All the Little Children

The cousins have arrived.

We now have two six year olds, in the house, one four year old, one three year old, one two year old, a nine month old baby and a four month old baby. But only two dogs and no cats.

I know many people live in houses with this number of children and more, but its the kind of thing one generally works up to, one baby at a time. We're all kind of reeling from the noise, toys and how do I say it? clutter? filth. Not filth, just stuff.

Yesterday we really celebrated R's birthday with cake, presence, party games, balloons, party hats. R was very angry about the state of the world today. 'NO' he shouted when presented with a beautifully hand made birthday pizza. 'No no no!'

'No no!' he shouted when asked if he would like to wear a hat and open a present. But he managed to swallow his displeasure and open all the packages anyway.

'No!' he shouted when offered candy. He was unable to stop shouting No! but he was able to work his way through a whole bag of chocolates anyway.

No! I could hear my patient long suffering mother in law (Mimi) shouting to herself when I asked her to help me sew a Mei Tai. 'Ok' she said out loud. It wasn't nice of me to ask. I don't know how to sew. I've never used a sewing machine. I can vaguely sew things by hand, but not anything that would impress anyone. We lugged all the children (only four, before the Cousins arrived) to the fabric store and looked for something heavy duty. I found a stripey canvas like something in blue and white as well as a magenta colored zipper for my skirt, vast fragments of ribbon for Emma to afix to a play dress in the hopes of turning into Cinderella and having many birds and mice come help her sew, and some orange thread so I can 'fix' something.

Then she (Mimi) stayed up long past her bedtime to watch me struggle to feed the material through the machine in a straight line. Stripes turned out to be a stroke of brilliance. She got her own back, though, by making me iron everything, knowing that in normal life I refuse to iron anything.

So now I am in the possession of a very fine Mei Tai. I would post pictures but I forgot the bring the little device that gets the pictures onto the computer, so you will have to wait. And, in case you needed the same inspiration I had, here it is.