I hadn’t planned to get involved in the discussion and was only peripherally aware that the boy, about 9 years old, was arguing with Peter and Mary about the existence of the Tooth Fairy.  Peter and Mary did not seem to be overly interested in the conversation, and Peter had just last week, on the occasion of Mary losing her first tooth, been instructed to keep his opinions about the Tooth Fairy to himself.  I focused my attention on Fritz’s last soccer game, and felt that the conversation in front of me would eventually fade away to other subjects.

But then the boy turned to me and demanded, “Tell them that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real.  Tell them that you are the one who gives them the money!”

“I’m not going to tell them that,” I replied.  Really, I didn’t want to get involved.  Keep in mind that losing teeth is not an extremely big deal in this house.  The going rate for most baby teeth is a quarter, and even my 5 year old knows that isn’t a tremendous amount of money.  Often payments are late…days late…especially if the teeth came out of the mouth of a 10 year old.  But when you are 5 and you go to bed with a tooth under your pillow and the next day it has magically transformed into a coin, it’s pretty cool.  I generally don’t give specifics about the process.  “Put it under your pillow.  They say there’s a fairy who leaves you money for it.  See what happens.”  

But I couldn’t get into the nuances of the imagination with this kid. 

“If you don’t, you’re a liar,” he said.

“But I didn’t say anything…” I tried to object.

“And liars go to the fiery pit of hell!” he declared.

Well, now.  I wanted to explain that liars actually speak lies, and that remaining silent is not the same thing as lying.  I also would have liked to point out that honesty does not consist of always speaking everything you know to be true all the time.  Or openly sharing your opinion with everybody.  And make-believe/fiction is morally legitimate.  But having been officially labeled as one of the damned, he probably wouldn’t have listened.  And he was too busy moving on to his next topic: Santa Claus.

First he said, “Santa Claus isn’t real.”

Peter objected, but the kid tried to shout him down, and turned to me to see how I would respond to that one.

“Santa Claus is another name for St. Nicholas who lived in Myra, which is now Turkey,” I told him.

“He was an evil man,” he told me, “Santa is another name for Satan.”

“No, St. Nicholas was a very good man,” I said.

“No, he’s Satan!”  “Is not.”  “Is too.”  “Is not.”  “Is too.”

Really, this is what I was reduced to.

Finally another mom, unrelated to him, told him to stop arguing.  I was embarrassed.

And I do feel a bit bad about countering another parent’s catechesis of her children.  But if you tell your kids stuff that simply isn’t true, and then set them loose to tell other people that they are going to hell if they disagree, oh, well.  I’m sorry to have to correct your understanding of the history of Santa Claus, and I’ll happily loan you a book or two if you wants some facts.  I agree, Santa Claus, as is commonly portrayed in today’s media, might possibly be a force for materialism and gluttony.  But he’s not Satan.

An email I plan to send:

Happy New Year!

My computer has been returned after a virus had made my life online very difficult.  That was one reason why my blogging – blogging?  what’s that? – has been so sparse.

My dad asked me last week, “What is up with your blog?”  He misses the updates on his grandkids.  I know others do, too.  So, though blogging had dropped in my list of priorities following the birth of George and the beginning of school, I think it needs to move upward slightly.  Once or twice a week won’t kill me, right?

Funny…I have such conflicting resolutions this year: more blogging…less time online.  The reality of modern life is that access to email and my online calendar is important.  Last minute changes in activities means not checking email could result in being in the wrong place at the right time.  Or the right place at the wrong time.  Maybe we just need to stop doing things outside the house….

St. Nicholas

Every year my parents give me money with which to purchase presents for the kids for Christmas.  As I was wrapping a few this morning, I was happy for my kids knowing that these items were things they had asked for and really wanted.  As I was making the tags to identify Grandma and Grandpa as the giver of the gift, I realized that I had yielded the title of “Giver of Awesome Toys or Other Frivolous Entertainment” to them, making them much cooler than Bill and I in my children’s eyes.

