The news at our house is BABY FISHIES. In the comments section of the post about the fish, Steph said it looked like I had both male and female fish and that the females looked pregnant. Me: *flipping out with both panic and glee*

Later that same day, William was watching the fish and he yelled out “BABY FISH BABY FISH I SEE A BABY FISH!!” and we all went rushing over and there were two tiny baby fish in the tank. I did some mad Googling and some mad Steph-emailing, and so far we know there are at least two babies that are alive as of this morning—but we are trying not to get too attached. It’s touch-and-go because the grown-ups eat the babies, you see. And it’s hard to tell what’s going on because the babies are very good at hiding. Maybe babies are being continually born and eaten and we just keep seeing new ones, or maybe there are only two but they have good survival skillz. And we don’t even know if these are baby platies or if they might be baby MINNOWS. What a wild and crazy time to be alive!

Adults swimming. One particular fish is almost always separate from the others.

SOME sites suggest letting nature take its course in this situation: the grown-up platys are, um, PROLIFIC BREEDERS, so if you make special arrangements for the babies you can end up with a tank overrun with fish. Other sites suggest an in-tank baby fish nursery, and I got one of those but have been unable to catch the babies. (The way you’re supposed to do it is put the mama fish in the nursery until she has the babies, then remove her—but I am not even sure I know which ones are pregnant, and their pregnancies last 4 weeks so I don’t want to coop them up for a really long time, and wouldn’t she just eat her babies right away if they were in a little box and unable to hide? Gruesome.)

Other sites suggest removing the babies to another tank, and we even HAVE another tank but it’s unheated; also see note about not being able to catch the babies. Other sites (and also Steph) suggest adding more small plants for the babies to hide in, so that’s the current plan.

We spend a lot of time gathered around the tank looking for babies and shouting “I SEE ONE, I SEE ONE!!–oh wait, that’s a flake of food.”

Adults, cruising for babies to eat.
(And see, there’s that one apart from the others again.)

Rob is twelve. TWELVE. Twelllllllllve. We have already noted at our house that this is the last year before we have teenagers in the house (and that after that, we will have teenagers for THE NEXT FIFTEEN YEARS SOLID). “The last year before ____” is kind of neat, or at least I thought it was when I was 9, and when I was 12, and when I was 29. And there are TONS of them all clumped together ahead of Rob: there’s 12 (last year before teens), then 15 (last year before driver’s license), then 17 (last year before voting, smoking, and legal adulthood), then 19 (last year before the twenties), then 20 (last year before alcohol).

But what really brought our new situation to my attention was that he can now take doses of medicine for “adults and children 12 years and older.” This has been a thrilling transition, but difficult to make: the day before his birthday, he could have one tablet of acetaminophen; the next day, he could DOUBLE that dose? (No, no—I get that it doesn’t really work that way. But I was dosing by looking at the label and not really thinking about it, so effectively it DID work that way.) I’ve been reluctant to do it, even though Rob is now 5’3″, the height of many adult women, and surely THEY take the adult dosage.

This reminds me a little of the “ages 3 and up” toys: there is such a long stretch of time when it seems like every toy would mean horrible, horrible headlines if I let the child play with it and then Something Happened—and then suddenly we are free, in an open meadow with Ages 3 and Up toys all around us, free to purchase and play with, no more imaginary headlines like “UNFIT MOTHER GIVES 2-YEAR-11-MONTH CHILD A TOY MEANT FOR CHILDREN 3 AND UP—AND PAYS TERRIBLE AND FULLY-DESERVED PRICE!!”

Or of the time right after pregnancy/breastfeeding are finished, when suddenly my body was my own again. I can drink coffee without even THINKING about it! I can take cold medicine when I’m sick! I can have broccoli and tuna without later wondering if that’s why the baby is crying! NO ONE IS TAPPED INTO MY SYSTEM EXCEPT ME! Why, I could do STREET DRUGS and they wouldn’t even get NEAR the baby! It’s like we have a plastic barrier between us!

