When I was pregnant with Rob, I bought a travel system (infant car seat plus a stroller the seat could snap into) on a good clearance. In fact, did I ever tell you I bought it one afternoon, and the next morning I went into labor? I cut that a little close, I suppose. I didn’t want to get everything done Too Early in pregnancy and then be at loose ends later on. And also there were so many seat/stroller options and I couldn’t figure out which was best. Anyway this has nothing to do with the story.

The stroller that came with the travel system was nice while the car seat would snap into it, but once Rob was out of the car seat the stroller was so big and heavy and bulky, I hated lugging it around and hated using it. But umbrollers were too flimsy and often didn’t have baskets underneath. I wanted something in between, and, by happy accident, I found a floor model stroller on clearance that was exactly what I wanted: lightweight and non-bulky, but sturdy and with a nice roomy basket underneath.

I used that stroller for Rob, and then for William, and then for one twin at a time (like when I was out with only one of them, or when I could let one of them walk, or when my mom brought a stroller, or anyway this is kind of a boring parenthetical), and then for Henry. When Henry had just turned three, that stroller finally broke (a fatal structural snap), and goodness it had certainly earned it! I felt silly buying a new stroller when Henry was so close to not needing one, especially when this is the VERY SAME THING that happened with our crib: it made it through five children, and when Henry was about a year and a half old it broke. It seems like equipment is made to last through four children. (Although, our boy winter coats have lasted through three boys, which makes me think this might be an issue with HENRY and not with equipment/clothing.)

I dithered and fretted and finally bought another lightweight, non-bulky, sturdy stroller with a basket underneath, figuring that the timing might be silly but I DID still need/want a stroller, and someone on Freecycle would get lucky when we were done with it.

Then last weekend, Paul backed over it with the minivan.

So now I have used one stroller with 4-1/2 children, and the last 1/2 child has used TWO BRAND-NEW STROLLERS.

The third room is done! This is the room that used to be pale pink when it was Elizabeth’s. Now it will be William and Henry’s. William wanted the room to be blue and green; Henry wanted it to be blue and orange. So Paul painted almost the whole room blue (Behr Jamaican Sea, 510B-5), except in the part where the bunk beds would go, where he painted the upper-bunk area green (Behr Tart Apple 420B-4) and the lower-bunk area orange (Behr Orange Spice 250B-5):

Today we moved the bureaus around (we’re doing some switching around of those, too), and then moved the two that will be William’s and Henry’s down to their room. Tomorrow the bunks will move down and we’ll see how it looks with the colors.

So now it’s time to choose a paint color for OUR new room. Here’s a photo of our room I was luckily able to find in another post, since our room is currently halfway dispersed between the computer room and the living room:

I like that quilt. I’d like the wall color to go well with it. But my only color-choosing skillz lie in looking at something and MATCHING a color to it. And yet—I don’t want our wall color to match any of the colors from the quilt. Opinions? Maybe just do cream walls this time?

I was making dinner last night and fretting about how, when the mother of one of William’s friends came to pick her (the friend) up, she (the mother) and I stood in our (Paul’s and mine) INCREDIBLY CLUTTERED AND MESSY dining room (messiness marker for reference: extras of the photos we sent out in our Christmas cards, scattered across the floor under the table) and she DEFINITELY saw the room, because WE WERE IN IT. And there was no way she’d think it was some FLUKE, because she has been here probably a dozen times before, and if anything it has looked WORSE on previous occasions, because at least THIS time I picked up the used washcloths and some of the winter outerwear and scraps of paper and barrettes and paperclips and cat kibbles—at least the ones right inside the door—and I also straightened the runner carpet (carpet runner?) which had been akimbo as usual.

So anyway, I was fretting, and I was also kind of praising myself for standing there talking to her like nothing was messy instead of dissolving into fretfulness and drawing her attention via detailed apology to each thing that was messy, and I was reassuring myself by thinking how, really, when someone else’s house is messy, I admire them if they brazen it out instead of acting freaked about it as if I were the sort of person who would like them less for it and maybe snicker about it to other people, rather than the sort of person who thinks, “WHEW, her house is messy, maybe we can be friends!” And so I was glad that the nonchalance approach was what I’D done in that situation, in case it would impress that other child’s mother the way it impresses me.

So THEN I was thinking how, on the other hand, I also admire it when I go to someone’s house and it’s really tidy and clean. I’m always impressed, even though I also make a mental note to not let that person see MY house until they love me so much it’s too late for them to be shocked, and then they have to instead justify their love of me by redefining what they consider a mark of good character and upbringing.

