Minefield

One of the purposes of having four kids in six and a half years was so they'd go through the stages of their childhood at roughly the same time. I could throw them in the bath together, they'd all take swimming lessons at the same time, and they'd all (yikes!) go to college around the same time. I really didn't want to end up pushing a stroller at Bryce's high school graduation.

But I'm beginning to realize that I might not have had them close enough together. When Bryce was a baby-- he ruled the roost. As soon as he could crawl and pull up, we babyproofed the house and got rid of all of the tchotchkes that could end up in his mouth. Other than emptying our bookshelves and VCR tapes on a daily basis, he didn't get into too much trouble in the "moblie but still stupid" phase of babyhood. It was pretty much the same scenario with Annie. Bryce had toys that she'd get into, but since he's less than two years older than she is, he'd get annoyed when she'd knock over his blocks or get into his puzzles, but other than getting sat on or knocked over, she was never in any imminent danger. Pretty much ditto the situation for Isaac, except that he had two older siblings who would scream if he got into their stuff.

But in the last two years, Bryce and Annie have moved on from blocks and stuffed animals to Polly Pockets and Star Wars action figures and Legos. I keep the kids' doors closed most of the day (and they have to keep all of their "big kid" toys in their rooms instead of the playroom) but in a single day the other day, I found a Lego walkie talkie, a Polly shoe, part of a South Beach Diet bar wrapper, and a leaf in Maren's mouth. And she was sucking on a Thomas engine too, so even if she hasn't choked to death or died from Polly magnets in the intestine, she'll probably be done in by lead paint.

At this point, I'm glad for the 100 fewer kid hours in the house each week. Maybe, just maybe, it will decrease the mess to the degree that I can keep up with Maren and what she puts in her mouth.

He may be potty-trained...

This one. Yep, he's adorable, but he just doesn't get it. He uses the potty without any problems now. It's been days since he's had an accident of any kind. He even wipes his own bottom, a skill that neither of my other kids picked up for years after potty training. But he hasn't quite grasped the concept that he doesn't need to change his clean underpants every time he goes to the bathroom. Yesterday I did five loads of laundry. In those five loads were fourteen little pairs of Diego and Shrek underpants. He doesn't tell me he needs new underpants-- he just goes upstairs and puts them on himself. From now on, his discarded unders are going to get the sniff test, and if they still smell like Tide, they're going right back in the drawer. Maybe we'll get through the weekend without running out.

Here are those eight month pictures I tried to take the other day...

Book #45: The Maytrees

Title: The Maytrees
Author: Annie Dillard
I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't read much Annie Dillard in the past. For some reason, she has always intimidated the crap out of me. Writers who write fiction, but have a strong social conscience that comes forth in their writing (like Barbara Kingsolver and Annie Dillard), tend to make me nervous, for some indefinable reason.
Whatever the reason, after reading The Maytrees, I feel like I've been missing something by not reading Annie Dillard sooner. For one thing, The Maytrees is an interesting story-- Lou and Maytree meet and marries when they're young, have a child together, and ten years later he leaves with her best friend, Deary. Twenty years after that, Maytree and Deary return so Lou can nurse Maytree back to health and Deary in her final months. But more than just a story, The Maytrees is a great novel of character and place and time. It's not written exactly chronologically, so Dillard reinforces the idea of time throughout with her style. And though it's spare (about 200 pages) it seems somehow sparer. It's not a quick read, even though it's short-- instead, it's more like poetry as prose. And it's defnitely not the last I'll read of Annie Dillard.

Book #44: Scarlet Feather

Title: Scarlet Feather

Author: Maeve Binchy

Ever since I feel in love with Circle of Friends as a high school student, I've always equated Maeve Binchy novels with comfort food. They're easy going down and very satisfying. Circle of Friends was like a good pan of my childhood best friend Lucy's mom's mac and cheese (follow that?)-- you know, the really crusty, cheesy kind. Tara Road, and the other handful of Binchy books I've read over the years could also be neatly categorized as "mac and cheese books."

