Moved

Well, I've made the jump to Word Press. I'm still trying to figure it all out and get things up and running, so please bear with me. You can find me here: www.kristinsfourkids.wordpress.com.
Please change your readers to reflect the new blog address and come visit.

Stream of Consciousness

Two of my four kids do not eat cereal with milk. It boggles the mind, as Doug and I both grew up eating cereal with milk. Granted, we didn't grow up eating the SAME kinds of cereal. I ate Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Raisin Bran~you know, the "good for you" cereals, while Doug ate things like Froot Loops, Sugar Smacks, etc. Annie and Izzie love their bowls of Cheerios or Kix with milk. The other two, well they're content to eat dry cereal. Weird.

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My kids call me Moomie (or Moomers). I really have no idea why, but it's stuck. Izzie is currently standing next to me singing "Moomie" to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle". Kids. They're strange.

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Did you know that Thanksgiving is two weeks from today? My kids have no school for the entire Thanksgiving week. I'm pretty sure that someone's head will roll for that scheduling plan. I keep saying that I'm going to start writing down my Thanksgiving meal plan so I can start purchasing what I need, but as of today that hasn't happened. I'm not even sure how many people are coming to my house Thanksgiving Day for dinner.  I do know that I may be trying The Pioneer Woman's Green Bean Casserole though because that is MY favorite dish and her modern version looks delish. Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving dish?

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I tend to pick an author and read every single thing that he or she has written. Case in point-Kathy Reichs. She created Temperance Brennan, which the tv series Bones is based upon. I purchased the first 10 books and plowed through them in record time (obsess much?) before I reigned in my spending and got the other books via inter-library loan. The latest book is waiting for me to pick up tomorrow and I'm
ridiculously excited. Sometimes I pick an author to read and then get stuck with my choices. Take Isabel Allende for instance. I found her in college by shelving one of her books while I was working at the library, checked it out and fell in love. But then a couple of her books were really slow moving and I lost interest. Those books sit on my bookshelf, taunting me because they were the books I just couldn't finish.

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Current debate in our house~what to get the kids for Christmas when they already have so much stuff that they don't appreciate/play with/take care of. Of course since all four of them have birthdays in the 30 or so days following Christmas (yes, I know, I didn't plan that well AT ALL) we need to consider that when we purchase Christmas gifts. We are leaning toward giving a "family gift" plus their stockings and calling it good. They have grandparents and aunts/uncles who give them awesome gifts too so maybe the less-is-more approach is the way to do it. We've always gone a bit overboard I think with our gift giving for the kids, so taming it will be a) good and b) difficult. How do you handle things in your house? Do you give lots of gifts, or a big gift and some smaller items?

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I spent the day a couple of Saturdays ago with two really great friends, laughing, eating, scrapbooking. The day flew by, as good days always do. I realized when I headed home that night that I need more days like that~more days with friends who make me laugh, more days to just sit and be ME, more days to relax and have fun instead of running here and there. We realized that it had been almost a year since the three of us sat down together and vowed that we wouldn't let it go that long again. That's a vow I intend to keep.

November

Where the heck did October go? It's November 5th already! Yikes. I thought I'd just do some photos of what we've been up to in the last few weeks.

Busy is as busy does

Life here has been busy. I remember rejoicing at all the free time I'd gain when the girls started preschool, but that hasn't materialized much. I've been so swamped that I'm taking next week off from school volunteering, appointments and such and taking 6 much needed hours to myself to regroup.

Drew started soccer for the first time through our district's recreation department. He LOVES it. Turns out he's a bit of a natural at it. Natural like scoring 7 goals in his game Saturday while neither Doug nor I were there to see it! Yikes. He has boundless energy so soccer is a good fit because quite frankly, the boy can't sit still and running around for an hour somewhere other than inside my house is good for him.  He is really enjoying kindergarten. His class if full of little blond boys with crew cuts like his and it's pretty funny to look at. I'm anxious to hear what his teacher says at his conference next week. I've volunteered in his class twice and chaperoned the field trip to make fairy houses and to me, he's taken to school quite well.

