One Cobble at a Time

I have reached the point in packing where I’m wondering why I didn’t get more of this done yesterday. Agh.

In our house I am the person who finds things. If the kids lose their shoes, they come to me. If Howard misplaces a book he comes to me. Most of the time I can find the missing item in a fairly short span of time. There are times when I can find things that belong to Howard which I’ve only seen once several months ago. It is almost uncanny at times. I don’t know how I do it either. It is probably due to the fact that this is my house and I’ve done most of the organization here. Also the things that are moved get moved by my people and I know where they are likely to put things. Whatever magic alchemy that occurs to allow me to find things, takes place on a subconscious level. I can’t just stand in one place and tell you where the object is. I have to wander around until I suddenly know exactly where to go get it.

This evening Howard began packing his things for our coming California trip. He needed a couple of gym bags that neither of us have seen for several months. This time a little piece of me stood back and watched while the finding portions of my brain went into action. Howard had already searched for the bags. I knew this, but I still started in his office where he had already looked. I knew the bag would not be there, but the process of looking through the office triggered something. I knew that the next place I needed to look was with our luggage in the storage room. Sure enough one of the two bags was there. I went to our room to search our closet for the second bag. It was an unlikely place for it now, but last year it ended up there a lot. The bag was not there. I re-searched the luggage storage which triggered a memory of the second bag being out in the garage near the bikes. Sure enough, there it was.

Watching the process was fascinating. None of it was verbal or logical. I had to see and touch things in order to trigger the necessary memories to direct me where to go. I’ve previously noticed that it is much easier for me to go and get something than for me to describe where it is. This means I tend to jump at the beck and call of my kids who need to find their shoes (which are usually “lost” in plain sight.) I’m trying to make them do more of their own looking, but younger children honestly can not recognize the shape of a shoe if it is half covered by a blanket. The pattern recognition faculties just aren’t sufficiently developed yet.

I think that no matter where I am or what I am doing parts of my brain are cataloging objects and locations against possible future need. This same process will identify anomalies and bring them to my direct attention. I don’t consciously notice shoes scattered on the family room floor. That is normal. But if on of Gleek’s shoes is on the windowsill I notice it enough to wonder why it is there. Then when the kids come to me asking for their shoes, I can tell Gleek exactly where her shoe is, but I’ll have to physically go look for the other ones because I never consciously noted them.

Brains are weird.

We are approaching high pitched Christmas anticipation frenzy as we turn the corner into less-than-one-week-until-Christmas. The kids have been counting and recounting to make sure that they counted correctly. They’ve been counting until our California trip departure. They’ve been counting to Christmas eve. They’ve been counting until Christmas day. They’ve been counting days. They’ve been counting nights. I’ve been trying to tone down the excitement levels. Unfortunately I have not been assisted by the people who left a gingerbread house kit on our doorstep this evening. Now I have Christmas anticipation frenzy with candy and frosting. (Incidentally, if the people leaving 12 days of Christmas on our doorstep happen to read this blog, I’m not really complaining. We’ve received four wonderful gifts now which we have all enjoyed greatly. Thank you very much!)

Speaking of gifts, my kids have all finished their Christmas shopping and wrapped it all. I had to make sure it all got done in plenty of time for me to assess how much stuff needs to be packed into our van for this trip. We all tried to shop for small gifts because we knew we would be traveling. This seems to have worked because I think I can fit it all in. Yesterday I pulled all the gifts out from under the tree and packed them into boxes for transportation. This process was fascinating to the kids. Gleek and Patches in particular watched each package to into the box.

Gleek spent a lot of time poking her packages and speculating about contents. When she was speculating about the package from Patches he thoughtfully announced exactly what was in it. Patches is so excited about giving gifts. He loved wrapping them. He knows that they’re supposed to be a surprise, but he’s so excited about what he is giving that the secrets just kind of slip out. The first time this happened he immediately collapsed into tears because he realized that he’d ruined the surprise. Wonderful Link just looked at tearful Patches and announced that he hadn’t quite heard what Patches said. He then talked out loud pretending to try to figure out what was in the box that Patches had just revealed the contents of. Gleek followed that example when Patches announced her present. Now we just try not to talk about presents in front of Patches. A week is a very long time for a small child to keep an exciting secret.

I have to confess that I’m counting too. 2 more days until we depart. But those two days are going to fly because I have so many things to get done. I am a little stressed about it all. But I’m happy stressed because I’m really looking forward to having an out-of-my house vacation.

My theme song to my children for this morning:

How can I miss you if you won’t go away?
far far away from me.
How can I grieve, if you won’t leave?
And how can I shed a tear, if you’re still here?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder,
so they say.
Let’s see if that old saying still holds true today.
I’ll sadly sigh
as we say goodbye.
I’ll miss you more than words can say,
but how can I miss you if you won’t go away?
So go way my darling and please don’t delay.
And my heart will grow fonder each hour you’re away.