And now the first of my children can take an adult dose of painkiller or cough syrup. It’s the beginning of a whole new era! Soon I’ll be serving him a cocktail before dinner, and trying to make him vote for my candidate instead of Paul’s! [Edit: I’m kidding about the voting thing. Paul gets very prim about voting, saying “It’s private” if I try to discuss who we’re voting for, so I’ve told him I’ll just go ahead and assume he’s voting opposite of me, then. But I think we always vote the same, or close to the same. (That is, we might disagree on the local board, or we might disagree in the primaries, but we agree on the party and the president.)]

During my first marriage, when I was 20 years old, my in-laws came to visit us for the first time. One day while they were there, the mail came with four letters, each notifying us of one or more bounced checks, with huge scary fees on each one. I’d NEVER bounced a check before. Instead of putting the letters aside and dealing with them later, I was all upset and I explained why. So my father-in-law tried to figure out what happened, by GOING THROUGH OUR CHECKBOOK. Furthermore, he kept saying things like, “$5 for a mail-away crockpot cookbook? Did you even verify if this company EXISTS? You’ll never see THAT check again,” and “$70 at Target?? What FOR??”

He finally did find the error, and it was a stupid and simple math error (adding rather than subtracting) that had made me think we had a thousand dollars more than we did have. And I would have been more grateful to him for finding it if he hadn’t completely laid bare for humiliation every single purchase we’d made, as if the things we’d spent money on were to blame for the error. And if he hadn’t made me feel utterly and eternally incompetent for having made a stupid and simple mistake.

I have been known to over-assume a “one strike and you’re out” policy in relationships: one mistake and I can assume someone else will never let my non-mistakes outweigh it; one point of disagreement and I can assume the other person won’t want to be friends anymore (and the internet, with its “YOU SAID ONE THING I DON’T LIKE AND SO NOW I’M DONE READING YOUR BLOG!!!” does nothing to make me think I’m over-assuming it, either). But whether or not it’s generally true and whether or not I’m usually right, I did think in this situation that my father-in-law would now never think of me as a competent adult. It was one of the many sources of relief I felt at the divorce: now I could start over, with a clean slate and a balanced checkbook, with no one in my new life knowing I’d made a math error.

(The actual error, as I know now, was that I let him take the checkbook and fix the error.)

Speaking of shopping, today’s trip to Target didn’t result in any Awesome Finds (oh, wait, I did get a red-and-white holiday-season-type sweater for Elizabeth for $5), but a trip afterward to the fish store resulted in a lengthy consultation with a fish-expert-type person and also in five new additions to the Thistle household. Meet platys 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, who will remain unnamed until they have survived a reasonable period of time.

You know what’s tricky? Photographing FISH.

Such a good shopping trip today! (Fine: these things are from two separate trips. But how much accuracy do you want/need?)

A package of four brown napkins (not pictured because they looked so drab in the photo) marked down to $3, and a set of frog napkin holders marked down to $7 at Home Goods (a little steep, but it was the last box of them), for future napkin/rings giveaways:

Two oak-leaf-and-acorn flower pots, exactly what I was looking for, $3.99 each at Marshalls:

Sparkle shoes for Elizabeth, 75% off at Target—so, about $3.24/pair. Paul says if I blog about it I have to tell you how many pairs I bought. This is the photo Paul felt was misleading:

So FINE, I WILL tell you, I’M not embarrassed: twelve pairs. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, because it was four pairs in each of three sizes, and also Elizabeth wears glitter shoes almost every day, and also glitter shoes wear out kind of quickly if worn every day, and also SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT OFF which is the same as buying ONE full-price pair in each of three sizes. So in sizes 10, 11, and 12 (current size and next two sizes) I bought silver glitter, gold glitter, and red glitter, plus one more pair of shoes: matte silver in size 10, and then there was a pair of matte black and a pair of patent black and I can’t remember which one was 11 and which was 12.

