Almost exactly four weeks ago, we moved into this house. And today I realized that I haven’t bought a single roll of paper towels–nor a package of napkins (okay, except for the napkins I sent to school with Isaac’s birthday treat)–in that entire time.

Before we moved, I’d been working on cutting back on our consumption of paper products, focusing on those pesky paper towels that are so easy to grab in larger quantities than you really need and so very…disposable. But I always had a roll of paper towels on hand for “emergencies”. Well, you know how THAT goes. One day you can’t find a towel and you’ve got a little mess on the counter so you pull out the roll…and then you figure that since it’s out you may as well do a good wipe-down of all the kitchen surfaces…and then you leave it out during dinner and the kids each rip off a full square or two.

So during my inaugural visit to the local grocery store to stock up on staples, I grabbed trash bags and toilet paper, but then paused in front of the paper towel selection and thought.

What if I just…didn’t buy any?

What mess could be so hellish that a regular dish towel (or, in an extreme case, a bath towel) wouldn’t do the trick? How hard could it really be to make sure there were always a few cloth napkins in the drawer for hand-wiping? How likely would it be that we’d actually have an emergency that would require the use of paper towels?

So I didn’t buy them. And haven’t since.

And guess what? We have all survived just fine. We have a drawer in the kitchen stuffed with dish towels and washcloths, and just grab whatever we need for the job at hand. I’ve delegated all the holey and orphaned socks to a bag in the pantry, and use them for cleaning the bathroom and kitchen surfaces. When a napkin or sock has been used, we toss it in a basket that’s in an inconspicuous corner of the kitchen. When supplies run low, I dump the basket in the washing machine and wash it on hot, sometimes along with other items that need a hot wash.

It’s so easy not to use paper towels, I can’t believe I never committed more firmly to it before. In fact, I’d say that I’d now be more annoyed by the amount of hassle it would take to carry a bulk-size package to the car and then into the house, than I am by the very minor amount of extra work it takes to wash the towels. I guess it’s just a matter of getting in the mindset and sticking to it (like meal planning or cloth diapering or anything else that takes only a teeny amount of discipline, but a good amount of preparation.) The nice thing is that now that we have a system, there should really be no reason we’d need to break down and get paper towels. You can get cloth napkins and dish towels at the thrift store for a song and a dance, and with four boys, I’ve got a steady supply of holey socks heading to the rag bag.

Have you made any changes lately that you thought would be a pain, but were surprisingly easy?

No, I’m not talking about family size. I’m talking about something perhaps even more controversial…home size.

Over at (new-improved-check it out!) Larger Families, I recently posted about housing size on the message boards (psst! See that? We have brand-spanking-new message boards! Register! Post! Ahem…where was I?)

Oh yeah…the jist of the post is that I’m curious whether living in a smaller space is maybe more than doable, but actually advantageous, when raising kids (even lots of kids). Stephanie from Adventures in Babywearing posted about this recently and it got me to thinking how much I really enjoy being in this little cottage, even though I’m used to having a lot more room to spread out.

Here’s where I’m coming from. Our space in Chicago was perfectly arranged for a family, particularly a big family. Pretty much everyone who ever came over remarked on how ideal the layout was. It was two apartments that had been duplexed together into one unit, so the living/”grownup” space was upstairs, and then there was almost as much “kid” space downstairs.

There were just two drawbacks. One: We never, ever used the fourth bedroom. Sure, there was a bed in there, and occasionally a guest slept in it or I dumped laundry on it. But mostly, it went unused. So did the upstairs office, for that matter. So basically, the six of us shared three bedrooms and seemed to prefer it that way. I’d even say the third bedroom didn’t see a lot of action, between the bigger three boys always wanting to bunk up together, and the youngest generally preferring to be with us.

