With Five You Get Minivan

So, in case you're wondering why I've been sort of lame in the posting department lately, I have a good excuse! It's because I've been too busy falling asleep spontaneously, surfing baby name websites for an obscene amount of time, pondering whether a laundry-hating person such as myself could actually attempt cloth diapers, and researching minivans. Yes, mommytown is getting a little bigger....baby number three is on his/her way!!!

For a long time Brandon and I really debated about whether or not having three kids was such a good idea. We have a pretty good thing going on right now seeing as we have the two most awesome kids ever (all of my readers' kids excluded, of course). Are we just setting ourselves up for some really lame kid that maybe won't be as cool as our other two? What if no one really likes this new kid? Or they are the type to always stir things up and want to play cowboy when Emma and Charlie want to play space explorers? What if they hate all things princess and transportation-oriented?

Plus, you pretty much have to get a giant car once you have three kids. Our hip, small car days are numbered. We considered all these possibilities and decided to go ahead and tempt fate in the hopes that we will have a third kid who is just as awesome as the other two. Plus, I am a third child myself, so I am biased toward third-born children everywhere. My parents probably had all these same worries and discussions and went ahead with things anyway. Hopefully they don't have any regrets? There was probably a moment of regret there in my late teens.... We won't go there now, though.

Baby number three is due November 5th-ish and we couldn't be happier. The first trimester is pretty much history and I am glad to be back to my non-nauseated self. So far, this baby is quite the mexican food aficionado. I had the realization recently that I incorporated guacamole into just about every meal we ate last week. I am all about the avocados (and the chocolate ice cream) lately. He/she also already gets the hiccups and seems to be very laid-back--both traits we witnessed on the ultrasound last week when, save for a spastic hiccup every now and then, we could not get the little bean to wake up and show off his/her spinal cord and profile.

Well, the kids are home from preschool now, so I better pay them some attention. The kids are talking to me in their robot voices right now. WE-ARE-TALK-ING-LIKE-RO-BOTS-TO-DAY-A-PPAR-ENT-LY. IT-IS-PRET-TY-FUN-TO-TALK-LIKE-A-RO-BOT. GO-A-HEAD-AND-GIVE-IT-A-TRY...YOU-WON'T-BE-SOR-RY. HAVE-A-GREAT-DAY-MY-FELL-OW-RO-BOT-FRIENDS.

Fight for Your Right to Potty

Will Charlie ever be potty trained? I'm beginning to have my doubts. Visions of him in a cap, gown and a pull up are becoming more and more realistic to me. Sometimes I imagine a college-age Charlie in his dorm room, asking his roommate to toss him a diaper so that he can take care of business...because it seems highly unlikely that Charlie will ever attempt to go #2 on a potty of any shape, size, color, or type. I think I just might be doing something wrong in the potty training department? Truthfully, I think the person who is the most in need of training is me.

Tell me your secrets, all you potty training wiz kids out there (no pun intended), I need your expert advice, please! Do I need to have a potty party? I actually bought the book Potty Train Your Child in Just One Day at the beginning of this potty journey and started to read it. It reads like a high school term paper about going to the bathroom and throwing parties. If, for some reason, your personal hobby is learning about potty training through the ages (Did you know "in the mid-1960s children in London were starting their potty training before they were five months old, while Parisian children--just across the English Channel--weren't starting until they were almost eight months old"?), then you will love the section of this book entitled "Changing Traditions." If you're like me, and just want your child to get his pee pee out of the tunnel (as in, "Charlie do you need to go pee pee? No, Mommy, it's in the tunnel."), then this section could easily be skipped. If you are one of those moms who likes to research a little before making a major purchase like a plastic child's potty, then there is a great chapter on which potties are the most popular. I was proud to see that our Safety 1st Potty 'N Step Stool made the cut (phew!). There is also a section explaining how to trace your child's bum so that you have a little bum pattern to take with you on your potty shopping trip (because "one size doesn't fit all").

