Case closed

I finally figured out why, no matter how many times I clean, sort and reorganize my pantry, I can never locate anything on the second shelf from the bottom. 

His name is Jacob.

And I'm sure there's nothing I can do about it.

Fins to the left

It may have been the greatest day of his life. 

We stood just feet from the edge of the water, gazing down into the world's largest salt water aquarium habitat, a 6.3 million gallon shark tank that is home to four whale sharks and a host of other black tip reef sharks, sand sharks, manta rays, "sawsharks" (the largetooth sawfish that Caleb deemed his favorite) and other sea life.

It was feeding time at the Georgia Aquarium, and the sharks repeatedly swam right up to the edge of the tank, their fins breaking the surface of the water where we stood in a gesture Caleb was certain meant they were trying to say hi. So he waved back every time, and kept reminding us that in his shark hat, they probably thought he was a shark as well.

We stood there for nearly a half an hour while the workers climbed into their boats and headed out to give the sharks their breakfast. Caleb got a private lesson on what they eat (vitamins just like him!) and later wandered behind the scenes of all the exhibits, getting a back stage view of belugas, baby sharks, the coral reef, and even petting the starfish.

Special thanks to our very special tour guide for making this birthday present one our shark-loving little guy will never forget.

Happy Birthday, Caleb!

Caleb is everything I imagined a three-year-old boy would be.

He's rambunctious, he's loud, he's busy, he's smart, he's curious, he's messy, and he only ever wants to play with anything with wheels.

He loves sharks and Tow Mater and diggers and dirt and figuring out how things are put together (or how they come apart, more often). He adores his big sister, tolerates his little brother, loves to wrestle with Daddy and has an unlimited supply of snuggles for Mommy.

He looks exactly the way he looked at six months, and a year, and two years. He has the most unchanging, timeless face I've ever seen. He still makes the greatest cheese face ever, and he still loves it when I make his hair spiky after baths. It never lasts long. His hair has the texture of steel wool, and only wants to lay as close to his head as possible.

He's just as silly as ever, and still on the fast track to being the class clown. He and his sister have invented some sort of game in his closet that involves stuffed animals riding on something called a "Zog-Zoe." He won't tell us what it is, except that it's something you "zog" on. Abby's not quite sure, but she plays along, and Caleb is forever inviting her to come ride on the Zog-Zoe with him. She responds by following his lead and gathering all the pillows and blankets from her bed and setting up some sort of stuffed animal convention in his closet. This has gone on for months now, and the excitement of the Zog-Zoe in his closet shows no signs of waning. Occasionally when we're driving around town, he'll point excitedly at something at yell out "Look at the zog-zoe!" But we never know what he's talking about. I'm starting to think the confusion he's causing for everyone is half the fun of this game.

He's smart, probably because at three he's already spent a year in preschool and half a year in pre-k following along with everything his sister is doing. He recognizes and can write most of the letters of the alphabet, can count to 40 or so, recognizes and can spell his name, and recognizes the C-130s, F-22s and F-16s that frequently buzz our house. He solves mazes and puzzles like a champ, and has an insane amount of patience and determination when it comes to problem solving and figuring things out.

He loves to help, and is quick to grab the measuring tape or the drill whenever his dad is working on a project. He's measured our kitchen, backyard and garage more times than I can count, has helped assemble two twin beds in the past few months, and is first in line when Daddy needs someone to hold a flashlight while he crawls under the house to change an air filter. In the kitchen, nothing is baked that hasn't had some assistance from Caleb. He's my go-to ingredient dumper when I need an extra hand with a cake mix or a casserole.

He talks all the time, and only occasionally pauses to sing a familiar tune or one he's invented. "Can I have some water please" to the tune of the hymn "Hallelujah! What a Savior!" is one of my more recent favorite Caleb creations. ("Can I have some water please?/Because I am so thirsty/And I haven't had some yet/Can I pleeee-ease/Have some water?")

We celebrated his birthday just the way he would have it: a giant helium Mater balloon, a digger cake, a birthday crown that he wore all day long, and tomorrow, a trip to the aquarium to watch sharks eat their breakfast. Never has there been a celebration more perfectly suited to our little guy.

Happy birthday, Caleb! Thanks for bringing so much fun and silliness and joy into our lives!

Two out of three

I didn't set out to collect hospital bracelets. It just seems to be happening that way.

