driving me mad

 I have been overheard this past week saying, "If there was an orphanage in Bangor, one of you would be dropped off," meaning Julia Ellen. In the past 4 days she has sniffed out the bigger kid's candy stash and ate every last Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, leaving the wrappers all over the girl's floor while they were at school. She pulled dozens of books off the shelves in the schoolroom, leaving us to pick our way across the floor. She screamed every single time she didn't get her way (which was about every 10 minutes), interrupting school time and grating on my nerves. The final straw today was finding this morning my pretty lime sweatshirt that I had just bought covered in black acrylic paint. 

Yes, it was partly Charlie's fault for leaving his paint somewhere she could reach, and I guess I shouldn't have left my sweatshirt downstairs, but I'm a little tired of the whole toddler/preschooler age. I'm not even pushing the potty training, as I said to another mom of many at the soccer game the other day, "Don't I get a pass after going through this five times already?" I know I shouldn't wish time to go any faster, but I sure do look forward to the day when our home is not quite so messy.

going 90 mph all the time

Summer is supposed to be fun right? Picnicking with friends by the pond, reading a book on the porch, canoeing on the lake are typical Maine summer activities. I am squeezing in those things, but my typical day looks more like this:

awaken at 5am with a toddler kicking my fanny because she crawled in at 2am and likes to sleep sideways

go out to the garden to dump the compost bucket and enjoy the quiet and the birds

sneak down to the furnace room for a little time reading email and my favorite blogs

fix 7 breakfasts, empty dishwasher, fill dishwasher, clean up counters and table

direct older children to practice the piano and finish up those last stubborn school subjects (Mary is down to spelling, Charlie has 3 stories left, and Will has vocabulary, spelling, and reading left)

wash, dry, and fold 3 loads of laundry

make lunch and clean up

run 7 miles

recharge the riding mower after some little kid drained the battery, direct Will to mow the grass

get on the big tractor and mow around the edges of the fields

sweep all the floors in the house except the kid's bedrooms and bathrooms

mop the entire 1st floor after Julia Ellen spills red Koolaid

• sit on the front porch with a cold bottle of beer, enjoying the view

• decide what to have for supper and make it, clean up afterwards and run another load of dishes
• go out into the garden to escape the children, only to have the little ones follow to help and peer into the compost bin
• trudge inside at dusk to bathe the 3 younger children, brush teeth, and harass the older ones into showering make sure all the garage and barn doors are shut
•  read aloud on the sofa
• put the baby and little boys to bed
• crawl into bed and read until my eyelids droop shut
• turn off the downstairs lights so the big kids will go to bed
• fall asleep at about 10:30pm

rise and shine ready for a slight variation the next day , and the next, and the next...

I do realize that my life is a bit easier now than it was with a newborn or infant, but I know that lazing around eating bon-bons on the sofa while watching TV is not going to be a major part of my daily routine for many, many years to come.  

shovel out the stalls

This morning was the only Saturday we had left before we leave for Maine with nothing on the schedule. No altar boy practice, no Boy Scout event, no Little Flowers, no running race, no ballet recital. So, I woke up with a clear agenda: to clean the children's rooms before stuff started growing underneath the beds. We started with the girl's room, crammed full with 2 twin beds, 1 toddler bed, 2 dressers, 1 enormous dollhouse, and all the normal stuff preteen girls accumulate.

Maggie almost got stuck underneath her bed after pulling out a wall of trash, food, papers, enough hair doodads to stock a beauty parlor, and enough pens, pencils, and crayons to supply an entire art department. After 2 hours of cleaning, sorting, pitching, and sanitizing (including throwing away a moldy yogurt container, even though we have a food-allowed-only-in-the-kitchen rule) the place looked and smelled wonderful. Luckily the boys had taken most of their work on themselves and all I had to do was sort the last bits in the closet (thank you Charlie for the gift of a slice of bread I found) and vacuum.

Now the house is clean and tidy, at least for the next 12 hours, and hopefully I can keep it relatively good shape for the next 6 weeks. There is something to be said for having less "stuff," the house in Maine is much easier to clean, mostly because it has been a toy and TV-free zone for the past few years. While I don't want to throw away all their toys and American Girl doll clothes, I am grateful for the few months of the year when I don't have to organize and pick it up so much.       

pristine for 10 minutes

The property manager stopped by the house yesterday to "inspect" the place and make sure we hadn't trashed the joint before extending our lease for another year. I guess the combination of the last tenants leaving it a mess and us having 6 children was the reason why this was stipulated in the lease. I was a little nervous about the possibility of her being like our previous sleazy property manager finding any excuse to get rid of us so I spent the last week scrubbing, dusting everything, steam cleaning the carpets, and even organizing the toy bin.
After giving us the okay and walking out the door Julia Ellen got into my purse and smeared lipstick on the carpet and naughtily drew on the walls, doors, and upstairs carpet rather than go promptly to bed last night. Yes, it is all cleaned up now, but Charlie hit the nail on the head when he asked, "Aren't you glad she did that today rather than right before that lady got here?"

