Bedtime, or a lack thereof

We suck at putting our kids to bed. Mostly, I think it's a matter of having no self-discipline, and mostly, I think it's my fault. Jacob we completely screwed up, and I won't say how because I don't want people coming back at me with well, he should be in his own bed by now or you should have just let him cry it out when he was a baby. But it's still tough getting him to bed at night, some nights, that is.

I always thought that the next kid would be different, that I would know what I was doing from the beginning in the sleep department. I was wrong. I still don't get it.

Someone asked me today if Sabine sleeps well at night (I don't know why people are always asking this question). I told him, "Well she did, then she was born into our family." In the beginning she did sleep well. The first night of her life she slept completely through the night but I was too wound up by giving birth to sleep myself so I just sat there in amazement, watching her sleep. I can't really remember what it was like right when she came home from the hospital, but she basically slept pretty easily, not as much as they say a newborn should though. Then I remember for a while we were really good. I'd lay her in the co-sleeper and she'd stay there for the first shift of the night, which was 3-4 hours. Then I guess she grew up a little bit and tuned into the world more. It wasn't so easy in that she'd just fall asleep, she had to be put to sleep.

That's where it got hard. The rocking chair was still in our room then, so I think I was rocking her to sleep, or wait, maybe this was the phase where she had a cranky time in the evening and we had to bounce on the yoga ball with her in our arms for half an hour. I remember we would always note that she got cranky and tired about 7pm or a little later. It was then that I decided her 'bedtime' would be 7pm, and Jacob would follow with an 8pm bedtime. Previously his 'bedtime' had been 9pm but the time change was fast-approaching and I knew we'd have the whole 'fall back' thing to our advantage. It actually worked for a time and I'd say that was our most successful bedtime attempt to date.

Then I guess after that was the rocking chair? See, it is already a blur in my mind.

A note: When I use the word bedtime, I am simply referring to an arbitrary time Zach and I use when we want to threaten Jacob with something, or when he thinks there wasn't enough playing in the day, as in, "Jacob, it's 9:30! That means it's already past your bedtime!" We're probably really screwing with his head by using this word in any sort of context.

I remember one time, just one time, when we were all upstairs getting ready for bed, and I remember this clearly because it had never happened to me before - Zach was in the bathroom brushing his teeth, Jacob was in the bed, awake, and Sabine was in the co-sleeper, awake. I must have been folding laundry or something at the foot of the bed and hadn't started thinking about putting Sabine to sleep because she was just in the co-sleeper for safe-keeping. She was cooing to herself, or playing with Snuggle Bunny, and then all of a sudden she wasn't cooing. I peeked over and her eyes were closed, her body relaxed. All signs pointed to sleeping but I couldn't believe it! I called Zach in to look and we were all just astounded. I had that one brief moment of total clarity where I thought, so that's how it's done! And It Never Happened Again.

So I guess that brings us to the rocking chair and Pachelbel's Canon in D. I decided we would relax them to sleep if it killed us. Both kids were now 'going up to the bedroom' (I say it this way because what goes up must come down, as in downstairs after a failed bedtime) at the same time because we'd been having the problem of finally getting one to sleep, only to have the one still awake make noise and wake the sibling. I'll call this the 'two birds with one stone' method. All the lights got turned off, everywhere in the house. The Sleepinator got turned on full volume. Pachelbel ran on a continuous loop. Lavendar oil was smeared all over the room and all the humans present. Sabine was swaddled and set to rocking in the chair with me. Jacob was snuggled in bed with Zach. My one rule was going to be that I would not nurse Sabine to sleep because I want her to eventually go to sleep on her own, and I thought maybe this was the way to go about it. The whole thing took so much effort, sometimes yielding no results, sometimes only yielding tears and yelling from various members of the family.

We'd go about this for a week or two tops before it just took way too much energy. It shouldn't be that hard, right? We'd get lazy and start to loath the hour of 'soothing to no avail'. Then after a week of being lazy we'd buck up and try to establish some routine again. All the while the children were learning that their parents are suckers and will always revert to taking the easy way out at bedtime.

