Last night, Henry woke up twice to nurse. I like to think of myself some sort of Natural at getting up in the night, but it’s actually that I adjust well: if he wakes me up when he hasn’t been waking regularly, I’m a sleepwalker. I woke up in the recliner an hour or so later, with a sleeping baby sprawled across me. I tried to put him in his crib, but no: now he wanted to nurse. So I nursed him, fell back to sleep, woke again with the baby sleeping on me. He again explained that he’d been robbed of his opportunity. Some nights, I write myself an I.O.U.

In other news which MAY OR MAY NOT be about Henry, I called the doctor to ask what constipation remedies were safe for an 8-month-old someone who may or may not be 8 months old. This is my first baby to have this problem, so this is all new territory for me.

I talked with the nurse, and she said they don’t recommend things like milk of magnesia until the child has been seen by the doctor. She said that I should try changing the child’s diet first, starting by taking out applesauce, bananas, rice, and carrots, and adding prune juice, white grape juice, more fruits and vegetables, more fluids, and more grains.

So, fine. But how to get the juice into him? He just spits when I give him a sippee cup. I’ve never even offered him a bottle, because lengthy and frustrating experiments with his siblings showed me it was easier not to bother with it.

On the other hand, Henry is the easy-goingest, laid-backest baby I have ever had. His life philosophy is “Sure! Whatevs!” So I got an Avent bottle (those are the ones the breastfed babies used in the daycare where I worked), and I put some prune juice into it, and Henry fumbled for a minute and then latched on like a champ and drank it right down.

Conclusion: slightly-warmed prune juice is A GREAT IDEA. I’ll say no more.

As long as we’ve all lost our appetites anyway, this seems like good timing for a diet update. I am having a teetery couple of days, almost forgetting I’m ON a diet. Like, this morning I was all, “Hey, this would be a good day to bake cookies!” Then I had a very grim remembering, and it was SO grim, I felt like the only compensation was to go ahead and make the cookies. (I haven’t.) (Yet.) (But I AM eating an enormous bowl of sugar-free fat-free pudding at 10:00 in the morning.)

But I am still on it, and my weight is still going down—more slowly, of course, but ever downward. I notice I’ve been feeling perkier and more energetic and like I’m better able to cope with things. I even washed the kitchen floor, and if that doesn’t smack of losing weight directly from the brain, I don’t know what does.

Swistle: Baby Names

The crappiest Valentine’s Day present of all is the single, perfect, long-stemmed red rose: it’s cheap and it’s painfully trite, but you have to pretend it’s BETTER and more MEANINGFUL than something more expensive or more thoughtfully chosen.

One of my best Valentine’s Day gifts ever was THIS, from Paul:<

We only had four kids then, and he got each of them dressed in a coordinating outfits (white shirts for everyone, blue pants for boys, pink pants for girl), and took their photos holding letters (L O V E) he’d cut out and painted. Then he got prints made of the photos and went out shopping for a frame, and he chose the frame I would have chosen over any other.

So, awesome: lots of work, lots of thought, and also showing he knows me (the frame style, and also knowing I am the kind of person who would want the children to be in order of age).

But the REAL best part was later that day, when he said, “OH DAMMIT! I meant to give you that for MOTHER’S DAY!”

Our Kelsey is in the hospital for pre-term pregnancy complications. Our Samantha is just home from the hospital and on bed rest for the same thing. Would you be darlings and go leave them a bolstering comment or two?

Whoops.

You want to know about my CATS? Oh, they’ll LOVE that. It’s very little attention and love they’ve seen since we brought home the first of our five unusually large, loud, furless kittens. …Sorry, I hate cats’ eye view, too. What’s next? Talking about “their humans”? Referring to the cats as our “furry children”? It’s a slippery slope, my friends: one day it’s “furless kittens” and the next day it’s “My cat walks all over me!” sweatshirts.

We have three cats, all acquired in ignorance of our creature-saturated future. The first one was Ge0rge. (You are going to think I am a PARANOID FREAK for disguising my CATS’ names, and listen, I agree. But on the other hand, I feel like my mother-in-law is EVERYWHERE. The walls! They have eyes and ears! And horns!)

So, this is Ge0rge, who in actual life has an o and not a zero in his name:

We adopted him from a shelter when he was a kitten. Ge0rge is not my preferred kitten style: he was frisky and sunshiney and hypering up and down the walls of his cage. He would run right up our bodies and sit on our shoulders.

The kitten I picked out more my style: sniveling, clinging, cowering. That was OIiver, who normally has a lowercase L instead of a capital I, and who normally does not have a mysterious red scuff on his nose:

OIiver is also a shelter cat, chosen painfully from a litter of four very similar kittens. His mother was also in the shelter, and I still wish I’d taken her, too. She was a very nice cat. And then maybe OIiver wouldn’t spend so much time sucking his own paw. Plus, it turns out I don’t like kittens, even if they’re in my preferred style.

