Running free

Running free, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

Dig our new plastic horse herd! Bean and I picked them up this morning after posting our desire for plastic horses on Freecycle. I was expecting a bunch of crappy My Little Ponies, but these were clearly someone's prize collection once upon a time. I would have totally loved these when I was a little girl. Who am I kidding? I totally love these NOW! A complete stranger has made horse-loving Bean's week, bless her.

Sugar drunk

Sugar drunk, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

Sometimes I thoroughly enjoy my job. "Staying home to bake for appreciative children" is definitely one of my favorite job description line items of this stay-at-home mama gig. Here is Bean, chowing down with gusto on a post-nap slice of Battenberg cake. Before this, I could literally never get Bean to smile for a photo unless I asked her to think of her Papa and how much she loves him. Apparently, marzipan-wrapped cake loaves will also work!

My friend, Kat, showed me her copy of The Gentle Art of Domesticity, and I knew right away that I needed my own copy. The recipe came from this wonderful book, as have many other inspiring (and beautifully photographed) ideas for creative home life.

I wonder if "Queen of Hearts Jam Tarts" will result in an equally smiley photograph?

In which once again I am stupid with the hair color

DSC01556, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

So I dyed my hair the cheap way again, and once again it came out way brighter than I'd intended. I didn't think it was that bad, though, 'til yesterday. I was out gardening in the sun when I heard the door across the street slam. Then the excited voice of our 12-year old, home-schooled neighbor yelling, "Whoa! Mom! You've gotta come see this! Look at her hair!"

Entertaining children was not quite the effect I was going for. Bean asked me the day after the dyeing, "Mom, what happened to your hair? Your normal hair?" So perhaps I should've realized it was worse than I thought.

Oh well! I'm still too cheap to pay someone to fix it and too busy to spend that much time obsessing over it anyway. It'll fade sooner or later.

Hands full of slugs!

Hands full of slugs!, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

I've got to post this because the photo--and the event itself!--were too hilarious not to put out there. I was trying to keep loud little Bean out of the house over the weekend while her early-rising Papa caught a quick nap. We went out into the backyard to do a little weeding together, which she enjoys because it invariably means we find some form of interesting life. In the case of the barberry shrubs near the swings, pulling up handfuls of overgrown crabgrass yielded handfuls of overgrown slugs. Yuck!

I'm never bothered by this sort of thing, but even I was grossed out when I saw the slugs wrapping themselves between her fingers, webs of slime draped behind them. After Bean stashed the slugs in a new bowl habitat and came inside, it took me ten minutes and a new green scrubbie to get rid of the horrible goo--and then I had to throw the scrubbie away because it was so filled with nastiness.

Such is life with Bean!

Crap legacy

I suspect that some years down the road, when I look back on this era in my life, I will think of it as a time when I didn't do anything particularly well. I'm pretty smart and accustomed to feeling more or less successful in whatever way I choose to spend my time. Not in a brilliant, genius kind of way. Just, you know, pretty good.

Now, I don't whether it's because a third kid has thrown me or if the new business is taking its toll, but I just feel like I suck at stuff. I can't keep up with this blog or others' blogs or even the business blog. I can't manage not to yell at the kids at least once during the course of my day (and let's face it, it's usually more than once). I can't figure out how to improve my deteriorating relationship with Sister which seems to be made worse with every day of math homework. I can't get anything done. The house is filthy. Every available horizontal space is taken up with boxes of crap. You know? It's just overwhelming if I stop to think about it. And I've never been very good at ignoring things that bother me.

Intellectually I know that this is probably par for the course with young children around, but I just don't know how to turn off my inner control freak.

Things not to say to Husband

What I would put right now as my Facebook status update if my husband didn't have me as one of his friends: "Sugarmama is real damn sick of her husband running half an hour late for dinner lately. Especially on nights when she got no fucking sleep because the baby kept her up."

There. I said it.

And now for a pre-late-dinner cocktail.

Baby's jones

My first two girls seemed to get all the oral fix they needed through nursing. Neither Sister nor Bean ever cared for a pacifier. (I did offer one sometimes if all else failed to soothe their screams, but it was always rejected with outrage.) Sweet P is very different. She nurses plenty, but when she doesn't have a booby in her mouth, she also likes her little rubber plug. She's even discovered that I often keep one in her car seat in the dining room so as to never be without one in the car. She'll sometimes get this look in her eyes in the middle of whatever she's doing--today it was me playing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" with her--and she'll crawl off to find that spare. She pops it into her mouth and looks so pleased with being able to help herself that I don't have the heart to take it away.

