Author Archives: powerskirstin

How long would our cloth diaper supply last if my husband followed through on his plan to trash, and not launder, every poopy diaper the middle child makes from this point forward? And other hypothetical questions, like, will she ever eat another vegetable again that isn’t some form of a potato?

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Up until our son was born, our middle gal was a strong, healthy, and active eater. She would often eat multiple breakfasts, including most of mine and my husband’s. While our oldest girl is oftentimes skeptical of veggies, the middle one (formerly) wouldn’t think twice about gobbling up some of my eggs mixed with mushrooms, onions, greens, and asparagus. 

Although never a big fan of fruit, even as a baby—which I think is totally bizarre, by the way—she could eat her share and more of many a vegetable. She was especially fond of roasted cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts.

I’m using the past tense because after our son was born, my breastmilk arrived. And with it, came the abandonment of vegetables for the middle child—as well as most other foods that aren’t toast, crackers, pretzels, Cheerios, or potatoes—and the arrival of the worst poopy diapers ever known to this house. And perhaps, ever known to mankind.

We’ve been cloth diapering for four years now. When we were expecting with our oldest, a friend referred me to this site, where we learned all we could about using cloth. We eventually decided to give it a go. It’s worked out pretty well for us so far.

It has definitely saved us big money. I’ve read that parents can expect to pay around $2,000 for disposable diapers per child. We’ve made less than a $1,000 investment in cloth diaper supplies that will see us through three kids, though we still buy and use disposables when we travel, and to have on hand here at the house for when the laundry just doesn’t quite get done in time.

And there’s the environmental factor, which is nice too. We don’t make as much trash as we would using disposables, although one could argue we waste a lot of water keeping up with the washing of these things.

So, what are the downsides to using cloth? I used to think it was just the high maintenance of keeping up with the three-cycle (cold wash/hot wash/cold rinse), every-other-day washings. And there can be a slight yuck factor, though you get used to it after awhile. Think ammonia smells and dumping and rinsing the occasional dirty diaper.

However, I now—we now—realize all else has paled in comparison to the recent poopy diapers that have come forth from our breastmilk drinking, white-food only eating toddler. THEY. ARE. THE. WORST. 

We are talking huge portions of soft, mushy, and smelly shite. Huge! The kind of shite that you can’t simply plop off into the toilet and easily flush away, like her diapers of yesteryear. The kind of shite that brings on insta-diaper-rash it’s so nasty.

These new diapers need to be scraped by toilet-papered hand, multiple times to have any chance of being able to be used again, and to avoid ruining our washing machine on account of being totally loaded.

Which is why my husband said recently that he plans on just throwing away the diapers from here on out. Not even bothering to try and clean them. I guess he’d rather buy disposables during this phase or just replace the cloth with new cloth. 

I suppose, now that I really consider it, those choices are far superior to the scraping and dumping and holding-my-breath-so-I-don’t-throw-up option with the giganta-turds we are now seeing at least once, if not several times a day.

If only she were into potty training, this nightmare could all just go away. At least I don’t really have to worry about her nutritional intake as I’m eating well enough for both of us. She’s bound to get lots of goodness from my milk. 

I just hope we can all survive this chapter of the parenting book.

Anxiety Episode #10: I’m by myself with the three kids when one of them gets terribly hurt and we need to somehow get ourselves, unassisted, to the emergency room.

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There’s nothing like having a new baby in the house to make me feel all kinds of vulnerable. Lately, I’ve been worrying that some tragedy is going to befall one or more of us and that I’ll have to call an ambulance for the first time in my life because I’m outnumbered and overwhelmed.

For the past week or so the oldest kid has complained of chest pain a handful of times. She’s had no other weird symptoms. No fever. No problem going to the bathroom. No shortness of breath. She’ll just randomly say her chest hurts. Then she’ll make a big show full of grimacing and saying she can’t walk for an hour or so and then return to normal.

I haven’t called the doctor yet because she has hours and days of being totally fine and not mentioning it. And because several times when I pressed her on it, the chest pain mysteriously jumped from the top left to the top right side, and then to the lower belly region. And also because I really suspect that what’s been going on is she’s been twist-swinging on her belly on the backyard swing at our house and at my parents’ place.

