Edwin Wins the Prize

There are certain milestones that come with parenting.  Some milestones are good ones - first smile, first piano recital, first day of school.  And then there are the other kind - first time staying up all night with a sick child, first child in the hospital, first major home damage caused by a child.  I feel like we've been really lucky in the bad milestones, especially with health.  I've been especially grateful for this while living in countries where medical care isn't always well-equipped to deal with emergencies.  

I've always known that, statistically, one of my children would eventually break a bone.  With seven children, there's no way that I could escape that milestone.  Ironically, I was the first one in the family to break a bone in 2020.  But last week, Edwin took the prize for the first child to break a bone.

After I had gotten up from my Sunday nap, Edwin came and asked if he could get some ibuprofen.  Edwin never asks for any kind of medicine, so the warning flags immediately went off.  I asked him what was wrong.  "Oh," he casually told me, "I was chasing Joseph outside and slipped on some snow and fell down.  It's fine.  It just hurts a little.  But it's not broken or anything.  Definitely not broken.  I'm fine."

I gave him the ibuprofen and grabbed his arm for inspection, not trusting the judgment of a thirteen year-old boy who doesn't like to cause problems for adults.  I moved my way down his forearm until he started wincing.  I checked for swelling, which was already noticeable.  Then I had him move his arm.  

He waved it around in the air.  "See," he showed me, "I can move it just fine.  It doesn't hurt."  I looked at him and told him to stick his arm out and rotate his hand back and forth.  "Well," he hedged, "I'd rather not.  It's kind of uncomfortable."  When I moved it for him, his face was a dead giveaway.  I called Brandon to come and give a second opinion.

"I think that Edwin broke his arm," I told Brandon, "but I know that I tend to jump to the worst possible scenario.  Could you look at it?"  Brandon inspected it and agreed that yes, he'd probably broken it.  We called the local doctor that works at the embassy and told her the story.  Yes, she sighed, it would be necessary to bring him in and check on it.  

Brandon loaded Edwin into the car and drove him up to the embassy.  Roza spent about two minutes inspecting his arm and announced, "It's probably broken."  So they headed over to the government hospital that had a functioning after-hours emergency department (private hospitals keep 9-5 hours).  

When they showed up, Brandon told me later, the emergency room was filled with children cradling various broken limbs.  Evidently the first warm weather of the spring combined with a lot of melting snow made for lots of scenarios similar to ours.  The doctor took a cursory look at Edwin's arm, announced that it was broken, and sent him over for an X-ray where they confirmed what everyone knew - Edwin had indeed broken his arm.  Ironically, his break was in almost exactly the same place that my own break was three years ago.  It wasn't as bad as mine (which wasn't too bad either), so he was quickly casted up and sent home.

Edwin has taken everything stoically and figured out how to do his life one-handed.  Thankfully spring has finally decided to stay, and he can wear flip-flops everywhere and doesn't have to get help to put on socks and shoes.  He also doesn't have to try and pull a coat over his cast.  It was good timing for breaking an arm.  

There have been some benefits for Edwin.  He has shed no tears over having to take a break in piano playing, and doesn't mind having to hand his dishwashing job off to another sibling.  Although he's still going to taekwondo three times a week, he doesn't have to do any pushups - but that won't be so great when we has to get back into condition after the cast comes off.  

As a whole, having a child with a broken arm hasn't been particularly stressful.  It helps that Edwin is old enough to figure out how to shower and dress himself and isn't inclined to whine anyway.  As a first broken bone, it's been very un-dramatic.  I'll be happy if he stays the only one with a broken bone, but I'm not holding my breath.  Statistics usually catches up to you in the end.

Happy Birthday, Edwin!

This week we had our last birthday for the year, Edwin's twelfth birthday.  His birthday falls right in the middle of the birthday season, where we have five straight months of birthdays, so we're definitely in the mode of celebrating.

On his birthday he got to pick the breakfast (German apple pancake), dinner (Georgian), and cake (lemon meringue pie).  Everyone had a holiday from school, so everyone was happy to celebrate Edwin's birthday with him.  There have to be some benefits to being homeschooled, and this is definitely one of them.  Recently Eleanor was feeling very sad for all those poor children who have to go to school on their birthday.  

We didn't do anything too terribly exciting on his birthday, but he was happy to help me make his birthday pie.  Edwin enjoys cooking, and is very good at following both recipes and instructions, so I was happy to have his pleasant company with me.  He got to make the meringue himself, and did a very good job at it.  But he was also equally happy to be let off the less fun part of cooking - the dishes - even though he offered to help.  

He was very happy to have a delicious dinner of Georgian food (and I was happy to order it instead of cooking), declaring that Georgian with its delicious cheesy khachapuri is now the very best food one can have.  He was even happier to have pie, but he was most happy of all to open his presents.  

Twelve year-old boys are very easy to shop for, as they apparently can never have too many LEGO sets.  He was pleased with the sets that Joseph, Kathleen and Sophia, and Brandon and I gave him.  He was equally excited about the chocolate bar that Eleanor gave him.  I think that he was very happy with all of his birthday.

I've now watched two of my girls grow from children into young women, but Edwin is my first boy to start that transition from child to young man.  He is, as all of my friends with boys have promised, becoming quite enjoyable to be with.  I enjoy his funny sense of humor, quiet diligence, and concern for his younger siblings.  This doesn't mean that he doesn't also have his times of driving his siblings insane with brotherly tormenting, but he's usually amenable to a knowing look from me in order to leave them alone.  

He hasn't yet reached the amazing feats of eating that I know is coming soon, but he's definitely starting to challenge his older sisters at eating contests, having outpaced me at meals several months ago.  He's almost five feet tall, which means that pretty soon I'll have three children taller than me, with four more to go.  

On most days, everyone is happy to have Edwin as part of our family (and I'm happy myself every day).  Happy birthday, Edwin!

Socializing our Teenagers

Ever since we've started homeschooling, we've gotten questions about various aspects of homeschooling.  Friends wonder how I'm able to get it all done (a combination of delegating and paying a housekeeper to do some of my work for me), family members wonder if we'd consider sending the kids to high school (so far, nope - and that was Kathleen's decision), and strangers wonder how crazy the house is (very crazy some days). 

One of the most frequent questions I've gotten is about how we'd 'socialize' our children.  It hasn't been much of question that we've worried about.  There are enough children that they get lots of lessons in sharing, conflict resolution, taking turns, working together, making compromises, and being kind.  I can't speak to how well they've learned these things at home versus how well they would have learned them at traditional school as they've never gone.  But it's worked well enough.  

The children have always managed to have just enough friends that they aren't too lonely.  Usually their friends have come through church.  Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is really a huge advantage for homeschooling, as the children see each other at church every week and so friendships are easier to form.  I'm friends with the mom, they're friends with the children, and everybody gets a break from seeing each other all week long.