And they don’t have to personally clean it themselves, either: if they hire someone else to clean it for them, I admire their courage (because that involves phone calls AND having someone else in their house AND having someone get all personal with their possessions), and I also admire the sensible idea that we let the professionals do what they do best while we spend our time doing what WE do best—whatever that is.

So THEN I thought, “I seem to be saying I admire EVERYONE’S housecleaning situation, no matter WHAT. Is that possible?” and I thought, “Yes. That seems to be the situation here.”

Okay, now I have a bunch of links and stuff to show you, in case you are someone who laments the lack of action in the blogging community on weekends.

First, here’s another of those videos Paul finds and blows our household’s collective mind with. You will have it stuck in your head AND YOU WILL SAY THANK YOU:

[oh dear, I don’t know what this used to be; apparently it did not transfer during the blog move]

Paul says the guy who sings that song is the same guy who sang that “Peaches” song from a few years ago (“millions of peaches, peaches for free”), and you are very welcome for getting THAT stuck in your head TOO.

Next, The Bloggess on dealing with bullies. It’s her usual combination of “making you laugh until you might actually barf” + “actual issue that needs to be addressed” + “something kind of touching that makes you feel all emotional especially because you’re all primed for it by the laughing/barfing” + “actual advice for dealing amusingly with troll commenters, which starts the laugh-barf cycle all over again.”

Next, Mir on making sure your contract is right before you write for money, lest you find yourself looking at your own book on the bestseller list, but with all the profits going to someone else.

Over at Milk and Cookies, perhaps you would like to help me choose a travel mug?

I am mystified by the latest notice that came home from school with William. Today is Pajama Day, and I understand the first part of the instructions: “Remember pajamas need to be school-appropriate.” I am a LITTLE cranky that they are reminding me of something so obvious, but I am SURE (as in, “absolutely 100% sure, no need to convince me of it as if I were denying it, though feel free to give amusing examples”) that ALL school personnel have LONG SINCE stopped saying ANY sentence that begins “Surely any reasonable parent…,” and that the sentence about appropriateness is indeed warranted. Though it does seem as if a parent who would send a child to school in, say, just boxer shorts and socks, or in a satin cami and satin shorts with “SEXY” on the buns, would need more than a general sentence about appropriateness to point out to them that their choices were the ones being referred to as inappropriate.

Anyway, the next sentence is the one that mystifies me: it is italicized, and it reads “They may not be the ones you wear to bed.” Well, clearly! I mean, we all have at least ONE pair of pajamas we never wear to bed!

I don’t think the school is actually telling me that the children must wear pajamas to school that are not pajamas they’ve ever slept in. I think it’s a badly-phrased sentence, and that the school is trying to say one or two of the following things:

1. “It is okay to wear pajama-like clothing that is not in fact pajamas—such as sweat pants or yoga pants and a t-shirt.” They mean “might” instead of “may”—though even changing that word wouldn’t make the sentence clear enough.

2. “They should not be the pajamas you slept in the night before.” They might be trying to avoid children rolling out of bed and coming to school as-is.

Anyway, William is right now trying to decide if he’s going to wear sweatpants and a t-shirt, or if his popularity is stable enough to risk the feetie pajamas.

Except for a brief experiment with some earrings that turned a weird color in her ears, Elizabeth’s been wearing only her pink heart-shaped ear-piercing earrings ever since she got her ears pierced. I highly recommend this, by the way, until the child is old enough to manage her own earrings: just leave them in all the time, and use the piercing ones because they’re surgical steel and the backings lock on so she can’t lose them.

But somehow she lost one. Isn’t it lucky I have so much trouble getting rid of things that are expensive, sentimental, or theoretically useful? Because I opened my jewelry box, took out the gold star-shaped earrings I had MY ears pierced with when _I_ was 5, and put them in her ears.

I DO want email updates from online stores. I DO. So unsubscribing is not the option that would be helpful here. But I can hardly STAND this:

Monday: “Three day sale starts today!!”
Tuesday: “Three day sale still going on!!”
Wednesday: “Ending today! Don’t forget about our three day sale!!”
later Wednesday: “Last chance for our three day sale!!”
still later Wednesday: “ONLY HOURS LEFT!! HURRY!!”
Thursday: “By popular request: sale extended an extra day!!”
later Thursday: “Sale is almost over! Don’t miss out!”
Friday: “Long weekend sale starts today!!”

