Sounds of the Season

Christmas 2011 has come and gone. This year we we celebrated with wonderful food, friends and family surrounding us. All six of us were completely healthy, which has got to be a first in several years. (Uh-oh, I feel myself tempting fate with that bold statement.) Much of it was chaotic, comical and musical, as are many things concerning our family.

Santa delivered some nice goods and left our house without taking Mira, despite Ethan's warning that she'd be whisked away to Spain by Old Saint Nick. (Mira announced triumphantly on Christmas morning, "Ha ha Ethan, Ho-Ho not take me!") Mira was the lucky recipient of a toy saxophone (clearly I am a glutton for auditory punishment, since the norm around here is already for multiple instruments to be played at once. Not the same tune, of course. Hey, let's add another sound to the cacophony!) Apparently all we needed to do as far as Christmas presents was to give every child a toy saxophone - forget clothes, Wii games, faux UGG boots - because the saxophone was the hit of the holiday.

"NO ETHAN, THAT MY TRUMPET!" (Ethan clearly feels bad about offending her)

Ethan had figured out Careless Whisper on the new sax by noon, which is impressive, baffling and disappointing. Impressive because after all, it's a plastic toy, and he doesn't even play the saxophone. Baffling because... Careless Whisper? Really? (I guess that pretty well covers disappointing, too.) Now I walk around with Wham! singing "I'm never gonna dance again/Guilty feet have got no rhythm..." in my head all day. And since I'm griping about Wham!, the icing on the Bad Music Cake is that because it's the holiday season, I have the song Last Christmas, also by Wham!, stuck in my head constantly. In my opinion, Last Christmas is the dumbest Christmas tune ever recorded. So with Careless Whisper and Last Christmas, the holiday was a bad music double Wham!my. (Get it? Get it?)

Because we celebrated Christmas with family early, on the 23rd and 24th, this year's actual Christmas day ended up being delightfully slow. My sister Melissa and nephew Little H came over for dinner, but most of the day was just our gang. A true Family Day, complete with games, naps (the preschooler and me) and lots of cookies. Let me repeat: lots of cookies. I noticed tonight that the past week's cookie frenzy has caused me to look like I'm five months pregnant. Yeah, pregnant with a baby peanut blossom. Not cool. (♫ "Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat..." That'd be me as the goose.)

Our northern state was downright balmy for December on Christmas day, so naturally someone suggested going to a soccer field to kick the ball and let Coonhoundus run around for awhile. ("Someone" being Randy, in whose mind it was 70° rather than the actual 41°. I froze my butt off. However, this comes as no surprise, as we've entered the season of the Turn-up-the-heat/Turn-down-the-heat wars in the car as well as "Stop letting cold air in under the covers"/"But my feet are hot" controversies in bed. But I digress...)

After we'd eaten dinner and Melissa had left on Christmas night, we decided to visit some beautiful holiday light displays downtown. It was warm enough to walk through the city parks and look out over the Mississippi - unless you are a teenage boy who insisted that changing from shorts to jeans before we left the house was just too much work. So he was chilly. At one point Mira appeared to be shivering, but then we discovered that was a potty dance. Since literally nothing is open on Christmas and time was of the essence, we realized we had no option but public urination. Randy put her in what he refers to as the hammock-hold (they've gotten quite adept at Mira peeing outdoors since our South Dakota hiking trip) and she left her mark, there among the twinkling Christmas lights in a downtown park on Christmas night. If there had been snow, we could've sung "Peeing in a Winter Wonderland," but as I mentioned, it's been balmy.

A few more holiday pictures...

Abby with Little H

Christmas morning: new hat with nightie

New toys for everyone!

Holidays are exhausting

Preschooler-Highschooler

Living with a preschooler is sometimes like sharing a house with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Or Sybil. She is alternately intense, distractible, impulsive, dramatic and compassionate. She is social and opinionated, and can be absolutely egocentric, displaying a grandiose sense of self-importance. Her intelligence and humor continually astonish me and I am convinced she is the savviest three-year-old in town. As she becomes ever more independent, she needs the security and consistency of clear rules, so it's crucial that we set limits. I know she cherishes that parental connection, even if she fights us tooth-and-nail. She can be defiant and it appears she feels no guilt; insincere utterances of "sorry" are usually coerced by me. And I adore her.

