Spooky!

This guy and me, we have an understanding: He can build an elaborate web outside my kitchen window and eat the bugs who congregate by the porch light and I will not try to kill him AS LONG AS he never, ever, ever tries to come inside or send any of his relatives inside. If he does, I will kill him dead.

Of course, I'd have to get over the panic attack, first. And maybe call DH to do the killing for me so I wouldn't have to get too close. (Have I ever blogged any other spider adventures? In Texas once I found a spider as big as my hand crawling on my bedroom wall. DH was out of state -- on a recruiting trip for his residency program, I think, or maybe a job interview -- but I called him anyway. Obviously I knew he couldn't kill it for me over the phone, but I needed moral support! 30 minutes of hyperventilating, tears, and false starts later, I finally squealed and smashed it with a shoe. Another time, in Idaho, Uno and I found a particularly dangerous looking spider on the couch in the basement; it wasn't sooooo big -- though it wasn't small, either! -- but it was black and kind of furry. *SHUDDER!* DH worked close enough to home that he often came home at lunch, so Uno and I sat there watching the spider -- didn't want him to get away! -- from a safe distance for 90 minutes until DH could come and kill it for us.)

Okay, yuck. I was feeling all smooth and brave about this guy, since we have this treaty and everything, but now I'm feeling creepy-crawly. My hair is constantly falling out and every time a loose hair brushes against my neck or arm, I think it's something else. Eeeeew. I shouldn't have started this. Ick. Eeeek.

So sorry. :-(

In other spooky news, I took the girls to the Halloween store this afternoon to get them out of the house so DH could nap a little before his night shift. I thought it would be a fun outing; we'd get ideas for costumes (I told them I wasn't buying today, so no begging!) and look at decorations and props. The first thing we saw as we entered the store was a lawn display, some kind of gory fountain with a guy holding his own chopped off head, blood oozing out of its mouth instead of water. It was gross. I hate that element of Halloween, honestly; it's too over-the-top for me. I don't mind all scary stuff -- witches, zombies, skeletons and skulls -- but I like them to be a little bit classier than that. It's like difference between Hitchcock and cheesy B slasher movies.

Anyway, 3yo Tres was nervous as soon as we entered the store. I tried to steer us to a more innocuous aisle -- steam punk accessories and Indiana Jones costumes -- but then the girls heard barking. I assured them it was probably from some motion-activated Halloween decoration, not real dogs. Because who lets real dogs in costume shops? Apparently this place does, because just after I had the girls all calmed down, we saw two dogs (leashed and with their owner) charging down the adjacent aisle. Pretty much all my girls are nervous about dogs, but Uno is terrified of them. She screamed and clung to me and wouldn't let go. She kept wailing, "Make them go away! Mommy, make the dogs go away!" I had to peel her off of me to remind her that she was safe, and that as long as they were leashed it was Uno's job to stay away from them -- that her phobia wasn't the dog owners' responsibility.

Uno calmed down after the dogs left the store, but Tres remained on high alert. The decorations made her nervous. The masks freaked her out. We tried to stick to the non-gory parts of the store, but that didn't help either. At one point Dos picked up a broom from the Harry Potter section and Tres screamed, "Don't touch that! I'm worried you'll fly away!" We tried to explain that it was all fake, but I guess she's not old enough yet to fully understand the difference between real and pretend. (Though I had thought she was savvy: When she was potty training, I told her not to get her Dora panties wet because then Dora would be sad. "Mom," she told me, rolling her eyes a bit, "Dora won't be sad because that's just a picture on clothes -- it's not a real person!" Huh. That line had worked on her sisters when they were her age! Whatever!) We wandered around some more, looked at the friendly toddler costumes (a ballerina! Strawberry Shortcake! a princess!), but of course around every corner lurked some dark and scary thing so we called it quits before too long.

"Promise me," Tres said, "promise me you'll never take me to the Halloween store again. I don't like it." Poor kid.

On the drive home, I listened to an interview on NPR with the Baltic brass band-influenced alternative musician Beirut. He sounds like an interesting (not spooky!) guy, and I liked the snippets of music they played to punctuate the interview. His first album was Gulag Orkestar; his latest is Rip Tide. I think I'll check him out. Maybe you should, too. :-)


~RCH~

Things I've made recently

I am not a brilliant artiste, but I like to break up the drudgery of my days (and/or make my responsibilities seem more exciting) by crafting things. And of course when I say crafting, I mean using Photoshop, mostly.

