The birthday fairy came, as is our custom.  Brought a dragon and some dragon jammies he’ll be wearing forever.  Happy kid, check.

I didn’t plan anything with any sort of notice, which is also my custom during the last month of pregnancy.  If you weren’t invited, don’t be offended.  There wasn’t anything to invite you to until it was happening, honest!

Thankfully we had folks we could hire  to come stand in so the poor boy felt loved.

Just kidding. We didn’t have to fork out the big bucks for that. They came anyway, bless their hearts.

Paying the store to make the cake so I wouldn’t feel guilty for not making a cake like I usually do, now, that’s a different story.  And just in case you’re wondering, I don’t encourage merchandising ’round here.  In fact, I’m a bit scarred by it, since it took years to wean …

<I s’pose I already mentioned it in Saturday’s post… but… oh well.  I wrote this first, actually.  And I took no pictures of the mountain we dropped off.  Sorry.>

Turns out, we had enough stuff to fill the back of the minivan to the top!   And you know what?  It was so invigorating, I have lots of energy for dejunking the rest of the house.  At least until the next drop-off.  Funny, how that works now.

Boy, have I come a long way since the nervous, “Oh, I just can’t bear to let all this go but I guess I will for the good of humanity and the sake of finding floor in the play room, but but but…”

Ha!

What was I afraid of? Getting arrested? …

Junk? No!

Not any more anyway.

In preparation for “the big move” coming, I have consolidated ALL my children’s toys…

get this….

to fit…

in….

THAT cupboard.

What big move?

Well, we decided we really don’t need a house this big, so we’re looking for something about half this size.

JUST KIDDING!

We’re staying in our too-big house.  We kinda like it, and it’s going to take for.e.ver to dejunk the rest of it anyway.  But *someday* we’ll buy a much smaller home on a much bigger plot with much, much less traffic going on outside our driveway.

No, no, “the big move” is where the front room and play room swap places.  It involves moving the world’s heaviest couch and our baby grand piano — hence, it’s a big move.

So what’s in there?

Top Shelf: Stuffies.  They use stuffed animals as accessories …

Here’s the story.

We have an almost-100-year-old house.  All old houses are funky in their own way, and ours is no exception.  Maybe that’s why we feel so at home here. 

It starts with our two front doors.  Yep, we have two of them.  Then when you go in the front door (the one that isn’t blocked by a couch), our front room has three other doorways leading from it.  One goes to the play room, one to the office/library/disaster room, and the other goes into the kitchen.

Once upon a time….

I hung a red velvet curtain in that doorway to the kitchen.

I claimed it was a way to save …

I hosted a spontaneous Mary Kay “party” in my kitchen with 20 minutes’ notice on an evening where John worked ’til 9pm.  I only had 10 minutes or so to “tidy up” after putting the kids to bed by myself.

Wonder of wonders-

(1) After “flying solo” with the kids all day for three days, I was still happy and feeling fine.

(2) There wasn’t really any mess to be embarrassed about.  At least not in the front room and kitchen.

This was a first for me.

All this time I’ve been beating my head into the walls here trying trying trying trying to “clean,” working day after day and not making much headway at all…

No wonder.  I was going about it completely backwards!  I was cleaning from the top down, from the surface in.  I …

Okay, it seems like just last week we were playing that game with Baby C.  And then a few days ago we were watching her, in her little toddler 2-ness, play it with Baby D.

Yesterday, I’m pretty sure, D was teaching it to E… And now today we have E tormenting teaching Baby F.  It’s such an amazing thing, time.

Cute, but what is the point here?

Um, yes.  Cinderella is now SIX.  Yep, more than one hand’s worth of fingers. Whoa.

I am very, very happy with how she’s growing up – which is a miraculous thing, since when she was three I had serious doubts about her living through another year, let alone turning into a charming, compassionate, understanding, vivacious little person.  Don’t you wish I was blogging back then?!  Me too.

But she is! The guinea pig child is turning out okay!  What a …

Without a doubt, he understood that his baby brother was sad and wanted a binky.  Without a doubt he knew that the one in his own mouth was the only one available.

I will even go so far as to say he knew he wouldn’t get one again.  I’ve never had a child sacrifice like this for a sibling.  It still amazes me.

But – come to think of it – we haven’t talked about it; he hasn’t asked for it and I haven’t brought it up.

As so, to satisfy …

What?!  More on housekeeping?  What IS it with her?

I’ll tell you what it is:

Living in a home with 4 little (emphasis on little) kids is hard to keep up with. It’s a laugh and a half, a ball and all, but it’s not easy.  I don’t think it’s supposed to be.

Living in a cluttered, messy home with 4 little kids is reeeeeeeeeeeeally hard and not fun.  Trust me.  It’s just not.

I tried changing bad habits, learning good one, etc, and met with some success –go me!—but that was, um, quite a while ago.

The last three years started with a hurried out-of-state move and one baby after another.

Keeping an orderly house is going to require changes.  Big changes, little changes, lots and lots of them.  And so…

I’ve been afraid of it.  What …

Ironic, isn’t it, that good changes are often challenging – bad changes will happen without any effort at all.  We can try to avoid making changes in our lives – we can be afraid of it, put it off, cling to the past, or ignore it altogether, but we might as well face it:  Life is change.

For example, in our family…

An adorable family portrait is only going to be accurate for about 18 months in terms of family members. 

We’re just doing our part to preserve our unusual last name for generations to come. 

For all of us – with or without them …

I know, I know.  Every mother thinks their baby is the cutest ever.

Furthermore, it’s likely that most mothers think whichever baby is currently “the” baby, is the cutest.  Or at least too cute for words. 

Which is why we are all so glad we live in a digital-camera age.  So easy to share, so easy to enjoy, so easy to capture just the right expressions… I tell you what, man, this is the life.  Instead of telling you, “I get stopped everywhere we go by people telling me what huge eyes he has,”
I can just show you this:

Wasn’t that so much more fun?

Indeed.…