September 11 - A Guest Post

Liz here... taking over Scott's blog for the day.  His day was super busy, as he cleaned the kitchen, (including doing a mountain of dishes), put away many loads of laundry, and picked up the house.  All this in addition to schooling the children!  So, the blog post just didn't happen.

He left as soon as I got home to go to writer's group and then he's going out to work on his book edits.

One of the reasons why he didn't have time to blog was that he spent a while talking about September 11 with the girls. They looked up youtube videos of that morning and watched portions of a History channel documentary about it.

Talking to the girls about it was good.  They didn't really understand why someone would want to hurt people that were innocent. They asked if there were kids that were killed, we said yes. They wanted to know if the people on the planes were killed.  Yes, they were.

They sort of put the pieces together as to why some of their friends' parents had to go fight in a war.  They were glad to know that we caught the Bad Guy that orchestrated it, but they were sad when we told them there are more Bad Guys out there.

They liked hearing about the people on the flight that fought back and sacrificed their lives for others, people they didn't even know.

The conversation will continue about this, I know. Meanwhile, their lives go on.  They are playing outside right now as I write, I can see them from the window.  Laughing, running around, riding their bikes.

I took a picture of the sunflowers in our yard, because sometimes, I have to remember that even with all the bad in the world, there is still good. And sometimes you have to fight for it.

Staying Up Late

Early on in this whole child raising adventure, we put our kids to bed late because of our schedules. My wife has always worked and breastfed and so it worked out better (meaning she had to pump less) if the babies sort of slept from 11pm to 11am (waking up to feed once before she went in to work).

Babies can seriously sleep anywhere.

As they got older, they usually worked their way into a more normal schedule (going to bed between 8 and 9 and then waking up between 7 and 8), but it was sort of shocking for some people to hear about the whole 11pm bedtime thing for a baby.

Yeah, it's a little weird, but it worked for us, and I'm a firm believer in fitting the baby into your schedule.  

I have noticed with our three-year-old though, that she is a little more rigid in her need for routine. Including an early bedtime. On a normal day, she is usually asleep by 7:30. Sometimes earlier.  And when this routine gets out of whack, so does she. 

But we try to not be ruled by this little quirk of hers. Because, after all, things happen sometimes. We visit with friends or family, there's a special thing at church, fireworks on the fourth of July, you get the idea. These are experiences we want her to have (and we want the rest of the family to have them too).

So, she has to deal (and we do too - with the fallout, that is). Like when she calls random things like food "dumb-o" or "stupid." (Words she picked up from her older sisters.) And it's good for her, and us, as long as we can get back to our regular schedule eventually. 

But that's just one kid. Our others are really much more flexible. Currently, I'm letting the older ones stay up until about 10:00, as long as their behavior is good. We play Minecraft or a board game or something like that, or we just hang out. 

Since they're homeschooled, I figure it's one of the perks.  I mean, they don't have to be up at a certain time, so they can sleep a little later and it's no big deal.

My wife and I are definitely night owls, and so it doesn't bother us. Although if a child has to be nursed or snuggled with for longer than 5 or 10 minutes, Liz WILL fall asleep.  And then be groggy for a bit. 

But that's nothing that a fresh cup of coffee won't fix! And yes, we have both been known to brew a cup of joe after the kids go to bed. 

But unhealthy habits aside, that's how bedtime has gone down in our house lately... Although, here's how it was happening back in June - they still do the delay tactics, although not as much, when they go to bed late. It's really quite unbelievable.

Back When My Wife Pretended to Be Homeless...

I was looking through the archives of the blog the other day, and I was reading this post and noticed the part when I wrote about my wife pretending to be homeless when she was a kid. I mentioned there that that was a blog post in and of itself. So, I've asked her to do a guest post about that time in her life, because I personally find it both very funny and weird. Thanks, Liz.

Well, I don't really know what the big deal is. Didn't everyone imagine weird stuff when they were kids? About being homeless and finding homeless babies who needed care? No? Well, I did.

I had this long running pretend scenario where I was homeless and I would wander around with a  basket trying to find food. It was really convenient that we had these big pecan trees in our backyard, because if it were the the right time of year, I had an endless supply of food. And since I lived in Georgia, the best time of the year to wander around outside with a scarf wrapped around me was the fall, which was when the pecans were ready to eat.  Perfect timing!

So, then I would wander around imagining myself going through different adventures. (I'm sure I looked a little crazy.) I would then sometimes find an abandoned baby who needed me to care for her. I would wrap her up and put her in my basket and then go about "milking" dandelions and milkweed and other random plants so that she could have food to eat and stay alive.

[Scott's note: This was probably the same baby doll she brought to our marriage, and was seriously THE CREEPIEST DOLL EVER. It's eyes were weird and cloudy and stuck half-open. It's head was a different color than its body, not on purpose. It's toenails were messily painted with real nail polish, and it had a big crack in her plastic side. In this crack, Liz stuffed a ton of paper clips at some point in her life, so there were a bunch of rusty paper clips rattling around inside it that would occasionally fall out. Why the paper clips? Liz has never given me a real answer to this. The baby's name was Hadley, which, incidentally, is the name that is always on her list of favorite baby names.  At some point in our marriage, Liz got rid of Hadley, but I guess she'll always live on in my mind (and my  nightmares).]

Frankly, pretending to be homeless is probably one of my least weird childhood imaginings. A friend and I used to pretend that our Cabbage Patch Kids were our children, but we didn't really want to deal with pretend husbands, so we just had them die in the "War."  Funny thing is that my pretend husband's name was Scott... what do you think about that!?  Ha!

My friend and I also used to play this scenario at school (if you read this, Rachel, you'll have to tell me if you remember this) where we had this mean uncle (Uncle Methuselah) and we had to work for him, cleaning or something like that and he kept us locked up and we were always trying to escape.  We made up this song that went something like "Uncle Methuselah is his real name, he plays .... (something)... like a game." I can't really remember all the words, but I can definitely remember the tune!  We had many verses we would sing, probably made up by Rachel because she was very creative and musical.

Then, at home, I would always climb out my window onto the roof (my room was on the second floor) and then scale up to the very top of the house to look out at the world below (this would have probably make my parents, and especially my Dad, have a heart attack, so it's good they never really knew about this.) And I remember one time trying to start a campfire in my bedroom. People, it's a miracle that I didn't burn our house down.

I liked playing pretend as a kid, in fact, I was still playing with dolls until I was about 13 or so. I had five Cabbage Patch kids - and, shockingly enough, I did not keep any of the names that they came with. Remember how they always came with the weirdest names? I totally disregarded them and made up my own. I still remember them: Mary Lou, Malcolm, David Michael, Amy, and Chrissy.

Scott had a boy Cabbage Patch, and he kept the name of his, in fact he was appalled that I changed mine. But I've noticed that Belle is like me - she'll always name her own dolls.  We're rebels like that, I guess.

So, that's my story. Random, yes. Blog fodder? Of course.