The big questions

So, it's Memorial Day and I'm trying to keep S-phie reallybusy and distracted so that she won't think to ask me what Memorial Day is about. I find myself particularly ill-equipped at handling the big questions. Let me recount some illustrative situations that have occurred in the last year or so (format borrowed from our friends, the C-ccones):

S-phie notices the magnet on our fridge that has a picture of Bush w/duck tape over his mouth as a suggested homeland security measure:
S: Mama, why does the president have tape on his face?
Me: Umm . . . well, it's a joke. So that he won't say anything else bad that will hurt anyone.
S: But isn't that mean to put tape on his face?

J-sh arrives home on the day Cheney shot that guy and I am giddy w/glee. We are both beside ourselves, remarking how awesome it is, etc.
S-phie: Why are you happy that someone got shot?
Me: Well, we're not really happy, umm umm umm umm, it's hard to explain, it's a grownup thing umm umm umm. (My trusted friend Anna later admonished me that I really blew this one, that I should have just denied it altogether).

J-sh is reading S-phie a book about Native Americans and does not censor the parts that refer to God like I do.
S: God made everything.
J: Hmm . . . where did you learn that?
S: From Z. Everything, even the trees.
J: Well, that's what some people believe. People believe lots of different things about God. The Native Americans believed there were lots of Gods, called spirits.
S: That's what I believe!
J: Some people believe that there is one God, other people believe there are lots of Gods, and some people don't think there's any God at all.
S: Let's ask Woofie. (Woofie is my dad, who is perhaps the least spiritual person on the planet).

Seems like you only hear about parents fearing questions about where babies come from. But that's so straightforward, it's just a science thing, no interpretation required. I'd take sex questions over socio-political and religious ones any day. Luckily, it's noon and she still hasn't asked about Memorial Day.

Found the cord to my digital camera!!!!!

Happy Day. I finally found the patch cord to my (admittedly shitty) digital camera. Now I can upload the old pics and take new ones. The cord was under the desk in our "study" (more on this later).

H-nry and C-rina's b-day party (H-nry is beholding his beloved cupcake):




S-phie at her recent dance recital:


Maximum cuteness:

If you love something, set if free

if it comes back to you, it's yours, if not, it never was. Remember those cheesy posters in the 70's sporting this quote and a photo of birds or some other symbol of freedom? Well, I've learned the painful truth of those propehtic words.

In the last month, I weaned C-rina and H-nry. I thought I might be an "extended nurser", or EN as it's known on the www. I just thought I might want to hang onto my babies for as long as possible, since there will be no more of them, barring a miracle (read: winning the lotto). And while I do hate seeing their babyhood slip away, continuing to nurse wasn't getting it for me. I was just tired of it and H-nry was using his many teeth for ill-advised chomping at the boob. I had figured that it would be really hard to wean H-nry, as he had been a diehard nurser, refusing the bottle and all. And when I cut out the after-work nursing session, he really did hate me for it. He would just look at me and cry, like "why are you betraying me like this?" But after a few days, he was over it. All of his short life he had been the biggest mama's boy, and as I said, a nursing fanatic. I sometimes worried he only loved me for the boob, but I convinced myself that it was more than that. Well, it wasn't. Now that he's weaned, he's his own man. No more hours of snuggling, which I now realize was just his way of buttering me up for a gratuitous nursing session (or two). He's on the go and got no use for his old ma. It hurts to know that he only loved me for the milk, and that he was using me all those months. What a crafty little bastard. Oh well, at least the co-dependence has been unmasked and we've both moved on. C-rina, being a more honest baby, never used me for milk and now is my snuggly mama's baby, for better or worse.

On the farm (what does not kill us makes us stronger)

S-phie went on a field trip recently to Spence's Farm in Chapel Hill. They got to learn all about the animals and got to take eggs from the hen, and S-phie was so excited, telling us that they were still warm and that she didn't break them. But the biggest excitement was that she rode a horse. She was terrified and apparently was not going to do it at first, but then at the last minute she decided to do it. I wasn't there, but got reports from my spies. She was so proud of herself when I picked her up. And I love these pictures - she looks so pensive in the first two and so utterly thrilled and proud in the last one that I can't stop looking at it. Tears.

Low expectations

This made me feel better about the whole mold and maggot thing.

Golf balls

Last week my husband was out of town and I was flying solo w/my three for a couple of days. I go into supermom mode when he's away and clean more than usual, perhaps just to show him up in some twisted way. Anyway, I actually cleaned the high chairs.

Let me just issue a caveat here: I am a disgusting slob. And I look like Mrs. Clean compared to J-sh. Before blogs I wanted to have a 'zine called "dysfunctional living." Every month it would have a centerfold picture of the worst mess in my house that month. Never got around to it.

