footie pajamas!

I snapped these pictures this morning while it was still dark out, and the boys were stumbling around the house trying to get themselves dressed. That explains both the bad lighting and the fact that my kids went off to school with un-matched socks. Yes, sometimes I am That Mother. But at least That Mother can say she got some adorable shots of a jammies-clad sitter-upper baby!

Read more about how I’m surviving (barely) the back-to-school shuffle with five kids at largerfamilies.com.

For the next couple days, Jon, Clara and I will be hanging out in Grand Rapids, MI, experiencing ArtPrize–a contest where 1262 artists in 159 venues citywide compete for the world’s largest art prize–$250,000. It’s a very cool concept and one that puts the decision about what makes ‘art’ firmly in the hands of the public rather than some inaccessible institution, judge or jury. As you can imagine, that’s made it rather controversial as well. I’ll share more about the contest after I’ve had a chance to see more of the art (though so far, I’ve liked what I’ve seen).

This is the third weekend trip Clara’s made with Jon and I this summer, and I have to say she is one easy-traveling baby. But that may not last long–earlier today she got herself up on her hands and knees and rocked back and forth. Crawling’s not far off, so her days of being happy in the stroller are likely numbered. Yikes!

Speaking of getting out with kids, at the More to the Core blog I’ve published an interview with my friend, travel writer and mom of three Toni Klym McLellan of BringTheFamily.net.

And over at Babble.com I pose the question: is motherhood really the hardest job in the world?

This may be the only photo in existence of myself and all my kids where everybody is looking in the general direction of the camera. And only one kid is goofing off!

And because who can resist those dimples, here’s one of Clara, held by her aunt Beth at a backyard barbecue last month.

I was just reading this touching post at Velveteen Mind about hoping for a baby girl, and it reminded me of an essay I wrote years ago while pregnant with baby #4, which was published in the (now-defunct) ePregnancy magazine. Reading it again I am reminded of how intense that desire for a girl was, and how glad I am that, though I would have been totally happy as a mom of five boys, the dream of having a daughter is one I didn’t have to give up after all. (It doesn’t hurt that Clara is one of the sweetest, smiley-est, most dimply-chunky-legged babies I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.)

Here’s the essay, written almost exactly four years ago.

I am sixteen and one-half weeks pregnant with my fourth child, most likely my last. My pregnancy is going smoothly; I feel healthy and I have a baby with a strong heartbeat.

But I can’t relax. You see, I have three boys.

They are smart, funny, energetic, and affectionate little guys, aged one and a half, 5, and 7. They bring joy and depth to my life, and I couldn’t imagine life without either of them. But I was supposed to have girls.

From the time I was a young girl, playing with my Cabbage Patch dolls, I preferred girls to boys. I gestated, birthed, breastfed, and diapered hundreds of imaginary Ashleys, Jennys, and Sarahs.

When I became pregnant with my first child, the idea that it could be a boy never even crossed my mind. I imagined only a curly-headed little replica of myself, spinning around in pink tutus and tiaras.

What I got was an ultrasound picture with a large white circle drawn around some very suspiciously male genitalia, and a single word, all in capitals: BOY. Well, it wasn’t what I expected, but I soon adjusted to the idea of a curly-headed little replica of myself spinning around in a Spiderman costume. Boy names? Easier, but not as fun as girl names. Boy clothes? Not nearly as good a selection as there is for girls. And five months later, my firstborn, whom we named Jacob, was born.

Not so very long after Jake came along, I found out that I was pregnant again. This time, I really tried to have no expectation about gender. I told myself that a boy would be fine, but a girl would bring balance. If I have a girl this time, I reasoned, then my family would be complete and I would be able to retire from parenting at the age of 40. Not that I was expecting, or hoping for, a girl or anything, mind you.

The baby was already there, a boy or girl, just waiting to join our family. Nope. I was just going to accept this baby’s gender, no matter what. And on and on I went.

And at the 20-week mark, I found myself once again staring at a wiggling penis on an ultrasound screen—and once again trying to brush off the pang of disappointment that followed. And when my third ultrasound also showed a boy, I felt the pang again.