“Thanks for the socks, Mom.  It will be lovely to have warm toes.  Grandpa, you ROCK! How did you ever guess I wanted a talking Princess Celestia?  I LOVE her; she will be my BFF forever!!! I heart you, Grandpa!”

Of course, grandparents should be cooler than parents.  And since Christmas is brought to us through their generosity (and the generosity of my in-laws who also select wonderful presents), I guess the myth is not too far from the reality.

*******************

BTW, I have seen so many posts about avoiding materialism during this season.  About giving time, not toys.  About giving handmade things or useful things.  About not spending so much time shopping or stressing about “stuff.”  I concur with all these things, for the most part.

But at the same time…

I spend all day with my kids.  All day, every day.  Much of it is even fun and recreational.  I can’t give any more time.

We’ve nailed the handmade and useful categories.  We’re all about minimizing the useless belongings, because we have to move those items every few years.  And I am the first one to pull out the fabric stash to make something we want or need, instead of shopping for it.

And we don’t generally buy the kids “stuff” throughout the year.  Birthdays and Christmas, that’s usually it.  New books?  We go to the library.  Fashionable slouchy boots?  Um, no.  New jersey of your favorite football team?  Christmas is the one time of year that my kids can ask for “stuff” and have their requests seriously considered.

So, avoid consumerism if that’s your vice.  But for me, this is the one time a year that I let myself dream.  And I’m pretty sure that our family of 9 will still spend less on Christmas than many families half our size.

Hi!

I never did a “George at 3 months” blog post.  George is now 4 1/2 months, so I need to hurry before “George at 4 months” is past history.

We’ve been busy.  High school takes a lot of time, for both Fritz and me.  Always, the first child navigating a new experience requires more time from me than the next child doing the same thing.  Once I know what I’m doing, I can direct activities with more speed.  But the first time through, I try to get it right, so I read everything.  Add that to the demands of an infant, 4 other students, piano/guitar/trumpet/violin lessons, and 3 – 5 days a week soccer practice, and there is no wondering why I only did 3 blog posts in the entire month of October.

I’d much rather look at my siblings than the camera

At two months, George was very skinny, and I had been working hard to increase my milk supply and reduce the supplement I was giving him.  The pediatrician wanted to see him again at 3 months, just to check his weight.  I remember that I went at least 3 weeks straight without a single bottle, checking his weight every few days with my own baby scale.  I remember closely reading about weight gains in The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and constantly calculating his growth to confirm he was within normal range.  I would not let my pride interfere with his health, so if he had not been gaining enough, I would have supplemented.  Although his gain was at the lower end of normal, I was pretty happy that we had managed to get to that point.

OK.  This is getting old.

And then we went to the pediatrician, and she frowned a serious frown, and told me that he should be gaining 2 pounds per month – the top end of what I had understood to be normal – and if he didn’t do better by his 4 month check up, we’d have to consider blood work or other testing to see what was wrong with him!

This is the last one, and then I’m going to start rolling, which is much more fun.

I was upset.  I thought perhaps my book had a typo.  Perhaps I read it wrong (8 or 9 times).  I went home and checked it.  I went online to various other sources to confirm it.  Two pounds per month was ideal, but as low as one pound per month was still considered normal for exclusively breastfeeding. I was right after all.

Nevertheless, I decided to give the child one bottle per day of 4 ounces, just to see how he would do.  I wanted to soothe the concerns of the doctor, and honestly, the child could use the extra calories.  Although his weight gain was normal, he was still at zero-percent on the growth chart for weight.  That one little bottle was all he needed to pack on the ounces at more than one every day.  In fact, by his 4 month check-up, he had gained two and a half pounds, and made it onto the charts at the 9th percentile (or 5th, depending on which chart you use, the CDC or the WHO…I’ve learned tons about these charts, if anyone cares to know.  Interesting stuff).

Teenage boy + infant brother + camera = silliness

More fun than algebra

Unfortunately, the triage nurse who weighed him was inexperienced (or incompetent).  Not only did she measure his head incorrectly, managing to get a smaller circumference than at 3 months, she also could not read her own handwriting and could not remember what the scale had read.  She decided that the number she had written must have been 5.1 kg, instead of the 5.7 kg it actually was.  Those 600 g are nearly one and a half pounds, meaning that it looked as though, once again, my baby had only gained 1 pound in a month.

