RM can walk. Over the last couple of weeks, it’s been a step here and there, but on Friday she took off for real. Several times she made it across the dining room, slowly, taking a step, balancing, then step - balance - step - balance - step - balance. She’s ten and one half months old today.

She took up this walking thing very differently than the boys did though. If we are sitting with her, holding her hands, and encouraging her to walk from one of us to the other, as soon as we let go she will drop down, and rapid fire crawl towards me or Dad or one of her Bubbas. She’s lightning quick when she’s crawling, and definitely knows the efficiency of it. The walking came almost when nobody was looking. She was playing quietly behind me while I was working. I glanced over just in time to see her moving slowly, concentrating on each step and not toppling over. When she finally did go down, then she looked over at me and just smiled.

I’m wondering if this is a sign of her personality. Is she going to be much more of the “let me do it myself” type than her brothers were? I’ve seen her focus on a toy or some other object, studying it, manipulating it, working very hard to make it do something or perform some function that it’s supposed to do, at least in her mind. She’s very patient and deliberate at so many of her actions.

She recently spent a good 10 minutes working at opening up the cell phone. It took a couple of good yells, throwing it down in frustration once, and several times having it pinch her fingers, but she never gave up. In the end, she opened it up all the way and was able to push buttons to her hearts content.

If so, she’s definitely my daughter. I’ve been known to drive myself nuts trying to accomplish something on my own. My husband and I are backwards, I’m the one who will drive around in circles, too stubborn to stop and ask directions. There are good and bad sides to passing on this trait to my daughter. She won’t need a lot of hand holding, and will probably always be pretty self-sufficient. I just hope she doesn’t become neurotic about needing to figure out everything on her own.

The days just keep slipping away from me. I don’t feel like I’m sitting still all day long, but night rolls around and the vast majority of the piles of work are still sitting right where I left them. I can’t figure it out.

I managed three loads of laundry, but you still can’t walk through my laundry room because of all the dirty laundry. One appointment for the kids is out of the way, but there are three more in the next two weeks. Meals have been prepared, but the teenage boys still come by and tell me they are hungry eight or nine times a day. I vacuumed yesterday, this morning you can’t tell. I’m pretty sure I cleaned off the kitchen counters, but they are covered with dishes yet again.

I need to get some sewing done, I don’t think I’ve touched the machine in a week or so. I have things cut out for RM that I’d like to stitch together before she outgrows them. I started fleece jackets for all the guys last February. I’m sure they’d appreciate them before another round of cold weather comes and goes.

So much time gets eaten up by RM. Shame on me for complaining about my wonderful little girl, but it does get frustrating sometimes with so many other responsibilities as well. She’s very independent these days, and doesn’t want the constant holding anymore, but with the locomotion comes the increased need for supervision. She invents new ways to get in trouble. TR just found her down the hallway dragging the silverware basket out of the dishwasher. We put that up, and now she has the phone. I’m just hoping she isn’t calling some long lost friend in China, or 911. She frequently manages to speed dial home on the cell phone. Consequently we aren’t programming any more speed dials. Grandma loves her, but probably doesn’t want four or five calls from her in a row.

I have managed a few more crochet projects. I have bad hands and wrists, but they’ve been feeling pretty good lately so I’m trying to finish stuff I need, and stuff I want while I can.

One more diaper soaker down:

I need to stop with the shorties now and start on some longies. The temperatures are in the 90’s still, but won’t be forever.

Then, shame on me, I did a project just for fun. Found this pattern through an online group and had to make myself one. It was something easy to work on in short bits and pieces of time. That’s an excellent thing for me, all I really have to myself is short bits and pieces of time.

Of course I changed the pattern just a little bit, like I nearly always do, but it’s essentially the same bag.

Now it’s time to head out and do something productive before this day totally gets away from me too. Wish me luck.

I honestly crave a decent night’s sleep. I crave it the same way I would crave my favorite food. I long for it just like I would a dream vacation. I miss it as though it were my long lost very best friend.

I want a long, uninterrupted, blissfully restful stretch of sleep. I want a night with no barking dogs, no crying babies, no nightmares - mine or anyone else’s - and no nocturnal, stumbling trips to the bathroom. I want a night to pass by and be totally unaware of any events that occurred during that night. I want to wake up in the morning, feeling positively high from deep and satisfying sleep.

I need for this perpetual heavy feeling behind my eyelids to go away. I need for mornings to be pleasant, and looked forward to; not dreaded and met with groans of despair. I need for the dog to not bark and whine in his sleep. I need to know that SW’s dreams are pleasant and restful, RM has suffered no teething pains or unbearable pangs of hunger, and I need to be able to manage an eight hour stretch of time without a visit to the little girl’s room.

I’d honestly settle for a nap that lasted more than five minutes beyond the initial dozing off.

My daughter has some sort of extra sensory perception, I’m convinced of it. There simply is no other explanation for some of the happenings around here.

