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February: The Most Bland Month Boise Can Offer

/ Jo Bird / 1 Comment

Ohhhhh I hate February in Boise.  Gone are the crisp blue-sky mornings of January.  It’s just 28 (or 29 during leap year) days of INVERSION.  Fortunately my birthday falls in February.  But I’ll get to that later. 

I guess since Simon’s pizza was cheese-less his smile is more genuine.  Cameron, Eli and Miriam have cheese oozing out of their pores.  I’m not sure what instigated this photo session but the minute I get out the camera and take a picture of one of the kids, the rest have to have their moment to shine.  As a side note, because I’m thinking of it, in Miriam’s picture you can see the top of her Tangled microphone.  The other day there was no school so I took the kids downtown to have lunch with Richard.  Miriam carried her microphone with her everywhere that afternoon.  It’s a different demographic downtown, I get the feeling many of those people don’t have much exposure to kids, let alone a family with four of them. We get attention whether we like it or not.  But Mim likes it.  She performed or posed for everyone who asked about her microphone.  The girl is not shy. 

Darth Vader

Yoda

Darth Maul
Eli is a project oriented kid, and for several weeks his projects were these homemade Star Wars masks.  I really am quite proud of his creativity, but the masks were severely irritating my OCD.  I have a zero tolerance for clutter, everything must have it’s place and there was just no good place for these awkward creations.  So I took some pictures to immortalize his hours of hard work before the masks went the way of the landfill.  

We have been part of a babysitting group for several years now.  One Friday night each month we take our turn being in charge of all the couples’ children.  When we started there were only six or seven kids.  At one point we were up to 13 kids but then one of the families moved away and a smaller family replaced them.  The other three Friday nights we get to go out, and have free babysitting.  We love this arrangement, it’s a brutal three hours once a month, but it’s not even really that.  And the kids love it too of course.  On this particular evening Simon had to be quarantined to our bedroom because he had a cold. He ate snacks and watched cartoons on Netflix.  He’s adorable even when he’s miserable.  Note to self: Squinty eyes can be cute even when they are puffy and red, just smile!

This must have happened after the Busy Hands post.  It happened twice that day.  Simon and/or Miriam dumped out all the plastic little hairbands.  I made them help me clean them up the first time, but since that lesson apparently wasn’t effective, I just cleaned them up myself the second time.

Mim started gymnastics in February. I think I smiled the entire hour as I watched her the first day.  She tried everything with gusto.  She isn’t super coordinated, but she makes up for it with enthusiasm.  It was her first social experience too, and I think she felt so grown up having her own activity to tell everyone about. 

This is either a movie-night or a cartoon-morning.  Hard to say.  I’m trying not to raise a bunch of couch potatoes but I think they would be if I let them. 

Turning 31 is Anticlimactic

/ Jo Bird / 1 Comment
So I wrote about the Whole30 back in February or something.  After finishing that, all I wanted to do for my birthday was go bowling and eat the kind of food you find at bowling alleys.  French fries and nachos made with processed cheese.  Which we did.  And it was as anticlimactic as turning 31.  Processed cheese is still, well, gross. 
Bowling however, is RAD.
Ohmygosh! Is Cameron making the duck face? #themomentyourkidiscoolerthanyou
And… #themomentyouhashtagtolookcooler
Before I know it he will be taking dozens of selfies with my old iPhone.  Oh wait. He already does that. 
 Okay fine grumpy, I’ll try with a child who adores me.
That’s better.
 Richard must be the parent he REALLY loves. 
And I think that meets my quota for pictures of myself on this blog for the year.  And only in February…

Busy hands

/ Jo Bird / 6 Comments
At Miriam’s three year well-child exam the Dr. asked about her disposition.  I used the drawing paper as a representation of Miriam’s disposition.
 
 
“She colored this in the 30 seconds after the nurse left and before you came in.”
 
