Ugh Again

Our weather forecast for the next few days looks like this: 87 degrees for a high, 68 for a low; 83 high, 69 low; 83 high, 71 low.

Lemme translate that into my personal forecast: Sweaty with a 99 percent chance of severe crankiness.

And lots of this:

Out-of-focus iced coffee will be my salvation.

Stay cool, my lovelies. Winter will be here before you know it.

When the Stars Align

If Jack goes to sleep at 6:45 p.m. . .

And Cubby and Charlie go to sleep at 7:30 p.m. . .

And the MiL is at a concert . . .

And A. is at a bonfire with his high school buddies . . .

Then I get one night with just me, a bar of extra-dark chocolate, and Can't Buy Me Love on Netflix.

And that, my friends, is my idea of perfection.

Three Boys and a Bench

A few months ago, I decided I wanted a bench in between the beds in Cubby and Charlie's room. So I e-mailed my dad, the (not amateur) carpenter extraordinaire, and asked if he could make me one. Because I can do that, because he is awesome.

Yesterday, this arrived.

Ta da! It's like magic. And it didn't get broken into a dozen pieces this time by FedEx. Hooray.

I unpacked it outside initially, so I wouldn't have to haul the box and everything back down the stairs. Cubby and Charlie discovered that Nana had packed those nifty cubbies with a few surprises for them.

Firemen hats and police vehicles, specifically. We've got all our emergency responder needs covered.

Then I hauled it upstairs and put it under the window between the beds, where it fit perfectly. Because that is the beauty of custom-built furniture.

Another beautiful part of custom-built furniture? It can be built sturdy enough to withstand the climbing of two small boys. One of whom appears to be trying to pet the baby on the head. With his foot. Nice, Charlie.

My dad also included a very amusing letter for Cubby and Charlie explaining that this particular bench was built with wood A. scavenged from a torn-down dairy barn, so it smelled like cow poop. Cubby and Charlie loved this, of course, because they are small boys and the idea of a poop bench is hilarious to small boys.

Baca wins again.

Not My Finest Moment

When I took Cubby to the doctor for his before-school physical last week, he had to get some vaccinations. Unfortunately, one of them was the tetanus one, which goes right into the muscle and hurts like hell. And even more unfortunately, they were out of the chicken pox vaccine and we had to go back when they had received the new shipment of the vaccine.

Our appointment for that vaccine was this morning, so Cubby has had five days to brood about getting another shot. He brought it up periodically, with a dramatic little shudder and an, "Oh noooo! Not another shoooooooot!"

He does tend towards the dramatic, so I didn't pay too much attention to it. I should have, though, because when we got to the doctor and he was sitting on the table with the nurse at the ready with the needle, he flipped. right. out.

I'm talking screaming, crying, writhing, totally out of his head flipped out. I tried talking to him, reasoning with him, making him look at me, telling him about when I got chicken pox. The nurse tried talking to him, reasoning with him, telling him how sick chicken pox could make him. He was beyond listening to anyone, though.

Meanwhile, I had Jack down on the floor of the exam room while I held onto Cubby, with Charlie next to Jack, and I did not have the time to spend talking Cubby down off this particular unreasonable ledge. And we sure as hell were not going to be coming back another time with all three children in tow.

So I sat on a chair and pinned him in my lap while the nurse gave him the shot.

He was fine as soon as the needle went in. It was just the anticipation, I guess. I felt really terrible about how it all went down, and I thought maybe I should have prepared him better, or taken his anxiety more seriously, or something.

But then I thought that he had to have that shot to go to school and I had two other small children to deal with at the same time, so the pinning him down option still seems like the best way to go. Because in the end, I'm just that cold-hearted, I guess.

Let's hope the flu shot in October isn't so fraught with drama, however.

All Packed Up

Big day for Jack yesterday: It was his maiden voyage in the pack.

He was very excited. So was A.

Big day for me, too, because when the day comes that someone else can carry an infant for me, I feel as if a great literal weight has been lifted. And of course, I'm much more likely to want to do things involving walking, since I only have to carry my own weight. So yesterday we walked up the (dry, thanks to no rain) gully next to our house and found a very nice muddy swimming hole for the older children to splash around in and pretend to be dinosaurs fishing. At least, I think that's what all the roaring was about.

Charlie, incidentally, had no issues with Jack in the pack, unlike Cubby when Charlie started riding in the pack. Charlie was all, "Whatever. That pack is for babies. I have to walk so I can attack things with my spear." This is the difference between the first and second born.

It's the beginning of a new era. An era of less back pain for me, I hope.

Hey, Kids! Let's Play Hide and Heads!

Remember the ducklings? They are now fully grown ducks, and six of them are drakes. And that means that today was Doomsday for the drakes. Or Decapitation Day. Or Death Day.

Whatever alliterative name you want to give it, those drakes were going down. (Hey look! There's another!)

So A. went out and sharpened his hatchet at 7:30 this morning and unceremoniously whacked the heads off of five drakes on the pile of wood awaiting splitting outside the duck pen.

The children were, of course, present for this. Cubby was mad that we didn't let him do the decapitating, actually, but we'll give him another year before he gets that job.

He did get to help, though. After the deed was done, the MiL was standing there with both hands clutching the feet of all the dead drakes and she asked, "Who's going to pick up the heads?"

Well, I know who isn't going to be picking up any drake heads. Hi!

But there were two very willing head hunters. Allow me to present Cubby and Charlie, the totally unsqueamish butcher helpers. And hunt they did, because some of the heads had fallen kind of in between the chunks of wood and weren't all that easy to see. So I told Cubby and Charlie to start searching for five heads. At which point Cubby exclaimed with glee, "It's like hide and seek, but hide and heads!"

Right. Carry on, my small country bumpkins.

School Days

This morning the whole crew is taking Cubby in to the doctor so he can get a physical before school starts next month.

If the stars align with Jack's random-these-days naptime, we'll also get Cubby's school supplies while we're in the Small City.

I called the school district on Monday about signing him up for the bus.

I bought two pairs of jeans, two turtlenecks, and two sweaters for him on Tuesday*.

It seems I have a school-age child in my house.  That sound you hear? That's my mind being blown.

* From swap.com, a site I had never heard of before, but it has a huge selection of used clothes and an easy-to-use format. Since I can never get to the thrift store anymore (or rather, do not want to go to the thrift store with three kids under six) and I am sure as hell not going to pay $20 for a pair of jeans that he will wear for six months before growing out of or destroying, I was very pleased to find this site. (No, no affiliation or sponsorship from them. As always.)