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!