We've had a couple of families - one from church and one from not - that have had enough children that matched up with our so we were able to get together for a weekly playdate.  Between those get-togethers and church, everyone was pretty happy.

But now we're entirely on our own.  Every week we've got nobody to look at but the same eight faces we've been seeing all week.  The younger children haven't really minded that much; in my experience younger children are pretty content with siblings.  They're a known quantity - no surprises from people you've spent your entire life with.

But I've come to realize that my teenagers need more than what we can give them.  I've never raised teenagers before, so I'm learning as I go.  Both Kathleen and Sophia are pretty low-drama most of the time, so I haven't had accusations of ruining their life, being the worst mom ever, or wondering why we had to move to this terrible country where they don't have any friends.  I consider myself very lucky.  But they have told me that they'd like to see some friends on a regular basis.

If we were in the US, this would not be a problem.  Between weekly church, weekday seminary classes, and weeknight youth activities, they would be quite busy with friends.  It would probably be an almost perfect balance of having some space and being able to be with peers.  

But we're not in the US, and we won't be there for many more years, so we have to work with what we have.  Thankfully, the one family that lives within walking distance of our house has a daughter who is Sophia's age.  This summer, I started encouraging them to go and see if she was free to hang out.  They confessed that the first few interactions were kind of awkward - "It was so weird to go and do things on our own!  Like, you didn't set up a playdate or anything.  We just walked over, rang her doorbell, and asked if she wanted to come swim."  But now they have a semi-regular afternoon to meet up, go on a walk, talk about whatever teenaged girls talk about, and go to the store for ice cream.  I'm often grateful that they have one friend close by.

After we got back from our trip to the US this summer, Sophia (with some encouragement from me) decided to start setting up social outings with a group of people.  Tashkent has a lot of activities that are fun - amusement parks, bowling, laser tag, ice skating - and they're not very expensive.  It's been interesting to coach her through all the steps of making a plan, contacting people, arranging dates, and all the other things that are so easy for an adult and so daunting for an inexperienced teenager who's never done this before.  I've come to realize that this is also part of my job as a mother of homeschooled children.  They don't have the opportunity to learn this on their own, so I get to teach them.  I sometime wonder if their friends find the tone of Sophia's emails and texts a little strange, as I only know how to write like a middle-aged mom and am not up with the way teenagers talk.  

Their first outing was to a local amusement park.  They got themselves there by taxi, rode a bunch of rides, made some new friends, ate food, and got themselves home.  Edwin tagged along (or was forced to, as both girls they invited had brothers who are Edwin's age) and was pretty dubious about the value of this so-called "socializing."  I was a little nervous too, as I'm not used to sending my children out on their own, something that most moms are very used to.

But when they came home, everyone was full of smiles, stories, and excitement for the next time they got to go and hang out with their new friends.  So yesterday they met them again, this time for bowling, and had a great time again.  Kathleen reported that she had the high score, a 60, and that was with bumpers.  It was fun to listen to all the stories they had to tell and see how excited they were for what they had done.

I know that both girls would like to see friends even more often then they do, but I'm happy that they have at least a few opportunities so go and practice socializing away from their parents and family.  Kathleen's departure for college is starting to appear on the horizon, and sometimes I wonder what kind of intense shock to her system everything will be.  So if I can prepare her as much as possible, hopefully it will help some, although there's never been anyone who is prepared for all of the changes that college brings.  

It's also fun as a parent to see them get older and see them get to start to do some things on their own.  Homeschooling gives me the ability to keep them closer for much longer than I would be able to in traditional school, but there is still a time when everyone needs some more distance so they can start to practice running their own lives and making their own choices.  Before long, I'll be almost entirely on the sidelines, cheering them on as they become fully independent.  Thankfully I have a long time before all of them go off and leave me, but it's strange to see the first one begin to think about their departure.  But that isn't for a few more years, and so for now I'll just enjoy watching them take their first steps.

Elizabeth Joins the Fray

 Elizabeth is officially talking.  She's been saying words for some time now, but in the last month she has mastered the art of three- and four-word sentences.  Overall, I'm very happy when my children are capable of communicating things to me.  The crying decreases dramatically because everyone can understand each other enough to keep emotions generally stable.  When they need something, they can tell me instead of bursting into tears when their incomprehensible gabbles don't get what they want.

But the one time I'm not happy about talking toddlers is dinner.  Dinner is often the top of the crescendo of noise and craziness that has been increasing throughout the day.  By the evening, everyone is tired, the activities of the day have created hurt feelings or resentment, people have been pushed through their required school work, and I'm ready for everyone to get to bed so that I can finish my work day that began at 5 am that morning.

Dinner is also the time when everyone wants to talk about their day.  And it's when they want to ask me questions about the most strange things they can think of.  Additionally, it's the place for unresolved fights to continue.  And the children want to make all the requests they've been saving up during the day.  Also it's when everyone has all the conversations they couldn't have while during their school work.  

It's basically when everyone makes all the noise they can think of, combined with spilling milk, food, or both.  Sometimes I have to shout so that everyone can hear me.

And now that Elizabeth can talk, there are nine people trying to talk over each other at once.  Most of the time, having seven children isn't too much trouble.  Our house is big enough that everyone can spread out.  I usually only have to help one child at a time, and often I can get a bigger sibling to help out a smaller sibling if I'm already busy.  It's a lot less work than one would think.

But when everyone is together at dinner, I can really tell that I have seven children.  Our kitchen isn't that big, and all of the noise seems to bounce off the cupboards, tile floors, and high ceilings and multiply into a dull roar.  And now we've added a two year-old to the mix.  Since everyone else is already noisy, Elizabeth figures that she's got to be even noisier so that she can be heard.  In the usually declamatory fashion of toddlers, she will sit in her high chair and talk about whatever comes to mind.  

"PICK UP FORK.  EAT FOOD.  YUCKY FOOD."  She has has no idea what conversation is, so she figures that if everyone else is talking, it must mean that she should also be talking.  But even worse than her 'conversation' is her requests for things.

"MORE MILK.  MORE MILK!  MORE MILK!! MORE MILK!!! MOOOOORE MIIIIIIIILK!!!" If she asks for something and nobody gets it for her in five seconds or less, then she figures that she needs to ask again and keep asking repeatedly until she gets what she wants.  And in her defense, that's probably true most of the time because we don't hear her until she's said things at least ten times because everyone else is trying to talk over each other.

Every now and then we try to bring up the idea of everyone taking turns talking during dinner and it lasts for maybe ten or even fifteen minutes before someone can't stand holding their thoughts until all of the eight other people have had their turn and everything degrades into a free-for-all again.  

