Evie is Eight!

A short four days after the birth of Heidi, we celebrated the birth of Evie!  She turned eight years old!

Birthday Buddies! In matching knitwear!

We celebrated Evie's birthday with cake and ice cream, of course, and presents (of course)!

Mark picked the cake out at Costco the other day.  When I asked what was on the cake he said, "A pumpkin.  Or maybe it's a basketball.  I couldn't really tell.  But it does say Happy Birthday."  Oh, that man loves to tease me! I about had a panic attack thinking it was a basketball cake!

Evie's gifts were her very own ball of yarn and knitting needles, a giant coloring book and new colored pencils, and, best of all... her first Breyer horses AND a trip to horse camp next summer!  It is hard to get a birthday present that is so far in the future, but we know that a week of horseback riding this summer is what she wanted most in the world! 

I would like to say that our gifts to her pale in comparison to her gift to us.  Every day, this beautiful little girl blesses us with her love.  She has spent these last difficult weeks taking good care of her younger siblings.  She plays school with them, reads them stories, teaches them simple math concepts, takes them outside to play, and is always willing to run little errands all over the house.  She is patient, kind, and understanding.  She is loyal to her older brothers, even though they tease her.  She really is a gem of a girl and I was supremely blessed eight years ago the day she was born.

Birth Story

Early in the morning on Sunday, November 24th, I started waking frequently needing to use the bathroom.  This is not unusual for a pregnant lady four days past her due date, but for some reason, it was really bothering me.  By 6:00 AM I realized that I was actually having light contractions.  Finally, the baby was coming!

Mark and I started hustling around the house, getting last minutes things straightened and supplies gathered.  We knew we had awhile to wait...but we didn't know HOW long it would be.  My contractions stayed light and infrequent all morning, but I called my doula-friend and midwives, just to give them a heads up that today was the day!

My doula-friend came over after church, but the midwives were at another birth.  Our two due dates were two weeks apart, but she started labor early and I was late.  We both were experiencing light, slow mornings, so I was not worried at all about when the midwives would come out.  Their back up plan was to have one come out here and the other stay with the other mom with another back up midwife.

All afternoon, we puttered around, doing nothing really.  I continued to have irregular contractions that weren't even painful.  I could talk through them, so I knew the actual labor and delivery were far in my future.  I was chilly all day, which was the opposite of how I normally feel, but I knew I was shivering because of the excitement and anticipation of real labor.  By dinner time there was still nothing going on.  Mark made spaghetti for dinner (I wasn't very hungry so Daniel ate all my noodles and left the sauce) and we started thinking about our next steps.  My doula-friend's girls were at home with their grandma, but grandma needed to work the next morning.  We decided that my doula-friend should go home, get her girls ready for bed, and be on call for when things really picked up. 

At 8:00 PM, I went to bed.  I fell asleep immediately, but woke up ten minutes later. Contraction.  I went back to sleep.  Ten minutes later, I had another contraction.  I went back to sleep.  This pattern repeated a few times, so I got out of bed to see if the ten minute pattern would stay.  It did!  By this time, the younger kids were settling into bed and the older kids were getting ready for bed.  I called my doula-friend to come back; her kids were settling into bed too, but she was going to wake them up and bring them over with her.  I called the midwives and left a message for them that things had finally settled into a pattern.

Between 10:00 and 11:00, my contractions were between 4 and 7 minutes apart.  They were slightly painful, but not enough that I had to stop what I was doing.  And it's a good thing too!  Mark had set up the birth tub and had started to fill it.  He sunk the hose deep into the pool and walked away.  Somehow, the hose worked itself loose and our precious hot water was sinking into the carpet and running all over the bathroom floor!  "Anna! I need your help!" I heard Mark shout from the bedroom.  He came running out of the back of the house.  "I need a shovel or something!" he shouted.  I assumed correctly what happened and grabbed a stack of towels on my way.  But the mess was too big for towels.  Lucky for us, we have a steam cleaner that worked perfectly for this situation.  It was like getting the carpet cleaned when we weren't even planning it! As I was busy sucking the water up, I had another contraction.  This was when Mark said, "What do you think you are doing? Give me that steam cleaner! Go rest!"  Yeah, I guess a laboring mom shouldn't have to suck up gallons and gallons of water of the bathroom floor.