And the physical changes! Even though of course we knew what changes were coming, her rapid growth seems to defy science. In three short years, her height and weight have nearly doubled. Her previously bald head has hair. She talks non-stop, sharing every thought with me. In a year she will be riding a bike. How can a child change so dramatically, so quickly? Even as our hearts are warmed while watching family videos of Mira's homecoming in 2008, we are sobered by how quickly time has flown past us, as this baby who was completely dependent on us yesterday is suddenly almost a regular "kid."

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Living with a preschooler high-schooler is sometimes like sharing a house with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Or Sybil. She He is alternately intense, distractible, impulsive, dramatic, compassionate and sarcastic. She He is social and opinionated, and can be absolutely egocentric, displaying a grandiose sense of self-importance. Her His intelligence and humor continually astonish me and I am convinced she he is one of the wittiest people I know. As she he becomes ever more independent, she he needs the security and consistency of clear rules, so it's crucial that we set limits. I secretly think she he appreciates that parental connection, even when she he fights us tooth-and-nail. Sometimes she he appears to completely lack impulse control and seemingly feels no guilt; insincere utterances of "sorry" are usually coerced by me. And I adore her him.

And the physical changes! Even though of course we knew what changes were coming, her his rapid growth seems to defy science. In three short years, her his height and weight seem like they've doubled. Her His previously bald head smooth face has hair. She He talks to friends non-stop, sharing guarding personal information from me. In a year she he will be riding a bike driving a car. How can a child change so dramatically, so quickly? Even as our hearts are warmed while watching family videos of Mira's homecoming in 2008, we are sobered by how quickly time has flown past us, as this kid who was dependent on us yesterday is suddenly practically a "regular kid" full-grown man.

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I love the relationship and interactions between Madame Toddler and "Man-Child" Highschooler. Yes, Ethan thoroughly enjoys teasing her. Fun games include chasing her around the house and threatening to put her in the oven; wrapping her tightly in a blanket with her arms pinned to her side and pretending he's going to eat her (he calls this game "burrito"); and changing the words as he's reading her stories ("Laura hugged Pa, and his blue eyes smiled down at her. And then suddenly those smiling eyes jumped out of his skull and ran away, leaving Pa blind and unable to play his fiddle.") Each "game" elicits blood-curdling screams of protest from Mira. But as soon as Ethan stops what he's doing, she begs him, "Do it again!" If I ask her, "Who makes you laugh a lot?" she responds, "Ethan and Gigi!" (Gracie). (Abby also makes her laugh, but she definitely sees Abby more as Junior Mother - care and comfort more than rough-housing.)

The influence of the teenage sibling is obvious in Mira's words and actions, and their interactions result in Mira doing a lot of trash talking for someone her size. (She recently said to Ethan, "I gonna throw you in the garbage and get a new brother," as well as "I not like your hair.") It can be embarrassing if strangers are within earshot, and you end up wishing you were wearing a sign that read, "We're a nice family, honestly," but of course you end up just grimacing.

But as much as I might grimace at her "big talk," her close relationship with a brother who is 12 years older makes it worth the imperfections. I think a lot of teenage boys would be too busy to pay much attention to little sisters, but Ethan thoroughly enjoys her, and she adores him. I love it.

A Season of Silver Linings

I am not much of a blogger during times of stress, which explains why I haven't done a post since August. Folks, it has been a rocky road (and not the ice cream kind), and the uphill journey continues. Oh, the struggles, stories and facts I could share about pediatric mental health! but this isn't that type of blog, so I will leave it at that.

But the truth is that autumn hasn't been all bad. In many ways, it's been a wonderful season of kids growing and changing and achieving and wow-ing me. Instead of writing tonight I will share some pictures that capture some of the "silver linings" we have enjoyed. (And if I go a little overboard in celebrating the kids' stuff, please - give me a pass this time. It's been important to focus on the positives lately.)

Mira Rules the School twice a day this year - preschool and speech class (the latter is helping her articulation but doesn't always prevent her from saying things like "bub-wack" for "back rub").

Jam session. Ethan made the top jazz band, and performed in the pit orchestra for the school musical. Meanwhile, I have learned the important fact that if you play a "blowing instrument" you don't refer to your mouth as your mouth; it's your "chops."