Sweater (and hat) by Nana (best photos I could get)

The doctor came in with this mis-information and announced George would have to be re-weighed.  She was hot.  I could see “failure to thrive” alarms going off in her head, concerns of abuse and/or neglect.  She did ask me, though, if I remembered his weight, which I did, of course.  And since the nurse had gotten the head circumference wrong, she quickly focused her wrath on the nurse instead of me…especially once she entered his real weight into the computer and saw that he was now, in fact, on the charts.

The kicker, though, was when I boldly challenged her assertion that my baby must gain 2 pounds per month.  I insisted that 1 pound was also normal.  She asked for my sources, and, having been prepared for this, chose the most respectable source I had seen: Dr. Sears.

“Dr. Sears is unreliable,” she retorted.

I was momentarily speechless.

“Um.  How about La Leche?” I asked tentatively, wondering what I would do if that source were also lacking gravitas.

She decided that they were acceptable, but was still skeptical of my parenting skills, since I
quoted Dr. Sears.  I later (thank you Facebook friends) realized that Dr. Robert Sears, author of The Vaccine Book, is probably who/what she was finding unreliable.  I had been thinking about Dr. William Sears, his father, but either way, I can not see how a doctor’s researched opinion about vaccines would make his knowledge about weight gains in breastfed babies unreliable.  They are doctors, too.  And with loads of experience.

What’s up, Mom?

Aw, no, not more photos.

Seriously, I have had enough.

OK, one smile, and then I’m going to start screaming.

Side note: like Eve drawn to The Forbidden Fruit, the doctor’s comments convinced me to read that vaccine book, and I have no idea why anyone would find it anti-vaccine.  I don’t think there was a single vaccine that he said not to get.  He does raise some alarms about the level of aluminum in the vaccines, but his solution is to space the shots out and avoid the shots with 2 or 3 or more vaccines in one – so more shots, more often, than what is usually done.  I highly recommend this book for anyone with children.  It’s good to know about these diseases, and the risks of getting the shots vs. the risks of not getting the shots.

I do think things have changed in 5 years, the last time I had a child getting shots, because I have never had a child have as strong a reaction to the vaccines as George has had.  At his 2 month shots, he had a low-grade fever and was cranky, as they all were, but with him it went on for over a week.  It also upset his tummy badly.  It might have been coincidence, however, he had the exact same reaction after his 4 month shots.  And when I mean cranky and upset tummy, I mean hours of colicky behavior every day for 7-9 days.  So, at his 6 month check-up, he’s only going to get the DTaP, and we’ll get the others at his 9 month.  I can’t wait to tell the doctor that I’m spacing the vaccines because Dr. Sears suggested it.  I’m aiming to be her favorite parent.

OK.  Enough about the obnoxious doctor.  George is growing and doing well.  He’s inquisitive, and a wriggly, squirmy bundle of energy.  He is the center of joy in this household.  He loves his siblings, and nothing makes a grouchy teenager happier than seeing his little brother’s face light up with delight just because his big brother is looking at him.

Maybe I should get my son a foosball table?

He is vocalizing now, after being a very quiet newborn.  If he isn’t laughing or screeching “dadadada”, he is doing his best imitation of a pterodactyl: “SQUAWK SQUAWK!”  Getting photos of him during our family photo shoot session this past weekend was a challenge, because he wanted to roll over.  The photographer had to be quick.

It won’t be long before he’s mobile, and then the adventure really starts.  Last night, I had just put some dishes from the oven on the bar-height counter in the kitchen from whence I planned to serve dinner buffet-style.  Not realizing what I had done, Fritz sat at the bar, while holding George, and quicker than anything, the child had reached out and grabbed the dish, getting 2nd degree burns on 4 fingers of his right hand.  {sigh} It was a bad-mommy moment, but just a warning that we’re going to have to be on top of things with this one.

*************

I had a bunch of photos to upload and share, but alas!  I seem to have reached some blogger maximum of free storage and they want me to pay to upgrade.  Um.  No.

