Days 4 and 5

The last two days of Chris's absence went fairly smoothly. Bela recovered slowly, Gill took her place but got over her illness quickly. Mae didn't get sick until several days later. And somehow, I was spared.

We managed to leave the house for a trip to Garfield Park Conservatory. We had lunch at a favorite spot. We dropped Gill off at her new daycare (more info to come!).

We even made something: Pine cone peanut butter bird feeders. Felt like the old days. Gill even joined in, and they hung them all in the backyard on the chicken coop fencing.

And in doing so we, to our surprise and delight, lured a rare and exotic species - we couldn't even find it in our Backyard Birds book. A real beauty.

This little bird likes our pine cones.

Well, after a weekend of some family time and circus classes and crazy 3rd grade girl playdate, Chris is packing to leave again.

Let the adventure continue.

Day 3

Bela was sick in bed all day, cuddled up to my (new!) computer watching our entire iTunes library's worth of movies. Swiss Family Robinson, The Little Mermaid, The Princess Frog, The Scarecrow.

Gill, Mae and I only escaped the house once to run a few errands. I'm on a roll with the wiring of the lights, man. Or at least a wavering, wobbly stumble. Today, I set out to install the lovely sconces I ordered a month ago from Etsy. Our dining room has had two holes in the wall with wires sticking out since I ripped out the ugly ones the day we moved in. That was almost 2 years ago.

I didn't accomplish the task. I got as far as Home Depot. Standing in the lighting aisle with zinc plated nipples in my hand, I struggled to find the "female loop" I needed to go with my nipples and my hickey. And I couldn't bring myself to ask.

After many minutes of chasing Gill and squinting at the offerings on the shelf, I found (I think) all the strangely named girly parts I need to illuminate the dining room. And I think I'll do it tomorrow.

Mae was a very sweet bedside assistant today, until she wasn't. That happened around dinner time. She came storming into the kitchen on another "errand" for sick Bela.

"Mom, I'm tired of always having to do what Bela wants! She asks me to do everything for her!"

I kneeled down to her height and said in my calm, wise mommy voice:

"Mae, you cannot control what Bela does. You can only control how you react to it. She will always ask you to do things for her. If you don't want to, then you have to say no."

"But she'll yell at me!"

"Again, you cannot control what Bela does. You can only control how you react to it."

I know, I know. I really choked on this as it came out, because I KNOW this is true, and yet I NEVER follow it myself.

Anyway, feeling very wise and very mommy, I went about my cooking and cleaning until it was time to wrangle the loose monkey in the house and put her to bed.

I called from the couch where I was nursing Gill for the night - "Girls! Please shut the bedroom door and turn down the volume on the movie. I'm trying to put Gill to bed!"

I heard Mae sigh and start to get mad, and then it was like a light went off. I heard her mutter to Bela: "I'm not going to do that. I can control me."

Backfire.

Muffin thief

Adventures in single parenting

I'm crafting a positive attitude about this upcoming single parenting bit. Thought I could document it for posterity here - the positive attitude and the single parenting part.

Chris has been gone for 36 hours.

We are still alive.

I knitted while listening to music last night (we currently have no TV), and the girls stayed up late playing with their buddy who spent the night. This was a good thing.

I'm 1 1/2 inches away from finishing Bela's Christmas Cardigan. I anticipate this will take me at least another 48 hours at the rate I'm going, and then it can join all the other hand knit sweaters at the back of her closet. But before she tosses it in, a photo session will be in order. Stay tuned.

Anyway, at about 4 am Bela crawled into bed with me, snuggled up real close, her germs touching my germs, and whispered: Mom, I feel really sick.

Today.

After circus class, after errands, after peanut butter and jelly, she threw up.

Now, Mae is the expert vomiter, always makes it into the bowl, can even reach the toilet. Not a drop out of place. But Bela? She is always so surprised by the whole affair. Remember a few years back when she threw up from the top bunk down into sleeping Mae's bottom bunk? Usually she creeps into our room at night, sidles up to the side of the bed and says "Mom?" blarchhhhchchchchhhhchchchhc. All over.

So today, she threw up on our cool old chaise lounge, and the carpet in the basement apartment, and the down comforter she was snuggled in. The smell in the basement is unspeakable; I refuse to go down there.