But I think she might be developing a little oral dependency now. For the last week she's been waking up 5 or 6 times a night as if she were a newborn. She doesn't appear to be teething anymore--that was three weeks ago and teeth numbers 5 and 6 finally came in on her upper gums with no more inflammation anywhere in her mouth. I think it's just that in her dimly night-lit room, she can't find her freakin' pacifier. I nurse her to sleep and generally put her down without incident. But when she wakes up a couple of hours later, I give her the bink and it puts her right back to sleep--'til it falls out. Again and again.

At 4:00 this morning, after waking up to retrieve it for her several times, it finally dawned on me that I was being used. Finally, I know, but I was tired as hell, okay? I told Husband--who at last registered that perhaps he should take a turn getting up--to just look in on her but not give her the damn plug anymore. He did just that, but when he left the room Sweet P screamed for quite some time afterwards. I'm not even sure if it was constant or if she dozed off. I was such a zombie at that point that I slept (fitfully) through whatever fuss she might have been making before getting up to nurse her at 4:45 when I heard her yet again.

Do you ever get the feeling that a good night's sleep is the modern holy grail? I'm going to stop giving her the pacifier at night, I think, in the hopes that a cold turkey approach will end this awful new nighttime routine of hers within a few days. I'm so tired of being so tired!

Making apple butter

Making apple butter, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

It's been a miserably long time since I was last here, and while I've been absent fall has come to NC. Isn't it funny how the last day of summer happens without you knowing that it's the last day? You kinda know it's coming, but you don't know that particular 95 degree, swelteringly humid day is the last one of the year? Turns out it is, though, and pretty soon you realize it's time to do stuff like whip up pumpkin muffins with your delighted 3-year old daughter and make a big mess of apple butter to go with it. That's what we've been doing around here lately, and it's very cozy indeed.

What not to do with your sister's colored hair gel

What not to do with your sister's colored hair gel, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

I swear, every time I turned my back on Bean yesterday she was doing something godawful. Witness this goopy mess of a toy here. What happened was that I left Bean and Sister playing happily upstairs while I went downstairs to make dinner. A few minutes later, I hear Sister wailing, "Oh no!" I went to see what was amiss, and found that Bean had climbed from the toilet to the bathroom counter where she was then able to reach the medicine chest. Fortunately, we don't keep actual medicine--which Bean thinks is "tasty"--there. But we do keep Sister's vast collection of colored hair gels there, and Bean had emptied 3 of the tubes onto this unsuspecting stuffed critter.

Other shenanigans yesterday: pulling all the flowers off a shrub in my front flower garden, catching gold fish from her father's pond (which always ends in fish death), yanking Sweet P's legs out from under her while she was crawling several times, and I can't remember what all else. It was a rough afternoon and I was near tears by the time Husband made it home (late).

Today's looking better, despite a rough night with the baby not sleeping. But apparently an hour of mama time first thing in the morning, even after very little sleep, cures most of what ails me.

Sunday house

I love my house most on a Sunday evening. All the laundry is done. The beds are made up with fresh linens. There are fresh flowers from the garden in the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, the dining room. Everything is put away and clean. The kids are clean, with full bellies, in their beds. The trash is taken out. The refrigerator and pantry are fully stocked, as is the bowl of pretty, fresh fruit on the counter.

All is well.

Good mood mama

This week has been so much better than last week. I'm certainly not getting any more sleep than last week, but I am over a summer cold and I'm also consistently getting up at 5:45, about 45 minutes (if I'm lucky) before anyone else gets up. At 5:45 it's still dark outside, and some mornings I'd much rather sleep. But it's been worth it to have the quiet time. What I've been doing is making myself a cup of tea and going out onto our dark back porch to sit on the rug. I stretch a little because when it's quiet I notice how stiff my body is in the mornings now. (It didn't used to be.) I watch the sun rise through the trees behind the house because our porch faces east. I listen to the birds wake up and the crickets go to sleep. Yesterday I listened to an owl makes its way through our neighborhood, it's hooty calls getting farther and farther away from me.