For one example, there’s her naptime just the other day. She’d been peacefully napping for only 30 minutes or so. The house was quiet, the boys were behaving themselves and being quiet for a change. I made a sandwich, and sat down to eat it. I made the mistake of thinking and then saying aloud: “I should actually be able to sit down and eat this before RM wakes up.” The very moment I finished speaking, RM woke up and started crying to be picked up. Even in her sleep, she knew my plans and was able to thwart them.

When she’s down for the night, no amount of noise will wake her. Not her brothers yelling or the TV blaring or anything. But the quiet little click of me turning the bedroom lamp off gets her every time. I’ve figured out the reason for that, it’s not the sound at all. It’s that when I turn off the lamp it means I’m going to sleep also. So her unconscious mind knows that’s the moment to wake up to keep mommie from getting to sleep.

Just today, I was sitting in the room with her working on a project while she dozed. I very quietly laid down my yarn in order to get up and go throw in a load of laundry while she slept. But no, it wasn’t happening. Merely my intent to leave the room was enough to disturb the nap.

So there you have it, evidence for her psychic gifts. Hmm, it appears they only work in her sleep, doesn’t it?

This is it, the last week of my thirties. I’d like to be able to say I have special things planned, but no such luck. TR starts school this week. I’ll set up home school lesson plans for SW. And I think RM has a doctor’s appointment. What do you think of that for exciting?

I don’t even have any plans for my birthday itself. Early in July, I gave up on hinting and told my husband I wanted a party. No one has given me a party since I turned 13 years old. He doesn’t do hints, subtle or otherwise, so I straight out told him that I wanted to know that someone in my life cared enough to go to the trouble of giving me a party.

But he didn’t do a thing. His excuse was, like it usually is, that “things happened” and he didn’t get around to it. I’m not sure what those things are, other than spending hours managing his seven fantasy baseball teams, or watching as many games on TV as is humanly possible with basic cable. It certainly isn’t because he spends ridiculous amounts of time helping with the housework or taking care of the yard.

After seventeen years of marriage you would think I would have expected this. Yet my feelings are still hurt, more than a little. After all, I’m turning 40, it’s a big thing.

I need to give up the pity party, and just go do something special for myself. After all, in November he will turn 50, so I can get back at him then.

I won’t though. I’ll bake a cake, make a special dinner, and try to get a few friends together for him. I’m funny that way.

My husband often has problems retrieving the names of things. He’s always been that way, otherwise I might worry he’s developing dementia or something. Fortunately for us it just seems to be one of those things about him.

At times it can be pretty frustrating, and we’ve ended up in more than one argument simply becuase I have no idea what he’s talking about. But over the years I’ve developed quite a talent for figuring out what he means. For example, he’ll ask for “one of those things you eat with.” That means a fork.

Occasionally his loss of, or misuse of names will result in something quite comical. Last night as we were driving was one of those times I found very amusing.

He says, “I just saw an emu. It wasn’t in a fence or anything, just back there next to the road.”

I was a little distracted at the moment, and this really didn’t catch my attention quite yet. There are fields here and there in our neighborhoods where you do see different types of animals. I probably just answered, “Hmmm.”

Then he says, “It might have been a llama, I’m not sure.”

Now I’m focused, because something just isn’t right here. “An emu? Or a llama?”

“Yes,” he says, “I’m not sure which one.”

“Honey,” I ask him, “Do you know what an emu is?”

Now he’s catching on that maybe he made a little goof. “Uh, well, I guess not.”

“Big bird, kind of like an ostrich.”

“Oh. I guess it was a llama.”

I do an awful lot of reading. It’s usually done in small snatches of time, while I’m nursing, or in a waiting room somewhere, or in those few minutes of time I have between when all the kids are asleep and I give in to exhaustion myself. My husband reads a lot too, although not as fast as I do, which results in lots of arguments over who gets to read a new book first.

Over the years we’ve ended up with a ton of paperbacks around the house. More than all of our bookshelves can handle. We tried visiting used stores, trading them in for credit and finding new titles. It seems like it’s harder and harder to get out of the house and browse in a bookstore though. Our time allotment for stores pretty much gets eaten up by grocery shopping. We’ve probably abandoned hundreds of dollars of traded-in book credits at various used shops around the city, both in stores that are still operating and ones long since out of business.

A few months ago we found Paperback Book Swap. I really think this is just a fantastic idea. It could be just because I’m a complete Internet geek, and anything I can do from right here at my desk without struggling to get all the kids out the door is very cool to me. But it solves two problems for me: keeping new books on hand so when I finish one there’s another one ready to read, and keeping the mountain of books sitting around down to a manageable size.

It’s really simple how it works. You post on the site all the books you have and are finished with. Then you browse the books everyone else has posted and see what you might want. You get credits for the first batch of books you post, and from there on you get a credit for each book you send out. If someone requests your book, you print a mailing wrapper right there on the site, which tells you the postage and everything. Then you wrap up the book, put the postage on it and drop it in the mail. When that person gets the book, you get a credit to request another book for yourself. The person who has the book you want pays the postage to mail it right to you.

Another fun, geeky thing on the site is a map feature. You can see a graphic map of all the places you have mailed books, and another map of all the places where books have been mailed to you. It tracks the miles for the shortest, longest and average distance the books have traveled also.

