In Support of the Family Dinner

I'm sure you've all read about the various positive effects of sitting down to dinner as a family, right? Smarter kids! Better-behaved kids! Non-stoned kids!

Seriously. I heard a radio commercial awhile ago where they got some college student to talk about how sitting down to eat with his family when he was younger meant that he didn't drink as much as his fellow students.

Sure, kid.

Anyway.

I myself am a big advocate of sitting down as a family, but for one simple reason: It's the only way to keep my sons from behaving like complete beasts.

On a normal night, all three adults and the two children sit down around 6 p.m. and eat dinner. Mostly the adults talk, with many interruptions by loquacious Cubby and occasional random and semi-intelligible comments from Charlie. The adults eat. The children eat. I do my fair share of nagging, but it's much, much less than when I am forced to eat with the children by myself.

God help me.

On the nights when the MiL has a meeting or whatever and A. has night court, the children sit down with me and proceed to engage in their own form of dinner conversation. This is never very sophisticated. Tonight's conversation included the endless repetition of the "button" game, during which one child says "Daddy button" or "Mommy button" or whoever button and the other one repeats it and laughs hysterically.

I don't know either.

They bubble their milk. They menace with forks. They blow tunes into their penne pasta. In short, they behave abominably.

They do not do this when other adults are present, so obviously I am not the civilizing influence here. There must be more than one adult at the table; I suppose because then they have an example of how a rational, polite person behaves while eating and interacting with other people.

And this is why I will always, always champion the family dinner, as long as A. is around to eat with us. Otherwise, I may as well throw all the food into a trough and let the children dive in.

Worth Waiting For

Due to many incredibly boring computer issues, I haven't been accessing the photos on my camera. However, I finally sat down and figured out how to get the photos off my memory card and on to A.'s weird Chromebook (they don't run on Windows, so everything is very different). And what a good thing I did, because just look what I was saving for you!

This one time when I decided to get all Pinterest-y with a tea party I had with the children on a rainy and grumpy-boring morning:

Scary.

Personally, I find food faces to be frightening, but I was just trying to get them to eat lunch without any drama. Actually, as I recall, what I was really trying to do was get them to come inside for lunch without any drama because we had been outside for two hours on a very damp, cold morning playing with rubber worms in the shed and I was SO OVER IT. So I lured them in with the promise of a tea party (always a popular activity around here) AND a special snack to go with their tea.

Hence, the freaky food face. They loved it, though.

They also, as always, loved their tea. Cubby has the exclusive use of an individual-sized tea pot plus a small sugar bowl and tiny cream pitcher* so he can pour and mix up his own tea.

Pretty sure the sugar bowl is the main attraction, even if it does only have about two teaspoons of sugar in it because I am a Mean Mom.

Charlie hasn't yet caught on that he doesn't get all the fun accouterments. As long as he has his delicate teacup and saucer, plus a spoon for stirring, he's cool.

He prefers the rose-patterned tea set, but will accept the butterflies if necessary.

I always laugh when I see pictures of other kids "playing" tea party. I can just imagine Cubby and Charlie's reaction to little plastic cups with no actual tea. It would not be well received.

There! Aren't you glad I finally figured out how to get some pictures on here? I know I just made your Monday. You're welcome.

* The MiL tends to collect these sorts of things, which is why we have them. They weren't purchased specifically for Cubby or anything, although he certainly considers them his personal property by now.

Let's Hear It for the Sugar Crash!

I have to go to the doctor today to get the routine blood draw to test for gestational diabetes. This involves drinking a gaggingly sweet beverage on a mostly empty stomach and then waiting an hour before they can draw blood. And then comes the sugar crash. Blinding headache, here I come!

Obviously, this is not an outing that I'm anticipating with any great pleasure. But what makes it worse is the amount of planning I had to do to even make this unwanted outing happen.

This is not a appointment to which I want to drag my two feral children. Not that I EVER want to bring them along for appointments, but an hour in a doctor's office? I may as well try to cage a wolverine. That's approximately the level of whirling energy I would be trying to contain.

My options for appointment times were very limited, so I had to take one on a Friday morning. This meant that neither the MiL nor A.* would be available to watch the children. Neither of my kids have ever had a babysitter other than those two adults. (I know--sheltered life.)

So I called my friend Alyssa and asked her if I could drop off my two children at her house at 8:15 a.m. for a few hours. Alyssa is currently eight months pregnant with HER third child (a girl, hooray!), but it's a measure of her generosity that she didn't even hesitate at the prospect of wrangling four boys ages 2, 3, 4, and 7 for an entire morning.

Needless to say, I owe her big time.

And just to complicate matters, I arranged to bring my minivan in to the mechanic today to finish some work begun last week, totally forgetting this appointment I already had. So now the whole family is going to load up in vehicles at 8 this morning. We'll go to the mechanic to drop off my van on the way to Alyssa's. A. and I will drop the children off for their playdate (I'm calling it this to make it more exciting for them so it won't be so much like "Mommy is abandoning you," and more like, "Fun times with friends!"), then drive to the Small City and drop A. off at work. I'll go the doctor, then go get the children, then go home, and then we'll go back to the Small City this evening to pick A. up.

I'm tired already just thinking about it.

* A. took a new job at a law firm in the Small City, so his work hours have gotten much less flexible.

