Booting the boots

  I feel guilty for liking the show "Hoarders." I can't decide whether the people are being mostly helped or mostly exploited. The show provides a therapist to help alongside the "extreme cleaning specialists," but they also allow only two days for the process. Putting on that kind of time pressure puts the hoarders at risk of a breakdown. I hope that's not what the producers are counting on, but I suspect it is because it wouldn't make good TV to see someone heal slowly and peacefully.
  I feel bad for the hoarders and recognize they have a sad mental illness. Yet part of me just watches and thinks, "Dang, that's crazy!" Part of the appeal, too, I suppose, is the reminder: "Don't be like that." I'm always motivated to clean my house after watching the show.
  That's why I'm getting rid of boots. Apparently, I'm a rain-boot hoarder. It seems I can't come across a one-dollar pair of children's boots without buying them. My stash has outgrown the box where I store them over the winter, so some are going to Goodwill. There's no way I need so many the same size, but thoughts will pop up: I do have four kids now, and we live in the woods, which get muddy, and if they have friends over and want to play outside ... .
  But no. We don't need all these boots. I think kids' rain boots are cute, and I like finding some for cheap. That's all it is, not a real need. "Hoarders" taught me that.

Overconfidence

  Oh, cruel gravity. I wrote about how Princess is such a good baby-holder. Yesterday, the baby-holder dropped the baby.
  From what I gather, she had him propped in her arms in front of her, his bottom on the arm rest of the big chair in the living room. He wiggled suddenly and rolled off her arms, belly-flopping onto the hard floor. He got a small bruise on his forehead and cried and cried.
  Princess, meanwhile, was ashen-faced and shaking. I wasn't in the room at the time, and by the time I made it downstairs, she had picked him up and was trying to soothe his crying. Gameboy was standing like a deer in headlights. I asked him later why he hadn't called for me, and he said he panicked. I thought to myself about all the asinine things they've asked for help with, but I didn't say anything about how this was a time I'd want to be summoned.
  I took the baby and was reassured that he was crying. I moved his arms and legs and checked that his eyes were tracking normally. Besides that, you just dust him off, right?
  I asked the kids what happened and how high he was when he fell. They answered honestly, but slowly from being in such shock. I told Princess to take a break in her room. I came up after a few minutes to assure her the baby was OK. I asked her if she was scared, and she started to sob.
  So of course, I don't need to punish anyone or yell at anyone because you couldn't make them feel worse. On the other hand, I don't want to tell them it's no big deal or "that's OK." Before bed last night, I reminded Princess that however it was that she was holding him, that wasn't safe. She needs to be more careful and pay better attention to what the baby is doing. He's getting bigger and stronger, and he'll jerk his body around without warning. He'll probably clock you in the nose once or twice. And I told them both that they need to answer faster if I'm trying to decide whether everyone is OK or if we need to go to the hospital.
  I've done a good job so far staying calm when the kids get hurt. None of them, thank God, has been hurt badly, though, so there's probably a point at which I'd freak out. Gameboy had blood running out his nose once that just about got to me, but he was 2 and needed my help. I've got to step up, right?

My big birthday girl

  For the past few days, every time Princess holds her baby brother, he falls asleep. She sings to him, and unlike her fidgety little sister, is good at sitting still.
  Princess is 9 years old today. I would have thought she'd be about 15 before she seemed as grown-up as she is now.

Brotherly love

  Gameboy is in his room right now putting together a Yu-Gi-Oh! card deck for when his baby brother is old enough to play. "He's going to be hard to beat with this," he said.
  I'd be lying not to admit that my desire for Gameboy to have a brother was one reason I wanted another child. It's not the only reason, of course, but the idea wouldn't go away. It's a shame they're 12 years apart; will Gameboy still want to play card games when he's 20 and his brother is 8? Yeah, I think so.