Paul has this weird idea that people only need one or maybe two pairs of shoes. This is indeed the way it is with four of our children, but I explained to him that one of our children LIKES SHOES. As I was explaining this, the child in question came into the kitchen, saw the shoes, and LOST HER MIND in a very gratifying way, complete with a quavering voice and shining eyes and pinkening cheeks of emotion. I looked at Paul with a “See?” face.

On to the next thing. A pound (not the usual 12-ounce bag) of Starbucks anniversary blend, $7.99 at Home Goods (not a clearance price, but it was a kind I wanted to try, and it was at Target sale prices) (because the sale price on 12-ounce bags is $6, and this is 33% more coffee in the bag so it would cost $8 if it were the same price per ounce):

A pretty soup/salad bowl for $3.99 at Home Goods:

A pink glitter desktop memo pad, with metallic-silver-edged pages, for my desk; and a matching pencil case (not shown) for next year when Elizabeth goes to first grade, $3 each on clearance at Home Goods:

A pig spatula for $1.99 at Home Goods (I already have one, but I use it all the time so I bought another):

(Here is the rear view:)

New Leapster game for Edward, 75% off at Target:

Yesterday I had a crappy day. I didn’t write about it here because meh. But it was crappy, and YES as a matter of fact it DID turn out to be partly PMS, and PERHAPS YOU SHOULD NOT ASK SUCH NOSY QUESTIONS, GEEZ.

ANYWAY. Lucky for me I had in my possession a heap of Crappy Day Presents from Rachel, AKA Doing My Best. This is such a great idea: she and her friends send these to each other, not to be opened right away but rather to be held for a crappy day when such a thing is most needed. Not only does the recipient then get a well-timed gift, she can look look forward to it the entire time BEFORE she needs it. And then when there IS a crappy day, the feeling is not just “ACK, CRAPPY” but also “But this means I get a PRESENT.”

I love this. Rachel sent me a sampler of FIVE Crappy Day presents so I could try this out over time, and she labeled them with how severe of a crappy day should be matched with each gift. Here’s Rachel’s key:

Minor—“Life certainly can be blah!”
Moderate—“Why is everyone around me *SO* IRRITATING?!”
MAJOR—“If people don’t *WATCH OUT*, HEADS MAY ROLL!!!!”

And yesterday I went straight for a Major. Look what was inside:

A two-layer tin of chocolates, and a little card containing kind words.
Foreground: the label that was on the outside of the package.

Would you like a closer look at those chocolates? I’ll bet you would, you naughty wench.

Those are See’s Chocolates, mostly MY FAVORITES (Butterscotch Squares) but with some Polar Bear Paws thrown in for variety and the fun of trying something new (and they are REALLY GOOD: peanuts and caramel and white chocolate and cute name).

So! I can now give first-person testimony that this is a great idea, especially if you ALREADY like sending impulsive little presents to friends.

We’ve been dealing with sleep issues with Elizabeth. With Elizabeth WHO IS FIVE YEARS OLD. Actually, that looks young when I type it (aw, FIVE!)—but it seems like I wouldn’t still be working on sleep-training issues with someone who knows how to do air quotes.

This time it’s that she started waking up in the middle of the night wanting to come to our room. That was fine periodically, but soon it was every night, and soon after that she started waking earlier and earlier until she was waking up before our bedtime. I thought she was old enough to have this situation explained to her, so I told her now she would need to go back to sleeping in her own bed.

After that, she continued to wake up night after night crying, and I’d go down there and explain it to her again, and then she’d cry for an hour, or an hour and a half, or TWO hours. I would lie in bed, wide awake and simmering with angry resentment, going down periodically to reassure/re-explain through clenched teeth. She’d finally go back to sleep, but meanwhile my frustration and awake-in-the-middle-of-the-nightness would have turned itself into a full-color review of Every Situation In Which I’ve Ever Felt Angry Resentment.