So if you read a lot, or have tons of books sitting around, go have a look! I’ve been really impressed so far. A new sister site has just opened up also, the same general idea but for CD’s. I’m sure that will be useful for us too, my husband’s CD collection numbers in the hundreds, the high hundreds. It would be so nice to see him let some go before new stuff comes in. There just aren’t enough hours in a lifetime to listen to all the music he has around here!

I am almost positive the kids never hear a thing I say. Well, that’s not actually true, but they do seem to have that very selective hearing loss that’s so common in so many kids. It might not actually be a loss of hearing though, it’s more of a selective response to the statement. What I really believe is that they file stuff away somewhere just to pull it out and throw it back at us when they can.

I do know that several times a week I tell them, and their friends, to close the front door. I know that at least once every day I tell them to pick up their dirty clothes from the floor. Repeatedly, every hour or so, I need to tell them to turn down the volume on the TV. And yet, on their next trip outside the door is still left open. Every discarded item of clothing lands on the floor. The volume on the TV creeps up and up and up all over again.

The other day I asked TR to empty the dishwasher, and his response was “I don’t want too.” This led me to lecture him about being a part of the family, having responsibilities around the house, taking care of things that needed to be done, and sometimes having to do things you don’t want to do. He didn’t respond; just grumped his way through putting the dishes away. About a week later, he asked his Dad to get up and get him something to drink. Dad’s response was “I don’t want to.” So TR proceeded to give him the lecture about doing things you don’t want to do. The part about the responsibility and things that “need” to be done apparently got lost, or selectively edited out. But I suppose I should be glad he heard or internalized something.

The phenomena occurs with both of the kids. Just the other day in the car, I was explaining to TR about being polite and not interrupting. Right in the middle of this little talk, SW interrupted. I tried to point out the significance of this, how he had just interrupted my speech on interruptions. He said, “But Mom, the Baby’s asleep and you are going to wake her up!”

Yes, that’s definitely one I say a lot.

I spent years raising boys: rough and tumble, digging in the dirt, stepping on matchbox cars in the middle of the night, snips and snails and puppy dog tails boys. First TR, then SW, then 11 years with two boys, and I always thought this was just going to be my life. I longed for a sweet little girl, and pigtails, and little dresses and playing dolls. But it was good really, because I had great boys.

Then out of the blue, surprises and miracles and all that, I had a little girl. Pink clothes in the closet and frills and lace and sugar and spice and all the nice stuff. A daughter to raise and teach all the womanly things and show her how wonderful it is to be female. I am so excited every day to be enjoying all these new experiences. I love the thought of watching her grow and having tea parties and doing crafts and dressing up dolls. It’s going to be so wonderful!

That is, wonderful if it ever actually happens. Because, of course, she’s growing up with two big brothers. Big all boy brothers. Already she crawls around the floor dragging Mideval Swords with her. She can throw a baseball and hit you right in the head nine times out of ten. Given the chance, she dashes off into Bubba’s room and goes straight for the Playstation controller.

Just this evening, she was sitting on TR’s lap while he played a RPG on the computer. She started laughing hysterically so I asked him what was so funny. He said, “She loves it when I stab the two-headed bears with flaming swords.”

I have some pretty strong beliefs on a lot of subjects. Not everything I believe is totally in the mainstream of things either. I’m really for the most part an Attachment Parent, you know, extended nursing, babywearing, co-sleeping and all that. Around my house we recycle, and shop carefully, and use cloth diapers and try to be environmentally conscious. We tend to be a bit liberal politically, though not extremely so.

It’s important to me that I be allowed to have my beliefs, and make my own decisions. I’m a pretty thoughtful person, and I consider my choices and options carefully. I like to research things, get the facts, and find out information for myself. The positions I hold on issues are a usually pretty carefully considered ones.

So I tend to get very irritated when people try to tell me how to think. More than just irritated really, but I try to stay polite. Because honestly, I’m not a fool and I don’t have strong positions on topics for which I have very little knowledge.

I think there’s a huge difference between sharing your opinions or giving out information, and telling other people what to do. It often seems like people act as if both are the same thing. I know so many people who think that it’s necessary to say “You Should Do This” when sharing their opinions. And by no means are they willing to listen to anyone else’s thoughts or position.

Just as strongly as I feel about being allowed to think for myself, I also believe I have no right to tell others what to do or think. After all, what kind of person would I be if if I engaged in the same behavior I object to in others? Sometimes I hate to even give my opinions on anything controversial, because I don’t want to create even the possibility that someone might get the impression I’m telling them how to think. I also want to avoid opening myself up to being told how wrong I am. I don’t mind if someone says they disagree with me, I just hate it when I’m told my opinion is wrong.

I belong to a few message board sites. I enjoy the sharing of ideas and conversations in all of them. But it seems inevitable that sometimes “those” conversations come up, the really controversial subjects. Strong opinions are shared, people start going back and forth, and eventually, every time, someone ends up angry or hurt. I work very, very hard to stay out of the threads that even might get heated. Maybe I’m a wimp, and if so, then so be it. My opinion on the subject is: Sometimes it’s OK to just live and let live.