 

Doug and I are sharing director duties for our hockey organization.  We're in charge of over 100 kids and their placement in the program. We're also in charge of the coaches and their certifications. The last couple of weeks have been non-stop hockey preparation. There are currently 7 boxes of hockey jerseys courtesy of Tim Horton's in my living room. Our season opened this past weekend and while it was an enormous amount of work we were both pleased with how well it all went off. Meg helped out on the ice for Drew's hockey session and she surprised us with how well she was skating. I'm looking forward to seeing her on the ice with her team Friday night at her first practice of the season.

Speaking of Meg, she is loving 4th grade so far. We have her school conference today and I'm anxious to hear what her teacher has to say. She is in a reading class separate from her regular class with kids at her own reading level and she's enjoying that. She is taking keyboard lessons again and despite not much playing over the summer has really improved. I look at her and am amazed at how grown up she is getting. Literally and figuratively. She's almost 5 feet tall! She wears my sneakers! What's next, my clothes?

Annie and Izzie are loving preschool. They have a couple of friends that they spend lots of time with and love doing their art projects. We knew they'd love it there after spending 3 years shuttling Drew there. There have been no tears at drop off and while they have a great time they're quite excited to see me when I return to pick them up. We're taking a field trip to the farm across the street from Meg's school tomorrow and that is always fun. 

I've been spending more time in my car than I can remember since we moved here. My dad fell and broke his arm (which if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you are already aware) and despite surgery to put an 8 inch plate and screws in his arm is doing quite well. He started physical therapy last week and is improving daily. I'm frustrated that I can't help my parents out more even though I only live 20 minutes away. I can't imagine how my brother feels as he lives in Massachusetts. My in-laws are angels and are taking my dad to and from his appointments this week so that my mom can work.

So that's where I've been. What about you?

The One Where I Got a Brazilian

(Get yer dirty minds out of the gutter. Like I would EVER tell ANYONE if I got a Brazilian)

This past weekend was Doug's 18th anniversary of his 21st birthday (i.e. he's older than me!) AND our 12th wedding anniversary, so we decided, being such romantics at heart, to combine the events and go out to dinner. I had to find us a babysitter since all three of ours had the nerve to go to college, but we found an old babysitter of ours (love Facebook) and she came to watch the kids so we could go out.

We pretty much stick to what we know and go to the same places for our anniversary~our favorite pizza place, our favorite fancy restaurant~so this year we looked for something different. A colleague of Doug's mentioned that he went to this new steakhouse on the waterfront in Portland. He said it was a fixed price dinner, all you can eat, and that he loved it. So, we decided to try it out.

Gauchos is a Brazilian steakhouse and holy cow (no pun intended) did it live up to the ravings. You get to place a card on your table with either the green side up (meaning "please keep bringing me food until I absolutely burst") or the red side (meaning "oh my god so much food in mah belly I may die"). We got offered steak, pork, turkey, chicken, more steak (oh my the steak was yummy), sausage. The salad bar was enormous but I only ate a little because I'd heard about all the delicious meats we were going to be eating and I needed room. We even saved room for dessert and Starbucks coffee. It was a really great dinner, despite the absolutely obnoxious man at the table next to us who was louder ALL BY HISSELF than the 2 large groups in the tables behind him. We happen to have a knack for being seated near really obnoxious people no matter where we go. It's a gift I tell you.

So while I'll never tell you if I got a Brazilian, I will definitely tell you that my Brazilian dinner was fab. Here's to another 12 years Doug!

Like Swirling Bubbles

Earlier today I was outside with Annie and Izzie, standing on our front lawn and blowing bubbles. The girls love to watch me try to blow really big bubbles and then chase them and catch them with their hands, face, even tongues. It's windy out though, so most of the bubbles whipped around the girls and then swirled upwards toward the sky.  While I stood there watching the bubbles swirl around and around, I realized that lately, my days feel all swirly and crazy, just like the frenzied bubbles.

We're not into any sort of routine here yet. While Drew and Meg are on their third week of school (albeit only their first FULL week), Annie and Izzie have only been to school for two mornings. Some days all the kids are up before I am (and I get up at 6:15ish). Some days it's 7am and I'm getting Meg up so that we can make the 8:10 bus at the end of our driveway. Some days Doug is home long enough in the morning to help get breakfast for 4 on the table and he puts together lunches for Meg and Drew while I lay out clothes so that kids remember to put on fresh undies and don't try to put on socks that are too small or wear pants that are high-waters. Some days he's out the door just as I come downstairs and then it's an hour  or so of kids demanding every last bit of attention I can muster without coffee in my system.