Or if one conversation gets boring, various side conversations pop up because there's always somebody else available to talk to.  And it's a guarantee that at some point during dinner one of those side conversations will turn into a fight.  With so many people in the family, there's always someone you can find to disagree with.  Often I spend half of dinner not saying anything at all, if only to do my part in lessening the general dinner noise.  

The only bright spot of hope is that our usual dinner conversations will now be capped at nine participants.  Unless we have an intrepid dinner guest or two, nobody else will be joining the fray.  And as everyone gets older, they might begin to learn how to listen to what everyone else has to say before just talking over them.  But for now, our dinners can get very, very noisy.  But I suppose that's what happens when you have seven children.  In the end, I've got nobody to blame but myself.  

Happy Birthday, Joseph!

This week Joseph turned ten years old.  When Kathleen turned ten years old, it was such an unimaginably ancient age that I hardly knew what to do with myself.  With two adult-sized children in the house, ten is less of an advanced age, but for Joseph ten is still a big milestone.

We celebrated his birthday with a day off from school.  Everyone loves this family tradition, and almost every child has their birthday during the school year, so we get to have a lot of birthday holidays.  According to Eleanor, the best part of being homeschooled is that you get to have school off on your birthday.  The children ended up watching two movies during the day because we decided to home.  Even as an adult, watching a movie in the middle of the day still feels like the height of luxury.  

In addition to picking both movies, Joseph got to pick the breakfast (aebelskivers), his cake (lemon tart), and dinner (sushi).  With so many people in the family who have so many different opinions, a birthday is a special day when the birthday child gets to make all the choices without having to take turns with anyone else.  

The best part of Joseph's day was, of course, his presents.  This year some of his siblings gave him presents, so he was a very happy boy with five presents to open.  All but one were LEGO sets, adding to the number of possible caltrops that can be scattered across every imaginable place in the house.  As soon as the tart was shoveled into their mouths, Joseph and Edwin sprinted upstairs to start building their new treasures.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do for presents when they finally grow out of LEGOs.  

For Joseph's birthday Saturday, we went to the circus.  The "Russian" ('more like Kazakh' was Edwin's verdict after noting the ethnicity of the performers) circus was in town, so we decided to join in with crowds of Uzbek children and their parents for an afternoon of entertaining acts.  This was our third trip to a Soviet-era circus building, having gone to the Baku and Dushanbe circuses also.  We were happy to see that Nur-Sultan also has a circus, although it was built after the Soviet era.  

Watching acrobats perform breathtaking feats of strength, balance, and agility never gets old, and everyone enjoyed seeing what amazing stunt would be next.  We got to watch tightrope walkers, jugglers, a bear, acrobatic archers, funny acts, and someone jumping rope on the back of a cantering horse.  Nobody was bored.

We are all happy to have Joseph as part of our family.  He is irrepressibly cheerful and can usually be found with a wide grin on his face as he finds a new joke to tell or a funny story to relate.  I can always count on Joseph to help out with whatever I ask him to do, and he always wants to make sure that his siblings are taken care of.  I'm quite interested to see what Joseph will find to pour his interest into as he grows older.  But for now, we'll enjoy him as the newest decade-old child in our house.  Happy birthday, Joseph!

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth turned two last Sunday.  Brandon spent all Sunday observing the Uzbek presidential election in Bukhara, so we didn't celebrate on Sunday, but instead on Monday.  One of the advantages of being two years old is that you're not quite clear on what exactly birthdays are and when they're supposed to be celebrated.

Sophia has been teaching Elizabeth the happy birthday song, so she was delighted when we lit the two candles on her cake and all sang to her.  She was even more delighted when she received a bag of candy that her siblings has bought for her and a book that her grandmother had sent.  When the evening ended with a piece of cake, her birthday bliss was complete.

Elizabeth is a very typical two year-old, busily getting into all the trouble she can find.  After Elizabeth repeatedly ransacked Kathleen and Sophia's room while they were doing their schoolwork, the girls have started locking their door whenever they leave their room as Elizabeth can now open doors by herself.  

One morning this week, Edwin found Elizabeth in the kitchen.  She had pulled a chair over to the counter, climbed up the chair, and then found a bin full of chocolate chips.  Knowing that someone would find her eventually, she busily stuffed as many chocolate chips into her mouth as quickly as she could.  When she was discovered, her face was smeared with chocolate and Elizabeth looked very pleased with her ability to find tasty treats entirely on her own.  

Kathleen and Sophia begged me to buy a bike trailer so that they could take Elizabeth on their afternoon bike rides, and I finally gave in a month ago.  Now one of Elizabeth's happiest things is being tucked into the seat of the trailer, cuddled up with her blanket watching the streets of our neighborhood whizz by as her sisters pull in her style.  Whenever she wakes up from her afternoon nap, she immediately starts demanding, "Bike trailer!  Bike trailer!! BIKE TRAILER!!!" 

I've always enjoyed two year olds, and Elizabeth is no exception to that.  She definitely has her moments when she's loudly demanding something that she can't have, or desperately wants a thing that I don't understand, or hops on and off and on and off my lap constantly while I'm trying to teach school lessons.  But she is usually adorable cute, cheerfully happy, and oh so sweet to cuddle in my lap.  

I'll freely admit that part of my enjoyment in her is because she's the last one.  Whenever I have to clean up another mess she's made, I know that those messes won't last that much longer.  Her irritating screams and cries aren't that bad because they won't be followed by someone else doing that.  And every new milestone she reaches is the last time I get to watch one of my own children reach do that new thing.  I now understand why the babies in families get special treatment from everyone.  

We are all happy to have Elizabeth in our family.  Happy Birthday, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth, Emotional Support Toddler

Brandon is, sadly, back to working full-time at the embassy.  He has been since the spring, but we're still in mourning that he has to go to work and leave us all day every day.  Occasionally, however, he will still work from home if can swing it.  

Last Thursday he participated on a conference on religious freedom in Uzbekistan.  Before covid times, these conferences were held in person, but now everyone has discovered the joy of virtual conferences and attendees can enjoy attending from the comfort of their home or office.  It saves travel time, and the organizers don't have to worry about providing snacks and drinks for breaks.

Before I went downstairs to do school with the children, Brandon let me know when his slot for speaking would be.  He had spent a reasonable amount of time working on a speech that he was giving on behalf of the U.S. government and he didn't really want it to be punctuated by screams, shrieks, cries, pounding, slamming, or any other other random noises that happen on a regular basis at our house.  It's pretty impressive how well microphones can pick up the exact noises that you'd rather not have shared with everyone.

As the time approached, I let all of the children know that Dad would be giving a speech, and everyone should be very careful to keep quiet.  William started shrieking just before the appointed time, but I was able to chase him down and force silence on him just in time.  We all tiptoed carefully around the house, speaking in whispers and most especially staying out of the upstairs where Brandon was working.  As I helped Eleanor work on her grammar lesson, I heard Brandon speaking loudly and clearly and felt like a Good Wife for keeping everyone quiet for this important moment.