Finally, chapter 5 gets us to "potty party day!" Now, we're finally getting down to business. This is the chapter that promises to unlock the secrets to potty training Charlie in one day. Here is the Potty Party Checklist:

• "Acquire all items on the Potty-Training Essentials list ( potty chair, baby doll that wets, doll underwear, training pants, disposable pull-ups, big-kid underwear, potty chart, flushable wet wipes, waterproof mattress covers, waterproof blanket)


• Purchase the items on your chosen party theme list (I think our theme will either be "spiderman scooters" or "super dinosaurs.")


• Buy and wrap a present for yourself that you really want (totally on board with this one).


• Wrap the doll.


• Wrap and hide your child's big-kid underwear.


• Cut fabric or alter big-kid underwear to make a dozen big-kid underpants for the doll--these underpants should match or have the same theme as your child's big-kid underwear.


• Place the potty-chair in the bathroom.


• Decorate the bathroom and party room with the chosen theme.


• Wrap party prizes.


• Wrap your child's Grand Finale Big Kid Celebration gifts from you and your family members.


• Prepare a variety of enticing bite-size treats.


• Stash a handful of potty-training books in the bathroom and a handful in the party room.


• Stack the potty training videos next to the VCR.


• Purchase a variety of drinks and prepare ingredients to make fruit smoothies .


• Place the waterproof blanket or rug on the sofa in the party room."

I estimate that this potty party will cost me about $500 and will take about six months to prepare for. I think I'd rather change disgusting underpants for the next six months than spend the time sewing tiny doll-sized spiderman underwear and acquiring potty videos and books by the handfuls. I do like her idea of buying myself a "present that I really want," but do I really have to wrap it?

I also worry a little about post-potty-party letdown. I'm not sure I can maintain the potty joie de vivre for the time it will take to make this no diapers thing a reality. The author recommends having a "potty parade" the day after the potty party. I guess I will consider that option. I don't know...there has to be an easier way. Right? I have a few more minutes left before I have to go pick the kids up from preschool...just enough time to run to Target to pick up some more diapers and wipes for Charlie. Or I could use the time to study up on potty party themes and surf the web for places to buy a waterproof blanket. Stay tuned and I'll let you know which way I decide to go...

Free Range Kids

Here's another interesting story that is kind of in the same thread as shampoo visors and banning tag... also check out http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ for more stories about giving kids independence. Are you a freerange mom? I'd like to be, but I don't know if I'm quite there yet.

On DC Urban Moms (a local mom listserv I read) people have been talking about the "subway kid" and reminiscing about the good old days of their childhood when they were allowed to ride the subway, take international flights and ski behind school buses without so much as an adult peeking between the blinds to check on them. I'm sure that there was the occasional injury and natural consequence as a result of this much independence, and I'm not saying that people should send their four-year-old off on a trip to backpack through Europe by themselves, but a little independence and the trust in the basic goodness of humanity would be nice. Yesterday I watched my kids ride their wheeled vehicles of choice (Hello Kitty bike for Emma and Spiderman scooter for Charlie). I was sitting on our front steps while they rode on the sidewalk in front of our house. I told them not to go past a certain point (which was pretty far away...almost beyond yelling distance) and then gave them the freedom to go up and down the sidewalk by themselves while I sat and watched. It was so amazing to watch them zoom away from me (well, Charlie zoomed...Emma sort of moseyed along, riding her bike the way a muppet might ride a bike). I watched them get farther and farther away, wondering with a tiny bit of anxiety if they would zoom and mosey away from me into some sort of danger zone, and then I watched as they stopped themselves when they got to the designated boundary and turned around and came back to me. My heart filled with pride as I watched them. It seems like if you never let your kids have a little freedom in life, you never get the opportunity to teach them how to stop and come back to you. I think we both learned important skills yesterday: me, how to let go and them, how to come back.

Apparently, my sub-conscious was still working through some of this though, as last night I had a very vivid dream about Emma taking a trip solo to the mall in our car. (!) She came back totally unscathed, but the car was returned to the garage mangled and dented. I'm no psychiatrist, but I'm guessing that dream means I'm not completely ready to let go just yet.