Here are some things I've been working on:



I think I mentioned I was making myself a planner. I designed it for September 2011 - September 2012, with space for everybody's activities plus DH's work schedule and my Primary responsibilities on a week per two-page spread, and had it printed at Blurb.com. I like it. The only thing I would do differently is to design more space for Wednesday & Thursday, which fall on either side of the spine; the book doesn't lie perfectly flat, so a bit of each of those days gets lost in the bleed. Oh well. Anyway, this is the cover I made.




Uno saw my planer and wanted me to make her a 12 month calendar. "You can make it with monsters for every month!" she said. "For January, make Yetis throwing snowballs at each other. For February, draw vampires in love. For March...." I protested that I can't actually draw, and that it's even trickier to draw on a computer with a mouse (I don't have a tablet) but she begged me to just try. Like this: "Pleeeeeease, Mom, just tryyyyyyy!" All stretched out and desperate. So I'm giving it a go. Thank goodness for Photoshop shapes and brushes! This is one of two abominable snow people; the other is a boy, and is exactly the same, flipped horizontally, sans eye lashes and painted nails. Now I just have to put them against some kind of snowy background and give them stuff to throw at each other. (Please note that any person or anthropomorphic being I draw will always be facing forward. I can't draw profiles or any action other than arms raised, LOL.)




Tres had a preschool lesson last week about time, both in macro (days make weeks make months make years) and micro (hours of each day, parts of a clock) increments. For the daily stuff, I made this clock. I cut out each of the pieces, "laminated" them all with clear packaging tape, and then let Tres practice putting the icons on each part of the day where they belong -- sun up at 7; breakfast at 8; get the girls from school at 3(ish); etc. We didn't really mess with the hands of the clock because it was all a bigger lesson than I thought it would be, but I've saved the parts for another day.




I'm in charge of Sharing Time in Primary this month, and also designing the bulletin board with our monthly theme (which, for September, is The Gospel Will Be Preached In All The World). I made this 22"x17" poster, printed on four letter-sized card stock pages which I then taped together, representing the Tree of Life as described in Lehi's dream (1 Nephi 8; 1 Nephi 11). I printed out extra fruit, wrote gospel principles on the back of them and "laminated" them again with packing tape, then stuck them on top of the poster which I pinned to the bulletin board. For the activity, we talked about missionary work: What would you tell people about the gospel? Each kid got to come up and pick a fruit off the tree, and then we talked about that principle (prayer; faith; Christ as Savior; etc).

(Oh, and as a last minute addition to the bulletin board I cut out blank paper doll people in various colors and had them hold on to a silver sparkly pipe cleaner representing the Iron Rod mentioned in the scriptures above. I thought it turned out nicely, but I don't have a picture of the finished product so you'll have to imagine those parts.)


I guess that's all for now. I need to start thinking about how to draw spooky/cute vampires before Tres and Cuatro get up from their naps....


~RCH~

Antiestablishmentarianism

1. Clearly, I'm not so good with goals: I began the month with the intention of writing a post every day in August, but with the understanding (explicitly stated) that I would miss some. And I have. But I don't really care. I've posted way more than I have all year long up to this point, so the net result is positive.

2. I first came to resent the whole idea of goal setting as a teenager in my church's Young Women "Personal Progress" program. I think it was designed to mimic the boys' scouting program (but without being actual Girl Scouts, because everybody knows Girl Scouts are a godless liberal training ground) (or something). We were supposed to set a specific number of goals in various categories (Knowledge, Good Works, Faith, etc) over the course of several years and if we accomplished them all by the time we left the program at 18, we got ... a necklace with a generic lady on it. Oooooh! My first year in YW, we were able to come up with our own goals as long as they fit the categories. Then the program changed, and we were only able to choose from a predetermined list. That irritated me.

First of all, I don't like being told what to do. (Even by myself, apparently.) It brings out my stubborn streak. But I certainly didn't like someone else trying to micromanage my personal accomplishments. Yes, I concur that Knowledge, Good Works, Faith, and all the other etcs are important virtues and ought to be encouraged and cultivated. But how I cultivate those in myself isn't really anybody else's business, and dangling a little piece of jewelry as incentive kind of cheapens the whole mess that much more. (Surprise! I never earned my necklace.)