Still, it’s stressing me out when she complains about this, and I’m watching her like a hawk when she does for the first sign of some kind of serious illness or distress.

The middle child has been coughing a lot lately and randomly choking on foods and beverages. Will she be the one to need urgent care? 

She’s also been working on mastering climbing the wooden ladder on the play set in our yard. The rungs are spaced pretty far apart, so her legs have to stretch to the max to make the climb. She’s done it unassisted but with me or the hubs standing close by just in case. 

This afternoon she went out back for a time with her older sister. I stayed inside, but told her not to climb and slide without me. She said OK, and then promptly went out back to climb and slide without me. 

I watched from the kitchen window holding both the baby and my breath, willing myself to trust her and her abilities to judge for herself what she is comfortable and capable of doing on her own. 

She made it fine. I exhaled, and then raised the window and yelled to her not to do it again. There’s only so much I can take.

Should I even go there with the baby? Every time I load him into the Moby wrap I pray I don’t drop him on his head, onto the hard floor below, despite the fact he’s the third kid and by now my muscle memory has the process pretty well ingrained.

Leaving him alone on the diaper changing pad on top of the dresser? I do it. know you’re not supposed to. But, there’s a limited time during which I know he won’t be capable of rolling his chubby little bum up over the edge. I’ve got a couple weeks or so. But still. Just the thought of him tumbling off is enough to undo me. 

Or the possibility that one or both of the girls, when they’ve got ‘the wilds’ (which is how my husband and I lovingly refer to their hyperactive, sometimes sugar-induced or sleep-deprived horseplay), will carelessly trip and fall and land on the baby and squish his little itty-bitty guts out. 

Not even two weeks old and I’m already imagining and preparing for the worst for him. What a mess his mother is. What a dark, dark mess.

I mean, this is all I need, really. On top of everything else, to be painfully stressed that we are going to need emergency medical care or to be medevacked to the nearest level 1 trauma hospital.

Maybe I just need to get more sleep.

Unless you have substantial physical evidence, do not attempt to argue with your know-it-all four-year-old child. Especially if you are a know-it-all too. You will not win. And, it’s just not worth it.

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Our oldest child is in a Montessori pre-school program a few mornings a week. On Fridays, a woman comes to her classroom to teach the students some beginning Spanish. 

At first, Nora couldn’t easily remember what new Spanish words she’d learned when I asked her after school. But after several lessons (she used to not attend on Fridays), she’s able to relay more and more vocabulary. 

At lunch today, she sang us a song with the lyrics: Adios amigos, Goodbye friends! over and over again.

Then, out of the blue, many hours later, on the drive home from picking up our car from being serviced, she said to me, “Mommy, do you know what buenos días means?” 

I do, but asked her to tell me what it means. She thought for a moment and then replied, “It means hello.”

I clarified that while we do use buenos días to greet someone, it actually means good morning. 

“Nuh-uh. It means hello. How do you know, anyway?” she said.

I told her I learned Spanish when I was in school and that I speak a little Spanish with my students at my job.

She was not convinced. “No, mommy. It just means hello.”

I felt my frustration level rising, although this could have been due to the fact that the baby was screaming and the middle child was whining about wanting me to hold her, as if I could just magically stop driving the car and respond to her wishes. 

“OK, Nora,” I said. “I’m not going to argue with you. What is the point anyway, really?

Which is why moments later, after she had removed both her rain boots and  socks while sitting in her car seat, and proclaimed matter-of-factly, while covering up the sunshine with an outstretched leg, “Mommy. Do you know that my foot is bigger than the sun?” I just acquiesced and replied, “Yep. Your foot is bigger than the sun.”

Someday she’ll learn that the sun is far bigger than her foot. And that Rapunzel, though beautiful in all her animated glory, is not a real person. And that candy is not a health food, even though it is really yummy. And even that a drive to the grocery store, while seemingly endless to her, does not, in fact, take forever.

I did overhear Nora telling my husband tonight that buenos días means hello, but you say it in the morning time. A nice little compromise, I think. And, close enough to the truth, anyway. So I’ll take it.

