The Three Rules

When Jake walked in the door today, I had just been drilling the kids on the new Three Rules For Dinner so they could recite them to him:

One: No talking with your mouth full
Two: No eating with your fingers
Three: No sticking forks in your diaper

It's been a day.

Since today is Tuesday, it started as every fourth Tuesday starts-- with a moment of mourning for how far downhill the house has gone just a week after its monthly cleaning. I then attempted to marshal some energy--Kay, after teasing me with a few days of sleeping through the night back when she was just three or four months old, is not sleeping through the night. It doesn't help that it's winter--in the middle of the cold dark night when one hardly wants to budge from under the covers oneself, there is something maternally primal about cuddling an infant close in a warm bed, protecting her from the harsh cold (though if a sixty-three degree bedroom can be considered harsh weather conditions by one's primal instincts, evolution is certainly heading in a wimpy direction.) So I was indulging in letting her sleep in bed next to me when she woke to nurse in the night--until she started to teethe. There is something primal about protecting one's body parts from sharp little infant teeth, too, you see.

So, lacking any energy or brain cells but also lacking a nanny or a school to send my first and fourth grader to, I proceeded with serving breakfast ("Bot, make your own oatmeal"), dressing and potty training ("OK Timmy, I've got your shirt and pants, you bring your penis and let's go to the bathroom"), laundry ("Alex, find me _Understood Betsy_ while I put this laundry in the washer,") reading ("Alex, where is Molly? And what's Betsy going to do? Good-- remember, if you can't tell me what's going on when I ask you, you are barred from Legos till dinner."), writing ("Alex, keep writing. Alex, keep writing. Alex, write the next letter without stopping-- withOUT stopping!"), and then, when three phone calls came in concerning the parent advocacy group I help head in our school district, I proceeded with changing and nursing K and confiscating all writing and drawing utensils from Timmy (since he will scribble on anything that isn't paper but especially favors permanent surfaces like tables, walls and floors) while talking on the phone. Then, remembering that it was Tuesday, which meant Messy Artist, which meant a chunk of the afternoon taken away, which meant this only mildly school-productive morning was even more irritating because we didn't have time to make up for it in the afternoon, it was now time for prepping lunch and scolding ("OK, back to school next week if you guys can't stop complaining whenever you have to write something or manage to stay on task when I have to walk away--Alex, are you listening? So show me you can finish that sentence...ALEX, I'm still sitting right here and you're still stopping! Alex, if you don't finish that sentence in the next five minutes there will be no Legos for the rest of the--wow, I'm impressed you can write that neatly when you write that fast, see, if you can do that when TIMOTHY JACOB NO MARKERS ON DOORS!" I do do positive reinforcement, really, but not on days when it took Alex 45 minutes to write one sentence but Timmy only 45 seconds to put pink marker on the glass door to the playroom and black pen on the dining room table in between dispersing crumbled green playdough to the four corners of the first floor.)

Off we went to Messy Artist, where Dunc's teacher agreed to give Timmy a test run for an hour. I took K out for a walk, going uphill to go by the duck pond, until it abruptly began to rain--and me with no hood, though K was covered well. Quickly went back downhill, and it stopped raining. In the meantime, Liam called because he'd arrived home from his midterms at noon and found no one home, and being the wonderful mom I am, I told him that since he'd just finished two exams, he could play Xbox once he had lunch since there were no little kids in the house--he had a little over an hour. In my house. Alone. And here I had paid a TERRIFICALLY HIGH amount, according to one grandma, just so I could walk in the rain with a baby. *sigh*

Only when we arrived home, Richard presented Liam with what he thought would be an appreciated gesture--Bot had found Liam's Buckyballs on the dining room floor this morning and picked them up to keep them away from Timmy. Buckyballs are little silver natural magnets, pretty darn strong little magnetic balls sold, of course, in the ThinkGeek catalog--Liam got them as a Christmas gift from a friend. Within seconds of Bot handing them over, I heard Liam grousing because six were missing and he wanted someone to grumble at over it. Now, there are 216 balls in a set of Buckyballs, and Liam was acting like his world had ended over six. In the meantime, I'm thinking, "There are six little magnetic balls likely on my floor, with a newly-crawling baby in the house."

