the sleppys

Kendall and Mommy

Ty’s birthday was on Monday, the 14th, so we went camping on Saturday, the 12th. We headed out in the morning to Everglades National Park, where else? We took hikes around the usual places and saw the usual wildlife. Many Black Vultures sat along the trails. They migrate here from the north during autumn. They are friendly, curious birds. Turkey Vultures are quite a sight to see soaring and gliding, but they are not curious but nervous and will fly away if people approach. At Royal Palm, the babies walked around, which was different because I would carry them when they were younger. Now that they are a bit older than the last time we were at Royal Palm, they were safe as long as they were holding someone’s hand.

We hiked to the Mound from Gate 15 and saw that it was covered in broom sedge. We had been seeing the sedge grow and become more established during the past seasons, but this time, it was tall. Not just the sedge but the trees were taller, too, of course. Though it is expected to see taller plants, it also is a bit disappointing to see a view blocked by them. We were standing 50 feet above the Everglades waters, but the view was covered by these plants. Eh. The wood storks and vultures were pleasant to witness as they flew low to the water, almost at our eye-level as we stood on the Mound. The boys took their usual trip around the Mound while the girls sat around and daydreamed.

We made it to Pine Glades Lake where we ate lunch and presented Ty with his birthday present: a fishing rod. The boys fished for a couple of hours, and the girls waited in the van. I was sleepy, so I napped. But that made it difficult to keep the girls entertained in the van. Eventually, they napped, too. I tried my arm at casting and fishing but caught nothing. Everyone caught nothing.

We set up camp at Long Pine Key. It was a busy weekend, the day before being Veteran’s Day. Our usual campsite was occupied as was our second-usual site. Not that we have rights to them, but it’s always reassuring to be in the same place. We found a site on the border of the forest and the Road Closed sign, and had only one neighbor. Eventually, the Road Closed signs were taken down to accommodate for the higher demand of campers.

Night fell, and the mosquitoes buzzed and bit. I put on my mosquito net because they absolutely are in love with my blood. Kendall, who has the same attractive blood, also wore hers. Still, they bit her hands and legs. Annoyed by them, she climbed into her car seat in the van and kept saying, “Skeetoos hit me. I outta here. I home.” Hot chocolate made her and everybody else feel better. The children brushed their teeth and went to bed in their tents.

Dad and I stayed up to watch the fire. There was also some commotion at the camp site about a hundred yards to the west. I’m not sure what was going on, but the Park Police showed up on foot and spoke to the campers. I was trying to pay attention to the voices, but the mosquitoes were incessant, no matter how close I sat to the fire. I crawled into my tent at about 10:30pm, which is awfully early: Dad and I usually stay up past midnight. The crowd was very different that weekend. I heard a man a few sites over shouting “HIALEAH!” which is a town northwest of Miami proper and almost directly north of the international airport, heavily populated with loud people… I think because they have to shout over the sounds of landing 747′s.

At 12:30am, I was woken up by the sounds of clanging bottles.

At 5:00am, I was woken up by a bat’s squeaks, and I stayed up, listening to nature, which included mosquito buzzing.

We had a pancake breakfast with coffee (or water, for the children) and headed back home.

Before the parents had coffee, the children were up and running around. Kendall started crying.

Dad: [annoyedly] Why does she have to cry like that?
Mom: [sympathectically] Because she was born on the floor.

Talon started crying about something. Don’t worry, they are fake cries and more like very loud whines.

Kyle: Oh great, now Talon was born on the floor!

Both are pretty loud whiners, but Kendall takes the cake. I just hope she’ll put that to good use and become an opera singer or a drill sergeant when she is grown.

I don’t know when they started doing this. It was either during or immediately after blinking. Both Kendall and Talon, who are two and a half, climb up the “monkey bars,” which aren’t your normal playground equipment but are metal bars and poled fixed in concrete. They stretch their arms up to the second bar while standing on the first bar, which is only about two inches off the ground. They each climb in unique ways but both end up with their feet on the second bar and hands on the third. It does scare me, but I recall Taylor’s ability to climb those bars when she was about that age, maybe even earlier.

Taylor is among the population here that can maneuver straight across the bars at the top. Originally, the structure was a shed, with canvas draped around the bars, so the top is the roof. Sometimes she cries for me when she finds herself stuck at the top, but I simply tell her that she has to get down. She always finds a way down where I don’t have to touch her, not even guide her steps. She just needs encouragement, and she finds a way.