Scarlet Feather, ironically enough for my metaphor, is the story of caterers. I can imagine Ms. Binchy seeing the same couple catering the same parties all over Dublin, and using them as her inspiration. In fact, I feel like she did a great job on her research of what really goes into catering work (I worked in events planning for a couple of years while I was in grad school, so I have some experience on that end). I also really enjoyed the sidestory of Simon and Maud, the twin cousins-in-law of the protagonist. But I found myself incredibly frustrated with Cathy Scarlet, around whom the story centers. At the beginning of the novel, Cathy appears to have it all-- a great business, a wonderful husband, good parents, etc... But she's cranky. I don't know if Binchy intended to make her so crotchety. After the fifteenth argument with her "horrible" mother-in-law, I began to think that Cathy was really the horrible one. When her husband suggested that she follow him to a job in the Netherlands and leave her business behind, I felt like she reacted in a similarly crotchety way. But Scarlet Feather, at least for me, raised issues of whether a wife should want to follow her husband to a job halfway around the world (a curve ball she hadn't seen coming) or whether a husband should put on a brave face when an oops pregnancy happens (a curve ball he hadn't seen coming). It all ended rather comfortably, I guess, but I thought she should have worked harder on her marriage. As I was reading it I felt like I was watching an accident happening. I wanted to reach out and tell them to pull their heads out of their butts. Anyway, if Scarlet Feather is mac and cheese, then it's the mac and cheese I made once in the crockpot that curdled. I think we ate it anyway, but it was pretty disgusting. Pretty sad for a book about cooking, right?

Week in Training: August 27-September 2

Monday: 4 1/4 miles, outside
Tuesday: 2 miles of hills, spin class
Wednesday: 7 miles, outside, with a stray German Shepherd who decided I was his friend, not good times
Thursday: ditto Tuesday
Friday: 4 1/4 miles, speedwork (5K time 20:36)
Saturday: 12.4 in 1:40 and it felt fantastic!!! One of those runs that makes you remember why you love it.

Total miles run: Just about 30 exactly
Total other stuff: 2 spinning classes

You know how they say a picture is worth 1,000 words?

Well, these pictures are worth $179.99, plus tax.

You see, it all started last Thursday. Maren was turning eight months old that day, and I wanted to get a picture of her on her eight-month birthday. So I took my camera out, and shot this picture (it's Maren with my friend's daughter, Lucy). I immediately got the "change batteries" signal on the camera. So I dutifully changed the batteries. But as I was sitting at the desk, changing the batteries, I got interrupted, and left the camera on the desk.

Four hours later, I found the camera lying on the playroom floor. It was dead. Irrevocably dead. I had been watching my friend's three kids all afternoon, and freely admit that with seven kids in the house, keeping track of the camera was not my highest priority. Signs point to Isaac as the camera killer, since the last three pictures on the memory card bear his signature (they're all pictures of his underwear on the bathroom floor).

Under ordinary circumstances, I'd weigh my camera options a little bit. We'd had this one for two years, and it served us well. I probably would have done some research for the best model at the best price and ordered it online. But school started today. Annie started kindergarten. And there was no way I was going to let that day pass without pictures (I know some grandmas living in far away places who would have been very unhappy with me). So on Saturday, Annie and I went to Target, bought the two-years-newer version of the same camera we already had. It wasn't even on sale (gasp!).

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are the pictures I paid $179.99 for.

Bryce-- starting 2nd grade:


Annie on her first day of kindergarten:



All of the school-age kids (Isaac starts preschool next Wednesday):


Walking and waiting:

Annie M.?

I spent a long, long time obsessing over my kids' names. It was on my mind from the moment the line on the stick turned pink until Eddie and I finally came to a consensus we both could live with. Since I grew up with an unusual name ("how do you pronounce that?"), I wanted to give my kids names that were fairly easy to pronounce and spell, but uncommon enough that they wouldn't forever be known by their last initial in elementary school. We studied the Social Security administration website, and decided that we wouldn't be comfortable naming our kids anything in the top 50.

When Bryce started kindergarten, the first friend he made in his class was Bryce C., who was also in his class in first grade, and is now in his second grade class. Bryce was #90-something on the SSA list the year Bryce was born, but there are four Bryces in the seven second-grade classes at our elementary school. We just happen to live in an area with a large concentration of Bryces, I guess.

A couple of weeks ago, a new family moved into our ward. Their daughter, born within a month of our daughter, is also named Anne (which was about #300 on the SSA list in 2002). So my daughter is now Annie M. in her Primary class (with seven kids total). Today, Annie's kindergarten teacher called me to let me know that there's another Annie in the class, so she wanted to know if she'd prefer to be called Anne (definitely not), Annie M, or Annie Caroline. Now I'm 0-2 in picking unique enough names that my kids are the only one with that name in their elementary school class.