Then there's a sort-of reprieve during the day. Meg and Drew get on the bus (or I deliver them to a school to catch a bus-Meg-and head into school-Drew) and then I either take Annie and Izzie to school or we just come back to the house for more coffee and snacks/play/tv/fighting/play/fighting/lunch/fighting. You get the drift.

Then 3:45 rolls around and the bus drops off Meg and Drew and the frenzied bubble action starts all over again. The kids fight for attention to tell me about their day, Drew has a meltdown every.single.day because he can't go to a friend's house/have friends come over/smack his sisters. You get the drift. It's exhausting. I want so much to give them all undivided attention but I am one person and they are too many and it's just not possible. I've tried giving them each time to tell me about their days but they interrupt each other and there's just the general chaos that goes along with parenting four kids. Not to mention needing to make dinner or dealing with laundry or checking homework or all that other crap that you have to contend with as an adult.

I don't like the swirly, frenzied feeling. I much prefer being the bubble that floats along evenly in the sky. I prefer calm. I prefer quiet. Of course then I went and birthed four kids and that kind of all went out the window. By the end of the day I am so beat that doing anything other than putting on jammies and sitting my butt on my couch is seriously out of the question. It's not what I want. It's not how I want to feel. I want to enjoy the frenzy, at least some of the time. I want to be able to remember these days in a good light, not in the "ohgoodlordwillthiseverendandwhycan'ttheyjustbequietforfivewholeminutes" way that I'm feeling now.

But today I guess I'll watch the girls play outside in the dirt and get the big kids off the bus and try to breathe in and out when the bubbles go swirling through my house and make a good dinner and try to remember that I have it very, very good.

Finding Time

I had not-quite three hours to myself yesterday while Annie and Izzie were at preschool. It was the first time since Drew was born 5 1/2 years ago that I didn't have a child in my house during the school day (not counting days when Doug is home and takes them out with him; you know what I mean). Because it was my first "free" day I didn't schedule a dentist appointment or run any errands other than the post office. I didn't arrange coffee with a couple of the other preschool moms I've known for a few years; I just wanted to be in my house and see how it felt to be taking back a little of my life.

Don't get me wrong. I love my kids. I would do anything for them. But as my daily existence is so completely intertwined with what THEY eat and THEY watch and THEY read and THEY do that I have gotten pushed to the side. My blogging time, for example, is so limited because a)it requires some brain power, b)I am constantly interrupted when I try to write or think and c)did I mention needing brain power? I can't tune out the kids when they are here so more often than not, I don't blog. Twitter on the other hand, is easier for me to manage while constantly being interrupted.

Doug called me while I was sipping coffee and asked me what I was going to do while the girls were in school. I told him "nothing". I had emptied the trash and uploaded some photos that I took of the girls yesterday, but other than that, I hung out at my computer. It was nice to actually READ a blog post instead of  getting halfway through it and needing to feed a child/wipe a bottom/break up a fight. I wasn't lonely and I wasn't sad. I was just me and it felt so good.

Once we get into the routine of the girls going to school twice a week, then I'll do more things. I'll be volunteering in Drew's class on one of those days every other week. I can go to the dentist without taking the kids with me. I can clean if I want or edit photos or scrapbook. I can read a book. I can do those things that I never find the time for while the kids are racing around the house at warp speed (like right now). I'm looking forward to a better balance of me and Mama. I think I've earned it.

Slow Down, You Move too Fast

How did we go from this

To this?

Happy first day of preschool my girlies. 

School Daze

Yesterday was the first day of school for Meg and Drew. We had a weekend of nervous tummies and cranky attitudes over the adjustment to the bus ride and meeting new people and doing new things, but yesterday morning was great. Doug stayed home with us so that he could walk down the road and put the kids on the bus too.  I was handling it all just fine until Doug asked Drew if he needed a "Kissing Hand", at which point I bawled like a baby and both kids gave me kisses on my hand to stay with me all day (if you haven't read "The Kissing Hand", do it but be warned it WILL make you cry) and I beat my husband and buried him in the woods. No, not true (the husband beating part).  Drew was quite confident, until he saw the bus coming down the road, but he got on with a smile and happily waved when the bus went back down the hill past our house.