So I decided to break up this fight. Trying to force Elizabeth to do things my way in the middle of the night has never, ever worked: not when she was brand new, not when she was an older baby, not when she was a toddler, and not now. She has recurring sleep issues, and maybe there is a way to deal with them that would solve them, but my guess is that we’ve tried everything at this point (I’m reluctant to try to decree absolutely that no suggestions for books/methods could possibly be useful, but I do think that we’ve heard all of them by now). Trying to do things My Way is leading to misery and anger, and it’s not solving anything. So last night, she cried and I brought her up to our room.

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William gets Night Sadness: feeling in the evening or around bedtime that everything is too awful and sad and hopeless to be dealt with at all. He goes long periods without getting it, and then some daytime thing will show up as nighttime stress. Right now it’s his Monday schedule: he gets pulled out of the classroom FOUR TIMES on Mondays for various things. William is not a Sharer, talking-wise, so the first we really understood the depth of the problem was when two Monday mornings in a row he was “sick.”

I preferred he not drop out of any of the four things, so my first way of dealing with it was to try to treat the Night Sadness. I taught him the various things that help me deal with my own; I used my dad’s Nightmare Cure, which I might have changed over the years but still think of as his (turn lights on, pee, chew a Tums, drink of water, brush teeth); I let him stay up a bit and sit with us. Nothing was working.

So my second attempt was to ask him if perhaps one thing was stressing him more than the others. Last year he was stressed to tears by a writing group he was in, and it got bad enough that we said to the teacher that we didn’t really care at all if he wrote below his ability PERMANENTLY, it was too much stress to be worth it. But this time he said he didn’t really want to drop any of the things, he just wished they weren’t all on the same day. So I asked if I should contact the teacher and find out if things could be spread out a little, and he explained the various reasons why the schedule can’t be budged.

So my third attempt was to ask if he could think of anything we could do to improve Mondays in OTHER ways. He couldn’t think of any, but I started thinking of some. Like, maybe he could get hot lunch on Mondays and not have it count toward his “once a week” limit. And if the hot lunch that day was one he didn’t like, I could make his lunch for him instead. And he could bring a chocolate-chip granola bar as his snack. And he could get a pass that day on practicing his clarinet.

Last night when he had Night Sadness, I put him through the Nightmare Cure, and as he was doing it I reminded him that in the morning he wouldn’t have to pack a lunch. And he could have deviled eggs for breakfast. And he wouldn’t have to practice his clarinet.

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These things cause older-brother Rob to hit the ceiling, of course. Why can’t HE have an extra hot lunch on Mondays?? When HE took clarinet, why didn’t HE get to have a skip day?? I try to be understanding about this (I too was a firstborn, and I too had a fine-tuned sense of Justice Betrayed), but I also think it’s a good opportunity to discuss how we make different accommodations for different people. Elizabeth gets a pass in the middle of the night right now because she can’t figure out the sleep thing and neither can we. William gets spoiled on Monday mornings because he’s having trouble handling his Mondays and yet doesn’t want to get out of it either. When Rob was younger he had social and speech issues that meant he’s the only one of our children to have attended two years of expensive pre-kindergarten plus three summers of expensive “preschool camp.” Henry’s getting extra time with Paul right now, because for whatever reason he’s going through a Daddy-craving stage and nearly has a breakdown during the week, so on weekends Paul doesn’t expect to get anything done without Henry attached to him.

And then it won’t be long before some of these things shift around. Maybe Henry will go out of this Daddy Stage, but then he’ll need something else; maybe Elizabeth will start sleeping all night in her own bed again, but then she’ll need something else. The hard part, to me, is that it’s so SHIFTING, and that it’s so different from child to child: it’s not something that lets me say to Rob, “Well, when YOU were five, YOU got to sleep in our room.”

Christina asked for cat/SIL updates, and I will also throw in a freebie “falling-down-the-stairs injuries” update.