Tandem nursing: A great success! Although I may never get off the couch or leave the house again.

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Following Rowan’s birth, I was separated—with the exception of a few small visits, during which she did not really ask to nurse—from my middle child for four days and three nights. She had previously weaned from breastfeeding at night, but was still actively nursing two-to-three times a day. It was the longest we’d been apart up to that point.

On our last day at the hospital, as Liam and I considered heading home with Rowan, and having my parents hang onto the girls an extra day more than we had planned—due to our becoming ill with a stomach bug—I suddenly burst into tears. 

When Liam asked me what was wrong, I replied, “What if Frances doesn’t want to nurse anymore?”

I’m sure it was due to hormones, utter exhaustion, and just the overwhelming emotion of the previous two days’ events, but it felt as though I were grieving for something I hadn’t even yet known I’d for sure lost. I was consumed with the thought that I had nursed my youngest daughter for the last time, yet wasn’t prepared for the relationship to end.

And then, there was some kind of an emergency on the hospital floor—a Code K? Evidently a baby had gone missing. Several nurses and aids came into our room checking about and looking into the bathroom rather urgently and somewhat discreetly. 

Gratefully, the baby had just been misplaced, not stolen. She was returned to her frantic parents. The commotion, though, had the much needed effect of snapping me out of my little pity party and moving me toward packing up our things, lest our baby be the next to go missing.

In the end, I needn’t have worried about Frances. When she was returned to us, she lovingly and eagerly accepted my offering to nurse. In fact, she would gladly do so as often as her brother, I think. Thankfully, she is somewhat distracted at meal times and when her dad and big sister are around. It’s the times, like this morning, with Liam back to work and Nora at school, that I fear we will just be our own little three-person LaLeche League circle, nursing for hours on end, with no relief in sight.

It has taken some getting used to balancing time spent breadtfeeding the baby and also responding to Frances’s needs. I’ve managed to get them both attached at the same time a handful of times, but I prefer them to nurse separately, given the seeming gigantic size of my nearly two-year-old when compared to my eight-day-old and the logistics involved in positioning everyone just right. Liam snapped a ridiculous picture of us all the other night and was just dying to share it with someone outside our family. I urged him to be wise and NOT share it. I haven’t checked Instagram lately. Let’s hope, for his sake, it’s not hanging out there.

Our nighttime looks a bit interesting now too. Initially we tried Liam sleeping with both girls in one bed, while I slept with the baby in the other room. Our thinking was that since Frances had night-weaned, and just spent three nights sleeping with my parents, this transition would be OK for her.

However, she woke up the first two nights, multiple times, distressed and screaming, wanting to be with me. Liam couldn’t console her. So now, even though I read about co-sleeping and nursing “rotisserie style,” (turning back and forth as needed in between toddler and newborn), and decided it was NOT for me, that is where we are. It’s necessary to be flexible, right?

So far, it’s all been OK. I feel like I’m still able to get sleep. And honestly, nursing this time around is off to the best start ever. I recommend every new mom have a nursing toddler to help alleviate engorgement and the pain of having an overabundant milk supply. I have had very few problems and discomfort, unlike when both girls were born.

We continue to take things day-by-day here, but are happy to report that our two little—well, one little, one giant—nurslings are thriving!


I’ll take diapering a vagina over a penis any day of the week. Hands down. 

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As if being a new parent isn’t hard enough, we have the added bonus of having to care for and diaper a penis this time around. 

I feel like our diapering station is set up like an operating room tray, complete with sterile gauzes and other necessary instruments and tools. With girls, we never needed this. What should be a simple chore involves no less than sixty-three steps, and often, all hands on deck, or at least four hands—Liam’s and my own.

On Easter my dad scoffed in disbelief at my diapering complaints, wondering aloud why it took two of us to change the little guy’s diaper. I just looked at him and said, “Dad, you have no idea.” 

Which of course, he does. It’s just that it’s been over thirty years since he’s had to care for a newborn penis. His memory must be cloudy. Or perhaps he’s blocked it out, due to trauma, which I plan on doing several months from now.