If we can't go more than four weeks (to the minute, practically) without visiting the Emergency Room, something is wrong. And we're adding another one to this family come July. I'm hoping to nip this Saturday-night-ER-field-trip thing in the bud by then. Although having the emergency entrance to the local children's hospital programmed into my GPS might be kind of a bad sign.

At least no one's finger got chopped off this time. A freakishly high fever and acute abdominal pain are no fun (just ask the four year old with those symptoms...she'll tell you how miserable she is). But they sure beat the blood and gore of our last visit.

Two hours and a popsicle later, they pumped her full of fever reducers, sent us home and told us to bring her back if it gets worse. 

I'm hoping that one bracelet with her name on it is enough for now. I'm a little tired of spending my Saturday nights in kids' triage.

Why we homeschool

Because sometimes, when I lay out my books and lesson plans and worksheets for our morning of Pre-K, my daughter has a better idea.

Sometimes, she looks me in the eye and says, "Mommy, I'm ready to learn today!"

"Great sweetie," I reply, glancing at the materials I've prepared. "Did you have something specific in mind?"

"I want to learn how to draw a frog," she tells me without hesitation.

Telling time will have to wait then. Today, we will learn how to draw a frog. 

And that smile she gave me when she figured out she could do it? 

That was my Teacher of the Year award.

A job to do

He gets it from his dad.

My nearly three-year-old can't stop thinking. And once he's thought of something, he has to try it out, and tweak it, and perfect it. There's hardly a moment of the day when he's not in motion, physically, and I know his brain is working double overtime behind the scenes.

It must be exhausting to be him.

Give him any set of random objects, and he'll find something to do with them. Something that involves small-scale construction, most likely, and something that will move his cars and trucks from one place to another more efficiently.

Little brother stole the ramps for his bridge? Not a problem. He tried an innumerable array of possibilities before settling on using alternate parts of the train track to do the job. (Caleb's not one to try the most obvious solution first, and he's not a huge fan of simple solutions. The more complicated a fix, the better, in his little world.)

To get to this arrangement, he went through cups, books, pillows, blocks, and even tried balancing one end of the bridge on his sister's leg. (She wouldn't hold still, so he moved on.)

He's calm, methodical, and precise. He's not easily frustrated by failure, but seems to file each unsuccessful try away in his mind for future use on some other problem.

And in his mind, the task at hand is the only important thing. Lunch and a screaming brother couldn't distract him from his job. He wasn't stopping until Mater made it over that bridge, and in exactly the right way.

Now if only he could channel that determination into some Stop Running in the House efforts, we'd be all set.

Solids, liquids and gases

Today's science lesson is brought to you by The Berenstain Bear's Big Book of Science and Nature.

It is because of this book that my kids know their months and seasons. It is because of this book that they can tell you the different characteristics of plants and animals.

It is why my daughter knows that frogs and toads are types of amphibians.

It is why my son knows plants make oxygen for us to breathe.

It is why they understand the basic types of machines, and how to build one.

And today, it is why they understand the three kinds of matter, how something moves from one state to another, and why helium balloons stay up in the air.

I'd love to take credit for their education, but pretty much everything they know, we owe to Mama and Papa Berenstain.

Stinky McStinkerson

It's been a really long three weeks. And we are all so very glad it's over. Especially Jacob, who seems to be surprised at the sight of his own hand after having his cast removed this morning.

Three weeks is a long time to go without use of your left arm. It's a long time to go without sucking your thumb. It's a long time to go without a bath.

(We'll pause now for a brief intermission while we sing "My Little Stinker" to the tune of "You Are My Sunshine.")

You are my stinker

My little stinker

A nice warm bath would do you well

We haven't bathed you

In three long weeks now

And you're really starting to smell

We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging...

Three weeks of learning to walk with all that extra weight on one side was just enough time to bring Jacob's crawling days to a screeching halt. It's impossible to crawl when your arm is fixed at a 90-degree angle.

Three weeks was just enough time for me to start viewing all the gray dents in my floors and walls as household scars of a childhood that will go by much too quickly.

Three weeks was just enough time for Abby and Caleb to learn to dart, duck and step aside quickly lest they be broadsided by the weaponized arm of an angry and frustrated little brother. Jacob has overcome his handicap tremendously in the time his cast has been with us, but the things he could not do--pick up and play with more than one truck at a time, or drive the big Mack truck, or catch himself when he fell--were nothing short of infuriating. It has been three long weeks of flailing, screaming, angry baby madness around here. My only solace has been naptime and bedtime.

