Prologue: All the World's a Stage...

Before you can fully appreciate the recent Geoffrey-centered drama, you must understand the context of all my past pregnancies.

Eric.

I have remarked before on the tendency for drama in my pregnancies. With Eric, I had some major adjustments. In the space of twelve months, I got engaged, graduated from college, got married, lived in married student abject poverty for a semester, celebrated Jon's graduation and job offer, got pregnant, and moved to North Carolina. I then went through occupational withdrawal (I wasn't a student and I wasn't working) while pregnant in a new ward with a high turnover rate. My mental state fluctuated between insanely bored and incredibly worried, both as pertained to motherhood. Add in some not-quite gestational diabetes. And there was the time I thought I was having a heart attack. (Turned out it was a combination of the baby strrrrretching the connective tissue between my ribs plus an anxiety attack.) Then 9/11, two weeks before my due date, terrified everyone and almost grounded both grandmas. Oy.

Both grandmas did manage to arrive in time. My due date arrived and I poked my distended belly. "That's it, B," and said firmly. "You're of age. Now move out or start paying rent."

I went into labor early the next morning. Both grandmas, Jon, and I all got to the hospital in plenty of time. Labor and delivery themselves were absolutely textbook. Slow but steady, 10-12 hours total. Epidural, second-degree tear....

I did pee all over the doctor. I didn't do it on purpose, but neither did I feel remorse. He was an obnoxious, hyperactive, egotistical chihuahua of a man. I did not appreciate his constant lecturing about how I was "breathing wrong" and "wasting oxygen by grunting."

I thought of all kinds of come-backs, some then, and some, inevitably, hours later. ("I don't care how many babies you've delivered, you've never actually delivered a baby," or "I don't have room for a back-seat driver!" or "Those who can, do. Those who can't, coach." I would have been delighted to switch places with him. Grrr.)

Unfortunately, I couldn't deliver the lines since I was too busy breathing, pushing, and, alas, grunting. I accept that I wasted oxygen which should have been channeled to my straining muscles, but, truly, I could not help it.

Nursing was horrible. I rank them as the third- and fourth-worst weeks of my life. I loved baby Eric of course, but trying to nurse him was sheer hell. Frustration, complete exhaustion, and excruciating pain for me. Frustration, exhaustion, and gnawing hunger for him.

I'm amazed I stuck with it. I'm proud of myself for succeeding, but even today, I think the cost was almost (but not quite) too high.

The best memory in all that was the day I spent sitting on the couch listening to General Conference with a sheet over my head, trying vainly to nurse discreetly. My poor father-in-law sat valiantly trying to listen to modern prophets and ignore the background sound track of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of baby gums. He also tried to avoid even glancing in the direction of his burqa-clad daughter-in-law. I made this difficult by flailing about with occasional shrieks of "OUCH!!!" and "Bad baby!" I imagine Eric and I (completely draped in a white sheet) looked and sounded like a very scary (or very funny) ghost.


Daniel

At an ASL lesson, Kathryn Chapman once asked me to practice story telling. "Tell me a story," she instructed, "Like about what happened when Eric was born."

"Eric?" I signed. "Hospital--doctor--nurse--medicine--boring." (This was actually perfectly acceptable grammar in ASL.) "But Danny," I continued, placing "home" in one spot and "hospital" in another, then showing a car moving swiftly between them, "Super fast--freezing rain--screaming--no drugs--pain, pain, pain--awful, horrible....Drama."

Physically, my pregnancy with Danny was my easiest. I had other medical issues going on at the time, though, which really complicated things. Still, I worked through things fairly well and had mostly regained my equilibrium.

On the night of January 24th, 2004, I was sitting on the couch reading. It was around 11:30 and I was about to go to bed. Suddenly I realized I'd been having some abdominal discomfort. "Huh," I thought, dismissing it as a minor digestive problem. Then, "Wait...is that a contraction?" I glanced at my watch. Around six minutes later, I glanced at it again. And then, an interval later, again. It was ten or so days early, but there was an ice storm coming. Jon and I had already discussed how we didn't want to be stranded at home and then have me go into labor. "Perhaps," I thought, moving upstairs to throw a few things into an overnight bag -- yes, I had procrastinated, despite Jon's frequent reminders -- "Perhaps we should err on the side of caution."