So I called Liam over: "Liam T, there are six little magnetic balls likely on my floor, with a newly-crawling baby in the house. Forget trying to find out who is to blame for the loss of your Buckyballs and FIND them."

"But I thought I left them upstairs, and--"

"Clearly, you did not. They were downstairs."

"But I was SURE--"

"Liam, no one went up on the third floor, took them, then brought them down here and lost six. You left them downstairs, and chances are the person responsible for them ending up on the floor is two years old and you won't get any meaningful information from him. But I need to know they aren't on the floor right now, so go LOOK. And remember to check anything metallic they might be sticking to." When he groaned, I pointed out, rather pointedly, that he had just had two hours of no studying and hanging out in my house alone which happens to me almost, um, NEVER, so the loss of six little magnet balls out of a few dozens is not cause to claim a bad day and groan about it.

Then I got another phone call, just as G's bus was pulling up, so I got to cut the phone call short due to the bus' arrival but then had to deal with the fact that G had once again picked at his fingernails until they were bleeding. While going to clean up his hands, I got a call about carpooling for Bot and a friend--the other mom had a sleeping younger child, and since I had Liam and Cory home and the drive was literally two minutes down the road, I could drive there without taking all the kids.

While explaining over the phone upstairs (while pouring peroxide over G's fingers) that I'd be there in ten minutes to pick up Bot's buddy, however, Liam had concluded that his missing six Buckyballs MUST be behind the piano. (Subsequent debriefing revealed that Liam came to this conclusion not because he remembered leaving the balls there, but because he'd left OTHER items on the piano last night. To some extent this made sense, because as he pointed out, since he didn't remember leaving the balls downstairs at all, the fact that he didn't remember leaving them on the piano doesn't mean he didn't. Of course, it also didn't exclude anywhere else downstairs.) How best to get little magnetic balls that had fallen behind a piano? By making a string with the other 210 and hanging it down behind the piano so the hypothetically lost Buckyballs would be attracted to their brethren and then hauled to safety.

Not a bad plan, actually. Of course, he was hanging a string of magnets blindly down behind the piano with no clue what might be down there. And what was behind the piano?

An outlet with no outlet cover.

By the time I have come downstairs to explain to Liam that I was taking K and G with me to drive Bot and he had to keep the rest of his siblings alive for ten minutes, the piano was pulled out from the wall so that Liam could confirm that two Buckyballs had slid into the outlet where they could not be retrieved without probable electrocution and I could see that there were plenty miscellaneous items that had fallen behind the piano that were affected only by gravitational forces. I was quickly filled in on the situation, and as I was just trying to figure out if Liam had come close to being electrocuted and how high the "Oh. My. God." factor should be here, Liam melodramatically declared,"That's EIGHT missing now! I'm going to need a new set!"

Now, don't ask me why this, of all things, should have driven me nuts, but between time pressure for the carpool, not getting enough school done, not being able to get G to stop biting or picking at his fingers after many months, not being able to get the phone to stop ringing, and not being able to control the rain, I guess Liam's melodrama seemed like something I could actually control. Maybe.

"REALLY?!?! No, you do not NEED anything of the sort! You can LOOK for the six that were lost, we can shut off the circuit and get out, maybe, the two that are in the wall, but," and here I thought I could throw my closing comment out as I left to carpool and be done, "since you survived up until this past Christmas without Buckyballs, clearly you don't NEED them."

But Liam couldn't help himself from speaking. "Well, I didn't KNOW about them before Christmas, but now that I DO--"

"EXCUSE ME?" Liam turned around with a face that clearly showed that he knew he'd stepped in it. "Are you seriously contending that as of this past Christmas, when you got the Buckyballs, that they became a *necessity*? Do you really mean to say that you NEED a bunch of little magnets, and not just a bunch, but AT LEAST TWO HUNDRED OF THEM?"