The Ugly Shoes

Sometime in the very early part of this pregnancy, my left foot got all jacked up. Specifically, the bottom heel of my left foot. At first I thought I had just pulled a muscle and I figured I'd just try to keep off my feet as much as I could for awhile (HAHAHAHA) until it healed itself.

Nope.

Then it was summer and I thought maybe my sandals were making my feet hurt and if I spent a few days wearing my running shoes, my foot would heal itself.

Nope again.

Though there was no denying the fact that the days I tried to wear sandals were the days the pain went all the way from my heal up my leg and into my back, rendering me more or less crippled. And on the days when I wore my running shoes, while not pain-free for my foot, I could at least walk without limping.

This is why I now wear my running shoes every day, all day. And I HATE IT. Because running shoes are just . . . ugly.

Unless I'm actually running or exercising (which I am not now, ever), wearing these shoes just makes me feel sloppy. And although I am the last person to offer myself as a sacrifice on the alter of fashion, I also don't like looking sloppy. So every day I schlep through the day in my maternity jeans and running shoes, feeling like a caricature of a frumpy mom.

But since the alternative is not being able to schlep at all, I wear the damn shoes. And cross my fingers, toes, and eyes that whatever this foot issue is, it will disappear after this baby is born so I can once again wear some non-sporty shoe.

Take Two

According to my archives--the only way I can ever pinpoint exact dates for anything anymore, and that right there is reason enough to keep up with this parade of drivel--it's been almost exactly three months since A. attempted camping with both Charlie and Cubby. You may recall that it didn't really work out.

But now Charlie is a whole three months older and more mature. He is, as he will remind anyone who forgets, a big boy. Plus, he's now used to sleeping (more or less . . .) in the same space as his brother.

So A. is trying again. At four o'clock this afternoon, he loaded all the camping stuff plus both boys into the wagon pulled behind the lawn tractor and drove up into the pine plantation on our (very accommodating) neighbor's property.

I think Charlie may actually make it through till morning this time, although I wouldn't bet the farm or anything on it.

As for me, I've already scrubbed the grout in the shower, had a nice phone conversation with my mom, and eaten my dinner. Further excitement will probably include some ice cream and maybe, if I'm feeling really wild, a movie.

Or maybe I'll just go to bed at 8 o'clock and actually get a full night's sleep for the first time in over a week.

Check back tomorrow for all the exciting details. You know you want to.

Update: Yeah, never mind. The lawn tractor came chugging back to the house at 6:45 this evening towing two very dirty boys. As soon as the sun started to set, Charlie had been very clear that he was ready to go home. So A. brought him home and then walked back to the campsite with Cubby. Charlie was very pleased by his forest adventure and in quite a good mood. He was also totally wound up and not so much down with the idea of "bedtime."

Oh well. At least I got a few hours to myself.

Cohabitants

So, you ask (well, one of you asked, and I'm sure my mother wants to know), how is it going with the two feral boys in one sleeping cave? Funny stories there. Though they didn't seem all that funny at the time.

On the first try at putting Charlie down for a nap in the new room, it took me over an hour to get him to sleep. In the accompanying screaming and thrashing, he smashed into my mouth with the top of his head and slightly loosened one of my front teeth.

Off to a rousing start! (The tooth is fine now; no permanent damage.)

That night he didn't go to sleep until nine o'clock, which is well over an hour after his usual bedtime. Cubby tried very hard to be helpful, even telling Charlie a bedtime story involving a bear trying to steal honey from some bees and covering himself in old rubber tires so he wouldn't get stung. The bear got the honey and then went for a walk in the woods, during which there was a thunderstorm, but those handy rubber tires kept him safe from the lightning.

It was a really great story. Almost worth the other 74 minutes I spent trying to get them both asleep.

Charlie woke up a couple of times that night, as well as too early the next morning, which in turn woke Cubby up, which meant some really cranky children (and mother) the next day.

The next day the before-nap hysteria lasted 45 minutes. Progress! Of a sort. That night was another nine o'clock finish. This might have been my lowest emotional point in the whole process, as I imagined never getting an evening to myself again and instead listening to screaming and dealing with bed-escaping children for hours every day.

But then on Monday, Charlie went down for his nap with no screaming. Just like that. I called A. at work to share the miraculous good news.

Bedtimes still require that I literally sit between them--there's a chair between their beds--to keep them from talking and keeping each other awake for an hour until hysteria sets in, but they're both going to sleep by around 8 p.m. Charlie still wakes up on occasion at awful times like 2 a.m. or 4:30 a.m. and I have to get him back to sleep, but that's just Charlie, not the room.

So, in sum, we're not really where I'd like to be yet (that is, to the point where I put them in their beds, sing their lullaby, close the door, and walk away), but it's better. Bearable. And I haven't sustained any more physical injuries. Success!

Hooray for the Autumnal Equinox!

What, you're not excited? Well, get excited, because Cubby sure is.

Do not ask me why the First Day of Fall has assumed such importance to him, but it has. And it assumed some importance for me, too, since I've been getting kind of tired of being corrected anytime I would make some statement about it feeling like fall or being fall. EVERY TIME, Cubby would jump in to remind me that it's not fall yet, Mom, the calendar doesn't say it is. This, from a child who can't read.

Pedantic? My son? I can't imagine where he got that.

I must admit that there is something sort of satisfying about a day in which the hours of light and the hours of darkness are equal. It's as if the universe is in balance or something.

Or something.

Anyway. Happy fall, my lovelies!