baby it's cold outside!

Notice how I always perk up and come blog when it's cold out? Well, it's cold out. Hasn't been cold in a good....[checking blog list and seeing when I was last active] 10 months or so. This is cold for real, people! Like the new little dog was shivering. Inside. In our house where we're living. In it! Shivering from the cold! Granted it's half chihuahua and Mexico isn't known for its snow, but come on! The dog is now wearing a sweater. I can't decide if he looks hilarious or ridiculous, but more importantly I'm wondering why I don't own a sweater.

Wow Mommy, this is awesome!

It was back to the old school grindstone this morning, complicated by the blustery cold and the fact that not only had we not worn jackets in the past 10 months, but that a couple of kids had grown so much in the past 10 months that said jackets, procured through a fifteen-minute search laced with colorful muttered-under-the-breath words, no longer fit. I was feeling rather resourceful and smug when I finally found a jacket (wait, or is it coat? Am I qualified to know the difference?) left over from the days of Alexei's toddlerhood years ago. I'm pretty sure he wore it exactly never because he, too, lived in Florida at the time and it was one of those ten months out of the year where we sweat to death instead of blog about how cold we are.

Tuesdays mean Creative Corner (aka toddler and preschool P.E.) at 10am, a mad dash home to squeeze in an hour of school and a quick lunch, and another sprint back to catch homeschool P.E. at 1pm. In other words, sheer mayhem. This was the first time this school year that the madness was encumbered by cold. Do you have any idea how long it takes to wrangle a two and four-year-old into warm clothes? Or how much Florida-bred grade schoolers whine and complain at the thought of donning long sleeves and socks? Apparently neither do I. I am chronically early to everything we do, but not today! We were *almost* late.

Anyway, back to the special jacket I had lovingly, caringly saved for years so Hobie could be warm and snug on this momentous day. We forged on to the Creative Corner class in the morning and I got the kids all unraveled and settled in the gym for playtime. Hobie ran off to play with blocks before I had a chance to remove his jacket, but came back in time for the class to begin. I nabbed a sleeve and pulled and off came the jacket, along with a hailstorm of black vinyl. It would seem that years of baking in the garage during Florida summers had turned the jacket's innards to flakes. We only managed to shed a few handfuls on the gym floor right there in front of everybody. I think I had a flashback to being laughed at in 7th grade in my brother's old worn out leather jacket. Alas, the jacket had to be reapplied after class and we made the trudge of shame back to the car, a trail of vinyl confetti following in our wake.

Wait, is this a hand-me-down??

Fast forward past Creative Corner, past school and lunch and almost being late for homeschool PE with Hobie now sporting last year's fleece pullover. We're finally home and in for the day and I get the brilliant idea to throw the jacket in the washing machine to see if the vinyl liner won't just come right off. I'm an awesome, frugal mom and this hand-me-down won't get the best of me. As a matter of fact, it worked like a charm! Might need a new washing machine now, and for a few minutes I thought the hubby might stop speaking to me, but the jacket's inside was stripped completely clean.

So stripped, in fact, that getting the now-vinyl-less jacket on and off would be physically impossible on a two-year-old. Guess who's getting a new jacket tomorrow!

snapshot Saturday

I was sitting here on the computer this afternoon, hard at work while the baby was napping. Actually I was goofing off on facebook, but I figure that's a given. Suddenly from outside I heard the sound that parents everywhere quickly learn to dread : the ice cream truck jingle. Now the song may vary, but the sound is so distinct as to draw kids from every corner of the neighborhood with just one chime - it's like a dog whistle for anyone under age twelve. I had never heard an ice cream truck drive around our new locale, and until this moment had been thanking my lucky stars.

The jingle continued to crank out as the truck wound its way around the outer circle of houses, before swooping into our little cove. Then the music stopped traveling as it lured in some unsuspecting adult. I walked to the window to see what poor schmuck had been hounded into patronizing the ice cream man, prepared to have a good snicker at their unfortunate fate.

Too bad it was my husband.

Yes, it is February. Yes, we live in Florida. Yes, she's in a swimsuit.

I don't know what this one's story is.