"Well, I think it's 208 or 216, but, um, well..."

"There's no 'Um, well.' The answer is either, 'No, Mom, I don't actually need Buckyballs to survive' or it's 'Yes, I do need them to survive.' "

"Wull, I GUESS--"

"Guess? Shall we go through everything in your room so I can demonstrate to you just which things are truly NEEDED and which are NOT? Do you not understand what 'need' means or do we NEED to do that?"

"No, we don't."

"Clearly, you are overreacting. Clearly, so am I, but I do think that might not have happened if you had managed to not let your world, and mine in the process, get turned upside down because of EIGHT TINY MAGNETS. I don't want any more attempted inquisitions of any more of my children except Timmy--because you deserve the insanity that is trying to get an answer out of Timmy--about these Buckyballs. Bot kept the ones he found safe, you should thank him for that, you should sweep up all that stuff behind the piano and then push the piano BACK. You WILL NOT stomp, complain, yell, or otherwise carry on while I am gone because I WILL know about it. And when *I* decide Dad has nothing better he needs to do, we will tend to the magnets in the wall--until then, I do not want to HEAR about Buckyballs!"

"OK."

"Good." I glared at him, he frowned back, but it was fairly respectful frowning, so I took a deep breath and said, "I am going to leave now, and I will return calm, and I will find you calm, and this will be over." Always an optimist,I am. I left, with the remaining 208 Buckyballs in my pocket. And you know, once you start playing with them, they are pretty darn neat and addicting.

When I explained to Bot's buddy's mom that there were magnets in my wall, she burst out laughing, and then I realized that it really was funny but I could see Liam's frustration, too, because after all, who would have guessed there was a hole in the wall to suck up magnets? And he no doubt felt dumb that his idea wasn't as smart as he thought it was and then I came along and chewed him out. Poor kid...so I went home and made nice with him. If I could just remember what it was like to be 15 BEFORE I felt the frustration of being 38, he and I would be best friends. (I have SO much more empathy for my parents of 25 years ago now!)

So Liam and I were on good terms by the time Bot got dropped back off, and good thing, too, because Timmy had not napped and was being a total bear to all of us. When i told him that no, it was not time for chocolate chips, and no, he could not have the pasta yet because it was still cooking, and no, he could NOT write on the counter (at this point, all writing instruments were under lock and key, so where he kept finding them I don't know) and no, he could not whack Duncan with a dinosaur and call it "playing Star Wars," he ended up just howling in time out while I turned to Bot and Liam and actually said, hoping for some sort of humorous uplift, "Tell me, did we need a sixth boy? Is there something redeeming about Timmy right now that makes having a seventh kid worth it?"

Liam grinned, but Bot pretended to look thoughtful and said, "Nnnnnno, not that I can think of. Maybe when he was small and cute, but no, nothing now."

I looked at Liam. "You've got to have SOMETHING you can think of, right? I mean, he's our Timmy, it was worth having him for some reason--" A look at howling Timmy kicking the floor--"Right?"

Liam looked at me, "Well, I know there MUST be, but....Umm...Ummm..." We stared at him and thought.

"Well, when in doubt, look to Social Security. He'll still be paying taxes when you're getting benefits, right? There you go. He's worth it because in theory, he will help to pay for your Social Security."

The boys didn't look too sure--and i don't blame them, because at that moment Tim hardly looked like a future wage-earner or responsible taxpayer--but it was time for dinner, which is when Tim turned happy.

Only he was so happy that he was just spastic at the table, and while managing grace and the serving of the pasta while Tim was being loud and silly and goofy and just waaaaayyyyy too Timmish, the phone started ringing. I decided to ignore it, figuring it was just Jake telling what train he was or wasn't taking or a telemarketer, only it KEPT ringing, so Cory ran to get it as I barked at Tim, who was pounding his fork tines-down on the table over the exciting Parmesan cheese, and looked at the caller ID. It was in fact Jake. So I answered the phone.

