF WITH YOUR HEAD HAIR!) except that my forehead needs a disguise and because my head is too big for a ten-gallon hat, I need bangs. Regular, normal, obedient bangs. Is this too much to ask?

I can’t think straight when my hair is a-tangle. I’d had it short. I’ve grown it long. I highlighted it for years and then three years ago, I decided to embrace my natural dirty-dishwater, how-now-brown-cow color. Then I found a gray hair.

So, at the moment, I’m distracted by my below-shoulders mane which is mainly a pain in the rain. Hide the scissors.

Yesterday, Babygirl boycotted naptime. Oh, she rolled around on the bed next to me and claimed the best pillow for herself, but she did not sleep. I teetered on the edge of consciousness, rousing periodically to find her still chanting or wiggling or singing. And then after an hour and twenty minutes of this, the clock said 2:18 and I leapt from the bed and told her I needed to check on the boys. As I exited the room, I heard CuteBaby’s cries from the crib. He was awake. So much for my lunch.

Babygirl did not stay in bed, but called down from the top of the stairs a few moments later, “I had a good sleep!” She emphasized this lie by rubbing her eyes.

Hours later, I thought to myself, she’s doing really well. . . no fits at all this time. The last time she missed a nap, she disintegrated into a physically fit bundle of fury, stomping her feet, refusing to answer any questions, screaming while drool trickled down her belly.

I should know better than to even think such thoughts, because moments later, she threw a doozy of a tantrum. Right before bedtime, she followed up her earlier effort with a prize-winning shriek of irrationality, complete with tears, snot and saliva.

You’d think I’d learn.

This morning, I luxuriated in a day filled with fewer responsibilities. It’s Spring Break, so we aren’t doing schoolwork. CuteBaby won’t arrive until after lunch, so I cleaned off my desk and enjoyed catching up on some reading. If my body can’t be on vacation, at least my mind can.

And then–HOW CAN THIS KEEP HAPPENING?–TwinBoyA opened the door and said, “Hey, why is there water all over the floor?” So much for peace and tranquility. The washing machine strikes again, wriggling the hose loose from its mooring.

On the bright side, the boys rushed to find all the towels in the house. What teamwork! What an exciting adventure! An indoor pond! I worked up a good sweat dragging soppy towels over the floor with my foot and into the stupid washing machine. Only three unexpected loads of towels for today.

I wedged the washing machine firmly against the utility sink. I can only hope that this water-filled disaster does not happen again. But as surely as a two-year old throws fits, my washing machine hose will come loose again. And it will happen when I am least expecting it, basking in the uncharacteristic glow of optimism. I should know better.

I’m all about the details. My husband might tell me what, but I want to know when, and who and how and what were they wearing? Conversely, when I launch into a story with a simple point, I can see my husband’s eyes glaze over when I embellish the tale with the adjectives and adverbs, the less-pertinent-to-the-story subpoints.

He’s a pastor and so he tries to protect me from the harsh realities he deals with on a regular basis. If you tell him something in confidence–or even something in passing conversation–he will not divulge the details to me. And not just because of his professional duty. Or because he can’t really remember the details. No. He purposely shields me from stuff like that. The detail stuff.

But I am all about the details, as I might have mentioned earlier. So, when someone telephones him and shares their good news (a grandbaby born today) and bad news (some weird finger-webbing, most likely correctable), I pry. I want to know. Did she have an epidural? How big was the baby? Webbing? He doesn’t know and even if he does know, he’s not telling. He’ll sometimes think of me and remember to ask about the sex and weight of the baby, but not always.

He’s not keeping me in the dark for some sinister purpose. As spouses often do, he’s treating me as he’d want to be treated–and he just doesn’t want or need the details. So he figures I’m better off not knowing the details.

Yesterday was his day off. He visited a child in the hospital, a five-year-old with a mysterious blood disease. Later in the day, he visited a man dying of lung cancer. The doctors opened up his chest, realized his disease had progressed too far, and sewed him back up.

I spent yesterday ignoring the rumbling pain in my stomach while tending to the needs of six children. And everytime I wanted to gripe, I stopped cold.

My husband is healthy. My kids are fine. Rambunctious, but fine. Strip away all the details and that’s what really matters.

Some days, I look at my boys sitting on the couch, caressing their Gameboys, and I wish we didn’t live in a fortress. I wish I could shoo them out the door so they could ride their bikes until dusk. I wish they could stroll down the street to the marsh preserve and wind their way through the swampy ground, searching for pollywogs in the ditches.

But I know for a fact that a sex offender lives on our street. And I’ve seen news footage of children snatched from their front yards. I know all about Amber alerts and bad guys who prey upon children.

We don’t even let our children play in our own front yard. I know we’re not alone, either. I think as times have changed (or as our perception of the world has changed), Americans have begun to hunker down inside the safety of their homes. Instead of children playing a pickup game of basketball in the park, every house has its own basketball hoop. If I look out my back window, I see trampolines in two different yards and a big wooden play structure in another. Each home has created its own little playground for its smaller inhabitants.

We no longer play communally in our neighborhoods. Oh, sure, the children will play at each other’s homes, but they do not run and holler in the streets like we used to when we play kick the can with all the neighborhood children.

At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, I recall back in the day (in the 70s, when we called low-rise pants “hip-huggers” and thongs were what we wore on our feet) that the setting of my childhood was not just my house and my back yard, but my entire neighborhood. We lived in a planned development full of cul-de-sacs and looping roads. If you drove past the “Whispering Firs” sign, you’d cross a small creek before going up a hill and meander through a street full of split-levels and ramblers. Our house was a small rambler on the corner of a cul-de-sac.