Anyway, H-nry's high chair is a Peg Perego Prima Pappa that we inherited from some people we barely knew in Brooklyn. For those of you low-rent MF's out there, let me enlighten you: the Prima Pappa [hereinafter "PP"] is the fanciest (i.e. expensive) high chair on the market. Apparently, people find its look less offensive than gaudier, less expensive alternatives, like perhaps a tacky Americana one from, God-forbid, Graco. Maybe Italian babies are cleaner than mine, or maybe fashion rules over function in Italy and in the lives of Stateside PP parents, but IMO, this highchair is a complete piece of shit. And not in the normal POS way - it has millions of unimaginable crevices and grooves which seem to serve no purpose other than for food to get stuck in. So put this in our house and what do you get? a) maggots? or b) mold? Answer: both. Although, to our credit, not at the same time (yet).

When S-phie was a baby, we had a fruit fly problem. It sucked because we had to really really really clean the whole house. But the fruit flies remained. We were stumped. Finally, I traced their flight paths back to the high chair. But it was spotless. Still, my observations revealed that they definitely came from the high chair. Further investigation, which involved using a screwdriver to unscrew little plates in the seat of the chair, revealed pits of teeming maggots in these little compartments under the screwed-in plates. I told you this highchair is a fucking nightmare. And do rest assured that the maggots were one of my all-time parenting lowpoints. But I blame the PP. We moved S-phie to a booster seat w/no maggot pits.

Hating the PP with a passion, I would have gotten rid of it, but instead I lent the evil chair to Ben, of the Trixie Update (now I know how to do links). I had bleached the whole thing several times, so only told him about the maggot incident after they were done using it. I would not have taken it back at all, except I was pg with twins and it just didn't seem practical to buy 2 new highchairs. But being no fool, this time I made sure to periodically lift the seat cover and dump a little bleach into the maggot pits and to clean around them. However, last week when I was in my extreme cleaning mode, I took the whole seat cover off (extreme, I know) and this time, in the back of the seat (the maggot pits are near the front), where the straps go through the seat cover, there were two balls of mold, each the size of a golf ball.

Which got me to thinking. You know how sometimes you think, why must there be roaches in the world? Or posion ivy? Or maggots? What purpose do they serve? And then you realize it's some bigger picture, food chain type of thing and let it go. Well, I feel that way about golf. That it's just weird and annoying and serves no purpose. But when I saw the golfball-sized mold balls, I had an epiphany: the golfball is a critical measurement tool. Golfball-sized hail, a tumor the size of a golf ball, or mold like a golf ball. A ping-pong ball is the same size, I suppose, but ping pong is wimpy, as are the balls, that can be crushed between our spindly fingers, rather than inflicting serious injury like the mighty golfball. This revelation, which has helped me make peace with golf and its representativies, really made me feel better about the whole mold thing. And, I thought, at least there weren't golfballs of maggots. I'm getting better at parenting.

The three I've got

S-phie pretending to be Velma (of Scooby Doo fame)

C-rina (left/stage right) and H-nry (right/stage left)

What the hell am I doing with a blog?

Only time can answer that question. Blogs are weird and narcissistic. But totally addictive, perhaps b/c of the voyeurism factor. Anyway, I was surfing links to mama blogs from my friend Ben's uber-blog, the trixie update. (Okay, a person who doesn't even know how to insert a link-y thing has no bizness having a blog, but maybe I can learn some new tricks). And then I wanted one of my own. My kids are cute too!

Speaking of which, let me say that I named my blog overpopulator because I am a crazed breeder (and b/c of the ubiquity of blogs). I'm a Mormon or Catholic or some other brand of fundamentalist religious fanatic procreator trapped in an atheist's body. I have three kids already - count 'em, one, two, three - as in three strikes you're out. But I don't want to be out, I want to bat again. That is to say that I have found myself having the strangest and strongest urges for yet another baby. My older daughter, S-phie, will turn 5 this summer. My twins, H-nry and C-rina, just turned one. We are totally overwhelmed in every way by having 3 kids. And yet I have the baby bug. WTF? Could it just be that with S-phie getting ready to start Kindergarten this summer and with the twins having just turned one that I'm feeling the empty nest? Maybe it's all just a silly daydream, fueled by my knowledge that another baby is not going to happen, and that maybe I wouldn't even want it if I could have it. Kind of like when I was a teenager and would plan my wedding to Roger Daltry (ick!) or David Lee Roth (ick but not as icky as Roger, I don't think - such different kinds of ick - apple ick and orange ick). If my husband J-sh finds out about this (the baby bug, not Roger and David), he will freak out. I even found myself thinking recently that all that was holding me back from another baby was that ever-elusive fortune and that I would put out a personal ad:

MWF w/3 kids seeks person of means to support child-bearing extravaganza. I am over-educated and overweight, but on a diet. Seeking patron or partner to support old-lady-who-lived-in-a-shoe wannabe and her brood; will divorce for the right $.

I think I should sleep on that one. Could this be delayed post-partum psychosis???