out of the blue

On Friday, we were walking home from school.

"Do daddies have babies?" asked C

"No, only women have babies. Mommies. Only mommies have babies." i said.

"Why?"

"Because only women have the right parts. We say a mommy has a baby in her belly, but it isn't really her belly. It's a special place, called a uterus, and only women have them. That's the difference between women and men."

"Oh."

We plod along in relative silence for half a block or so.

"Why did our baby die?"

**double take on my part, she has never brought up Nicolas independently before**

"You mean our baby Nicolas, why did he die?"

"Yes"

"Well, it was an accident. Sometimes accidents happen."

"But why?"

"We were at the hospital for him to be born, but he died. It was an accident."

"But why?"

"Um, we don't really know...the doctors don't know....that's the thing...um...sometimes these things happen...."

"But WHY????"

"OK, look. When the baby is inside the mommy, the baby is attached to the mommy with a cord. The baby is inside, right? So he can't eat or breathe air, but he doesn't have to, because he gets everything he needs from the cord, from his mommy. We think something went wrong with Nicolas's cord, that he couldn't get what he needed to live."

"Oh."

**silence -- she ponders this, while i wonder what the people walking around us think of this conversation**

"I don't want babies to die."

"Me neither, sweetheart."

**ok, i nearly lost it here, but i don't think she saw me tear up**

"But our babies were born, and they were alive."

"Yes, we were lucky, everything went right with M and T."

"and me too, and A too"

"Yes"

"You were more careful?"

**wow, blame the mother starts early, huh?**

"No, i was equally careful with all of you. But Nicolas died and you lived, and i don't really have an answer for why."

"Oh.......can i have a fruit snack when i get home?"

"After you eat something good for you, sure."

yeah, i'm here, thanks for asking

and no bedbugs yet, though i did see something which resembled a cockroach this morning. It scurried under the stove before i could smash it and look at it properly. Then 5 minutes later i saw another bug in the same vicinity, which was clearly not a cockroach but is one of those beetles which look similar. So i am hoping the first was not a roach, but instead i saw the same bug twice. We have spiders all over the place, too. These colder nights always make this crap happen.

The boys had their 15-month checkup yesterday & seem fine. I have lots of cute stories but no time to post them, i had better do it because otherwise the stories will be forgotten.

I guess i am OK but it seems to be a rough fall for me, mentally speaking. I have been trying to adjust to the new semester with it's crazy schedule and though i am not caught up yet, it might happen soon. If i would stop reading blogs and start working. So, ok, maybe i should do that.

yuck, bugs

Ok, if you have had the misfortune of spending hours in my basement (say, doing laundry or woodworking), you would have seen many a House Centipede. Truly, these many-legged things are rather gross, but dh told me 'oh, they eat other bugs', so i largely have left them alone.

Except now, they are coming up into the main part of the house. Yesterday i took out a big pot to boil water for pasta, and saw one running around inside it. Yes, i let out a yelp and dropped the pot. Dh saved the bug by dumping him outside, but was not so amused today when he lifted something off the floor and another one shot out from underneath.

On the other hand, H. (the bible-study play-group woman) has recently been battling an infestation of bedbugs. Bedbugs, omg! Just around the corner, too. And these many-legged things eat bedbugs, according to wikipedia anyway, so i am inclined to cut them some slack. Because, though they are awful creepy, they are nowhere near as bad as bedbugs.

But how do i keep them out of my pots?

another milestone

M. seems to have discovered temper tantrums this morning. Hmmmm. I thought i had a little time for that, they are not yet even 15 months old (that will be next week). But there was apparently some huge dispute over the fisher-price barn....should the cow go in or out? Oh, my, the turmoil!

Oh, and T got tooth number 5, actually last week, the day after he chipped off tooth #4.

thank goodness all mornings aren't like this....

I won't even bother to write it out...sigh. It involved lots of poop, the usual assorted screaming, and hubby who put my phone in his pocket to do me a favor by bringing it downstairs for me, then forgetting and leaving the house with the damned thing. Already late, with babies amusing themselves by shutting each other in closets, the last thing i really want to is to search the whole house in vain for a cellphone.

I'm having a little trouble adjusting to start of school, i think. Remember, i tell myself, that this is a period of transition. That, and the usual depressions, would explain my lack of posting or reading here. Well, you know, that is how it goes.

Yesterday was the first day i had to actually take out the jackets. It is really fall, after all. Where oh where did my summer go?

Autumn smiles

Denise asks what makes us smile in autumn, so i thought i would ask the family.

C: cupcakes for my birthday!


T: Eat!

M: Eat! More!

(so, i guess the same as C. Mind you, they say 'eat' and sign 'more', it's cute)

A: It's cold, so the mosquitoes die.

Me: Baby steps

pumpkins starting to turn

and yummy yarn being knit into a warm sweater...
Dh: ***censored**** I won't write that, this is a family blog!

If you run before you can walk....

...you are likely to end up doing something painful, like breaking a tooth. Which is what happened to T yesterday. Chipped that new tooth clean off. Can i still say he has four of them?

What is it with this boy? Is there some kind of curse to being Twin B? I mean, M tumbled down the stairs a few days ago (no, not *all* of them, just a few) and he was just fine. Barely cried. M bounces, whereas T breaks. What is up with that?

I did, however, finish his sweater. This is the Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise Jacket pattern.


You might think that i am just attempting to preserve anonymity by posting pictures of the backs of my children. In some sense that is true, but it seems that 95% of the pictures of them are of their backs now....so maybe it is just the way it is at this age.