Livin' Large

On Sunday mornings, A. gets up with the children so I can, uh, not. I rarely actually sleep any later than they do, but the important thing is that I am not downstairs at 5:45 a.m. answering questions and pouring milk.

This particular Sunday morning Charlie very unfortunately woke up at 5:30. Nothing good happens at 5:30 in the morning. The early-rising child is grumpy, the early-rising adult is grumpy, it's still dark outside . . . no fun at all. But A. dutifully got up and got dressed, then pried an unhappy Charlie away from me and took him downstairs, screaming the whole way.

Charlie was screaming, I mean, not A. Though I'm sure A. felt like screaming too.

Although I was awake for the day at that point (Charlie's method of cuddling involves climbing on my head and pinching my cheeks), I was not keen to go downstairs and be desperately clutched at like a mother chimpanzee by my Charlie chimp.

I stayed in bed and read my book. It's warm enough now that I can do that without freezing my exposed hands, so I read for more than an hour. Since I didn't hear any sounds of distress from downstairs, I figured A. had matters well in hand.

When I got downstairs around 7 a.m., I discovered just how A. kept matters in hand.

First, he gave Charlie an enormous spoonful of peanut butter and let him eat it standing on a chair at the counter. There was peanut butter on the coffee maker, peanut butter on the sugar bowl, peanut butter on the chair.

Second, he found an hour-long YouTube video about sheep and cattle ranching in Nevada. Charlie sat in A.'s chair by the woodstove (by himself, thankyouverymuch--he kicked A. out) and watched the whole. damn. thing.  I saw the last two minutes when I came down. That was about a minute and 45 seconds too much for me. But Charlie does love his cows and sheep. A lot, apparently.

And last, A. wasn't foolish enough to try to dress Charlie. This always results in screaming and tears, so to keep a happy Charlie, one must let the pajamas ride.

When I finally got up, Charlie was happy, A. was happy (if extremely sleepy), and I was happy that I hadn't been downstairs for the past hour and a half.

So apparently if I would just let a perpetually pajama-clad Charlie eat peanut butter from a spoon and watch YouTube videos about cows all morning, peace would reign.

Sorry, Charlie. You'll just have to wait until next Sunday for that.

My Many-Legged (and Super Creepy Looking) Ally

Have you ever seen a house centipede? Bet you have. But just in case you haven't been introduced, prepare yourself:




Yes, it is indeed really nasty looking. They move incredibly fast, too, in that scuttling way that, say, cockroaches do.

I do not enjoy seeing these in my bathroom, which is where they always seem to be. I don't see them a lot, but when I do, my first reaction is not, "Why hello, old friend!"

However. Awhile ago, I saw this article on the beneficial nature of centipedes in the house. In sum, they eat a lot of other nasty bugs, including ants.

I thought of this the other day when I went into the bathroom to take a shower and found a centipede in the sink. It was stuck in there, unable to get enough purchase on the rounded porcelain to scuttle out. I also noticed that the little black ants that invade the bathroom every spring and that I had been seeing for the previous few days were not in evidence.

So I didn't kill the centipede. Instead I just swept it out of the sink and let it run off into a corner. Go on, little buddy. Feast on ants. Any enemy of the ants is a friend of mine.

Until.

The next morning when I got out of the shower and grabbed my towel to dry off, I felt something crawling on my leg. I immediately did the instinctual flail about wildly to GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF RIGHT NOW, and what do you think went racing along the tub?

Yeah. My buddy the centipede. Probably the very same one I granted the reprieve to the day before.

I'm all about live and let live, little ant-eating creature, just don't live on my towel, okay?

The Battle I Lost . . . for Now

Mary very cleverly noticed in the Easter pictures that Cubby's mane also surrendered to the maniacal Barber of Blackrock, leaving me with three buzz-cut males in my house.

Yes, A. too. Why do you think Cubby wanted his hair shaved off?

I must admit that I was kind of upset with the result. I just really, really don't like buzz cuts. And I particularly don't like seeing Cubby lose all his nice, thick hair to one. But he asked, so he got it.

At first he said he liked it, but then came the first time he was tired and upset and he tried his more or less from-birth method of self-calming: twirling his hair with his fingers.

Oops.

That's when he told me he didn't like having short hair. Okay! No problem, Cubby! It will grow out and we will NEVER CUT IT ALL OFF AGAIN, AMEN.

I just have to hide A.'s clippers.

This Easter Brought to You by the Grandmothers

Something I accepted about myself awhile ago is that I am never going to be a real star when it comes to holidays for my children. Maybe it's because I'm not crafty, maybe it's because I'm not a Fun Mom, maybe it's because I just don't care all that much, but not for me are all the Pinterest-y adorable crafts and multi-day lead-up traditions for holidays.

I do, however, make some effort. I decorate for Christmas, albeit sparingly. I managed an Easter basket last year that went over reasonably well with Cubby. But this Easter . . . well, I kind of surpassed myself in holiday suckage.

Thankfully, the children have two grandmothers who provided everything they could possibly wish for.

From my mother last week came these felt bags with various little gifts in them. 