For the last month or two it's been a mish-mash of Sabine falling asleep nursing/us both falling asleep on the couch/me rocking her downstairs/swaying with her upstairs, etc, etc, etc. However she was falling asleep, it would always end with me trying to put her into the co-sleeper, taking five minutes to make the transition, only moving one finger at a time, pressing my head to hers, letting my hands hover above her abdomen, only to have her wake right the hell up. How frustrating! At this point the rule "Whoever goes up, will not come down again" was established; meaning we were going to teach the kids that the bedroom meant Sleep, with a capital S. Once you go up to the bedroom there is no manipulating. Dammit.

Yeah, right.

A big part of the problem is that we are parents of small children, and by definition that means we are exhausted people. Once Zach and I go upstairs to get them to bed, we start to get tired ourselves (if we weren't already). And when you are tired and in a dark room, soothing round-faced cherubs to sleep, chances are, you are going to fall asleep too. My only time to get anything done is late at night, but if you're in bed with a little one, A) You will fall asleep and nothing will get done, B) You will stay awake but lose all motivation for doing anything productive, or C) You will look over at the sleeping child in your arms/on top of you/snuggled around your body and not be able to peel yourself away. Knowing that any of these possibilities is likely to happen makes me have a strong aversion to going anywhere near the bed if I'm in the middle of something. But it's not like I'm doing something selfish, like tooling around on the internet, I'm actually doing useful things that have a direct impact on keeping this household running. So it's sort of like a Catch 22.

For a while now the co-sleeper had been relegated to the other room, which could be a bedroom if some other more disciplined family lived here. I pulled it back out tonight, a concrete symbol of our new effort.

And this is what happened: Sabine fell asleep nursing, in the living room. She miraculously stayed asleep through being poked by Jacob who thought it would be funny to wake her. She stayed asleep (on my lap) through one round of Chutes and Ladders with the three of us. Then Ginger came into the room and shook her body. This woke Sabine. I was somehow able to get her back to sleep but refused to go upstairs with her when Zach repeatedly told me to. I really wanted to play the damn game with the two of them. We never get to do stuff like that. I knew if I took Sabine upstairs that she would wake right up and I couldn't go back down to resume the game.

I finally relented and went upstairs, layed her in the co-sleeper, almost had both my arms out from under her and Jacob came up the stairs to get into jammies. He happened to be singing a little ditty on his way up and, pop! her eyes shot open. She played with Snuggle Bunny for a few minutes and finally it was too cute that Zach called me (now downstairs) up to see. By then we were all back to using full-volume voices and Sabine was laughing. I went back down. Zach held Sabine (but oh yeah, she only wants to be with me at night) until she started freaking out looking for me. I went up, tried to hold her, but she was fighting to nurse back to sleep. I gave her back to Zach, he swaddled her and I started to read to Jacob. He finally gave her back and she cried some more so that I couldn't even hear myself reading. We put out the little lamp and Jacob rolled over to go to sleep. Sabine screamed her head off some more while I was actively trying to sooth her. Eventually Jacob could no longer take it so he went back downstairs. Another 15 minutes getting Sabine to sleep - all snuggled up on my chest. Then I went downstairs only to find Jacob wide awake on the couch, it was well after 10pm.

What's funny about all this trying is that we've really gotten nowhere with the kids but in the process, I've become a morning person. I've been falling asleep on the couch with Sabine at 9pm, the laptop just a couple feet away from us. This is probably the furthest away from sleep hygiene that one can be, and I'm sure those electrical currents from the computer are fabulous for a baby to be exposed to, especially while she's trying to sleep. On the bright side, I pop up all ready for the day at 7am. I get more done before 9am than I used to get done before 5pm. But we still can't get anywhere on time. A discussion for another day...