When I try to describe Miriam and Simon’s mischievous dispositions to other people, my mind always draws a blank.  So I decided to start keeping a log.  These…disruptions… individually would just be an inconvenience, but collectively they test my sanity.  They are incidents that Cameron and Eli either never did, or did so rarely that it was still cute. 
Miriam found a kitchen rag in a pile of unfolded laundry and got it soaking wet, then took the dripping rag and “washed” everything in site.  She did this the night before too, only it was a dirty rag she had found on the floor in the laundry room and she laid it, soaking wet on the living room carpet, only to be discovered after she went to bed and I was doing my nightly “pick-up-everything” ritual.
This also reminds me of the time Miriam got her hands on the Windex and sprayed every last drop of what remained in the bottle, all over the furniture, bedding, and walls of her bedroom.
When I fail to shower before the kids are out of bed I’ve found it to be safest to keep Simon in the bathroom with me. Today while I showered he took the 16 or so rolls of toilet paper and stacked them in towers around the bathroom. 
As I type this Simon is trying to pluck the few fine hairs on the top of my foot. (Don’t tell me you don’t have hair on your feet.  We’ve all got a little Hobbit in us, right?)
Three times in two days Simon emptied the contents of an old Crystal Light canister, which contains 1000 plastic hair elastics.  And Miriam made a “snow angel” in them. 
They frequently remove all the dvds from the armoire, dump the laundry out of all the hampers to use them as cars/boats/planes, and pull all the clothes off of Miriam’s hangers. (Hers being the only hangers within their reach.)
Don’t they sound horribly devious?!
It is part of their daily ritual to yank all the books off of the shelves of Cameron and Eli’s bookcase. And sometimes in desperation I lock them in their bedroom while I cook dinner, always to discover that they have pulled every wipe out of the container and scattered them around the room. 
These things occur too rapidly and too frequently for me to remember everything I ought to do to prevent them.  But go ahead and call me a glutton for punishment because, really, some are so easily preventable.
Like Simon climbing in the bathtub fully clothed.  Or Miriam putting every lotion or cream in Simon’s hair. 
And I’m still too devastated to say much about the giant gouge in my freshly stained table surface.
But I’m on a roll here…
There was the time Simon took the lid off the dog food bucket and tossed it with reckless abandon around the kitchen.  (While stuffing a kibble or bit into his own mouth.)  No drink on the coffee table goes unspilled.  No cereal box undumped. 
Where am I failing as a mother?
 
Miriam loves to take one bite of each apple or pear and leave them unfinished in the fruit bowl.  And just days after her birthday she decided to make her new dollhouse “pretty” and colored it all with purple and green marker.  
 
 
And one of the greatest mysteries of all around here, is how one of the pair got the tv remote inside the piano, and how I managed to understand/believe that it was actually in there when the only evidence was Simon’s dimpled finger pointing at the piano. 
 
And of course there are just the everyday messes, one of which involved putting all the toys in the crib, and my discovering it only as I’m trying to put the sleepy child in bed. 
And the somewhat adorable venture, of Miriam and Simon each putting on a pair of my shoes in my closet, marching them down the hallway as if walking the runway, and then returning to the closet for a new pair, leaving the last pair on the living room floor.
 
And the not-so-adorable time Simon took a bite out of Richard’s deodorant…
And then nauseating blow-outs like this.  At Chik Fil A.
(Sorry, that one deserved a warning. I only took the picture to text to Richard to elicit sympathy. And now I do the same here: the other three children were unsupervised in the play-place. I had only wipes to work with, and naturally, only a few at that. I ended up tearing the onesie off with my bare hands – I attribute that to sheer adrenaline- and throwing it in the garbage.)
 
I’ve been feeling so baby hungry lately.  I ache for a newborn.  And then I wrote this blog post.  And I realized that I might need therapy if I tried having another child.  Forget that, I need therapy as it is. 

Whole30 Diet

/ Jo Bird / 1 Comment

I might be jumping the gun here, because I have to get through today, but I wanted to post my thoughts on the Whole30 “program” while they are fresh.