And so the third cat we adopted was a grown cat. She was a stray in our apartment complex, a knocked-up teenager. Someone else took her in (technically, she took herself in: she walked right into their apartment without asking) when she needed a place to have her kittens, and then we took her when her kittens were old enough to be given away. I thought it would be sad to separate her from the kittens, but you should have seen her shaking off the shackles.

We named her Amelia, but called her that about three times before we nicknamed her M0use, and we’ve never called her anything else since then. You wouldn’t know it to look at her now, but when she was younger she was thin and almost all white, with huge ears. So the nickname seemed less silly back then.

My friend Mairzy and I first bonded over baby names. In fact, I’d say that if you include the “Hey, Mairzy! Hey, Swistle!” and the “See ya, Mairzy! See ya, Swistle!” as part of the conversation, our first chats were roughly 95% baby names. About right, Mairzy?

It’s still our favorite topic. We both own tattered copies of The Baby Name Wizard (Maizy’s is more tattered: she generously loans hers out, whereas I hoard mine like miser’s gold), and we like to page through them together, calling out opinions. Anyone seeing us in a coffee shop would assume that both of us were pregnant–and certainly we go into name overdrive when one of us IS. But baby names are not a pregnancy topic for us: they’re an ALWAYS topic.

We are interested in EVERYONE’S baby names. We have heard it many times, but we are still surprised when people say they “just chose” a name, as if it were not an activity involving piles of baby name books, hundreds of discussions, and multi-page lists. Not because it’s “necessary” to do it that way, but because it’s SO FUN. If choosing a baby name is a no-big-deal, boring task…perhaps you’d let US name your baby?

Here is what Mairzy and Swistle would like to know today: What did you name your dolls when you were a child? This is not limited to literal dolls—you could include stuffed animals or pets—but what we’re looking for here is your budding baby-naming skills. Not relevant: descriptive names (“Fluffy” for a stuffed cat) and jokey names (“Fred” for a hamster–unless you really did think that was an awesome boy name you’d use for a future child).

I had two dolls I gave names to. My first was a baby doll, and I got her the Christmas I was five. I named her Jeanette Isabella after my favorite Christmas carol. Later I changed her name to Sarah; later still, I changed her name to Nina. My second doll was a Cabbage Patch Kid, and I named her Megan.

Mairzy had two dolls she played with a lot. She named them Anna Nicole (she notes: “not Smith”) and Katherine.

We are not sure what these names Tell Us, but we are Very Interested all the same!

I sure enjoyed all your comments about how awesomely organized I am. Perhaps I should just keep it to myself that THIS is my “coats and backpacks and boots” organizational system:

And that THIS is my “bathroom drawer” organizational system:

And speaking of not being entirely with-it, last week I was in a big panic because WE HAVE NO BREAD OMG WHAT WILL WE DO?? and it seriously didn’t occur to me until today that we have a BREAD MACHINE. We can make bread RIGHT HERE ON THE PREMISES. (We only use our bread machine as a (1) counter-space reducer and (2) pizza dough maker.)

And speaking now of pizza (are you enjoying these smooth, well-organized segues?), I had a little diet crisis yesterday. I took Rob to a doctor appointment and afterward I let him choose a treat from the vending machine. And I was doing FINE, just hanging out and watching him choose something, feeling proud of myself for being so patient as the minutes ticked by. Until I saw the strawberry Pop-Tarts. The kind with sprinkles. Oh how I love Pop-Tarts! And 80 cents later (what a rip!), I had the package open and was eating half a Pop-Tart in the elevator. And part of me was saying, “OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? PUT THAT DOWN!! OMG ARE YOU CRAZY?,” and a louder part of me was saying, “MMMMMMMmmmmmmm!”

After half a Pop-Tart, I was calmed down enough to start thinking that really I should toss the rest out. I didn’t feel like I HAD to have it anymore, so I shouldn’t eat it. But…the WASTE! And it would be so yummy! AND THEN: I dropped the package into a puddle. Not on purpose, completely by accident. I stood there staring at it, unbelieving—surely it could still be saved? Surely the 5-minute rule means the water was not filling the package? I was in denial, but soon had to admit that the Pop-Tarts were gone, really gone. THAT made the decision, didn’t it? It was like losing 60 cents, right there. But today, looking back, would I pay 60 cents to NOT have eaten 1.5 Pop-Tarts? Yes. So: good deal.

Then I further played with fire by stopping at a drive-through on the way home for Rob to get lunch. And I let him get more than he’d be able to eat, already in the back of my mind planning to eat the extra, so as not to waste it. (Really, it would only be the Financially Sensible thing to do.) And the smell of the chicken nuggets nearly DROVE ME WILD in the car on the way home. And then he did, in fact, eat all of it, so I had soup.