I'm sure there are many, many girls who loved the program and benefited from it. But it had the opposite-than-intended effect on me, and left a lasting bad taste in my mouth.

3. There's a similar program for the Primary children ages 8-11, to prepare them to tackle Big League goal setting when they hit their teenage years. (And also, of course, to help them take responsibility for learning the gospel in more self-directed ways; I need to focus on that.) As their leader, I ought to be all gung-ho in helping them meet the requirements.... But I really struggle with my enthusiasm in this area. :-/

4. It's not all about church programs, though. I never liked the grade grab, either. I'm the sort of nerd who really enjoyed school (mostly, with a big exception for math classes). I loved the sense of accomplishment I got from doing challenging things well. I loved to feel those neurons flying, making connections between disparate points, my understanding of the world growing ever larger. That was enough for me -- if it came with an A, cool; if not, whatever. Education was the point, not arbitrary letters on a piece of paper. If I wanted an A, I used to tell people, I could draw a lovely one myself and stick it up on the fridge.

The "problem" (in other people's minds, not my own) came on the few occasions when I didn't think my educational time was being used well. For some reason we spent the first bit of my senior year AP English class working on remedial sentence construction:

"I have a dog." "My dog's name is Rusty." "My dog is black." === "I have a black dog named Rusty."

Really? That's college level course work? I should waste my time filling out worksheets like that? Clearly, no. So I didn't. And I failed that unit.

And I didn't care.

(I don't mean to disparage my AP English experience as a whole -- we quickly moved on to much more appropriate material. I LOVED that class. It's depressing, though, that the teacher thought any of us needed that unit in the first place, and even more depressing if she was right.)

Anyway, my rambly point: Education is absolutely a worthwhile goal. Micromanaging it with stupid busy work and offering cheap / arbitrary rewards, however, will never motivate me. (I think DH puts more stock in grades as a concept, so if any of our daughters turns out like me we'll have to figure out a way to respond as a united front.)

5. Maybe the real root of the issue is that I'm cranky and / or crazy stubborn. Or lazy; I'm willing to admit to some natural laziness that might disincline me to setting goals. I've just never been a striver -- I don't have the energy and I don't see the point! I don't think everybody needs to be a Type A Overachiever. I'm content to go with the flow, to improve myself as I can in my quirky and individualized way, without the pressure of answering to anybody.

As they say in the hood, I'ma Be Me. :-)


~RCH~

Zzzzz Zzzz

1. Sleep is delicious. I don't understand why my children don't want more of it!

2. Although we all slept in a bit this morning, so I shouldn't complain. For some reason my phone (which doubles as my alarm clock) ran out of batteries overnight (though I always make sure it's charged before I go to sleep, so I don't know what's up with that) and it didn't wake me up. I woke up instead to Uno right in my face exclaiming, "Mom, it's almost time for school!" We actually had 15 or 20 minutes to get everyone dressed, fed, and out the door -- which is pushing it for us -- but the adrenaline of waking up to that realization had everybody scurrying. No tardies. *Phew!*

3. Summer completely screwed up Cuatro's nap routine. I had hoped that when the big girls went back to school and the house quieted down, she'd return to her Cozy Nap After Breakfast, Cozy Nap After Lunch schedule.... But nope. She thinks she needs to be awake ALL THE TIME now (because she mostly was all summer, what with their noise and their wanting her to be their "puppy" all the dang time). *Sigh.* She still needs the rest, but she will cry herself into a tizzy -- she has never once cried herself to sleep; I don't think she's built that way -- any time I put her somewhere she might comfortably nap. If she thinks I'm trying to get her to sleep, she freaks out ... which is why she has napped for the past several days in the high chair; she doesn't see it coming. (Am I a terrible mom? It looks so uncomfortable, but I can't move her without waking her up.)

4. DH's uncle told the girls about a yoga program he likes to watch (watch being the operative word, I think; he has joint and other problems that I believe keep him from participating). "You all are young and stretchy," he told them. "You should do it!" And so, a couple days ago, they did: Uno dragged Dos out of bed at FIVE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING to do yoga with some lady on PBS. 5:00 AM, seriously? When I discovered it, I turned off the tv and marched them right back to bed for another hour; they need their sleep far more than they need to do the downward dog (or whatever). They get grouchy without enough sleep! Thank goodness for a DVR; I'll record it for them and they can get their exercise after school.