Mommy, is there something I can do?

That is, for money?

All three of the big kids in the house are in a frantic race to get out of bed so they can be the first to empty the dishwasher ($.50), fold laundry ($.25), or vacuum the carpet ($.50). Will is saving money for an extra week at Boy Scout camp, Mary is hording hers for no particular reason, and Maggie needs to earn an additional $4.50 for a Jessie doll from Toy Story 3. "It was the only thing on my Christmas list that I didn't get," she has been lamenting for the last month. I'm perfectly happy doling out the extra cash in exchange for not working my fingers to the bone trying to keep up with the clutter that just naturally accumulates in a household of 8.

Since the kids don't receive an allowance, they must work to buy any extras such as the pellet gun that Will was allowed to purchase last week. He had to earn the right to do so by finishing his work in a timely manner and not giving me any grief for a week. Of course the gun needs ammunition replenishment that I can hold over his head in the future. For once in the last 12 years I feel like I could theoretically put my feet up and nosh on a few bon-bons, that is if I had any chocolate in the house.

scrubbing the floors

With the new mother's helper arriving today as well as one of our parish priests coming this afternoon to give our home an Epiphany blessing, I took the opportunity to clean the entire place for the first time since we moved in back in October. Perhaps I can think of the exercise as my pre-Spring cleaning, but I just didn't want anyone to walk into our house for the first time and spy the clutter that inevitably accumulates when one has too many tasks to perform and not enough time and energy to tidy up afterwards.

Even my dresser, with its pile of race medals, 4 year old's coloring endeavours, and 6 month's worth of dust is now glowing. The floors are all vacuumed, the debris from under the children's beds is put away or pitched into the trash bin, and the silver baby cups on the mantel are polished. It is so lovely to have a spic and span environment, I just hope that Tim doesn't expect me to repeat the performance later in the week so he can experience it himself when he gets home from a week away. I have a feeling that after holding down the fort alone will create the atmosphere of too much to do and not enough time that led to the mess in the first place.    

something to eat, dear?

One of Maggie's Christmas gifts from her aunties was a craft book showing the many neat things one can make using Sculpy, a polymer clay. She has gone wild making tiny foods for the dollhouse family, cherry pie, chocolate chip cookies, an ice cream sundae, bread, and a turkey. This seems to be the gift she has enjoyed the most, and as it is creative, I am more than happy to bake her little creations in the oven. We pulled the table and dolls out of their little home because the light was too dim inside to get a clear photo of Maggie's lovely delicacies. 

The girls' dollhouse is an antique, built for the daughter of the Bremerton, Washington shipyard commanding officer during the Great Depression. Every generation has added something, such as new wallpaper or furniture (My aunt Ellen repainted the dining room set shown above). A few years back I painted several of the rooms and made new bedcovers. Maggie is certainly doing her part to make the dolls' home more comfortable.   

our last day in Maine

Between Mary's morning riding lesson and afternoon piano lessons I have a long to-do list to get through today. Get cash for tolls, buy snacks and a few toys for the kids to play with in the car, pack schoolbooks and clothes, clean the apartment, and return 60 books to the Bangor library. Actually, we have been working like fiends for several days now cleaning out the barn and garage and sweeping all the dust bunnies out of the corners of the bedrooms, scrubbing out the freezer, and returning library books to the other 2 towns we visit. We have pulled up the tomato plants, taken 2 bags of veggies to the food pantry, and put all the stalks and stems in the compost, while stacking the stakes and cages neatly in the barn.

It is a lot of work, but well worth it when we return in June to find clean floors and all our gardening supplies ready to begin another season. It isn't an exciting last day of vacation, but a dinner out at our favorite truck stop restaurant might compensate for hours of packing, cleaning, hauling boxes downstairs, and packing it all in the truck. (Hint, hint)

cleaning up the joint

In anticipation of Tim's Tuesday arrival, the children and I have been cleaning like mad. Saturday was our official put away day and we began after breakfast by making a list of chores that needed to be accomplished and put a child's name down next to it. By 2pm the barn was tidy, the garage was clean and swept, the tent was collected from the clearing in the woods and put away, the bikes were lined up, and the inside chores were finished as well: laundry, changing sheets, mopping floor, etc, etc, etc.

