A now insists on being diaper-free between the hours of 6 and 8pm. Which has resulted in more pee on the wool rug accidents than I can count, and one poop on the foam alphabet squares. Our discussion tonight went something like this:

Mommy: “A, if you aren’t going to wear your diaper then you need to be sitting on the potty.”

A: “Yeah, potty!”

A few minutes later A gets off the potty, lured by a favorite dance scene on Sesame Street.

Mommy: “A, potty or diaper.”

A: “No!”

Mommy: “Yes!”

A: “I hide.” And off she ran to duck behind the foot stool.

I love the fact that they still tell you what they are doing and where they are hiding at this age.

—————–

And another A conversation from earlier today.

A: “Mommy, I sleepy.”

Mommy: “OK, let’s go nap!”

A: “Oh, no, sleepy, not nappy.”

I am taking it as a good sign that she at least recognizes that she is tired, even if she still refuses to take action on that feeling…

Today, after months of requesting to sit on the potty and producing nothing, A actually got some pee to land in the bowl. She promptly clamored for attention, received claps and hugs from me, a congratulatory phone call from M and kisses and hugs from C. Overcome by all of the excitement she then peed on the rug and burst into tears.

One step forward, one step back. I’m not running out to buy underpants anytime soon.

Jennifer asked about the chickens…and there is a (short) story to tell.

The chickens actually came from my dad’s side of the family. His older sister and her husband have a varied collection of animals, including horses, cows, dogs, cats and chickens. My mother and my aunt used to do a yearly summer exchange of children, I would head to CT to learn to ride horses and my cousin J would head north to get his summer reading accomplished under the supervision of my mom the English teacher. One summer my uncle decided to offer up some baby chicks to my sister and a kitten to me. We carted our pets back to the farm, and my mother grudgingly took in both the chickens and the cat as she wasn’t driving them back to CT.

Turned out the chickens had salmonella, and my sister caught it and became very, very ill. The chickens were disposed of (I couldn’t tell you how) and my sister had a long, painful recovery. My mother swore she would never have anything to do with fowl of any sort ever again; I became permanently scarred and live in constant fear of salmonella poisoning. Just ask M about my neuroses around chicken products.

A new favorite game has been invented Chez J-E that I feel obligated to share with my fellow parents. Paper Towel Bowling. Set up unopened rolls of paper towels in a bowling pin like fashion, hand the kids some soccer balls (kid sized) and let them go to town. An otherwise horrific afternoon has been transformed into “the coolest day EVER mommy.” I’ve lost the last two frames to A who seems to have a knack for bowling.

Who knew?

It’s back to reality, middle of the night wake ups and all. I had a wonderful time at my sister’s, even though my internal alarm clock now seems to be permanently set at a ridiculously early hour and I didn’t get as much sleep as I had hoped. But I still got much more sleep than I would have gotten at home, so I really can’t complain.

Spending time with Baby C without having to run around after my own kids was a joy. She is such an easygoing child, and I’m afraid I spent the whole weekend telling my sister “This is just amazing! You mean she plays independently, goes to sleep when you put her in her crib AND sleeps through the night without a peep? I just can’t believe that such things are possible!” I clearly need to take parenting lessons from my sister and her husband. And hopefully when Baby C comes to visit next month she won’t pick up my kids bad habits….

I was also inspired to buy myself new socks. And underwear! In bright colors! It feels rather decedent. C and A also received some new clothes for next winter, as surprise surprise, wool sweaters are not a very hot commodity in Texas so I was able to pick up several for virtually free. Auntie M and her husband also got a babysitter one night and the three of us went out to a delicious dinner.

M seems to have survived the weekend intact, although I don’t think we are going to see him for the next week or two, as he didn’t even get a chance to start the work he was planning on doing. It’s amazing how much time it takes to chase two kids around. And M didn’t get his convertible; A was up at 2 and 4 am last night.