My midwife, her birth assistant, and my doula-friend (and daughters) all showed up by midnight.  I'm not sure exactly when, but I do know that the last contraction I recorded happened at 11:48 PM.  The girls went straight downstairs to sleep on the couches.  After we chatted with everyone and got supplies set up, I went back to bed to sleep as much as I could.  Because, still, my contractions were several minutes apart and not at all unbearably painful-just uncomfortable.

By 2:00 AM, I had had enough.  I knew this baby was still posterior (her back was against my back instead of against my front) and I knew I still had another 24 hours of labor ahead of me.  I knew that I had only interrupted rest for almost 24 hours and I was tired!  I was so tired and so cold and so tired of being cold that I just knew I didn't have what it took to get to the end of this birth.  I talked to Mark and told him that I needed to be transported to the hospital to finish this birth.  I was willing to receive pitocin and an epidural because I just could not survive another 24 hours without rest.  It wasn't the pain sending me in, it was the lack of sleep.  He had my midwife come back and talk to me and she offered to check baby's position and my dilation.  Guess what?  Baby was anterior and in a great position!  And guess what else? I was seven centimeters dilated!  And as soon as my water broke, my cervix would open right up and it would be time to have the baby!  Wow! I thought for sure I would only be a 3 or 4 and here I was, just hours away from being DONE!  That was all I needed to hear.  I was ready to have this baby at home.

I crawled into the birth tub at this point and labored for only two hours.  I was able to sleep between contractions.  My doula-friend brought me drinks and wrapped my shoulders in warm towels.  Mark was on Lula duty; she woke up twice during the labor and Mark was able to get her back to sleep without bringing her into our room (she still joins us each night).  In fact, he was with Lula when my water broke.  I shouted, "Go get Mark! My water broke and this baby is coming NOW!" or something like that.

And then Heidi was born!  It was such a wonderful moment to look into her sweet little face and marvel at how pretty she was.  She is now five days old and is getting even more beautiful.  She is sweet and precious and just a peachy keen addition to our family.

Heidi at Two Days

Heidi is the opposite of Lula.  She likes to be awake.  She likes to suck and prefers my finger to anything else.  This means that I don't get anything done-like eating or other necessary tasks.  She also likes to move her hands a lot.  One of these days I'll be back to blogging...

Heidi Cecelia

I'll just post a few pictures before I head back to bed.... of Heidi Cecelia, born 11/25 at 4:05 AM.  She was 9lbs 5oz and 22 1/4 inches long.

Just born!

Weighing the baby

My four girls

I'm resting as much as possible.  Any time I feel like leaving my room, I regret it and go right back.  So I'll probably wait until tomorrow evening for another update and more pictures.

Hot Potato!

Last night, Mark made the tastiest dinner ever!

This is a twice-baked potato with ham, bacon, onion, and serrano peppers, topped with melted cheese, avocado, and sour cream.  Oh my! It was worth waiting for!  So spicy and creamy! Mark has learned the hard way (several times now) to wear something on his hands when he chops hot peppers.  But his hand protection was too cumbersome last night, so he ended up accidentally rubbing spice oil into his eyes...  I told him if the baby was born last night, there was no way I was going to let him hold her!

She wasn't born.  However, things are starting to move in that direction.  Moving sloooowly, but moving nonetheless.  Mark and I were up by 6:00 AM getting loose ends tied up and by 8:30 we were starting to get bored.  Now it is 1:15 PM and we are wondering if this little girl is holding out to share a birthday with her grandpa!  Contractions are short and spaced far apart, so we have quite a while to go!

My Precious!

For the last six nights, we have watched the extended version of the Lord of the Rings movies.  One part per night, six nights.  Watching movies with small children takes a lot of patience.  But it also makes for some good conversation.

The first thing one might think is, "Those movies are SCARY! How can your little ones watch them?"  Well, either my kids have a higher tolerance for scary characters or they just learn early on that the Orks are just regular people playing dress up-from me.  Mark says I ruin the magic of the story when I tell them about people pretending to be characters in the story and I might as well tell them all there is no such thing as Santa while I'm at it.  But he sleeps with earplugs and I'm the one that gets up with them at night.  The first time they see Gollum as a 2 or 3 year old, they usually say something cute like, "Is that a monkey?"  And most of the time, the youngest of the crew (Daniel and Lula) fall asleep as soon as the movie starts.

