Some of you may have noticed that we’re at the end of the school year, which means, of all things, new Sunday School classes for my kids. They switched to their new rooms with new teachers this last week, and we’ve been hearing about Abigail’s class ever since. (Change is not her favorite thing, let’s just say.)

Today she was telling me how they played a game involving some kind of cards laid flat on the table. “And the teacher was going to turn them over,” she explained, “but there was to be no cheating. And she said it like this: NO CHEATING.”

I laughed, wondering why their brand-new teacher felt the need to lay down the law with the half dozen easy-going seven-year-olds. “I’m sure you wouldn’t cheat,” I said.

“No, but Joey would,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Why would you say that?” I asked.

“Because I saw him. He tried to peek under the cards as soon as the teacher laid them down.”

Oh. Okay. Well that there’s a good reason, I suppose.

(And yes, I changed that name to protect the somewhat-innocent. Now I just hope there isn’t a kid named Joey in the class.)

ME: [typing]

ME: [typing]

ME: [not so much typing anymore]

ME: [wandering off, returning to computer, still not typing]

ME [to Dane]: This is how you can tell I’m in the middle of writing something.

DANE: Are you cleaning the keyboard? With… q-tips?

ME: It was dusty.

DANE: Sigh. [by which I suspect he means: Get back to work or get off the computer! Please!]

Some friends of ours stopped by to play last week. Owen doted on the almost-two-year-old girl, following her around and trying to get her to play; he also insisted on calling her by the wrong name the whole time she was here, despite our attempts to correct him. (The other mommy said nice things like, “Well, actually Owen, we prefer to call her by her name; no one calls her [that other name], so she maybe doesn’t know you’re talking to her…” I tried the direct method: “Owen? Let’s use her name! Not [that other name]!” He would smile and nod and ignore us.)

And since then, he has come up to me no less than eleventy billion times to say, very politely, not a hint of whine in his voice, “I’m bored. I’d like those friends to come back now.” Occasionally he’ll interject into conversations: “You know, those friends can come back any time they want to. I’ll even play with them if I’m wearing my pajamas. I don’t mind.” I finally suggested he just watch out the window in case they walked past. And he did, though they did not miraculously appear.

He’s even using the right names when he asks for them now, though I might be more appreciative of that fact if he’d stop asking for maybe five minutes in a row. Possibly. I can’t decide if I ought to arrange a play date right away, or if that will just get him started all over again: “Bye guys! That was fun! When can they come back? Can they come now? How about now? Okay, now?”

I’ve been reading Writing Down the Bones this week. I wasn’t really loving it at first; I felt like Goldberg was telling me what to do, and I don’t especially like being told what to do (to which my mother, among others, can surely attest). Then Heather mentioned that she really likes it, so I started reading a little more closely. Apparently you can’t tell me what to do, but I’m highly influence-able.

I didn’t end up changing my opinion of the book, though, just changed how I read it, so I guess maybe I can hold on to that notion that I have my own mind after all. Maybe.

At any rate, I realized that Writing Motherhood is really Writing Down the Bones for the mother-writer set, but with more (and more specific) writing prompts. In case you were needing a pithy little encapsulation of a book I talked about weeks ago. (Well, in case you needed that AND you’ve read Writing Down the Bones; if not, my clever little description probably doesn’t do much for you.)

All right, I’ll go ahead and admit it: Today I am officially uncomfortable, and not only because I’m drinking a nasty iron-and-supplemental-mineral drink. I’ve been unofficially uncomfortable for at least a week now, but since that mostly involved waking up with sore hips (side sleeping is not my friend) and having a mildly sore back by the end of the day, I thought I’d hold off on the whining a little while longer. No more!

I seem not to fit in my own skin, quite suddenly. There is itching and stretching, not to mention the heartburn and all manner of sore muscle. Yeesh. And it does not get more comfortable from here, if memory serves.

So what did we do today, given my current level of whininess? Er, that is, discomfort? We went to IKEA. Because it’s sale time, and we need more stuff.