The kids both had a great day, even though it was almost 90 degrees here yesterday and our schools don't have air conditioning. If I've learned anything from having a school aged kid for 4 years is that finding a way to let your child unwind after school is KEY to keeping your sanity. Unfortunately, I didn't FOLLOW that mantra yesterday and had a cranky son because I asked too many questions! So we'll try a different way today and see if that works!

I'm not sure how I grew such big kids though. Any ideas? In the meantime, I'm trying to adjust to having just two at home after 3 1/2 months of having them all here and finding ways to keep Annie and Izzie busy and out of trouble. I can't wait for them to head to school next week for the very first time!

In Preparation

The bus has been ridden. The teachers have been met, friends new and old have been greeted. School outfits have been chosen, cast aside, chosen again. School supplies have been delivered and backpacks are ready to be packed with homemade lunches and notes stating "I love you. Have a great first day of school".  Tension is riding a bit high around here and Meg and Drew prepare for the first day of school on Monday. We've attended the ice cream socials at both of their schools, have chatted with teachers and parents we haven't seen all summer. Books such as "Wemberely Worried" and "The Kissing Hand" have been read repeatedly to Drew, Annie and Izzie (their new adventure doesn't start until September 9th). Meg has a new desk lamp and a cork board which still needs to be hung above her desk. The traditional first-and-last-day-of-school taco dinner has been discussed and all items will be procured this weekend. The kitchen cork board has been emptied of all previous school items such as lunch menus and calendars and will be filled this weekend with reading calendars, new lunch menus. Early release dates need to be put on the calendars. A whole tote full of paperwork needs to be read and filled out, to be returned to school with the appropriate child on Monday.

Today there is a crispness in the air telling me that fall is coming. It's just around the corner. The first four days of school, however, will be hot and muggy and I'll have warm, sticky kids exiting the bus next week. But fall is coming. The cooler mornings are the telltale sign. Soon our coat rack will be filled with sweatshirts. This weekend though, we'll get haircuts and new sneakers, and maybe take one last trip to the lake on Sunday.

I think we're ready. All of us, not just me. School is such a grand adventure awaiting the kids. This school year will bring good things. I can feel it.

His Turn

When we moved to this house, it was a week before kindergarten began for Meg. It was out of our hands, of course, because when you build you are dependent upon the weather to cooperate and we had a very rainy spring that year which slowed the process down. We knew no one when we moved here, other than my husband's co-workers. No one had a child starting kindergarten. Meg was pretty much on her own.

Fortunately she met her friend B on the bus ride during Orientation and they found out they were in the same class, so she was able to have a friend on the first day of school. B's mom and I have become very good friends as well. But I've always felt bad that our decision to move put Meg in such a difficult position of having so much to adjust to so quickly. Moving, leaving her friends, starting school in a strange town. It's hard enough for adults, but asking that of a 5 year old was really just too much. She had a great kindergarten teacher who helped her adjust and learn, but it was a very long year for us all.

In one week Drew begins kindergarten. It's a completely different experience for all of us. He already knows the bus route. He knows his teacher~she is the same teacher Meg had. The two boys that live on either side of us will not only be on the bus with him, but in his class. He has plenty of friends from his preschool to see during lunch and play with on the playground. Don't get me wrong~he's a nervous little man these days and is prone to crying over everything and not sleeping enough. We understand his tantrums better now, thanks to already having a school-age child who starts to get her cranky pants on about 2 weeks before school starts. I bought several "getting ready for kindergarten" books before he left preschool and we've started reading them in earnest. He'll head off to Orientation with Doug and me on Wednesday nervous, but with a different kind of nervousness than Meg had. He'll say hi to his friends as we make our way down the hall to Room 25, the room with Clifford the Big Red Dog on the door. He's been to the school enough that he may know the way himself.

I can guarantee you that I'll be one hot mess next Monday morning when I put both my kids on the bus together, not so much because I'll be worried about them, but because I can't believe it's his turn to climb the stairs of the bus and head off to school. I'm grateful he has his big sister on the bus with him this year, to make sure he gets off at his school and that he gets back on each day. I think he'll hold his own though, after a bit of time. I can't wait to see what this year brings for him.

