6:45: Wake to sounds of husband in the shower
Cedar crawls in bed with me. I feel mauled by a grizzly bear by the time she’s finished wallowing on me.
Make coffee. Kiss husband. Wave good-bye from the window with naked 2-year old by my side. Norah wanders in. Grumpy. Much like me in the mornings, this one.
Cancel my 10am playdate. Bummed about it but I have some sniffles starting and I don’t want to spread them. We were supposed to make homemade hair conditioner.
Breakfasts consumed by two small children over the next three hours (4 boiled eggs, two blueberry pancakes, 1 orange, 2 peaches, 4 spoons of peanut butter, 1 piece of toast, 1 chunk of cheese, 1 yogurt). Yes, really.
3 cups of coffee and a secret cupcake consumed by me.
Sounds of Elizabeth Mitchell on Pandora.
Save Cedar from a puppy attack. Clean up puppy mess. Find a library book shredded by puppy. Put puppy in crate.
Shower. It is a good day. And I have new soap.
While in shower, Cedar brings me her diaper. She has removed it. It contains poop. I try to lure her to the shower so I can clean her butt.
Learning with Norah: She reads to me. I read to her. We read about amazing heroines of the American War. Turns out that while Paul Revere rode 16 miles, a sixteen year old girl rode 40 miles at night. In the rain. Where is her poem? Ahem. (Oh wait! I found one!)
Back to learning. I drink coffee while she does addition with coffee beans. She reviews her timeline cards and we giggle over pronunciation of “Hammurabi,” “Amenhotep” and “Tutankhamun.”
We break so Norah can play with My Little Ponies.
I clean up potty messes made by both Cedar and puppy. Answer work emails. A friend wants to know about natural birth of twins. A woman tries to decide between VBAC at the hospital or at home. A lactation question. A contract confirmed. A private class arranged.
Norah and I worked on memorizing “The Bones Song.” It is so much fun to sing. Our motivation is to sing it for Aunt Noelle in December. The skeleton Dr. Stafford loaned us has been a fantastic visual aid.
Lunch. A triumph and a fail. Triumph: I finally convinced one of my children to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Thank you Cedar for branching out. Fail: Norah wanted a lettuce and plain wheat bread sandwich. Which she didn’t eat. She ended up with celery and peanut butter.
Cedar napped. Norah worked/played on her computer. I ate lunch and read a book. (I will be happy to finish this book 5 from Game of Thrones. Madness. Should have never started the hefty series. But I must finish. How many thousands of pages have I read?)
Phone call from a client with maternity leave ending. Daycare looming Monday. Anxieties. I push the girls on the backyard swings so I can talk without fighting in the background.
The 5 year old yells “stupid phone call. I hate your phone.” Um, it was the only phone call all day. Time for physical play! With much dread, I dress them in old underwear and we walk to the neighbors’ backyard renovation project. I unleash them with cookie cutters and buckets in a giant mudbath. My neighbor and I (and baby Elisha) talk about slings and wool diapers while my children make mud angels.
****Pictures deleted because creepy people keep searching “children playing in the mud naked.” Um, gross!****
Hose children. Bathe children. Fill and empty tub three times to get rid of mud. The girls use all my new soap.
Pack children and drive to my parent’s house. Time it perfectly for uninvited dinner. While eating, Cedar has an allergic reaction to either red pepper or tilapia. Swollen lips, red bumpy cheek (“it hurts, mama!”), sneezing, coughing. For a couple of hours. Norah entertains with a magic show involving a hat and the requirement that we all close our eyes each time she needs to make something disappear.
We look at constellations using an iPad app.
On the way back home, we listen to the unabridged Anne of Green Gables on CD. Norah asks “what is the depths of despair?” Oh child. My mind races to events that will take her there someday. I hold back tears as we continue to listen to Marilla Cuthbert and Anne Shirley with an “e” talk of what tomorrow might hold.
I feed bedtime snacks of yogurt. I risk giving Cedar some Benadryl. She’s still reacting to the pesky food. Benadryl usually causes her to go hyper-wild. Do I risk it? She seems pretty tired. I risk it. Put Cedar to bed. Norah to bed. Craving salt, I sit down with bean sprouts and tamari sauce. Bam! Cedar fell out of bed. Put child back in bed.
Talk briefly with my husband before he puts a kayak into the ocean at night. Turn on his Pandora station, “GruzFrahBah”.
Search for the perfect poem for a friend’s blessingway tomorrow. Settle on this one.
Play on Pinterest.
I fret over my poor neglected blog and decide to blog something. But what?
It is 1am as I finish this post. And I gasp as I remember that Norah still has red mud in her scalp and we have to leave at 8:30 in the morning for her science lab. Shoot.
Run my mind over all the events and expectations of tomorrow. It is going to be a doozy.
She notices everything. What type of cars people drive, if portions are not equally distributed, clothing her friends wear, facial expressions, verbal nuances, when the grass needs to be cut, the dust on the ceiling fans, the neighbors’ comings and goings. The exact details of a yellow jacket.
Inexplicable Ways 