Feeling a little bit like I might be addicted to sugar, I decided at the new year I would try to give it up.  I thought about throwing dairy and gluten in there too, to see if they were contributing to digestive troubles, but was undecided and uncommitted until I heard about the Whole 30. (Thanks Jensie.) You can read all about it here, please do, but I just want to share my thoughts about it.

The main principles are

-Eat mostly veggies, with meat (mostly lean meats like poultry and fish) throw in some fruit and a few oils and nuts/seeds. 
-Eat three meals a day. 
– No preservatives, and no  squeezing your old round diet into a Whole30 compliant box.

So what did I think of it all?

– I have some seriously unhealthy eating habits.  Before I started this, I never prepared a meal for myself and sat down to eat it. (Except at dinner.)  I snacked all day, ate when ever I sat down to do anything (read, watch tv, computer), and was more or less non-discriminatory about what I ate.  I also ate emotionally and out of boredom.  (Not REAL boredom, that’s unheard of.  More like “I-can-eat-to-procrastinate-what-I-should-be-doing” kind of boredom.)

– Real food tastes good.  I definitely missed things, I’ll get to that.  But most my meals were satisfying AND tasty.  I never felt hungry after eating, and when I made the right effort at meal time I rarely felt hungry for a few hours. 

– Pinterest SAVED me.  I found so many good ideas and recipes on there, and found things I will be making indefinitely.  (Homemade almond butter and mayo.) 

– I did NOT notice that I slept better at night, maybe because Eli still had nightmares and Simon still cries in his sleep.  Nor did I notice that I had more energy. And maybe that is because keeping up with the four kids demands any available energy.  But I was a little disappointed about those two things.

– I DID lose weight, which wasn’t necessarily my main goal, but a girl won’t complain about dropping those last few baby pounds a couple months before her baby turns two years old. 

– Along those lines, I have to add my anecdotal research to the pile.  What I ate was a lot more important to weight loss than exercise.  Last fall I was running a lot.  On Saturdays I would do long runs, 8-12 miles, and I didn’t lose any weight.  That was very discouraging.  I just didn’t realize until this last month how bad my eating habits were.  The first two weeks of this “program” I didn’t even exercise (too cold/busy/sick) and I lost weight.   

– It’s hard to say if avoiding gluten and dairy helped with my digestive troubles, I didn’t notice a difference.  But I also found that eating too many nuts could cause the same problems. I guess it just goes back to moderation in all things.  I didn’t ever feel bloated or “stuffed” which helped my pants fit more comfortably around the waistline.

– What did I miss the most? I would have to gauge this by the things that were most difficult for me to resist, and it was definitely desserts/sugar.  I was very strict with the plan, and tried not to feed my sweet tooth the first couple weeks.  But by the third week I made a “dessert” for myself with nuts, cocoa, dates and strawberries.  And I loved every bite of it.  I also envied the oatmeal and toast my kids were eating for breakfast, and hopefully my new appreciation for whole grains will last awhile.   And of course, the goat cheese I bought before I started this “diet” called to me every time I made a salad. 

– Eating out wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.  I only went out twice, to a seafood place and a mexican place, and had no trouble finding something filling, delicious and compliant. 

– In order to stay motivated and read and listenend to a lot of things about the benefits of a healthy diet.  This was also very imformative and helpful.  I encourage anyone to embark on a food discovery journey. 

– So what now? I know that practically speaking I won’t sustain this diet forever.  And I don’t really have a desire to.  Food is such a joy in my life, and variety is so important to that joy that I don’t plan to give up grains, beans and dairy entirely.  BUT I do plan to make vegetables a bigger part of my diet, and my family’s. 

– As for the immediate future, I plan to sit down to watch a movie and eat a bag of peanut butter M&Ms and popcorn tomorrow night.  I also want to get french fries and FRO-YO on my birthday.  But otherwise I’ll just deal with each sweet temptation as it comes along, and try to make healthier choices for meals and snacks on a day-to-day basis.