Scarecrow Walk at the Landscape Arboretum prior to seeing "Hairspray" with Mom and Melissa

Ethan's soccer team was really fun to watch. They finished 9-1-1, and Ethan learned a few Karen phrases along the way from all his Burmese teammates.

Abby made varsity as an eighth grader and quickly became a starter. I'm not going to lie, the whole experience of seeing Abby improve tremendously and get tons of attention because she was so young, was really fun for Randy and me! Oh, and she loved it too.

Abby was awarded Rookie of the Year

Loungin' in the Patch

We went to a Halloween party as the Ingalls. Abby looked great as Laura, but she was not interested in being photographed in a dress - especially a ruffle-sleeved prairie frock like the one I found her! (Randy as Pa, Mira as Baby Carrie, me as Ma and Gracie as Nellie)

More Halloween...

The spice of life

Busy, busy, busy...

As I chauffeur kids to and from sports, music lessons and friends' houses, I am struck with the knowledge that there are a thousand versions of me across the country, driving their own kids to a zillion activities. All of us leading very fortunate but typical lives as middle-class moms of busy teenage- and elementary school-age kids; participating in carpools and phone trees, managing schedules online. A dime a dozen, we are. As much as I cherish that cup of Caribou coffee we're all sipping, it irks me to think I am a June Cleaver or Carol Brady (minus Alice, of course) of modern times - complete with the stupid minivan. (Although I do drive the smaller stick-shift car more often than the van. That's something.)

The color commentary I tend to have about other drivers while I'm in the stupid minivan (or car) potentially sets me apart from the rest of the (more mature) Mom Taxis at least somewhat. I'm not proud of random outbursts like,"C'mom Mullet Boy, let's go! The light's not going to get any greener if you water it!" (and other examples not approved for all audiences) but they seem to slip out. I keep things in check pretty well when the kids are in the car but when I am by myself - well let's just say those aren't my proudest moments, but they are some of my most creative.

I'm also pretty sure that most of the other moms aren't flying by the seat of their pants like I am when it comes to key details like "Where is the field located?" and "Was I supposed to pick up Annika?" As I have touched on before, I am pretty much the worst candidate you could think of for being responsible for busy schedules. Those last minute moments of panic just make life more interesting, right?

See how serene and in control she is? See that clean vehicle? That's not me. She's the anti-Jules.

Of course, there are many other aspects of daily life that I like to think differentiate my existence from the rest of the world. These are more positive than my comments about fellow drivers or my inability to manage schedules. It's the kids themselves, the ones I am driving around. Impressing me with their music, making the varsity team, unexpectedly cleaning the house, sneaking my coffee for themselves, drying their Clearasil'd faces on my good towels so the benzoyl peroxide leaves bleach streaks. Making me laugh, making me crazy. They are the spice of my life.

One, as you know, is particularly spicy.

In the past week alone, she has made life spicy - and comical - by:

• Biting her finger to see if she could make it bleed after I said "No blood, no Band-aid" when she wanted to decorate her legs with them.
• Turning her back and sticking out her tongue when she was mad. I know she is doing it for attention so I tend to ignore it. As a result, she still isn't sure if it's naughty enough to get my goat or not. Her tongue stick looks more like an exploring protrusion than a mad face, because she doesn't know how to do it right.
• Trying to physically push me out of the way while I held Gracie's hair back as she threw up, saying "I want see!"
• Trying to put Abby's dried up contact lens in her own eye.
• Getting stuck in the toilet. (She was wiggling and and trying to resist sitting on the potty before nap because she wanted to keep playing. She lost her balance and fell into the toilet, legs sticking straight up. She looked more indignant than panicked, and it did shock her out of a brewing tantrum. For my part, I felt the need to call Ethan so he could get a look at the scene before pulling her out. He thoroughly appreciated that.)

I have to say, life is never dull and she always provides good blogging material.

We took a picture of her calves the other day because I realized she has more muscle definition than I do. She three, shouldn't she still have cankles? But when you run everywhere, all day, apparently you get ripped little legs. I guess I should try it.

"Vacation" may be overstating it

We recently returned from a wonderful summer vacation out west. Although "vacation" might be a misleading description for such a trip. Vacation implies rest, relaxation, recharging... Adventure may be more accurate. Or how about undertaking.