So, I had to remind my dad. 

“Well,” I began, “one person gets the new diaper ready. Another prepares the penis pad (a gauze with Vaseline to protect the circumcision site). Another wets the wipes (our last that remain of the supply given to us by the hospital). Then, one slowly opens the diaper, careful not to disturb any slimy contents too much, lest they creep out and dirty the things around them. Another removes the old penis pad, while still another covers the penis with some kind of cloth until the wiping is complete (We missed this step a time or two, only to be rewarded with a fruitful spraying of penis pee all over the place. Now, this step is essential!). After the wiping, the new protective penis pad gets put into place, the diaper is folded down to avoid adding further injury to the umbilical cord site, and the diaper straps are fastened with a quick prayer that the process will not need to be repeated again any time soon (The boy loves to wait until we change a pee diaper, and then decides to unload his slimy poops in the next few minutes).”

So, by my count, that’s at least ten steps, or ten jobs for ten people. The boy must be wondering about our incompetence as it takes us about as many minutes to complete the task of changing his diaper.

Gratefully, the cord has fallen off and the circumcision site seems to be healing well enough not to require gauze anymore. Also, we are out of hospital wipes, which needed to be moistened with water, and can presumably resume using normal baby wipes. All of this accounts for a reduction in steps by at least five. 

Now I think the only thing we need to protect ourselves against is the wayward spraying fire hose. I can deal with this, though, after the ridiculousness of the first week of penis care. I give you moms to many sons lots and lots of credit for going through this more than once.

Like I said, give me a vagina to diaper any day of the week. Hands down.

Reflections on the birth of our son: Part two.

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Wow. What a whirlwind. The tagline of this blog has never seemed more true. I’ve had every intention of writing for days about the past week, but our minutes and hours—rightly so—have been spent caring for our three, very needy children. Turns out adding a third baby to the mix brings levels of whining, screaming, crying, and clinging to all sorts of new and extreme heights; everyone needs a little more love and hugs, as well as patience and kindness these days.

I wanted to capture a few more memories from the past week while everything is still fresh in my mind. In another week or so, there’s no trusting what will remain.

Laboring at home is far more comfortable than laboring in the hospital. This past Tuesday, the morning of Rowan’s birthday, I awoke at 4:00 with contractions. Although I remained hopeful, I wasn’t sure what to expect given my body had begun false labor already once before.

However, two hours later, after contractions started coming with increasing frequency and intensity, I made the decision to call in to work to request a sick day. This was it! I spent much of the morning pacing the house trying to think of last minute things that needed to be done. Apparently, there was nothing to be done. I got bored. Restless.

We went for a walk around the neighborhood. Frances held my hand for much of it, stopping along with me when I needed to take breathing breaks. Nora rode her tricycle and Liam pushed an empty double stroller, should one or both of the girls tire of walking. In the end, Frances made it the whole way, and Nora needed only to be towed up the steep hill while hanging onto the stroller strap as Liam pushed, a sight funny enough to bring smiles and laughter from everyone, especially when Liam’s swift, unbalanced tugging, threatened to overturn her a time or two.

When we got home, I nursed Frances, hoping to bring about more intense contractions. Success! Several times I had to employ deep breathing techniques just to get through. Although her mouth was occupied with sucking, she managed to copy the sound and intensity of my breathing, through her nose. After the contractions passed I was laughing out loud at her show of solidarity.

We later all moved down to the basement for a change of scene. Liam worked on a playlist of tunes to keep us occupied both at home and in the hospital. He later admitted that he was going to include some of Nora’s favorite Mary Poppins and Frozen songs just for fun, to see what my reaction would be. Although I’m sure it would have brought great amusement for him to hear the songs, I’m happy to report I didn’t have to suffer listening through them at the hospital. Not that I was really all that aware of music in the background anyway.

In the basement, I broke out the yoga mat and the exercise ball, deciding to labor on my hands and knees for a change. Nora did some downward dog with me and was moved too, like her sister, to be a breathing partner. Totally hilarious. But also a testament to how powerful breathing can be.

