It occurs to me that I fail to mention Audrey. Truthfully, she’s a sweet, undemanding newborn who hardly ever talks back; I’m afraid our conversations are too cutesy to write about. It’s a lot of, “Who’s the cutest baby? Are you the cutest baby? Yes, you are! Do you need a diaper change? No? Okay! You’re still the cutest baby!”

She continues her lifelong struggle to learn to suck her thumb. She has made great progress, and can now get one or more fingers in her mouth, up her nose, and also poked in her eye, sometimes all at the same time.

Owen calls her a “sweet little muffin,” and plays with her nearly appropriately. Yesterday I didn’t realize I had moved out of lunging distance until I heard Owen say, “Let’s make Audrey fly!” Luckily, before I could figure out how to intervene, he announced, “Nah, she can’t fly. She’s plastic.”

Also, Abigail can totally pick her up, carry her across the house, and set her down again without doing any damage whatsoever! Who knew? And don’t ask how I found out. Though I will say there were no tears involved at all.

See? Terribly cutesy. Sorry, that’s all I got.

Hint: If you give the kids a dutch oven full of water to play with on the living room floor because it’s too scorching hot to play water outside, and too scorching hot to play anything BUT water inside, a Neat Sheet WILL NOT contain the mess.

In case you were wondering.

This morning the kids pulled out some cool wooden building blocks—one set makes a coliseum, the other makes a Roman arch. I decided to pop in a classical music CD and sit down to build with them. I was feeling Very Parental: educational toys! not plastic! mom totally present! and paying attention! with brain-enhancing background music! Until about two minutes later, when Abigail popped up and said, “Hey! What’s that music? Is it Mary Poppins? It sounds like Mary Poppins!” And then every few minutes one or the other of them would jump up from our building adventure to turn the television on in case they were somehow missing Mary Poppins.

In between attempts to locate the elusive Ms. Poppins, I would build with the lovely toys while Abigail made them into people (“This is the mommy block, and this is the daddy block, and here’s the little baby block. And these ones are the guard blocks who guard the block castles…”) and Owen tried to kick them down. When I finally gave up and agreed to start the actual Mary Poppins DVD, I insisted that the blocks get put away first. Abigail smiled sweetly and made an offer almost no parent could refuse: “If you let us leave them here, we’ll each give you a bag of pennies when we grow up.” I, unfortunately for her, AM one of the few who could refuse. Though, really, I should have considered a little longer. How big of bags do you think those would be? And when exactly will this “growing up” occur?

Now that we’re teaching Owen to lie about his age at the library, he’s been telling people how excited he is to be three. Except it sounds like “I’m free! I’m free!” See, because life is lived in bondage when you’re two. But then, man, that third birthday hits, the liberators arrive, and you just gotta tell the world: “I’m FREE!”

We took a quick trip to Costco over the weekend, which consisted of me and the girls hanging out in the car while Dane and Owen ran in to pick up eight flats of bottled water and a 20 pound bag of baking soda. Abigail stayed strapped in to her carseat with a stack of newly-checked-out library books for, oh, I don’t know, maybe six seconds before she started pleading to be unbuckled, culminating in this dramatic final bid:

ABIGAIL: If I don’t get out of my car seat soon, I am just going to DIE.

ME: Yeah? What are you going to die of?

ABIGAIL: Just death. I will die of death.

ME (sympathetically): Well, that’s too bad.

ABIGAIL: It’s coming! I can feel it creeping up!

ME: What, death?

ABIGAIL: Yes, death! Death is creeping over me… Wait, no, it’s just a little tummy sickness. It’s passed now. And, hey, look! I see Daddy!

And so it is that Daddy drives away the doom for another day. Hallelujah.

Dane’s out signing Owen up for the library’s summer reading program, so the girls and I are having quiet play time (read: Mommy on computer time). Abigail signed up yesterday, then read and reported on her first book before we left the library. “What was the impediment to signing Owen up?” Dane asked after work. The impediment was (can you guess?) me! I somehow let it slip that he isn’t quite three yet (summer birthday—sorry, kid!). They didn’t even ask, I just told them. I don’t know why. So then the sweet little girl (they have preteens doing the sign-ups) told me to come back after his birthday. And I didn’t think of bullying her into giving me a sign-up packet.

Owen was cool with this at the time—“I’ll come back! After my birthday! When I’m three! And sign up!” (imagine him saying each bit while jumping in place while Abigail’s trying to talk to the sign-up girl). Except! Except! After Abigail reported about her book, she got to choose a prize, of course. She took home a bendable kitty (think Gumby, but tabby-striped). AND WE HAVE NOT HAD A MOMENT OF PEACE SINCE. “Is it my turn for the kitty? I want Abigail’s kitty. Can I have the kitty? My kitty please? Please? Please? PLEASE?” Accompanied by many, many tears. Even though we made Abigail instantly put the kitty in her secret-special-toys-she-can’t-share box out of sight. Even though the none of the rest of us have mentioned the kitty once. Even after we explained about it: “Owen, the kitty has gone nigh-night!” “Okay, but can I play with it NOW?”

