He Has His Father's Eyes...

...and his mother's flawless logic.

Today I allowed all the children to chose a piece of candy to eat. Max chose a Heath bar. As he opened it, he said: "I'm going to make a healthy choice and do something that's good for me. I've chosen a Heath bar because if you add an L, you get Health!"

From Rainbow to Grayscale

Recently I caved in to cute puppy-dog eyes, hands folded under cute little chins, and cute little begging voices, and allowed Max and Faustina to have real birthday parties this year. In the past, I have allowed the kids to choose dinner (either at home or at a restaurant) but rarely will I actually throw a party. In this household, we have birthdays in January, February, March, April, May, June, August, and December...thinking of having that many parties makes me want to take a nap.

However, Faustina and Max both agreed to invite a small number of guests (Max invited only two, which was very easy for me!), and I figured it wouldn't be too hard on me because they are old enough to run off and play on their own without having every moment planned and observed by me. (TRANSLATION: I was able to curl up on the couch and crochet while the boys made The Super-Car Of The Future out of LEGO blocks in the room next to me).

Faustina chose a spa party, which was overwhelming to me. I chatted with a friend who did a spa party in the recent past and she gave me some great ideas. Armed with this new confidence in my ability to throw such a party, I sat down to write a shopping list when Faustina popped up out of nowhere and said she'd changed her mind and she wanted a rainbow party instead. Max, who was the Phantom of the Opera for Halloween last year, chose a Phantom of the Opera party. It came as a surprise to Max that it is not exactly easy to find Phantom of the Opera themed goody bags, games, and party favors. I decided to use a black and white theme instead and allowed him to decorate his own cake with a piped Phantom mask.

Faustina got a swirled rainbow cake that I made using this online tutorial and the recipe for White Cake from The Joy of Cooking. Max got a black and white cake that I made using this technique (which I am eager to try with lots of different colors of batter!).

Faustina had a bright orange tablecloth, purple forks, yellow plates, green cups, rainbow-colored ice cubes (made by freezing Kool-Aid), and little custard dishes full of Skittles (I even separated them by color, reminiscent of the way my friend Shelly and I used to obsessively organize our M&Ms before eating them). Max got a white tablecloth, black plates, black and white napkins, black forks, chocolate milk, and custard dishes full of yogurt-covered raisins and chocolate-covered peanuts.

Faustina and her guests made pipe cleaner creations and butterflies out of coffee filters. Max and his guests played a life-sized board game, which I created by taping 4x6 cards to the floor and making a 10" die out of a cardboard box.

Good times were had by all, and I - surprisingly - am not dreading the next birthday party. Maybe that's because the next birthday in the family is Veronica's, and she's too little to have friends or choose her own fancy dinner, but it's probably because Max and Faustina are so sweet (and so are their friends).

Conversations With Cuteness

GUS: Hey, where's Max going?
ME: He's going to walk down to the mailbox.
GUS: Oh. Whew. I thought maybe he was going somewhere else, like the Jurassic or Triassic Era.

The Problem With Comfort Food

Sometimes, when the sky is gray and the air feels bitter and cold, your immune system decides to pack its bags and head to Florida, leaving you with a runny nose, a headache, and, if you're really lucky, a stomach bug that starts in one kid and eagerly makes its way through the rest of the family as the week drags on.

Yes, now that you mention it, I am speaking from experience.

On weeks like this, I am usually able to keep my spirits fairly high, because I am Super-Mom. I don't mean I keep a Super Clean House or have a Super Organized Homeschool: I actually have the superpower that allows me to tenderly care for six vomiting children but never catch the stomach bug myself. I'd knock on wood, but I think it's bad luck to be superstitious.

Despite having this super ability and being able to stay optimistic while tending to various Disgusting Messes, by the end of the week, I'm ready for some serious comfort food.

The problem? Comfort food usually takes a really long time to make. Maybe I am comforted by the wrong types of food. I like hot baked potato soup that has simmered on the stove for an hour or so to achieve perfect thickness. I like a slow-roasted slab of beef with homemade gravy and steamed vegetables. I like roasted chicken that has been marinated, seasoned to perfection, and cooked in the oven for the majority of the afternoon. Let me ask you this: Does ANYONE EVER feel like spending all day cooking after doing 15 loads of bedding laundry every day because Disgusting Messes have frequented every child's bed?!