A little before noon I decided it was time for us to head in to the hospital. We called Candace, our neighborhood sitter, and savior, to come and stay with the girls.

I was disappointed to find when the midwife first checked me, at noon, that I was only two c.m. dilated (they wouldn’t admit us until I reached four c.m.). She gave us the choice to walk the hospital grounds or to go back home and return in a couple of hours. After some indecision, we decided to stay. I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were progressing, and fast. The midwife said she would be back to check me in two hours, at 2:00 p.m.

Since it was a sunny and mild day, Liam and I decided to head outside to walk. And also, because it was a little unnerving and humiliating to be having intense contractions in front of hospital visitors and employees in the halls of the hospital.

Very quickly the contractions progressed to where I had to stop walking and lean on Liam for support. I began to feel nauseous toward the end of every contraction, so we decided to head back inside. An hour had passed—it was only 1:00 p.m. I asked the triage nurse if there was any way the midwife could come back to check me early. She said no, that if I wasn’t further along, they would definitely send me home. She preferred we wait until 2:00.

So, Liam and I headed back into the very small, very uncomfortable room, where I had only the surface of a small counter to rest my head upon, or be in bed. After I threw up in the sink (take that you disbelieving hospital staff!) I climbed into bed, trying not to be sad and angry and disappointed that this was to be my laboring experience for the next hour, instead of having the privacy and space and resources (birthing ball, walking space, yoga mat, whirlpool, labor and delivery nurse) of a proper labor and delivery room.

I went into my breathing trance and waited as patiently as I could until the midwife came to check me, and found I had progressed to five c.m. This was a little after 2:00. By the time they were finally able to admit us to a room, I was a little over an hour away from when Rowan would be born. At this point, my sister, Melissa, had joined us in the room to offer support.

The charge nurse tried to start an IV in my hand (unnecessary since I did not need antibiotics and wanted to go natural), but after blowing veins in both hands, gave up. The other labor and delivery nurse (this amazing woman who was present for part of both girls’ births as well) started a whirlpool tub for me, which I would never get to use on account of the swift progress my body was making.

At eight c.m. the midwife decided to break my water. Not long after, following several more contractions and controlled pushes, I was able to hold our son in my arms. What a relief! He cried a sweet and loud little cry for almost the whole hour he was with me. He did take to nursing a few times, which was great…and quiet.

 

And then there were three. The girls love their baby brother. Nora insists she can take care of Rowan by herself. In her mind, this means she can watch him from the couch as he sleeps peacefully in his chair. She likes to snuggle him and kiss him and put stickers all over his clothing. She is fond of singing him songs and trying to calm him with her endless chatter when he cries.

Frances loves holding Rowan. She sits patiently with arms outstretched and seems amazed by his features and noises and very presence. She gets distressed when he cries, wanting to make him feel better in any way she can. She is clearly the one who is suffering the most from this transition. No longer our baby, she is learning that we can’t always respond to her every need. She wants to be held a lot and has a renewed and vigorous interest in nursing. Indeed, our tandem nursing is off to a good start. How long we will be able to keep it up remains to be seen. But, for now, we are all mostly happy and thriving.

Our patience has been tested countless times since we’ve come home from the hospital. And, things have indeed gotten quite tense here in our small house. However, our hearts are full with gratitude, and we are trying to be intentional about holding on to the effortless moments, full of warmth and love, to see us through the chaotic, trying times when we find ourselves asking: What in the hell were we thinking?

Reflections on the birth of our son: Part one.

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Contrary to what John Mayer’s lyrics say, my body is not a wonderland. While I will proudly acknowledge that it strongly, amazingly, naturally, and very capably brought forth life and love two days ago, it is now wholly wrecked and wicked.

I’m looking forward to the coming days when a trip to the bathroom no longer looks like a crime scene afterwards, and the muscles in my back and shoulders no longer ache as though they were involved in pushing Sisyphus’s boulder up a hill over and over again, instead of just pushing out a baby (albeit a nine-pounder!).

Next up to look forward to in the new mother body era: porn star-sized boobs full with good milk and lots of lots of leakage. Can’t wait.