She has also acquired the beading bug. Well, the arts and crafts bug. She’s always been a pretty good artist, in my opinion, chosing crayons over colored pencils. She once drew herself walking with Daddy, holding hands, toward the van, and looking at each other. One can clearly tell that she was looking up while Daddy was looking down. I think that’s pretty amazing. She’s now into beading and jewelry making. I finally found a good elastic material that doesn’t fray as the bead is inserted.

Kyle is playing the piano behind me. He’s using the book that my brothers and I used for piano lessons, the book that Ty used. The same exact book. My name is in it along with the dates that I learned the pieces. My brothers’ names and dates are written in, too. Ty, well, I didn’t write Ty’s name. I’m thinking I should have. Anyway, he’s preparing for a recital in the spring. He’s going to play “Hunting Song” and…. well, I’m still not sure what else he’ll play.

Ty is learning the “Star Wars” theme on the piano. He reads music better than I did at his age. He doesn’t practice as much as he should, being that it’s a difficult piece, but when he does play it, it sounds about what it should.

He’s also teaching himself third grade maths, including equivalent fractions and mixed numbers. I never know what to give that boy to challenge him. His cursive is perfect. His narrative paragraphs are descriptive. His knitting is a little tight, which is his only current flaw. That, and he likes to take initiative and do things his own way, which are not the way he was instructed.

I love that the play “Hide and Nature Seek.” The three older children are so sweet and fair with the young twin girls. Well, not always, but for the most part, they let them win or make it easy to find them or something darling like that. And other times, they fight the way siblings do.

ANNNND….. we have built our portfolio of English, American, and German folk songs:
Seven Joys of Mary
Greensleeves
Wayfaring Stranger
Blue Tail Fly
Fiddle Dee Dee
Ballad of the Boston Tea Party
Hopp, Hopp, Hopp
Bakke Bakke
O Tannenbaum
Es war eine Mutter
Ich bin ein Musikante

I think our next song will be “Swanee River.” I just have to find and write down the verses because I know only the piano melody.

They also sing solfege, the octave, third and fourth intervals along the octave, arpeggios major and minor, and chords in solfege I, IV, and V7. I’m so glad we home school. I can’t imagine how ignorant they’d be if they went to government school!

We woke up this morning and immediately started writing down our time table. That’s Time Table, as in, Time. Not multiplication. For the most part, we stuck to our assigned tasks at the assigned times. I started the cakes a little too late, so I finished them later than planned. The children helped to clean up the house. I swept more than a few times because the floor just couldn’t keep clean. We ate lunch, rested a bit, and continued our cleaning.

My aunt and cousins were visiting from out of state. They came down with a family friend and my maternal grandmother who was visiting them from another country. My parents offered them lodgings in their house in the city. Being Kendall and Talon’s first birthday, we asked them to come down today to celebrate.

They arrived at our house at about 6:30pm. We talked and watched the boys sword fight. I, once again, defended my child-led weaning beliefs. Ty played the piano for them (and they were very much impressed). My youngest cousin and his friend went outside and played Frisbee with the children. Later on, we sat down for dinner. Dad had made a casserole from scratch, and everyone gobbled it up.

Talon and Kendall really had no idea what was going on except that there were strangers in the house. Talon looked a little worried but kept quiet most of the time. Kendall, on the other hand, expressed her upset fervently. My dad stopped by after work to eat a small dinner and have some birthday cake.

I am usually the one bringing the cake forward, to the birthday boy or girl, but Kendall wouldn’t stop crying unless I was holding her. So Dad brought forth the cake. I directed the singers with a starting tone (to keep it sounding good because “Happy Birthday” sounds awful when people aren’t singing on the same key). When we stopped singing, I held her face to the flame so that she could blow it out. She just looked like she was going to cry some more. Kyle was close by and blew the candle out.

We ate slices of the cake. Eight minutes later, it was Talon’s turn. (Talon was born an hour and eight minutes later, but we’re not going to wait that long).

I was holding Talon and hummed the beginning tone. Dad brought forth her cake. We sang Happy Birthday, and I held her face to the flame. But she just looked around. Again, Kyle helped blow out the candle. I cut up her cake, and we had seconds — but of much smaller sizes because we had already had Kendall’s cake.

We hung around for a little while longer, cleaned up the big messes, and finally said our goodbyes.

Kendall was really tired and went down easily, but Talon wanted to nurse a little longer. She’s only one, you know. She still needs “nurse.”