The other drawback is that I’m an “out of sight, out of mind” kind of person. So if the kids were downstairs playing, I really didn’t think about what they might be doing down there until I went down and saw an outrageous mess. There was a huge toy area, and lots of space for them to spread out/spread stuff out. I had a harder time keeping on top of the small messes they made throughout the day, because I preferred hanging out in the upstairs part of the house, so I wasn’t always walking through the downstairs picking up little messes before they got to be big messes.

But I’d gotten really used to having all that space so I was a little nervous when we moved in here. The home we currently live in has two floors, but there’s really no extra space to speak of: a kitchen that opens into a dining room, a decent-sized living room and sunroom…that’s the whole first floor. Upstairs is two small bedrooms and one medium-sized bedroom.

And still, it feels like plenty of space. In fact, there are some things that are easier about it. For one thing, keeping track of where all the kids are and what they’re up to is a snap. And since there’s really just one common area in which to hang out, it’s impossible for the boys to slink off and disappear when it’s time for homework or dishes. We’ve been talking more, just by virtue of being in each other’s presence most of the time. And I find that instead of facing an unholy mess at the end of the day, I just naturally deal with stuff throughout the day as it comes up because it’s right there in my face.

I’m sure a lot of my preference has to do with my ADD-esque personality. I have a much easier time remembering to do things–even connect with my kids–if circumstances throw them right in front of me. And as we add another child to the house and my big boys become privacy-seeking teenagers, we may very well need a lot more space than a house this size has to offer. But as we contemplate what kind of house we’ll buy in the future, I have to admit that a home that’s on the diminuitive side is feeling more and more attractive. Maybe we–even those of us with bigger-than-average families–simply don’t “need” as much space as we’ve been led to believe?

Do you feel like your house is too big, too small, or just right? Is layout everything or are you more interested in square footage?

We’re entering into the busy birthday season in our household. Of the six members of our family, five were born between the end of September and the beginning of December.

What does that mean for me? I buy cake mixes in bulk, don’t bother putting away the wrapping paper, ribbon and tape until December (at which point I just swap out the paper and keep the ribbon and tape handy for Christmas). I set a little aside for gifts, and gear up for rowdy, noisy boy-filled parties.

It’s a little hectic, but it could be so much worse.

When Jacob was approaching his first birthday, I briefly considered having a Big Party to celebrate his turning a year old. You know the type: handmade party favors, a crown for the birthday toddler, a cake baked from scratch, coordinating colors for the wrapping paper, ribbons, napkins, plates and tablecloths - and perhaps a juggler. Or a pony ride.

There’d be no cop-outs like cartoon-character party hats or cake mixes, I decided. My boy deserved a REAL birthday party, the kind attendees would talk about for years to come.

As it turned out, fate intervened. Tight finances and a hectic schedule led to me cutting my grand vision down to the basics: cake and ice cream, a few presents and a small family gathering. Jacob smeared cake all over his face and hid under the wrapping paper. From the looks of things, he couldn’t have cared less about the absence of a juggler or pony.

Since then, I’ve approached most birthdays with a similarly laid-back style. All our parties have the basics - cake, ice cream, presents and guests - but the location, décor, number of attendees and number of gifts vary depending on our budget and how hectic our lives are at the moment. And I’ve yet to make any of my children a jeweled felt crown on his special day.

If I thought about it for too long, I guess I could start feeling like a bad mom for phoning in birthdays. After all, years ago I remember a fellow parent remarking to me that she thought birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese were “kind of sad” and “unimaginative” … and I agreed with her. Conveniently for me, at that moment my kids were too young to even know what Chuck E. Cheese was. Two years later, guess where Jacob had his fifth birthday party?

The fact is, as much as I’d love to be the kind of mom who creates imaginative birthday invitations, comes up with elaborate party activities and sends each guest home with a bag full of hand-sewn finger puppets, I know I don’t have the inclination or, frankly, talent to do it with any consistency. And birthdays seem like an awfully loaded event for setting that kind of precedent.