Lessons from a Yard Sale Novice

I've never been one for yard sales. I did pick up a great bureau at a yard sale in my neighborhood many years ago and it's currently in Annie's and Izzie's room and I'm pretty sure it cost $10. Before we moved to this house we contemplated having a yard sale so we didn't have to move so much stuff. Then we found out I was pregnant and decided that we'd better keep all the kids stuff and clothes (good thing we did since I was pregnant with the twins!).

But as the stuff kept accumulating in our basement, we got a little overwhelmed. We keep all the clothes that Meg outgrows for Annie and Izzie, but we were keeping all of Drew's clothes as well. So we finally buckled under the weight of a zillion storage boxes and opted to hold a yard sale this weekend. If you've never done a yard sale before, here are a few small tips:

1. Be prepared for people to ignore your signs and come early. We started at 9 on Saturday and people were waiting at the end of our road at 8:30.
2. Either send the kids to grandma's house or have a babysitter come to help out. It's very difficult to make lunch for your kids when you're needed on your lawn to help customers. Kids will also play with every single toy you have out for sale and even take things back into the house during the sale. We had our babysitter with us Saturday and she was a huge help.
3. Advertise your sale on Craigslist. We had several people tell us they saw our ad, so we weren't solely relying on our signs.
4. Speaking of signs, make them BIG. Doug had ours printed at his office, then mounted on poster board. Everyone said they were easy to read and follow to get to our house, which is quite off the beaten path.
5. Sunscreen yourself and your lemonade-selling oldest child because even though it's the end of August that sun is still darn hot. Oops.
6. We sold a ton of the kids' clothes because we only put out what was in good condition. We also sold things for $.50 an item which helped us sell so much. We ended up providing bags to people who had so much that they couldn't carry what they had.

Next time we have a yard sale we'll organize the kids' clothes differently. We had everything in buckets with labels such as "Girls 2T" but next year we'll actually split out the seasons a little better so that customers don't have to fish through all the summer things to find the fall clothes. Our sale was mostly kids items and even though we put that in the ad and our signs, people still came looking for other items and were disappointed. Next year we'll be putting more household things that are taking up space in the basement.

We were really thrilled with how well Saturday turned out. Yesterday it was cloudy and ended up raining so after having just a few people stop by we called it a weekend, took down our signs and packed everything away. I was dreading the whole experience (it was a LOT of work to prepare for) but am really glad we went through with it.

Lest we sound like money grubbing whores, the money we made from the yard sale is going to a fun thing like paying for the work done on Doug's truck last week. The winter coats that we didn't sell will be donated to our local TV station's "Coats for Kids" campaign, which every winter provides thousands of winter coats to kids right here in Maine who otherwise wouldn't have one.

Oh Yes We've Got Trouble

Right here in River City, with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool. The Music Man

Whoever (or is it whomever?) coined the phrase "Terrible Twos" most certainly didn't have 3 1/2 year old TWINS. There is just something so different about having two children going through the same experiences at the same time. 

Three is hard. Three is the time where boundaries are tested, where the word "no" is used to its fullest 2,308908l,09890 times a day. Three is where letting them be independent MUST go hand in hand with being on Code Red at all points in time (case in point~the girls locked themselves in their room and colored every available wall space blue and yellow recently. I thought they were playing nicely. Lesson learned). Three means really getting down and listening when they are talking ninety miles a second about who knows what but it must be important to them or they wouldn't be telling you all about it.

Three is just plain different with twins. The girls feed off each other and get into so much more mischief than I ever anticipated (see above). We had to remove the doorknob from their bedroom door to keep them from locking themselves in their room and taking all the clothes out of their closet. The gigantic bucket of crayons had to be put in the garage because Isabelle kept coloring Annabelle's shirt and not her paper. They hit each other, pull each others' hair, take each others' toys and run away with them. They are, in short, completely and totally exhausting.

But as much as they make me (and their older brother and sister) crazy, they have their moments of total sweetness too. They'll sit nicely and play a game together, or gather up their stuffed animals and have a picnic with them.  There are days when it seems that the bad behavior outweighs the good behavior and I wonder how exactly I'm going to manage to make it to bedtime without a massive tantrum on my part. Hugs from them certainly help and they both give great, all encompassing hugs. It's when they hug each other (and I'll admit, it's usually something forced upon them by me) that I feel like they'll grow up to love each other and take care of each other down the road.