Don't get me wrong; it was fun, and there was family bonding time-o-plenty (many of the interactions positive, a few of them suspiciously similar to bickering). We laughed a lot and hiked in some spectacular settings. But like any family vacation, there were some moments that were exhausting. Specifically, there were certain individuals who never stopped moving/chattering/wiggling/questioning/singing.

Constant motion.

Not to suggest that a week of traveling with the other children was stress-free. For certain kids, there was something to worry over at every turn. For others, there were periods of teenage sullen-ity (like that word?) But the Little Ball of Energy was the one that tired me out. (Speaking as the Big Ball of Tiredness).

Oh, but it was beautiful, particularly Custer. In this century in America, to be able to look as far as you can see over low, rolling mountains and see nothing but pronghorn antelope and birds - no roads, homes, telephone wires or power lines - is amazing. We could have been standing in the same spot 200 years ago with the same view. Why, Pa and Mr. Edwards might've come through the grass on horseback at any moment.

Watching pronghorn

Besides experiencing the majesty of the American West, the best moments for me involved laughing with the kids. We laughed with Randy, and we laughed at him. ("Apparently all they sell at Pamida is Pamida Water! I don't trust it. We're going to a different store.")

There were also many times while driving that the words coming out of my own mouth - or Randy's - made me burst out laughing. Things I never imagined saying...

"Mira, if you rub that apple on the bottom of your feet one more time I'm going to take it away!"

Conversations I never imagined overhearing...

"Ethan! Look my teeth!"

"What about your teeth?"

"My teeth clean?"

"What? Hey, what do you have in your mouth? Is that a ... Mira, that's gross! Mom, Mira has a Clorox wipe in her mouth!"

Highlights for other family members? Perhaps for Gracie it was having her hands cuffed in Wall, SD, by her loving brother. (Or not.) He managed to lock the cuffs in a way that couldn't be undone without involving the store manager. It's really cool as a parent when you have to wait in line at the register and then tell the teenage cashier, "Um, my son handcuffed my daughter and now we can't get them off." (Ethan, meanwhile, slunk away, red-faced and laughing, trying to pretend he wasn't with our family). Incidentally, this type of occurrence has long been known as "Pulling an Ethan" by our family. You can read more about "Pulling an Ethan" here.

Mira's favorite part of the trip may have been sleeping in a big bed with Gracie (more like on Gracie). And of course she found it very exciting when all six of us shared one hotel room. (Eleven o'clock at night, Randy and I were sitting in bed, silently reading by barely any light, waiting until all the kids were asleep and we could turn on TV and have a beer. And they were all asleep - except one! One energetic preschooler, whose little braided-and-beaded head kept peeking over the half-wall dividing our "suite" so she could make sure she wasn't missing anything.)

Yes, she quite loved the lodging experiences. There were pools and playgrounds, and refrigerators just her size. And if she ran into the wrong room and made herself at home before I caught up with her and apologized to the startled occupants, what of it?

We did a lot of hiking, and she is one rugged little cookie, with stamina that rivals anybody's (and often surpasses mine). She became quite adept at wilderness peeing, which made me proud. (I have a long history of peeing in woods, from the Adirondacks to the Grand Canyon). The only drawback to this newfound skill was that after we were home, she dropped her pants in someone's yard when we were on a walk. I probably should've explained to her that peeing behind a tree while hiking in the woods = OK, peeing on someone's front yard while walking down a suburban street = not OK.

Ethan's favorite moments? Possibly tormenting Mira to amuse himself. He did entertain her in the car quite a bit, which was a tremendous help because we had some long days on the road. He would be reading to her and I'd suddenly become aware that he was taking some major liberties with the plot: "Without warning, Dora became angry. She took the scissors out of Backpack and stabbed the troll repeatedly, before turning her violence on Boots..."

He also took great pleasure in pointing out "Ho-Ho" (Santa) everywhere we went. Why so many Ho-Ho's? Sturgis, baby!

The fact that there were Ho-Ho's everywhere Mira looked was unsettling to her, because Ethan has been filling her head with tales about Santa that are based on David Sedaris's "Six to Eight Black Men" since last Christmas.

"Look out Mira, there's Ho-Ho! He might get you!"

"No, Ethan, he get YOU! You naughty, he kick you!"

Oh, my innocent, angelic children!

And Abby's favorite moments? I think she liked everything, even a nearly-vertical hike in 95 degree heat one day. As the rest of us collapsed at the summit she said, "That was great!" Of all the kids, she loves hiking the most and she's a born naturalist.