Soon enough, Brandon grew quiet and we returned back to our normal school noisiness.  A little while later, I checked in with Brandon to see how the speech had gone.  

"It went well," he told me, "but right before I had to speak, I heard Elizabeth coming up the stairs, babbling to herself.  Right as she came up to me, the moderator announced that I would be speaking, and I had to turn on my camera.  I couldn't do anything about her being there.  Everyone was waiting for me and I couldn't suddenly rush off camera so that I could carry Elizabeth downstairs and give her to someone.  I just had to start my speech.  There wasn't anything I could do.  

If she had come up five minutes earlier, I could have taken her downstairs to you.  If she had come ten minutes later, I would have been done.  But instead she had come at the exact wrong moment in my entire workday.  I had visions of that BBC guy with the little kid in the background flashing through my head and I couldn't believe that the exact same thing was happening to me.

Luckily, she came from the side and she's short so everything happened where the nobody could see what was going on.  So I clapped my hand on her head to keep her from trying to climb on my lap and just started my speech.  I was afraid that she was going to cry or complain about being kept still, but I think she was just surprised at my my reaction and also how loudly I was talking.  She might have been able to tell that something important was going on and kept quiet, but I'm just grateful nobody but me could tell that she was there the entire time.  Maybe she just knew I needed a live audience."

As I listened to him, I couldn't decide whether to die of mortification or die laughing.  I had been so careful about making sure everyone kept very quiet, but didn't even think to wonder where Elizabeth was during that all-important ten minutes.  I literally had one job to do, and only had to do it for ten minutes, and I wasn't able to get it done properly.  

But when I thought of Elizabeth standing next to Brandon, held immobile by his hand firmly held on her little blonde head, I couldn't help but laugh.  What a perfect encapsulation of life as a father of seven children - giving a speech to numerous government officials and members of various organizations while desperately trying to keep your almost two year old daughter from making an unannounced appearance in the meeting.  

In the end, everything turned out okay, and nobody was the wiser except the three of us.  And now the entire internet.  But I know that the next time Brandon has to give a speech while we're all at home, I'll be very sure to make sure that Elizabeth is kept as far as physically possible from Brandon.

Happy Birthday, Sophia!

This week, Sophia turned thirteen, which means that I now have two teenagers in my house.  When I mentioned this to Sophia, she looked at me with a somewhat incredulous expression and replied, "Mom, you're going to have two teenagers in the house until William leaves on his mission - and that is in fourteen years!" So I guess the era of teenager-hood has arrived at the Sherwood house.

But to be fair, Sophia has - so far - shown no inclination to become like some of the horror stories that one hears about.  She is very practically minded and doesn't like conflict, so that certainly helps to keep the drama to a minimum in the house.  Occasionally we will have a difference of opinion about things, but she's very good about talking things through without getting dramatic.  Once she told me that occasionally she will run scenarios in her head where she decides to defy the parental orders just to see what could possibly happen.  "But," she commented with a shrug, "I always realize that that you have all the power and will win every time.  So it's really not worth it."

So far, I'm enjoying the teenage years of my two girls, as we get to have fun conversations together discussing life, future plans, and things that are going on around us.  They're both quite helpful and have helped widen the island of sanity in the middle of the whirlwind of life with seven children.  My role as a mother with them has changed over the years and I'm much more advisory than I used to be, checking in on them from time to time and offering help with problems and situations, but letting them do the heavy lifting from day to day.  It's probably a good thing that they're both so independent as I have my hands full with their five younger siblings.

To celebrate Sophia's birthday, we cancelled school for the day.  Sophia is mostly done with her school for the year anyway, as their online classes were gracious enough to finish the week before her birthday.  But everyone got school off, as birthdays in our house are holidays for the entire family.  

She started the day crafting with Kathleen, then swam until lunch.  After lunch, everyone enjoyed watching a movie and eating popcorn, something that never happens in the middle of the day on a weekday.  For dinner in the evening, we had sushi, followed by Sophia's favorite raspberry-chocolate-meringue cake.  And of course there were presents, because what's a birthday without presents?

Sophia really enjoys climbing and will climb any tree she can find, so on Saturday we went rock climbing at a local gym that a friend had recommended.  All of the children enjoyed making it to the top of the wall, and Sophia was the fastest each time.  

It seems like just a few years ago that I was a young mother of two and Sophia was a cute little baby with an infectious smile and adorable mohawk.  But now she is almost as tall as me, weighs about fifteen pounds less than me, and is closer to being a mother with her own little baby than she is to being my little baby.  But I guess that's what happens when one has children - they grow up without ever asking your permission.  

We're all happy to have Sophia in our family.  Happy Birthday, Sophia!

The End of an Era

Elizabeth turns eighteen months this week, which means that she is definitely no longer a baby.  She hasn't been a baby for quite some time, but I don't think I realized it fully until the last few weeks.  Being a girl, she started talking a few months ago and keeps adding a word or two to her vocabulary each week.  After a slow start, she is confidently walking around the house, happily making as many messes as she can before someone finds her and confiscates whatever writing instrument she has managed to find despite our best efforts to keep them from her.  She has even figured out how to go both up and down stairs.  If we weren't leaving in three months, I'd be gearing up to potty train her in a few months.

When Kathleen was eighteen months old, she was a giant, almost old enough to head off to college.  I was three months away from delivering Sophia, so Kathleen didn't have the luxury of staying a baby much longer.  I needed someone who was big enough to do things on their own and maybe even help out.  

But Elizabeth is the last child and has so many other siblings that fill all of the other slots - teenager, tween, older child, younger child, toddler - that nobody has really considered her as anything other than The Baby.  But while none of us were noticing, she kept on growing up and turned into a toddler without our permission.

It is both strange and liberating to contemplate the end of having a baby in the house.  I've had babies in the house (or on their way) for fifteen years now and been anticipating babies for much longer than that.  Ever since I was a child, I've always wanted to be a mother and looked forward to that eventual day.

I'm certainly not done being a mother by any stretch of the imagination (after I'll mother is a job that never ends), but I'm now officially done with being a mother to babies.  I knew, theoretically, that this day would come eventually, but the theoretical consideration of a future state and the actual arrival of that state are two different prospects entirely.  I have now finished a stage of my career as a mother, and from here on I will be closing down more stages on the back end while I continue to open up new stages on the front one.  

Awhile ago I realized that I will no longer have a constant baby in the house, the older babies getting replaced with new models quite regularly.  Now I will have a constant teenager (soon to be two teenagers) in the house, always someone who is looking forward to and planning for their own life as an adult to begin soon.  Instead of welcoming in new family members, I have to shift to sending them out on their own.  

