Here in the Pacific Northwest, winter brings rain. My yellow daisy-like flowers are still blooming in the pot on my sidewalk. The pansy occasionally shoots up a purple bloom. The hyacinth bulb is sending up greenery. And so, just when I think spring should arrive–after all, the weeds are actually growing–the temperature drops.

By our standards, last night was really cold, down into the twenties. My boys were delighted to find water turned into ice in the sandbox (filled with rainwater now). It was thick, too, and lasted through the day.

I hear there are rumors of snow on Thursday.

Okay. Fine. But after that, no more winter. I’m ready for spring.

School Breaks
Before I schooled the boys at home, I looked forward to the end of school breaks. The kids would go back to school and my days would resume their lilting schedule and rainbows would appear in the sky. Now I dread it. I’ll have to drag my school-at-home boys by the ears to get them to the kitchen table, ready to tackle math. YoungestBoy has started to proclaim that he “hates” school, which I just can’t believe because he does so well and reports he had a good day every single day. But I’m going to email his teacher, just in case.

Tomorrow DaycareKid will be here, too, so we’ll just suddenly be going full speed ahead. I’d rather lounge in a hammock for a few more days. Not that I own a hammock, but still.

Outright Refusal
Tonight, when I put Babygirl to bed, I said, “Good-night. Have a good sleep!” and she said, “No.” Well. Okay, then.

On Printers
My printer died. It was a HP PSC 1210 All-in-One. I loved that it printed, copied and scanned, but now it’s dead. I’m not so sure I want to replace it with the same model, given it’s unreliable history. But I’m cheap. So, what do you recommend, Internet? What annoys me is that I used to have a perfectly reliable plain old printer. Then a friend gave me a similar plain old printer. So, I switched to that printer and got rid of my printer (after it clogged up my storage room for a few months). When I got this new printer (a year ago), I donated the other printer to charity. And how does the universe reward my good deed? Now, I have no printer! Two computers, no printer and I gave away two printers in working condition.

Celebrity Babies (and Moms)
I’ve been thinking about why the paparazzi is so eager to snap a photograph of new celebrity moms . . . first the hoopla about Gwyneth Paltrow and the Apple of her eye . . . and now Julia Roberts and Phinn and Hazel, for example. Does the media actually think the public cares about the mushed up newborn face of a baby? No way! What we really want to see (you know you do, admit it) is the condition of the post-partum mother. We want to see if Julia has the same mooshy tummy that childbirth imposed on us. We want to see if Gwyneth looks haggard and chubby. I freely admit that when I saw a post-partum picture of Kate Hudson, I felt gleeful–she looked like she’d had a baby. Her face was round and her body reflected her pregnancy weight gain–for about twenty minutes. Then suddenly, she was lithe and lean and not just unpregnant, but looked never-been-pregnant-shaped again.

I ask you. How is that right?

Desperate Housewives
My blog-tracking device thing-a-majig tells me that I have visitors who come here after googling “Desperate Housewives.” To them I say: Sorry. There are no actual unretouched photos of those “desperate” housewives here. Just the ramblings of a real-life desperate housewife who has never seen anyone like that at the PTA.

Well. Today is the first day of January, which means that my fortieth birthday approaches quickly. You’d think that maybe I’d be alarmed at the thought of such advanced age, but given the alternative, I think aging is a fine idea, even though it brings wrinkles and loose skin. I have a lot of things to do, work to accomplish, books to read, a storage room to organize, scrapbooks to update, and the never-ending laundry to do. I am nowhere close to finishing my life’s tasks, so if I die soon, I will die with a big mess in my wake. And that’s just not an option.

I’ve had most of the week “off,” since my daycare child hasn’t been here and I haven’t been schooling the boys. I finished the dreaded paperwork for school at home. I switched the contents of a kitchen cupboard with the contents of a kitchen drawer. I threw away expired medication. I undecorated. I stocked the refrigerator with vegetables and low-fat dairy products. I shopped a few clearance sales. I saw a movie. I took Babygirl to visit my mother (just a few miles away) for the first time in a long time. I’ve slept until Babygirl has called my name at nearly 8 a.m. each morning. I took the cat in to be spayed. I cleaned up the storage room. I emptied out the front hall closet, sent a bunch of coats to Goodwill and tidied it up. Now the vacuum cleaner fits in the closet again. I bought more books at Value Village, because you never know when you might be bedridden and suddenly have enough time to read two hundred books.