When I found out that I was pregnant with my fourth child, I decided not to find out its sex. “Aren’t you dying to know?” people asked. “No,” I told them all smugly, “I want it to be a surprise.” It took me a while to remember that I never did much like surprises.

This baby means the difference between a family of boys—a rough-and-tumble jumble of muddy sneakers, fishing poles, and frogs—or two boys and their little sister, which conjures up images of canopy beds and tap shoes. This baby carries the potential for making me the mother of the bride, or the four-time, happy-and-proud-but-slightly-less-prominent mother of the groom.

Sometimes it occurs to me that most of this baby is already firmly in place: hair color, eye color, complexion, and yes, sex; all these are determined by now. An ultrasound gender diagnosis won’t change the fact that this baby is already a boy or a girl. And the truth is, both possibilities bring a smile to my face. And yet—as long as the possibility of that mother-daughter bond exists, I won’t really be able to let go of the fantasy.

Mothers aren’t supposed to admit that they would like their child to be one sex over the other. As long as the baby is healthy, we are told, it’s selfish to want anything more specific. Of course, I’d like to think I’m not one of the selfish ones. But hoping for one gender or the other is not the same as wishing for a different baby. I wouldn’t trade this baby in for a different one, no matter what the gender. I love the baby I’ve got, but this pregnancy could represent my final chance for a girl. And, selfish or not, if I never have a girl, I’ll miss her presence.

My ultrasound appointment is set for three weeks from today. I know that when I face the ultrasound technician my stomach will be fluttering like crazy with nerves. And if the words I hear are “girl”—then I can let my little-girl fantasies run wild.

And if she says “boy”, I know what I’ll do. I’ll feel a momentary letdown, a pang, and in one long exhale, I’ll let go of the tutus and the fairy princess costumes and the canopy beds and the prom dresses. And as I inhale, I’ll imagine four little boys in a row, getting haircuts, running through my backyard, and tackling me with hugs. I’ll smile and go home dreaming of the family that we will become.

Here are some other places you can find me online these days:

on my WeTV blog, I posted about Mommy Jobs, co-sleeping drama, and bizarre baby products.

Follow me on Twitter. Come on. Even my dad is doing it.

I posted on the Chicago Moms Blog about my creepy Craigslist encounter with a sex offender and Free-Range Kids.

I’m a family travel expert on Away.com

in honor of Mother’s Day–and because reading all the mom-centric stuff around the blogosphere has got me thinking about her–I’ll be posting about my mother all week.

This piece was inspired by Mara’s post about what her mother taught her about travel.

What did my mother teach me about travel?

On first consideration it would be easy to say “not much”. My parents divorced when I was young, and my mother didn’t have much money or time to take us on exotic adventures. Anywhere we went had to be navigable, round-trip, within a weekend, because my mom ran an in-home daycare and couldn’t take weekdays off. We didn’t go on vacations to either coast. We didn’t have a cabin on the lake. The only reason we even made it into Canada was that we lived about five miles from the border, and the shopping was better there on the occasion we needed something beyond JCPenney or KMart. I was fourteen years old before I made it out of the Midwest, and every trip that took me further than a Great Lake state was with my dad.

But even though she didn’t physically take me on many trips, my mom taught me a lot about the way I experience travel today.

First of all, whether it was through the music we watched, the books we read or the movies we watched, Mom seemed to make a point of opening up the world to us. I knew that there were many places outside my realm that were fascinating, exciting and worth visiting….even if I couldn’t do it right away.

Second, she made a point of exploring what was available to us in our small city in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula. Whether we were blueberry picking in the woods, skipping stones on Lake Superior or watching freighters roll by on the St. Mary’s River, she took pleasure in the small details…the kind that are available to anyone in any town, no matter how small or unglamorous or remote.

One of my favorite things to do as a traveler (and travel writer) is discover the undiscovered. That diner with the fantastic pancakes in a sleepy small town. Or a quiet beach off the beaten path. The simplest things often bring the most pleasure, and often they’re right under our noses. That’s what my mom taught me about travel: you don’t have to go thousands of miles away to find something worth discovering. History and art and culture, natural wonders…it’s all there for the finding, no matter where you are.