But I'm also very happy to be giving away clothes as soon as Elizabeth grows out of them.  I was happy to put the infant car seat in the give-away pile, along with a pile of baby blankets and crib sheets.  I'm looking forward to getting rid of the diapers and diaper pail this fall.  I thrilled that I never have to fly with an infant again.  I'm relieved that our travel from here on out will always be with children who can walk, talk, and eat regular table food.  The children are all happy that we won't have any more agents of destruction that get into their favorite toys and books and ruin them.  

But I'm also sad that I have only have one more baby to cuddle that will let me rock them as they sweetly suck their thumb, nestling themselves under my chin.  I know that I will rock other babies, but they will never be my babies.  I'll never again be able to elicit those deep, delighted baby laughs as I blow raspberries on soft baby tummies as they kick their legs in pleasure.  Nobody will fit perfectly into the crook of my arm or fall asleep in my lap with the perfect bonelessness of baby sleep.  Pretty soon nobody will even want bedtime stories any more.  

But such is life - there is always a strange, disconcerting mix of both sorrow and gladness.  And despite trying to decide whether I can't wait for them to grow up, or that I never want them to ever stop being babies, time continues on quite regularly without any consultation from me about how I would prefer it to flow.  Once we are born, we march inevitably on to death.  Or to put it less bleakly, once a baby is born, it marches on inevitably to adulthood and all the joys and sorrows that come along the way.  

So whether I like it or not (and that depends on the day and the time of any particular day), my era of Mother to Babies has ended.  Time for toddlerhood to begin!

Happy Birthday, William!

Today William turned four.  His birthday is actually this coming week, but I'm not a stickler about doing things on their exact dates if other dates are more convenient.  We've had several Christmases on a day other than December 25, and everyone was just as festive.  Brandon has a busy schedule this coming week, so celebrating on a weekend made more sense this year.  Plus, William isn't that aware of what dates are.  And also, who would argue with having their birthday early?

For his birthday activity, we went to a local trampoline park.  We hadn't been in maybe a year (definitely not since March), so Elizabeth had a whole new world to discover and was beyond excited to have an entire room full of trampolines to crawl on.  I had to laugh as I watched her crawl from trampoline to trampoline, stopping to sit and bounce on every single one.  

I don't usually bounce with the children, but had to watch Elizabeth this time, so Kathleen and Sophia cajoled me into showing them my trampoline flipping ability.  It's been a long time since I was young and (much more) reckless, and although I pulled off the flip, it was a lot scarier than flips used to be.  William took advantage of my presence and made sure that I spent a lot of time jumping with him.  Which was fair, as it was his birthday Saturday.

The fun continued with lunch at a restaurant (also not done in over a year) and William's choice of movie for the evening.

Today we had his birthday meal of choice, spaghetti.  I have never made spaghetti in my entire life, so when he started asking for it, I couldn't figure out where he had even heard of it, much less eaten it.  Then I remembered that his current favorite book is Spaghetti With a Chance of Meatballs (because who doesn't love a book about food??), but I still couldn't figure out where he had eaten it, until I recalled his play dates at a friend's house.  I asked my friend if they had ever eaten spaghetti for lunch, and she said that yes, but only once.  But for William, I guess once was all it took.

For dessert he had chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.  When I brought up cakes, he first requested a red car cake, which got shot down.  I'm not a creative cake maker, so I gave him the option of white cake with brown frosting or brown cake with white frosting.  He opted for brown cake with brown frosting, choosing the best of both worlds.

One of the best parts of little kid birthdays is how easy they are to please.  For his present, I sent Sophia down to the local grocery store, where she picked out a set of three little cars for him.  She and Eleanor (the only currently solvent siblings) also bought him a set of little cars, and he was wildly happy when he opened his present.  My mom had asked for suggestions for a grandma present, and I told her not to worry because: 1. He's only four and doesn't need much more than a simple present, and 2. We're going to be getting rid of lots of toys in a few months anyway, so why buy more toys now?

So for William, it was a perfect birthday.  He got to make all the choices, blow out the candles, have cake, and add more cars to his collection.  I think that we could all learn a lesson from the happiness of four year-olds.  Happy Birthday, William!

Elizabeth, the Reluctant Walker

 I love when my babies reach mobility milestones.  I always excitedly watch for when they learn to roll over, then sit up, then crawl, and finally walk.  Brandon doesn't understand why I want them to become more mobile - it just gives them further scope for creating messes.  Why would I want a nice, quiet, self-contained baby to get some mobility and start creating chaos everywhere they go?  I understand his view - mobile babies do manage to orchestrate some pretty spectacular disasters - but I enjoy the self-entertainment value of the messes.  Yes, I have to clean them up eventually (or even better - make one of the other children do it), but for that twenty or thirty minutes while the baby is creating their newest masterpiece, I am left alone.  A mobile baby is not a bored baby, and an entertained baby is a happy baby.  

I especially love when my babies learn how to walk.  When babies start walking, they aren't left behind all the time, busily crawling to try and keep up with the rest of the family.  They stop following everyone around the house, crying loudly to be picked up and taken along.  Instead, they just toddle behind, happy to be going something like the same pace as everyone else.  And they can be let out of their strollers when we go to parks, happily toddling around instead of eating mud and getting dirty.  It's just a better way to live.  There's a reason humans became bipedal.

Kathleen learned to walk at the early (for our family) age of twelve months.  Nobody else has matched her early mobility, with the latest walker being Sophia.  She didn't decide to be self-propelled until I was six months pregnant with Edwin.  Most of them have started walking between fourteen and fifteen months, much to my sadness.  I hear stories about nine- or ten-month walking babies, but none of mine have ever come close to being that clever.

Elizabeth has been... less adventurous... about all her mobility milestones.  She was coming close to her six-month birthday and was still unable to roll over.  She hadn't shone any inclination and wasn't particularly worried that practically her entire life was spent on her back.  Finally, worried about her development, I showed her how to roll herself over.  After a day or two of coaching, she picked it right up.  But I'm not sure when she would have decided to do it herself if nobody had intervened.  

She learned to sit up by pushing herself backwards through a split, which was endlessly entertaining.  I took several videos so that we can make sure she never forgets how strangely she sat up as a baby.  Her crawling also took coaching, but thankfully she learned to crawl before too much boredom set in and cries for entertainment disturbed us every twenty minutes.

When she learned to pull up on furniture at nine months, I figured that I had an early walker on my hands.  In my experience, babies are walking within a month or two of learning to get upright.  First a month passed, then two, then Elizabeth's first birthday, then another month, and she still didn't show any desire to walk.  

By the beginning of December (13 1/2 months, for those counting), she learned how to stand independently.  "Finally!" I thought to myself, "Now we're getting somewhere!"  Her favorite place to stand was in front of the Christmas tree, where she could delicately finger the ornaments, babbling pleased comments about the baubles she had better access to with this new and improved way of doing things.