Obviously I should have taken a Before picture instead of just throwing out the old carpet and putting in the new one, but I couldn’t wait even TWO MORE SECONDS. So what I’ve got is this photo of a post-bath kitten, in which you can see enough of the old carpet to get an idea of what it was like: it was an 8×10 bound piece of the kind of carpet found in classrooms and offices, in an assortment of blues. The main impression was of medium-dark blue, darker than it looks with the camera’s flash but not much.

We’ve had it for years and years, and it just looked TERRIBLE, and there were crumbs so embedded in it that the vacuum cleaner couldn’t get them up, and bits of play-doh mashed in, and various stains, and ACK, anyway, when I found a 7×10 carpet 75% off at Target today, I had that sucker out to the car within 5 minutes, even though it involved lugging a 7-foot carpet roll down the elevator and through the store and checkout and then folding down half the backseat so that the carpet could stretch from the trunk all the way to between the two front seats.

Then at home I had to move three large chairs, six stools, and a coffee table. THEN I had to roll up the old carpet, including somehow getting it out from beneath a heavy pine cabinet with a 115-pound fish tank on top of it. THEN William and I had to sweep up years worth of dust and crumbs and bits of carpet backing that were under the carpet, THEN we vacuumed, THEN we wiped the floor with wet cloths, THEN we lugged the new carpet into the house and put all the furniture back, including lifting the edge of the fish-tank-topped table again. That’s when I thought, “…Wait. Doesn’t this kind of carpet need some kind of non-slip mat under it?” Well. Let’s just put that out of our minds for now, shall we?

The recliners are pulled forward on it more than they will be: with our house rearranging, we’ve stowed bureaus in the living room behind the recliners. The carpet is more….what’s it called, Early American? than is our usual style, but I wouldn’t call our style Office/Industrial either so this is an improvement. And I think the dark turquoise leather chair keeps it from looking as if we MEAN it to be Early American. And the yellows and reds are the EXACT yellows and reds of our recliners and couch. And don’t we get pretty light in the living room in the afternoon? And could I not have troubled myself to pick that handkerchief off the recliner before taking this photo?

I also found this striped throw at 75% off—$2.49 down from $9.99. I think clearance Valentine’s stuff is excellent for a girly little girl’s room: lots of pink and hearts. In a previous year I bought Elizabeth a large heart-shaped pillow.

Both Valentine’s Day and Easter tend to have good clearance year-round paper plates. I can’t really use a Christmas tree plate in February, but I can give someone a heart-plate of brownies in May.

Pretty and impractical 75%-off dish towels! They’ll look grubby and stained within minutes! Nevertheless I love them!

Elizabeth’s class is doing Weather Week, and on one of the days they’re supposed to wear yellow clothes and sunglasses. And what did I find at Target? Yellow sunglasses, 75% off.

I feel like we have a whole bunch of unfinished conversations going!

I’ve done two things for my resolution to act on generous impulses. Actually, it’s been three, but I’ve already forgotten one. One of the ones I remember is that I impulsively ordered a box of chocolates for someone else while placing my own order. The other was weirder: I ordered a shirt for a classmate of Elizabeth’s. The story on that is that it was on a really good clearance and I was ordering it in pink for Elizabeth because it’s one of those fake-vintage-ad shirts and the name in the ad happens to be her aunt’s name (my brother’s wife, not Paul’s sister). The shirt also came in purple, and the name of Elizabeth’s aunt is the same as the name of Elizabeth’s friend and classmate who LOVES purple and often comes dressed fully in purple. Boy, that’s a long story. Anyway, it felt like a weird thing to order the shirt for someone else’s child, but I referenced the resolution and DID IT. Then I held onto the shirt for two weeks, fretting about how to phrase the note I’d send with it to the parents I haven’t met. Finally I did it, and got a very nice note back from the child’s mother, and so that was a pleasing thing and I’m glad I did it.

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I DID register Henry for preschool, and I feel happy about the decision. We recently finished paying off our 11-year-old minivan (sigh), and the amount of that payment will significantly assist us in making the preschool payment.

Elizabeth thinks it’s HIGH TIME Henry was CIVILIZED

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There are STILL no more baby fish, so either I’m wrong about the pregnant females or else something has gone wrong with those pregnancies. I’d place my bet on the former, except that they look JUST LIKE the photos I saw online of pregnant platys, and not all the females in the tank look that way: the two I think are pregnant are about twice the thickness in the tum area, plus they have dark marks at the back of the tum, which are supposed to be indicators of pregnancy (the more you know! *shimmer sound*). So what I’m hoping for is that everything is FINE but that I’m wrong about how soon the babies are supposed to be born.