I told Jon, who began grabbing stuff far more aggressively. I called the doctor. She listened to my "Owww!"s over the phone and said to come on in.

We got Eric up. Poor kid, he was roused from sleep at midnight, thrown into the car, and rushed to a strange house. (At least we had a plan of where to park him.) He was two.

Yes, we had to stop and pack a bag for him, too, and yes, I was ill-prepared. Jon has been gracious enough not to rub it in too much over the years.

Sadly, the babysitter's house was in the opposite direction of the hospital. We drove over there, dropped off a very disoriented Eric and all his gear, and paused while Brother Schnegelberger assisted with a priesthood blessing. I remained in the passenger seat the whole time. Poor Brother S. was wearing light pajamas, and the temperature was plummeting rapidly. I was also beginning to pant and whimper. The contractions were coming more quickly and I was getting nervous.

Jon then retraced our route in the direction of the hospital. It would ordinarily have been a twenty- or twenty-five minute drive. In the middle of the night, with minimal traffic, it went slightly faster. It seemed like ages. I began yelling. "OW, OW, OWWW!!!"

Jon stopped for a red light. "Run it!" I ordered, tersely, and he looked startled but complied. We hit every single red light from then on, but by then I was screaming "Aaah! It hurts! Make it stop!" and Jon didn't have to be told to run 'em.

In retrospect, screaming "Jon!! Make it stop!!!" was one of the cruelest things I've ever done to the man. He's a guy. And an engineer. He likes to fix things. This was one problem where he was helpless. I maintain I was not responsible for anything I said at that point. (I do note proudly that I did not curse, even once. Or call Jon nasty names.)

 He began going twenty, then thirty, miles over the speed limit. I worried that a cop would pull us over. I feared not the ticket, but the inevitable delay. Would a police escort offset the time lost explaining the situation?

By then I was crying incoherently. It was a very odd experience: I could think fairly rationally, I just couldn't communicate.

Jon screeched to the ER entrance. A nurse was standing ready with a wheelchair and bundled me into it. Jon raced off to park the car. He said later the brakes almost caught on fire.

The nurse wheeled me, shrieking, through the ER. I had a vague, blurry impression of lots of faces staring at me, mouths dropping, as I was rushed past them at a moderately loud volume. (I was pre-registered at the hospital, by the way.)

The labor nurse didn't even have to look at me. Hearing me coming from several hundred feet away, she automatically routed us into a delivery room. She helped me undress and began to examine me. Jon rushed in, gasping asthmatically and looking like a second medical emergency.

"She's there," one nurse said to another, and I REALLY started to wail.

"Nooooooo! I want drugs! Give me drugs!!!!" I screamed, over and over. (I remind everyone of my classical vocal training. Despite a baby interfering with my diaphragm, I was very...piercing.

The next twenty or so minutes are rather vague. What I really remember thinking was "This must be what torture feels like. If someone told me, right now, that he could make the pain stop instantly if only I would reveal the top secret nuclear launch codes, I would totally do it. In fact, I wish I DID know some top secret nuclear launch codes, because then perhaps I could negotiate something..."

This was just a few weeks after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. I have always opposed torture, but this experience gave me a much deeper, personal view of the issue.

It also gave me a new perspective on the atonement, but that's a topic for another time.

Somebody gave me something to bite down on. It wasn't helpful. I think I almost accidentally bit off someone's finger, though. I wished for a nice, thick, crunchy leather strap. Or a thick stick.

I remember a nurse getting in my face and yelling back at me. Something about "Gail. The baby is coming and you have got to focus!"

I did manage to push when they told me to push. Horrible as it was, I realized that I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. I also managed not to scream while pushing, since I was highly motivated to use my oxygen efficiently.

From the moment I thought "Huh. Was that a contraction?" to the moment I delivered measured almost exactly two hours.

Daniel popped out. I collapsed, hyperventilating and shaking uncontrollably. The pain and accompanying hysteria waned quickly. The first coherent thing I said was, "I am NEVER doing that again!!!" Jon got a quick disappointed look, like "Aww, I kind of wanted more kids, but I am totally not arguing with her right now!" Reading his look, I clarified, "I mean natural childbirth, not no more children."