Tag, you're too aggressive

I saw this article today in the newspaper and thought it was interesting. Basically this elementary school principal has outlawed tag from her school, claiming it had become a game of "intense aggression." Granted, I don't have a kid in elementary school yet, but I don't really see what the big deal is with a little bit of intense aggression during recess. For some reason this article reminds me of thumbing through the One Step Ahead catalog and seeing the ads for the shampoo visor and thinking 1) Whatever happened to just telling your child "close your eyes"? and 2) How have I been washing my kids' hair this long without a shampoo visor? What kind of mother am I?

I feel the same way about this tag thing...whatever happened to letting your kids get a few scrapes and bruises on the playground? Isn't that pretty much what childhood is all about? Come to think of it, isn't that what life is all about? Is there a shampoo visor for every aspect of childhood these days?

What do you think? If you have a shampoo visor, it's time to fess up.

Night School

I have been teaching Charlie's Sunday School class at church this past month. We have a potential 27 two-and-a-half-year-olds that could show up on any given Sunday. We usually have about 19 or so in the class. One of my helpers brings in an extra folding table and we have to take chairs from the classroom down the hall. The tiny, windowless room is wild with toddlers.

I have some experience with teaching. My first teaching job ever was teaching high school English in night school in downtown Chicago. Most of the students were there because prison or having a baby had gotten in the way of their high school career. I had one student who was a grandmother at the age of 26, just four years older than me at the time. I was hired to take the place of another teacher, so I inherited his curriculum. He was teaching them Beloved by Toni Morrison. (!) I had struggled to comprehend this book in my college Women's Lit classes. I couldn't believe I was going to have to try to teach it to people who could barely put a sentence together. I had a very full classroom then too--I will never forget standing in front of them, wearing my best adult costume, trying my hardest to connect. I must've smiled a lot. One time a student asked me, apropos of nothing, mid-lecture, "Ms. Hailey, why are you always smiling?" Was it because I was nervous? I think I might be a nervous smiler. But I think it might have been because I was happy. What a strange place to find yourself feeling happy. It felt a little like being in one of those dreams where you find out that you are the star of the play and you haven't been to any of the rehearsals...and opening night is in about five minutes...and it's Shakespeare. But somehow, instead of totally humiliating myself, I was enjoying myself. It turned out I had something to say to them about Beloved and I enjoyed hearing their thoughts on the book as well. They wrote poems about growing up in their crazy neighborhoods and going to parties in the projects. They tried to get me to go to the movies with them. I taught them how to diagram sentences. We used to play a game that I invented where they had to identify the part of speech of each word in a sentence. It's a really fun game, I promise.

In Charlie's class I am probably doing a lot of smiling too. I get nervous, just like I did before when I was teaching night school. I know it's silly to be nervous in front of two-year-olds, but I am just silly that way. Much like my night school students, Charlie and his classmates wear their emotions on their sleeves. Some of them will enter the room crying, their mother or father reluctantly handing them off to me like a bundle of raw humanity. Here, they're saying, take this incredibly sad, scared little person and teach them about God. I get nervous that I'll forget the plot of whatever Bible story I'm supposed to be talking about. Did they eat fish before or after Jesus showed up? Which side of the boat were the apostles supposed to cast their nets again? Mostly I feel nervous because I feel even less qualified to teach about the Bible than I did about Beloved. I worry that these two-year-olds will see that I am not a perfect Christian or a perfect anything for that matter. I have more doubts than I'd care to admit. My version of prayer all too often ends up sounding more like I am dictating a letter to God. Dear God, no, strike that, Dear Heavenly Father, no, God, is better I think... we'll stick with "God." I feel like I am learning right along with my young students. I am reading some of these stories for what I know is not the first time, but it feels like the first time they are really registering in a lot of ways. I'm basically in the church equivalent of night school. I'm not sure how I ended up being such a slow learner in this area, but here I am. I was raised going to Sunday School my whole life, but for some reason it didn't really take for a long time. I think some people are more porous than others and they just soak up religion and God and all that stuff the first time it is presented to them. This is a weird analogy, but here it is anyway. When I give Emma and Charlie a bath and I wash their hair, I can pour one pitcher of water over Charlie's head and his whole head is wet instantly. Something about his hair just grabs on to the water and soaks it up. With Emma I have to keep pouring it on over and over again. It's like her hair has some sort of waterproof coating on it that just repels wetness. I think I'm like Emma's hair in that way. The pitcher has been poured over my head a million times and it's finally sinking in.