Dear Jacob: December 2008

Dear Jacob,

This has been some year for us. We used to be best buddies, but now at times I feel like I don't even know you. Ever since Sabine was born, you've seemed to regard me differently. You're more wary of me sometimes, wanting to be left alone or to the care of your father. You clearly prefer him these days. That's a hard pill to swallow, but I guess a normal thing in the span of the mother/son relationship. And I figure it's just the beginning of this whole detaching process. Not that I expect to ever feel less of an attachment to my children. But I suppose it will feel like a deeper form of what I experienced when you were a baby.

When you were born it was like one of my vital organs - specifically my heart - had been removed from my body and was walking around outside of it. I wanted to put you back in and keep you safe forever. As an older baby and toddler, it felt very abnormal to be away from you, as if one of my limbs were missing. Eventually it began to feel more normal, and then I was pregnant and too tired to care. Now that Sabine is here, it's like it's given you the chance to pull away from me a little more while I am distracted with this child who, too, feels like a part of me that should not have come away from my body.

What would a quest for maternal freedom be without the trappings of a good revolution, right? You've been sure to include many of these 'trappings' into our recent days; including, but not limited to, whining, complaining, refusal to follow instructions, disrespect for others, torture by sing-songing every spoken word or repeatedly fake-burping, arguing minuscule details, and a great many little annoyances which I simply refer to as 'Chinese water torture'. On some days it's not necessarily a blatant form of warfare, it comes out more subtly, like the way you address us, "Hey Dad, come look at this, or "Mom, what are we doing today?" I do not like this one-syllable addressing business.

To fight back I implement impossible rules and limits. I'm not usually aware I'm doing this, but I'm trying to get better at it. For instance, I'm giving myself a New Year's resolution to not be such a craft nazi. I hoard the craft materials away, only parcing out little bits at a time, saving the good stuff for a future date down the road that will probably never come. I do this not only with the craft stuff, but with other things. We have all these things around the house that I am always refusing to use because I think we have too much stuff in circulation as it is. Well I'm going to try to stop saving so much and stop being so sentimental about other things I don't want to get rid of. I think it will be a lot better for both of us if I can just leave you alone about using up an ENTIRE SHEET OF STICKERS all at once. I promise I'll try.

Recently we had a little spat that made me realize how impossible some of my standards really are. I can't stand the dog hair around the house, on everything, in everything. Most objects, in my mind, have an assigned status, 'floor object' or 'furniture appropriate'. If a floor object touches the couch, it will get dog hair on it, thus spreading the hair around to our bodies and then other pieces of furniture and right into Sabine's mouth - horror of all horrors. And vice versa with the 'furniture appropriate'. Anyway, you wanted to put something on the floor to build a fort with or something like that. Each item you went for I told you was not ok to put on the floor. Finally you complained (in a yell), "What DOESN'T have dog hair on it?!" Exactly, I thought, he's finally getting it. Days later I'm realizing it was not you who was getting it, but me who was failing to see the impossibility of keeping the dog hair limited to the floor. It's not like this realization has solved anything, but at least I'm aware of it. As I see it now there are only two options, send the dogs packing, or I'll have to find a new home.

A few days ago I tried to curl myself around you in bed, like always, and you politely told me you didn't want to snuggle just then. It's difficult to absorb that, but I have to respect your wishes and realize that eventually I will no longer have the rights to your physical self. It's a rare treat these days when I get a whole-hearted snuggle from you and an unending hug, a glimmer of your love for me in your eyes. "I love my Momma," you'll say on these instances. These times are more than worth the pain on the days when you're fighting the battle to your independence (I wouldn't let any other male treat me the way you do then). The moments when you open up and come back to me wash away everything else.

Since the beginning of time as far as your life is concerned, people have always commented about your eyelashes. When they compliment you sometimes I joke around and say, "That's how he'll find himself a wife." Either that or, "He's going to break a lot of hearts with those lashes...and the first one will be mine." I can't say I've ever had a broken heart before. Maybe the kind of break that happens right down the middle and all at once - say from a boyfriend - is repairable, a clean cut just requiring a number of stitches, but these days I find that little pieces of my heart are being chipped away as you start to make your own way in the world. They're getting all mixed up in the world and I don't think they can ever be replaced. I guess I wouldn't want them to.