The nurses gaped. "How," they asked in astonishment, "Can you even think about hypothetical future children right now?"

They had a point.

The second coherent thing I said was "Hi, my name's Mommy and I'll be your server for the next eighteen years."

It was odd how quickly the nurses moved from drill sergeants to sweet, sympathetic ladies. During the crisis they yelled at me and practically slapped me around. Afterward, they were very solicitous.

Jon stuck around briefly, but he needed to hurry home to beat the impending storm.

That night, an inch of freezing rain fell, shutting the city completely down and cutting off power to large sections of it. Including our neighborhood.

Jon awoke freezing and trapped. The electricity came back on, but not the furnace. He was frazzled too, poor guy. When he called the babysitters to explain that not only were the roads unsafe but our house lacked heat, Erin suggested gently that he should call about getting the furnace repaired. "Oh! Good idea!" he said, dazedly, and she thought "Poor guy."

Poor Eric ended up spending two extra days at our friends' house.

The roads cleared after 36 hours or so, and it looked like I could go home on time.

Then, with Jon on his way to pick me up, the nurse came in to do one last set of vitals on Daniel. After a minute, she said, with studied casualty, "I just want to check on something," and wheeled his bassinet out of the room.

She returned a few minutes later, without my baby, and sat me down. Daniel was "breathing funny," she explained. "It's not exactly wrong, but...it's not right, either," she said vaguely. Then she described how his chest was doing a see-saw motion. Sometimes his upper chest moved a lot, and then it would migrate so his diaphram had all the motion, and then back up again. A gradual cycle. They wanted to keep him a few extra hours for observation, and to give the resident pediatrician a chance to examine him.

Jon showed up. "A few hours" turned into "at least two extra days in the NICU." He might have meconium-induced pneumonia.They would take a sample and grow it in the lab, but it would take at least 24 hours to get the results back, so they wanted to start him on antibiotics right away, just in case. But the regimen would take at least 48 hours, and in the meantime they might as well run every single test imaginable, checking his blood oxygenation, the air pressure in his lungs, a chest x-ray, and a host of other things I can't recall any more.

They kept expecting me to freak out, and I kept not complying. I was worried, of course, but I thought that if my baby was having breathing problems, the very best place for him was in a very well-monitored NICU, where the slightest issue would be caught instantly. They granted me continued stay in my room; although I was officially discharged, I was staying on as part of Daniel's bill. Insurance even covered it. In fact, it was rather restful. I pumped, slept, and visited Daniel whenever I wanted. No nurses nagged me, except for one reminder that Danny was getting hungry.

Jon and Bishop Garrison gave Danny a blessing. Feeding him was complicated by all the wires and needles stuck into my poor little pincushion. I hated to see him uncomfortable, but he was in a crib next to a set of three-pound twins who were later transferred to UNC via helicopter. My eight-and-a-half pound baby looked like a giant in comparison, and I felt vaguely guilty that he was the healthiest kid in the room.

No, the real terror came forty-eight hours later, when they sat down with Jon and me to go over their findings. It boiled down to "All the tests came back negative, so we're not sure what was actually wrong with him. There might have been some meconium in a lung, the x-ray was inconclusive...anyway, it's probably fine to take him home. We're discharging him. Just watch him carefully, and if he suddenly spikes a fever, has a seizure, turns blue, or quits breathing, call 911."

Wide-eyed, I thought, "I am so not going to sleep for a week. Couldn't they keep him another few days...?"

It all worked out in the end, of course. And my mother was very gracious when I called to tell her, "I know I've apologized for your labor and delivery with me, but I have this new perspective about what it must have been like..."

Ah, karma. Alas, Daniel can't undergo natural childbirth himself, and I wouldn't wish it on a daughter-in-law. In fact, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I'm sure the universe will find other ways of balancing things, though. Wahahaha.

Marian.

