anatomy of a snow day: Part two (Cookies?)

Still here. Despite the fact that it's not snowing, b/c the roads are icy, and b/c Seattle comes to a grinding icy halt when it snows even a few inches, we're all at home. And b/c tomorrow is Thanksgiving... we're home for the week. Whoopee.

The funny thing is that last week, M and I were brainstorming ways to survive the long TG weekend, and here we are... with a whole week on our hands.

Once again, I am pitted against all the mothers who are thrilled to have their kids home - no lunches, no carpool. But alas, no school either. (These, consequently, are the same mothers who celebrated the end of the school year and were sad to see their kids go back to school at the end of the summer. I'm clearly just made of different, meaner stuff.) At least this time I can assuage my guilt -- I do, after all, have a newborn at home. A newborn who's going through a colicky patch at the moment. A newborn who had us both up for much of the night last night. A newborn who puked all over both of us, and then herself before falling back to sleep. A cute, but messy and disruptive newborn.

We've played in the snow, done a boatload of arts and crafts projects, all the things you're supposed to do on a snow day. The kids have certainly got their money's worth -- so can't they go back to school now. Please?

Someone suggested I bake cookies with the kids. That sounded about fine when I remembered that I hate baking. OK, maybe hate is strong.. but I don't like doing it all that much alone. Why would I enjoy it with Fiona sticking her entire head into a bowl a batter when I'm not looking (banana bread), or Bennett stealing everyone's dough to make a giant cookie in the shape of an Indianapolis Colts horseshoe that will be too big to ever bake (chocolate chip cookies), or Efram crying because Bennett stole his dough and picking up the bowl and hurling it across the kitchen spraying the remaining dough everywhere (same batch)??

But I may have no choice. For someone who doesn't like to bake, doesn't eat wheat, and especially dislikes making cookies that require cutters, I have an insane cookie cutter collection. Somewhere. Looks like I'll be pulling it out today. Wish me luck.

anatomy of a snow day.

Woke up this morning to snow. Light snow, but too much for Bennett to take his daily 6am bike ride/jog with M. Which means one thing: He's going to be bouncing off the walls all morning. True enough, after Fi wakes me up by sitting on my bedside table and knocking off my lamp and the leaning tower of unread books and magazines, I come downstairs to find that he, Efram, and Francie had made snow-cones using a gallon of grape juice. And tracked snow everywhere. And left all the doors to the house open. Happy Monday to me.

Still, school had not been canceled, so they could have done just about anything and I'd still have managed... by staying focused on their imminent departure. At 7.45 I sent them on their merry way with M - who drives them to school.

I spoke to a friend who kept her kids home today b/c (unlike mine) her kids don't ride the bus home, and she had heard that the "snowstorm" we're expecting at midday will make it impossible for her to pick up her kids. (School is in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, which is notoriously icy.) Feel mildly guilty for forcing mine out of the house w/o even a though to their safety. But it quickly passes.

Then the email comes. School closing at noon. Kids headed home on bus and will be here around 12.30. Am not-s0-secretly wishing the bus doesn't make it and they are stranded at school for a while. Given that I almost killed them this morning, I think that they are safer there.

Ok, 3 hours of relative quiet to enjoy. And it really is quite a delight to stare out of the windows and watch snow fall on Lake Washington. When it's snowing this old house is even more charming. And when it's quiet, well.. all the more so.

UPDATE:
On the way home from school the bus broke down. Mind you, this was completely unrelated to the snow -- or so I think. The bus has broken down three times this past week.. so, something is slightly amiss at the bus company. Anyway, I found out and went to meet the bus, which was stuck in the middle of the road about a mile or so away. It's not snowing, but it's cold and this is a Jewish school which means.. Jewish mothers. So everyone is frantically trying to get their kids off the bus, squeeze other kids into their cars, and to contact other parents to let them know what is going on. It's quite a scene.

Still no word on whether there is school tomorrow.

UPDATE:
School tomorrow highly unlikely.

Panic

Light snow today. Seattle powers down entirely when it snows. Two years ago, weeks after Fi was born, we had 2 weeks of snow days.. back to back with winter break. It was hateful. I'm afraid to go to sleep for fear that it will snow during the night and the schools will be closed tomorrow.

I barely made it through the weekend. Can I survive a snow day?

http://www.king5.com/weather

Monday Mornings

Yes, it's raining. Yes, I slept in two hour increments last night. But it's Monday. And 4 of the 5 kids are in school. And the house is quiet. Messy, but quiet. And I have forced myself not to take on any new work until 2011... so for now, I can only think of Peter and the Wolf: "All is quiet, all is quiet."