I found the dog with her snout in my bag. She didn’t get to a lot of the chocolate. Looks like she just smooshed it around my journal, my hairbrush, and my keys. It’s my fault, of course, for leaving my bag open in the music room, where I usually keep it  during the day. She knows she did wrong. She went straight to her crate with that guilty look.

Talon really really really looks like she wants to walk. She doesn’t want it badly enough, however,  because if she did, she’d be walking already. It’s just mind over matter. I take her down the corridor in the mornings, and she prefers to walk instead of crawl until I let go. Then she stands in thought for a few moments and prefers crawling. She has made attempts, real attempts, to walk. The last time, she walked to the coffee table, wobbled a little and fell forward, hitting her lip on the table leg. She didn’t hit it hard, and she didn’t cry. I don’t think that it was enough for her to stop trying.

Talon and Kendall fight over toys and food. I’ll give a piece of zweiback toast to Kendall, and she looks like she’s considering taking it. Talon just takes it. Kendall yells and gets mad. I give another one to Kendall, but she doesn’t want that one. She wants the original one that I gave her. It’s the same way with toys. Talon will be playing with a Little People person or a building block, and Kendall will snatch it from her hands. Talon is still where another toy will console and entertain her, but I don’t know how long that’ll last.

Ty has started learning knots. His first know is a bowline. He can’t do it without the help of the illustrations in the book. He learned the clove hitch, but still needs help from the book. I tell him that he should learn these things because he’ll be running errands for us in town when we move to the country. He’ll need to tie his horse to the posts in a way that he can untie the horse but the horse can’t untie itself. And he won’t have a book to help him along. That motivates him, knowing that he’ll have a horse and go into town by himself (or with a buddy).

One of my piano moms gave me about a hundred books that she doesn’t need anymore. She has two boys who are out of college who read and learned from these books. They are great books. Though I’m not a fan of coloring books in general, the coloring books that she did give me were of epic images: castles, Columbus’ voyage, Pilgrims, Civil War, Native Americans. And there were snippets of information that went along with each image, i.e. biographies.

The babies are eating more and more kinds of food. Now that they are nine months old, they can tolerate new foods better than when they were four months old. When they did turn four months, a lot of moms were telling me that I can start feeding them regular food. Food at four months? That’s crazy to me. With our first child, we followed what the books (Doctor Spock, Babywise, et cetera) were preaching to us. But trying to feed a four month old who can barely sit up and is continuing to make a mess with his sloppy food was frustrating. “Give it time. He’ll get used to it.” More crazy talk. So with our second, I waited until he was six months to feed him. It was easier, but I still did not feel that I was doing the very best for him. One mom told me that she exclusively breastfed her baby until the baby was almost one year old. “Can babies survive on breastmilk for one year?” Well, God made my mammary glands to make the milk that provides nutrition. This nurse-for-a-year concept didn’t seem as ridiculous as giving a baby slop at four months. It was like being taught a strategy and slapping one’s own forehead for not realizing the simplicity! I took our third baby to work with me for ten months, and she nursed exclusively because we were attached to the hip, which is where babies are supposed to be: attached to their mother. I know that it’s nearly impossible for a modern mother to be with her baby 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the first 45 weeks, but we made it happen.

So at nine months, both babies can confidently sit up and tolerate new foods. This morning, I mixed in two table spoons of cow’s milk into their cereal, which is barley and breastmilk. They didn’t seem to notice the change in taste, and two hours later, they are not looking like they’ve reacted with allergy. I think we should try goat’s milk because it is supposed to have a composition similar to breastmilk.

A few nights ago, Dad made a delicious soup with white beans, pork, onions, celery, and carrots. I mixed their cereal not with breastmilk but with the stock. The cereal disappeared from the bowl faster than you can say, “Bob’s yer uncle.” They liked the taste of taste! Not that they think that breastmilk is bland, but it kicked the jarred Garbar junk in the derriere.

I’m aware that some might think that I am being over-protective about the babies’ intestinal flora. If I had the choice of being over-protective or unaware, I’d chose the former. There was a police officer who made the news recently for going out of his way to save a choking two-year-old girl. The girl was feverish, so her mother gave her meat. Meat. With a fever! When my children have fevers, they get breastmilk, even if they are two years old.

Usually, children are not allowed in the kitchen.

But this was Kendall’s first moment of unassisted sitting.