I can’t believe I’m pacing the waiting room over BABY FISH.

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I found all the comments on whether to let William quit the clarinet SO HELPFUL. I waited until he was trapped with me in the car, and then I basically told him all the options you guys mentioned, from “quit altogether” to “stick it out,” with all the options in between, and all the pros and cons of each option (he loved this, of course) (I activated the child-safe locks on the doors first). I told him I want him to get enough exposure to music to know if he likes it or not. He said it’s the clarinet he hates, not music in general, and that he wants to take keyboard next year (it’s offered starting in fifth grade, AFTER a year of other music lessons), and that he’s not particular interested in any of the other instruments he’d be able to switch to this year.

So we decided our goal was to get him through this year so that he can do keyboard next year. In order to accomplish that, and in order to make me feel all right about him keeping commitments (I was frank with him that that was an issue), he will spend half an hour a day (where “a day” is understood by both of us to mean “four or five times a week, not seven”) Doing Music. His options are: (1) Sit in front of his music book with his hands on the clarinet, but I won’t nag him to produce sounds; (2) Actually practice the clarinet; (3) Play our keyboard; (4) Play the recorder; (5) Some other thing, if either of us thinks of something—such as listening to classical albums, or looking on YouTube at videos of people playing instruments.

This has been a moderate success. On one hand, we no longer have to fight about music practice, and he complies right away when I tell him it’s time to do it instead of dissolving into despair. On the other hand, he never ever never ever goes and does it without me telling him to, and I am too scattered to remember it more than, say, twice a week. So a recent modification was that I warned him that it was to his advantage to remember to do it himself: if he remembers, say, 2-4 times a week, I’ll feel like he’s taking care of it and likely won’t notice he isn’t doing it as often as agreed; if he never remembers, I’ll feel like I need to make a chart that ENSURES he does it four or more times per week.

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Elizabeth’s finger is doing well. We probably should have put the big piece of gauze + several bandaids thing on it to begin with, because I think that’s what effectively stopped the bleeding. The next day I just left the bandage on, but it fell off on the bus ride home so I got a look at the cut and it looked fine: nice and clean and healing. I put on a fresh bandaid with no gauze pad.

When my dad read the post, he reminded me that he’s available to help in such situations: he’s been a workshop guy since childhood, and says that you can’t do that for decades without getting accustomed to evaluating cuts. He says it’s easier to evaluate if you look while running cold water over it—which also helps it to stop bleeding. I’ll stop now before anyone (including me) starts feeling woozy, but wanted to pass along the tip.

Last night Elizabeth had earned a behavior reward, which she used to stay up late. That is what she almost always spends her rewards on, which is so pleasingly baffling to me (in the “children are so DIFFERENT—from us and from each other!” sense) because one of her other options is to have a dessert or treat, and she TURNS THAT DOWN in order to stay up an extra hour and a half. Whuh? My 5-year-old self would NEVER have passed by a treat! NEVER!

Anyway, so she was staying up late. And Paul was making salsa, and she likes to sous-chef, so she was cutting a green pepper. She’s recently been allowed to start using sharp knives. Do you see where I’m going with this? She got her first cut.

Paul is…*scrunches forehead in pursuit of delicate word-choice*…a fainter. And so the first I heard of this event was a strange tone to Elizabeth’s voice and then Paul was airlifting her to the bathroom, saying to me “Elizabethgotcut” as he streaked right back away from the scene. She was holding her finger in her other hand and starting to up the tone from “strange” to “screamy.” She didn’t want me to look at it, so I looked briefly and then asked Paul if he thought he could bring me a clean dry washcloth, which he did, backing into the bathroom holding the washcloth out blindly.

There are two things I know to do for cuts: one is to apply pressure, and the other is to elevate. But I held her finger firmly in a washcloth for the next hour and a half, and it didn’t stop bleeding. I would hold it up high for awhile until my arms got sore, and then just hold it at her shoulder-height for awhile. I’d peek at it and…nope, no way are we done with the pressure and elevation. I started to wonder—do we go to the ER now? What’s the ER moment for something like this? I don’t want them to be like, “Oh, did she get a boo-boo? Here’s a $50 bandaid, you rookie.”

