Happy Father's Day to my partner in crime

We all know that Cort is a great dad. He loves, loves, loves his kids. And they love him beyond words.

He's not just a great dad, though. This parenting gig is a team job. And he is the perfect teammate.

He never bats an eye when I have an obligation that requires him to take care of all the kids. In fact, he is far more likely then I am to just load them all up and take them to do something fun.

When I read parenting books or come up with new strategies for dealing with the kids, he patiently listens to me. This despite the fact that on most other subjects, he stops me halfway through and tells me that I talk too much, and he's got it.

When we have to be somewhere, he often manages to get himself and all four kids ready, while I am still drying my hair. When I forget to do things to prepare, he does them (thanks for ironing Will's tux shirt for the wedding, babe!). Then he gets all the kids buckled in the car, while I rush out at the last minute to hop in the passenger seat to put on my makeup on the way to the event. He occasionally gets a bit exasperated, but mostly he just smiles a little ruefully because, truthfully, he knew all along that this is how things would go.

He has wholeheartedly supported my decision to work less in order to be around more for the kids. This makes me more of the primary child caretaker, and he now shoulders the burden of being the primary breadwinner. At the same time, he manages to leave work early to take our kids to multiple ballgames and practices per week. And he has gone to work late numerous mornings this summer because the little kids have swim lessons at the same time that the big kids have to be at camp.

Yes, he sometimes gets the kids riled up right before bedtime by pretending to be a monster or pretending to lose a stuffed animal that is actually sitting right on top of his head (the latter is the kids' favorite!) But afterwards, he almost always apologizes, and then takes the lead on getting four now crazy, giggling kids to bed.

On this Father's Day, as this is being posted, he is not getting to sleep in or be pampered in any way. Instead, he has taken the whole family on a weekend camping trip. A trip that he spent hours planning and packing for, while I did very little. And we are having a great time and making lots of memories!

So Happy Father's Day, Cort. And thanks for being my partner in this journey called parenting.

Meet Miner and Silas

One of the first grade projects this year was to raise Monarch caterpillars into butterflies. So, meet Miner and Silas:

Silas the caterpillar

Miner the caterpillar

Miner was Joe's caterpillar. He said he made up the name one day when he was playing an imaginary football?/basketball?/baseball? game outside. He likes to make up names for teams, and had come up with the Minnesota Miners.

Silas was Charlie's caterpillar. He named him after the best hitter on the A's baseball team. Not the Oakland A's, but the Timbergrove A's. Basically, he named him after some 7 or 8-year-old that he doesn't even know. (If Silas had died, he was going to get another one and name him Cyrus, which is at least after the best hitter on his baseball team.)

Speaking of dying caterpillars, it was a really rough year for Monarch caterpillars. Most of them died. I felt so bad for all the little girls in their class who were so sad. I don't think the boys would have cared much.

First Silas, then Miner, went into chrysalis at school. (I can't believe I didn't get a single picture in chrysalis.) We drove home so carefully with those bug boxes with hanging chrysalises (chrysali?), it reminded me of the first time we brought babies home from the hospital.

Then several days later, Silas appeared -- as a butterfly!! By this time, the boys were invested in them, and Cort and I were even more interested (it really was cool). We got up several times during the night to make sure he was still alive and ok! Charlie took him to school, and released him into the school's butterfly garden.




We thought we were going to miss Miner emerging as a butterfly, but luckily he did so the day before we left town. When he did so, we discovered that Miner was a girl! (Female Monarch butterflies are smaller and have thicker veins, whereas males are bigger and have two black dots on their wings.) Joe got to take him -- uh, her -- to release on the last day of school. (No pictures of Joe releasing Miner.)

It's a little corny, but they were beautiful little creatures!

Silas the butterfly

Miner the butterfly

Another first

One of the fun things about having kids is all the "firsts" you get to record.

For example, Joe was the first to sever a limb or get stitches.

And Charlie was the first to get a foreign object stuck in a body part.

And now, Will has the first broken bone in the Maddux family.