Love,

Mommy

Got Lashes?

The Ice Storm

Here's some of the things that happened during, since or because of the ice storm:

~ We talked a lot more, read more, did more meaningful things (good) because we didn't have the internet.
~ We watched more TV (bad) because we didn't have the internet.
~ Sabine started crawling
~ I didn't miss the annoying sound of the house phone ringing, or having to check messages when we came back home
~ We all went to bed earlier
~ Got way behind on Christmas shopping
~ Jacob walked around going "ehhh! I burped, hahahha" for three days straight even though no one else but him was laughing.

Here are some of the pictures:

This limb blocked our driveway. It's twice the
height of Zach (right side of the picture)

The limb that blocked the road,

Moon & icicles.

Both kids watched intently out the bay window

The next day

Everybody helped with the cleanup...

Sabine: Month Six

Dear Sabine,

Today you are six months old. It blows my mind how friggin fast those six months went by. In fact, it's terrifying because I know the next six months will go by just as fast. And then six years will go by before I know it. And suddenly, before my very eyes, you'll be all grown.

I wish I could keep you kids small, I like being a mother to young kids. I remember when Jacob was a baby, rapidly growing into a toddler, and then a little boy; we kept saying, "Oh this is the best age." And then he'd enter another stage of development and we'd think that was the greatest.

Right now you are becoming a little person with her own preferences and ways to express those preferences. You started real crawling the other day. You reach for us to be picked up. And you reach for any object near enough to grab. This is becoming problematic when we're holding you; sometimes you almost lunge out of our arms to get to something. When we take something away from you, you cry now instead of just accepting it. Your favorite toy is clearly the old cloth star that hung from a play mat we had for Jacob.

Everything is going into your mouth these days. You're interested in everything, and so, so curious about the world around us. And you're really responding to anyone who interacts with you. You 'talk' to us, offers anyone who looks your way a huge smile, and I swear you're starting to wave. I almost think that you're beginning to say hi. My mother always told me that I started saying hi when I was six months old and I never believed it, but now I can see how that might have been possible. You make a breathy hi sound at the same time you start flapping your little arm and it either happens when someone walks in the room, or when someone is waving to you. So what other explanation can there be?

Anyway, Sabine, this is where it starts to get really fun. This is your first best age.

Love,

Mommy

Disclaimer: If you are a grandparent of Jacob and Sabine, don't read this!

Last year we got our Christmas calendars from Staples, like we had done every year. I swore it was the last year they were coming from Staples. For just a couple dollars more per calendar I ordered them from Snapfish this year. The day before the power went out we got them in the mail. I was going to write about it right away and rave about them like crazy. But since I haven't had the internet for a week and a half, much of the excitement has worn off. I'll just say that we were so freaking excited to get the calendars. They were awesome! I had so much fun picking out the page layouts, the backgrounds, adding captions. The picture quality is awesome. They arrived within a few days of ordering them and I never had to go to a store four times to try to pick them up!

Baby Gear

When you buy a van, you're not only getting a vehicle in which to drive around your kids, you're also getting a piece of portable furniture.

The van seat was sitting in our house for a couple months while Zach drove around with a thousand pound wood stove in the back of the van. He finally got someone to help him cart it out of the van and into the most logical place - the shed. Not like it should go in our house to be installed or anything. So I made good use of it while it was in the house, strapping Sabine in when I needed both hands free.

Also in the baby gear department we have a ghetto high chair. I was cleaning out a closet lately and had to find a new home for this old car seat. I doubt I can use it in an actual car because it's about to meet its expiration date and the straps look pretty shabby. We've been missing the bassinet on wheels that we could cart her around in on the first floor, but this desk chair happens to have wheels. Combine the two, and viola!

Don't worry, she's in there securely, thanks to the latch system:

Verizon

After nine days without telephone and internet, Verizon just stopped by and hooked us back up. We were part of that big ice storm in the northeast last week. We actually only lost power for 14 hours, but most of the people we know lost it for at least three days. My mom had no power for over five days.