Paul looked it up online and in our parenting manual, and all of the answers involved closer looks at the situation than even I could tolerate taking, even if I could see past the bleeding, even if Elizabeth would have permitted such examinations without being strapped down and sedated. Finally it was OUR bedtime, so we bandaged her finger with a large piece of folded gauze and three very firm bandaids, and I guess it did stop bleeding in the night but there is no way I’m taking that bandage off for awhile.

What I kept thinking that whole time was that I STILL don’t know what to do. I STILL don’t know when to call the doctor about croup, and when to just use steam and cold air. I STILL don’t know when it’s an ear infection; I STILL can’t tell the difference between a virus and bronchitis; I STILL don’t know the difference between a normal skin rash and one that needs treatment. I STILL don’t know when to take a child to the ER for a couple of stitches, and when to rig a bandage ten times the size of the finger tip. It’s frustrating to do this job for so long and still feel like I’m in training. I mean, I realize that’s normal: it’s not like I think other parents have magically figured out every single thing and never have moments of uncertainty. But it’s still frustrating to be sitting there at 10:00 at night, dithering about it—and to still be dithering about it the next day.

I made a very stupid mistake eight years ago when my oldest child was about four years old and had just attended his first children’s birthday party. He wanted a similar party for his own birthday. I said, “Those are expensive, and a lot of trouble. Maybe when you turn ten.” I forgot that I was talking to a child who, if he does not become a successful trial attorney and support us richly in our old age, will have to redeem himself in some other way that makes his legalistic, argumentative, “But didn’t YOU say…” personality worth it to have brought unharmed to adulthood. And so anyway when he turned ten he had a party at one of those places with a claw machine and skee ball and air hockey and so forth. Whew! THAT’S over with!

Sadly, I had forgotten the other four children.

Yes, yes, I realize I could say I had changed my mind or that it hadn’t worked out or that life wasn’t fair or WHATEVS, and I DO say such things quite often, but this is an idea the kids are soooooo excited about, and also I’d say nine-tenths of my reluctance is pure social anxiety (the other one-tenth is a mix of “dislike of other people’s children” and “OMG THE COST”), and also I think it’s nice for them to each get to have ONE big fun-location party per childhood, and also it gives me a fast answer every OTHER year (“No, only for the tenth birthday”), and so anyway I’m sticking to this, despite advising everyone I know to avoid making similar commitments because OMG I HATE THIS SO MUCH AND I HAVE TO DO IT FIVE TIMES.

Anyway. William’s ten-year party is coming up. We have booked one of those places where the site shows photos of children who look so unpleasantly out of control, I can’t IMAGINE any parent seeing the photos and then going on to book a party there. Nevertheless, we have done so.

The party may include up to fifteen children, including the Birthday Child. My first layer of agitation is the sending of invitations and the anticipated Total Lack of RSVPing. And they REALLY MUST RSVP (ideally via email), because the party costs the same if fewer than fifteen children come, and so BY GUM WE ARE HAVING FIFTEEN CHILDREN THERE, and so if some kids can’t come we need time to invite other children. So I’m all pre-agitated about THAT, because I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering an RSVP situation, but if not, you would not BELIEVE how few people RSVP. I mean, you’d think, “Well, of course a FEW inconsiderate ungracious ill-mannered wolf-raised PINEHOLES won’t RSVP, but even _I_ can make a few follow-up phone calls, no big!” And then when you are calling EVERY SINGLE PERSON you sent an invitation to, you will start to wonder why you didn’t just call them to invite them in the first place, since at least then it would have been a HAPPY phone call and you wouldn’t have had to deal with the fuss and expense of the paper invitations and stamps.

But what I’m working on NOW is party favors. And goodness, I could drop $50 on party favors and have fifteen frankly-pitiful favor bags. And I would like NOT to do either of the halves of that sentence. And yet I DO want favor bags, because I don’t know about other people’s kids, but those are my kids’ favorite parts of the parties they go to, which makes me wonder if we should just have a party where people arrive, eat cake, and collect bags. Maybe we could skip the cake. Maybe we could just mail them the bags.

Question one, then, is “What would be cool to put in a favor bag for fourth graders (a mix of boys and girls)?”

And question two is “Where should I buy the stuff, if my goals are ‘not spending $50’ and ‘not having to buy two 12-packs in order to get fifteen of something’?”

And if your answer is “Well, WE try to AVOID bringing a bunch of CHEAP CRAP into OUR house,” I would point out that this answers neither question one nor question two, and also that perhaps you’d like to work on that tone of voice so as not to be quite so off-putting.