Tis the Season

It's been a week since we last posted, and perhaps you'll understand why when I tell you that I am buying my own screen time at the cost of allowing the 16-month-old to root around in the guinea pigs' cage and throw straw and bedding on the floor. The cage is up on a table, but he knows how to pull up a chair and climb up and open the side door, or perch with his little clingy toes on the edge of the table and reach through the top. He is very happy doing this.

He is not happy at night, when I am trying to wean him. He sleeps in my bed, because we finally threw out the crib that he refused to sleep in or look at or even to countenance being carried toward. Indeed, he was up for a good two hours fussing and throwing himself around the bed, particularly at my head. The fingernails of the small child are of an exquisite sharpness, and he scrabbles diligently at my exposed neck. Consequently, I am at a bit of a disadvantage today, while he is totally fresh and ready for action.

Even with six other children in the house, there is often a failure of eyes on the child, such that over the course of a week, I've twice walked into the dining room to find baby on the table, happily shaking salt over everything. (This might be less of a danger if some of the other six children would clear the table each night after dinner -- or even if their mother did it herself.) This very morning I heard a crash in the other room, and ran from the table where children were doing schoolwork to find that baby had found a box of push pins in the desk and dumped them all over the floor. (This could have been avoided if the box still had a lid.) Later, he threw a lunch plate on the floor and broke it. (This could have been avoided if the plate hadn't still been on the table.) Recently, we've had to be vigilant that he doesn't get into the litter box which now lives near the washing machine because we have a stupid cat to whom we yet feel some sense of obligation. We have to be vigilant because baby has figured out how to open the cabinet under the kitchen sink where the dishwasher packets live. We have to be vigilant because baby has realized that the toilet brush looks kinda like a sword. Basically, we have to be vigilant, and it is small comfort to know that most things could be avoided if only we were perfect.

I have been around the block enough times to know that this is a season. Baby, moving fast toward the terrible twos (which really run from 18 months-four years), will not always be a sweet seven-toothed fellow with a death wish. Eventually he move toward the age of reason, and he'll still do dumb stuff, but at least it will be different dumb stuff. Even now I see my future, in my oldest son, age 10. He is moving into a pre-pubescent... well, I hesitate to call it "idiocy", because I know he's a smart lad, but there's this phase with boys where they just have more energy than impulse control, and they have to roll around and be dopes, and where two or more are gathered the IQ level drops exponentially, and there's a level of selective deafness centered around the range of the maternal voice. Yes, well, we are in that phase.

We are also in the season of having three fully pubescent daughters under one roof. Let me tell you that you do not dial up traits in your children, and sometimes the personality that emerges is one that has nothing to do with your own. "May you have a child like you," runs the ancient curse, and yet more puzzling is when you have a child whose drive for conflict runs entirely counter to your own. Many is the time when I have turned to Darwin after the offender has left the room, and said, "That girl is going to get married one day, and God help her husband," and he says, "I'm so glad I married you." 

Just as there are seasons in age, there are seasons in education. I am about to embark on something new with my 8yo, a sweet lovey mama's girl who does well with math and other subjects, but who cannot read. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, and it has finally been hammered into my own brain that even though phonics makes instinctive sense to me and has worked for four of my children, I cannot rewire a brain that works differently by doing the same old thing. To that end, we are starting a very expensive program for dyslexia -- not even the reading program, but the pre-reading sound and pattern recognition program. Thank you in advance for your recommendations, but I am committed to seeing this particular curriculum through, on the advice of a trusted mentor. It is hard for me to back off and admit that not all educational ends can be achieved using the Socratic method and a shoestring budget and my own instincts, but one is never too old to learn.

It's season change for me in other ways. I turn 40 next week, as my children keep reminding me. I've felt 40 for ever so long now, but it's been a mild comfort to reflect that I'm really still only 39. No longer. Did I tell you that I had my hair dyed red for my play? That was about six weeks ago, and it's growing out now. The stark contrast between the rich auburn and the mostly gray mixed with faded brown is pretty striking. I don't really want to make the commitment of time or money to keep coloring my hair, and the auburn, though a great character move, is a bit much for everyday wear. This is all in striking contrast to Darwin, who seems destined to reach a ripe old age with nary a gray hair in sight, whose body remains unaltered by his seven offspring, and who will remain 39 for a whole six weeks longer than I will.

The baby has moved from the guinea pigs to watching Netflix with his siblings, to standing on a table flicking on and off the lights, to disabling my iPhone. Time to get up and move into dinner season, followed by chat season, followed by bedtime for small ones season, followed by older kids' mom-and-dad time season, followed by nursing baby to sleep season, followed by trying to write while falling asleep season. All good stuff, but man, even Mother Earth only has to deal with four seasons. I guess she and I are both getting a bit grayer every day.