So Verizon left a message on Zach's cell phone telling us that someone had to be home on Saturday when they stopped by to fix our lines. They said they might be by anytime from 7am-5pm. We're already behind on Christmas preparations because of the ice storm, then there was a snow storm on Friday, so that ruled out the possibility of getting any shopping done. Yesterday was the one day we could have gotten things done, but we weren't allowed to leave the house. Do you think Verizon showed up? No.

Now that we have the internet back I'm hoping to get all my pictures uploaded and post a few blogs I didn't get around to finishing before the power outage. If things go my way today, I'll get a bunch of that done.

Anyway, they came this morning and the guy stepped right in a little pond we have tucked into the corner of a landscaped area of the house. He went in knee-deep and was soaked. So I guess we're even.

are we white trash?

Yesterday we were all hanging out in the living room and Mango was being annoying, as usual. Jacob all of a sudden goes, "Mango's a dumb ass." Oops. Apparently someone's been saying that a little too loudly and he picked up on it. We love her, but sometimes it seems like she has no clue. When we call her that we mean it in the most loving way possible. I swear.

A few minutes later Jacob was playing with his trains. He had gotten really into the scene he'd created and was doing voices for all the different trains and trucks. From across the room I heard him say, "Hurry, hurry, we have to get to the hospital, this guy is drunk!"

You know what they say - children learn what they live...

Dog Years

Tomorrow is Smitty's birthday. Or so Jacob says. But he's been saying tomorrow is Smitty's birthday for a week now. Apparently he doesn't have the preparations is order so he has to keep putting it off. Or at least that's what I'm assuming. For now I'll have to be grateful that Jacob hasn't asked me to bake a cake and get ice cream like I had to do for Pilchard's birthday last year. Pilchard celebrated her birthday for two months straight. Now it's Smitty's birthday and each day the number of years he is turning changes. I can't remember where it's at now; Jacob makes up a new number each day.

Smitty's been going with us everywhere these days. He came to Playschool today. And when it was so bitter cold walking across the parking lot, Jacob stuffed Smitty into his coat to carry him in.

Right now Jacob is trying to get him to bed. He's in a preemie sized sleeper and Jacob is nursing him in the rocker. He just explained that Smitty didn't dirty any diapers today, although I hear that he grinds his teeth in his sleep (hmm..so does Jacob - projection anyone?) so Jacob has to put a special mask on Smitty. I wonder if they make this mask for five year old humans? He told us how he has to try to stop Smitty from grinding his teeth because it's bad for him. This is what we tell Jacob for an excuse when he wakes up with us pressing on his jaw, or occasionally me with my finger jammed between his top and bottom teeth. I don't actually know that the teeth grinding is bad for his teeth, but I'm willing to pretend it does in an effort to get Jacob to stop because the sounds that it makes is worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. It makes me want to cut my ears off.

The jaw rubbing started because I think I read about another mother's experience with her daughter's teeth grinding. She said that when her daughter would grind her teeth she'd gently rub the girl's jaw to relax her muscles and make her stop. It was the only thing I ever came across suggesting you could do anything to stop the annoying habit. So I started to use the technique on Jacob and it worked at first. Then after a while it didn't work so well. The jaw rubbing would actually wake him and he'd swat me away. But that sound is so awful I can't let it go.

Now he's progressed to violently fighting me off in the night while actually still grinding his teeth. So the jaw rubbing has zero effect except to make me feel as if I've got a little bit of control. When that doesn't work I get desperate to make it stop and that's when I try to pry his teeth open with my finger, hence the finger jamming. His teeth are clenched down so hard that I often have trouble getting in there. What kind of stress could be coursing through his little body at night that would make him so physically tense?

When the finger jamming doesn't work I basically try anything to wake him up. By that point I'm so freaked out by the grinding sound that my primal instinct overrides the fact that the source of the noise is my own flesh and blood and I'm afraid that someday it might drive me to actually punch him in the jaw (not really).