I don't talk about Marian much, but it seems like Daniel has been telling everyone in the ward about her. That experience was definitely dramatic. I will only add that as bad as nursing each of my babies has been, lactating without an infant was even worse. I tried to donate to a milk bank and was disqualified because of a mild, routine medication I was on. Though it was safe for my own babies, the milk bank couldn't risk drug interactions for preemies. The sheer waste of it all made me feel even more frustrated--and helpless.

Samuel.

Sammy was definitely the least dramatic of all my babies. After my previous experiences, I had predicted a huge, histrionic scene involving a car accident, ENTs rushing me to the hospital via ambulance, and my giving birth, six weeks early, via emergency C-section.

I like to think that Sam was just too sunny and cheerful, and too much of a gentleman, to do that to his dear, sweet mama. In any event, the pregnancy, labor, and delivery were all fairly calm. I pumped instead of nursing for six weeks and it was wonderful. Sam was a marvelous baby, easygoing and charming. I was almost (but not quite) disappointed by the lack of opera quality. This exhaustion with drama signaled to me that I was now officially a Grown Up Old Fuddy-Duddy.

Geoffrey.

I hoped vaguely that Sam had broken the drama curse. "Maybe this baby, too, will come without major incident," I thought hopefully. (This time it is the universe's turn to cackle maniacally. What was that about karma...?)

Sleep

After exhaustive research, I have concluded the following:

1. Yes, sleep deprivation is a form of torture.

2. It can't be very effective, since it renders the subject incoherent.

Once upon a time, during dead week, I went most of a night, and then a day and a night and a day, without sleep. During that time, I wrote a huge research paper, rushed it to my professor's box minutes before the English office closed, rushed back to the Institute, and then composed an eight-page political science opinion paper in less than two hours. I even managed to drive home without incident before collapsing. (The papers both got an A.)

A dozen-odd years later, three nights of minimal sleep (plus childbirth) rendered me completely non-functional. I wasn't quite hallucinating, but I was in bad shape. My apologies to anyone I may have accidentally offended in the last week due to my sheer spaciness.

I had an almost-but-not-quite boyfriend in high school who liked to tease me. "She's a national merit scholar," he intoned, "But she can't tie her own shoes."

I have been imagining what he would say in this situation. "She's an English major and a prolific creator of bedtime stories, but she can't fill out a simple birth certificate form." (Or problem-solve an easy carpool issue. Or even write a blog entry.)

Well, rejoice! Last night I actually got some sleep. Even better, I got a long nap today. (Thanks, Jon!!!) I am feeling vaguely human again, and mostly unzombified.

It is my hope that I can begin chronicling the exciting events of the last week...starting tomorrow.

Alas, so much has happened, I will need to take it in parts. That means you have to hear about the unimportant details (like wildfires and home evacuation) before you get to the good stuff (like notes on young Master Geoffrey).

Speaking of sleep, let's check in on other family members. Daddy has been slightly less of a zombie than Mommy, but he's still been exhausted with compromised efficiency. Sam's schedule has been upended and he has been cranky. Eric and Danny have still not settled into their school routine, and keep trying to stay up late at night. Jon has hit on a marvelous solution to this problem: push-ups. Also sit-ups. If they're being too boisterous, he makes 'em do calisthenics in sets until they're too exhausted to party. Brilliant idea!

Jeff has been snoozing just fine. No all-night marathons for him; in fact, he won't even stay awake enough to eat. He's Sleeping Baby and we're the marginalized magic fairies. If sleep deprivation is the universal intellectual handicap, young master Geoffrey is the smartest person in the room.

As proof of his somnolence, I include a video clip of him snoring. This serves both to prove that I wasn't hallucinating when I claimed that he could, and to assuage my conscience for not providing more baby-themed content.

More tomorrow. After another night's sleep.

The Best #^@)! Attendance Excuse Note, Ever.

The title may be an over-reach.

But can you blame me for hoping it's the best note I'll ever write? I shudder to think of the confluence of circumstances which could inspire me to a better one.

I quote my recent email to Meridian Charter School:

Daniel Berry was absent Tuesday, September 6th because of family drama: first our house almost burned down, and then I had a baby.