I even sat down and edited a piece from this blog for submission to the local newspaper. I plan to send two pieces (600-700 words each) as a sort of audition for a guest columnist spot. This morning in the shower, I had a moment of clarity and panic. What in the world am I doing? If I don’t get it, I will say, “Well, I am a loser.” If I do get it, I will actually have to come up with an article once a month! What if I can’t do it? What was I thinking?

I’m going to send in the pieces anyway because I’m a glutton for punishment. And I don’t have anything to lose.

I’ve been reading a book by Mel Levine called A Mind at a Time. Each chapter brings 11-year old TwinBoyB to mind. He has difficulty paying attention. He has trouble with short term memory. He struggles with decoding language and writing. As I read along, I see him more and more in the pages of this book. He’s a bright child, but really agonizes over schoolwork. Over the course of his public school education, he’s come to believe that he is dumb. I am trying to reverse that idea, but I feel like I’m trying to stop a speeding car by holding the bumper with my bare fingertips and digging in my heels. So far, I just feel like I’m being dragged along, getting bumped and bruised. It’s not supposed to be this hard.

I never anticipated having a child like TwinBoyB. I fit perfectly into the public school system’s system. I am a visual learner. I love handwriting. I read voraciously. I pay attention and I remember anything I see and most of what I hear. I am sequential and was the first girl in my class to learn the multiplication tables because I thought it was fun. I wrote stories to amuse myself. I won every class spelling bee and math contest.

And as smart as I was, I never thought I’d be mothering a boy so different from myself. How smart is that? Not smart at all. I really didn’t think there’d be much to this parenting thing beyond teaching manners and keeping the kids safe. Everything else I thought they’d “catch” from us. They’d learn from simple modeling of behavior. And I was a good student and had friends. My husband had plenty of friends and was an average student. Neither of us gave our parent’s one second of grief–other than that time I wore mascara against my father’s wishes (boy, he was strict).

Now I am having to practically earn a master’s degree in the neurological development of children. I will be meeting with a team of specialists at the school to discuss my son. I feel like I need to be one hundred percent versed in the issues I see facing him. I need to have samples of his work and a timeline of his development. All this comes as such a surprise to me, for some bizarre reason. I thought frosting cupcakes would be the biggest issue facing me.

So maybe I went into this whole motherhood thing with my head in the clouds and unrealistic expectations. Even if I had known what would face me, I would have glossed over the trickier parts, the messier parts, the most aggravating parts because denial is my friend. I’d say, “Hey, how bad could it be?”

And so, that’s how I go into 2005. I say, “Hey, how bad could it be?” and “Could I please have a refill? My glass is half empty.”

Happy New Year!

To those who landed on this blog by searching for “when do lentils go bad” and “naked women in nylon stockings” . . . how disappointed you must have been when you clicked on the link to me.

I’m not even sure what the date is today. I’ve been spending this week catching up on the busy-work, the stupid, redundant paperwork which is required by the school district for my schooling-at-home kids. I’ve always hated worksheets and paperwork for the sake of paperwork, so at first, I thought I had figured out a way around it. Then the requirements were clarified for me. So this week, I recreated a log book documenting our lesson times. Today, I spent most of the day writing up an individualized academic plan.

I only wish I were getting graded, because I’m pretty sure I’d get at least a B+. Although my assignment is overdue, so I’d probably fail it altogether. At least it’s finished.

DaycareKid was here on Monday and Tuesday, but right before lunch-time on Tuesday, he suddenly started crying. He ate lunch, then took a nap and woke up crying. He cried through his diaper change, cried while I put on his shoes, cried when I gave him a snack, cried while he watched a video and cried while he waited for his mom to pick him up. He was feverish and didn’t stop crying until he conked out on the couch again at 4:30 p.m. His mom came a short time later. Today, he was supposed to come over, but she stayed home with him. Poor sick kiddo. I just hope he didn’t share his germs!

This morning, even though DaycareKid didn’t come over, I still had to get up and shower early because I had to take one of our kitties–Roy–to the vet’s office to get spayed. (Yes, Roy is a girl.) I dropped off the kitty and was home before anyone in my house was awake.