Kathleen and Sophia, as eager as I was to see Elizabeth walk, started baby bootcamp for walking practice.  Their early efforts with gummy bears as bribes were fairly successful, but Elizabeth got tired of the game, and would fold her legs up in protest, going limp with every attempt to make her stand and walk.

Still they persevered, and after a month break, she grudgingly allowed her sisters to set her up so she could stumble a few steps into their arms.  After the false start of the month before, everyone thought that surely this was the time.  Every other time my children have learned to walk, they have moved quickly from those first few steps to walking drunkenly across the room, hands waving in the air, grinning with excitement with their new skill, taking a few weeks at most to make that jump.  

But not Elizabeth.  Having been shown that walking was possible, she just didn't care.  She would willingly enough consent to being set up to take three or four steps, but didn't see the use of doing any more than that.  When she needed to take something with her, she would just get up her knees and knee-walk across the floor while clutching the crucial toy, safely kept from having to walk.

This past week she has decided that walking is okay if you need to get from one place to another, but only if it is three feet away from where you already are.  Everyone is, again, waiting for that first unprompted trip across the floor, but I've stopped holding my breath.

We have a family vacation planned for the first week of March, one that would be a lot easier to take with seven fully mobile children.  Almost every day, the children ask if I think that Elizabeth will be walking by then.  If she were any other child, I would easily answer yes.  But I have no idea with Elizabeth.  She clearly likes to do things in her own way and in her own time.  

Sophia asked me recently how we could make Elizabeth walk.  I laughed and replied that nobody can make a baby do anything.  You can make things more attractive, set up situations where they're more likely to do things, and exert some small amount of physical coercion.  But - just like any other human being - you can't make babies do anything.  They do things when they decide that they want to do them, and not a second sooner.  Which is a good lesson to learn early on in life because children will continue to learn things when they want to and not any sooner.  And so will teenagers.  And so will adults.  So I suppose it's good to learn the limits of your power as a parent early and save a lot of hair being pulled out in the future.  Or at least that's the idea.  

So for now, I'm making sure to add 'baby carrier' to our packing list.  Is it possible that Elizabeth will start walking in the next four and a half weeks?  Perhaps.  Is it likely?  Maybe.  Should I stake the happiness of may vacation on it?  Definitely not.  She's making sure that we know now that she prefers to do things in her own time and in her own way.  Which, I suppose is good to know early so we can get ready for some fun times as she gets older.  And for now, I'll just keep carrying her around the house with me.  It's the final time anyone will need me to do that for them, so I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Family Home Evening in the Pool

Spring here in Tashkent has been rather uneven.  Of course, spring is a season of uneven weather - never does the weather slowly warm up in a perfectly rational climb of increasing daily temperatures.  But this spring has been annoyingly uneven for people who want to swim in their pool, especially when one of those people is me.

But, as I remind Kathleen every time she complains about yet another cloudy, rainy Saturday followed by a clear, sunny Sunday (and there have been a lot), soon enough it will be clear, sunny, and hot every single day.  For four months straight.  So we don't need to rush the advent of summer that much.

But this past Monday it was one of those clear, sunny, hot days.  Our pool heater has proven to be a little wimpier than I'd like and the water hasn't spent much time above the 85 degree mark - my bare minimum temperature for swimming.  But on Monday the weather was perfect for swimming - 93 degree air temperature and 85 degree water temperature.

I had some yard work to do that afternoon, and spend a couple of hours sweating while watching the children splash in the pool, asking me to come swim with them.  Finally, I was finished and rushed to put my own swimsuit on.  It was close enough to 5:00 that I didn't feel bad asking Brandon to come join us.

Usually I start cooking dinner at 5, but I kept revising my dinner plans as we kept playing.  We started with swimming, followed by fruit tag, then a rousing game of keep away (parents vs. children), after that a very uneven game of chicken (anyone sitting on Brandon's shoulders was guaranteed a victory), and finished the evening with cannon ball contests (I won). 

By the time we finished, dinner time had come and gone and it was 7:30.  Brandon and I unanimously declared that we had just had our activity portion of Family Home Evening.  I then made up a new meal - dinnssert - where we combined dinner and dessert together in the meal of waffles with fresh strawberries and chocolate sauce.  Everyone approved. 

We rounded out our Family Home Evening program with a discussion of goals while eating waffles, cleaned up the meal, and then sent everyone off to bed.  They all fell asleep quickly and slept soundly, one of the wonderful effects of a long afternoon in the pool.

Usually I'm a very scheduled person; the schedule works for me and I can loosely contain the chaos that is seven children.  Everything is neatly packed in, all of the pieces having found their place over the years of trial and error.  From the time I wake up in the morning until the children go to bed in the evening, life proceeds at its measured pace.  It has to, or the chaos will slip its bounds and explode the household into a noisy, crazy, stressful mess.

But it was nice to spend an evening in the pool instead of marching to the usual schedule.  I was happy to break my own rules to play with the children, taunting them for their inability to catch the ball as it sailed over their heads (but not for much longer).  I enjoyed having children that could wait a little while longer for dinner without dissolving into tears or fights as we enjoyed a perfect evening together.  I hope they'll remember that evening as one of the times where - despite the world outside our gate - everything inside the gate was perfect and everyone was happy together.  When they think of their childhood, that happy time will hold a special glow.  A time when we were all together, enjoying being a family of people who love each other and love being together.  I know I will. 

RSV

We have all been trading colds for the past month.  Many friends traveled over Christmas break and everyone brought back sicknesses, including a nasty cold that has made its way through the school and embassy.  I've been watching as each of the children have fallen prey to it, with Brandon even spending a night with William who would wake himself up coughing and then start screaming and crying. 

So it was no surprise when Elizabeth woke up Wednesday morning with a stuffy nose and a cough.  When everyone in your house gets sick, it's an inevitability that you will also get sick.  By Thursday morning, however, the cough had turned into wheezing.

I've had a lot of children with colds and don't have a tendency to not panic about minor sicknesses.  Part of it is laziness and part is an unreasonable dislike of being told to go home because I'm overreacting.  But as I listened to Elizabeth's breathing and counted her breathing rate (thank you, internet sites for helpful information), I realized that this was not just a normal baby cold. 

I called the health unit, told them that Elizabeth was having trouble breathing, and then told them to expect me shortly.  The nurse and PA also counted Elizabeth's breathing, listened to her lungs, watched her labor to breathe, and checked her oxygen saturation levels.  After a few breathing treatments with albuterol and no measurable improvement, it was time to move on to the next step.

Under normal circumstances, a case of RSV would have been sent to London with its pediatric ICUs, but these days most countries aren't that interested in people with respiratory distress coming in for medical treatment.  So instead we were left with the options available in Tashkent.