My morning mood is vastly improved by starting the day off alone and quiet rather than having to be "on" the minute the kids wake me up. I may even set my clock a little earlier to get even more time like this!

On the fence

I've been trying to decide lately whether to keep going with this blog or not because--as the few of you still reading here have probably noticed--I'm having trouble fitting it into my life now. And part of it is also that I don't have all that much new to say lately. I'm either having a horrible time with the kids because I'm sleep-deprived and trying to do too much, or I've gotten a little rest and being home with my daughters is the very best thing I could possibly imagine doing right now.

I'm having one of those latter kinds of weeks right now, in case anyone is interested. I just spent two relaxed hours outside with Bean and Sweet P, weeding the garden, catching butterflies and frogs, trying to keep Sweet P from swallowing pebbles. It was a perfect couple of hours and just exactly how I imagined being home with kids could be in my pre-Bean daydreams. (It remains to be seen whether my inner grooviness will hold once Sister gets home from school and the daily math hysteria resumes once again, but I'll try.)

Anyways, I still can't make up my mind, but considering that my days go much better with the girls if I keep my computer time to a minimum, I may drop the blogging.

Friday morning

I backed up my wake up time to 5:45 today since Sweet P seems to be on an earlier wake up schedule herself. If only I hadn't had to pack Sister's lunch this morning instead of last night I would've had a lovely bit of just mama time...

This first week back to school has been a real bummer, to use a phrase dating from my own school days. I've already had Sister's teacher call me to express her concern over my daughter's near-constant fidgeting--yes, already! I found myself wanting to advise Sister to just start biting her nails like I used to do, but instead had her make herself a "stress ball" to squeeze under her desk. It's just a balloon filled with rice and tied off and is pleasantly squeeze-y. Sister herself told me that she can't just sit there with her hands quietly resting on her desk, that she needs something for them to do. I can definitely relate, so here's hoping the rice-filled balloon will fix everything. If someone recommends she be medicated to keep her focused in school, I will seriously consider homeschooling her.

My goodness, what grim thoughts for lovely mama time!

Some things I'm looking forward to this weekend: getting some sleep so I can kick this cold that isn't helping with my record-high grumpiness level; having brunch with a couple friends; doing some sewing; and having Husband home!

Birds are beginning to sing now, though the dog is still snoring in his crate...

Work love

I was just puttering around the house before anyone wakes up, half-thinking about what I could do with Bean today. Have I mentioned here that she's gotten to the point where I must have an answer to the question, "What are we going to do now?" If I tell her, "Hon, we're doing it!" or, "I thought we'd just hang out together," she becomes enraged. She's an intense little person who wants to always be moving on to the next thing. I'm a goal-oriented kind of gal myself, but my mother assures me that I was nothing like Bean as a kid.

Anyways. It struck me a minute ago that today I get to go to work! And that the answer to Bean's inevitable question could be, "Miss Valerie is going to come take care of you and Sweet P today."

Respite from the steely-eyed glare of my 3-year old!

New routine

This first week back to school is just dragging. I really was surprised to realize this morning that it's only Wednesday. If felt like at least the beginning of next week.

One bright side to the new back-to-school routine is that I've begun setting my clock for half an hour earlier than Sister's wake-up time. So I'm getting up at 6:00 and my only goal is to have a cup of tea in solitude before anyone wakes up needing me. It makes me very grumpy to have to be on as soon as I get up--and sometimes before I get up if I bring the baby into bed with me, and then Bean gets in bed with us and wants to mess with Sweet P, and then the dog begins whining downstairs when he realizes people are waking...

Quiet and solitude are so rare for me these days and I've always been the kind of person who needed a lot of time alone. I'm sure I'd be a much better mama and much nicer person in general if I could just figure out how to get more of that. 6:00 waking is a start. My mom used to get up at 4:30 in the morning when I was a kid, but I don't think I'm quite that desperate yet!

Summer is over

DSC01262, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

Sister's going back to school on Monday and I think I'm really going to miss the completely whack games that the girls played together. At the beginning of summer, I had big plans for all the time we were going to have at home. Cooking, baking, sewing up toys, doing paintings, setting up a family art space... but somehow all that ended up happening was naked Barbie parties and pet torture. Yeah, we went to the pool a couple times, made homemade popsicles once, went to the museum...but really, that was about it.