While I got some lovely hugs from C upon my return, A didn’t even seem to notice that I had been gone. And while I am glad to be home and back into my normal life and it was great to see the kids again, I have to admit that I did not miss them nearly as much as I thought I would while I was gone. I could have stayed away a bit longer without a problem.

Anyway, that’s the boring, not so detailed, update as everyone is clamoring for “special” breakfast and requesting mommy participation this morning instead of engaging in independent play.

Chichimama is back! The kids are still alive. I’d say, on balance, we even had a good time. (Did I mention that Chichimama is back!).

Actually, it wasn’t bad and today went well. Church in the AM, kids were well behaved most of the day afterwards and they (thankfully) took long naps. A half hour after they woke up, it was time to head to the airport.

Since I believe that every experience should teach you something, here’s what I learned:

• I hate markers
• I hate the Wiggles song and dance mat (or whatever it is). Whoever thought the Wiggles could induce so many arguments between kids?
• If I want to get C to nap, allow him to throw two or three really good tantrums. (This is still a theory, but I’m going to experiment. I mean, have you ever really paid attention to a tantrum? The calorie burn on a good one must be extraordinary.)
• It is VERY tempting to let the TV raise the kids.
• Squeaky floors might add character to a really old house, but they’re a bitch when trying to sneak out of your daughter’s room.

But my biggest takeaway (and I’m going to try to say this without sounding like some squishy, Clinton-esq, easy-to-cry, new-age ’90s man) is that I can appreciate how difficult it is to raise the kids and run a household day in and day out. Chichimama, you do a great job and I thank you!

And thanks to everyone’s words of encouragement!

For Kristy…

It’s hard to pick what to write about growing up on a farm, as it all seems so common and boring to me. Twenty baby lambs being born in a two-week period? What a pain, it meant that I didn’t get much sleep and froze my toes off while standing around waiting for the mothers to get their acts together and start nursing their babies. Shearing time in the spring? An entire weekend devoted to hauling greasy fleeces around the barn and tying them up in old sheets. But I guess I’ll start with a general overview, and now that I’ve started thinking about my childhood there will probably be more in depth pieces to come.

To clarify, while ours was a working farm, and sometimes even a profit-making farm, it never made enough money to support two children who went to private schools. To keep us in clothes, food and tuition money, my mother also wore the hats of an English teacher and tutor for most of my childhood. My parents divorced not long after the purchase of the farm, so the responsibility for its upkeep and survival fell squarely on my mom’s shoulders.

We lived on a farm because that is what my mother had known growing up. Although she had technically resided in Big Midwestern City with Two Names, she spent the majority of her time on the rural farms of her aunts and uncles as both her parents had demanding careers. It was on those farms that her childhood memories were made, where she learned to knit and cook and bake. When she grew up she knew she wanted a farm as that was where she was happiest. But she also knew that she didn’t want dairy farms like her uncles, she had found them too confining. Cows had to be milked at the same time every day, leaving one with little flexibility to sleep in, work late, or take a vacation.

Aunt H had taught my mother to knit at a young age and she always loved the peace and calm it brought her. As the wool needed to knit came from sheep, and sheep seemed to be a lower maintenance animal than cows, a sheep farm seemed like a good idea. So when I was about seven or eight we bought our first sheep. There was Flower, and Susie, and I think Ribbon, although she might have come a bit later. Their offspring, most of whom were destined for places other than our pastures, were called Freezer, Freezer 2, Freezer 3, and so on until we hit Freezer 22, at which point my sister announced that she got the gist and I named the next one Wilber (apologies to my vegetarian readers).

Our flock quickly grew from three sheep to its high of forty or more during lambing season. While we started out with Corriedales, my mother soon branched out into the sheep equivalent of mutts for the variety of fleece quality and colors. When my sister was old enough to own her own sheep she selected the Horned Dorset, which turned out to be a stubborn and mean breed, although my sister refused to hear anything derogatory said about her beloved Petunia. We also had an assortment of other animals, some chickens, some guinea hens, and a peacock that paraded between our farm and the one down the street.