"TIM-othy JA-cob. STOP pounding the TA-ble! WHAT?!? WHY did you have to call me TWICE? Don't you know I'm not answering the phone because Timmy is destroying our table?"

"But I only called once," poor Jake said. This was not the phone call he intended.

"It rang eight or more times! That has to be more than one attempted call, right?"

"Well, but, I only called once--to tell you I'm at Mountain Station but I don't need a ride." See, Mountain Station is only a 10 minute walk from us, closer than South Orange where Jake usually gets off because most rush-hour Midtown Direct trains don't stop at Mountain.

"Good, because a ride is not exactly what I was ready to give you, and why are you at Mountain, anyway? Bot, hand this plate down to Cory, and Liam, get Timmy his water before he drowns us all."

"I'm here because..,.this is closer, and the train stopped here." I was starting to figure out that Jake had come home a train earlier than his usual earliest, and was playing coy about it.

"Wait, but it was only five a little while ago, did you come home early?"

This is the part Jake was waiting for, the part when I melt with unexpected joy and gratitude because he's come home EARLY. You could hear his grin over the phone.

"Well, yes, I di--"

"TIMMY! GET THAT FORK *OUT* OF YOUR DIAPER!" All the kids looked at Tim, who was spinning around with the fork sticking tines-out, thank goodness, from the back of his diaper like a tail. Everyone laughed, and I told Jake, "It's been a day. Not all a bad day, mind you, but certainly a day, and I should get off the phone.

"OK, well, try to keep it not all bad until I get there, then." I unceremoniously hung up, got Tim in his seat, and proceeded to restore order by making each kid recite the Three Rules before i would hand over his or her plate. When it was Bot's turn to say, "No sticking forks in your diaper!" Cory got an evil grin on her face and said, "She didn't say anything about knives!"

"Corinne Elizabeth, if any of your little brothers now sticks a knife in his diaper or underwear, ever, you will be stuck accompanying me to the ER, even if I have to stop and pick you up from school on the way or wake you in the middle of the night!" So we were all laughing by the time Jake walked in.

"OK, guys, what are the Three Rules?"

Alex's Latest Thing

Alex's latest thing, other than SCOLDING HIS BROTHERS IN ALL CAPS when they infringe on his Legos (and, since he shares his room with a 2-yr-old and keeps Legos in that room to play with in the morning when he wakes ups and his hollering at Tim wakes ME up, this is a frequent and very wrath-inducing occurrence) is to complain as if the world is ending in earshot of someone who might be able to give him the answers or items he seeks, instead of, say, asking politely.

For example, "I'll bet we'll NEVER have dinner ever again!" subs for "Mom, could you please tell me when we'll be eating dinner?" And I'm sure you can all guess how much patience I have for such a combination of complaint and melodrama.

So tonight when he wandered into the kitchen and muttered, "I wonder WHEN dinner will be!" I coached him along.

"Well, you'll have to keep wondering since you can't seem to find anyone to ask politely about dinner time."

He gave a huge sigh and said, "Mom, could you please tell me when dinner is?"

I looked at the timer. "In twenty-eight minutes."

A pause, another sigh. "Mom, could you please tell me how long 28 minutes is?"

I admit, I was stumped.

#

(I eventually told him, "Long enough for you to have an apple while you're waiting." Hey, dinner was Spaghetti Pie, so I knew he'd eat it, plus he loves apples and apples are fruit and healthier than the spag pie he was waiting on, and there is probably no other non-Lego item that could keep him occupied for even a fraction of 28 minutes...)

Alex is Soooo Learning

Alex does, I admit, often seem pretty darn clueless. He's bright enough, but if his mind is elsewhere getting it HERE can be exasperating. So today we were supposed to go over verb tenses, concentrating only on the three most graspable for first graders: past, present and future. So I explained what each was, and then used the verb "play" as indicated in the helpful little notes to show the tenses. "So I would say, 'Yesterday I PLAYED.' Right?"