Saturday morning, around 4am, Will fell out of bed for the first time. His bed is no more than12 inches high. With bed rails. Yeah, I know. Only one of my kids could manage that.

By the time I got in there, he had climbed back in bed but said his neck hurt. I rubbed it, and he went back to sleep.

The next morning when he got up he said it still hurt. That led Cort and I to contemplate the age-old parenting dilemma: do we take him to the doctor, or not? If it were a weekday, the answer would have been easy. We would have waited before making the trip to see if he got better. But these sorts of things never happen on weekdays. We had approximately 4 hours to take advantage of our pediatrician's Saturday morning clinic. After that, we were looking at a holiday weekend, so if we decided anytime between Saturday and Tuesday that it needed to be looked at, that would mean an ER visit.

Luckily, this was one of those times when we decided to take him in, and it was the right decision. Yep, a broken left clavicle.

He's got a sling, and he's really been quite a trooper.

Busy

We've had momentous occasions around here: birthdays, baseball, anniversaries . . . . Hopefully I'll get around to documenting some of those eventually.

I've got clever blog posts lingering in my brain. I know I'll forget those.

I'm not sure why we are so busy. Maybe just life with a 6-person family?

All I know is that twice in recent days, I've been so busy that I haven't had time to stop and use the restroom until it was almost too late.

Blog posting is much farther down on my list.

Tonight's UNO results

Game one winner: Cort and Joe
Game two winner: Cort and Will
Game three (girls v. boys) winner: Girls
Game four (kids v. grownups) winner: Grownups
Game five (kids v. grownups) winner: Kids

A fun night. No crying by losers. At least until it was bedtime.

Makes My Monday

Joe the poet

DEAD BEAN

A Dead Bean Its Slippery

And To Many Beans To

Walk

CLOVERS

I see

I see a hole lot

CLAY MATHUE'S TAKLE MACINE

It Was Twenty To Twenty-Six Packers They

Had The Ball On The Eighteen He Hicked

It Was In The Quaterback's Hands

Clay Went Back To The Quarterback The

Quaterback Had Nowone To Trough

To He Went Back Ten Yard Takle!

Ball On Twenty-Eight

Another sack - 12 Yards

Three Sacks Ball on 50

Fourth And Thirty

To Go They Kicked It Fake! Gain Of Forty-Nine Yards

Ball On One 1rst Down Til Fourth And One Hicked

Touchdown Ravens!!! Tied Overtime We Get

The Ball Touchdown!!!! 53 seconds Fourth down Hut

missed

WE WIN!!!!!!

He didn't get a very good grade on his poems. But he's still pretty good at math!

Wordless Wednesday

Dinner and games and books, oh my!

Tonight, even though Cort is out of town, I took all the kids out to dinner. It was truly enjoyable.

After we got home, the kids got ready for bed quickly and we had time to introduce Will and Helen to the game of UNO. We played four times. Everyone loved it.

We still had time to read after that. I got to spend one-on-one time with Will and read his new Curious George book to him. Joe read on his own, and Charlie read Richard Scarry to Helen with no problems whatsoever.

What a wonderful evening. A definite improvement over last night!

Makes My Monday

Yesterday, on the way home with all the kids, there was some work being done in the road near our house. And I hit it. More precisely, I hit some of the equipment. My tire was slashed and much of the passenger side of my (new, to me) car has a large scrape.

Cort is on business in Oregon, and his car is in the shop while he's there. So I don't have another mode of transportation. The shop closes at 5:30. This happened at approximately 5:29.

Also, while I was trying to call to make a police report, Will fell and split his lip on the floor. He also pulled down his pants and peed in the front yard while I was trying to take care of things with the car.

But Tony Montalbano of Montalbano Tire is a saint. He sent someone out to my house, after hours, to put my spare on. It took the guy quite awhile. The charge was $15.

Then, after I put the kids to bed (amidst tears because all this caused dinner to run late, and we ran out of time to read books before bedtime), I ate SIX of these dark chocolate granola things we just got at Costco.

So, what made my Monday? Tony Montalbano, Costco, and dark chocolate.