Last night, I saw Closer again. I wanted to see it as soon as it ended the first time around. This time, wouldn’t you know it, a woman brought her TWO YEAR OLD child to the 9:10 p.m. showing. She should thank her lucky stars that she chose to sit on the opposite side of the theater with her child, because I would not have been very polite when I expressed my annoyance at the presence of a toddler at an R-rated movie which is so completely not appropriate for a two year old. During the movie, the little guy was wandering around near the screen. (Children at movies not meant for them is my pet peeve. One of my pet peeves. The only one I can think of now, if you don’t count the horror I have developed over the fact that Barney the purple dinosaur has no elbows. I’ve been pondering the Barney irritation factor for quite some time and finally decided it’s the elbow thing that drives people crazy, even when they can’t quite put their finger on it.)

This time, two clearly dim women left during the pivotal scene in the movie. They returned about ten minutes later. What is wrong with people? My pleasure at immersing myself into a movie is marred by the stupidity of my fellow movie-goers. I mean, did they think this was “Meet The Fockers”? Seriously.

Anyway.

This afternoon, Babygirl and I went to Target to buy more razor blades on clearance for $4.54 per box. I discovered this price last night when I bought razors before the movie–the regular price is $18.19. Babygirl loves shopping, but we ran into a friend from the pool who dared to greet Babygirl with a touch. Babygirl was not amused and demanded to be picked up from the shopping cart. When we walked away after a short chat, Babygirl helped me push the cart, which involved her arms completely stretched overhead so her hands could grip the handle of the cart. She said, “I am a good helper!”

And she is. She sang “Happy Birthday to You” and “I love you, you love me . . .” all the way home and I considered briefly freeze-drying her at her current age and then I remembered how she screams when I shampoo her hair and how she follows me into the bathroom and how she freaks out when nice people greet us in Target and her adorability factor slipped down a couple of notches.

But she still is so sweet that my teeth ache just thinking of her.

[By the way, I live in the state of Washington where we still don’t know exactly who our next governor will be. There have been two recounts and frankly, I say the best two out of three should win. (The Republican won the first two counts, then lost in the final hand recount by a few votes.) Or just flip a coin. Or play paper-rock-scissors. It would be just as valid a result.]

Babygirl did not want to nap today. At the very last second, she found YoungestBoy’s giant, green Hulk Hands and she was attempting to bonk DaycareKid on the head with them. I finally picked her up and carried her stiff, resisting little body to bed where she shrieked and cried until I threatened to put her in her own crib.

Then she was glad to be snuggled next to me. Still, it took her an hour to fall asleep. I fell asleep, too, then. The problem with a lovely nap mid-day is that I can’t wake up. When I do wake up, I can’t get out of bed. And I really, really want to because I want to be awake in my house while she is not. Awake, that is.

I did manage to roll out of the bed and when I came downstairs, it was as if spring had arrived. The sun is shining brightly and the kitchen sinks are empty. The dishwasher is stil warm. And my husband is gone. It’s his day off, but apparently he’s tending to a church crisis of some sort, so he cleaned the kitchen and went to work.

And here I am, blinking in the sunshine. I know winter just started, but spring will be here in approximately twenty minutes. That’s just how it works around here. I even saw some bulbs peeking up from their pot on the porch. I really appreciate living in the Northwest after living in northern Michigan for four years. One year, we didn’t see grass (because the snow didn’t melt) from October to March. That is just too long to live in a winter wonderland.

Oh, I hear Babygirl’s footsteps. Time to go.

Yesterday morning, Babygirl stood on the bathroom counter, chattering away, while I was blearily getting ready. After I shower, I follow the same routine each morning. First, put in contact lenses. Second, brush teeth. Third, put on deodorant. I don’t think. I just keep moving. (Usually because I am late.)

Yesterday morning, apparently Babygirl distracted me (I like to blame other people for my mistakes) and I grabbed the wrong bottle of contact lense solution, the one with bold yellow print that says, “DO NOT PLACE DIRECTLY IN EYE.” Then, I rinsed my lens with it and placed it directly in my eye, at which point my eye spontaneously combusted and I had to pry it open to remove the on-fire lens. Babygirl said, “What happened?”