He stopped looking off into space and said, "Oh, yesterday is in the PAST, right?"

"Yes, I just said that. So I would say 'Yesterday I....' I what?"

Alex just stared up slightly to my left. "I don't know." *sigh*

"OK, past tense, I would say, 'Yesterday I PLAYED.' Present tense is right now: 'Today we play.' Then future is :'Tomorrow we will play.' See? Past, present, future. See, right now is present, so I'd say, 'Duncan is sitting on the couch because he took the cushions off the playroom sofa which made my very mad.' Later, we can say, 'Duncan sat on the couch this morning because he took all the cushions off the playroom sofa,' because this will be in the past by then. Or we could say, 'Tomorrow Duncan will sit on the couch when he takes the cushions off the playroom sofa again.' See?"

At least I had him smiling now (though Duncan was glaring at me from his time-out on the couch), but I had no idea if he was actually absorbing any of this.

"So, your assignment is to take what you copied yesterday for handwriting and make it past tense. What does this say?"

He read the passage. " 'I will give you wisdom,' God said. 'I will also give you riches and honor.' "

"So, what tense is that?"

He gave a bored look and half-yawned, "Pres--" then he suddenly went alert and said, "Ah, future! It's future!"

I was actually surprised. "Yes! And so what would it say if it was past?"

"It would be, 'I GAVE you wisdom!' " he stated confidently.

"Great! And the second part?"

" 'I also GAVE you riches and honor.' "

"That's right! So your assignment is just to write that." I was kind of feeling guilty that I had doubted he could get it that easily, when he twisted the knife even more.

The little imp gave a hint of a grin as he looked sideways at me and asked, "OK, but can that be FUTURE?"

"Future?"

Slowly his smile grew because he knew he was being an imp, so he tried to keep turned away as he shot quick sideways glances at me. "Like future tense, so I WILL write it LAY-ter?"

OK, if the kid had whined, complained, begged, or flat-out asked if he could do it later, I would not have entertained it for a second. But for that little hesitant bit of wit, with that self-conscious, sly little smile? Well, I'm a bit starved for wit, you know, being married to Jake, so here it is, 11pm and I still haven't decided that the future is now present.

Today's Quotes

I was putting Dunc on Lego.com for his ten minutes of privilege, and as the page was loading I told him, "OK, here we go."

Dunc gave me a big smile, stuck one foot up in the air behind him as only he can, and gave me a hammy, "THANK yoooouuu, my lady!"

Alex grumpily answered from where he was reading his assignment, "Duncan, you can't say that. She's not yours."

Duncan gave the effective "Yes, she is!" argument.

"No, she is NOT. She belongs to dad." I was busily "making the window big" for Dunc to buy more time to listen.

"What?" was Dunc's witty reply.

"She's with dad, like they're MARRIED, so she's with him. NOT you."

"Waaaaahh?"

"She's his, not yours, that's what I'm saying."

#

You know what else Alex has been saying? "I'm going to kick your butt." I know this not because he's said it to me, but because when I had Tim outside, eating his yogurt out in Nature while he swung in the toddler swing, and his foot bonked into me, he began to giggle and say, "I kick your BUSS! Mom, I KICK you BUSS!" and in the depths of my maternal subconscious audio files I was pretty sure it was Alex saying that in the background recently.

#

And Bot, who has discovered that Mom will pay pretty well for vacuuming and who is, unlike Liam and Cory, a kid who will proactively go after sources of extra income, agreed to vacuum the ground floor today. I made it clear that I wanted this done over the lunch hour(s), so while i was nursing K he came in lugging the vacuum and looked down. "Dang! The kitchen really DOES need to be vacuumed! Look at this floor" I love how having to clean something makes them suddenly un-blind to messiness....Though speaking of vacuuming, my effective get-them-to-pick-up ploy of telling Alex that if they don't pick up, the cleaning ladies (who only come once a month now, but they don't know that) or I will end up vacuuming up Lego pieces is causing Dunc trauma. One morning I told him I would need his help picking up so I could vacuum in the playroom, and he began to pick up while i started to vacuum the dining room and living room. Then I called him in to eat his oatmeal five minutes later when it was done cooking, but once I settled him with his oatmeal and turned the vacuum back on, I saw him go by the other side of the dining room table and head for the playroom.