So we sat in the kitchen and swapped casserole recipes. Kendall has been talking about a mean breakfast casserole. I’m kidding… about the sitting up part.

Kendall‘s lower central-left incisor debuted Monday the 15th, and the right one on Thursday the 18th.

Talon was toothless until New Year’s Eve. Both her lower central incisors broke through the gum together.

In her crawling attempts, Kendall sways on her hands and knees, back and forth. She moves her left knee forward, yet she hasn’t figured how to move the rest of her limbs. She is certainly mobile – in an inchworm kind of way.

Talon moves quickly along the floor, dragging her body while pulling with her forearms. She doesn’t even use her toes to push off. It’s all upper body. Before you know it, she’s putting a sword or battle horse in her mouth.

Kendall is pink.

Talon is olive.

Kendall coos and babbles throughout the day. She’s quiet only when she’s sleeping.

Talon is quiet except when she’s loud. She screeches with joy.

Kendall sits well by herself in a leaning tripod position. Her right arm supports her weight after she turns onto her bottom from a crawling position. She’ll stay that way for a few minutes and watch her older siblings’ play.

Not interested in sitting up, Talon would rather watch the action in her dragging/crawling position. She will stand with locked knees for several seconds if she has assistance. A lot of times, she’ll do squats in quick repetition.

Kendall looks like Kyle.

Talon looks like Ty and Taylor.

Kendall sleeps through the night.

Talon wakes up at least once. Sometimes twice.

When asked, “Are they twins?” I usually answer, “No, they were born on the same day.” What I really want to say is, “They were born on the same day from the same pregnancy, which, by definition, makes them twins. But the smaller, younger one is a result of superfetation, and that doesn’t happen everyday. If you’re going to put them in a box, put them in a cooler box and recognize that they are unusual twins.”

Kyle was having a hard time with a castle. His pirate had fallen into one of the bastions (a full circle, not the typical half-circle), and he couldn’t get it out. His hand kept getting stuck. He asked me to help.

“Turn it upside down,” I responded.

He picked up the castle, which was a bit heavy for him, flipped it, and shook it. Out fell the pirate. He smiled. “Mommy, you have great ideas!” Gravity must be taught, I suppose.
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Talon and Kendall have been practicing rolling and are attempting to crawl. Talon rolled back to front one morning. I found her in the crib, belly down. I didn’t put her like that nor did Dad. Kendall was found belly down in the crib by Dad later that afternoon. That was a few Fridays ago… October 24. Lately, we’ve been putting down blankets and setting the babies on the floor with toys just out of arm’s reach.
Kendall is controlling herself a little better than Talon in the sitting up competition. Actually, a lot better. She’s kicking Talon’s ass. She doesn’t sit up unassisted just yet, but she can balance herself for a second or two before leaning forward. Then she’ll be like that for several seconds before falling to her side – which never happens because we have terrazo floor and must be VERY careful to avoid babies’ hitting their heads on it. Talon just doesn’t get the whole sitting up thing. At all. She’s still like a bag of water.

But she’s winning in the eating competition and the complaining competition and in the waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night competition. Yes, it’s all a competition with these twins. But, hey, no pressure. Talon, by our hypothesis, is younger than Kendall. Not by a mere 68 minutes but by a few weeks, gestation-wise. “Are they twins?” “No, they are just born on the same day.”
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Our washing machine broke down. The switch that sets the agitator when the lid is closed has failed – again. The last time that happened, I spent twenty minutes shaking the whole appliance, jiggling the wire that connects to the switch until it finally started. That’s how we fixed electronic equipment in the Army. Shake it ’til it works. Unless it has obvious water damage or fried-black components.

I’ve been washing clothes by hand – diapers, too – in a five gallon bucket with a plunger. Agitating. Agitating. Agitating. It’s starting to agitate my nerves. But the clothes comes out clean, and my triceps get a much needed workout. After wringing them by hand, I hang them to drip dry on the solar drying array. That does most of the drying on sunny days. But even on sunny days the sun is so far south that the Royal Poinciana in the southwest corner of the yard spreads its shade across the hanging laundry before 2pm. So I put them in the drier. I know, it’s not very “green,” but we don’t have enough diapers not to be washing everyday. They need to be ready to wear before the sitters get here.

The solution to this is an old-fashioned wringer.

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My brother Joe and his wife had their first child on November 14th. Their baby boy was born at 1:12am and shares a birthday with Ty. They are exactly six years apart. My favorite cousin was born the day after my sixth birthday.