What does this have to do with Smitty? I'm not really sure. I'm convinced there must be some root problem to the teeth grinding. If the physician and dentist tell me that there's nothing you can do about it, then maybe I should see what the psychologist has to say about it. I have to get to the bottom of it for my own sanity. And if I have to role play with Smitty, then so be it.

where the action is

Jacob is building this little house out of a car seat box that I just pulled from the closet. It's actually pretty impressive - Pilchard is hanging out inside with the wipes container and a few other odd items, she's got one of Jacob's t-shirts on. Some decorations are taped to the top, including a 'stocking' he just made out of a kleenex box and two of Santa's reindeer (aka Moosey and Lion). He's all into the Christmas festivities this year.

Sabine is on the other side of the room, doing her little workout. She's on her belly, which is the position she has always preferred. She's so close to crawling that we're afraid to leave the room when she's on the floor, lest we miss it. She alternates her attempts between down dog (the yoga position with your hands and feet on the ground and butt in the air) or on hands and knees. When she's on her hands and knees she rocks back and forth, and just a couple days ago would throw herself forward, landing with a face plant to the floor. Now she's progressed to shifting both her knees forward on the ground at the same time then stretching out to being on her belly to get her upper body forward. The pulls up to hands and knees to start the whole move over again. She gets some good distance this way, it just takes a little time - I like to think of it as inch worm style.

There are basically two scenarios where Sabine is not happy. During the second half of the day if I'm out of her sight, she's pissed. And in the car seat - she still hates that. But if it's not one of those times, she's usually good to go. Sabine loves being on the floor in the living room, just playing around. She sat tonight with the top to Jacob's water bottle, alternately examining it and then sticking it in her mouth to have a taste, her little feet kicking in the air. But then when Jacob started in with his little house, that was where her attention turned. She spent the next ten minutes trying to get over to where Jacob was. She always wants to be where the action is.

She's cute when you're holding her and trying to do something. If it gets within a close enough distance where she can reach it, then she grabs for it and brings it right to her mouth. I'm sure this describes every baby, but they all have their own way of doing this that's different from their peers' and it's just so cute. She likes to bounce around now when you're holding her in a standing position on your lap, going from standing to squatting, not crazy bouncing just yet like some babies but she will soon. I feel like I have to write about these things now because by the time I do another Dear Sabine, she will have moved on to completely different achievements. For all I know she could be crawling tomorrow...

Dear Sabine

Dear Sabine,

Sometimes I look at you and I'm sure I must be dreaming. You are so beautiful and perfect that it takes my breath away. I can't believe how lucky I am to finally have you here with us, and at times I actually think I must be imagining this life.

Since the day you were born you've stopped old ladies dead in their tracks, won the admiration of small children, and provoked stories from empty-nesters of how it seems like yesterday their adult children were that small. Today at the co-op a woman told me you looked like a little doll sitting propped up the way you were. I unabashedly agreed, and I wholeheartedly accept the compliments that are lavished on you.

I am enjoying the attention from strangers, but it also makes me very wary; wary that I'm using up all the happiness of life in these precious days of your babyhood. Is that possible? Can a person be so greedy with their good fortune that they use up their life's quota all in one shot? I desperately hope not, but the cynic in me is staying well-aware of the fact that good things have been happening all around. Deep down I must believe that if I can continually stay conscious of the good thing we've got going, then I will maintain a firm grip on the good luck, that I can will it to stay around forever, if such a thing in possible.

Basically, I will never take my children's presence for granted. So please, please, please, don't let anything happen to them.

Sabine, you still want to stand up all the time. And when you aren't standing you are doing what I call your v-crunches. This is when we try to lay you on the floor but you pop your little head up like you're trying to sit up and then your little legs pop up off the ground. You refuse to relax and you just stay in position like that. I'm sure when you are older there will be some important part of your personality or way of being in the world where I'll look back and say, "Yeah, she's been like that since she was a baby - she never wanted to lay down, or let a minute of life pass unobserved."