Stop vacuum. "Dunc, go eat your breakfast before it gets cold."

"OK." Back toward the kitchen.

Start vacuum. Dunc comes by and goes back to the playroom.

Stop vacuum. "Dunc, is your oatmeal done?"

"No."

"Go eat it, then!"

"OK." Heads back to the kitchen. Start vacuum....

I won't tell you how many times I repeated this pattern before deciding to get to the bottom of this. Let's just say that it was more Dunc's increasing distress than my intelligently stopping the pattern that eventually led to a tearful, "But MOM! I didn't finish picking UP the playroom!"

"You can do that after you eat."

"But you're VACUUMING! The pieces will get all sucked up!' That last sentence ended in a practically inaudible little squeak of a cry. Dunc is a master of ending sentences in a pitifully heartbreaking squawk, complete with pathetic frown and big sad eyes and not a trace of phoniness or deliberation.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh...." So I explained that I understood his concern, but that I would NOT go vacuum in the playroom until he told me everything was all picked up, so he really could go have his breakfast because I promised I would not go in the playroom and suck up any Lego pieces.

He went back into the kitchen. I went back to vacuuming the living room. Dunc went back to the playroom. You can see how much I'm trusted when it comes to Legos.

My Little Ad Man

Last night, Jake and Liam lugged into the playroom several large boxes and plastic bins full of the fall/winter clothes (which I think only made it up to the third floor in July or so) and I went through them and sorted out clothing for the various kids. Though I fold laundry in the Red Room (on the second floor), the seasonal sorting is a bigger task better done where there is room for all the bins and piles, hence the lugging allllllll the way downstairs to take advantage of the bigger TV and the bigger room (though Sunday is, for the record, a pretty piss-poor TV night once we hit 10pm. I was surprised, however, to discover that though Jake was so engrossed in his computer that he ignored everything i said, he caught every witty line in cable re-runs of Desperate Housewives....Jake likes Desperate Housewives, Jake likes Desperate Housewives!)

In just two hours I had a large bag of discards and the bins refilled with the sorted, folded clothes ready to be lugged upstairs and put into drawers in the morning--when the real challenge becomes figuring out who will be what size in the spring so that the spring/summer clothes get put away in some semblance of order, and how I store two boys' worth of stuff (Liam and Garrett) for the two or three years it takes the next boy (Bot) to grow into them (having Cory between is quite inconvenient) and how to fit two boys' worth of fall clothes into Bot's dresser. There was a whole laundry basket of new baby girl clothes of the next size ready to be washed, gloves and hats in a pile (which is pointless--when it comes time to find gloves and hats they'll all be missing anyway), and bins piled high with clothes. It being past 12:30am, I managed to drag Jake away mid-episode (I had seen the episode before and assured him that we would not find out in this episode what Orson's mother was holding over his head anyway) to go to bed, leaving the clothes in the playroom till morning.

So I was very happy I dealt with the whole thing even though it was after 10pm when I got started last night, because Alex came downstairs on a morning when the heat actually had to kick in dressed in a worn-out short-sleeved t-shirt and thin shorts, declaring he had nothing else in his drawer to wear. I smiled, took him by the hand, and led him into the playroom, telling him I knew where I could find warmer clothes for him.

We walked in the room and he immediately declared, "Boy, you could really use some Space Bags!"


"Really?"

"Yeah. It would sure save a LOTTA space!"

Clearly the ad time the Space Bags people buy on children's channels would be well worth it if seven-yr-olds had credit cards....