Chloe is asking Santa for a Little Cute Baby for Christmas.  You may recall that Chloe already has a doll she has named Little Cute Baby.  She got her for Christmas two years ago, and the doll accompanies us almost everywhere, including camping and vacations.   Consequently, she is starting to get quite worn.  So, Chloe is asking for a replacement - an identical replacement - a brand new, exactly the same Little Cute Baby.  Oddly enough, this has been a dilemma for me.   There is some part of me that is sad about the whole thing.  Where is the sentimentality?  Is everything so disposable nowdays?  The ease and comfort of simply exchanging one thing for another, newer, better, should be practical and logical, and yet for some reason it disturbs me.  Maybe it is because dolls are closer to people than things, because of their shape and because of how much love is invested in them daily.  Perhaps the real fear is that one day I'll overhear Chloe's tiny voice saying, "Mommy is getting pretty worn, maybe we should get a newer one!"

Okay - another Seth moment.  Today when we got home from school, Seth said, "Could I have something to eat? The hot dog at lunch was enough to sustain me until now, but I would love a little snack."  He talks like a novel!  A nine year old using the word "sustain?"  I've always loved vocabulary, but now I'm raising vocab freaks!  A couple of weeks ago at our friends' house, I was explaining that my kids are now 1,3,5,7,&9 years old.  Seth said, "in other words, we have now embarked upon the stage of odd numbers."  You should have seen how our friend looked at Seth!  It almost made me snort my drink!  But then this is the kid who, when he was in kindergarten, explained to me that he had scraped his hands because, "I trod upon my pants and tripped."  Seriously - part of me is totally proud, and part is a little afraid!  Seth actually wanted to perform sentence graphing for his talent at the talent show last month.  Not at all normal, and completely my fault!  Can kids still be cool and talk like that?  Or will he be ostracized by his peers forever?  Aarrgh - this parenting thing is complicated!!!  Smart, cool, athletic, ambitious - but not geek, arrogant, over-competitive, or selfish.  Where is that line?

The alarm didn't go off yesterday.  Tysen and I were woken up almost an hour late by Seth, who walked in and said, "either the alarm didn't go off, or else I slept until Saturday.  Which is it?"  Sometimes the things they say are so funny I just can't stand it!

A few years back, we finally gave in and bought a fake Christmas tree.  It was a close-out, after-Christmas deal, and we had a ton of trouble finding a live tree in our price range that year, so we decided to move on.  The next Christmas, instead of looking in a lot, we pulled out our plastic tree and set it up.  You know what?  It wasn't all that bad!  No frozen toes or dismay at prices at the tree lot, or worrying about how long the tree would last before becoming a fire hazard and picking needles out of the carpet until spring.  But what I really did miss was the smell - that fantastic, irreplaceable aroma of fresh pine that reminded me of childhood and ushered Christmas into the house.  I love that smell!

Two days ago we hauled the fake tree out of the basement.  The first thing that I noticed when I walked into the living room after the tree had been set up, was that it does indeed have a smell.  It filled the room with it's own aroma - it smells like fresh plastic.  You know, the way a new toy smells, just out of the box.  And so my natural irony concluded that perhaps it is appropriate that a heavily commercialized holiday should smell like plastic!  Imagine it now - Plastic scented holiday candles, plastic scented potpourri.  They wouldn't call it "plastic," but instead, "the true scent of Christmas."  Out with pine and cinnamon - let them go the way of wassail and sleigh rides, nostalgia for times past that mostly just live in songs.  There is a new tradition in the making!  What do you think?  What other scents could be added to my new line of "True Scent" holiday candles? 

The washing machine just ate Chloe's comforter.  Months ago the washer went skewompus and the agitator only moves in one direction instead of going back and forth.  Instead of repairing or replacing, I improvised:  I turn the machine on the fastest agitating mode.  The way I figure, really fast one direction is about the same as medium speed two directions, right?  Worked fine -- until today.  Luckily, I was in the basement when the machine started jumping around and making crazy noises - who knows what might have happened if I hadn't stopped it when I did?  As it is, the comforter was twisted around clear inside the inner guts of the machine,  the central agitator has come apart in several pieces, and I am soaking wet from wrestling the twisted, torn, dripping comforter from the machine's clutches.  Told you I had a Greek Curse!! 

I hear the flu season is going to be terrible this year.  Is there ever a year that they don't say that?  I'm waiting for the day when I open up my newspaper and read a headline declaring a projected healthy winter: Experts Predict Slow Flu Season: Don't worry about shots this year.