I bet there's a Pinterest tutorial on how to make something similar, but I also bet my mom bought them at the drugstore. I come by my non-craftiness genetically.

The Cadbury Mini Eggs were courtesy of the MiL, who also went around last night hiding chocolate bunnies and Cadbury Creme Eggs all around downstairs.

Uncle Doctor (the family member who originally bought this house in 1886) was unfortunately born too early to know the joys of the Cadbury Creme Egg. A sad thing indeed.

After donning the egg glasses and egg bubble necklaces from their bags, the children went around finding all the chocolate in the house.

The egg glasses were later crucial to a sword game, during which I believe they were a visored helmet.

The bubbles were the real hit, though. You best believe that shortly after this photo was taken, we were all outside and I was blowing bubbles, 28 degrees be damned.

And then I put on their coats and boots over their pajamas so they could look for the dyed hard-boiled eggs outside in the frozen morning. Guess who boiled, dyed, and put the eggs outside for them? Yeah. Not I, said the Not-Fun Mommy. The MiL gets the medal for this one.

This egg had already been peeled for Charlie to eat, but instead he elected to just carry it around and drop it a few times before flinging it to the dogs.

Later in the afternoon, we went to the MiL's brother's house for the big family Easter meal. The MiL's brother is a farmer. This meant that any time not spent eating rolls and pie could be spent here:

A tractor that hasn't moved in so long there are trees growing in it is the perfect tractor for a four-year-old.

Every holiday should be spent at a farm littered with derelict tractors. 

The MiL also prepared and brought three separate dishes for this family dinner. Know what I made? Not one single thing. How embarrassing.

I'll do better next year.

The Allium Cure

The children and I are in heavy mouth-breathing territory with this cold at the moment, which is just as fun as you would imagine. Thankfully, it warmed up enough this afternoon that we could go outside for an hour or so without any screaming due to frozen hands or noses.

Cubby is still a great fan of foraging, and Charlie is emulating his example with the wild chives that are everywhere this time of year. I don't even know if they're really chives, but they look like thinner versions of chives and they grow wild all over the lawns, so . . . I'm going with wild chives.

Cubby asked me if they were good for a cold. Sure, I said. I know garlic has been shown to boost the immune system, so why not other alliums, right?

Right. At what age do you think he'll catch on to the fact that I'm making this stuff up half the time?

Anyway. He then proceeded to pull up fistfuls of the chives and eat them, with Charlie doing likewise. Cubby made the mistake of shoving an entire bouquet in his mouth at once. He spit them out in a hurry, though, when the full impact of that many raw chives hit his tastebuds.

And then, of course, both children stunk of onions for an hour or so. Good thing I can't smell much at the moment.

Charlie Has Arrived

It's a big day when a boy gets his first real hammer.

Pro tip #1: The first hammer should be a tack hammer. Small enough that there's less inadvertent wild swinging due to excessive weight.

A big day for me, too, since when each brother has his own hammer and his own nail to hammer on, there is significantly less fighting and likelihood of someone getting smashed in the face with a hammer claw.

Pro tip #2: Start the nails for them on pieces of wood spaced very far apart. That way, they can only hurt themselves, not each other.

Just imagine the mind-blowing joy of his first experience with a real saw.

We'll wait awhile for that, though. One more year should do it.

It's Like He Doesn't Know Me At All

Cubby is sick again. Just a cold, and not nearly as severe as the last nasty thing he had a month ago, but still sick. This means, of course, that he must have chicken soup.

I think I mentioned to him one time about a year ago that chicken soup can help make colds go away, so now every time he's sick, he must have chicken soup. With potatoes, because noodles and rice are forbidden. He must have the magic elixir or heads will roll. Specifically, Mommy's head.

So when he came downstairs this morning snuffling and whining about snuffling, I knew chicken soup would be dinner tonight. I had chicken broth on hand, two quarts left from when we got rid of the chickens and I made and canned a few gallons of broth. I had vegetables. I did not, however, have any chicken.

I figured I could make the soup minus the chicken and just ask A. to pick up a rotisserie chicken on his way home. That way I could just shred it quickly and add it to the soup in time to eat.

So I called A. at work. I asked him to stop at the store and explained that Cubby wanted chicken soup. Before I could get to the part about A. buying the chicken for me, he said, "Okay, so just a can of Campbell's or something?"

What? Campbell's? Has he not been living in the same house with me for the past decade?

It's not as if I didn't eat my share of Campbell's soup growing up--minestrone was my personal favorite--but I don't eat it now. I mean, I have nothing against Campbell's, it's just . . . okay, yes. Yes, I do have something against it: It tastes terrible. And I could imagine Cubby's reaction if I served that salt-laden, watery mess with (God forbid) noodles to him in place of his beloved life-giving chicken soup with potatoes.

Pretty sure it wouldn't go over well.

I set A. straight and he dutifully went to the store. They didn't have rotisserie chickens at the small market near his office, so he bought some chicken tenders instead. Not Campbell's. Wise man.

Cubby loved his soup. He says he's feeling better already. Crisis averted.