Imagine that Jacob’s first birthday party really had featured live entertainment or barnyard animals. How could we ever top it? (Eventually, we’d be looking at professional fireworks displays, or perhaps renting out Disney World for a day.) Would we be able to have a normal party again after raising his expectations so high?

Don’t feel too sorry for my kids. Whether they’re having friends over for a sleepover or meeting up for an unimaginative activity like laser tag at the arcade, they always have a great time.

As long as the birthday basics are intact, my kids are perfectly content to celebrate low-key birthdays. Their expectations don’t get overblown, and neither are mine - so there’s way less a chance that anyone will end up disappointed. Best of all? I can enjoy their special day with them because I’m not so stressed out over making sure everything is perfect.

I have some shopping to do today to kick off birthday season. It begins with a trip to the closet to gauge how much of last year’s wrapping paper is salvageable, and then a trip to the grocery store to buy five or six cake mixes on sale. After that, maybe I’ll pick up some cartoon-character paper hats, or if I’m feeling really inspired, maybe I’ll finally get around to making those jeweled felt birthday-boy crowns for the little guys.

But if I do, they certainly won’t look like they came out of a magazine spread … and that’s more than OK by me.

Left to right: William, Owen and their cousin Jack. Adoring the heck out of a tree and each other.
(sorry for poor quality; iPhone is useful for a lot of things, but taking good pics isn’t one of them.)

It recently came to my attention that a lot of my old columns (I’ve been writing it for four + years….there are a LOT of old columns!) are no longer available online, so from time to time, I’m going to re-post some of my favorites. Here’s one I wrote when Owen was a baby:

When I was pregnant with my youngest son, Owen, I signed up for a yoga class, but quickly dropped out. I love yoga, but something about the nausea and lightheadedness I felt pretty much every time I tried to bend my enormous body in half took the joy out of it for me. So I looked forward to the class with moms and new babies under two months old with great anticipation. What could be better than spending an hour and a half in blissful yogic union with six other mothers and their babies?

I don’t know what I was thinking.

Before we were even sitting on the mat, Owen decided he didn’t like this new place, and began to protest—loudly. Other babies followed suit. Some whimpered, some cried, and some outright screamed their little heads off. Other babies decided this was as good a time as any to pass loud gas and fill their pants. Some moms walked their babies around, some changed diapers, and some retreated to the feeding stations set up along the walls. By the time the instructor invited the class to join her in the sound of “Om”, the room had filled instead with the sounds of cries, flatulence, grunts, and gulps—as well as an unmistakable odor. It sounded something like this:

Instructor: And now, I would like you to go inward and find that still, quiet place…

Baby # 1: Pbbbbbbbbbbttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

Instructor: …for it is from this quiet place inside us…

Babies #2 and 3: WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Instructor: …that we begin our practice of Yoga.

Chorus of babies: BURP! GURGLE! WAHHH!

I looked around the room, but couldn’t tell if the other moms were enjoying themselves or not. Everybody seemed to have on her best poker face: if any of my classmates were close to breaking out into hysterical laughter or running screaming from the room, I couldn’t tell. They all looked serene and calm—certainly a lot calmer than I felt. Yes, you’d think that by the time I was on kid #4 I’d have a clue: babies are unpredictable. They cry and poop, and they do it when you want them to do it the least. I get it. But darn it, I wanted to do yoga, not walk the floor and listen to the same crying I get at home, only in stereo.

After I went home, I debated whether or not to return to class the following week. Suddenly it dawned on me that while I might not have had a lot of opportunity to stretch my body during the class, it had been a perfect opportunity to exercise my ability to quiet my mind, which is a big part of what yoga is all about. So I decided to return to the class—after tweaking my expectations a little.

The following week, Owen surprised me by happily lying on the mat through about half the class, while I got to move my cramped muscles in a way I hadn’t in months. Of course, he cried plenty, too. The seven babies in the class kept up their constant symphony of bodily noises and shrieking, but I just reminded myself to breathe, grabbed a stretch or two when I could, and tried to spend the rest of the time enjoying my baby, who I noticed had already changed dramatically from just a week before.