I didn't write his excuse note sooner because I was dealing with aforesaid drama: first managing a mandatory evacuation (and the threat of my house burning down); then going into labor at a friend's house, more than two weeks early, in the middle of the night; and then "artfully navigating" the insane hospital bureaucracy which a) lectures a new mom about getting uninterrupted sleep to avoid post-partum depression, then b) invades her room at 4 a.m. to draw her blood, and then c) sends in a social worker to screen for post-partum depression when d) she's caught napping indolently a few hours later.

The house and the entire family are fine, but I bet you will rarely receive a better absence excuse note.

Respectfully,

Gail Homer Berry

I hope that the school staff will be merciful. If not, I will explain that in the 60 hours prior to composing that note, I had slept a fragmented aggregate of perhaps 8, besides giving birth and exercising marvelous self-restraint at the legions of hospital staff who had impinged upon my privacy at regular half-hour intervals.

For more rantings about insane hospital procedures, read this entry about trying to escape with Sammy.

For people wishing more details, I can only say I'm working on a much longer blog post, but, alas, I keep getting interrupted by over-zealous hospital staff.

I'll write my blog-posting excuse note tomorrow. Assuming I'm coherent tomorrow, and not experiencing sleep deprivation-induced hallucinations.

A final note: I'm sure there are better excuse notes out there. I will give a prize to the person who sends me the best one. But: It has to be true. I could write a perfectly lovely fictionalized note, but that would be cheating. (I may have exaggerated slightly, but the substance was real.)

Stupid Weepy Pregnancy Hormones!

As an adolescent, I grew to hate hormones.

Annoying. Distracting. Inconvenient. Indulgent. Ick.

After a few instances of thoroughly embarrassing myself with emotional outbursts (age thirteen-fourteenish), I started analyzing social dynamics. What was actually going on? How ought everyone to behave? And, most important, how could I, at least, avoid further humiliation?

I observed variations of a few basic scenarios played out, over and over again.

Tell me if any of these sound familiar from middle and high school years:


1) Three guys and a girl, all eighth graders, are assigned to a group project. They meet to discuss division of labor. The girl tries repeatedly to impose some sense of order upon the proceedings, but is ignored while the boys engage in belching contests and discuss the latest basketball brackets. Finally, she gives up in disgust, yells at them, and storms off to do the entire project herself. They all look at each other and shrug. "What's with her?" one asks, and another says "Somebody has PMS." (Naturally, she couldn't have a legitimate grievance.)

2) Ten minutes before morning bell, several friends are clustered around their lockers, chatting. A girl in their group stomps in, glares at everyone equally, and announces, shrilly, "I have PMS and I'm not responsible for anything nasty I say in the next forty-eight hours so stay out of my way!!!" She slams her locker and stalks off again. The boys stare after her and tremble.

3) A seventeen-year-old boy cracks a very obscene joke. In mixed company. A girl winces, then pointedly walks away. The boy calls after her, "Hey--sorry--but you know, I'm a guy. I can't help it!"

4) An eleventh-grade couple are eating lunch:
Guy: ...happy they didn't raise taxes.
Girl: [horrified] But they're oppressing the poor who need those programs! The Republicans torture puppies for fun and now they've moved on to the American people!!!
Guy: [calmly] I would just rather see reduced spending than raised taxes.
Girl: [hysterically] I had no idea I was dating a FASCIST!!! [Wails] You don't love me! I have to [sob] break up with you!!! And right before the dance! How could you DO this to me??? [She rushes off to the bathroom to indulge her grief, and ends up missing half of her next class.]

Incidents like these, played out every day in American schools, lead to stereotypes about how "guys are jerks" and "girls are irrational airheads."

It's easy to criticize the teens, but then I look at their role models, like helicopter parents, evil bosses, and pandering politicians. In an ideal world, everyone would be calm, polite, and balanced. They would engage in public discourse with dignity, decency, honesty, and a modicum of logic.

Since that's not going to happen, I suppose I'll just have to mock 'em all equally.


The problem, concluded my fifteen-year-old self, was that nobody wanted to take responsibility. In many cases, the kids weren't even aware of how much they were influenced by their own neurochemical state, and honestly thought their anxiety/crankiness/hysteria was warranted. For them I felt some sympathy. But people who used them as excuses, crutches, or weapons...the same did I most heartily wish to smack. Or smite, depending upon the severity of the offense.