Ironically enough, Annie's teacher's name is Sheila. And when she got me on the phone, her first question was, "how do you pronounce your name?"

Babysitters-- cheaper than therapy

We live in a neighborhood with lots of young kids, but not nearly as many older kids. Our ward is similar-- just a couple of Young Women, and a nursery nearly 70 strong. So babysitters are in high demand here. I've been using the same babysitter since we moved here, and always felt a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach whenver it was time to call her. Sometimes I'd call and say, "If there's a night over the next three weeks when you're available, please let me know" but if I needed her on a specific night, I knew I needed to reserve her early, because all of the moms of the 69 other nursery kids were likely to be calling her too.

One of the brightest spots in our neverending summer was suddenly finding myself with more than one option for a babysitter. First, our regular babysitter's little sister came of babysitting age (she's 11, almost 12, but it works for me). Then a family moved into the ward, and their three teenagers have all announced from the pulpit that they are ready and willing to babysit. Better yet, they're homeschooled, so they can even come on school nights or during the day, which means I might actually make it to a dentist appointment once this year. I love that I can call up either house and ask for any of the kids who would be willing to sit for us on a particular night. It greatly increases my chances of finding someone and decreases the number of calls I have to make (and therefore the nervous feeling in my stomach that only brownies seem to satisfy).

So we've been going out a lot more often this summer. I used to call our sitter only when it was absolutely necessary (for boring work parties and the like-- approximately every couple of months) because I was too afraid of rejection (when you're calling teenagers, I guess you tend to revert to a teenage rejection mentality). Now, with five potential sitters, we've been going out every other week. I've eaten so well (we went to the Melting Pot last night and it was GOOD!), but most of all, I've had so much fun dating my husband. It's not like I've fallen out of love with him or gotten bored or anything like that, but going out with him regularly reminds me of how much I like him as a person, not just as a dad or a couch potato or a lump on the other side of the bed.

Ever since I got married I've heard marriage counselors give the advice that couples should go on a weekly date. When we were first married, we always did. Once we added a houseful of kids, it seemed like an impossibility. But now it seems like a bi-monthly date might be possible-- and I'm enjoying how much fun dates with Eddie can be! And even though a babysitter is pricey, it's definitely cheaper, and more fun I'd imagine, than therapy.

ISO: a running buddy

When I started to get into a daily exercise routine, shortly after we moved to Minnesota, one of the things that kept me motivated was that I had friends to work out with. For the first year, whenever the weather was good, we'd load up our kids in strollers, joggers, slings and bjorns and do a 3-4 mile walk, followed by play time at the park. The kids loved it, and since Eddie was an intern and never, ever home, it was often my only adult interaction for the whole day. Gradually, we built up to running, and trained for a half-marathon together.

Since that time, I've always tried to have a running buddy. Not necessarily someone I'd run with every day, but someone I could rely on for a run or two a week. Someone to keep me motivated. Someone to chat with when the miles get long. Someone to go to races with when your husband tells you he'll be too overwhelmed to meet you with a bunch of kids at the finish line.

Then, last year, I got pregnant. And, as chance would have it, so did two of the three girls I ran with regularly. I kept running. The other girls, like most sane pregnant women, quit running after a while. So once they were easing themselves back into running, I was already into it full-force, working on my speed. And now, eight months later, I've worked on my speed so much that I don't have running buddies anymore. I don't mean to be jerky or intimidating when I say this, but I've gotten to the point where I'm just too fast for my old running buddies. Yeah, I'll do a long run with them every once in a while, but it's not the same as it used to be. It's fun to socialize, but the running part isn't that great. It's a little bit akin to walking down the street to the mailbox with a toddler who wants to inspect every crack in the sidewalk.

So I was at a ward Girls' Night Out last night and several of the girls were talking about getting started running this year and the races they want to do. I was pushing them to do the October half-marathon, but I couldn't find anyone who would bite. I emailed another girl who I know used to run, and she said she was just getting back into it and she'd email me when she was up to speed again. I'm more than happy to cheer people along at the finish line at Race for the Cure or the Halloween 5K, and even come along for the occasional three-miler with the girls in the ward, but I really miss having someone who can match me, step for step, on the ten-miler or the twelve-miler. That's when I'd like more company than just my iPod.