Thankfully there is at least one private hospital in town, and soon Elizabeth, the PA, the nurse, a canister of oxygen, and me were on our way across town to a place with ventilators and crash carts. 

As we drove in a terse silence, I remembered a day from my childhood.  My yearly well-child visit was later in the afternoon, and I knew that I would get the inevitable blood draw finger stick, one of the worst possible things in my five year-old existence.  Trying to prepare myself for the ordeal, I spent all afternoon pinching my finger, imaging the pain and bracing myself for it.  But when the actual stick came, no pinching could match the pain that lanced through my small being.

I've thought about the theoretical loss of my children many times - as any mother does - but that drive reminded me again that nobody is ever prepared for the reality of loss, no matter how many times we have pinched our fingers to try and steel ourselves for the pain. 

Thankfully this was not the time, as Elizabeth is now home safely, sleeping peacefully in her own crib after spending forty-eight hours in the hospital.  The ventilator in her room stayed quietly in the corner, off and silent.  The crash cart was equally untouched.  Instead we we had a very uneventful time, punctuated with nebulizer treatments and visits from the bemused Indian nurses who couldn't figure out why we were in the hospital with such a healthy, happy baby. 

I have always known that God answers prayers.  Too many of my own have been answered very clearly for me to ever doubt that absolute reality.  As we rushed to the hospital, I prayed my own fervent prayers, begging Him to let me keep my baby girl.  Brandon spread the word to his friends and family who also joined with their own prayers for her health.

It would have been easy to dismiss Elizabeth's rapid recovery as a happy circumstance, that she wasn't really that sick in the first place.  Babies recover from sicknesses all the time, and this was just another time like any other.

But I know that this wasn't the case.  I have no doubt that a miracle occurred and Elizabeth was granted healing as result of the many prayers offered up in her behalf.  And I am grateful. 

Elizabeth Update

Elizabeth continues to be a charming baby, and I decided recently that she is enjoyable 23 3/4 hours of the day.  And some days she's just pleasant the entire day.  I'm sure my other babies were just as enjoyable, but perhaps I just have the time to notice Elizabeth.  Or perhaps because she is my last, I'm soaking it all in before it's over.

I love watching her progress through all the stages, from a little lump that does nothing to a baby that is starting to make intentional attempts to do something.  She hasn't figured out how to flip over yet, but has realized that she can kick her mobile and will happily wait in her crib, kicking contentedly, until someone comes to pick her up.  

She is a very cheerful baby, smiling whenever she sees someone, and laughing when she is tickled.  Her favorite tickling spot is her collar bones, safely hidden up under her multiple chins.  I can never get enough of baby laughs; after having my own babies I completely understand Peter Pan's story of how fairies are born.  

Her siblings all adore her and race to go fetch the 'queen Elizabeth' when their sister's nap is over.  Often fights break out over who gets to hold her when Elizabeth is awake, and if I didn't want to hold her I'd never have to.  The children are always devising some new conveyance or throne for their favorite sister.

I love to see Elizabeth every morning when she greets me with her cheerful smile, and sometimes sit and watch her sleep and marvel at her perfect babiness.  Knowing that she is my last is often bittersweet.  I've been told many times before that babies grow up so fast, and have always thought that it was a good thing.  But now that every single day that passes brings an end to my time as a mother of babies, I feel each of those days keenly.  I try not to focus on that too much, but it's hard.  I can never get in enough baby snuggles to last me the rest of my life and soon enough I will only have the memory of them.  

I wouldn't keep her as a baby even if I could because she needs to have her own chance to grow and learn, just as I have had my own.  Sometimes I imagine what she will be like as a teenager, a young adult, a mother like me and can hardly see it in her chubby baby curves.  I imagine myself in my own mother's arms, being cherished as I now cherish.  I didn't imagine that parenting would be a sacrifice in this way, letting your child grow and become their own person when you'd rather keep them as yours forever.

I hope that when I die I can live in my memories in perfect fidelity, and feel her soft cheek against my own, her tiny fists grasping my hair.  I can hold her again as she relaxes into perfect baby sleep, content to be in my arms as all is right with the world.  I can hear her delighted baby chuckle and watch her arms wave in delight as I tickle her tiny sides.  

But for now, I can still enjoy the passing days as they actually happen.  They haven't run out yet and I can still tuck her into the corner of my lap where she is content to stay for now.  And she can stay there as long as she likes.  

Life Lesson: Don't Stick Pencil Leads in Your Ear

I have no idea why children stick things in various orifices.  I don't understand what causes them to look at a small item (bean, bead, seed, etc) and think, "It would be really fun to stick this up my nose!  I would love to see if it fits!  Of all the things I can do for fun, this would be the most fun thing I could possibly think of!"  But I suppose I'm judging the actions of people who also suck on appendages, refuse to eat perfectly good food, and wear nothing but underwear all winter long (*cough* William). 

We haven't had any things-in-orifices crises for quite awhile.  The last incident was when Edwin stuck a bead in his nose on Sophia's sixth birthday.  Her birthday happened to fall on a Sunday, Eleanor was less than three weeks old, and we only had one car.  It was a lot fun and took a visit to both urgent care and the emergency room to get the bead out.

So I should have figured that it was about time for another incident - we were in fact overdue - and not been surprised when Joseph guiltily sidled up to me last Thursday afternoon.

Thursday is my one free afternoon of the week.  I don't have Russian lessons or laundry folding or play dates so there are three full hours of time to do whatever I want.  This Thursday also happened to be the very first Thursday of piano lessons with our new piano teacher.  Our previous teacher had gone back to work after having a baby, and the new teacher is a friend from the embassy community.

As I descended the stairs to start Doing Whatever I Like, Joseph approached me with a worried expression.  "Mom," his high little voice quavered, "um, I have something to tell you."  It's never good when a child has 'something to tell you.'  That's when you know that whatever trouble they have gotten into is so bad that they can't possibly clean up the mess themselves.  They are in so deep that dealing with mom's wrath is still better than whatever new problem they've created.  

I took several deep breath, composed myself and calmly asked him what the problem was.

"Well, I was doing my school work and while I was writing the lead broke off my pencil.  I was bored and so I put it in my ear.  The last time I did that, I shook my head for awhile and it came out.  But this time I did that and the lead wouldn't come out.  I tried sticking scissors in my ear, but that didn't work either.  What do you think I should do?"

As the words tumbled out of his mouth, I saw my open afternoon evaporate.  I hate medical emergencies.  Our first resource is always the embassy health unit, which is great to have, but is also half an hour away.  Any time I have to take anyone in for the simplest thing, it's always an hour and a half minimum taken out of my day.  So before I change into real clothes and head across town I make sure we really need to go see someone about the emergency.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything better than the scissors Joseph had already tried, so I immediately knew we were in for a drive together.  

