1. It takes way less sugar than honey to achieve the same level of sweetened tea goodness.

2. I must put a huge awful lot of honey in my tea.

3. Because MAN do I put a lot of sugar.

4. I apparently have a mental block which precludes me from remembering to buy more honey.

5. Or it could be a memory-impairing brain tumor. Though that seems both more worrisome and less likely. Especially as I just finally sent Dane to the store for honey.

Today is Abigail’s birthday. She’s six. Which seemed so very big to Dane and I until we realized that at her next birthday, she’ll be seven, and that just sounds ancient, so now we’re fine with six (incidentally, Dane concluded that conversation by telling me that I’m old).

She woke up to discover a ribbon-festooned two-wheeler this morning, brand-new and suspiciously decal-free (and a helmet with bugs on it! No, not real bugs). Relatives have been calling all day to wish her a happy birthday. So far, she’s spent most of the day explaining that children ought to be allowed to eat as much frozen corn (still frozen, not reheated) as they wish on their birthdays, unless, of course, they are allergic to frozen corn, in which case they ought not be given any, even if they do ask, even if it is their birthday.

She also explained very seriously that the only conceivable food item to consume for lunch was ice cream. When I said I thought she’d be mighty hungry if she was going to wait until after dinner tonight to eat her lunch, she informed me that she was, in fact, about to DIE of starvation, and she would never see her Daddy again. Unless I scooped her some ice cream. Right now. Sorry, sweet child. Not going to happen.

She ate some frozen corn.

She has wanted to hear all about the day she was born: Who was at the birth? (Mommy and Daddy, of course, and our midwives: first Brandy, then Jamie, and last of all Andrea, just in time.)

Did you tell everyone I was born? (Yes, we called and woke everyone up in the middle of the night. Except Uncle Dan, who was still awake when we called.)

Who came to see me? (Everyone we know. The very first visitors were Grandma and Uncle Dan, who arrived at just the same time in different cars. Meme and Papy came later with Ry. And lots of others who came to see you, and also to bring us dinner and ice cream.)

Was I SO tiny? (Yes. But my arms weren’t used to holding a baby all the time, so you felt very heavy to me.)

Was I smaller than Owen when he was born? (Well, no. You were the biggest baby of all in our family.)

What did I do when I was born? (You screamed and screamed. You screamed for three hours, then slept for six and woke up screaming.) She laughs at this.

We’ve looked at the clothes she wore when she was a baby, now hanging in Audrey’s closet, and tonight we’ll look at her baby pictures. And now I had better go bake some cupcakes, as Abigail and Owen keep asking, “Are the cupcakes done yet?” and I have to keep replying, “We haven’t started making them!”

They don’t seem impressed by that answer.

Happy birthday, girl. You’ve come a long way in six short years. I can’t wait to see where you’re headed next.

Owen noticed the Spring 2006 issue of Brain, Child today—the one with a robot on the cover.

“Look, Mama! It’s a robot! A GIRL robot!” he cried, pointing excitedly at the photo.

“Yeah?” I asked, interested. “How can you tell it’s a girl?”

“It is a girl,” he explained. “It just IS.”

“But how can you TELL it’s a girl? Which part is the girl part?” I pressed. (And no, I was not hoping for a robot anatomy lesson, though when you think about it, there ARE no robot girl parts. I hope.)

He furrowed his three-year-old brow and considered the robot: its pink head with springs for hair, its cranks for earrings, its breasts made of what look like buttons, its skirt and apron, its pink arms and legs. It also has red feet.

“Here,” he pointed. “This is the girl part.” He tapped the magazine with his plump little index finger.

“It’s the shoes.”

[technorati tags: Brain, Child, girl robot]

My children share a bizarre tendency to refuse to fall asleep at bedtime. They get ready for bed, they get sleepy, they get in bed. They do not fall asleep. Minutes go by. Hours. Maybe days. They do not fall asleep. They rub their eyes, toss and turn. They do not fall asleep. I do not know why.

Audrey has joined in the stay-awake-when-sleepy game over the last week or so. This is peculiar, as she’s always been a put-me-down-at-the-regular-time-and-I-fall-right-to-sleep kind of girl. But no. This week, we do our bedtime routine at the regular time, and then she spends the next hour halfheartedly fussing (but wholeheartedly NOT SLEEPING). Today it occurred to me that she’s six months old. I’m pretty darned sure that’s one of the seismic shift ages for sleep; don’t they sort of completely rearrange their sleep patterns at six months? I think maybe that’s normal. The other kids have no excuse.

I miss winter. In the winter it’s dark by dinner time, and I swear my kids are all asleep by 6:30. After a while I start wishing they would stay awake later so we could go out and do fun things in the evening. Yesterday we went to Barnes & Noble around five o’clock, though, and let me tell you, it is NOT FUN to do fun things in the evening. The kids are worn out by the time evening rolls around.