I was holding my eye open with one hand and frantically splashing water onto it with the other. Babygirl repeated, “What happened?”

I know I said you could recognize me by the circles under my eyes and the Babygirl with a finger plugged into her nose, but as it turns out, you would have spotted me if you just looked for the woman wearing glasses over one flaming red eye.

My husband said from the comfort of the recliner, “I feel like when you’re coming out of anesthesia, and you can’t quite wake up. . . ” That’s how we are, today, my husband and me. Wherever we land, we doze. I have an uncle who suffers from narcolepsy, and today, I feel greater sympathy for him than ever.

My mom didn’t sleep at all last night. She always waits until the last minute, then drags through each holiday in a stupor.

Last night, I made it to bed at 1:00 a.m. At 1:30 a.m., I heard a slamming door and my husband said, “Is that the kids?” and I went downstairs to deliver a stern warning about staying in bed. TwinBoyB couldn’t sleep, had a bad dream, didn’t know what to do with himself. I said, “I don’t care if you sleep at all. Just don’t get out of that bed!”

I told them all last night that they were not allowed out of their rooms before 7:00 a.m. At 7:00 a.m., I heard them spring out of their rooms. They unloaded their stockings and I headed for the shower.

By 9:00 a.m., I had a coffee cake baking in the oven and we started opening gifts. By 9:30 a.m., it was all over but the clean-up. My mom arrived at 10:00 a.m. for brunch–which we didn’t eat until an hour later. Babygirl was absolutely entertaining and happy–she ran, literally, back and forth, laughing her sweet head off.

The twins looked very teenage-like today. They received personal CD players and all day long, they’ve either had headphones on, listening to music, or headphones attached to their new GameBoys.

When I put Babygirl to sleep on my bed, I fell asleep, too, though I tried to rouse myself to get the ever important “Time to Myself.” Alas, it was not to be, and as the day wore on, I grew more and more impatient with everyone. I need solitude, even on busy holidays. By the time Babygirl and I went to her room tonight for the bedtime routine, I was drowsy and crabby.

When we turned on the television (she usually watches a video before bed), a Lawrence Welk Christmas special was on, featuring old clips from decades gone by. Babygirl sat mesmerized, watching kids with wacky haircuts and 1970s fashions. I was utterly amused by a 14-year old girl who rolled her eyes when she was introduced by her dad. She marched over to the piano and plunked out her part of the family song.

Then, Babygirl watched Barney while I kept falling unconscious in the gliding rocker. When I finally left the room and entered my own room, I saw my husband, stretched out diagonally on the bed, face down. If I didn’t know better, I might have checked him for a pulse.

We are wiped out. And tomorrow, he has to preach again because it’s Sunday. I’m pretty much churched-out, but we’ll be there, right in the front row. You’ll recognize me by the Babygirl on my lap. She’ll have one finger stuck deep into her right nostril. And I’ll have circles under my eyes.

Tonight, we had our first annual Nachos for Christmas Eve Dinner. It was a stroke of pure genius, I think. My husband is not here for Christmas Eve dinner and since I grew up and don’t have to shuttle between my divorced parents’ households anymore, I celebrate Christmas with my loud little family on Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is the time we go to church, to pause for a split second to remember Jesus’ birthday. And there are candles and actual fire and the potential for singed hair and burnt fingers, so it’s also a thrill. And who has time for a fancy dinner? Thus, Nachos for Christmas Eve dinner.

The boys were in our church’s first pageant tonight. TwinBoyA was a King, dressed in shimmmery silver and a black turban and brand new black Nikes. TwinBoyB was the head shepherd and he twirled his staff as he sat on the steps, completely ignoring the restless toddlers and preschoolers dressed as sheep–even though DaycareKid, dressed somehow appropriately as a black sheep, was careening around the stage, while the pacifier-sucking Baby Jesus slept in the arms of his teenage “Mother” Mary.

YoungestBoy was a shepherd, too. When we arrived, the racks of costumes sat waiting for the children to find their own costumes. Each costume hung on a hanger with the child’s name attached. Except YoungestBoy said, “Mine is just in a bag on the hanger.” I questioned him and he explained that he thought the leader told him to put it all in the bag. So, his costume was bunched into a wrinkled ball in a plastic bag, hung on his hanger. He looked cute anyway.