5. I had a dream a few nights ago that I, as my teenage self, had to pick up two of my sisters from school -- one from elementary school, the other from junior high. Except that I forgot until way later in the evening. When I realized my mistake, I zoomed over to the elementary school first. All the doors were locked, but I found my sister around the back of the building, playing in a sand box. She didn't seem to care that it took me so long.

Then the two of us zipped up to the junior high, only to find more locked doors and a sign that said, "Student Waiting Area Closes at 10pm! No Exceptions!" It was 10:04. Too late. Couldn't find the sister anywhere. So the years pass, the family grows -- minus one sister (because apparently we never went looking or called the police or anything; sorry!) -- and finally I have daughters of my own that I have to take to junior high. (Don't remember if they were my actual daughters or fictional dream ones.) Lo and behold, who do we find there? The missing sister! Apparently she had waited for as long as she could, then went home with someone else, dropped out of school, stowed away on a freight steamer to Africa where she taught organic farming techniques to rural villages....

"Yeah," she said, "I kind of hate you for abandoning me, but I've had an interesting life -- and now I'm helping other young kids whose families forget about them -- so it's all good. No hard feelings." Then we hugged it out.

Anyone care to interpret that one? LOL.


~RCH~

So... Is this an every other day thing now?

1. I need to go on a spending fast: Necessary purchases only, and no talking myself into revised definitions of "necessary." *Sigh.*

2. DH has been working a lot of night shifts lately, which has its good points and bad points:

The Good
He comes home and sleeps the morning away, then wakes up as the girls come home from school -- which means they actually get to see him for several hours! When he works days, they see him for a minute or two as they eat breakfast, and then maybe after I've tucked them into bed if they're still awake when he gets home (assuming he gets home right away; if he gets a bad case right at the end of his shift, he may have to stay at work another couple hours to finish it up). When he works nights, he can help the girls with their homework, play games with them, eat dinner with us all.... It's lovely and rare.

The Bad
I get no sympathy for my own exhaustion because he doesn't work nights frequently enough for his body to ever fully adjust, and therefore he always wins the I'm So Tired contest. Not that we're competing. But seriously, sometimes -- often -- I really do feel very exhausted; can't I just have that? No, I wasn't up all night saving stroke victims or stitching up the aftermath of drunken brawls, but ... *YAWN!* ... my energy doesn't ratchet up in direct inverse proportion to the kind of night he's had. It's its own thing. Right?

3. I know I'm not supposed to think this way, but lately I've felt down / guilty because I don't do anything. Yes, motherhood is noble and beautiful, and/or the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and/or whatever other clichés you want to throw at me. I get that I'm growing people -- four of them! -- and that's no small feat, but it's such a passive job. I make sure they're clothed and fed and occasionally bathed (LOL) and that they don't kill each other accidentally or on purpose, but it feels like most of my job happens on the sidelines. And nobody notices. And if they do, they're as likely to reject it outright as to appreciate it. (Tres, before having the slightest idea what we're having: "Eeew, Mom, I hate your dinner!" Every. Single. Night.)

I think if they could operate a stove or drive a car, the girls wouldn't need me at all. But here I'd still be, trying to interject every now and then with a "Hey, don't do that -- it's not nice to sit on babies!" while being ignored. What exactly is my net contribution? It doesn't feel like much.

4. Well, that was bleak. Chalk it up to the fatigue mentioned in item #2.

5. Let's see, a number 5.... Hmmm. So hey, East Coast Earthquake, huh? How about that. :-P


~RCH~

Weekend Update

1. Last night was rough. Cuatro is teething; Tres wouldn't sleep; I nodded off on the couch downstairs accidentally, and when I woke up at 3am to go to bed I found Uno and Dos in my bed (DH was at work) WATCHING CARTOONS. At 3:00 in the morning, SHEESH. I kicked them out. I've felt exhausted and mad at the world all day.

2. I took all four girls plus Uno's best friend O to the movies yesterday, mostly to get them out of the house so post-night-shift DH could sleep. We saw Spy Kids, but not in 3D. Except that it sort of was in 3D because, though our theater didn't offer the visual effects, we did get the smell-o-vision card which is supposed to be the 4th D in more "classy" theaters. So 2Ds, plus two, minus one, comes out to 3D -- just not in the way you'd really want. If you wanted any extra Ds at all. Or something.

