A couple of weeks ago, we ran out of dishwasher detergent. (Stick with me, I’m going somewhere with this.) We didn’t realize we were out until we were about to go to bed, which is when we usually turn the dishwasher on.

No problem, I insisted, we can use a half borax/half baking soda solution! It’s environmentally friendly and cheap! And easier than going to the drugstore in the middle of the night!

So Dane mixed the stuff up and ran the machine. It worked… okay. The dishes weren’t especially clean, but they weren’t especially dirty, and it was only a one-time solution, so… that’ll do!

Except we forgot to buy more the next day, because we’re like that. So, midnight-ish rolls around, we go to start the dishwasher again, and… drat. We decided to go with the weird borax/baking soda mixture again.

I think it took us three days to get to the store and ALSO bring home dishwasher detergent. Apparently you have to both go to the store AND buy the product if you want to use it. Who knew?

At any rate, by that time, there was a weird mineral deposit on all our dishes. All of them. Every one. Coated in some hardened combination of borax and baking soda.

Let me just say: If you write an environmentally-friendly-tip website, and you recommend that I try some new cleaning product or method, I’m going to need you to spell out all the interesting little side effects from now on, okay? OKAY? Thanks.

Dane bought a multi-gallon bottle of vinegar, I soaked and scrubbed the hardened minerals off our cereal bowls, and all was right with the world again. Or at least with the dishes, which is pretty much all I thought we could reasonably hope for.

Except! The mineral deposit is, ever so slowly, reappearing on a select few dishes. Mostly bowls and silverware. I scrubbed it off again today.

Let me just repeat: If you feel the need to offer environmentally-friendly household tips to unsuspecting and lazy people over the internet, DO go ahead and tell them that their dishes will be forever altered. Because if you keep that information to yourself, they may not only cease to trust your recommendations, they may decide to go out and buy the least-biodegradable dishwasher detergent they can find, just to spite you. (All right, all right, I didn’t; I stuck with $18 a box safe-and-natural stuff, but I’m just saying. It could happen. And no, it doesn’t really cost $18 a box.) Thanks.

In case you didn’t already know, I rock. Purplepassion says so. And this entitles me to flaunt that pink icon there, which I must also share with five of you. Only five! And you ALL rock. What’s a rockin’ girl blogger to do? Pick randomly and then feel guilty, that’s what. So here’s who’s rockin’ today (but really, all of you! all of you deserve one of these!):

A Mommy With an Attitude
Mama C-ta
My Life in a Foster Care Space Warp
The Spice Choir
Of Making Many Books

I have been trying to comment on blogs more lately, but you know what? It’s harder than it looks.

I mean, you have to type in the comment without your toddler adding helpful bits (“g2si4ng^(*kg>fl”), you have to convince Blogger of your identity, and then you have to overcome the password thingy. All of which is difficult enough. But then there’s the matter of writing a witty comment that someone will not be embarrassed to have in their inbox and also that will not cause anyone to think I’m an idiot.

I do not mostly succeed.

I leave a lot of “Yay you!” and “Cute baby!” and “Ha, you’re funny!” and not a lot else.

I understand that I’m being ridiculous; I don’t suppose anyone’s really judging my character by the content of comments I leave on a blog. But they might be…

So I’m working on it. Maybe I’ll leave myself some practice comments below.

All right, well, it’s official: my hair has turned to crap again. I blame my friend Andrea, who clearly heralded its demise by pointing out how long it is. This, in turn, caused me to reflect on when I last had it cut, which, I am sure, led directly to its becoming suddenly and uncontrollably puffy and frizzy, with weird curliness around my ears. There is no hope. I will have to cut it.

But actually GETTING the haircut seems like such a drain on the emotional resources, what with the calling to schedule and the figuring out when I can go, not to mention the actually showing up and having it cut and then deciding whether to buy the product that will make my everyday hair somewhat resemble the hair I walk out of the salon with.

Andrea suggested I just have Dane cut it. I choked and spluttered and ultimately laughed, but will not be attempting that particular solution. Dane is talented at a great many things, but if cutting my hair is one of them, we are unlikely ever to discover it.

No, a haircut it will have to be. Once I psych myself up for it. You know, like in 2009.

I’ve read several blog posts lately about how having a second baby will be so much easier than having the first one. These do not tend to be written by folks with a newly-arrived second baby.

I suspect how “easy” one finds the experience depends in large part on the personalities of the kids and parents in question, but let me just say: I did not find it to be a walk in the park on a breezy spring day.

Yes, some things are easier. You may have some certainty that your child will not stop breathing just because you stop looking at her. You’re proficient with the diapers, the feeding mechanisms, the snaps and zips and other obnoxious fasteners on the tiny baby clothes. You’re far less likely to rush baby number two to the emergency room for a runny nose. You probably also have realistic expectations that the baby will not be a baby—with the broken sleep and the constant eating and whatnot—forever.