But for now, they're 3 1/2 and have torn apart something in their closet and taken down all their hangers and they need me to go back to being on Code Red. Maybe 4 will be better? 

 

Right here, right now

Right now I'm sitting here at my desk instead of cleaning my kitchen. The dishes are piled high and I really need to empty and then refill my dishwasher, but alas that isn't happening. I'm watching my very old cat twitch in her sleep next to me (on the desk, taking up lots of space). She is so old that I'm always checking to see if she's still breathing. She was my first pet EVAH (no, I do not count the fish we had as kids) and while she's old and crabby, I love her to pieces. Of course, she was young and crabby once too and I loved her then.

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It's eerily quiet upstairs right now. I think Meg is in her room cleaning as her friend O is coming to spend the day with us tomorrow. I am trying not to make a huge deal of this playdate, even though it's the first playdate Meg has had in 2 years (other than with her friend B, who comes here with his mom and she and I drink coffee and visit while the kids all play) but you have no idea how much I want this to GO WELL. She has already lost her collective shit more than once today and I'm hoping she gets this out of her system and just has fun tomorrow.

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We're having our first ever yard sale in two weeks. Our basement is overflowing with things the kids have outgrown. Having twins really does mean double the stuff, like high chairs and Exersaucers and clothes, clothes, CLOTHES. I'm hoping we have a)good weather and b) a good turnout and c)get rid of some stuff taking up space oh and d) make a little money as well. The biggest challenge, next to the kids trying to reclaim half the toys we want to get rid of, is the fact that we live 1300 feet from the public road, so we're hoping people will make the trip up our driveway to see what we have.

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The eerie quiet has been replaced with yelling. Three weeks until Meg and Drew go to school. I'm starting to crave some sort of a schedule. Oh sure, I've enjoyed getting dressed at 9 every day but that's going to come to a screeching halt here soon and I'm almost ok with that. Doug and I watched some football last night and I told him that if we're going to watch football then the humidity needs to go away, the temperature needs to drop and I need to fully immerse myself in fall. Fall is my favorite season, and at least here in Maine it seems to go very quickly and gets replaced by winter sooner than I'd like.

The Bullets are Flying Today

Bullets are in order today. It's just plain easier.

• I went to my high school reunion and had a BLAST! We walked in the door at 6:30 and back out again after 11. It was fun to see people who had no idea Doug and I were married; the look of shock was almost too much fun to resist. Two of the attendees were guys (men?) that I've known since I was 3 and 6. We got a great photo of the 3 of us together. It was also fun to watch those who, after 20 years, haven't figured out that we're supposed to have grown up. I'm ready for the next reunion, so bring it on!
• We were on "vacation" last week. Instead of doing many fun things, we spent the majority of the week dealing with our fridge, which just stopped keeping cold. Our awesome neighbors lent us a small fridge, which saved some of our food and we have a commercial freezer in the basement so we were able to save the few frozen items that didn't melt, but we still don't have a fixed fridge. It's sitting in the garage, awaiting a new compressor later this week. We do have a loaner fridge in the kitchen, and a huge scratch on the kitchen floor from the movers taking the old one out. Lucky us!
• We did manage some fun things on vacation. We took the kids to Santa's Village in New Hampshire with our good friends on Wednesday and had a great day. All four kids rode the log flume! With my bad neck, I was restricted to the merry-go-round, the train and the sky train. But I snapped 207 photos so that was good!
• Doug and I got a night away Friday night and went to Meadowbrook, which is an outdoor concert venue, to see Heart. We had great seats and saw an amazing show. Ann Wilson still sounds like she did 30 years ago!
• We're on the school countdown. Meg is heading to 4th grade and Drew to Kindergarten in 27 days; Annie and Izzie head to preschool in early September.  There is so much to do to get them all ready and I'm avoiding it all like the plague! We're still waiting for Drew's teacher assignment and the school supply lists for both of the school-age kids to arrive in the mail. It's making this Type A Mama a bit crazy. I've been busy marking down the schools' ice cream socials on the calendar and arranging childcare for the girls so we can take Drew to his orientation later this month! Hard to believe he's going to be riding the bus with Meg soon.
• I waffle daily between wanting the kids to go back to school and wanting them to just hang out in the yard playing, smelling of sunscreen and pool water and sunshine. I suppose that the days that they're driving me the most insane are the days I'm ready to ship them all off to boarding school, but when they're getting along and having fun, I want to keep them nearby and watch them over the top of my book or through my camera lens.