– Mostly I just feel really satisfied.  I feel like I accomplished something hard, which is always a big motivator for me to accomplish other things.  I feel healthier, which is good for my self-esteem, and I feel like I could do this again. 

Maybe.

January Leftovers

/ Jo Bird / 1 Comment

I couldn’t bring myself to go all the way back to a year ago, so I’m starting with 2013 and I’ll get to the rest later. Maybe.

I’m not sure how global warming amounts to the coldest January on record in Boise, but I guess it does.  Something to do with more extremes in temperatures I guess, but I’m no scientist.   Did I already mention that the heater in the old van left much to be desired and on these freakishly cold mornings, when the temperature hovered around 11 degrees, I would throw the kids winter coats in the dryer to get them warm, and then at the last minute put them on for the quick drive to school? Oh I did? Sorry.  I’m so glad we got a new van because this winter I think it’s our dryer that’s not up for the task.

We had one last night out with the Steven’s before they returned from winter holidays back to Vegas.  The boys were with Richard watching a football game and the other cousins had already left town.  I think Miriam and Thea liked have some time to nurture their blossoming BFF status. 

Is there such a thing as cabin fever where you’re itching to get INSIDE a cabin? January is kick-off for Richard’s busy season so one weekend I packed up the kids and we headed for the hills. It was so “Jo” I think I gave Richard a heart attack. Spontaneous, in the middle of winter, and I learned how to put chains on the van.  It was an adventure but the kids ate it up. We rented a cabin and spent a few days doing puzzles, watching movies, playing board games and reading books.  We also went sledding and drank a lot of hot chocolate. It was so fantastic I think it might be a new tradition. 

Simon is such a deadly combination of daring, careless, and clumsy. But he loved the sled more than anyone.  He laughed and laughed even after he wiped out a few times. 

It was really cold outside.  We couldn’t stay out there for more than 30 minutes at a time.  And one minute too long resulted in emotional break-downs
. 
 
If there was a silver lining to the brutally cold January, it was these mornings.  Of course the pictures don’t do it justice, do they ever? But it was these glorious blue skies with these crystals that were sometimes an inch high on EVERYTHING.  It really was breath-taking. I’ve never seen anything like it.  At the time I had just finished reading Mansfield Park and I was reminded of Fanny, and how she never took nature’s details for granted.  Since she is a fictitious character and I couldn’t call her up to share the moment with me, I settled for the next best and called my dad. 

A LONG story about a simple headwound

/ Jo Bird / 4 Comments

So I was on vacation the other night at the exotic resort of Winco, and I had just left produce, and was headed down the cracker aisle to grab the necessities (Belvita breakfast biscuits and popcorn.) when my phone began to ring. I try to avoid answering my phone in the grocery store because ever since the infamous “cupcake incident” I can only talk to people via speaker phone. This can be a little awkward in public. But it was Richard, and I thought he probably wanted me to add something to my list. That’s not at all what he was calling about, and the young adoring couple in the aisle with me heard Richard calmly say

“Simon hit his head, and he probably needs stitches.”

When you get this phone call about your first child, you drop everything and bolt out the door. If it’s your second child, you calmly explain your situation to a store employee so they can return the items, and then you bolt out the door. If it is your third child you pay for what you have in your cart, and meet your husband at the hospital. And when it is your fourth child you go ahead and finish your shopping because these childless shopping opportunites are few and far between!
I’m mostly teasing, but not really. I called a neighbor to come sit with the other kids, told Richard to meet me at the ER, and grabbed a couple other much needed items before paying for my groceries and then bolting out the door.
 
 
Simon was a trooper in the ER.  His camera “smile” is this sort of squinty-eye grimace, and Richard and I both chuckled at his stoicism, because despite his circumstance, he was doing his best to smile for the camera. 

 
He ended up with six sutures. (Sorry Richard, I just love that word even if it sounds affected.) And it took me a while to finally get the whole story, but this is what I got.
 