This is motherhood. Babies don’t care that you would really rather be in downward-facing-dog; they just want to be held and fed. They don’t care if you’ve eaten yet today or that you haven’t had a chance to go to the bathroom in hours. Babies are egocentric by design: ultimate self-centeredness is their entire means of survival. It can be frustrating. It can be boring. But it will pass.

I’m taking a lesson from my yoga class. I’m not always going to be able to have exactly the day I’d planned, and many of the details of my day-to-day life are now out of my hands. All I can do is adjust my expectations, do the best I can, and try very hard to access that still, quiet place within me.

For I have discovered that when I am in that place, I can remain calm even when a not-so-fresh-smelling baby is screaming in my ear. And that’s a coping skill worth having.

Remember these? I’m proud to say that by early June, those twelve little seedlings had grown up into ten healthy broccoli plants (I misjudged the location for a couple of them and had to tear ‘em out) that have given us a steady supply of this:

At least twice a week–and honestly, we’d be getting more if I hadn’t forgotten to get to them before the stalks grew too long and flowered a couple of times. (It happens faster than you might think!)

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with all things domestic. Love, because I love to garden and bake and concoct my own cleaning supplies and sew buttons on and read Martha Stewart Living…when I can find the time. Hate, because many times my life has gotten in the way, or my scattered personality has gotten in the way, or some new shiny hobby or time-suck has gotten in the way and thwarted my best efforts and most dearly-held ideals. And, as you can see from the community garden story in my previous post (above), I also suffer from an inability to do anything halfway. Whether it’s overhauling our diets, meal planning, gardening or crafting my tendency is to start out with big expectations and big plans and then crash and burn when I don’t meet my own expectations.

But the nice thing about being–gasp–31? I’m learning a lot about myself, I recognize all those little habits, and even though I can’t always fix them at once (though it would certainly be in my nature to try) I can make little changes. And one of the little changes I made this year? Focus on one crop. Sure, I planted some tomatoes and peppers and zucchini later in the summer, just to see what would happen (so far not much), but I focused the majority of my attention and time on those little broccoli seedlings. And I was rewarded for that single-minded focus–so hard for a girl like me to acheive–with a steady crop of fresh broccoli.

If the tomatoes redden up and the zucchini keeps me in bread until Christmas, that’s icing on the cake. But that broccoli was my main objective, and there it is, helping me feel just a little bit better about our place in the world and the food I’m feeding my family. Even when I pair it with this:

Speaking of inspiration and focusing on one thing at a time, check out this fantastic article by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

As for me? My gardening confidence has definitely gotten a broccoli-boost, and next year I’ll be ready to bite off a bigger project. Like growing broccoli AND tomatoes, perhaps.

And now I’m feeling inspired to go pull out my needle and thread and sew on some missing buttons. But just one or two, mind you. Just one or two.

We’ve been making an effort to drive less lately. As it is, I go through less than a tank of gas every other week–I simply don’t go anywhere outside of a 10- or 15- block radius of our home more than once a week or so, and even then we’re usually talking a 10-15 minute drive, max. So the sky-high gas prices aren’t pinching us too much yet.

But since you never know what could happen ($10/gallon gas? Sudden complete breakdown of the family minivan with no room in the budget for a new one? Both entirely possible) driving less seems like a good thing to get used to. And that means tweaking my own personal definition of “within walking distance”. When we moved here, I mentally wrote off the train, grocery store and many restaurants (besides the strip on Devon Ave, which is fantastic if you’re in the mood for Indian, Pakistani, or other South Asian food, but doesn’t really seem like the place to find a club sandwich or croissant) as “too far to walk”. Many of those things were ten or twenty blocks away, which just seemed really…far.