You might think that enforced sharing would be the way to go with this one, but you would be wrong. So! The boys are off to the library to get a darned kitty if it’s the last thing they do. I am secretly terrified that Owen will sign up, report about a book, and then choose a prize other than the kitty (they did have attractive Frisbees and ever-popular water bottles). And then both kids will be miserable, because they will each want what the other kid has, and also not want to share what they have, and there will be (at least) double the tears until I get them both back to the library. Which won’t be until Tuesday at the earliest, but probably more like Wednesday. Hmm, but maybe I can get Dane to take them after work on Monday! Maybe! And I could stay here and take a nap! Though of course I won’t, I’ll be very productive while they’re gone (really, honey, I will!).

Update: The library was out of bendable kitties! How could they let such a thing happen? BUT! They had one bendable PUPPY left! And Owen got it! And now he’s playing with it by putting it in Daddy’s shirt pocket and giving it “high five!” (read: smacking Daddy in the chest repeatedly!) And Owen says his puppy “Is a toy! It can not eat sandwiches! But it CAN get messy!” And he thinks he can share it with Abigail! And everyone seems terribly pleased, except Dane, who says he’s never going back to the library because trying to get Owen to talk to a stranger about a book was NOT the highlight of his day.

Last night I thought I would finally (FINALLY!) put away the laundry that had amassed on my living room couch. I don’t know how long it had been there, but it was packed in, covering the entire couch from armrest to armrest. My mom had stopped by earlier in the week (Hi Mom!) and put away some of it (Thanks Mom!), but even she couldn’t get through it all in the few hours she had to spare. And the couch had filled back up since then anyhow. I wasn’t exactly neglecting it, we just make more laundry with a newborn in the house. That and I never put any away.

But! On to the point of the story! Which is NOT that I am a lousy housekeeper! Though that figures in! So. I’m folding and hanging. A towel here, a shirt there, socks in a pile. So far, so good! I’m thinking how nice the couch will look when it’s not covered with laundry, how nice the clothes will look hanging in neat rows in the closets, how generally clean and tidy and lovely my house will feel when there’s no longer a wall o’ laundry for living room décor. And then, as I grab a towel to fold, a moth flies out of the laundry pile, buzzes my head, and lands goodness-knows-where while I am still dazed and confused because of the BUGS IN MY LAUNDRY, folks. I was going for clean here. Clean, tidy, sanitary, bug-free. At least free of the obvious kind, with the two inch wings and the hairy moth bodies. And yet, a moth. Living in my clean laundry.

Apparently that’s why one should put one’s clothes away when they come out of the dryer. Well, that and the wrinkle factor. Maybe your family can be free of both wrinkles and bugs; mine, it seems, can not.

Or is it just my family? Please tell me I’m not alone.

OWEN (walks up to me, and with no preamble announces): I want to watch the one with the dog.

ME: What?

OWEN: The one with the dog.

ME: What dog? Did someone walk by with a dog? (I admit this was a stupid guess. But in my defense, a LOT of people walk their dogs past our living room window.)

OWEN: No.

ME: O-kaaaaaay….

OWEN (patiently): I want to watch the one with the dog.

ME: Watch? What?

OWEN (less patiently): The ONE with the DOG.

ME (clearly in need of more caffeine at this point): What are we talking about?

OWEN: The movie! I want to watch the movie!

ME: Oh, movie! Got it! What movie?

OWEN: WITH THE DOG!

ME: Right, but what movie is that?

OWEN: I don’t know.

ME: Do we have a movie with a dog?

OWEN: No, that’s why I WANT ONE.

So if anyone has a movie with a dog to recommend…

Making Things Up: Why, does it SEEM like I know what I’m talking about?

Does it? Because I totally don’t. The content is real (trust me, I’m not that inventive), it’s just real life that I’m making up as I go along.

I live in southern California with my very tall husband and four kids who are still shorter than I am. Abigail is seven, Owen is four, Audrey’s a year old, and Sadie is brand new. (And yes, they were all born at home. And cloth diapered. And all that jazz. I know you were wondering.) They move fast, but I’m young and have stamina. And caffeine.

I spend my days reading books both with and without questionable language, and wondering how we can possibly have run out of clean spoons AGAIN. In my free time I enjoy—wait, no, I have no free time. Well, on my days off, I—wait again, no days off either. Hmm…

I do occasionally find time to write coherent sentences and string them together; find my clips here.