We moved into our house when I was five and I stayed there until I was twelve. In those seven years, I had the freedom to go as far as my feet would take me within the boundary of our neighborhood. I’d wander past the houses to the undeveloped fields and forests beyond. We’d play in the waist-high grasses, trampling down areas we’d pretend were houses. Other times, we’d go down to the creek where the mud would suck at our sneakers and oftentimes, we’d go home soggy. I greeted each dog in the neighborhood as I circled my block alone. I rode my bike in endless loops around and around the block.

That would never happen these days. It’s really no wonder American kids don’t get the recommended exercise. We don’t allow them to walk far enough to raise their pulses. I used to ride my bike with its banana seat a few miles down the road to buy candy at the gas station. I never wore a helmet.

The American preoccupation with keeping our kids safe seems to contribute to the plethora of organized sports and the craziness of rushing here and there with a vanful of kids. In my day, our mothers didn’t take us anywhere. We didn’t even have a second car. We stayed home and ran the neighborhood and raced our bikes around the block and tried to keep from falling into the creek. On rainy days, we played Barbies and Monopoly and yelled until our mothers held their aching foreheads.

I wonder if homes aren’t getting bigger and bigger because our world has become smaller and smaller. Families used to live in smaller spaces, but inhabit larger outdoor spaces. New houses now have bonus rooms and great rooms and a bathroom for every person. Instead of sending kids outside to play, they’re inside all the time–unless they’re in the family van, heading for activities. Or they play in their private custom-built backyard play structures and jump on their trampolines. (Except for my poor kids who have only a ramshackle backyard full of overgrown laurel hedges and ivy-covered fences. Fortunately, my boys need only sticks and stones and dirt to be happy and they find the laurel hedges to be a perfect climbing place.)

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like I’ve barricaded my family behind some kind of invisible barbed wire fence. I wish our kids could climb trees and meander to the school playground alone and explore the woods. But we just can’t take the chance.

All we need is a moat and our fortress will be complete. I just hope it comes with pollywogs.

Here are SG’s answers to my recent interview questions at The World According to Sass. Be sure to go over and say hello to Sassy Girl!

Sunday morning, Easter, I woke up with a cold. DaycareKid shared his cold germs with Babygirl and with me, so we were both sniffling and crabby. Still, we went to church and did our duty volunteering in the nursery. The children all looked presentable and I teetered on my high heels and my short dress. Twelve children played in the nursery under my care.

And so goes another Easter Sunday. I keep telling myself that motherhood will get easier when my youngest child gets a little older. I’ve been telling myself this for a decade. And then when my twins were about four, I became pregnant, despite the doctor’s prediction that we were “unlikely” to ever conceive. When that miracle baby boy approached three years of age, I told myself, now things will get easier. That was about the time I became pregnant again, which no longer seemed like a miraculous feat, but more along the lines of a divine practical joke.

Not that I wasn’t thrilled and grateful to welcome another child into our world and family. It’s just that the spacing of my children has not been what I might have ordered, had I been able to order them like a Chinese meal. (“And could I have three eggrolls to go with that?”) Some mothers spend a total of four or five years going through the baby/toddler/preschooler stage because they have their children close together. Our kids are almost five years apart and so I’ve been living in baby-toddler-preschooler-land for eleven years.

And if I weren’t breathing through my mouth because my nose is congested and if I weren’t so tired from waking up at 5:30 a.m. (yes, even this morning, sick and despite the rain) to walk . . . well, I might be concentrating on the sunshine and rainbows that dot the landscape when you live with a small child. I’d regale you with tales of Babygirl’s hearty laughter when my mother popped Babygirl’s bubbles with a stuffed bunny. I’d smile as I’d tell you about Babygirl’s tilted head and her squinted eyes when she questions me. I’d describe the joy of holding her long-legged body against mine and rocking, even though she won’t let me sing to her.

But oh. I am just so tired of living with smallish people. I want to move on to the next stage, though as I move on, I’ll find myself living with two teenagers and I hear that teenagers and toddlers resemble each other in many ways. Lucky me.

And then, I will close my eyes and dream of the days when I had a houseful of sweaty, noisy, giggling little children. And I’ll miss this, just a little.

Or a lot.

To him, words are a particle of sand stuck in his eye.
To me, words are soothing eyedrops.

To him, words are sharp rocks digging into his bare feet.
To me, words are soft mossy green carpet.

To him, words are shards of glass, drawing blood.
To me, words are smooth pearls slipping through fingers.

To him, words are a slap on the face.
To me, words are a touch, gentle caress.

To him, words are slimy slugs, leaving a sticky trail.
To me, words are butterfly wings, dancing in the breeze.

To him, words are a tangled tight knot.
To me, words are a satin cord tied in a bow.

To him, words are a paper cut.
To me, words are a band-aid.

To him, words are a sharp stick in the eye.
To me, words are a flagpole displaying a flapping flag.

To him, words are the grime remaining in the tub.
To me, words are the foaming, scented bubbles.

To him, words are playing cards, refusing to stack.
To me, words are perfectly weighted blocks, towering into the sky.

To him, words are an overdraft notice from the bank.
To me, words are a fortune bequeathed.

To him, words are a toothache.
To me, words are a Farrah Fawcett toothy grin.

To him, words are a straightjacket, escape impossible.
To me, words are a vibrant silk gown.

To him, words are a noose.
To me, words are oxygen.

To him, words are the enemy with rifle drawn.
To me, words are the faithful friend with icy drink waiting.

No wonder my son hates to write. Words trip him, confound him, confuse him, push his face into the ground. Composing words together for him is like riding a ski lift into the mountains and getting tangled when he tries to leap off. Then, to add insult to injury, his ski pops off and an avalanche buries him.

This boy just can’t write. He hates words . . . my beloved words.