I hope he knows the ice cream man is like a seagull : feed him once and he'll keep coming back.

smells like a Thursday

You can tell it's Thursday because my posts always get a little excited. Thursday = homeschool PE = guaranteed mayhem. Something about one mom, five kids, a long drive, and physical activity. Today, it was certifiably chilly out. Not "Florida cold," but actual, honest cold. For the first time this winter we could see our breath pluming in the air. When I started the car up the thermometer read 36 degrees. Of course it also said "ICE" in big warning letters, and I'm pretty sure we were safe in that aspect. The kids were bundled in jackets, socks, and shoes, and we picked up my niece and headed off to PE.

Many miles and ten degrees later, we made it to the park. My kids had their fingers crossed in the hopes that PE would once again be moved indoors, in part to avoid the cold and in part to avoid running laps. As luck would have it, the activities were in fact moved inside. The big kids ran off into the building, and I reached in to unbuckle the baby. The suddenly very, very stinky baby. The baby who decided to forgo his typical first-thing-in-the-morning routine and instead relieve himself at a most inopportune moment.

We made the trudge of shame to the public restroom, Hobie on my hip and Coral dragging on my pant leg. Luckily the building had a changing station, and I quickly had the plastic contraption open and hogging up three-fourths of the small women's bathroom. Hobie had never before been changed in such a location (I usually take care of the dirty deed right on the front seat of the car), and he wasn't thrilled at the prospect of lying on his back like a wounded turtle on this giant hard table hanging from the wall. Can't say I blame him.

I unsnapped his Fuzzibunz and did a double take. I'm not one to be squeamish, but this was the diaper to end all diapers. This was by far the nastiest, smelliest, biggest poop he had ever had in his little life. Poop was spread from one corner of the diaper to the other, front to back. He may be thirteen months old, but he's also still mostly breastfed, so there wasn't a whole lot of form to his function, if you get my drift. That it was all contained instead of covering his clothes and car seat is a sheer testament to cloth diapers.

However, since it was a cloth diaper, there was no tossing it in the garbage can. I didn't have a wetbag or a grocery bag or a Ziploc bag or an anything with me. I could vividly picture where my stash of scented plastic baggies was sitting all cozy at home, but I had nowhere to put this oozing stink bomb. I pushed the diaper down the table by his feet, and tried vainly to keep his appendages out of the mess with one hand as the other was struggling to open a travel wipe case. After much tug of war the case popped open and baby wipes rained all over the baby and the bathroom floor. I grabbed for wipes with my two free fingers and scrubbed the mess from his behind as he did his best impression of an alligator death roll. In moments he was snapped into a new diaper and his clothes were readjusted. He sat up and sat still. Crisis averted.

But I still had the diaper to end all diapers in my hands, and stood for a moment, a deer in headlights. Did I walk back through the reception area and front desk of the building with my load? Did I cram it in the diaper bag along with all of the baby's snacks and hope for the best? I frantically riffled through the bag, praying for Ziploc. Surely something in the diaper bag was plastic and capable of containment. That's when my fingers settled on a bucket hat. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Someone else was opening the door into the bathroom, and I crammed the diaper into the hat and velcroed the chin strap right around its foul contents. Then we strolled casually out to the lobby, the parking lot, and the car, and deposited our camouflaged load onto the passenger seat. Take that, carjackers.

The rest of PE was a flurry of chasing a fresh-smelling baby around a small room as he explored every shiny silver electrical outlet, unidentified floor fodder, and anything else he wasn't supposed to have. The big kids did their thing, the hour was over, and after a brief and chilly foray onto the playground outside, it was time to head home.

That's when the screaming began. "Mommy! Mommmmm-mmeeeeee! What is this on my seat? WHAT is in this hat?! Is that what I think it is?!"

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Some days, it would be nice to just stay in, wrapped in a soft sweater, sitting cozy by the fireplace.

But we live in Florida. In Florida, a sweater is a person who has constant pit stains. And the only fireplace I've seen around these parts is at Cracker Barrel. And they don't even have a fire in it, just some decorative logs.