Sometimes you look back at me, or the person who is holding you, just a glance to make sure we're still there, or confirm who it is that's holding you. When it's me, you turn your little head to see me out of the corner or your eye and then you give a little satisfied smile. Or when you just wake up a little, opening your eyes a crack just to see that I'm there and you're still in my lap. Then you drift back to sleep. I love being your security center. It's also kind of dangerous though because right now I'm the only person who will make you happy at times. It's such a great feeling to be loved so much by another person, but I also know how being so attached like that to one person can absolutely kill you at times.

we're getting better at bedtime though. Even though I'm the only one you'll take at night, at least I'm learning about what you need to fall asleep and stay asleep. When Jacob was a baby we had no idea about babies and sleep. So this is progress.

At five months you are so alert. But then again, you've been like that literally since the day you were born. You're just about to crawl, getting up on your hands and feet, then lunging yourself forward. You just have to do it one time to realize that that is the way it's done. Then there'll be no stopping you!

You're very into your feet these days. You stick out your tongue to say hi to people and it is the cutest thing I have ever seen. You can't figure out why your thumb won't come off of your hand when you pull with the other hand. You love, love, love Jacob. Yours eyes sparkle when he enters the room. You have long, long hair that I can already put things in. You're long for your age. You have those beautiful eye lashes that Jacob has too. You're starting to really like to play with the dogs. You like being outside, but still hate the carseat.

I'm writing all of this as much for myself as I am for you. That way incase I ever wake from this lovely dream I'm having, I'll at least have these memories of it.

Our Jacob

We sent Jacob to my mom's last night so we could get some stuff done. Well Beans was up till 10pm screaming her head off in our arms. And then she was up again at 7am, cooing and doing cute stuff in the bed next to us. Her diaper was full so I went to pull it off in the dark and the runny poop that was in it basically went everywhere you can imagine. So that was the bulk of our morning.

But I digress. This post is about Jacob. We're down here having coffee now, talking about Jacob. It's nice to miss him now and then. It puts all that annoying stuff he does into perspective. So he wants a chicken for Christmas. He's being realistic about it and asking only for one. He saw 'Santa' at the mall the other day - and don't get me started on how Santa was like, "A chicken? That can't be ALL you want for Christmas" Seriously? Don't encourage him to want more, more, more when he's happy with less. American kids are the most spoiled kids. Being Santa at the mall must be one of the most depressing jobs, listening to greedy kids list of their requests all day long.

Also, don't get me started on how suddenly Jacob is buying into the Santa Lie. One conversation with a certain family member and now he thinks Santa is going to come to our house and bring presents. Great. I can't really break his spirit and tell him that's not true, when he seems to want to believe it, now can I? I'm definitely not going to start agreeing with him and acting like Santa is coming to our house, but I guess I can't outright tell him that's not true. I'm just kind of playing dumb.

Anyway, Jacob wants a chicken so bad. And I can totally see him with one. He gets up every morning, hops out of bed and jumps into his Carhartts. It would be a natural progression for him to walk out back and feed the chickens. He pretends about them all the time, like he's in training for the day when we finally agree to it. We have to get him chickens. I'm to the point where there's no way around it. Tons of people we know have chickens. It would be a totally normal thing to do.

Zach says NO WAY. In capital letters. Well he just found out that Mara, at work, used to have chickens. I should have guessed. She's like one of those people who's lived everywhere and done everything. Zach really listens to her though. I'll try to convince him of certain things, take this herb and you'll feel better, or maybe your problem is that you're not doing X, Y, Z...but he doesn't listen to me. Only when Mara suggests it does Zach listen. That's ok. We call her his work wife. So I have a grand plan to bring Jacob in to visit Zach at work....we'll go visit Mara too and the two of them can chat about chickens. Jacob can tell her about his imaginary chickens, and she can tell him how she used to live on a farm. Then, later, Mara can tell Zach how impressed she was with Jacob's dedication to him imaginary chics and that Zach really should get him chickens for Christmas.

Can you imagine the look on Jacob's face on Christmas morning? He would go berserk.