Good sleep is hard to find. Our boy arrived late in the afternoon on his birthday. However, I’d been up since 4:00 a.m. that morning with early contractions and general restlessness.

On his first night, I logged only three sleep episodes, one lasting an hour, another forty-minutes, and the last, almost two hours. A far cry from normal.

Since our little man was born not so little, he had to undergo heel pricks every three hours to check his blood sugar levels. This happened with our girls too, but they fared fine on breastmilk alone and their numbers checked out okay.

With the boy though, the numbers kept dropping, so they had to increase checks to an hour after feedings at times. This, combined with vital checks on me and the baby, combined with the baby’s fussiness and my not being able to feed him on demand due to the blood sugar testing protocol, created an environment full of stress, crying (just baby, thankfully), and some zombied-out parents. Which segues nicely into the next revelation.

Sometimes breast is not always best? At least not in its own, as was the case with this guy. Those of you who know me well, understand my love and attachment to breadtfeeding. So, when the pediatrician and nurses were explaining to us how the frequent blood sugar checks and falling numbers were proving that my milk, or colostrum, was not enough to sustain the high caloric needs of my giant baby, you can imagine my disappointment when, after two really low sugar numbers, they insisted I start supplementing with formula. The alternative was to have him go to the NICU with an IV. At this point, even the lactation consultant was on board with using the formula, despite earlier attempts to try and advocate for us.

So, we started a new feeding routine every two-to-three hours that looked like this (and took nearly an hour to administer, start to finish):

  • Nurse the baby no more than ten minutes a side
  • Hand-express as much colostrum as possible into a pumping cylinder and syringe-feed it to baby
  • Use breast pump to try and express more colostrum, then syringe-feed this to baby
  • Syringe-feed as much formula as baby is willing to accept
  • Pray numbers go up so the heel pricking and blood squeezing and baby screaming can stop

After the first supplementation with formula, the baby’s numbers went up. After three more rounds, his numbers were finally holding steady. Hallelujah! No more stabbing and poking and squeezing blood from my baby (he probably endured about sixteen-seventeen needle sticks)!!

I was so grateful when today’s rounding pediatrician caught me getting ready to begin more formula supplementation, after seeing me syringe-feed some good quantity breastmilk, and asked shockingly, “What are you doing?”

I explained everything we’d been through up until that point, and she reassured me that the colostrum looked milky enough (a sign my milk was beginning to transition) and that hypoglycemic babies, once their levels balance out, rarely just fall back into trouble. She wanted me to quit the formula and just try to exclusively nurse and pump. Woohoo!

So that’s what we’ve been working on. And, in fact, since early this morning, we have quit the pump too. The baby is latching great and I’m hoping we will be able to round the corner soon enough. We’ve got a pediatrician appointment scheduled for tomorrow just in case.

Not quite the Club Med vacation we imagined. Yes, I know. Giving birth is hard work. But then, after the fact, there are nurses and aids who take care of you and respond to your every want and need. There is free hospital food to be eaten, TV to be watched, jacuzzi soaks to be taken, and lounging about to be done to begin the healing process.

When we woke up after our first sleepless night, we were excited about ordering enormous breakfasts and sipping on coffee (obviously we were delirious and still running on adrenaline). We talked about watching TV and reading some magazines, enjoying a break from work and parenting the two girls (my parents have had them for the past couple of days). 

And then, I don’t know where the day went or what happened to the hopeful thoughts that this hospital stay might be like some kind of mini-getaway for us. But, poof! It was gone.

We did enjoy breakfast, and some chocolate peanut butter pie, but TV turned out to be hugely unsatisyfying. And, we had a couple of family visitors, on top of round-the-clock care and feeding for the little-big man.

Around dinner time, the adrenaline had worn off. The lack of sleep had left us feeling completely wrecked, and…wait for it...we had both begun to feel as though we were getting sick with some kind of bug. 

I couldn’t eat my dinner. My tummy was gurgling and I just felt weak and exhausted. Liam, however, started with chills and aches and nausea. Basically, he became worthless from midnight until just before we were discharged this afternoon. Poor guy. Up until that point he had been an amazing partner and teammate.