"Maybe people can't control their hormones," I decided, "But they can always control their behavior." Thus, even if I was especially exhausted, or cranky, or frustrated, or twitterpated, I still made a real effort to act calm. Fake it 'till you make it. This was, I decided, the essence of true adulthood. (I do not claim I was perfect at this, merely much better than most of my age-mates.) People said I was unusually mature, or poised. I thought I just had a really smart, successful survival strategy. (And let me say, I avoided a great many humiliating mistakes by concealing my true feelings. I also got a lot of laughs by deliberately hamming up the melodrama.)

Now, I'm sure you're all thinking, "That's very nice. So what?"

Well, I must now confess that my smug sense of superiority over my adolescent classmates has evaporated. Here I am, twenty-nine plus or minus ahem-mumble years, mother of multiple kids, and I can't stop crying.

I'm not depressed. I'm not upset at anyone. I don't cry all the time. But when some minor thing sets me off, I start bawling uncontrollably. "I am a mature and rational adult," I tell myself, "And I will deal with this minor problem in a professional manner...as soon as I stop crying." An hour of crying later, I have serious doubts about the "rational" part of my self-message.

Poor Jon. For the last several months, he has suffered several iterations of me choking out, "And I KNOW I'm over-reacting and it's not actually a big deal, and I hate that I can't control myself, but I just can't stop crying...Waaaah!"

Now, I do make efforts to mitigate the damage. I try not to make any major decisions while super-hormonal. I try to acknowledge "I'm over-reacting; it's the pregnancy hormones," to anyone who crosses my path while I'm weeping copiously. I try to extricate myself from social situations and bawl in private. If a person has upset me, I try to wait until I am calm to confront the issue.

Nevertheless, this system is not perfect. For one thing, I keep crying at church. There is no good retreat at church, unless I want to go sit in my car in 105-degree heat. For another thing, not everyone believes me when I sob, "No, everything is fine, I'm just pregnant..." Many kind souls assume someone has seriously offended me. Finally, I may wait until I think I'm calm, but frequently I start crying all over again.

SIGH.

This is seriously annoying.

So, I have decided to take a break from personal responsibility. A few months ago, I got upset about something.
"Blame the baby," I told Jon.
"Which one?" he asked.
"I don't care!" I answered. "A baby, any baby!"
Babies make such convenient scapegoats. (I begin to regret our selection for U's first stuffed animal. He's a very masculine bull, with, I am certain, nary a taint of progesterone poisoning.)

As pregnancy symptoms go, this one isn't all that bad. It's better than nausea, vomiting, fatigue, interrupted sleep, and sciatic pain. I'm not sure if I'd choose weepiness over swollen feet or memory problems.

Hopefully U got some awesome build points for taking this quirk.

One month (give or take) to go. I can make it. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me!

(Except, of course, stop crying.)

I Survived Schlitterbahn!

The summer I turned twelve, my dad and uncle took a combined eight or so children to Disney World. My mom and aunt stayed home with the babies.

I was appalled. "Can't we afford Mom's ticket?" I asked, concerned. And "Mom, you are welcome to come. We can have fun even if you're there."

I was convinced that Mom was abstaining for some ridiculous purpose, preferring to play the martyr for obscure psychological reasons. After all, who would voluntarily stay at home with a toddler when she could be traipsing all around the Magic Kingdom?

My concern was entirely altruistic, since I figured we'd have more fun without Mom around. (My belated apologies.) For one thing, she walked slowly and we wouldn't have covered as much ground with her in tow. For another, Dad was much more likely to spend profligately on incidentals (like souvenirs and ice cream) without Mom protesting every expenditure. 

Mom assured me, repeatedly, that she honestly preferred it this way. "I'll talk to your aunt," she said, "Inside. Sitting down. In the air conditioning. We will discuss her recent trip to Germany." (The iron curtain had fallen a few months before.) "I believe I will find it very restful."

I gave up, finally convinced of her sincerity if not her sanity. "I guess I'll never understand," I thought.

You see where this is heading, of course.