  But no matter how crappy everyone else is going to feel, my house will be flu free!  Why?  Because I have spent the past several days jumping through the craziest hoops to get all of my household immunized!  That may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but it truly is.  Babies need to have two flu shots, given in half-doses.  Children under 9 need to get the shot from a pediatric nurse.  And Tysen's work does free flu shots for adults, but you have to be there within an exact window of time.  So that is how our flu shots became a fiasco!

October 6th - Evey gets part one of her flu shot.  Must get it early if the second one, exactly one month later, is to take effect before the flu season.

November 3rd - The Monday morning after Halloween weekend.  I wander around the house in a daze just grateful to still be standing and wondering where to even begin with the mountains of mess throughout the house.  Phone rings: "uuu Honey, you're going to kill me, but today is flu shot day at work and you need to be here at 12:15."  Really.  Change my clothes, do my hair, change toddler and baby clothes, do their hair, take kindergartener to school.  On the way to school my phone rings: "uuu Honey, since Seth is nine, he doesn't have to have a pediatric nurse, so he can come in and get his shot too if you check him out of school."  Great!  Park at the school instead of just dropping off kindergartener, haul the baby and toddler into the school, wait in office forever until they realize that the reason no teachers are responding is that the class is at lunch.  How happy do you think Seth was to see me at lunch?  How much happier do you think he was when I told him that I was there to take him to get a flu shot?  Needless to say, there was some foot-dragging.  Back in the van - book it downtown to hubby's office, circle and find a parking spot, wait at the elevators - Tysen gets off the elevator with a look of extreme caution on his face.  "uuu, Honey, you're going to kill me, but I got the date wrong.  Flu shots are Friday." Really.

Friday, November 7th - Early day at school.  That means that instead of checking Seth out of school (again) when I drop off Lily, I have to go back and get him to go down for flu shots at work.  10:40 - drop off kindergartener, go home, putter for 40 min., go back to school and check Seth out of school, pause and wonder for a moment if I should just go ahead and check Lily & Isaac out too, because school is out at quarter to one and that is really pushing it.   But the prospect of trailing all five around downtown outweighs my better judgement, and I leave them in school.  Back downtown with the pedal to the floor.  Getting off the freeway, phone rings: "uuuu Honey, where are you?  We're supposed to be there (two floors up from where he is sitting) in five minutes!"  Really.  Arrive, park, elevators, forms to fill out, hand forms in: "where is Seth?" the nice nurse asks.  "Over there, hiding," is Tysen's response.  "Oh, we also have the nasal mist, if he would prefer that.  And what about your little one (Chloe); would she like the mist instead as well?"  My turn, "umm, we understood that it was only for adults because there would be no pediatric nurse."  "Well, we do, in fact, have a pediatric nurse.  She is happy to help all of your children." Except the ones I left at school!!!  Really.  End up 30 min late to pick up the school kids - 30 minutes!!!  Just as I turn onto the school's street, my empty light comes on on the van's gas tank.  Quick call to Tysen - "how long can I still go when the empty light is on?"  Get to the school.  The guilt I was feeling at leaving them waiting that long was ridiculous, right?  I mean, by the time they get their packs and jackets, get out of the school, and play on the grass like they always want to - it's not a big deal, right?  I pull up to find them curled up in balls, huddling in a hole by the side of a hill because, as the remaining students waiting for rides thinned out, they were left conspicuous targets for some older boys who kept stealing backpacks, gloves, shoes, whatever they could get, and taunting them.  Made me want to cry!  If they had told me before I pulled away from that curb, boy howdy there would have been some bully boy heads rolling!!!  I thought they were just playing, not trying to hide!!  I'm a terrible mother!!

Today, November 10th - Kept Isaac home from the first part of school to keep an appointment I had made with the pediatrician weeks ago for an AM time before Lily goes to school.  Four little kids and me running (well, Evey doesn't run - she just clings to me like a monkey while I run) through the parking lot, in the pouring rain, with Chloe crying that she doesn't want her poka-dot pants to get wet, to get to the pediatrician's office to wait for forty minutes to have a nurse give them THE EXACT SAME NASAL MIST!  The mist doesn't even require a pediatric nurse!  But Evey did get the second half of her SHOT.

So now our entire family has had our flu shots/nasal mists and we're ready to face the impending flu season.  And my Mom thinks the whole thing is a conspiracy between the government and the pharmaceutical companies!  I'm beginning to believe it.