You’ve maybe figured out the parenting thing a bit. We had some general guidelines worked out. Our priority list went something like this: Take care of needs before wants, youngers before olders. Except the two-year-old seemed to miss the memo; she wasn’t cool with us tending to the baby when she needed something, too. And the two of them tended to need something (anything!) at the same moment about ninety-four times a day.

We knew how to parent a baby; it turned out we knew somewhat less about how to parent a toddler/preschooler who had suddenly become an older sibling.

Adding a third, though, was no big deal. There was some of that same “we both need something urgently” business, but not as much, both because their personalities are different and because there was a five-year-old to distract one of them while I helped the other. And we knew it would pass; we had more perspective.

Now, how a newborn and an eighteen-month-old coexist, I have no idea whatsoever. Feel free to enlighten me. But I will warn you right now: if you insist that it’s easy, I reserve the right to not believe you. Or to throw rotten tomatoes at your comment, unless perhaps you are very, very persuasive.

I feel like I’ve been eating terribly lately. Frozen burritos, frozen pizza… frozen anything, really. The kids are still eating their regular stuff; they’re willing to believe that convenience food is “grownup food.” (This may not be the wisest lesson I could impart, but I suspect they’re going to eat what they like when they’re grown regardless of what I suggest.)

So today, when I cringingly admitted to scarfing down these not-made-by-me entrees, my midwife said something along the lines of, “Yeah… I have no problem with that.” Oh. Really? I can just eat the burrito and get on with my day, no need to obsess over whether I ought to have tried harder to gag down the whole-wheat spaghetti?

Because at the moment, there are entire categories of foods I can not be in the same room with, and I still somehow have to get enough calories in a day. So maybe I ought to ditch the guilt over the white-flour noodles, and just be thankful for Amy’s macaroni and cheese. It’s a thought, anyway.

Heaven help us.

The library summer reading program started today. Since it was so fabulous last year, we thought we’d get in on the action right away. (And yes, thank you, I did just link to four separate posts about the library. Four.)

Abigail and Owen signed up and gave their first book reports; Audrey was furious that she didn’t get any prizes.

Any guesses how long until I wish we’d never heard of summer reading programs?

My family is from New England, Dane’s is from the Midwest. Which prompted him to send me this story, along with the following message:

“You’ve got Plymouth Rock. This is the heritage I bring to our children: a Plymouth Belvedere.”

Happy Father’s Day, Dane, for all you bring and all you are.

Leslie Bennetts’ The Feminine Mistake arrived on my doorstep this week, and it’s been eyeing me warily ever since. It’s not quite at the top of my reading queue yet, though, so it will have to just keep up its anxious wait.

It arrived very fortuitously—the mail carrier left in on the step instead of in the mailbox (even though I was at home…), so when a door-to-door salesperson knocked, I discovered the package. I will admit to possibly ignoring the salesfellow in favor of the book, which he may not have particularly appreciated.

He was from the phone company, trying to sell me some new! fiberoptic! services! and asked whether I still had phone service through his company (what, he doesn’t know?).

“Hmm? Sure,” I said, turning the book package over in my hands.

“And do we provide your high-speed computer access?”

“The DSL?” I asked. “Um, yeah.” As I wondered what I was expecting from Harper Collins, and whether I had to wait until he left to open it.

“And who provides your cable service?”

“What? Oh, we don’t have cable,” I said, finally looking up at him.

“No cable? At all?” Possibly he didn’t believe me.

“Nope.”

“Oh, well, our new fiberoptic service bundles internet access and cable services, so… you’re probably not interested,” he decided for me.

“Okay, thanks,” I said, closing the door. And he didn’t even try to sell me cable. I need to order more packages.

And now, for a break from our regularly-scheduled “what I did today” blog posts in favor of a brief rant on the topic of discipline! Because… why not? Also because MotherTalk is having a Blog Bonanza on the topic, and I apparently just can’t resist.

We lean very much toward attachment/intuitive/natural parenting (pick your own adjective!), but lots of attachment-friendly discipline books suggest that if your child is just attached enough, you won’t have any real discipline issues. The “when they feel right, they act right” mantra is repeated indefinitely, and sometimes—especially, say, when your kid is under two, maybe under three—it’s true.

But with my kids, and a great many other kids we know, there comes a point where they would just prefer not to behave “appropriately.” Not because they’re tired or hungry or even rebellious; they just figure out that sometimes, what they want to do is more fun than what I want them to do. And a great number of those Expert Parenting Books would have me believe that the problem lies in my relationship with my child, not in the fact that coloring on the walls is simply an enjoyable activity, even given Mom’s disapproval.

Luckily those same parenting books (along with relevant life experience) taught me to also know my child, so I can tell with some (admittedly imperfect) degree of accuracy, what their motivation is. Because if I wasn’t sure, the suggestion that they “didn’t feel right” would lead me in absolutely the wrong direction.

Yes, sometimes behavior is about an underlying physical issue: hunger, illness, exhaustion. Sometimes it’s about an emotional issue: insecurity, fear, anger. And sometimes, sometimes it’s more fun to spray your sister with the hose than to take turns watering the zucchini, is all I’m saying, and it doesn’t need to be overanalyzed.