I must remember this in the winter. I must not envy my friends who can take their kids out to coffee houses after dark. Or at least I must not try to emulate them. I must store up extra sleep instead. I’m pretty sure that’s what my kids do—they hibernate. And hibernation season, it is a-coming. (And that is what I shall tell myself tonight at bedtime.)

Yesterday, Owen pulled out one of the tea sets (yes, we have more than one tea set). He took it to the kids’ little table, filled the teapot up with water, and proceeded to fill each cup. Except this particular teapot doesn’t quite pour straight, leaving the kid with a wet table/floor/lap every time, but no tea in the teacups.

He comes running to where I’m nursing the baby and whispers, “Mom! I spilled some tea!”

“No big deal,” I tell him. “Get a little towel and dry it up.”

So I put the baby down for a nap and come out to check on things. Owen has finished his tea time and moved on to trains in the next room. I think, Oh, I better make sure he put the wet tea towel in the laundry basket, because of course he didn’t, and if I don’t grab it RIGHT THIS MINUTE, I will forget forever and wind up with a mildewy kids’ table.

“I cleaned up!” Owen calls to me.

“Great,” I say, turning to examine the table. Where I find EVERY SINGLE hand towel that we own, working together to soak up three-quarters of an ounce of water. Excellent.

He clearly learned the paper towel lesson.

My, I’ve been a bit wordy the last few days, haven’t I? Well, some days are like that, I guess. Okay, all my days are like that. I just write a lot. Talk a lot, too, but you probably can’t hear me from where you are. And I can HEAR the couple of you muttering about how thankful you are that you CAN’T hear me. Just so you know.

Dane tells me my technorati tags are highly entertaining, which is good. If you’re going to be useless, you might as well be entertaining at the same time. I may just adopt that as a motto.

And now, back to your regularly-scheduled… life.

Last night, just as I was getting ready to put Audrey to bed, she spit up. Right down the back of my shirt, down my capris, and into my shoe. “Let’s wash this outfit tonight,” Dane suggested as he helpfully smooshed spit up between my toes with the cloth he was using to clean me off. Good plan, as I had already been wearing these clothes for 48 hours, and possibly they had begun emitting an interesting odor in their desire to be laundered.

But alas, it was not to be. Neither of us threw in another load of laundry after that, and this morning I was roused from bed by a sickening splash! Glug-glug-glug noise. I grabbed the nearest article of clothing (the aforementioned capris), kicked on my flip flops, and ran to the living room, where I discovered both children standing at the outskirts of a river of carrot juice flowing from a lidless extra-large sippy cup overturned on a couch cushion.

Seeing me, Abigail immediately runs for ONE paper towel and begins mopping; when she realizes it has fulfilled its paper towel calling in life, she turns to carry it dripping (flowing!) to the kitchen trash can. I grab a towel and try to mop around the perimeter of the spill, pushing the bulk of the liquid in to the center of the room, but I realize as I go that the splatter reaches FAR further than I had guessed. The clean laundry on the couch? Splattered. The tub of blocks on the far side of the room? Splattered. OWEN? Covered in splatter.

As I get close I note from the directionality of the juice stain on his jammies that Owen was most certainly at the epicenter of the splashdown. I pick him up and set him, fully clothed (er, jammied) in the bath tub. I tell him to undress and stay put, and, shockingly, he does exactly that. While he’s undressing, I toss the towel out onto the patio, gather the juice-speckled toys into the kitchen, and start frantically wet-swiffering the floor. I quickly realize that AT LEAST two separate passes will be necessary to get the orange sticky up. I move faster.

Owen begins pounding his feet against the shower floor, which makes a booming echo; I hiss for him to stop—Audrey is still asleep. Isn’t she? I peek in at her—eyes still shut. I turn back to the catastrophe, then wheel around again. WHY is Audrey still asleep? I check if her lips are blue. Nope. Healthy pink. Chest is still moving up and down; okay, we’re good. So she just chose an opportune morning to sleep in. Excellent. I bathe Owen and we start the carrot laundry rinsing. One crisis weathered, and it’s barely nine o’clock in the morning.

Only hours later, when Audrey leans over for the express purpose of spitting up in my lap, do I realize that I am still wearing the nasty three-day-old capris. And my pajama shirt.

We had a bit of an adventure here today. And not the kind where Owen says “Dad, can we take an adventure?” and he means go to the park. No, we had the OTHER kind of adventure, the kind with the squealing tires and the shrieking and the rending of clothes and the gnashing of teeth. THAT kind of adventure.