The kids have been in my face this morning, in case you can’t tell. Large portions of my brain have been trying to figure out how I can get away from them and from my house for awhile so that I can be glad to come back and be nice to them. I haven’t figured it out yet, so instead I’ve been playing the above song on my Vocal Point cd. It has been cathartic to sing along.

The other day when I picked Gleek up from school she came running to me and cheerfully announced “I got to go to the principal today! It was fun!” She then began chattering about how she wanted to go again soon. As she chattered my mental wheels were spinning. She’d been sent to the principal’s office because she was sitting in the doorway of her classroom having a crying fit. The last thing I wanted was for her to start throwing regular crying fits so that she could go visit the principal’s office. Her chatter continued and she told me how she got to watch a movie in the principal’s office and she wants to go back so that she can see the rest of the movie. At this point I was wondering what on earth the principal was thinking. He’d apparently turned his office into a garden of earthly delights. Gleek’s chatter shifted and I realized that she was saying that now she didn’t mind about other kids teasing her because she was like Rudolph.

That’s when it all clicked. The principal and the secretaries in the office are brilliant.

Gleek has been having a hard time going to school ever since the day that one of the other kids called her a crybaby. She has been very anxious that she would be teased again. The principal is smart enough to know the difference between true sadness and crying for effect. He took my truly sad Gleek and talked to her. Then once he discovered that teasing was part of the problem, he helped her know how to deal with it by using the section of the Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer movie where Rudolph gets teased by the other reindeer. He helped her calm down, feel happy, and he gave her tools she can use to be happy on other days.

My fears about misbehavior so that she can go back have completely failed to materialize. Ever since that office trip she has been more cheerful and much more willing to go to school. Once again I’ve been shown how wonderful the administrators at my kids’ school really are. I should probably get them something for Christmas to say thank you.

This evening Patches was very seriously explaining to my why I should give him some M&Ms to eat along with his cottage cheese. It was a very long and involved explanation. When he got to the point where he informed me that M&Ms equal cottage cheese I couldn’t help it and I burst into laughter. His little face crumpled into the most adorable humiliated tears. I was immediately contrite and snuggled him into my lap to calm him down. I have to remember that these things are very serious and important to him no matter how funny they seem to me.

We don’t have either broadcast, cable, or satellite television in our house. This does not mean that we live in an entertainmentless cave. Instead we’ve gotten creative about how we get our hands on the entertainment we’re interested in watching. It is more work, but it means that we don’t have to put up with all the advertising and dreck programming that comes with a regular supply of television. We rent DVDs, buy movies, borrow movies, or barter trades. For a while we had a very happy arrangement where we traded homemade bread for the loan of MST3K videos. When my oldest kids were younger a friend kindly recorded a bunch of PBS programming for us. They watched and rewatched these tapes for years. Then the tapes sat and gathered dust because the older kids had outgrown them.

Today Gleek fell sick. Again. She needed something quiet to watch. I dug around the video cabinet and unearthed a tape labeled Zoboomafoo. I’d nearly forgotten this show. It isn’t on the air anymore, but my kids loved it at the time. I played the tape for Gleek. The image and sound have degraded a little with age, but Gleek didn’t mind. She was as enraptured as my older kids were when they were her age. Not only that, but as the older two came home from school, they plunked down to watch as well. Kiki reminisced loudly about how she always used to watch the show back in the “olden days.” I don’t know what it is about Chris & Martin Kratt and their lemur friend, but we’re all happy that they’ve come to visit again.

My friend’s baby was born around 5 pm, which meant that I was able to hand her four kids over to her husband by about 7:30. They went to go see their baby sister and then he’ll put them all to bed. My house is so much quieter with only four kids in it. I’ll probably have some or all of these other kids in my house tomorrow and Friday until their mom comes home from the hospital, but for tonight I have hustled my own crew off to bed and I have blessed silence.

Have I mentioned that I do not aspire to have eight kids?

My home has been invaded by four extra children. They’re here because their parents had to go to the hospital to give birth. This means I may have these extra kids all night long. I’m already mentally figuring out sleeping arrangements and how I’ll manage school departures in the morning if they’re still here. It is exciting to be able to help with this kind of an event. I’m really enjoying being the one who watches all the kids rather than the one who is in labor.

The five minute clean up is my new best friend. One day I hauled each kid individually into their bedrooms with the requirement that we both clean as hard as we could for 5 minutes. At the end of 5 minutes the kid was done whether or not the room was clean. Two kids per room means that each room got 10 minutes worth of cleaning. Lo and behold 10 minutes was all it took to make the floors vacuumable again. I spent 20 minutes and each of the kids spent five.

On both of the nights since that project I have enforced a five minute clean up in our toy strewn family room. This time all the available children were drafted for the same five minutes. I really had to crack the whip to keep them moving, but at the end of five minutes the room was clean and I didn’t have to be mean any more.

I’ve also been applying this to myself. I’ll take 5 minutes and pick up my bedroom or my office or the front room. Doing a 5 minute pick up breaks down the huge “clean the house” task into bite size chunks. Everyone knows that bite size chunks are much easier to eat a lot of.

My house has been much nicer and cleaner these past three days. Yay for good advice via LJ!