Babygirl watched all this from close proximity to me. She hovers around me as if she is a planet, held into place by some maternal gravity. At one point, she did ask to wear a sheep’s costume, so I pulled the fleece over her head and gave her a sheep hat, but very soon, she was done.

I sat in the front, off-stage, and at the appropriate time, sent two angels out to stand by “Mary” and “Joseph.” Then I tiptoed into the sanctuary to watch the rest of the pageant. There were no speaking parts, only narration and Christmas carols. When the children finished, my husband preached a short sermon and he did a fine job. I hardly ever hear his sermons and I always remember again what a good speaker he is.

Then the end of the sermon came and it was time to light candles and sing “Silent Night.” YoungestBoy was next to me and during the second verse of “Silent Night” I looked down to see him wiggling the little round cardboard paper thingy up his candle, nearly into the flame. I snatched that paper out of his hand and said, “NO!” I thought for sure that it was actually on fire and that I’d have to use my superpowers to quench the flames, but it was not. But it was close! I sternly told him to leave the paper-thingy alone–it’s meant to catch dripping wax.

And so we left with our eyebrows intact, no burns, no scorched hair.

The sight of the baby actress (who played Baby Jesus) in her father’s arms next to me, illuminated by candlelight brought tears to my eyes. Since I’ve become a mother, Christmas and the story of the Baby with His destiny fills my heart with such emotion. I think of the gift of His birth and of the gift of His death, and it is almost too much for me . . . because His mother had to hold him so gently, so loosely, and it must have broken her heart. And all that reminds me that life is a tentative gift, that babies are held in our arms for such a brief, sweet while and then the current of life sweeps them away.

The twins were in bed when I returned downstairs at 8:40 p.m. after putting Babygirl to bed. They are trying valiantly to fall asleep, even though normally they are still chatting at 10:30 p.m. YoungestBoy watched a Christmas special until 9:30 p.m. and now that they are all in bed, I’ll begin the wrapping festivities. My husband is resting–he has to go back and do another Christmas Eve service, starting at 11 p.m. Some years I actually manage to attend that service–I always really enjoy the stillness, the late hour, the candlelight–but tonight I will be home, preparing for tomorrow morning.

And another year will draw to a close and I will wonder how that’s possible when it seems that we just woke up in 2004.

Merry Christmas to all!

It’s that time of year when you are supposed to be cheerily shopping and eating and singing songs about the Babe born so many years ago. Hallelujah, hallelujah! The shepherds of long ago worshipped in awe, the kings brought gifts to the newborn King the angels sang.

And we pause to remember. The children don halos and angel wings and shepherd’s garb and three bigger boys dress like kings. A real baby plays Baby Jesus, though the baby is a girl and she has red hair, when she is swaddled, all you see is her baby lips and closed eyes and fingers at rest, sticking up from the blankets. We sing familiar songs and light candles and feel warm indoors though it’s cold outside.

But my heart is heavy tonight, despite the holly-jolly season. A Christmas newsletter came today from my midwife, the one who attended my birth with Babygirl over two years ago. I was so excited to open it–last year at this time, her Christmas newsletter showed pictures of her, pregnant pictures! She has four girls, the youngest who is about 9, and this pregnancy was a surprise to me. I’m not sure if it was a surprise to her, too, but she is my age and her oldest girl is 17.

Her due date was in February and I waited and wondered. Did she have a boy? A girl? So, I happily opened the envelope to discover the news. The first thing I saw was the family picture of her, her husband and her four girls. No baby. Puzzled, I turned to the letter. Her baby, a girl, died prenatally two weeks before her due date, probably from complications of Down’s Syndrome.

Sigh.

And an email came today, an update to a prayer request from yesterday. The subject of the prayer request, a two year old girl who’d had a transplant, had died.

Tonight, the church pianist mentioned that her mother is doing very poorly. She’s probably in her last days.

Monday, my husband performed a funeral.

Tuesday, someone else from church died.

I truly believe that life doesn’t end on this planet. I believe Baby Jesus came so that we would live happily ever after, not necessarily here in this lifetime, but ever after. But for now, hearts break and sorrow falls like snow.