Come to think of it, I guess my mom taught me quite a bit about travel. How about yours?

Today’s Mother’s Day, and I’ve been thinking a lot about my own mother, who died going on ten years ago, when I was still far too young to appreciate her. Mom and I had a complicated relationship, but the older I get–and the further I get away from the more dysfunctional aspects of her life (time has a great way of sanding away the bad and leaving the good) the more I see the many gifts she gave me. Here are a few.

Gift: The knowledge that people are more important than money or things, and that family is everything. My mother’s greatest wish for my siblings and I was that we would stay close as we grew up. We all get along very well today, which I think she’d be happy to know.

Gift: Making do. No, better than making do–being truly content with what you have. My mom re-used everything, but not in a sloppy pack-rat kind of way (when she died, her home had remarkably little clutter for us to go through). She simply used everything within an inch of its life, and felt no need to rush out and buy knick-knacks or a new sofa or curtains in the latest style. I don’t ever remember feeling deprived, even though I was acutely aware that friends of mine had more toys and new clothes than I did. Sure, I would have loved a few more pair of acid-wash jeans in Junior High, but not always getting what I wanted did a lot to help me be more appreciative and content with whatever straws I draw in life now. And it’s the memory of her resourcefulness that makes me feel a huge twinge of conscience whenever I’m being wasteful or lose perspective on how very materially blessed I am.

Gift: She wasn’t small-minded. My mom wasn’t college-educated, and she didn’t hang out with an artsy or intellectual bunch. Yet I grew up on a media diet of classical music, Harry Chapin and Fiddler on the Roof, NOVA and Masterpiece Theatre, Sesame Street and Peter and the Wolf in addition to the piles of books we brought home from the library. Mom didn’t read celebrity magazines or tabloids or watch vapid morning shows…ever. We had conversations about history, music, religion. I think my mom recognized that life was too short–and the possibilities for learning important things too endless–to spend much time indulging in petty entertainment, a lesson I would do well to remember more often.

Gift: Body-un-consciousness. My mom never dieted. She never commented on the size of her thighs or butt. More important, she didn’t comment on the way other women dressed or did their hair, or make remarks about my friends’ looks. She didn’t force me to clean my plate or hover over me to make sure I didn’t eat too much junk. She kept the house fairly free of unhealthy food (we weren’t allowed to have sugar cereal, for example) but wasn’t about to tell me how to spend my own money if I wanted to go to the corner store for Little Debbies. As a result I grew up with a remarkable absence of body-image issues. I’m not going to say I never moaned over my flat chest when I was a teen, or that nowadays I don’t notice that everything’s heading southward, but I feel like I’m able to notice these things without letting them take over my life. In fact, I wrote an essay about her comfort in her own skin, which I’ll put up in a separate post.

What gifts did your mother pass on that helped make you who you are today?

It’s been a full week of officially spring-like weather, and we’ve been enjoying it to the fullest here (that would explain the lapse in posts.)

First, there was the ill-fated fishing effort behind our house (we are fortunate enough to have spent the last 8 months living on a channel emptying into Lake Michigan, so there’s a beach a couple hundred yards from our back door, and a pier even closer. We are unfortunate enough to be leaving said home in a month.) The trip scored no fish, but it was abundant in photo-ops.

Last Friday, Jon, Clara and I accompanied Isaac’s third-grade class to Conner Prairie in Fishers, IN. I have been to a lot of historic parks, but this was one of the best I’ve seen. It’s authentic and huge–you could spend all day wandering through the gardens, striking up conversations with the costumed interpreters, and gawking at the historic buildings (real, not reproductions) with period decor and furniture. Starting this week they’ll be offering hot air balloon rides , but since we were there too early Isaac had to settle for throwing a hatchet:

which then broke,

holding a chick,

and playing old-fashioned games.

Saturday was spent walking the 1.5 miles downtown with the baby strapped to my chest in order to watch the community parade. I unfortunately got no pictures, just a bad sunburn.