Thankfully, my symptoms were less, though still aggravating. And, somebody had to care for this needy baby. So, my super-human mothering abilities kicked into high gear as I worked through the night to feed our improving son. No small feat. Thankfully, I was able to sleep better, if only slightly, than the night before. 

We are home now resting comfortably, with what I imagine is a touch of the stomach bug the girls just had. Our luck continues. Not quite how I imagined spending our last day at the hospital. Now we have to wait and see if the little guy will get it or not. Always an adventure here.

More to come another day on laboring at home with the girls and their reaction to “Baby Brother” who now, finally, has a name: Rowan James. We do love him so!

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Can’t we just pause it?

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We’ve instituted a Friday night movie night custom in our house and it’s been in place now for a couple of months. The girls really look forward to being able to choose a movie and enjoy Liam’s homemade popcorn, especially when Mommy throws in some surprise M&Ms at the bottom of the bowl.

The oldest, ever like her mother, insists on not wanting to miss out on anything. She’s learned that there is a pause function on the TV and so she regularly demands we pause the movie when she needs to break for the bathroom or retrieve random objects she believes she requires during the middle of the film, such as slippers, barrettes, or cloth napkins, which double not only as hand cleaners, but also blankets for baby dolls.

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She’s also learned how to program the pause button on her CD player. She may be dancing to tunes in the living room and have to pee, so she’ll run across to the player, hit pause, dash to the bathroom, and then resume playing, singing, and dancing when she returns.

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Just last week I was enjoying watching her, without her really being aware of my presence, as she set up several stuffed animal friends on the dining room table edge. She then proceeded to put on a dancing show for them in the kitchen. This involved lots of spinning and expressive arm movements, and humming and singing, of course.

In the middle of her charade, I observed her doing a kind of pee-pee dance, as we call it around here, and then watched as she ran over to her furry friends, pressed an imaginary button, complete with her own clicking noise, and then said, “Hold on, guys. Your teacher is going to pause the show. I will be right back, so don’t go away.” Then she made me promise not to let her younger sister interfere with the friends or the show in her absence.

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This past Saturday I had plans to take the girls, my sister, and my niece to the local theater to see a family production of Cinderella. As our luck would have it though, the oldest woke up with tummy troubles, yet again, early that morning. I confess, it might have had something to do with the fact that the night before, we had fried fish sandwiches and French fries for dinner. Though her stomach had been good for days, her appetite hadn’t really returned until that point. And, up until then, she’d had some pretty safe and bland foods. I wasn’t really expecting her to eat much of the food, but she dug right in, and showed no signs of wanting to nibble politely as she had done for days before. Instead, she was like a famished runaway orphan, seizing the opportunity of a hot meal as though she didn’t know when she’d be able to eat ever again.

So, yesterday morning she woke up, puked once, and then proceeded to have diarrhea (What is it about this word, by the way, that is so supremely distasteful? Ugh!) off and on for the next several hours. Mom of the year, here, I tell you.

I explained to her that we might not be able to go to the show because her tummy was upset. I told her that we wouldn’t want to have to keep going to the potty and getting up from our seats. She thought about this for a second and then said, “But can’t we just pause it?”

I laughed out loud and explained that the show was not a movie, but a play. There would be real people on stage acting out the story, and other people in the audience would be watching, so we wouldn’t be able to actually pause the show. She looked very disappointed, and slightly confused, as I explained all of this and she contemplated what it meant.

In the end, we did go to the show. We only had to use the bathroom one time, more than halfway through the play. We could hear music and faint voices from our stall in the restroom. She wondered aloud about what part we were missing and I gave her the play-by-play as best I could, that the prince had just met Cinderella at the ball, and they were likely dancing and falling in love. 

We made it back to our seats and finished the show without any other incidents, unless you consider her asking right at the end, as the cast lined up, in an extremely loud voice, whether or not she could talk to Cinderella because she had some questions to ask her. 

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Then, in the middle of eating a meal together this evening, the oldest needed to go to the bathroom, yet again (thankfully, it seems the tummy troubles are behind us). As my husband was getting ready to put a forkful of pasta into his mouth, she asked if he could pause dinner. Of course, to her delight, he humored her and froze his fork in midair, while she ran to the bathroom with a big smile on her face. When she was out of sight, my husband continued eating and I just looked at him smiling and shaking my head.