 So who wants to share what's new with them?

Twenty Years? Really?

I made a last minute decision to attend my 20th high school reunion this Saturday night. Twenty years. It's a prospect that both thrills me and makes me want to curl in the fetal position and suck my thumb. I originally replied "no" to the Facebook invite. Doug and I attended our 10th back when I was pregnant with Meg. We see people here and there; after all we did live for 4 years in the town we grew up in and not everyone ran screaming for the hills and moved away. My father routinely makes fun of me for coming back to Maine because when I left for college in New York I swore I was never coming home.

High school was, for me, a difficult time. I was smart. I played in the band. I was always an outsider, even within my own group of friends. I cared what people thought of me and took it very hard that I was never well liked. I was happy to leave high school and its issues behind.  You know, until I met, fell in love with and eventually married a boy from the football team. Ahem.

So the reunion just didn't have any pull for me, even though some of my old friends were going to be there and I hadn't seen them in many years. I got a disappointed email from one of my oldest friends (we met in 7th grade) expressing disappointment that I wasn't on the guest list. I can't remember the last time I saw him and I felt really bad saying we weren't coming. Doug could care less whether we go or not. He doesn't care one lick about what people think of him. He is perfectly content with who he is and what he has in life. (Did I just say "one lick"?) I would give my kingdom for a sliver of his attitude.

Monday I got an email from my friend Brooke saying she was contemplating coming to the reunion and was I going. I said no, but as we chatted back and forth on Monday I felt like I should go. We weren't close in high school but she was always nice to me and we've become better friends through our blogs. I haven't seen her since our graduation. I arranged a babysitter for Saturday night and voila~Doug and I are attending the reunion. Brooke will be there as well and I am beyond excited to see her again.

I can honestly say that I am horribly nervous for this reunion. I am not good with large groups now that I spend 95% of my time at home with my kids. Most people that we have seen don't recognize me at all, but everyone knows Doug. I am glad he's going with me because I'm pretty certain I wouldn't go alone. If this were my college reunion, I'd have no problem packing up and heading to New York, solo. I loved college and if my friends (I'm looking at you Nettie) would consider attending a reunion one of these years I would be there with bells on even though it always conflicts with my wedding anniversary. Bells. On. This reunion causes me to revert to my 14 to 17 year old self and I don't want that. I want to have fun. So I will.

Neglectful

Hello? Is this thing on? Anyone out there? Anyone? Bueller?

Well this poor blog has been seriously neglected this summer. So has the laundry, the piles of paper that need sorting and about a dozen other things.  Dishes get done just before Doug gets home so it looks like I've done something other than sit with a book while the kids play in their pool. Weekends are full of family time, with a little me time thrown in there lately, and all the things I meant to do keep getting pushed back further and further. At least I remember to pay the bills on time!

I've missed writing about the kids. They've only driven me partially insane this summer, with Annie and Izzie unleashing their inner Picasso on their bedroom walls and the way the four kids fight over dumb things like who made the mess in the playroom.  As a family we've done some fun things and I've had my camera with me every time but I think the photos are still on the card and not even on the computer. How pathetic is that?

So I'll try to be less neglectful of the blog. I'll try to write more and share photos of the kids. But maybe first I should fold some laundry and put it away.

Missing Him

Doug has been working on site in Portland for a couple of months now. This project is winding down, but then he's going to another one in another town. He leaves every day at 6:30. Some days I barely open my eyes to say goodbye to him. Some days the kids aren't up yet (but most days they are). Some nights he's home at 10, some at 7. If the crews are working, he has to be there, even if they're just digging, digging, digging.

I know the kids miss him. They literally start acting up the minute he closes his Explorer door and drives down the driveway. They yell "Doodles" and come running to hug him. They climb all over him, fighting for space on his lap. They interrupt each other just to tell him a little thing about their day.

I miss him too. We have so very little time together as just us. We have to carve out adult time from family time, which is already so small that we can't stand it. We're going to see Heart in concert in New Hampshire in two weeks, and that seems years away. We've arranged to have our parents each take a pair of kids so that we can go early, walk around, see the show and stay overnight. It's so very little time together, so we have to let it fill us up and enjoy it.