However, making things tidy on Saturday is a far cry from keeping things clean until Tuesday. For of course, the garage was a mess again after the children creatively turned it into a bowling alley with cardboard blocks substituting for pins and boat lines delineating the lanes. Will, Julia Ellen, and I have been sick so it was inevitable that the baby coughed so hard that she not only threw up two evenings in a row in her own bed, but once in mine. My freshly mopped floors have been baptized with spilled milk several times in the past 2 days, and someone smuggled crackers into bed, leaving a huge crunchy mess on the floor.

I still want the place to look nice for Tim tomorrow, but the only option left seems to be to cancel school on Tuesday, scrub everything before the children wake up, and hustle them out of the house until his plane lands. Yes, it will all be back to sticky floors and piles of clean laundry waiting to be folded soon enough, but there will be that 20 minute stretch of time when he can see that we really did miss him and made an effort to please. Welcome home honey!  

sprucing the place up

With less than 3 weeks left in Maine it is time to start the serious cleaning required to put a house to bed for the winter and since Tim only has about a week of "vacation," I'm trying to get most of that cleaning done prior to his arrival. As I tell the children, it isn't fair to make a mess and then walk away, expecting "Mommy, the servant" to clean up afterwards. Every morning I wake the kids up and say, "Take care of your jammies," After every meal I say, "Clean up your dishes," and every evening I order the children to clean up the huge mess they have made outside in their play. But over time the barn and loft and garage have turned into places to deposit all their stuff such as 8 bottles of bug spray, gardening gloves and pruners, Timmy's 14 toy tractors, and everything else one can think of. Tools need to be put away, seed packets for next year should be stored in a cooler (so the mice don't eat them), and the spilled fertilizer needs to be swept out to the grass before Julia Ellen tries to eat it. 

This past weekend Will mowed the entire yard by himself and considering that it encompasses the area around the garage, barn, and new house, as well as a strip all the way down the driveway, $10 is pretty cheap payment. Mary cleaned out the garage and vacuumed out the van for $6 total, and Maggie tidied up the barn loft for another $3. Yesterday I started the inside chores of cleaning out the oven and scrubbing the tub and toilet to remove all the iron stains that have accumulated over the summer. We still have a ways to go, but by the time Tim arrives next week, I want the place looking shipshape so he can enjoy the tiny bit of vacation he certainly deserves.    

less than a week to go

until Tim arrives for a week's vacation. The Union Fair begins Saturday and it will be lovely to be able to attend as a family, watching the children on the rides, licking scoops of ice cream, and rooting on the participants in the pig scramble. The program arrived a few days ago so Mary and I have decided that Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday are the best days to go. Of course, just buying all-you-can-ride bracelets for 5 children is almost $100, so they know that we can only do that one day. 

I don't want my husband to think that I've been this giant slacker since he's been gone, so the whole place has to be spic and span for his arrival. The children's beds have been stripped and the sheets bleached, the garage cleaned, and the van vacuumed out already, but we still have to tidy the barn, cut the grass, clean off the accumulated papers off every flat surface, and mop all the floors. I need to clean out the oven from a bad baking experiment and iron all the shirts and dresses that have piled up. I'm sure that after a week of all our activities the house will become messy again, but I'm sure Tim will appreciate our efforts for the whole 15 minutes it stays perfectly clean. 

everyone pitch in

Maggie was the first to start vomiting on Thursday with Timmy and Mary falling in line behind her on Friday and Saturday. I had to call the babysitter and cancel my race plans only to discover that it would have disastrous to plow ahead and run as I quickly came down with whatever tummy bug the kids brought home. We went from a perfectly clean apartment to complete chaos in less than 6 hours as Mommy was not available to pick up, scrub, and organize. But the good that came out of my illness was the cooperation that the children exhibited. They bathed the baby, cooked dinner, made pallets on the floor to camp out in the living room, read stories, swept the stairs, and brought me ice water. I'm still very weak and stiff, but I think a mere hour of wiping and sweeping will put everything back to rights.

miracle product

I have a lot of big furniture that has been handed down to me from various relatives. While it is beautiful and usually very useful (old dressers have much deeper drawers than modern stuff), it is stressful trying to keep the children from damaging it and dark finishes show such scratches very easily. So it was with scepticism that I purchased a bottle of Old English scratch cover for dark woods last week. Since then I have been a mad woman with a rag constantly in my hand, rubbing down my china cupboard, two sideboards, and 4 dressers.