Cat update: Mouse is holding steady. She continues to be a shadow of her former luxuriously plump self (6 pounds down from 11). Her thyroid was re-tested this fall and her current dose of medicine is still working for her. She still occasionally pees in inappropriate locations, but nowhere NEAR as often—and the vet thinks at this point it could be partly an old-age thing. She doesn’t wear a calming collar anymore: for a number of months I could TELL when the month was up and it needed to be changed, but then one month she didn’t seem to need a new one so I tried not using one, and she seemed fine. Benchley and Feather continue to be lovey-cuddlekins-friendy-friends, so they mostly leave her alone. Sometimes all three of them will sleep on the same chair, though it’s always that Benchley and Feather join Mouse, not that Mouse joins THEM.

(Benchley at rear of chair; Feather at front of chair; Mouse on arm of chair)

Sister-in-law update: Holding steady, WE HOPE. The lawyer is waiting to do the final settlement of the estate until after the 2010 taxes (including taxes to be paid on sold stocks) are done. As far as we know, Beth hasn’t changed her mind about keeping the house, but we also keep getting cc’d on letters to her from the lawyer that say things like, “Because I haven’t heard from you regarding my letter of the 18th, I will go ahead and…,” so that’s a little worrisome.

As an aside, Paul’s aunt (his mother’s sister) got bonus points (+3 for thinly-veiled family gossip) on this year’s Christmas letter by adding a P.S. that she hoped we’d wish Beth a merry Christmas from her, because she had no contact information AT ALL!!—with “AT ALL” underlined twice. Because this came on the heels of a letter saturated with “blessings”s and “amazing”s (including suggestions that these amazing blessings prove that God favors not only America [sic] ((because she definitely means “the U.S.”)) in general but also their family in particular), the peevish little passive-aggressive P.S. was EVEN BETTER and I upped the bonus to +5.

I sent her a cheery note telling her that Beth’s contact info hadn’t in fact changed (I had to tear up my first attempt and start over, because “not in the last eight years, in fact” and “the same info as your late sister’s, if you still have it” was not the tone I was aiming for) (the tone I was aiming for was “I hope you will notice that I am noticing that your silly attempt at peevishness showed only that YOU are the one who hasn’t bothered to keep in touch—but without you being able to call me out for tone”) (this is a very tricky tone to achieve). She mailed me RIGHT BACK, flustered by her tactical error and hoping to redeem herself while simultaneously shifting the blame, saying that Paul’s dad’s sister’s husband (are you following this? Paul’s uncle-by-marriage, but on the OPPOSITE side of a divorced family, so there was NO REASON his aunt would have been in touch with them except to pry) had told her the house would be sold last year.

Well well well! So this got another bonus +5 (very unusual to score Christmas card points for something that did not in fact arrive by Christmas card, but I find that awarding points keeps me from awarding smackdowns), since she has revealed herself to be a prying old pry-bag, and why aren’t ANY of these concerned aunts/uncles contacting either Paul or Beth to ask about their plans? If this had been an email exchange rather than snail-mail, I might have responded with “Oh, that’s odd! We haven’t talked with him about the plans!”—but that’s impossible to write on a little floral notecard and sign it and stamp it and put it in the mail, and perhaps that is for the best. I hope my silence instead conveys to her my intended tone, which is “Uh huh. Why don’t you just consider whether that reply improved your position.”

Okay, so that’s the update: Paul’s family in its usual dysfunctional turmoil, but luckily far away from us. And we hope the estate settlement will happen soon, with no last-minute changes of heart from his sister.

Injury update: Buttular region (injured in both falls) still uncomfortable when transitioning from sitting to standing, but improving. Ankle (injured on the second fall) doesn’t hurt to walk on, but has gradually over the course of a week gone from having a bruise on one side to having a bruise on three sides, and then the top of that foot swelled visibly, enough to hurt when I put on my shoes. But…the INTERNAL part of the foot/ankle isn’t bothering me at all: that is, the bones don’t hurt, the joint doesn’t hurt in any direction. It’s just the skin and padding that feels injured and ouchy.