If only pausing on demand were so easy for the rest of us. I’d invoke that power all the time. Maybe the next time the girls get into a heated argument about something I’ll just scream, “Pause, please!” at the top of my lungs, and see what happens. Seems like it might be worth a try. 

I can’t decide which is more annoying: typing out entire blog posts on my cell phone, or using my laptop with a significant broken key.

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For a little over a year now, my beloved MacBook Pro has been without a functioning delete key (see image below: where working key should be, you’ll notice an empty key space filled with glowing backlight).

How did this happen? Well, let me tell you. Last Christmas, I decided I needed a big crafting project for our basement play space. I set my sights on several online DIY tutorials for a child’s teepee and worked for days like a madwoman until it was finished, imperfections and all.

The finished product.

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Two dads trying out the space just to make sure it was safe and suitable for the children. They look quite at home, don’t they?

Each morning for a few days between Christmas and New Year’s I took my coffee downstairs to work on cutting and sewing canvas, spacing out poles, and eventually, assembling the whole thing together. I had my laptop with me on the floor because I was using the online tutorials as a guide.

One morning, I carelessly knocked over my cup of coffee. I didn’t notice it right away, but the coffee had spilled onto part of the Mac keyboard. When I finally saw it, after I let out a string of oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shits, I swiftly righted the cup, flipped my laptop upside down and ran to get a towel. An initial assessment showed that every key was working except the delete key. An hours later assessment still showed that every key was working except the delete key.

I did some quick and dirty research online to see about replacing the keyboard. It all seemed to point to a very expensive replacement and no easy fix. I’ve never taken it anywhere to be serviced or inquired about a repair. Liam and I have simply dealt with life without delete. It is a HUGE pain in the ass to be typing anything of some length (e-mails, blog posts, lesson plans, etc.), because we inevitably make mistakes when we type, and there is no ease of just hitting a button to go backwards and erase. Instead, we must highlight the error and either type on top of it, or just hit the space bar to clear it. Often this latter move results in creating two spaces between words, when there is meant to be just one, so we have to highlight both spaces again and press the space bar one more time. Let me tell you, it is a real drag.

Forget forward deleting either, an easy alternative option on a non-Mac keyboard. There is this option on a Mac too, using a shortcut, but you have to use the command key in conjunction with the delete key.

Want to go back to a previously viewed website on your browser? Can’t do it with a quick and simple keystroke anymore. Have to use the trackpad to go and press that backward arrow. Major waste of time. Deleting massive amount of photos, or clips in iMovie? No problem, right? WHEN. YOUR. DELETE. KEY. WORKS. Now we have to manually drag everything to the trash. Such a chore.

I suppose it could be worse. We could be without the ‘e’ key, the most frequently occurring letter in the English alphabet, a fact I just looked up online. What would we do then? Substitute with another vowel, like ‘a’? Frances would be Francas. Restless Roost would be Rastlass Roost. Similar enough, right? It might even be fun for word-smithy readers to try and decipher blog posts using that simple key switcheroo, a cryptoquip of sorts.

Liam and I have agreed that the best, though, is when we get to work and use our Dell, district/office provided laptops—machines with fully functional keyboards. We’ll both forget that we can actually use the backspace key. So, we find ourselves doing the whole highlight and type-over bit, and then realize—wait a minute! We can actually just hit this key right here, and all is well with the world again. So easy. So the way it should be.

And because things are not as they should be, I find myself at times preferring to type out blog posts on my cell phone, a fact Liam thinks is just absurd given the small size of the screen. I admit this can be equally frustrating since the keyboard is mini-sized too and this makes it easy for misplaced fingers to type lots of errors. However, when this sort of thing happens, I can just easily hit the delete key, erase my mistake and type again!

Hopefully someday in the future we will once again have a functioning keyboard on the laptop. Until then, we are becoming expert highlighters and type-over-ers. Be thankful for your working keys, people. Don’t take them for granted!