But the most miraculous transformation has been our 100 year old upright piano we bought about 5 years ago. We decided to start piano lessons for Will and found a great deal, it just cost more to transport the piano than the purchase price. (a friend found out after one sharp turn that using a pickup truck to move an upright is NOT a smart move) The piece has missing patches of veneer, scratches all over, chipped keys (I went over them with an emery board to smooth them out), but plays beautifully (the tuner said it would last forever). Yesterday morning I went over the entire case with the special polish and it really does look like a different piano. So...if you have dark furniture and lots of sharp object wielding children, I highly recommend picking up a bottle of Old English polish and expect to be amazed.

(before and after)

Herbert Prentis has competition

I shouldn't get upset, after all some of the gifts the children received came from me, but now we have boxes of craft projects and coloring stuff to add to the cramped girl's bedroom, which was already full of doll beds, doll clothes, horse stuff, and books. Maggie can't even walk to her bed, she has to leap from the middle of the room and try to miss the piles of clothes she hasn't put away before she can go to sleep. It is a real trial for Mary to share a room with her messy little sister.

There is a clear line of demarcation down the center of the room with Mary's jewelry arranged just so on the dresser, neat lines of plastic horses with flowing manes at the foot of the bed, and clothes stacked by color in the drawers. Maggie's side is strewn with damp towels, American Girl clothes, and when we pulled out everything from under the bed last week we found 14 dirty socks. I have already bought the child several under the bed boxes from IKEA, shoe and sweater organizers for the closet, but still the mess spews forth like lava from Mt. Etna, threatening small children in its wake. Julia Ellen can't go into their room due to my fear of her eating beads or paper that are liberally strewn across the room. I cringe whenever I walk by and soon expect Mary to ask if she can move in with the baby. I have lots of ideas for shelves and such once we move to Maine, but since this is a rental we can't yet.

The solution that Mrs. Piggle Wiggle conjured up for little Herbert (who was trapped in his room because he wouldn't put his toys away) of offering him to lead the town parade if he could put away his things and escape his self-imposed prison won't work simply because Maggie doesn't have any place she can put all this stuff.

treasure hunt

Charlie decided yesterday to take the cushions off the sofa and stuck his hand waaaay down behind the springs. "I found something!" he yelled with his little fingers gripping a Matchbox car. His hand plunged down again and snagged a book. I got into the spirit and felt around and before we knew it, we had found:

5 pencils
1 pen
3 puzzle pieces
3 holy cards
7 hair elastics
1 rosary
2 books (1 was a rather large library book of recent vintage, I'm so glad we found that one)
3 ancient keys
5 LEGOs
4 vehicles (including a very tiny surfboard)
a handful of rosary beads (we used to make them for the missions before Charlie put one in his ear)

I then plugged in the vacuum and sucked the crumbs and dust that have been accumulating for 10 years before putting it all back to rights.

Makes you want to examine under your own cushions, now doesn't it?

chore chart

A few weeks ago, inspired by the story of the Duggar family, I instituted a chore schedule for the older 4 children. I was worn out every day by noon from trying to get every kid's teeth brushed, making and cleaning up from breakfast, starting school, and getting the bathrooms and floors clean.

If all the big kids were away all day at school I could manage it all, but attempting to do all this and teach 4 grade levels of material was impossible.

The chart is on the wall in the upstairs hall and each kid has a daily list of basic hygene items and 1-3 chores. Will and Mary alternate taking down the laundry and hauling it back up.

Other jobs they must complete are cleaning bathrooms, emptying trash cans, vacuuming the stairs, dusting, and cleaning up the playroom. They get paid on Fridays (I don't assign chores on the weekend), 3 cents per mark. They average about $1 a week, but I am finding that I am slipping back into the nagging mode again so starting tomorrow I am instituting a penalty. If they do the job they get paid, but if they don't do one they get a fine.

strapping on the old trainers again

With no running races to prepare for, I didn't run a single step in September. Luckily I still managed to retain my summer weight loss and after unpacking my clothes from Maine, I put all the pants in the "fat clothes" box in the closet and pulled out the next smaller size. Now, I still have about 8 pounds to lose to get back to my super-skinny-running-machine weight, but at 7 months post-partum I'm doing pretty well.