When I was teaching night school I would take the el home to my apartment after class was over. I can remember walking the few blocks from my stop to my building and more often than not there was snow on the ground. I would see my footsteps in the snow and look back at the trail they were leaving behind and think to myself, I make a difference, my life has meaning. Each footstep seemed to take me closer to the person I wanted to become. There have been a lot of footsteps leading me to where I am now, and I think I'm getting closer with each one.

Dirty Laundry

Confession time...are you ready? I hate doing laundry. And it hates me. I can't seem to ever get to the bottom of our giant McBride Family Laundry Hamper. I thought by consolidating our family's laundry into one hamper that it would somehow help me keep tabs on the laundry situation, but no dice. The pile in the hamper just seems to stay at about the same level no matter how much I slave away at my two nemeses: the washing machine and the dryer. Why do I hate doing laundry? In these modern times of indoor plumbing and Downy balls, it is like the easiest thing in the world to do. It's almost space age, like a flying car or something...just throw in some dirty clothes with a little magic powder, push a button and, forty minutes later you have clean clothes! I remember my mom telling me a story about a friend of her mother's who was the first person my mom ever met who owned a dishwasher. My mom and her mother stood in this woman's kitchen as she walked them through the process of loading the dishes, pouring in the soap and voila! Clean dishes. "You still have to put them away though," my grandmother's friend sighed. And that's the thing with laundry that I have the biggest problem with. The putting away part. The putting away part generally drags on way too long at my house. It can go on until there is a new week's worth of laundry to put away or until a guest comes over who might venture deep enough into our house to witness my piles of laundry. Guests are great motivators to me. Guests to my house probably think I am the type of person who puts her laundry away...and puts the newspapers in the recycling bin before they have somehow piled up to be taller than Charlie...and vacuums the horrible place under the table where the kids eat their meals. I have everyone fooled!

While we're on the subject of things that get on my nerves, does anyone else with young children get sick of constantly feeding them, or is it just me? It's been about 4 1/2 years of being a mom and I am still amazed at the amount of time I spend doling out food, cleaning up food off the floor and table, washing dishes, going to the grocery store for more food and washing the food stains off of clothes. I'm not even counting all the time I spend "discussing" what kinds of foods are acceptable for breakfast, snack 1, lunch, snack 2, and dinner(i.e. why we can't have m&m's for every meal).

Does anyone have some super organized plan for keeping their house clean and their clothes clean and their kids fed? If so, I don't know if I can be friends with you anymore. Ha. Ha. Okay...it's 4:09 p.m. The kids are pouring all of their toys in their suitcases in preparation for the pretend vacation they're singing about right now. From the sounds of things they'll be needing a lot of spoons and Lincoln Logs on this vacation. Looks like I have just enough time to pop in a load of laundry, clean up after snack #2 and start cooking dinner.

For the truly bored

I was doing my Easter basket internet research the other day when I stumbled across some really crazy Playmobil play sets...here are some pictures of the ones I found particularly esoteric:

Children with Guinea Pigs


Vending Machine



Polar Researcher with Sled



Here are some other situations that are specific enough, yet also universal enough to create Playmobil play sets out of (in my opinion):

Dentist's Office Waiting Room Play Set (Complete with clipboard for filling out new insurance information!)
State Vehicle Inspection Waiting Line play set (Wait in line just like Mom and Dad!)
Spring Cleaning Play Set (Your child will have a blast deciding which items go to Goodwill and which ones get sold on ebay!)
Mommy's Getting Highlights play set (Free with purchase: "Babysitting Daddy!")

Got any of your own ideas? I could start a list to send to Playmobil and make us all rich!!