And while we're on the topic of naps, I should note that three weeks was just enough time for Jacob to bid farewell to his morning nap altogether. The first few days post-injury, he struggled to fall asleep. For the next week and a half, he simply screamed his head off whenever I put him down for his morning nap. This past week, I've given up entirely, and spent the morning helping a very tired, cranky baby push through his exhaustion to make it to lunch. If I was clunking myself in the head with a big heavy cast every time I rolled over and couldn't even snuggle my blankie the way I'm used to, I might have trouble sleeping also.

But, it seems, three weeks was just the amount of time Jacob needed to begin healing. The cast came off to the tune of much screaming today, but the reports from the doctor are good. He said, once again, that Jacob's finger looks great. (And once again, I thought to myself that his finger actually looks horrific, but apparently it looks just the way it should at this stage of the growing-back-together process.) He told us to expect the fingernail itself to pop off in the next week or so, and to look for it to grow back in the next two months. In the interim, we'll have a chance to get a really good look at where the finger was severed and reattached through the nail bed. He told us a bandage was unnecessary, unless I couldn't stand to look at it. (This doctor seems to have me pretty well figured out.)

In short, he said the two things I most wanted to hear today: my baby is going to be fine, and I can bathe him now.

This is good news. The images burned in my mind of my son's mangled finger no longer ruin my appetite, and they don't keep me up at night anymore.

But the smell of a kid who hasn't been bathed in three weeks is enough to turn even the strongest of stomachs.

Nothing to see here

Seriously. There's absolutely nothing outside that window to look at.

But when Jacob wandered over to the front door and started pointing and shouting "Guk! Guk!" (which, by our best guess, is his attempt at "Look! Look!"), his siblings simply had to see what he was so excited about.

Turns out, it was nothing. Or maybe a leaf blew by. We'll never know.

But the presence of each child at the window had the others so convinced that there must be something awesome outside to see, none could be persuaded to move for some time.

Children are gullible little things, aren't they?

Fast-paced marble munching

Today, as always, we enjoyed our snack on the floor in the kitchen instead of at the table. Because let's be honest, that's where all the craisins are going to end up anyway.

And my youngest, frustrated as ever by his cast, and realizing that his siblings were eating twice as efficiently with their two hands to his one, did the next logical thing.

He turned snack time into a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos, and effectively blocked the playing field for his opponents.

Well played, my little starfish.

Wide awake and dreaming

I realize I'm pushing this nap thing. For heaven's sake, Abby's four and a half. What four and a half year old takes a 2-3 hour nap every afternoon?

Mine does.

And the fact is, she still needs it, no matter what she says.

Case in point: today, after a successful morning of coloring, puzzle assembly and doll house decorating, she insisted she was not sleepy. Her tired eyes belied her words. But I was willing to play along.

Okay, I conceded, but we're still going to have quiet time, just like we do every day, because your brothers and I are tired. Pick out some books to read, I told her, and stay awake as long as you like.

"I'm going to pick out lots of books, Mommy," she informed me, yawning, "because I do not need a nap today."

And with that, I tucked her in and let her be.

About an hour later, I decided to check in on her, to see how that no-nap thing was working out. And this is what I found. She didn't just fall asleep. She fell asleep mid-frog book.

Now that's tired.

Fun for the whole family

 We're a little behind, but we're finding our groove again.

Most of my homeschooling mommy friends celebrated their hundredth day of school recently. (Some with considerable fanfare.) I don't even want to think about how many days behind we are as far as the official "school year" goes. I just know we're no where near having 100 days behind us. Lucky for us, it's only Pre-K, and my kids couldn't care less. Also, any number bigger than 60 is "almost a multitude, Mommy!" according to Abby, so I figure we've done about a multitude of days at this point.

Abby's still determined to learn to cut, read and tell time, and to do all these things at an adult level. I keep telling her it's okay if her lines aren't exactly straight, if she can't sound out all the words ever penned by Beatrix Potter, and if she can only find the "o'clocks" on her little talking clock right now. It's a little like talking to a brick wall. We're still working through her frustration issues, her perfectionist tendencies, and her total intolerance for anything that resembles failure. It's a long, hard road, but we're trudging it together.

We're working through our Teach Your Child to Read book together, and she seems to love the special mommy-daughter time each day that we've dedicated to helping her reach her reading goals. I'm more than impressed with the design and organization of this curriculum. I had my doubts, but it's working great for us, and I can see Abby is well on her way to being able to read by her fifth birthday the way she wants to.