I decided to do the "smart" thing: While I was at Target forgetting to buy diapers (but thankfully remembering to buy detergent), I decided to grab some TV dinners. I got salisbury steak with a side of macaroni and cheese. My mom makes awesome salisbury steak with ground beef, French Onion soup, and lots of other deliciousness. The beef is separated into 4oz-ish ovals and served with a generous helping of gravy. My mom's macaroni and cheese is made with layers of mostaccioli, white sauce, and freshly grated Parmesan and fontina cheeses, and is nothing at all like the stuff you get out of a Kraft box.

...the problem? The salisbury steak only vaguely resembled some sort of meat product and there was macaroni EVERYWHERE, especially in the watery stuff that I think was supposed to pass as gravy. I am NOT comforted, especially because this experience made me realize that I'm a Great Big Snob. Guess I'll go marinate that chicken after all.

Conversations with Cuteness

Is this Veronica's first Conversations post? What a big girl.

VERONICA, BRINGING ME HER EMPTY CUP: I want some more please Mommy.
ME: Oh, you do? You should be going down for a nap now that you've had your milk.
Just then, Clare started to cry from her crib.
ME: Uh-oh, is that Clare?
VERONICA: No, mommy, it's a sippy cup, and I want more milk in it.

Conversations With Cuteness

Max saw me opening my bottle of fish oil capsules and he gasped.

"Are you going to eat those pills?"

"Yes, I am," I replied, bracing myself for the unpleasant smell of the large capsule.

"I'll go get the bucket," he said, rushing from the room to retrieve the yellow bucket that he's been keeping by his bed in case the stomach bug strikes again.

"That's not necessary," I said, holding back a smile so I didn't appear to mock his helpful gesture. "I'm not going to throw up."

"I thought you said you throw up every time you eat those."

"No, you're thinking of liquid chlorophyll. I used to have to drink it when I was pregnant with Gus. It made me really sick because it tasted so bad."

"But the fish oil is gross, too...?"

"Yes. Sometimes I want to gag a little bit, but I take them anyway because they're really good for me."

I swallowed both pills as Max stood by, horrified, both hands covering his mouth. When all was said and done, he slowly put his hands down and looked at me in awe.

"Did you even chew it? Did you just swallow it whole?"

"Yes, I swallowed both of them whole."

Max shook his head slowly and muttered, "I just don't understand why they have to make them so gigantic."

I'm with you, buddy, I'm with you.

One Hundred Fifty Nine

159. Any guesses as to what that number represents?

It's not the amount of my monthly bill to the hospital that has seen us for so many ER visits over the past year (although it's pretty close).

It's not the number of minutes it takes me to get through one homeschooling day (it takes me much less time than that).

It's not the number of yarn skeins that are neatly wound and stashed away in my yarn closet (I actually have way fewer neatly wound yarn - but I have a whole lot more tangled blobs of yarn that have been hastily rifled through time and time again).

Give up? 159 is the number of socks I paired today while my husband and children watched a movie downstairs.

Every time I do laundry, I find at least one mateless sock. It even happens when I do a load of linens. Sneaky little critters, socks. When I find a single sock, I don't go crazy trying to find the match. I simply drop it into a laundry basket with dozens of other singles, and about once a month I dump the entire basket onto my bed and make as many matches as I can. I have never counted the results before, but I did today.



159. That means I folded together 318 socks with their mates. That also means that I have more than "dozens of singles" as I mentioned before. (I have never been good at guessing distances, amounts, or money, which makes me terrible at those "guess how many jelly beans are in this jar" games.)

So, you may be thinking (in your most polite tone, of course), you don't write anything for almost half a year and when you finally return, you write two printed pages about laundry. Huh.

Hey, this is a family blog. I'm a mom of six. I do a lot of laundry. I show my love for my children by meticulously sorting through their socks and finding the mates. Fact: women are notorious for having twenty-eight pairs of shoes that are identical in every way except their slightly differing colors, but men are now notorious - at least to me - for having the most ridiculous socks EVER. I had at least a dozen men's socks, all black, to be matched. In fact, based on what I said above about being bad at guess-timating, maybe it was more like 6,430 socks. They were all black, all the same length, but all ever so slightly different. One had a gold stripe on the toe and no logo. One had a red stripe and a red logo. Then there was a red stripe with a gray logo. This is madness!

All this being said, I do hope to write in this blog more regularly. My babies are growing up quickly and I need to have a place to store my memories of them. I can't store memories in my head anymore, it's full of socks.