3. When we took Cuatro with us to see the Smurfs, she behaved herself nicely: She quietly noshed on a bottle, then fell asleep in my lap until the movie ended. Not so for Spy Kids. She made all sorts of noises, so I left the other girls in the row and took her to the back of the theater where I could bounce / sway / butt pat her to sleep. HA! She refused. She screamed a bit (sometimes in a happy way, sometimes less cheerfully), made motorboat noises, vigorously wriggled in an attempt to let me put her on the popcorny ground (I didn't), and occasionally gnawed on the collar of my shirt. One time she grabbed my shirt to chew on it, but spit up inside it instead. Right down the front of me. It was awesome. (If by awesome you mean not at all awesome.)

4. Cuatro is FINALLY getting some top teeth. And I mean it this time! I've thought for the last three months that they would pop through "any day now" -- because really, statistically, they would have to at some point. And she can be inexplicably grouchy sometimes (though she's usually very pleasant). But I saw them today: Two little white lines on her upper gums. They're almost here. Come on, little teeth!

She got her only other teeth two at a time, and now she's getting two top teeth at once -- is that normal? I don't remember the others' very well (I am traumatized by all things dental) but I don't think they came in pairs. Maybe one pretty soon after another, but I don't remember my other girls getting them together like this. Hmmm.

5. Dos lost her other front tooth last week, BTW. On Thursday, I think; she had the school nurse pull it out for her that afternoon while she waited to be picked up. I like it when they fall out / get pulled out at school because then I don't have to deal with any of the icky aftermath. I think she looks like a vampire now with both of those teeth gone, LOL; it's a shame she didn't lose them closer to Halloween! She said I could stage a photo shoot with her tomorrow, so maybe I'll post pictures of her later. :-)


~RCH~

It's August, so naturally I'm thinking of Halloween

1. I've been looking at Halloween costumes for the girls. Mostly just for Tres, because I have no hope of influencing Uno and Dos in their decisions (darn opinionated children!) and Cuatro isn't old enough to get excited about Halloween yet. Tres, at nearly 4yo, is the perfect mix of impressionable and enthusiastic.

2. She doesn't remember her first Halloween (she went as a sack of Idaho potatoes) or the next one (the famous mouse made by my BFF), but she still talks about the puppy costume she wore at 2yo ("I had paws! And a dog nose!"). Her memory of last year has less to do with the costume she wore (a kitty / ballerina combo) and more to do with the fact that I wasn't there (I was still stuck in the hospital with 3-day-old Cuatro). Boo.

3. I want this year to be fabulous. It helps that we'll be visiting my hometown over that holiday, where people get way more into it than they do here. I think we have a significant minority of people in this area who abstain from Halloween for religious reasons, and then also cranky old people who don't want to bother answering their doors. DH is a Halloween grinch (he says he didn't like it even as a kid -- what a weird boy), but it probably ties with Christmas as my favorite holiday of the year. I love the chance to be someone else for a day, and I love seeing what or whom everyone else chose to be. Hooray for chocolate, but I'd love Halloween even without the candy.

4. I wish we had amazing costumes.... Somehow our names ended up on the marketing list for a chichi store called Chasing Fireflies. They sell insanely expensive children's clothing; I've never bought anything from them (DH would have a stroke) (for that matter, I would have a stroke) but I love looking through their catalogs. A couple weeks ago we got their Halloween issue, with costumes such as


The Queen of Hearts, $98

or


Marie Antoinette, "only" $88.

As elaborate as the costumes are, I'm sure they cost a lot to make and their expense is probably justified. But it's not necessary. Not when Walmart costumes can be had for $10! :-P

5. Walmart costumes make me feel terribly depressed, though. They're flimsy and cheap and pitiful. My mom made all our costumes when we were little, and they were beautiful; if I can't sew things for my girls (and believe me, I can't), I'd at least like them to have that kind of quality. Just not for $100/kid. I've been scouring etsy and other places for more reasonably priced costumes (maybe $30 or less?) but so far I'm still unsatisfied.

But I guess I still have time to mull it over.


~RCH~