Tim gets home from work pretty late in the evening and with ballet and Scout meetings my running time was squeezed out. So, I awoke at 5 am this morning determined to begin my training regimen again, ran a very long mile and came up the stairs to the opening bars of Julia Ellen's wake up song. "Feeeeeed meeeeee. I waaaant millllllllllkkkkk!" At least that is what it sounds like to me. To everyone else it is, "mmmmmmmm. AAhhhhhh. Mmmmmmmm."

Now it is time for the other part of our new routine: 7am wakeup and I am working on a chart system for chores and such so I don't have to ask every kid 8 times, "Have you brushed your teeth? Have you made your bed?" I got the idea from reading the Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar's new book The Duggars: 20 and Counting! If you ever want to feel inspired and humbled at the same time I suggest you read this one. It made me feel like such a slacker for complaining about the workload with 6 kids, but gave me some great ideas about how to better organize our household.

spring organizing

Well I might not have alphabetized the 10 bookshelves of children's books in the schoolroom, I haven't sorted the toys into bins in the playroom, I haven't even managed to fold and stack neatly all the new fabric I have bought recently, but... I did tidy something: socks.

We keep this big basket in the kitchen with all the children's socks so that when it is time to go somewhere the kids don't all scatter, leaving me to follow when they call out, "I can't find my socks!" I finally switched to Hanes brand for everyone because they have those easily identifiable colored letters on the bottom (thanks Danielle!). To make it even more simple for those who can't recall which color cooresponds to which child, I made this chart:

Now that I've tackled that big project, maybe I'll start to work on those bookshelves....

unpacking and getting settled

A wonderful sight greeted us at breakfast this morning, two hard working men in grey proceeded to spend 10 full minutes shoving this mountain of boxes,


into the back of the County recycling truck. Yesterday while I was on the phone chatting with Michelle of rosetta stone, the kids dismantled my carefully stacked piles and made a huge fort spreading across the yard. Of course they all helped stack it back up, even though a certain 8 year old's attitude needed a tiny bit of adjusting.

My energy level and attitude have been flagging too, it is impossible to go-go-go day after day without some down time. However, I can't wait to get to Maine and get started on all the projects I have planned for the farm. Of course first I have to unpack two POD storage units sitting in the front yard and organize yet another house. But I'm sure that a few walks along the shore will restore my spirits.

I only have a few days left to give the house here needed a little more TLC so we invited Cousin Ann to help hang pictures. She has a fabulous eye for color and I have to say that her idea of putting the Chinese ancestor paintings over the mantel in the kitchen was terrific.

Many of the pictures and pieces of furniture we have acquired have come from family or have an interesting story (at least to me) and this set is no exception. The originals belonged to my grandfather and because my mother loved them so, her mother and sister made copies - painted them by hand and gave them to her for Christmas about 10 years ago. When mother died I so much wanted to feature them prominently in my own home to remind me of these 3 very special women in my life. Now I will have sweet memories of the past while I share bread with the family God has entrusted to my care.

pre-packers packing

In less than a week we will welcome strange people into our house to touch everything we own, wrap it all carefully in newsprint, and seal it in boxes. Then another set of people will put all the boxes in a big truck and drive away. Can you tell I have issues about this? Perhaps it is because I have always moved while either pregnant or nursing save once. Perhaps it is because I consider my home a fortress from the many worldly evils and when we move that feeling evaporates.

My coping mechanism is to become uber-organized mama, starting by making lists of what needs to be packed for Maine, what needs to come with us in the van, and what we need to eat for supper to use up everything in the freezer. I then organize every junk drawer, every shelf, every closet so the loose game and puzzle pieces are not mixed in with other junk and lost forever. Finally, I hit the liquor store for boxes to pack up everything that is not breakable or nailed down.

Unfortunately the kids undo much of my work by playing with the toys I put away, piece together the puzzles I stack on the shelf, and sneak the books I am trying to pack so they can read them by flashlight in bed. After two weeks of sorting and packing the house looks much the same as it did when I started but with the addition of a multitude of stacked whisky boxes. I have to remind myself to be gracious to the folks who we will entrust our worldly goods to and that in two weeks it will all be unpacked again in our new home. Lastly, if that isn't enough to put me in a better frame of mind I need to recall that in just 3 weeks we will be headed up to Maine for picnics, visits with old friends, and walks to acquaint ourselves with the farm. This is our last military tour so in the not too-distant-future I see the end of this seemingly endless packing and unpacking that has been the backdrop of my 12 year career as a military spouse.