I think this may be the end of this blog, folks.

Not the end of blogging.  Just the end of blogging here, after nearly eight and a half years of having this space.  Wow.  I don’t quite know what to do about that.

Suggestions?  WordPress better?  Or stick with Blogger?  Or something else?

************

One last photo.  This one was taken on a typical day.  He had been fussy and unable to go down for a good nap all day long.  I finally got him to sleep about a half hour before we had to leave for one of the kids’ activities.  My favorite rule of parenting an infant – never wake a sleeping baby – gets violated often with this poor kid.

Right before I picked him up.

 Can you see the difference a few weeks make?  This photo and the ones of him with the sunglasses were taken about a week before he turned 4 months.  The ones with Billy were done about two weeks later.  He’s getting thick.

Bill must have taken this shot.  I think it’s the best photo of the bunch.  It’s hard to catch a bird in flight in focus (this one is close), and to do so with an awesome sky in the background is great luck.

 The rest are shown in chronological order as the afternoon became evening.

I loved seeing so many people gather on the beach, despite the approaching storm, to see the sun go down.  Even with the clouds, we managed to see a spectacular display of color.  I look forward to our next trip on a hopefully less cloudy evening.

Jenny had a birthday.

In September.

I did get a picture. 

Jenny is now 9.

For her “party,” which consisted of having two neighborhood girls over, we made cake pops.  My MIL gave me a how-to book about cake pops, and my girls love it.  Jenny wanted cake pop owls, and so we made cake pop owls.  We’re not very good cake pop makers, but the girls had fun.  Some of the owls seem a bit distorted, but they sure tasted good.

Funky owls.  Delicious owls.

Other fun September stuff: we went to the science museum.

Rescue Heroes

Building a stable structure that can withstand earthquakes

You could make the whole table shake to see if your design survived

Tornado

Using a robot to find victims in the rubble

A giant “operation” game

We did not have time to see everything at the science museum, but I bought a membership so we can go back.

We also went to the zoo.  The rides at the zoo are free.  FREE!

Billy

Katie

“Mary!  Look at Katie (the photographer)”

“I can’t believe you’re making me ride with the little kids.”

Nothing to see here.

bumper boats

Somebody barely made the height cut off

As in: was just barely SHORT enough to go on

The last hurrah of childhood

One of George’s rides

She’s getting so big

This was as exciting as this ride got

hanging with the bats

trying not to fall…

log flume

yes.  victorious conquering of the wild log flume.

splash zone

Did I mention we were at the zoo and not an amusement park?

George’s other ride.  I had to beg someone to take my picture.

We ALSO went to the aquarium.  Yes, three field trips in one month.  I was a rock star homeschool mom that month.

Actually, I was a cheapskate/thrifty homeschool mom that month.  In the Tampa area, they have a thing called “Swaptember” where if you have a membership to one of those three places, you can go to the other two for free during the month of September.  We went to the science museum the first week of September…and then crammed in those last two in the last week of September.  Had to get my money’s worth.

Best thing: since I bought my membership in September, it is good through the end of the following September, so we can do it again next year without spending a dime!

My girls

This post brought to you by the end of Daylight Savings Time which has all my little ones going to sleep at a reasonable hour.  For tonight at least.

I’ve read quite a bit about Randall Terry, pro-life activist, on the internet.  Most of it from other pro-lifers.  Very little of it is nice.  Vitriolic is a better description.  It’s quite shocking, actually.  I don’t necessarily always agree with Randall Terry in methodology, but I recognize that we all have our role in life and those roles are not identical.  That Randall Terry is most despised by people who agree that abortion is wrong is a tremendous victory for the Dark Side (insert Darth Vader theme song here).

I also happen to know Randall Terry personally, and I know he’s a good and sincere man.  A bit of a loose cannon, yes.  Highly impassioned, yes.  But perfect, no. 

This article came out over a week ago, and I meant to link to it.  Finally, I have the time.  It’s long, but interesting to read to understand a bit more about what makes the man tick.

Randall Terry Shoots an Ad