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Pulling an Ethan

Def: Causing one's body, or part of one's body, or part of someone else's body, to get stuck in or affixed to an object unintentionally.

Some examples of Ethan "Pulling an Ethan" include:

• Putting an "I Voted" sticker over his eye to look like a pirate. When he attempted to remove the sticker an hour later, it was securely attached to his eyebrow with some sort of bizarre super-adhesive, and was not coming off without taking good chunks of the eyebrow with it.
  
• Cinching his Cub Scout belt so tight there wasn't even a millimeter of "give" to uncinch it, even when he sucked in his stomach as much as possible. Not a good move when you have to go to the bathroom really bad.
• Getting his index finger stuck in the middle of a CD to the point where we had to break the CD to free the finger.
• Sliding a plastic tamborine over the dog's head, which then seemed way too small to get back over his head. I was in another room and I heard Ethan chuckling, saying, "Hey Fred, now we'll always be able to hear you coming by your jingle." Then: "Uh-oh..." I went to see what was going on, and there was Fred, looking like a miserable jester with a purple tamborine around his jowly neck. Ethan just looked panicked.
• And of course, the handcuffs in Wall....

A few more pictures from the trip

ATTITUDE (Dude)

The blog has gotten away from me a bit. Since my last post the kids have finished the school year, soccer seasons have started and ended, I've visited New York with my mom and sisters, and Ethan and Mira have had birthdays. Oh, and Mira has accused Fred of punching her.

(Yeah, it's not super believable, given that the hound mostly lays on the couch, and more importantly, doesn't exactly have hitting arms. I'm picturing paws flailing.)

If I had questioned whether or not Mira was being truthful about Fred's behavior, I think her insistence that she goes to a job and drives a car (supposedly she drives herself to daycare - must be on her non-work days) might've alerted me to the fact that she has entered a phase of ... Tall Tales. According to Mira, she cooks pancakes, gets together with Gracie's friends, and our sitter never gives her lunch.

Well, you can say whatever you want when you're running the show, right? I'm pretty certain that in Mira's mind she's in charge and the rest of us are just her minions. She makes a pretty comical little tyrant, clicking around in her plastic high heels and calling me "Jules."

"Hey Jules, what doin'?"

It catches you off guard a bit the first couple times.

I've also been called Dude, although she tends to reserve that name for Ethan, much to his amusement. But beware chuckling at the queen! She does not appreciate being the source of our mirth, yelling at us, "IT'S NOT BUNNY!" (Her highness hasn't quite mastered the f-sound yet.)

How do you respond to an Attitudy-Judy? It's not exactly naughty, and though in my worst moments I may have fleeting thoughts of military school where they crush kids' spirits, mostly I react the only way I can. With a head shake. And a smile.

Yeah, Baby! POTTY TRAINED.

I think we can safely call it: Mira is out of diapers. Sure, there's still the nighttime/naptime Pull-Up, but she is successfully - and proudly - wearing her Dora underwear around town. If you've happened to have spent time around Mira any time in the last few days she has surely announced to you, "I pee potty!" Definitely all the parents at Wednesday's soccer game heard the news - for both teams.

This Peeing Pride is new - she was definitely anti-potty until recently, which is why I am so excited that we've arrived. Case in point: when I took her diapers off so she could sit on the potty, she:

• Angrily tipped over the Diaper Genie and tried to retrieve her diaper from the canister.
• Got a new diaper and tried to put it on herself.
• Hit me with the new diaper when she couldn't get it on. (Eventually, she was distracted from her anger by the fact that the diaper made one heck of a bonnet. Here she is, looking deceivingly agreeable. Hah!)

Because of Mira's strong potty training aversion, I actually offered my niece a tidy cash payment if she wanted to get Mira out of diapers. My niece was leaving town so it didn't work out, but my offer demonstrates my own lack of motivation to conquer the task.

If you're wondering at this point, why not wait until Mira was "interested," there were a couple reasons.

• She's plenty old enough.
• When she was reluctantly diaperless, she could hold it for hours. Meaning she had the control. Meaning her aversion was simply a battle-of-wills.

I've never been totally comfortable with the (fairly popular) Wait-until-the-child-wants-to-do-it approach. I was probably influenced by our Early Childhood class experience, too. We spent one day discussing potty training -er, toilet learning, sorry.