I may not always be very nice to him, because I'm tired and crabby from caring for our very demanding kids all day, but I really  hope he knows how much I love him.

This week

So far this week I have:

Done a zillion loads of laundry

Yelled way too much

Turned the air conditioners on and off and wished I'd had my father-in-law install the central air when we built this house

Cleaned crayon off every reachable spot in Annie's and Izzie's room

Forced the kids to box up their toys that they refuse to put away

Been unable to grocery shop because my kids fight too damn much

Let my kids watch 30 minutes of tv and then dealt with the aftermath for 25 minutes

Ate Cocoa Puffs for dinner at 10pm Tuesday night when Doug finally got home

Put first aid ointment on scratches on Annie's faces inflicted by Izzie (again)

Haven't taken a single photo

Haven't downloaded the photos I took over the long weekend

Haven't put fresh water in the kids' pool or let them go outside (much too hot)

Wished I was anywhere but here

Really hoping next week is better

On Strike (Edited)

This school vacation has been far from a vacation and we're barely two weeks in. The kids have done nothing but bicker most days. They've been demanding and incredibly rude, both to me and each other. Their once-clean rooms and playroom are so trashed they can barely get into them, let alone actually play in them. The weather has been pretty uncooperative as well, which hasn't helped the situation.

Tuesday was my birthday and I asked the kids to help me tidy up the downstairs as our friends were coming for lunch. Their response was a resounding NO and they went off to play, leaving me frustrated and sad, and having a house to tidy myself. It got done, but it left a very sour taste in my mouth that my kids are so self centered that they couldn't even help me out for a bit.

So last night after I made them a quick dinner because Doug was running late, I announced that I was on strike. I told them that I do everything around here, from all the laundry to taking out the trash, making them meals and snacks and since they are not nice to me, I was done. I am exhausted at the end of the day from breaking up constant fights, unlocking their locked doors when they lock each other out, listening to them demand things from me without a simple thank you, and that I wasn't doing it anymore.  I know Annie and Izzie don't truly understand why I'm upset, but Meg and Drew are quite old enough to understand that we're a family and that families need to work together. Since my words don't mean anything to them, I'm hoping that this action does. They cleaned up the table last night and Meg vacuumed the floor, so that's a start.

But this isn't just about them cleaning (although truth be told, they really need to work on that). It's about their lack of respect for me, Doug, and for each other. In the last two weeks I've had things thrown at me in anger, been hit, kicked, screamed at and I have had enough. I refuse to take them to the grocery store after the rotten way they acted Monday, causing me to have to reprimand them at the deli and not hear the person asking me if I had been helped yet (which then caused said deli worker to COME AROUND THE DELI COUNTER to ask what I'd like to order, leaving me mortified). The kicker is that when they go places with Doug, they use their manners and behave like normal kids, but when they're with me, it's mayhem.

I don't know how successful this little experiment will be. The kids woke me before 7 this morning (again) banging and being much too loud, and then Meg was vacuuming the kitchen at 7:04. But Doug is on board and reminded the kids that they are on their own today. Meg got everyone breakfast and is, at this moment, cleaning up the living room. I'm sure their "enthusiasm" will wane soon. I'm not asking for them to make every meal and do all the chores. I'm asking for their respect. I'm asking for them to help when I ask them to help, for them to be polite to me and to each other, and for them to realize that this will be a much happier household if they do that. I'm tired of being the Mama who yells all the time, since yelling causes them to ignore me and do whatever they want anyway.  The kids have almost no special privileges, so there isn't anything we can take away from them. So we're taking me away from them. I'm not going anywhere of course, and I'll be here to keep them safe, but it's high time that they realize that a little respect goes a long way. A happy Mama makes for a much happier house.

Edit. I want to be clear that the goal of this is NOT because I need a break (which, of course I do. I am home, alone, with four kids for 12 hours or more a day). The goal is for them to realize that I am NOT a doormat and that I am tired of them thinking that they can walk all over me all the time and expect me to do everything. I love doing things for my kids when they are being nice and respectful, but I do not want to do things for people who whine, cry, fight and tell me that they hate me all the time.