There seem to be a lot of parents out there relieved that their dear offspring will be heading back to school in the very near future (if they haven't already). But I'm just sorta bewildered by how very little we did this summer and feeling a bit disappointed that I didn't get around to teaching Sister to cook a few things like I meant, to teaching Bean how to embroider with yarn and a giant plastic needle on burlap, to even going to the zoo. Where the heck did all those long, empty weeks go?

More ways to waste time online

Just when I thought I knew all the ways in which I could get drawn into an internet time suck--browsing Japanese fabrics, trawling enviously through Etsy storefronts, reading your blogs, emailing my college girlfriends to try and coordinate a mutually acceptable potluck date--I discover another way to waste a lot of time I don't have. Facebook. Who knew what an obsession it could become?

I realized recently that with my twenty year high school reunion fast approaching, I'd better get my married name out there so that people could find me. So that, you know, I'd actually be invited this time. (I haven't gone to any of them so far.) So I created a Facebook account, invited a few friends, and went along my merry way. But so many people are finding me now!

I've had a number of college friends that I haven't kept up with "friend" me, an ex that I haven't spoken with in 10 years, and now, indeed, some high school people. I've actually busted out my horrible senior yearbook as a reference so that I can try to remember who these people were when they friend me. (Someday when I want to make y'all laugh, I'll post pictures of my enormous 1980's high school hairdo. I hope to never see another bottle of White Rain hairspray as long as I live.)

I think where the time suck comes in is when people ask me things like, "So what's your life like now?" and "What have you been doing in the last 19 years?" Those are both actual questions I've received and it takes awhile to summarize 19 years of personal history, you know?

Anyways, that's my most recent excuse for why I've been neglecting this blog.

Big juicy personal revelation with a side order of guilt

Yesterday was a good day. A very good day. The baby had woken me up the night before several times because of a stuffy nose, I had to rush the girls out of the house first thing in the morning, but still a very good day. The thing that was different? I got to go to work.

I met the babysitter at the new office and after Sweet P was tanked up with milk, the sitter whisked the girls away for a fabulous 2-1/2 tour of the wonders of downtown Mebane. (This woman is the childcare score of the century, by the way. Bean and Sweet P both adore her already, after only two afternoons with her.) I stayed at the office with Husband and our business partner and learned all about our new fabric printer. I learned something new! I hung out with grown-ups and made grown-up jokes! I thought about our business at length!

It was only later when I took the girls home and noticed how cheerful and optimistic I felt that I realized it was because I'd done something other than caring for my own children. Yeah, that's where the big helping of guilt comes in.

I don't think I need to say here that I adore my girls, but I'll say it anyway for the record. I'm crazy about them. They're wonderful, unique little people and I enjoy seeing how they evolve everyday. But I've been thinking this week that maybe I'm not doing such a great job with this stay-at-home mom thing. I've never been a patient person, I don't do the imaginative play thing very well, and you know what? Some days I am so bored I feel like I'm going a little crazy.

There. I said it.

I would really like to work a little while someone else takes care of my children. Not full-time or anything, but that's what I want very much.

Surprise! Still burnt out!

Yep, it's official. I am tired of Husband working so much on our new business venture. He didn't get home til 9:45 last night and left for work again this morning at 8:00. That was exactly 15 minutes after Bean and I had gotten up, by the way, so that's how much daddy time she had this morning, and that's how much baby-free time I had to get ready and make the bed. I hadn't even made it downstairs yet--he met me at the top of the stairs to hand me Sweet P before dashing out the door. Sigh.

I'm trying to tell myself it'll be worth it in the long run, but I'm afraid I'm just not that much of a visionary when another 10-1/2 hour day of taking care of kids looms ahead of me. I'm crazy about my daughters, of course, but I just need a teensy little break right about now.

In the time it took me to write this brief little post, I had to stop twice because Bean requested seconds on snack and then dropped and broke the cup that her applesauce was served in. Also, the baby is waking up after a 20 minute nap. Fuck.

Days without t.v....

DSC01235, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

...are spent doing EVERYTHING. I thought I was busy before? Sheesh!

In case you can't tell, that's our dining room table covered with quilts and all the sofa cushions and throw pillows piled up to make a fort. Then there's the scrap basket with fabric scraps all over the place. ALL the Legos out. ALL the cardboard blocks out. And yes, lots of happy, imaginative play going on there so I'm not complaining. Too much.