The middle kids, like Fiona and Evie, will giggle when Gollum talks to himself or when Gimli says something funny and they will love the elves' outfits.  They will ask questions that have easy answers.  Or questions like, "If Sam is just a regular person pretending to be a hobbit, is he really married to that girl he kisses at the end? No? Then why is he kissing someone he isn't married to?  How much did they pay him to do that?" 

Ian and Shane can (hopefully) appreciate the story on a deeper level.  If they ever stop talking about non-movie related things during the movie.  Last night, Shane lost a tooth right at the end.  He got so worked up about it we had to threaten to send everyone to bed early.  We sneaked a peek at him later and he was petting his tooth and calling it his precious...

...I dug into the annals of Downen history and discovered that Fiona was six days late.  This whole time I thought she was only three days late.  So it looks like I'm in for a longer haul than I thought...

The Video Game Solution

Since I'm feeling a bit like a "watched pot" and the baby is overdue, I guess I'll blog every single day about something. Anything. Just so no one thinks I'm off in labor somewhere.
I've blogged so many times about our attempts to get Daniel to sleep in his own bed.  But this time, we finally have a solution!  Daniel is FINALLY sleeping alone in his bed in his room.  Just in time too!  There was no way we could have fit three co-sleepers with us!

I told him if he stayed in his bed all night and didn't wake me up, he could play video games in the morning after Shane wakes up to help him.  The funny thing is, he can't even play.  Shane does the playing, Daniel's character just walks around and gets killed by the computer player.  But it works, and works really well.  Daniel even took himself potty in the middle of the night without waking anyone up and stayed completely dry (I woke up because I'm a mom and the sounds of little feet padding around the house automatically wakes me up).  He got extra game time for the potty trip!

The flip side is that Daniel throws a temper tantrum when I say his time is over and we need to turn off the TV.  He throws the controller and screams, so I send him to his bed until he can stop screaming and crying.  The last two mornings, before he even starts playing, I gently remind him that he only gets to play for a little while.  "What happens when I say your turn is over?" 

"I get sent to bed?"

Due Day Walk

Mark made me go for a walk.  He said something or another about how good it would be for me and how it might induce labor.  Whatever. Fine. I'll walk.  But he had to carry Lula!

Carry Lula? No problem!

Mark took me on his short, flat trail, through the five acres.  He has been busy removing deciduous trees to make way for cedars and other future fire wood.

Light-sucking vampire trees!

I reminded him that he had to walk slowly if he wanted me to keep up with him.  "Walk slowly? I'm not even moving and you still haven't caught up!" Ha, ha, very funny!

The sun goes down and Lucky joins the Late Baby club.

Now, remember the short and flat part of the trail? Seems Mark forgot the branches and logs I would have to climb over.  "It's good for getting the baby in the right position," he says.  This baby is in a posterior position right now, which could mean a very long, painful labor for me.

I will climb over any number of branches and/or logs if it means she will spin nicely into position by the time labor starts!

The resourceful father: can't find a sock? Use a mitten!

It was a beautiful sunny day today, but it also meant it was quite chilly!  The kids found ice when they played outside!

Groan, I'm still so far away from the house!

See my shadow?

Mark and the boys have been busy cutting and stacking some cedar that came down in a windstorm.  Now we have another stack of secret firewood hiding out on our property!

This is about the time I told Mark that I knew he had tricked me and that I was going to have to walk up the hill from the pond to the house.  Oh well. I survived.

 I actually had enough energy left to circle around the house to see...

...that we have some daffodils coming up! 

Waiting for Baby

We are now in the Zone of Waiting.  My due date is two days away.  I've had two early babies, three late babies, and one born right on time, so this one could come at any time-even today! Or next Saturday!  I haven't been sleeping well for the last few nights.  Uncomfortable sleep comes with the territory (indigestion, waking up just to roll over), but I'm experiencing something completely different than normal.  About five nights ago, I started having anxiety attacks with a racing heart in the middle of the night.  I try to calm myself down and go back to sleep...but then I jolt awake again.  This goes on until two or three in the morning.  Then Lula or Daniel will wake me up.  But after that, I sleep soundly until my normal waking time.  I'm understandably a zombie (with pink eye, did I mention I've had pink eye?) and I have no appetite so I just sit in my chair feeling miserable until I can take a nap.  The kids run around completely unschooled and unparented.  Mark was so busy at work last week, that he had no time to help me. 