So, yes, two days ago we were all sweating to death. It was 90 degrees. We were in shorts and flip flops, the state shoe. Most of our kids can't tie shoes at age ten. I kid you not. What's a shoelace?

And then today, today, this morning, it was an ugly fifty degrees with a stiff breeze. Socks had to be procured. Shoes were dug out of closets. Pants were tried on and found to be too short, leftovers from last February. They would have to do. Jackets were hunted down and rounded up. The kids really wanted snow hats and mittens, and down parkas, but we didn't seem to have any of those. Onward we struggled, into the nippy morning chill. I'm pretty sure some tears were shed in honor of the bitter, arctic cold.

Being Thursday, we had to pick up my niece and head up to Orlando and the kids' homeschool PE class. Me, five kids, long drive, lots of red lights. We finally make it over to the park, my attention straying between the gas gauge doing its best impersonation of empty, and a sheriff's helicopter circling overhead. The park where we attend PE is hidden behind a high school, and we ran into the school's security patrol blocking the access road.

"The school's on lockdown. You can get back to the park but just drive slow - my people are everywhere."

My people. Yeah. I've seen Mall Cop.

"Is there anything we should be worried about?" I asked, mesmerized by the police chopper pounding above our heads.

"No, it's fine."

Okay then. We made our way back to the park, exceedingly, painfully early. As usual. We were, of course,  the only ones there. No one else was dumb enough to drag five kids out into the freezing cold with a police helicopter watching our every move. I thought to call my husband, and he checked out the news online. Yes, the school was in lockdown, along with other schools in the area. Something about armed robbers on the loose, fleeing the scene. Police were out in force. Great.

Some friendly parks and recreation fellows pulled up alongside us, and echoed the news. Armed robber, suspected to be in the woods, maybe we shouldn't be there, yada yada. Those would be the woods directly flanking the park. Nice.

I herded the kids together and, per the parks guys' suggestion, we walked over to the recreation complex building, intent on getting inside. The doors were locked and no one answered our knocks. They probably thought we were armed robbers.

Just then, my brother-in-law called to let us know PE had been cancelled; they'd just called him. It was dawning on me that everyone else seemed to have fled the area, and no one was coming in. We hightailed it back to the car, the police chopper now seeming just feet above our heads. I maintained the calm, steady force holding the wee ones in check and preventing panic.

Actually, I think I stepped on one of them in my haste to get back in the car. I know it wasn't the little ones because I had one dangling from me and the other held in a death grip by the arm. My voice may have been a teensy bit higher than usual.

Doors slam, seatbelts click. The engine revs.

"I have to go to the bathroom."

I was gracious and didn't flatten the police officer now guarding the exit. Where were you ten minutes ago, buddy?

Fast forward to Seven Eleven. I managed to squeeze about 3 and a half gallons of gas out of the lone ten dollar bill in my wallet, bladders were emptied, and only once did I hear the plea for Slurpees. I piled a mountain of Cheerios on the car seat between the baby's legs, hoping if he couldn't reach them he might at least stop screaming long enough to try to get them. No such luck.

The drive to park number two went something like this :

"Feliz navidad! (ba da ba da ba da da) Feliz navidad! (ba da ba da baaaa)"

"Waaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! Waaaaaahhhhh! Waaaahhhhh!"

"I wanna wish you a merry Christmas!"

"Waaaaaaaahhhhhh!"

"I wanna wish you a merry Christmas!"

"Waaaaaaaahhhhhh!"

"I wanna wish you a merry Christmas, from the bottom of my heaaaaaart!"

"Waaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! Waaaaaahhhhh! Waaaahhhhh!"

The boy is a natural singer.

And I am a natural attractor of red lights. I'm pretty sure we hit every single red light between Orlando and the new park. And slow tourists. And several patches of closed road. Apparently December 2nd is Annual Road Sodding Project Day. Who knew. 

An hour at the park, a dropoff to four children, and a scream-filled drive home later, I needed a nap. 

"What's for lunch?" 

"Can you help me with my English lesson?"

"I want to watch Strawberry Shortcake!"

"Waaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! Waaaaaahhhhh! Waaaahhhhh!"

Check please.