I am having the kind of day where three children woke up wet and had to be bathed right away, and where toddler twins are hitting and biting and saying “NO YOU GO ‘WAY!!!” to each other, and I’ve already had one discipline issue of the “Do I really have to handle this or could I just pretend not to notice?” type, and the laundry is doing THIS:

And this reminds me of the comment Susan left in the comment section awhile back:

Okay, can you please tell me how you manage to cook and clean with 5 kids, esp 5 young kids?! i do not know how you manage it, without, like, a maid and nanny. even if your housework standards are low, i know your kids still get dinner, have clean clothes, and i can see from photos your not drowning in chaos, so some cleaning must be done.

HOW THE HELL DO YOU DO IT?!? please teach me. i am in your hands. i bet others would like to know, too.

Susan is right to assume that although my first response would indeed have been that I DON’T cook or clean, HAR HAR, I do in fact do some basic meal preparation and some cleaning. I don’t LITERALLY let the children rummage in the cupboards for cereal to eat off the floor.

…very often.

All day, but especially during Our Morning Routine (6:15-8:05), I rely on a system of MESHING activities: I get one thing going that can maintain itself for awhile, and then I get another thing going. It’s like the plate-spinning trick. Or like getting the washing machine going before you start cleaning the bathroom: then you and the washing machine are BOTH working.

So, for example, the first thing I do is get breakfast on the table, even if the baby is crying the entire time, because then any child who isn’t doing something else can be eating. And if the baby is NOT crying, I also get the coffee pot going so it’ll be ready later.

I get one older child into the shower, because once I start the water, they can handle it all the way through to showing up at the table fully dressed. I nurse the baby while three children eat, then fourth child joins them. I get the twins dressed either BEFORE this (if they wake up before baby) or AFTER (if they wake up after baby). I assemble lunches.

Sometimes I have coffee and cereal out on the counter for myself to eat as I’m assembling the lunches.

Then I shower while the big kids supervise the little kids.

The whole routine takes an hour and fifty minutes, and at the end of it we have six dressed people, at least five fed people, and at least two showered people. Also: two lunches assembled, two backpacks packed, two kids in outerwear. I have a list by the door of everything that needs to be IN the kids’ backpacks and everything they need to have ON, and so I can say, “Okay, get ready for school now,” and they can do it without any of us forgetting anything.

The older kids go off to the bus stop, and then the rest of my day is pretty flexible: it doesn’t really matter what time we have lunch, for example.

When we do have lunch, I make extra sandwiches. I put them in the freezer for the older kids’ lunches the next day. That’s why I used the word “assembled” above: I found it stressful to try to make sandwiches in the morning, so now I take sandwiches out of the freezer and just make the snacks. If I have a little left in a box of crackers, I put that in a baggie and put it aside for a future lunch.

I usually have three tasks in mind for each day. One of the three tasks is always laundry, whether I actually put a load in or not: laundry ALWAYS needs to be done. The other tasks might be to take out the trash, or to wipe off the counters, or to make a batch of baby food, or to make soup, or to scoop the cat box, or to write a letter, or to change sheets, or pay the bills that don’t get auto-paid, or some other thing. I might get to these things or I might not; typically I get to two of them.

When the older boys come home, I work on their homework with them. I try to schedule the rest of the day so that I’m not in a huge flurry of activity when they come home, since they bring that huge flurry of activity home with them already.

Other than that, I don’t have challenging goals. I don’t try to keep the house CLEAN-clean: I take care of the worst areas as they bug me. I don’t try to do crafts other than coloring–but I didn’t much like crafts even when I had only one child. I don’t try to grocery shop: Paul does that on the weekends. I don’t try to cook dinner: Paul cooks for the kids when we have a nursing infant, and we cook our own meals after the kids go to bed.

I’m sorry, this is so LONG and so BORING. But, you know, it IS that way!

The keys to it, I think, are:

1) Mesh activities. Get one thing going that can sustain itself, while you go on to the next thing. There should be as little “standing around waiting for mommy” as possible.

2) Separate what really must be done now from what can wait. A soaking wet child really must have a quick bath before getting dressed—but as much as I’m itching to change the wet sheets, those can wait until after the older kids leave for school.

3) Employ even sub-par resources. The two older boys are slow and messy, but they CAN help. If I’m in a rush, it’s like having extra hands. Maybe it takes them three times as long to pack their lunches, but it is possible for them to do it.

4) Get up early enough. I used to get up at 6:30, but found I always ended up raising my voice near leaving time. Setting my alarm for 15 minutes earlier SUCKED, but it made all the difference in how pleasant our morning was.

5) Grab opportunities. Some mornings, the kids wake up earlier than usual. When they do, I’ll have both older boys take showers, instead of just one. I might give a littler child or two a quick bath, or I might change sheets. If I’m waiting for soup to heat up, I don’t stand there reading a book (PAUL), I do a few dishes. (Note: I’m not talking about opportunities such as naptime, or the kids watching TV. I use those for computer stuff, not chores.)

6) Don’t try to do too much. I can’t tell you how important it was to me when Paul went back to work after Henry was born and said, “If all six of you are alive when I get home, I will be impressed.” I do what doesn’t send me over the Cliff of Despair, and everything else can wait until the kids leave home for good. Assuming they ever do.