Duct tape vs. plantar wart

  I have wanted to write about how duct tape cured my son's painful plantar wart but I was afraid it was invading his privacy. Now that it has been two years, he said he's fine with me writing about it. I told him I think the story might help people. And the story strangely became one of those special moments between a parent and child that I think we'll both remember.
  Back when Gameboy first showed me the wart on the bottom of his foot, I could see that it had been there awhile. As treatment went on for months and months, he came to feel guilty about how big he had let it get before mentioning it to me. This guilt made the treatments harder on him, I think. But walking on the wart had become so painful that we had to do something.
  It was at least six months that we tackled the wart using over-the-counter acid treatment, carefully soaking his foot, rubbing off loose skin and then applying more acid and a bandage every single night. We tried several brands, plus those little discs, which were a joke, and after all that time, seemed to irritate the surface skin some but didn't come close to affecting the wart.
  Next we bought an over-the-counter freezing treatment. My husband did this part, and later told me how commercials for this product fail to include a kid crying, "Ahhhhhhhh! It hurts! It hurts!" They couldn't get much done with the freezing method, and what they could do made no difference on the wart. We decided it was too painful to pursue any more.
  We continued with the acid treatment and started to think we'd have to take him to the doctor, perhaps for surgery. The thought of that sent me to the Internet for other ideas. I came across this information on the Mayo Clinic website about duct tape. It's on the ninth screen of information about plantar warts. I came to think they should mention this home remedy first.
  The duct tape method was simple: We put duct tape on the bottom of his foot and wrapped it around his foot so the tape wouldn't come off. After one week, we peeked. We could see the skin around the wart was starting to loosen, and the wart was separating from his normal skin.
  We put on new duct tape. One week later, we remembered to check late at night after he and I were the only two people still awake. As we peeled back the tape, we could see the wart was coming loose. As the tape was completely pulled away, the wart came off on the tape. It was about the size of a dime, cone-shaped, half-a-centimeter deep, a little pyramid of stink and yuck.
  We both retched; he says he almost vomited. Yet it was one of the happiest moments of his young life. We looked at each other, laughed, looked at the wart again, gagged, laughed again. Man, it was gross.
  What was left on his foot was like a divot on a golf course, but the bottom of this pit was covered with new skin. It didn't take long to heal and fill out. You can't even see now where it was.

  So that's my duct-tape-plantar-wart story. Might be a little boring, but it continues to amuse the two characters who were there to witness it.

Beauty and the beast?

  Princess was Taylor Swift for Halloween. It was a last-minute choice. She seemed to lack ideas this year but was encouraged by the thought that she'd be able to wear make-up. What sealed the deal was when I dug my glitter dress out of my closet. I honestly can't remember whether I've ever worn my glitter dress. If I go to some fancy event, will I want to wear the dress now that it's been a Halloween costume?

  Here's Taylor Swift with a dragon.

  Roar!

Gameboy emancipated himself from family Halloween and was with some friends. He was Gandalf again. He was accompanied by "Dr. Who," "The Phantom of the Opera with a light saber," "The phantom's sidekick with a light saber" and a Star Trek red shirt as a zombie. It might go without saying that these are his friends from his Dungeons and Dragons group. He didn't want to put his costume back on for me to take a picture, so my Halloween pictures this year are a little unorganized. No photo of all four of them; they're too hard to wrangle.

How to make a cute baby costume

  1. Start with a fleece blanket and a cute baby.

  2. Cut the fleece into two egg shapes big enough to go around the baby.

  3. Cut a hole for the baby's face and two slits for arms.

  4. Since this is a dragon-egg costume and not a chicken-egg costume, cut out some red spots.

  5. Sew on the spots. Sew around the head and arm openings to reinforce them. Then stitch the two sides together, leaving an opening at the bottom big enough to insert baby.

  6. Pose baby with big sister in her dragon costume. It's a mama dragon and her egg! (Warning: By this time, the cute baby might be in no mood for photos.)