Day 39

Ahhh, day thirty-nine, a day we will remember. A day of long car rides, homeschool PE, a Target fiasco, family trees, and the schoolwork that never seemed to end.

It amazes me how an hour of PE can equal four hours of us being away from home.

And how $4 worth of PE can really cost $4 + $1 in bottled waters from home + $8 in snacks + $10 in gas. But they sure are cute.

The morning started innocently enough; we were all up by 7:30, ready for breakfast and the day ahead. The ride over to PE was manageable : no one cried, no one forgot their shoes or underwear. We made our destination a bit early which gave everyone a chance to go nuts on the playground. The big kids had their PE session while the pre-school set ran amok on the swings and slides, and the baby ate Cheerios and finally succumbed to the allure of breastmilk.

And then, we headed over to SuperTarget (think Super Wal-Mart) with our mission in mind : find a beanbag chair and ivory fleece blanket for newborn photography props for an upcoming session. I had each kid repeat the mantra,

"We are not here to look at toys. We are not here to buy toys." (Repeat it with me)

"We are here to buy a beanbag chair and blanket, and then if we're all good, we can get a snack at the Target cafe." I made sure each and every little person with me knew the agenda. I was feeling as prepared as a woman outnumbered times three can possibly feel.

First, we attacked the automatic doors. My three-year-old, with three-year-old- logic and unbeknownst to the rest of us, stayed behind, trying with all her might to close the door that had just opened for her. Her little voice cried out, "Mommy, I can't get the door to shut!" At this point the door looked like it had been run into by something heavy, and it was no longer closing. Only nine or ten people waiting at the Target please-hire-me computers saw the whole debacle. RIP automatic closing door.

The baby slept through the whole ordeal, passed out and drooling on my shirt from his perch in the Ergo. Things were going well until we had to pass the toy aisles in our quest for the home furnishings department. Darn you Target and your Siren song of toys all along the end caps of each aisle we had to pass! The big kids resisted temptation, but number three, age three, didn't make it through. She started whining, "I want to look at the toys!!! Let's go down the girl aisle!! I want to see the toys! Let's go see the toys! Mommy, I want to buy a toy!!!"

The whine got louder and louder as we paraded past girls' clothing and reached our housewares destination. And of course, they had but one lonely beanbag chair left in the store, and it was filthy. I don't use dirt words casually; a fine coating of dust doesn't bother me. When I say it was filthy, I mean filthy. Like someone ran it over about ten times with a shopping cart, bought it and took it out to the parking lot, and let a gorilla roll around with it in a pile of garbage while eating nachos. And then they decided pink wasn't the right color so they returned it for a blue one and Target just stuck it back on the shelf. Truly filthy.

No, I did not buy it. It was there, we were there, it was in my hands, the very last beanbag chair, and I didn't buy it. Even I, keeper of four sticky, sweaty, dirty children, have my standards.

Somehow, number three picked up on my angst, my beanbag turmoil, and decided that this was the prime time to have a meltdown. This is my quiet child, my sweet and obedient child, the baby who was sweet and easy and then never uttered so much as a loud word during her twos. We could always count on this one to be the rock in our crazy chaos.

But not today.

She made a break for the toys. I grasped for a little hand, and she started screaming. A nosy lady popped around the corner and started lecturing me on 19 Kids and Counting and how the older kids should keep my three-year-old in line. We kept walking. I had the baby strapped to me in the Ergo, sound asleep, and was thus rendered unable to scoop her up and carry her from the store. Instead, we had to make the walk of shame from the far back corner of the store all the way out, screaming, furious child being half-dragged by the arm in my wake. Real parent of the year material.

We parked ourselves on the side of the building and had a discussion on behavior and why we had to leave the store. A final chance was offered for her to change her behavior and act like a civilized little person. Amazingly, we were able to retrace our steps and collect our shopping cart, giving a wide berth around the toy department, only to find that Target was also out of the blanket we wanted. Of course they were.