Even Lula has figured out how to fend for herself

By Friday, I was a complete and total wreck.  I could no longer function.  I have a very good friend that stepped in and came over and took control of my home, even when I insisted I didn't need any help.  She brought pizza.  She made me call my chiropractor midwife. She cheered me up. She cleaned!  This friend is the same one that threw the surprise baby shower when Lula was born and lent me her birth tub.  She is also stepping in as my doula for this birth.  That, right there, has lifted such a huge burden from my shoulders that I shouldn't have been surprised that I got a good night's sleep Friday.  She knows all about birth (and even teaches childbirth education classes) and loves attending births and everything about birth!  Plus, my kids know her and her kids and my littlest ones love her!  As my chiropractor midwife says, sometimes the Lord forces us into a position where we have to ask for help whether we like it or not!

The Lost Boys

My midwife has me taking some supplements that are supposed to help with my mood and appetite.  Since I've started taking them, I've felt more normal, but I don't know if it's a result of the supplements or having a good friend cheer me up *smile*  I can still only eat tiny amounts of food.  Here it is 10:30 in the morning and I still have no desire whatsoever to eat breakfast.  I'm still waking up at night; last night I tossed and turned for a few hours and had to sleep in while the kids played video games this morning.  But the hopeless feeling is gone and that right there is the most important part.

So now we are just back to waiting...

Warning, Morning Person Alert!

"If I didn't know you so well, I'd be really worried about you."
"Why? Do I look that bad?"
"Yes, you look awful. Warning! Morning Person Alert!"

That was an actual conversation from this morning.  But if I hadn't had such a long day yesterday, I would have been in better form today-I think.

Yesterday, our morning started early with Daniel and Lula snuggled up together between Mark and me (me, not I.  Now that I'm teaching grammar, I'm actually learning it).  Fitting four bodies in a king-sized bed is a bit of a squeeze, but when one of those bodies is also nine months pregnant...well, let's just say I didn't sleep well all night.  The sound that woke me up was retching.  Daniel was going to throw up in his sleep, all over Lula's head!  I quickly jumped up (my speed amazed me), yanked Lula out of the way by her ankles, and woke Mark up.  He sleeps with earplugs, so he didn't hear what I heard.  I made him carry Daniel, still half-asleep, to the bathroom and hold him over the toilet.  There way no way I could deal with that kind of mess.

When Daniel failed to produce even the tiniest amount of vomit (thank you thank you thank you God), Mark questioned my interpretation of what I heard.  Was I sure he wasn't just coughing?  I started to cry.  How are these germs getting into my house? Lula had a fever all weekend and she is a fountain of snot! I'm purposely avoiding public places and people with germs.  Doesn't everyone know that I'm only one week away from having a newborn? And sick newborns end up in intensive care?  How was I going to function?  We all got the stomach flu the day after Daniel was born.  It was hell.  I don't need a repeat performance of that! So there we were, four people up too early after a long night of not sleeping well after a weekend of Lula with a fever.

Molars? Virus? Bacterial infection?

Daniel is always chipper first thing in the morning.  We settled downstairs and got the fireplace going.  Daniel said, "I want my ice cream now."  Huh? What ice cream?  "I want the ice cream that Ian bought for me yesterday!"  We don't have any ice cream.  "Yes, we DO! I WANT my ICE CREAM!"  But how can Ian buy you ice cream? He doesn't have any money! You must have dreamed that Ian bought you ice cream! "NOOOOOO! He had money! He held it in his hand, like THIS!" [holds up fist] "And now I want to EAT my ICE CREAM!"  Oh my, this morning isn't going well at all.  I promised that I would buy him ice cream when we went to visit the midwife.  I can't believe I did that, but I was in no position to establish my dominance yesterday morning.  I just wanted him to stop screaming.

Professor Know-it-All aka Computer Junkie

I couldn't handle life anymore, so I went back to bed and slept until 9:00.  I woke up in a much better frame of mind.  Mark made breakfast and the boys were settled into a nice, quiet morning pattern.  After I woke up, Lula went back to sleep.  Daniel threw one more temper tantrum when I wouldn't let him play video games, so he got sent to his room where he promptly fell asleep.  The rest of the kids watched The Muppet Show until it was time to leave.

Back to sleep.  In his own bed.