I purchased some more Kumon workbooks to help us with our telling time and simple math. I had no intentions of doing math this year, but Abby seems to have a freakishly strong grasp of addition and subtraction, so we're trying it out. I think she likes the precision and the absolutes that come from dealing with numbers. She's like her dad in more ways than one.

Caleb still insists on doing school with us, which is awesome, but I'm afraid I'm not going to have any curriculum left when I try to start preschool with him next year. But he adores his big sister, and loves to do anything she's doing, so I print off two of every worksheet and let him help out with all our craft and science projects. And when he gets bored, he colors his CBS workbook and waits for us to move on to something more interesting than learning to draw the numbers on a clock.

Jacob, sans a morning nap, has been thrown head first into our school time, which was not an easy transition. He's more interested in chewing on books than listening to me read, he likes to eat crayons rather than color with us, and mostly he liked to do laps around the kitchen table while I tried to work calmly with Abby with a screaming baby in the background. Forget quiet books, activity centers and all those other great ideas moms have. Jacob just wants attention. Period. If he's not in on the action, no amount of pom poms to push through a hole in a jar is going to keep him happy and quiet. So I enlisted Abby and Caleb to help me help him see how much fun school time can be, and now we alternate Pre-K lessons and teaching Jacob what crayons are for as part of our regular learning activities.

There's never a dull a moment here at the School of Mommy.

Three in a row

For the record, when push comes to shove (or when the van needs a day in the shop), it is entirely possible to cram three carseats into the back of a decades-old sedan.

It's a tight squeeze, but it is possible.

Just in case you were wondering.

Obedience training

Enforcing your own rules should not be this hard. But it makes sense, when you think about it.

Abby, our firstborn, had the benefit/curse of receiving 100 percent of my attention at all times for the first 17 months of her life. And at present, I have a slightly obsessive compulsive, extremely perfectionistic four-year-old with zero tolerance for failure to show for it.

Caleb, the second to emerge from my womb, received, on average, about 60-70 percent of my attention. Abby was fairly well-behaved, and didn't want or require much input from me, so I was able to spend a good deal of time correcting and instructing my eldest son in the ways of our household. The other 30-40 percent of the time, he either did what he was supposed to or got away with what went unseen. This unavoidable and inconsistent parenting resulted in a kind, clever and often sneaky two-year-old who volleys between perfect obedience and total defiance. There's really not much middle ground with him.

Jacob, meanwhile, is on the fast track to total freedom. He wanders throughout the downstairs with his sippy cup in hand, alternately gulping and dripping milk wherever his little feet take him. (I recall a time when I maintained my Food Stays in the Kitchen Rule and my We Sit Down to Eat or Drink Rule with absolute authority.) He steals toys from siblings and gets away with it. He makes messes and does not clean them up. He throws food from the table. Heck, I've even been known to cook up a few chicken nuggets to fill his belly if he doesn't like what we're eating for dinner.

And all the while, I am screaming inside: "I'm the mommy! I'm in charge! You will sit down to drink that milk, you will not take toys without asking, we are going to clean up those blocks you dumped out, I'm taking your food away if you're going to play with it, and you will eat what is served to you!"

But the words seldom make it to my lips. Perhaps it's because he flashes us that adorable smile with every misdeed. But I suspect is has more to do with birth order than that little cherubic face of his.

So I set my mind to solving this. I made that cute little face, and I will not be suckered in by it anymore.

I started with my We Sit Down to Eat or Drink Rule. (Baby steps, people. One rule at a time.) Abby and Caleb do a great job modeling this for him, so I figured it would be the easiest to enforce. And today, we finally had a breakthrough. He toddled into the kitchen, screaming and pointing at the empty sippy cup on the counter.

"If you want some milk, you need to go sit down on the mat," I told my 15-month-old. I felt like an idiot. I'm pretty sure my husband rolled his eyes. Jacob continued to scream and point.

I would not be swayed. I retrieved the milk, filled the cup, and held it over the spot where I wanted his bottom to land.

"If you want some milk, you need to sit down right here," I told him again. Then I sat his milk on the counter, and walked away.

He screamed. He threw himself on the floor. He pulled up on my legs and pleaded with his eyes for me to just give him the milk already.

I pried myself from his clutch and walked over to the mat.

"Sit down," I said, firmly enough that Abby and Caleb stopped what they were doing and sat where the were in the living room.

And then, to my surprise, Jacob wandered over to where I'd pointed, and sat.