Actually, we did need more stuff: cheap bookshelves and dishes. Apparently we weren’t the only ones; we bought the last bookshelf in stock. We’re just desperately hoping it’s not damaged (or at least not too obviously damaged). They weren’t yet sold out of dishes, but there’s always tomorrow.

We ditched our plastic kids’ dishes after I read the Complete Organic Pregnancy (which I should really write about sometime… but not now) and bought them stoneware (read: sort of sturdy glass, but cheap from IKEA because we assumed breakage to be inevitable).

The bigger kids do just fine with glass, but on those occasions when Audrey gets a hold of a plate, look out. We started with a dozen each of plates, bowls, and… bigger bowls (pasta bowls?). We were down to three bowls and about a half a dozen each of the others. What do anti-plastic people put food in for toddlers? What? TELL ME! Please!

At any rate, we’re stocked up again. At least they cost under $2 apiece. Thank you, IKEA. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to talk Dane into both assembling a cheap bookshelf and massaging my lower back before he falls asleep. Good times.

I suspect you’re dying to hear more about Dane’s birthday, so let me fill you in!

The house turned out to be just regular-messy by the time he got home. We had a lovely dinner involving everyone eating approximately the same food at the same time and in the same place (you might think such a thing happens daily around here, but you’d be overestimating us). The ice cream/sorbet thingy turned out… well, it turned out. Let’s stop there. Dane and Owen liked it, Abigail and I were not overwhelmed with delight. (It was very banana-ish and very cocoa-ish. We’re going to make another batch this weekend, with more sugar or less banana. Or maybe both. I’ll let you know how it goes.)

And then we all stayed up long past our bedtimes, reading and chatting and whatnot. All in all, not a bad way to spend a weekday evening. And he didn’t even get anyone fired, which is more than we can say for some people on their birthdays.

Today is Dane’s birthday. We’re doing terribly exciting birthday things, like going in to work early (just Dane) and trying to hit our sisters with wooden toys (just Owen, and I’m not actually sure it’s related to the birthday).

The kids and I are making dairy-free, soy-free ice cream, because… why not? We’ve never made ice cream before, and the kids have allergies, so we have to substitute half the ingredients, but it should be fabulous! Right? Right?! Or at least it should be noisy, as there’s a machine involved.

There’s also a fair amount of kid-powered crafting going on, which probably means Dane will come home to a very, very messy house. Because nothing says Happy birthday! like paper scraps and drips of sugary almond milk. Poor guy.

One-year-olds leave quite a lot of foodstuffs on the floor. I don’t even remember feeding her this much stuff today.

Why is it that by the time all the children are in bed, I’m too exhausted to do any of the things I was waiting until they were in bed to do? This seems to be rather a flawed system, does it not?

I’ve been playing around with Nymbler, which will purportedly generate baby names you like. So far, not so much.

I told it I like my kids’ names, and it indicated that I’d probably like to name my baby Carmel, Lorraine, or Ashlyn. Or perhaps Isabelle.

When I add in some of our current name contenders, it suggests Archibald, Jemima, or Carl. Or perhaps Isabel.

Can’t say they aren’t trying, I suppose.

Our computer is trying to drive us crazy. It starts up okay, then slows down the longer it’s on. After a while you can click the firefox button then go brew yourself a cup of tea while you wait for the program to open. Eventually some of the programs stop responding; occasionally the computer crashes entirely.

It doesn’t seem to be a virus or a software problem; Dane’s thinking some piece of hardware is slowly dying. But which one? It’s our own little game of Clue. The motherboard, in the library, with the candlestick! No, the video card, in the kitchen, with the revolver!

On the one hand, this is very annoying. I like to turn on the computer, open a bunch of articles and blogs and whatnot, and read them when I have a minute to spare throughout the morning. On the other hand, it’s kind of nice—only turn on the computer when I have a specific task to do, then turn the thing off. As though I’m in charge of the computer, instead of the other way round! Imagine!

And now I must check my email before the big slowdown begins again. Cheers!