But then I took a few minutes to Google-map the distances, and learned that Target and Jewel are exactly one mile away, while the Metra is 1.3 miles. Should I need to get somewhere not on the Metra line, the EL station is just .5 miles further, or 1.8 miles total. Not a hop, skip, and a jump, but about a 35-40 minute walk…not torture. Especially considering that it doubles as exercise.

So lately I’ve been walking a lot more. To the Metra when I need to get up to Evanston (it’s a 5-minute ride); to Target, to the grocery store. Jon and I went out to dinner last week, and we walked 1.4 miles each way to this fantastic Mexican restaurant on Clark street–with a cheap bottle of BYOB wine and $7 entrees, it was a cheap night–and as we chatted while we walked on a beautiful early-summer evening, it didn’t seem like a long walk at all.

I’m finding myself stretching my idea of walkable distances further and further as I think of places outside of the radius I’ve become comfortable with, and realize that driving is often more of a hassle than a convenience. After all, it would probably take me about 7-10 minutes to drive to the same places I can walk in 20-25, but I have to find a place to park, watch out for pedestrians, and feel the da-DUMP of a hundred speed bumps. Where else can I get on foot? To the beach? Exactly 2.0 miles–easy. To the yoga studio? “Only” 3 miles. What about the indie bookstore? Just 3.7!

The biggest obstacle right now is that my kids are all relatively young. I love a weekly or so outing sans kids, but on the whole, it’s not really practical or desirable for me to spend hours away from them running errands. And two of them still have to be carted around at least some of the time on longer trips after their little legs give out, and pushing two kids in a stroller can make a nice stroll downright exhausting. The bus ceases to be a cheap option when you take four kids on it with you, and it’s not exactly quick, either.

Maybe when all the kids are big enough that taking two hours away from them just to get to and from where I’m going isn’t a huge issue, I’ll walk, train, or bus it everywhere I go. For now, I’m just doing what I can and doing my best to toughen up. For instance, today I walked the two-mile round trip to Target and Jewel for groceries and a few odds and ends. My double stroller is fabulous, but when I’ve got both the little guys loaded in there, the thing easily weighs 75 lbs. And before I left, I forgot to factor in that adding:

a gallon of milk
a 16-oz container of yogurt
a 10-oz container of sour cream
two bags of dense granola
Applesauce
And various bags ‘o carbs

would mean I’d be pushing 100 pounds for a mile. As we left the store in the 2:30 sun and I struggled to steer the stroller, stopping every few minutes to refill Owen’s pretzel ‘tup’ and take a swig of water, I cursed my silly notion, but after a few blocks we steered onto a shady street, a breeze picked up, and I got into a groove. Twenty-five minutes later I was home: sweaty, but triumphant, and I think I may even have beefed up my triceps a bit. Sure, what might have been a quick run to the store took about an hour more time and a lot more effort. But hey, my pants have been fitting a little tight lately, and I’d rather walk to the store than hit the gym.

Going by this calorie burn calculator, I probably walked off 250 or so calories today, and I figure that earns me an extra glass of wine with dinner tonight. And if that’s not an incentive to hoof it, I don’t know what is.

When I was ten years old, I chased a grown woman six blocks (she on bike, me on foot), then demanded she give me back my (stolen) bicycle. I did this not because I was a particularly brave or confrontational or athletic kid (nope, nope, and NOPE) but because there was no way my parents were going to get me a new bike just because I’d been dumb enough to leave mine laying in the driveway. I don’t see a lot of similar appreciation for things in my own kids, and it bugs me. Read my post at Chicago Moms Blog for the whole story!

I’ve been reading a lot about going car-free–partly in response to the painful gas prices, and partly for environmental reasons–and am wondering how people with multiple children, particularly those who don’t live right on a train line, pull it off. I stumbled across this post, for example, talking about how hard it can be to get a taxi to pick you up when you have a baby–and the blogger only has ONE child.