Half of the kids in the class had foreign-born parents and half were the typical American parents. The children of the foreign-born parents were all out of diapers at two. No exceptions. Those parents (Somali, Korean, Algerian, Indian and Argentinian) thought it was definitely "an American idea" to keep our kids in diapers as long as we did. They politely explained that in their countries, buying diapers was an expense many people couldn't easily afford. Or that a three-year-old in diapers in their country was viewed like four-year-old wearing diapers here.

I looked at Mira, my obstinate child, who could hold her bladder for several hours, and sighed. Yeah, she can do it. I have to deal with it.

We took her out of diapers a week ago. She hasn't had any accidents. She got on board with the idea about two days into the endeavor, when she discovered it was a darn easy way to get a treat. (She peed 14 times in three hours. Little dribbles that nevertheless merited Tic Tacs.)

Last night when we were at Target she had her first Public Pee. (Public Pee meaning in a public restroom, not in front of all the shoppers). Afterward she went running out of the restroom shouting to Randy (and all of the other shoppers who were standing in line at the registers), "I PEE ON POTTY TARGET!"

Folks, I think we've arrived.

Commotion

Recently Ethan (my most musical child) was playing the piano at the same time one of the girls was talking. "No piano!" I barked.

"Fine!" he retorted, storming off. I couldn't blame him for being offended - after all, he had been executing a nice rendition of "How to Save a Life," not scrapping his nails on a chalkboard. I apologized to him later, explaining what all my kids have already figured out: noise stresses me out.

I didn't used to freak out about too much noise (obviously only an old, stodgy person would do that.) I had music on constantly, especially when Ethan and Abby were babies. I played classical music to smarten them up, jazz to infuse them with an innate sense of cool, and edgy alternative so I could pretend to myself that I wasn't all that far out of college. But then they got older and started talking, loudly and at the same time, and soon Gracie was babbling and the Fisher Price bus was playing music while kids were having tantrums and Barney was singing on TV and Ethan learned to whistle and we got a harmonica and a toy vacuum and a howling hound dog ...

Yep, it was just like that. Only I never wore my hair in a bun.

I told Ethan, "Someday you and the girls will be reminiscing about childhood and you'll say, Remember how Mom always freaked out about noise? And you'll be right. But you have to understand how I got this way."

I explained that I'd been trapped in the van one too many times with too many audio sources: Ethan whistling, Abby and Gracie singing two different songs, and Mira crying because she'd dropped a toy (a musical toy, which managed to land on the floor with its "on" button is pushed in, resulting in Old MacDonald had a farm Old MacDonald had a farm Old MacDonald had a farm Old MacDonald had ...) Oh and let's not forget the top 40 radio that someone begged me to turn up.

"Now my brain cells can't take it," I concluded. "They want out when there's too much noise."

"That's excellent," Ethan said. "I can just picture your brain cells trying to escape."

Apparently he could visualize the scene rather well. Later he drew a detailed picture of my brain cells trying to escape the commotion. I have to admit, I think he captured it pretty well.

Here's the scene he drew:

A close up. I especially like the one in the middle, crying in the fetal position.

Easter (aka "Hamster")

Despite my genuine reverence for Easter, in the back of my mind I can't avoid thinking of the holiday as "Hamster" sometimes. When Abby was three or four, the Easter/Hamster confusion was part of a string of word mix-ups. (There was a boy in her park class named Oscar who she believed was named Whisker, and confusion over titles like "Narnicles of Chronia" and "How the Chimp Stole Christmas", for example).

Easter 2011 was lovely. Of course, there were also a few typical Jackson moments. We began on Good Friday by attending a "children and family" church service. The children were invited to do a craft at the conclusion, a search-and-find thing. Mira was given a plastic bird feeder tube filled with bird seed, into which she dropped various items representing the Easter story. (A small rock represented the stone that was rolled away from the tomb, for instance). I think the idea was that once all of the objects were mixed into the birdseed and the tube was sealed up, the kids could shake it and try to visually locate the various Easter items. Unfortunately, one of the objects in the tube was an M&M (because M&Ms were served at the Last Supper? I never did find out what it was supposed to represent). It was too tempting for Madame Sweet Tooth. She pried the top of the tube off in the three minutes it took to drive home from church, spraying the van and its passengers with birdseed. To top it off, as I stood freezing in nylons and heels vacuuming out the van in the garage, she located my cup of coffee in the house and polished it off. Because she needed that caffeine energy boost.