Twenty years of perspective later, I think, "Who would voluntarily spend an entire day outside, in scorching 102-degree heat, either immersed in unsanitary, bug-infested river water or limping after hyperactive progeny, when she could be resting her pregnant, swollen feet, tending a single napping toddler, inside the air conditioned comforts of her own home?"

I want you to know, I was a good sport about it. I even had a reasonably good time.

This excursion was a benefit generously provided by Intel. We got three free (and one vastly reduced) passes to the Schlitterbahn waterpark in Braunfels, TX, with a catered lunch included. Further, their timing was excellent: early in June, as soon as school got out. A chance for employees and their families to relax, bond, and enjoy the outdoors. It's not their fault that Texas is in the middle of a drought and heat wave. Or that I'm pregnant, or that I hate swimming. I am, in fact, very grateful for Intel's kindness.

Last year I managed to get out of it on the grounds that I had a brand-new baby, only two months old. Next year, I expect I'll get out of it by pointing out I have two babies. Granted U will be about eight months old by then, but I can use that leverage for all it's worth.

This year, though, I was stuck.

The major issue was that last year, Eric wanted to try the more adventurous rides and Danny didn't, leaving single-parent Jon to negotiate unhappy compromises. This year, they all argued, I could go too, and take Danny to the calmer attractions whilst Dad and Eric tubed happily through choppier waters.

Alas, their point was extremely logical. In fact, it's what we ended up doing. (We got a babysitter for Sammy.)

Now, a note about parenting.

One of the problems with parenting is choosing good consequences. A good negative consequence should be simple, easily enforced, and inconvenient to the child, not the parent. It's also nice if you can make it fairly logical, like, "If you hit me, then I refuse to play with you," as opposed to "No, you can't have a pony because you haven't practiced the piano for a month."

Thus, the Schlitterbahn expedition provided me with an absolutely perfect bargaining chip, since I honestly would have been happier not to go.

I made the kids clean the day before. "We can't have Sammy running around the house with an inexperienced sitter and a bunch of hazards," I explained. Alas, they ran out of time and were sent to bed.

I got up promptly in the morning, made sure Eric took his Ritalin, and assigned them their last chore.

It took the kids two hours to do ten minutes of cleaning. (I wanted all the trash and laundry in the upstairs hall cleaned up.)

Now, if I had really cared about the trip to the water park, or if we had paid full ticket price, I might have tried something radical, like going upstairs, sitting in the hall, and supervising.

Instead I yawned, sat in the rocking chair, and chatted politely with the babysitter.

Various arguments, drifting downstairs, indicated they had picked up perhaps five pieces of trash.

I got myself some cereal.

Every twenty minutes or so, I bestirred myself enough to point out that if they didn't hurry, we wouldn't be able to stop at IHOP (or Dennys) for a leisurely breakfast. That if they didn't care about arriving early, they also presumably didn't care about leaving early. That their indifference to my agenda meant my indifference to their agenda in picking rides. That we were still paying the sitter for his time, even though he didn't have anything to do yet, and that fee might come out of their point jars. That I was delighted our house was so much more fun than an amusement park! I must be doing a superlative job as a Mom if they preferred performing gravitic experiments with coat hangers to the over-stimulation of a crowded Schlitterbahn. (This supports the theory that cardboard boxes are far superior to loud, obnoxious, flashing toys.)

Jon, after waiting for an hour, started getting cranky. "I'm hungry," he complained. I offered to get him a snack.

He declined, then reminded the kids that from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., the park would only be open to Intel employees, which meant virtually no lines on the most popular rides. I added that the later we arrived, the hotter it would be and the faster their dear, sweet Mama would wilt like a delicate flower in the hot, hot sun.

The babysitter played with Sammy and laughed at us. It was very pleasant, actually, that Sam had time to make friends with him. It meant there was less panic when we did eventually leave.

After ninety-plus minutes of listening to play punctuated by sporadic clean-up, I recommended that Jon impose a time limit. "Kids," he called upstairs, "If that hall does not pass inspection in the next five minutes--" (I waited breathlessly, hoping he would say "We won't go at all!") --"We won't get breakfast at all! You'll have to wait for lunch!"

Ah well.

Thirty seconds later, the kids announced they were done. (Miraculous. Predictable, though, which is why I didn't suggest the time limit earlier.) I inspected. I pointed out perhaps three items they'd overlooked, and then declared myself satisfied.