Nevertheless, as promised we went to the Target Cafe and I purchased everyone their own popcorn and soda. Not familiar with the Target Cafe, I was not prepared for the sheer size of the popcorns. Imagine a paper lunch sack; now multiply that by four and add in four medium sodas. I had a baby strapped to me, two giant, overflowing bags of popcorn in one arm, a soda in the other, and three kids trailing me with their own burdens. I had to entrust a three-year-old with a full cup of bright-red fruit punch (what was I thinking?) as we walked across the front of the entire store to reach the side where we had parked. Then Ibis yells out as we're preparing to leave the store, "Mommy, your shoelace is untied!" I'm pretty sure only three or four employees turned to gape. Of course it was.

Getting in to the car was, I'm sure, quite a sight. We made it home to the tune of the baby screaming from the backseat as I chanted some colorful words under my breath, stuck in traffic. Thank you, tourists, but Disney World is the other way, and the speed limit is 55 mph!

Four hours sometimes seems like a lifetime.

Day 21

So we came home with a bedraggled, scabby, hairy, skinny, panting, pathetic little black and white cat that was following us on our afternoon walk. Only problem was, it already belonged to us! Mittens is what happens when you see a cutesy-wutesy kitty-witty peering out at you from a craigslist ad, and you temporarily lose your mind and adopt a cat that was obviously never meant to be indoors.

We've tried mightily to keep her in. She doesn't get along with our other cat (who would not step foot outside even if the house was a raging inferno), and she'll come in to eat and drink but heads right back for the great outdoors. Try keeping her in and she does bad things. Really bad, very naughty things you probably don't want to read about. So she is our yard ornament. I'm not sure how the neighbors feel about it, but we haven't ever had the heart to take her to the pound, and no one else has been dumb....err, I mean, good enough to take her home with them. I actually tried for awhile to advertise her on craigslist as a barn cat but amazingly most people seemed to read, "Free cat! Crazy, ill-mannered, stinky breath, attacks little kids, and yet another mouth to feed!" instead of my listing for a, "Free cat! Smart, a total sweetheart, charming, LOVES kids, will rid your barn of mice and make every day a joy!" Some people just can't read.

Today we finished up school before lunchtime (woohoo!) Shockingly there was a nice breeze blowing about outside, so we decided to take a walk/stroll/bike ride after lunch. I parked the stroller on the porch and loaded the baby up, trying vainly to get shoes on everyone else. I leaned in the door to grab my water and heard a scream of, "Snake!" from the front porch. Now there is not another word on this earth that can make my blood run cold quite like that one. I made the leap from counter to stroller in about half a second - I'm still not sure how I got through the partly-shut door. I may have morphed through it because I can't recall touching it. I yanked the stroller off its wheels and spun it around me and into the house, and grabbed the two closest kids in the same motion and pulled them inside. My oldest son stood alone in the yard, a snake between us. He was on his own. Sink or swim. That mothering instinct only carries so far.

Cut me some slack. He's almost ten.

Turns out the snake was about 6 inches long, a scaly little black beast with a white band behind its snakey little neck. I ran around the kitchen for a few minutes, bringing my heart rate down into double digits, and finally decided to toss the dog's dish on top of it. Hubby has a lovely gift waiting for him when he gets home from work. In all I felt a new level of maturity; the old me might have barricaded the door, herded all the kids into the bathroom closet, four doors shut between us and the serpent, me frantically panting into the phone for the fire department, police, and my husband to come and get the monster off my porch. Now I'm merely gagging at the thought of a *shudder* snake still sitting out there. I hope the little bas.....errr, thing dies under there.

*Smoothing my hair out* Now then, where were we? Oh yes, so we went out on our merry little walk around the neighborhood, Hobie in the stroller, Coral and I on foot, and the big kids on bikes. And the cat. We lasted about half a block before Coral took over the stroller and Hobie got strapped into the Ergo carrier with me. The cat followed us all through our neighborhood and into the next development, a half-mile from home. It dawned on all of us as we reached the turn-around point in our walk that although there was a nice breeze, it was still mid-90's, humid, and the sun was beating down. Florida in September. At this point the poor bedraggled cat was panting, so Alexei scooped her up and she rode the whole way back home on his bike. Not too many cats can claim that.

ready for our walk after the snake incident - Minnie lasted a half-block before mooching the stroller