We dyed eggs that night. Mira discovered that the fun is all in the dipping - and re-dipping, re-dipping, re-dipping. In all the years we've been dyeing Easter eggs I don't ever remember ending up with a final color that can only be described as "dog bile," but Mira managed it. With all three of her eggs.

We had Easter brunch at my mom's and Easter dinner at Randy's sister's house. The kids did an Easter egg hunt at Mom's house. Mira's hunt was the standard deal, but the older three had to decode word clues to find their next egg. The Big Kid got impatient trying to use his sugar-high'ed brain (throwing out wild guesses like "Beryllium Titanium" for "Behind the butter" - really, Ethan?), and decided to blindly turn the house upside instead of thinking, but eventually all the eggs were uncovered. We all stuffed ourselves silly at both meals (I mean, it was a holiday. I was obligated). The double celebration with family on both sides was really nice.

Some pics:

On the way to "bile"

Easter "do"

Back view

Ethan trying to get out of the picture with me. He's passed me up!

Egg hunt

Being Little: The Bane of Her Existence

It's so hard to be two when you think you're 10.

Mira, like many youngest children, absolutely does not recognize the age gap between her and the big kids. In her mind, they are all exactly equal: she can do everything they can do and go everywhere they can go (this type of thinking is definitely going to cause problems when she's three and Ethan starts driving). The worst part is, there are so many big kids around. Yes, there are our three, but the norm on weekends and all summer seems to be a whole gaggle of kids in our house and yard. (We're that house - the one that looks like I'm running a daycare and/or I'm the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe). Today the teens, 'tweens and ten-year-olds numbered seven - and that's not including the ones who live here. As always, the yard is strewn with balls, jump ropes and sidewalk chalk (so classy).

Mira revels in the activity - until they decide to do something she can't do, or simply decide they're done playing with her (let's face it: her aversion to sharing or taking turns gets old. Also, she's a bit of a hinderance when you're trying to go one-on-one with the basketball and she's planted under the hoop).

When the kids jump on their bikes or it's time for the only member of the group who naps to come inside, she falls to pieces. It's really pitiful. She hurls herself at the latched door like a sitcom character trapped in a locked bathroom. She writhes, twists, flops and screams: "ABBY! G! ABBY! G!" ("G" is Gracie. It's ironic but sweet that she thinks her sisters, who are desperate to sneak away from her, will swoop to her rescue when her cruel parents make her come inside). She exhausts herself; teary, snotty, hoarse and heartbroken.

It's worth mentioning that this tragic scene plays out at our house at least twice a day when the kids aren't in school.

The prospect of a whole summer filled with this anguish is a little daunting, not only because the episodes are draining, but because she is a determined and fearless little girl - meaning that she will try to escape back outside to track down the big kids (who may have biked to the coffee shop). That means the adult in charge has to be focused and on top of things. Oh, SO not a good role for me and my muddlement (!)

Some recent pictures...

Watching TV with (on) Ethan

Child of God

We had Mira baptized on Sunday. We weren't intending to wait until she was a Terrible Two (although it had the potential to be a lot more exciting than an infant baptism, given that there were candles and water on site. Plus, she's incredibly speedy, even in dress shoes). But scheduling it kept getting away from us. Until my sister got her son Hendrik's dedication ceremony on the calendar. That was just the kick-in-the-pants I needed.

I did have some serious concerns about the possibility that Mira would try to climb into the baptismal font (after all, she hopped into the koi pond at the Como Conservatory), or blow out the baptism candle, mid-blessing. Or yell "NO!" in her gravelly monster voice while being marked with the sign of the cross. That's always the sign of an angelic child, isn't it? ("What'd you say your child's name is? Damien?")

Surprisingly, she was really well-behaved (and quite cute). I think the experience of being up in front of hundreds of church members was interesting enough to distract her from her usual shenanigans.

All kidding aside, the ceremony was very nice - our pastor talked about Mira's Ethiopian heritage, correctly pronouncing Tseganesh, and her joining our family. Here are some pictures.

Wearing a traditional Ethiopian dress (borrowed from our little friend Mizan)