In other words, weekends are kicking my ass.

Dain Bramage...

I know that women claim to block out the experience of childbirth but I don't. No, I block out the first months of life... or, more specifically, the first months of nights. With each child I am reminded, as if anew, of the staccato sleep patterns of a newborn. My own little ones are always on the small side, so my nights are truly dotted with feedings every 2 hours. While I'm quite good at making it through the night without actually getting out of bed, night after night of interrupted sleep and (here's the rub) having to get out of bed the next morning with the rest of my miniature housemates -- has left my brain addled, foggy, and frankly, malfunctioning.

I suppose calling your children by the wrong name is the right of any parents, especially those with 5 kids... but calling your kids by the names of other people's children (did that), or not being able to access any name at all, and just screaming, "Child!" (that too)... well, that's just embarrassing.

Last week I gave directions from the airport to our house to visiting relatives and sent them on a wild goose chase all over South Seattle before I realized I had confused ALL my lefts and right.

I am perpetually misplacing objects, and will soon be misplacing kids as I did when Fiona was a newborn and I left her in the car for 15 minutes at the park ... before I remembered she was there.

And I stupidly tried wrapping up some loose ends at work when the baby was about a week old. All I can say is thank goodness I'm not a surgeon. (When Fi was a small baby I accidentally mailed a convict a chipotle salmon recipe instead of a legal document.)

I'd be curious to hear any other stories about the often embarrassing results of sleep deprivation...

Yawn.

Our au pair?

Another parent recently told me that she punishes her kids not by taking things away (tv, computer), but by adding something in: Chores. This may work for her, and many other parents.. but not in this house. Mr. Bennett bounds out of bed at 6 each morning, dresses, spends a good 30 minutes banging around in his bathroom doing his hair (wetting it in the sink, and combing in whatever product he can get his hands on ) and then plods loudly down the stairs to get the girls out of their beds, dress them, and give them breakfast. He often spends the early morning weekend hours preparing "treats" for us in the kitchen, or noisily (detect a theme?) laying out what he likes to call the Breakfast Buffet. (This always involves cut-up fruit and an inordinate amount of toothpicks.)

So, more chores would hardly seem like punishment, I said to the parent. Wow, she said, It must be like having an au pair.

I replied that Bennett only really does the chores he deems worthy, and if he can't be bothered, he tells us to bugger off. So, it is like having an au pair -- a French one.

Still, now that there are five little ones in the house, I'll take all the help I can get.

[Consequently, a lot of people have been asking me whether 5 is any different than 4. I'm not really sure how to answer it. While it's more of the same, it's different. And this time I have an especially ornery toddler in tow -- for some reason Fi seems to have gotten a head start on being an impossible two year old, something which didn't strike the other kids until they were closer to three. She constantly tells me to put the baby down and carry her, and insists of being fed like a baby, carried like a baby, you get the drift. So, I am getting something of an ass-kicking here. Still, somewhere underneath all the chaos, I'm managing to have fun. It could be the sleep deprivation kicking in, and making me think I'm having fun when I'm really now.. but I'll never know.]

Girth.

In addition to recently asking me why, if the baby only weighs about 7 lbs, am I so bloody enormous, Bennett came up with this gem today: "Mum, when you get in the car, did you know that the whole thing shakes? I mean, you're THAT big that you make the car shake!!"

It is at moments like these that I remind myself he'll never know the beauty of pregnancy and childbirth (although at the moment, I'm not experiencing much beauty in any form..), and that while it's my job to foster his humanity (can you tell I've been living on the West Coast for 12 years, or what?), he's still a male. Francie has at least more tact when she asks: "How long after the baby comes will you be fat for?" Or perhaps, I'm reading empathy into her question because I know (and hope) that one day she too will be blessed enough to curse extra pounds of baby weight. (Although the thought of my scrawny little chicken with any extra pounds is hard to get my head around.)

There's always dialogue about children and body image, and lately I have been wondering what it must be like for them to see me pregnant -- to watch me morph into a science project for what seems like an eternity -- to them and me. Francie doesn't even remember what I look like un-pregnant.. or as she said recently: "What do you look like when you're not fat?"

Other than waiting around for the baby, squeezing in appointments, wrapping up work, and fielding delightful questions from the kids, I'm enjoying autumn in Seattle. We don't always get this season.. we can often go from "summer" to rain.. but we've had lovely crisp, sunny days.. and I'm finally wise enough not to take them for granted.