Sunday, we went hunting for morel mushrooms. My brother-in-law, Scott, found ten or so, and Jacob found one.

I was completely unsuccessful, despite really going for gold, tearing through thorn bushes and crawling around in the dirt. But between the two guys we had a decent little haul.

Last night, Jenna and I made chicken, asparagus and morels with rosemary new potatoes.

It was delicious, and none of us wound up in the hospital due to eating toxic false morels.

Today it was a trip to the nearby nature center for a romp through the woods with Jenna, her kids, our friend Missy and her two kids and William, Owen and Clara. I forgot the camera, so I didn’t bring home any photos. What I did bring home? Ticks. Three found so far, one of which was ON MY HEAD. Now, of course, I’m convinced I feel crawling and itching all over my body. Something tells me I’m in for a long night…

Welcome Spring!

Or keep your dining room table clear. Or sweep under your dining-room table regularly. Or make sure your dressers aren’t overstuffed with clothes so they don’t shut all the way. The point is, all of us have that one thing (or half a dozen things) that drives us crazy. Whether yours is crumbs on the counter or rooms where half the lightbulbs are burned out, taking care of your biggest crazy-makers (BEFORE they get to the point of making you crazy) sets the whole mood for the day.

For me, that one thing happens to be making my bed. I used to roll out of bed in the morning, look at the rumpled sheets and blankets and think “eh, what’s the difference? I’m just going to be messing it up again in 15 hours.” But I spend a lot of time in my bedroom, even during the day, and I found that every time I went back in, the sight of that unmade bed made me feel…slumpy. It made the house feel messy even if the house wasn’t particularly messy. It made me feel disorganized. And every time I sat on the bed (like I am now with my laptop) I would feel like crawling under the sheets and going back to sleep.

I’m far from being a neat freak, but I began to realize that I require a certain level of cleanliness in order to function. I spend most of my day in my home, and if it feels too messy or cluttered I just want to retreat and watch bad TV instead of being productive. I also realized that it pays to stay on top of mess by constantly straightening up instead of saving it all for some mythical 2-hour stretch when I’ll be able to do a big clean. So four or five years ago I started making my bed every day, as soon as I could after waking up. What a difference. It took a couple of weeks to really get into the habit, but soon I found myself looking forward to making my bed–it feels like tearing out a fresh sheet of notebook paper, clean and crisp and full of possibility. Now, no matter how the rest of the house looks, my bedroom is a neat and pleasant retreat. When I go to bed, it’s so satisfying to pull back the smooth covers instead of climbing into a tangled mess of sheets. And it really makes a big difference in my mood.

I have other “must do” chores, too. For example, I really like my bathroom to look clean (with four boys this means wiping down toilets at least daily) and it’s important to me to have a clean kitchen sink (which I realized after doing FlyLady many years ago). I also Can. Not. Stand. to have couch pillows and throw blankets all over the living room so I stop a few times a day to toss pillows back on the furniture and fold blankets. I call these things my “triggers”—I’m actually crankier to my kids and anxious when my sink is messy or there are sofa pillows on the floor. So I try to stay on top of it through the day—and it all begins with making the bed.

One note, though: I have my older kids do a lot of chores, but I almost never put them in charge of my “trigger” tasks. It’s too important to me that they’re done right–not to mention promptly.

Do you have housecleaning “triggers” that can make or break your mood? What are they? How long did it take you to figure them out?

You’ve probably noticed I’m posting a lot more pictures than I usually do. It’s not just because of our firstbabygirl and the dozensofadorableoutfits she has and her ridiculouslycuteface: I swear, I haven taken lots of baby pictures of pictures of all my kids. The only problem was that usually those pictures stunk. I always blamed myself…and then my husband got a second-hand Nikon D70 from a co-worker. Now suddenly, even my worst attempts at photography seem to turn out…pretty good. At least not embarrassingly bad, and that’s progress. So here are a few we’ve snapped of the kids recently:

Clara loves the bath.

The boys love Clara.

Owen loves being three.

Owen really, REALLY loves being three.

William loves Miley Cyrus, but finds talking about it rather embarrassing.

I love this.