I handed him the milk, and thanked him profusely for validating my authority.

I think we're making progress.

Slow shutter speed

Need to kill a few minutes between dinner and bath time?

Turn out the lights, hand the kids those flashlights Santa left in their stockings and tell them it's a flashlight party.

I've found that if I stick the word "party" at the end of anything, it ups the fun quotient about a bazillion times for these kids.

Who doesn't love a party?

A fighting chance

We're only two days into this whole cast thing, and Jacob's already had enough.

He's finally worked up the nerve to try to use his left arm again, this time for a little leverage to try to drive the big Mack truck. But the sharp, pointy edge of a cast has little to no grip on our hardwood floor, and instead of making forward progress, Jacob merely finds himself slipping onto his belly or falling face-first into the back of the tractor trailer.

Nothing quite breaks this mom's heart like knowing how desperately my child wants to accomplish something, watching him give it his all, and seeing all his best efforts thwarted by something beyond his control.

I racked my brain for a solution, and this was the best I could come up with.

I guess that will have to do for now.

Bedtime prayers

Abby's conversation with God this evening:

"Dear God, please keep the new baby in mommy's belly healthy. And I want to know if it's a boy or a girl. Amen."

Just a few more weeks, Abby. We'll let you know as soon as we find out.

Starfish

This feels vaguely familiar.

We figured after everything Jacob's been through this week, he earned the right to wear the Stuntman t-shirt.

He powered through getting 15-20 stitches put in without having to be put under. It took a straight jacket and three of us laying across his little body to hold him down during the procedure, and he screamed the entire time. But he did it, which is more than I think I could do. We didn't realize just how much he was fighting us during the process of being sewn back together until his dad and I noticed the next day just how sore we were from trying to hold him still.

He has put up with being held, restrained, stuck in a walker, or strapped into his car seat for the better part of every waking moment for the past four days. The ER doctor put a great little temporary splint on his finger before he was discharged from the hospital, but it was up to us to keep him from putting any unnecessary pressure on it. That meant no falling, crawling, or driving trucks around. And that, we soon discovered, meant that someone had to be physically holding onto him at every moment. To make this more bearable, we spent a lot of mornings cruising around in the buggy at Target, one very fun afternoon at the mall riding the train and the carousel, and a lot of time eating snacks at the table with Jacob strapped into his booster seat. A dear friend loaned us a baby walker that allowed Jacob some sense of freedom while keeping him upright and out of harm's way. It also gave me a few minutes to do things like make breakfast or unload the dishwasher with both hands. My mom has been here, helping me with stooping-over-holding-the-baby-upright duties. Caring for our family has definitely been a group effort this week.

So many friends have called, left messages, provided meals, and offered babysitting and other help, and we are so very thankful. But mostly, we are thankful for your prayers for our little guy through this ordeal. They have been heard, and they have been answered.

We had our follow-up appointment with the hand specialist today, and he gave us the good reports we were praying for. The God who knitted our little Jacob together in the first place is indeed knitting him back together now. The doctor said that the blood flow in the tip of his finger looked good, and the wound seems to be healing nicely. (Personally, I think Jacob looks like Frankenbaby. Caution: The pictures are not for the faint of heart.) He will have a scar circling his finger where the fingertip was severed, but it should fade over time. By the time he's old enough to care about battle scars, be probably won't even be able to see this one.

I have held on to the promise of the ER doctor who told us that children are like starfish when it comes to healing, and that Jacob's finger was going to be just fine. It looks like he was right, and for that I am praising the mighty God who created these amazingly intricate bodies we live in.

Jacob's finger was rewrapped today and put into a cast that extends from his armpit to about an inch past his finger tips. This, the doctor assures us, will be all the protection that finger needs to heal over the next two and a half weeks. They left a little stump of his thumb sticking out in case he still wants to be a thumb-sucker after all that hand has been through. We'll see how that goes.

For now, we're prepping Abby and Caleb for the inevitable bruises their little brother is going to inflict on them as he learns to function with a giant fiberglass club for an arm. It took Jacob a while, but he's learning to keep his balance with all that extra weight on one side and he seems to enjoy being able to play again, albeit without the use of his left arm. I'm trying to remember where I put all those clothes that I cut the left arm off of when Caleb wore his cast a little over a year ago, and building up a nice pile of little boys' left sleeves in the meantime.

Please continue to pray for full healing of Jacob's finger, for minimal pain, and for no complications. We serve a great God, and He is looking after our little guy!