I was stretching out a pizza dough to bake for dinner when I glanced out the kitchen window. Hmm, what can I see? Lovely blue sky, little white butterfly, oh, and Owen, scaling the patio fence. He had been out there helping pick basil for the pizza, and stayed behind to inspect the herb garden for evil pillaging caterpillars. But now he was just going straight up the flat wooden gate (how?!). I ran to the back door, thinking I could grab him before—nope! Clink! I heard the gate unlatch just as I flung the screen door open.

“Abigail!” I cried, “Hold this dough!” She reached out her own mud-encrusted palms, but I thought the better of it; I ran after Owen, dough in hand.

I should mention that Owen has a thing about the street. And by ‘thing’ I mean an irresistible need to fling himself headlong into it. He’s not doing it for a reaction, I don’t think; he just seems compulsively drawn to the black asphalt and the dashed yellow line.

(At this point in the story, my real life friends Kelli, Tricia, and Sheila are all thinking, hey, yeah, I seem to remember him springing himself from the Sunday School room and bolting for the parking lot EVERY SINGLE WEEK for a while there. Yes, that was back when I could still catch him. Remember how fast I used to move? Either I’ve slowed down or he’s sped up.)

By the time I reach the gate, he’s almost to the street. I stop just outside our patio and call to him, because Owen’s the kind of kid who runs faster if he’s being chased. Actually I don’t know any kids who AREN’T like that.

I scream, “OWEN! THERE’S A CAR!” and miraculously he stops, teetering right on the edge of the lawn. “LOOK WHAT I HAVE!” I yell, holding up the mass of pizza dough. Again miraculously, he comes running back to me. Mental note: apparently raw yeasted dough has a stronger magnetic pull than asphalt.

When Dane gets home from work, I decide we should rehash the whole event as a helpful learning experience.

ME: Owen, we need to tell Daddy what happened with the gate.
OWEN (mournful face): It’s broken.
ME: No, what did you do with the gate?
OWEN (still mournful): I broke it.
ME: No, not broke. Did you CLIMB the gate?
OWEN (very sad): Yes, I climbed the gate, and IT BROKE.
ME: No, the gate’s fine. Did you OPEN the gate?
OWEN (no longer sad, just not sure why we’re telling Dane about it): Um, I opened the gate.
DANE: Was that SAFE?
OWEN: Noooooo!
DANE: Was it safe to run off?
OWEN: Noooooo!
DANE: Could you have been hurt?
OWEN: Noooooo!
DANE: Yes!
OWEN: Yeah?
DANE: Could a car have hurt you?
OWEN: Maybe bumped me.
DANE: And would that hurt?
OWEN: Nah.

(Now imagine the adults pantomiming a horrific car crash with injury in order to get their point across.)

I don’t think he ever believed us about the street, he still seems to think there’s something wrong with the gate, and I don’t think I’ll ever let him outside again.

FINAL SCORE
Preschooler: 2 (1 for the escape + 1 for the post-game show)
Parents: 0

Rematch tomorrow.

The August issue of the Mothers Movement Online is up this week, chock full of good stuff—including something from me! Exciting!

I heard today that two other pieces I sent away will be published at one of my favorite e-zines in October. Hooray! Dane brought me celebratory chocolate at lunchtime. (That’s why we close to where he works. Unscheduled chocolate.)

Not only am I not being paid to write, but we spend money on chocolate celebrating!

It’s a good thing I don’t do this “working” thing for a living. I don’t think I’ve quite worked out all the kinks yet.

Audrey has entered the world of the purposely mobile. Shocking but true. Okay, maybe not shocking—she’s almost six months old. But true nonetheless.

Last week I could lay her on a blanket; she might roll off, but wouldn’t get far. Now, nothing on the floor is safe. Through a series of rolls and forward scoots, the girl maneuvers her way to almost anywhere in the house.

I don’t actually know if she’s getting where she wants to go, since she doesn’t tell me where she’s headed before she takes off. But she’s always happy when she gets there; either she has terribly good body aim or she’s got one of those “eh, we’ll see where we are when we get there” travel philosophies. Which she would not have inherited from anyone around here.

Mostly she winds up with her face pressed against the mirrored closet doors. Apparently we’re not kissing her slobberishly enough, and she has to fill her own quota by applying wet affection to her own reflection.

I’m working on teaching the bigger kids to keep anything choke-worthy off the floor (or re-teaching, in Abigail’s case, though she never really got the hang of it the last time around, either). It mostly involves a lot of me explaining and them staring blankly at me. Clearly they wonder why anyone would ever want to put rocks, pennies, or dollhouse furniture in their mouths. I continue to assure them that she will. Then they run to play outside with me yelling, “Don’t step on the baby! She’s moved since the last time you ran through here!”

People keep saying, “Oh, she’ll move early; she’ll want to run after the big kids and join in the fun!”

I say, “Or she’ll want to run the other way.”

They always think I’m kidding.