My first sheep was Tokey, named after Tokyo (I told you I couldn’t spell) for reasons that now escape me. I had probably just finished a book about Japan. Tokey was a sheep with personality. She was the first one at the gate when you arrived with food, and would do practically anything for a sip of root beer soda. She had outrageously large floppy ears that looked more like they belonged on a goat than a sheep. She also had a few unfortunate spots on her ears and nose that made her not quite the champion sheep I had dreamed she would be. But she was mine and I spoiled her about as rotten as you could spoil a sheep. And despite her unfortunate spots, her genes served as the basis for many of the lines still in residence at the farm today.

My sister and I were 4-H’ers, and my mother was one of the leaders of our 4-H club. We spent the winters attending 4-H meetings and learning everything there was to know about the care and feeding of sheep. The summers were spent grooming sheep and showing them at the local fairs. The 4-H club and the fair circuit were my social life through elementary school and junior high school. I never quite fit in at school, and while I didn’t quite fit in at 4-H either, as how many 4-H’ers attend private schools, the kids there were a bit more tolerant of differences.

I was a 4-H’er until high school when the homework and other commitments of prep school made it impossible to continue. By that point, being a 4-H’er in the land of “do you summer in the south of France or Italy” was beyond embarrassing to a self-conscious teenager. I spent the next several years downplaying where I lived and what my mother did in her spare time, except on college applications where unique is good. It also served as a useful conversation starter with grownups I didn’t know, successfully distracting them from asking personal questions about me.

Once in college, while I still didn’t offer up my background on a regular basis, I found that it didn’t make the social pariah that it had in high school. And as I wasn’t immersed in the day-to-day activities of the farm on a regular basis, I stopped resenting it as much and began realizing all of the ways it had made my childhood and adolescence unique. I lived a life that is becoming extinct, and developed an understanding of and appreciation for the power of nature that few people are privileged enough to experience.

Although I still have no interest in farming in any sense of the word, I now grasp why my mother had been so drawn to it. While the community surrounding us has became more and more suburban, atop the New England hill nothing at the farm has ever really changed. Surrounded by the woods and ponds, sheep still graze peacefully in the fields and wander about the property in search of the freshest clover. The house, despite several additions and renovations, still seems exactly the way that it did almost thirty years ago. The barns still serve as the centerpiece of the property, presiding over the driveway and front pastures with a quiet grace. And every time I make the final turn in the driveway and see the property spread out around me, I know that a part of me has come home.

Baby lambs
Main Barn in the Snow

Well, after my Starbucks visit yesterday continued to go well. In fact, the day went very well and was really uneventful.

Then…A woke up at 3AM this morning. And 4 AM. And 5:30. Finally, at 6:45 she decided in earnest to start her day (and mine). 6:45 is actually not that bad – it’s just that when it comes after getting up 3 times prior it becomes an issue.

The morning went fine, we went to swimming (A had a blast and C enjoyed babysitting). But from then on it’s been touch and go. LOTS of bickering (including from me!). But I guess I knew I lost this round when about an hour before quiet time, just after a little spat between him and A, which resulted in my yelling at them, he said, “This is just not going well, is it?” That broke the tension enough to carry us through till quiet time and now A seems to be soundly napping. C, of course, isn’t.

Oh well. Chichimama comes back tomorrow and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s just hope it’s not an oncoming train!

I must be lucky. A basically slept through the night (she got up at 9 pm, but I was able to get her back down easily enough). Then she woke up at 6, I brought her into bed and she slept till 7:15. C got up at 7:45. An hour later, we were breakfasted (is that even a word?) and out the door for school. I am now sitting in a Starbucks, drinking a nice cup o’ joe and cruising the ‘net.

So far so good! Unless they are lulling me into complacency and this is merely the calm before the storm…