The rest of the day didn't go too badly.  We went to the drug store to finish Ian's first aid kit for Boy Scouts.  I bought Daniel a lollipop instead of ice cream.  I visited my midwife.  Everything with my baby is going well.  She is due with her baby two days before me, but she usually has her babies two weeks early.  She has never gone this close to her due date, so she is as grumpy and frustrated as I am.  Only she is very professional and didn't let on... (we have all sorts of back-up plans for this birth, so I'm not at all worried that she is not going to make it because of her own baby).  After the midwife, we stopped by the library and then took Fiona to dance.  The rest of the evening was spent watching TV while Mark, Ian, and Evie were at Boy Scouts and dance.

Dancing to Peter and the Wolf

Last night, I kept waking up with an adrenaline-induced pounding heart rate.  I kept thinking about labor-like I was in labor!  I would calm myself down, reminding myself I'm still a week away from due day and I don't have early babies.  I would go back to sleep and then fifteen minutes later the pattern would repeat itself.  I finally got up and went downstairs.  Sure enough, every fifteen minutes I would have a Braxton Hicks contraction.  I stayed downstairs for another 45 minutes until I heard Lula start to cry.  She's been a pain at night lately.  Instead of fussing in her sleep, she screams! She doesn't wake up, but she needs some kind of touch to help her settle.  I think I finally slept from 3:00 to 7:00 when Daniel came in to ask if he could make my coffee.
 
Daniel's latest thing is helping me make breakfast.  He loves to crack eggs.  Anytime he sees the eggs come out of the refrigerator, he needs to be the person to crack them open.  Being three, he's very messy at egg cracking and I am tired of cleaning up drippy eggs.  One morning, Mark decided to let him help make coffee.  Now he wants to be the coffee maker every morning.  This morning, my coffee wasn't ready by the time I waddled downstairs, but I'm not feeling well (insert morning person conversation here), so I asked for toast.  Now Daniel knows how to make toast and we are all eating slightly burnt, over-buttered toast for breakfast.

Choked down. "Yum!"

I just found out that one of Ian's close friends from Boy Scouts had to stay home from school with the stomach flu and that there are others in the Cub Scout pack with the flu as well.  I am going to set up a "hands on" history learning lesson where I, the tyrannical dictator, completely isolates my country from the rest of the global community.  We just finished a mini unit on North Korea (next up, Russia).

Thankful

The trend on Facebook is to post a daily update with what you are thankful for.  This evening, I'm feeling so thankful for so many things that it could only fit in a blog post.

The Pests from the West

I gleaned a 40lb box of bananas a few days ago and have been dehydrating them like crazy! Fiona has no memory of eating dried bananas.  Or drinking San Pellegrino with Grandad.  This made me sad.  What have I been doing the last few years?  I used to dry bananas all the time and then we would eat them at the YMCA and my midwife appointments when Daniel was on the way.  I felt like I was reclaiming a part of me when I started drying those bananas.  I'm so thankful that I'm reaching the end of this pregnancy and can start dreaming about what I'm going to do next...

Cream Cheese Kisses

I'm thankful for Mark.  We had our 12th anniversary a few days ago, but we didn't really celebrate.  Yesterday, he was showing me a picture of a salmon smolt (or baby salmon if you aren't a fish biologist) from his summer survey.  He was having trouble identifying exactly what species it was...it looked like one kind of salmon, but that one kind doesn't live where it was caught.  He wasn't asking me to ID the smolt or anything, I'm way out of practice for that.  But I did notice...that the smolt was in my tupperware!  Once a tupperware finds its way into Mark's truck, it might never come out again.  That used to bug me, but now I think it's funny.  I have to.  The fact that we have no plastic cereal bowls left in the cupboard is a testament to the fact that no one can remember which bowl is for feeding the cats-they get a new one down every time.  If I didn't think it was funny that my plastic bowls and tupperware disappear on a regular basis, I might go crazy.  I remember waaaaay back, when I was working on smolt traps with Mark, I gave him a loaf of banana bread.  It was wrapped in one of my two cloth napkins.  I expected him to return the napkin-it was cloth and reusable and that is what normal people do.  I didn't see that napkin again until after we were married.  I think I found it at the bottom of his work truck.

What girl wouldn't love Butterfly Kicks?