We decamped a few minutes later, a mere two hours behind schedule.

Between the late start, breakfast (at McDonald's), lunch, and my leverage to leave early, I spent a mere hour and a half at actual attractions. Plus a fair, but not excessive, amount of walking. I seized every reasonable opportunity to sit down in the shade. I kept my hand sanitizer close and dispensed it liberally.

I even unbent far enough to purchase a single memento: a cute little over-priced sand castle refrigerator magnet. I intend to display it prominently, as a trophy.

Despite the abbreviated adventure, the kids were both exhausted and fell asleep on the way home. Eric actually went to bed early.

The kids had fun, Jon got to spend some quality time with them, I got a clean house, Sammy did fine, and the babysitter got paid for eleven-odd hours of work, even if two of them involved sitting on the couch chatting and Sammy napped for a couple more.

Further, because of our liberal smearing of sunblock, nobody is even sporting a burn today.

The only drawback is that I don't have very many pictures, since there was no way we were taking our cellphones inner tubing on a river.

Overall, a definite success!

Still, I would rather have taken a nice, leisurely nap. I am remarkably sanguine about having joined the club of Old Geezers at the mere age of twenty-nine, v. 3.0. Do I hear an amen?

One final word of advice: Never, EVER, go shopping for swimwear while pregnant. Especially in the second trimester, when you're big enough to look fat, but not big enough to look pregnant. I was depressed for hours. In the end, I just wore opaque maternity clothes. (And, no, there are definitely no pictures of me.)

Best Homeschool Lessons: Silly Sentences with Rigorous Research

I have a confession to make.

It was a sin. A wicked indulgence. I wish I had never seen that llama. But the illegal tweezer shipment was totally not my fault!


Actually, I never learned to diagram sentences.

I had a good grammar course in eighth grade. And it was at Pine View, which counts for much.

Still, though it emphasized recognizing parts of speech, it never covered graphical representations thereof.

Sad that I made from grade school through a decent university--with a BA in English!--without once diagramming a sentence in my native tongue.

This sad deficiency I have determined not to inflict upon my own children.


Today Eric wanted a "really tricksy" sentence. I decided to challenge both of us by writing the sentence first and figuring out how to diagram it later.

Part of the fun was that Eric got to make suggestions about words to add. In the end, I mostly wrote the subject and verb, while he constructed the rest of the predicate.

Left: A sentence growing progressively more complicated and silly. Right: the final result, "Mommy, who is very surprised, nevertheless placidly observes rogue undead arrows with tattoos attacking her."


We both learned a lot.

For my part, I learned how to show a relative clause. Also, I discovered some fantastic reference websites.

For Eric, it was doubtless salutary to watch Mom, who is supposed to be The Expert, saying things like "I think 'nevertheless' is a subordinating conjunction. But it's not acting like one here. 'However' can be both an adverb and a conjunction, right? Let me look it up....

It unsettled him a little, but he got through it. Aspie anxiety practice!

('However,' by the way, can, indeed, function as either an adverb or a conjunction. According to dictionary.com, though, 'nevertheless' is only ever an adverb. It seems like the sentence "I appreciate your concerns; nevertheless I must insist" uses it as a subordinating conjunction. Grandma Homer? Help?)

Speaking of Aspie anxiety, imagine how it will upset him tomorrow when I mention, "Oops. I just realized something. I think there should either be a comma between "rogue" and "undead," or we should have charted them differently. Sorry."



I also think a "sentence contest" would be fun. I write a hard sentence for Eric to diagram; he reciprocates. (*Shudder*) Grandma Homer could grade our results.

Or y'all could submit sentences which Eric and I could tackle together. Perhaps a complex/compound sentence full of silliness? Suggestions?

"This orange juice is REVOLTING!...More?"

Do you recall the Star Trek movie where Data finally turns on his emotion chip, tries a drink, makes a face, decides he HATES it, and then asks for more?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZmkjKeqSOY&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

I have a rival clip!

Behold, Sammy trying orange juice for the first time:

Well, actually, this was his third or fourth time. Jon claims his first two faces were even better.