I've decided that somewhere along the way I've ended up in a Greek epic; and as in all Greek epics, I have unknowingly offended one of those cranky gods who then decide to make me pay for it!!  Last week I began making dinner - one of Tysen's favorites - a casserole that requires that I brown the hamburger, mix it with a bunch of other stuff, then cook it in the oven.  I put the pound of hamburger in the frying pan, walked downstairs to get the tomato soup, and completely forgot what I went down for.  After a few seconds of thought, I settled on needing to sew Halloween costumes as my reason for being in the basement (my sewing machine is in the same room as our food storage).  

So I sat down and worked on sewing.  15 minutes later, I smelled something burning.  The kids, of course, had followed me downstairs and were playing, so no one had been upstairs to notice before it got pretty bad.  How stupid could I be?  I ran upstairs, threw away the large blackened bullet of burger, opened all the windows (though it was really cold outside) and started over.  Finishing up the casserole, I popped it in the oven just in time for the phone to ring.  Candace was calling with a question about the baby.  I talked to her for a while and just closed up all the windows, then I noticed smoke billowing down the hallway.  The casserole had boiled over inside the oven!  Huge mess!  Terrible smell!  Smoke everywhere!!!  And right then, Tysen walked in from work....

After a lovely dinner of twice-burnt casserole, the evening proceeded normally.  Tysen was in the kitchen doing homework after we put the kids to bed, when I started smelling something again, and noticed even worse smoke.  Rushing into the kitchen in a panic, I was greeted by a consternated Tysen who, in an attempt to help out and make it so that I wouldn't have to clean the mess out of the bottom of the oven, had turned the self-cleaning cycle on.   While he knew that the stove locks down for six hours and everything inside gets burned to a crisp, what he didn't anticipate was the toxic smoke and smell!!  It was nearly unbearable.  It burned the back of the throat and made eyes water.  

So, at the end of the day, I guess we should just be grateful that our house is still standing and that everyone is well - but no one can blame us for eating out the next night!!

Crazy, true - you are saying - but not Greek-epic-wrath-of-the-Gods worthy.  Oh, but it was only the beginning.  Stay tuned for tales of our last trip to Lagoon and the never-ending saga of the Halloween costumes.  You will believe!

It has been awhile since I've written.  See, my husband and I took all the littles and and went on a camping trip.  We got home exactly a week ago, and I'm finally beginning to feel as if I'm starting to recover and get my feet under me again.  I have loved camping since I was a kid.  I always planned to live that way.  I remember, even in jr. high planning my dream cabin where I would live at one with nature.  Now, I can barely survive 5 days with 5 kids in the wild!  I admit it - I have gotten soft.  No more plans to someday move "off the grid" for this gal.  Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed every minute of the trip, and I've already reserved the campsite for next summer, but it was soooo hard!!!  I thought that my daily life was already one of perpetual motion, but up in the mountains, where the weather changes constantly and food prep is much more involved, I felt like a whirling dervish!!  It's regular life complicated by all four seasons every 24 hours with everything packed in tiny spaces.  I don't remember camping this way.  I remember leisure - listening to the wind in the trees - fishing on the river - reading - hiking - communing with nature.  I understand now why my Mom always laughed when I told her I was going to live in the middle of nowhere when I grew up.  Ah, wisdom.

But I still really enjoyed myself.  We go to the most beautiful spot, and it is fun to watch the kids discover it the way I did as a kid.  Wordsworth had it right when he called little boys "nature's priest."  Although my Lily is more wild than any of the boys - and more covered in head-to-toe dirt!  It is amazing to watch the stages as the kids at first are fascinated with everything, then they get bored wondering what to make of this non-technological world, then their minds begin to open, their imaginations begin to put down roots in the rich mountain soil, and something beautiful and wonderful grows.  By the time we leave, they know every rock and tree, where the grasshoppers are, the best skipping rock sites...  And they inevitably have established "clubhouses."  Not built, or altered from the way they find them, just spots where they gather - a fallen tree that makes a large hollow, the canopy of a giant pine, or a grassy clearing surrounded by aspen trees.  I always regret bringing them back to civilization (though one more day without a shower and I'd just cry).  In another Wordsworth poem, he writes, "and she shall lean her ear in many a secret place, where rivulets dance their wayward round, and beauty borne of murmuring sound shall pass into her face."  This notion resonates within me as I watch my children - filthy, bedraggled, sunburned, bug-bitten and more beautiful than at any polished time because the beauty of nature has passed into their faces.  

And so even though it takes me two weeks non-stop preparation followed by a whirlwind camping trip, followed by another two weeks of recovery and laundry, I will never neglect a summer by omitting a trip into the wild for my little wild ones.  But I won't be moving there permanently any time soon!