Anyway, I’m not turning our car in tomorrow or anything, but I’ve been thinking about ways to cut wayy back on our driving and keep running up against theoretical obstacles. I posted about them over at the Chicago Moms Blog. What do you think? Are you planning on cutting back on how much you drive, or finding alternative methods of transportation? Are you a car-free family already? If you have kids–particularly more than one–how do you manage it (or plan on managing it?)

Here’s my most recent column. (If you’re bored and looking for a laugh, check out some of the kooky comments it got over on Greenville Online!)

As most parents with half a brain understand, children need to be spoken to in order to learn how to speak. And the more words a child hears in his early years, the better he is likely to read and perform in school.

Research has even pinpointed an ideal number of words children should hear before the age of 4: 25 million, or 17,000 per day.

Of course, numbers like this have been largely useless to parents, most of whom don’t exactly have a lot of spare time for tracking how much language they’ve exposed their children to on any given day.

It would take a pretty fast hand and a large sheet of paper to tally up all the words you utter. Especially if your household is like mine, punctuated with a steady stream of Mom-ese: “William, please keep your fingers out of there. Hey, who put peanut butter in my pen cap? Owen, markers are for drawing on paper, not your tongue.”

So how’s a busy mom supposed to find the time to add up those words to make sure she’s providing an optimal environment for verbal and social development?

Enter the Lena system. Short for Language ENvironment Analysis, LENA is a device you plant in your child’s chest pocket — the system comes with specially designed overalls — which then monitors conversation between parent and child.

At the end of the day, parents analyze the data using LENA software to find out just how they measure up.

According to the LENA Web site (LENAbaby.com), “Research shows that parents overestimate how much they talk to their children. By using the LENA system, you know exactly how much language experience your child is receiving. LENA provides peace of mind that your child is developing at an optimal level.”

I’m all for talking to my kids (as evidenced by the fact that they all seem unable to shut up). But do we really need a $700 device (sale price is $400 if you act now!) to give us a basic idea of how we’re doing?

Isn’t this just one more example in the long line of “enrichment” products that we suckers — er, parents — are being pressured into purchasing using tactics like fear, guilt and anxiety over providing our children with that elusive “optimal development environment?”

Pamela Paul, mother of two and author of the new book Parenting, Inc., took a hard look at the “parenting industry” and found that not only are the companies creating and marketing these products actively play on parental fears, but we parents have readily bought into the hype.

“In the last 15 years, but particularly in the past five years, parenting has become professionalized and industrialized,” Paul says. “It’s led to the commercialization of child-rearing.”

Fear over economic instability and the desire to give our own children every possible edge has led to a high-pressure, high-stakes parenting culture, Paul says. “We are supposed to optimize and maximize every moment we have with our kids.” Paul stresses that she’s not critical of all products and services. For example, “Hiring a sleep consultant makes a lot more sense than buying a $1,000 designer crib that your baby screams in all night.”

Paying somebody else to teach your child to ride a bike? Not such a great investment, she points out. And overall, the number of products and services we seek out has ballooned out of control.

The result? Stressed-out parents who buy and do too much for their kids in order to give them as much opportunity as possible; and the nurturing of an ever-more materialistic consumer culture as kids get showered with expensive gear and playthings (the average American child, she reports, gets 70 new toys each year) as Mom and Dad seek out spendy services that will make them better, “more optimal” parents.

And though we all like to think we have more common sense than that, Paul points out that parents have bought into the idea that we can purchase our child’s health, happiness and well-being more than we’d like to admit.

She may be right. Even as I scoffed at the LENA system, somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if I should take advantage of its 30-day money-back guarantee.just to see if our household’s “language environment” is as “optimal” as I’d like to believe.

Since I don’t have an extra $400 lying around, though, I think I’ll just throw out a few extra three-syllable words and call it a day.

Perhaps we’re not optimal, but I figure we’re at least above-average. And most days, that’s good enough for me.