The American P.A. was out of the country, and the American nurse was out of the embassy for training, so we got to see Dr. Rustam, the local doctor who works at the embassy.  He took a look in Joseph's ear and confirmed that yes, there was a pencil lead deep in the ear canal.  I silently rejoiced.  The only thing worse than a trip to the med unit is an unnecessary trip the med unit. 

Dr. Rustam pulled out a pair of long, thin grabbers and rooted around for a bit without any success.  Joseph, thankfully, put up with the poking and prodding quite stoically without any tears or complaints.  

I wasn't sure what would come next after the grabber.  Dr. Rustam then pulled out an irrigator that hooked up to the faucet with a gun that shot water into Joseph's ear.  After a couple of attempts, a small black pencil lead came out and Joseph was declared to be pencil-lead free.  

Nobody ever warned me about the completely random things that I would have to deal with as a parent.  As the second of five children, I had a fairly good idea of the usual trials of parenting - sleeplessness, endless messes, vomit, diarrhea, injuries.  I can say that I've definitely had a lot of experience with those things in the thirteen years of my tenure as a mother.  

But then there are the really novel things that nobody would have ever thought to have warned me about.  "Make sure to keep pomegranate seeds away from children.  They fit perfectly up noses."  "Put the microscope slides in a high place.  Two-year olds love to throw them from back porches."  "Whatever you do, don't let the children play with butter knives in the yard.  They always end up on the front gate roof."  

It is not possible to name all the ways a child can get into trouble because children are endlessly creative.  There is no way to keep ahead of them and so instead I just follow behind them, cleaning up the novel messes that they have made while I was doing something else.  Whenever Brandon comes across a mess himself - one that escaped my notice while I was taking care of the rest of the messes - he inevitably asks why the anonymous child has decided to crucify Barbies on the lawn or use the front steps as a dry sled run or climb up the outside of the house using the Fifty Foot Rope. 

 I can never give him a satisfying answer because there isn't one to be found.  The best I can do is give a weak shrug, throwing up my hands in surrender, and reply, "It must have looked like fun to them?"  

And such is the life of a parent - never boring, endlessly surprising.  And one day, when we're old and have forgotten all of the bad parts, it will make for great stories.  Until then, however, it makes for a whole lot of lost afternoons.

In Defense of Ritalin

My family has a history of ADD.  Brandon's family does too, so it isn't surprising that two of our children suffer from it also.  When I was a child, ADD was a made-up diagnosis, something that was used as an excuse for children whose parents didn't teach them how to sit still and be quiet.  I didn't really believe that it was an actual mental difficulty.

Now, of course, I know differently.  Life - and especially parenthood - has a way of taking childish notions and proving them entirely wrong.  We started the older child on Ritalin while living with my parents during an OB medevac.  This child was not hyperactive at all and wasn't one one would think of the 'classic' ADD case.  My parents were a little skeptical that this child needed medication - after all they weren't disruptive and were capable of doing their school work.  But after the first day of watching this child on Ritalin, both were amazed at the difference.

Recently we started our second ADD child on Ritalin.  We waited to start the first one, a girl, until third grade.  But with this child, a boy, it became apparent that third grade was going to be waiting too long and so we started him earlier.

The day he started it was immediately apparent when the Ritalin kicked in.  Writing a sentence that took half an hour the day before took five minutes.  His balkiness when working with his sister disappeared.  Even his handwriting improved.  He usually made it through the school day with a liberal sprinkling of breaks but when I asked him if he wanted a break that day, he cheerly replied, "Nope! I just want to go ahead and get my school work done!" And he did.

These days I feel like that general approval of Ritalin was waned.  There are accusations of doctors handing it out like candy, and lots of hand-writing statistics about how many children use the medication.  Impassioned articles beg parents to decline brain-altering medications in favor of moving at a pace that the child can handle, usually with lots of breaks.

There are also lots of theories as to why the diagnoses of ADD have soared over the last few decades, from nutrition to old age to increased school demands.  I imagine that eventually that puzzle will be worked out, but the hows and whys don't really matter when you have a child that is struggling with a real problem.

And after watching my two ADD children, I know that it is a real problem.  Having seven children has allowed me to observe a lot of childhood behavior and sort out what is normal age-appropriate behavior and what is not.  After we had one ADD child, it made it even easier to spot the second one pretty young.  They weren't simply inattentive or lazy, they were different.  It wasn't just an issue of not having a desire to do their work or remembering to concentrate, it was a fundamental inability to do it when things got too hard.

And so I did the responsible thing - I got help for my children.  And help in this case was medication.  It certainly wasn't only medication, but medication was a crucial part of that help.

I imagine that if I only had one child, perhaps we could have forgone medication.  Perhaps.  My day would have been taken up by timers, reminders, and watching my child like a hawk.  And over time, they would have slowly, painfully developed that ability to manage those systems by themselves.  But it would have been a lot of work and probably been bad for our relationship.  One can only remind someone to do something nicely so many times before the gentle reminders turn into stern requests and eventually irritated demands.  Nobody likes to be bothered like that, and I know that I am driven crazy when I do the bothering.

I have a friend who was not diagnosed with ADD until adulthood.  When I mentioned that we had put one of our children on Ritalin, this friend thanked me for recognizing that this child needed help and then helping her with medication.  My friend said that they had spent most of their school years wondering why they were never able to manage things like everyone else seemed to be able to.  They felt like they must just be stupid or incompetent and went through episodes of depression because of it.  When the diagnosis - and subsequent medication - finally happened, this friend's life became functional in a way it had never been.  They were so happy to hear that our child wasn't going to have to go through the same struggles.

There are times for medication and there are times for other methods.  And often those things need to be used together - it doesn't have to be an either-or proposition.  My ADD children's days begin with medication, but it certainly doesn't mean that I get to check out and stop parenting.  Instead, it just means that I get to parent them more like my other children.  We still use timers and lists and check-ins, but they not longer are accompanied by increasing frustration and anger on both sides.  They get more autonomy and choices in how they get their work done instead of having rigid schedules to keep everything functioning properly.  There are definitely still times when both get seriously distracted, but it's not every ten minutes like in the pre-medication days.

I'm grateful for the tools that I have to help my children, and grateful that one of those tools I have is medication.  I'm glad that my ADD children don't have to try and brute-force their way through a problem that is not of their own making.  I'm happy that we can have a good relationship because we're both not driving each other crazy.  And I'm thankful for a supportive pediatrician that has helped us get our children the medication they need.

Now it's time for my public service announcement: If you or someone you love is struggling with ADD or ADHD, don't dismiss medication as a viable tool to help with that struggle.  Medication isn't the only thing that will help, but it's definitely something to consider.  We all need help, and sometimes that help comes in the form of a little white pill.