Here is the problem with self-deprecation: it sets the bar. It shows other people where we draw the line.

When we say, “Oh my god, please excuse the house, it’s a MESS!,” we might mean to be saying, “Please don’t think less of me because my house is messy, I’m sure your house is WAY BETTER,” but what we’re inadvertently saying is, “This is what I consider unacceptable. If your house is better than this, it might or might not be fine; if it is the same or worse, it is unacceptable or beyond unacceptable, and now you know what I think of it.”

When we say, “Oh my god, I am so fat, I am so out of shape!,” we might mean to be saying, “Please don’t think less of me because of how I look,” but what we’re inadvertently saying is, “This is what I consider unacceptable. If you are thinner than me or more in shape than me, you might or might not be okay. If you are comparably as fat/unfit, or MORE fat/unfit, you are unacceptable too, and now you know what I think of you.”

When we say ANYTHING that judges ourselves, we’re telling someone else how we judge. Even if we only judge OURSELVES that harshly, and actually look at other people through a much softer lens.

(I feel like I need to offer a benediction after that, and perhaps communion. JUDGE NOT, LEST YOU INADVERTENTLY JUDGE OTHERS. GO IN PEACE. And have one bite of bread and one sip of wine on your way out.) (Also, I will forget this in 10 minutes and resume attempting to tell people they are better than me, while inadvertently telling them otherwise.)

I’m having BAD DREAMS about fish dying. Last night I dreamed that one of our minnows died, and I knew it was because the water in the tank was toxic, so I tried to rescue the remaining minnow but I had nothing to scoop her up with so I had to use my hand (ICK ICK ICK), and then I put her in my water glass BUT OH NO THERE ARE ICE CUBES IN THERE AAAAAAAAAAA! Anyway. Fish stress.

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I found some Bath & Body Works lavender-vanilla conditioner on eBay for a price I considered MOSTLY reasonable (original price + reasonable mark-up for being hard-to-find + shipping + I really want it) so I bought it. But EVENTUALLY there will be no more lavender-vanilla conditioner left to buy. And I’ve tried other lavender-vanilla scents, and none of them are what I like. And what if Bath & Body Works DISCONTINUES THE ENTIRE FRAGRANCE??? Well. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, worry-wise.

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The definition of insanity needs to be changed from “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” to “Reading blogs that trigger rage reactions.”

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I know it seems early, but this is the month to register for 2011-2012 preschool, so I have to decide if Henry is going or not. He’ll be four years old this fall. The other four children will all be in full-day school.

Pros to preschool:

1. Otherwise it’s just me and Henry all day long.
2. Social interaction with peers, instead of with siblings who think of him as a baby.
3. Experience with an authority figure other than his parents.
4. Fun stuff we don’t do at home.
5. Learning to do citizen stuff like stand in line and raise his hand.
6. Me getting some time with no kids in the house.

Cons to preschool:

1. $365/month for 10.5 hours/week.

I don’t know how to decide. The money is POSSIBLE but not COMFORTABLE. Would it be better used elsewhere? We could make several extra payments on the mortgage with that. But I’m not social so he wouldn’t get peer interaction elsewhere. Rob went to three summers and two school years of preschool, but he had social and articulation delays that caused not one, not two, but FOUR professionals (pediatrician, two speech therapists, pediatric neurologist) to press upon us the importance of preschool. William went to one year of preschool, but I don’t remember our reasoning. Probably something like “We paid so much for Rob, it seems like William should go for at least one year.” The twins didn’t go, because $730/month was not possible for anything that wasn’t saving someone’s life. But we just made the last payments on our car, so the money for Henry to go is temporarily freed up (I’ve noticed that waiting too long to redirect the money causes it to absorb unnoticeably into the budget).