The story goes, that while Richard was brushing teeth, Cameron was running the circus. The kids were (like they always are) hyper at bedtime, and doing all kinds of crazy antics. After Eli hurt his head, Richard issued a warning to the ringleader, that apparently went unheeded. This left the ringleader to hide after Simon’s collision with the piano resulted in a bloody mess, because he felt personally responsible. Meanwhile Eli screamed about the blood and horror, and Mirim looked on with amazement and curiosity, quite enjoying the experience I think. 
So fast forward six days, the designated time period before suture-removal, and on this brisk morning I took Simon back to the ER to have the sutures removed.  I had Eli and Miriam with me, and the nurse, bless her heart, gave all the kids popsicles on our way out the door. 
 

Squinty-eye grimace = Smile

 
The kids were all FREEZING the whole way home because the heater in our van doesn’t work (a story for another day) and did I mention it was -2 degrees outside?
 
Less than two hours after suture removal (I know, I can’t help myself) we found ourselves at the church, having an indoor playdate with some friends.  It was another circus.  With another casualty.  I looked up to see Simon crying on the floor and saying “Owie owie owie.”   He had hit his head in exactly the same place and part of the wound had reopened.
Okay, time to put this story in hyperspeed.
I made all the necessary phone calls. I made a decision. I took more pictures. I drove to Walgreens and cried on the way there. I bandaged it. He ripped the bandages off.  But no more stitches.  No more popsicles.  Just what will likely be a rad scar.
 
And here he is.  The day after the second injury, smiling an almost normal smile. If you ask him about it he will point to his head and say
“Bonk.”

  And that is the really long story about the not-so-simple headwound.  

 

SNOW!

/ Jo Bird / 1 Comment
Simon did NOT like his boots.  He cried when I put them on.  They aren’t really snow boots, but we had to improvise.  Eli did not like the bib snow pants.  But when it came down to it they were both willing to pay the price to be out in the white delight.  
“He’s my marshmallow boy in the winter.
When the snow comes to cover the ground.
It’s the time for play, it’s a whipped cream day, 
I wait for it all year round.”
 A rare opportunity for me to be in a picture.  Maybe in 2013 I’ll be in more pictures…
The kids waited all winter last year to build a snowman and it just never worked out. The first snow was just a skiff, and not quite sufficient for a snowman.  But the second storm brought enough to construct this guy.  Richard was really sick after Christmas and was in the house with Miriam and Simon, but wasn’t really functioning as a care-taker, so I went back and forth from the yard to the house to meet the demands of the four kids, because apparently Cameron and Eli are not capable of making a snowman on their own. 

Time to Update!

/ Jo Bird / 2 Comments

Why is blogging dying?  I’m reminded of an episode of Colbert where he is promoting his book, he says

“For my younger audience, a book is like a blog for people with an attention span.”

I would take that one step further and say

“For my younger readers, a blog is like Instagram for people with an attention span.” 

Have I made that joke before?

Oh well, I’m ready to get back into it.

I’ve definitely said that before.

and I was proud

/ Jo Bird / 1 Comment

It’s dangerous to write a post after midnight.  In the morning when my more reasonable, less vulnerable self returns I might be embarrassed.  Oh well.

I can’t sleep, too many thoughts… and I’m a little afraid of what I’m going to dream about. 

I was thinking though, about how these tragedies can bring out the best in us.  We are more kind, we are more gentle, we are more loving.  We give virtual hugs and we are quick to forget the things we were arguing about yesterday.  My heart aches, and yet it is so full of love, I feel like I could hug anyone that would let me, or anyone who needed it. 

But then I thought, it’s too bad that it takes a tragedy to make us feel that way. 

Then, a few minutes ago while trying to distract myself in cyberspace, I came across this video.  I don’t know whether I laughed or cried more.  (A happy, emotionally exhausted cry.)


Caine’s Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

Anyway, I realized that the world is full of good, and although tragedies give us opportunity for unity, there is kindness all around.  I thought, there is so much love in communities, so much love in our country, and so much love in humanity. 

And I was proud.