In fact, after scrubbing the vomit out of our carpet, I spent an inordinate amount of time hard wiring a new ceiling light fixture (ikea) in the girls room. It only took 1 1/2 years, but today we went from bare bulb hanging by some wires to cheap ikea ceiling fixture that almost cost me my sanity.

This was, ultimately, a good experience.

What shall tomorrow bring?

Party

We celebrated Bela's birthday yesterday with some so- so pizza, a big fat (store bought) cake, and a few presents at La Villa Restaurant. So much more manageable than 20 girls crammed into our dining room, or sleeping on our living room floor.

We've always done it up big for Bela come birthday time. The funny thing is that I'm absolutely NOT a party person. Don't get me wrong, I like to go to one, most times, especially if I don't have to get dressed up. But throw a party?  It fills me with horror and dread.

I don't know where this comes from.

So after the birth of our number three, I simply decided that I could not be forced to throw three big parties a year.

On the one hand, there's the dread.

On the other hand, even the simplest of parties that involves children coming to my house seems to cost a ridiculous amount. After factoring in the cake, the goody bags, the crafts and activities, the food.... not to mention the presents. Added to the fact that Christmas was just two stinking weeks ago...

There has to be some alternating going on. So this year, Bela was out. On a practicality level, she completely understood. But she still made us suffer.

Anyway, I don't want to get all emotional here, but guys... my first baby is nine years old. Next year she'll be 38. Nobody understands the enormity of this, until they do.

Well, the ladies and I are coming down off of birthday high, enjoying the long weekend, but missing Chris. He walked out the door this morning and we will not really see him for many weeks to come. He'd headed to India, Boston, Chile, Mexico, and China in the coming weeks and months.

At least there's leftover cake.

And wine.

Homesick

I'm back at work after a long break, and the craziest thing just happened to me. I all of a sudden had an overwhelming desire to be back at home, lying on the couch with Gillian running circles around me. I would love to sit on her floor right now too, and read her The Little Engine that Could for the 450th time in 5 days. I'm so homesick right now.

Since I can't walk away from my job, I'll blog instead.

Tomorrow is Bela's birthday. Her 9th. It's hard to write down. 9 years. 10 years ago we unexpectedly found ourselves expecting, and now three kids later she's turning 9. Nine nine nine nine nine.

We're celebrating her big day in a small way for once. Dinner out with family and a few friends. Cake. Laughs.  And as her gift this year, aside from a couple wee little things, we have signed her up for acting classes - theater, actually - at Emerald City Theater. She's slated to begin in a few weeks, working with a group of kids towards a musical ensemble production in May.

You see, Bela likes to perform. Bela likes to be on stage, and Chris and I have made it our goal to find this girl some outlets. Circus performance, chorus, music lessons, theater. And after attending two musicals, two ballets and a play with her this year, after watching her face and her excitement, we knew it had to be theater.

I hope she likes it.

And we're financing this gift partly with the money some of you have donated to our "Project" fund. Thank you so much! We really wouldn't be able to sign her up for so many things if it weren't for your help.

Sigh. Back to work.

Scary Stories

As part of her third grade requirements, Bela has to read 10 non fiction books, 10 fiction chapter books, and 5 books of her choice.

She's read about 15 books so far on her own this year, all of them fiction.

I understand why they want to push non-fiction on the students, to prepare them to read and comprehend all types of texts, and to score better on their tests etc. But I can't help but share her preference for fiction, and am thrilled that she loves to read so much in the first place that I'm not about to put my foot down. In fact aside from buying her a book about identifying birds and a book about the planets and the constellations, I am almost no help in motivating her to fulfill her nonfiction requirements.

Chris and I even recently bought her the collection of scary stories by Alvin Schwartz - Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. This was something that Chris read as a kid and loved.

Bela loves it too, fiction lover that she is. But she can't read it at night. In fact, although she loves to read them, loves to scare herself silly (and just finished the last of the three today) she couldn't even keep the books in her room. She had to put them in a special box that she kept downstairs. Far from her sleeping innocence.

Her routine? Spend a portion of each afternoon reading from the scary books, lock them in this cute pink box, ceremoniously carry them downstairs, and deposit them into our safekeeping.

I think that within the set of three, the stories get scarier by the book. She finished the third one today and was also reading it late yesterday afternoon.

It's not really surprising that between me and Chris this morning I woke to find two little blond girls cuddled up and fast asleep.