I'm thankful for my girls.  They are so sweet and loving and unselfish.  Evie brushed and braided my hair today.  She helped me rub Mark's back.  She put Lula to bed.  Fiona rubbed my feet and helped Shane with dishes when he asked for a volunteer.  Both girls are really enjoying Taekwondo with Mark and asked him to practice with them this evening.  The girls include Daniel in their play and show more patience for his outbursts than anyone else.  The other day, Shane was saying that girls just don't understand dogs blah, blah, blah.  Mark said, "Shane, I know you have lots of experience with girls. But I have more."  He winks at me.  "Do not ever underestimate the power of a girl.  Never assume for one second that a girl isn't smarter than you or stronger than you or doesn't like dogs better than you do."  Tonight, after the girls settled down, he said, "I love my girls.  All of them.  I don't know why I ever complained about having so many of them. They're great."  I feel the same way!

Paper Cranes

Over the last two days, I read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.  This is quite possibly the most depressing children's book besides Where the Red Fern Grows.  This book was scheduled for Ian this year, but he read it a long time ago, so I read it to Shane, Evie, and Fiona instead.  At the end, when Sadako falls asleep and never wakes up again, Fiona was understandably upset.  She cried, "Why did those bad guys ever drop that bomb in the first place!"  We had a quick discussion about World War II and then I played the "squirrel" card.  "Who wants to learn how to make a paper crane?"

I pulled out my old scrapbooking paper and Ami's old origami paper.  We had three origami books and the internet to help us figure out how to fold origami cranes.  We folded cranes, peacocks, penguins, foxes, tortoises, and a sea lion.  When animals got boring to Ian, I let him fold complicated paper airplanes from that kit that has been stashed away for a few years.  When Ian started complaining that Evie was wasting all the paper, I had to point out that I'd rather the paper get used than stored for another five or ten years!

Some kids had longer attention spans and better critical thinking/fine motor skills than other kids.  Some of the instructions were really hard to follow!  Evie now has a collection of 18 peacocks!  And she still isn't finished.

If there was any question...

...that Daniel is Mark's Mini Me, this picture is your proof (complete with bad haircut):

Guess who?

I took him shopping with me again yesterday.  His most memorable moment came when a nice older gentleman waved at him.  Daniel sweetly smiled and waved back.  When we saw him on the next aisle, the gentleman waved again.  This time, Daniel made his most grotesque face-the one where he stretches out one eye and pulls the side of his mouth out with his other hand and sticks out his tongue.  He looked just like a little Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. 

Yeah, that face.

I scolded, "Daniel! Don't make faces, that's bad manners! You should smile and say 'Hi' instead."  He shouted, "I don't like smiling! And I'm never saying 'Hi' again!"  I seriously love shopping with Daniel.  You never know what he is going to say.

Happy Halloween!

The Downen bunch split up to conquer the KP candy carnivals last night.  We haven't gone trick or treating since we moved here...and no one misses it.  Each kid brought home enough candy to put us all into diabetic shock for a few days...except Ian.  He was too busy working.  Lucky for him, he has generous siblings who let him scavenge through their bags.

Ballerina, Ballerina Doll, Unicorn, Lion, Mad Scientist, and Magician

I took Daniel, Evie, and Fiona to the church for the annual candy carnival.  Mark took Ian, Shane, and Lula to the community center for their annual candy carnival.  I like the church better because they won't let scary, bloody costumes in.  And the fact that the carnival is in a church tends to keep the shady people away.  I only smelled a beer/pot mix on one person.  Ian earned community service hours working two game booths (throwing velcro balls at a target and shooting rubber bands at bottles) for Boy Scouts.  Shane earned community service hours for Cub Scouts by working the ring toss booth.  Mark earned My Wife is Nine Months Pregnant hours by taking Lula into public and chasing her around for two hours so I didn't have to.  Taking easily-overloaded Daniel into a noisy crowded environment where he gorges on cupcakes and cotton candy was much easier than chasing Lula.  Our only issues were overheating (he had his Superman PJs on under the lion costume, so he still looked partially in costume after stripping) and winning a plastic, glow-in-the-dark cobra instead of candy at one game.  He was pacified with both.

Isn't Mark lookin' good?  I'm going to have to lock him up so the single moms and rich divorcees at the YMCA don't try to snatch him away from me!

This morning, Mark called me from the road to tell me to hide the candy and only give it out after the kids all their work done.  Oops.  I was letting them eat as much as they wanted for breakfast already.  I figured I could get them all hopped up on sugar and then set them loose on chores that they would accomplish before the sugar crash.  I went downstairs and took a nap while they worked.  Now the boys are doing math and the girls are "cleaning" their room (also known as playing).  So far, so good!