the methods and madness of one family of 12
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OK, that’s a little melodramatic. I’m just kidding. But how would you feel? Here’s the discussion from Facebook, beginning where I share the tragedy with the world. Validation abounds. Now do you non-users see why we like Facebook?
Having children who cook isn’t always as great as it sounds. Why is it so hard to say, “Mom, I just used the last of the___”? Why, why, why?!
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I’ve missed blogging lately, so today I set aside an hour of time to write a post. Since it’s hard for me to focus while life roars around me, I decided to hide away in my clean, quiet bedroom for that precious hour. I wanted to be able to think, to ponder, to formulate what’s on my mind and in my heart, so I could preserve my deepest thoughts and feelings here in my online journal. I wanted to create something deep and meaningful that my descendants could treasure in years to come, a way for them to know and understand me even after I’m gone.
Instead, I spent the first 35 minutes of my hour waiting for my netbook to boot, crash and reboot. Now I’m searching for instructions on how to restore it to factory settings. I also learned that it’s possible to attach a full size keyboard to my phone. This would enable me to smash my netbook into smithereens and repurpose it as potting soil, which sounds far more useful than its current state.
Maybe that’s too destructive. I could just pop all the keys off and use them to play scrabble, or use the hinge to replace the one on the kitchen cabinet that the squirrel broke last month. Maybe I could open it and set it on end as a bed riser?
If you have other ideas for my netbook, I’d love to hear them. How would you use it?
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Part 1: In which we have unwelcome visitors
Part 2: Our unwelcome invader is revealed
It was a beautiful plan that couldn’t fail. The squirrel would dive through its customary escape hatch and instead of freedom, the other end of the dryer duct would drop her right into a rabbit cage with me poised to snap the door shut.
Kaitlyn and Deanna were in the laundry room, waiting for my signal. I was below, ready and waiting. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, Becca had crept into the laundry room to watch, leaving the door open behind her.
You see it coming, don’t you?
When we were all ready, they prodded the hiding squirrel. She shot out from beneath the laundry and instead of heading for the dryer vent she began skittering back and forth in a panic behind the dryer, around and between my squealing daughters.
“Where is it going?! What should we do???”
“Grab it! Get it!”
“There it goes!”
“AAAHHHH!”
While I listened below in horror, I tried to piece together what was happening. The squirrel had dashed around a bit, ran up the length of Deanna’s body and launched itself across the laundry room. Then it had skidded past Becca and into the kitchen, where it hid behind the fridge.
They pulled out the fridge and scared it out with a broomstick, then I heard a thundering, laughing, yelling stampede cross the length of the house. ”Noooo! Get the dogs! Lock them up!”
The dogs barked helplessly from a bedroom as little paws skittered across the tile and children thundered back toward the laundry room. I prepared myself. Surely now the squirrel would escape and fall into my trap.
They yelled and headed to the other end again. ”It just flew off the top of the door frame! It’s like a flying squirrel!!!”
“It’s behind the couch!” I heard furniture sliding. The stampede headed my way again. I got ready to snap the cage shut, but with no expectation of actually being called to duty. The noise moved again to the far end of the house.
“It’s in the Christmas tree!!! Is it in the tree? Where is it?”
I dutifully stayed at my post, amused but annoyed that I was missing all the fun.
Finally, I heard them moving one last time toward my end of the house. Everyone was quieter this time. The squirrel was exhausted, terrified, and losing hope. It finally hid in the laundry room behind a small stack of vinyl tile. As the girls moved the boxes away one by one, the squirrel’s body slowly emerged. When the last box was moved, it stayed right where it was, hiding its face behind its paws. They set a bucket over it and slid a vinyl tile beneath, and the chase was over.
I carried the empty cage up to the house where we carefully transferred our captive, and we all sat down to swap accounts of exactly what had happened.
note: The video freezes after about 1.5 minutes. I tried to trim it but youtube was having problems so I’ll have to try again later. In the meantime, you’ll know when to stop because it gets really, really boring.
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She’s going to need 30.
Remember the book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie? One thing logically leads to another. That books is a perfect description of what I did just a few hours ago, only I’m not suffering from ADHD like the mouse in the story. My whole train of thought always makes perfect sense. I’m sure you understand.
My sister-in-law was watching 3 of my younger children, and I called to tell her I was 15 minutes away, and I was bringing a bottle of wine so we could visit over a glass.
My house is less than a 1/4 mile from her house, so I just needed to stop in and grab a bottle before I headed over the hill.
When I pulled into my driveway, I noticed the door to the chicken coop was open. For the safety of the chickens, I needed to close it before I left.
When I went to close the door, I noticed the feeder was empty. I had a bag of feed in the trunk of the car, so I hauled it into the coop and filled the feeder.
While I was filling the feeder, I spotted a collection of eggs in the nesting boxes. ”Oh, Lydia is gone this weekend. I need to gather the eggs for her.”
I carried the 14 eggs carefully in my shirt, and on my way across the yard I stopped to let the Aussie off her leash. She gets tied up sometimes during the day, but always spends her nights in the house with us. She promptly took off.
After a brief but fruitless period of yelling her name into the darkness, I continued up the drive to the house. In the house, I found an egg carton and put away the eggs. As I put them away, my alarm went off. It was my reminder to give the Golden Retriever her medication.
I tried to feed the tiny pill to her disguised in a piece of baked potato, but she was unimpressed. ”Don’t you have any meat or cheese?” her eyes inquired. The pill fell on the floor as she mouthed the baked potato and my eyes said to her, “EAT IT. NOW.” She decided to comply.
When I was done with the Golden Retriever, I remembered that the Aussie was still gone. I went outside and called her. And called her. And called her. Finally, she popped up at the bottom of the driveway looking far too happy. If any of the neighbors is missing a goat or a chicken or a shoe, I think I know who did it. I coaxed her into the house telling her what a good girl she was[n't].
After my battle of wills with the dogs, I remembered that the alarm on my phone a few minutes served a dual purpose: I am supposed to take my vitamins when I give the dog her medication. I opened 4 bottles in succession and washed the pills down with a glass of water.
The glass of water reminded me that I needed to go to the bathroom. Really bad. I did the potty walk to the bathroom.
On my way out of the bathroom, I passed a bottle of wine sitting on the counter and remembered why I was in the house.
And finally I was back in the car with a bottle of wine, heading over the hill to retrieve my little ones and visit my sister-in-law.
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A few days ago, I told you about our unwelcome invader.
Based on the droppings and the fact that it was hanging out on the kitchen counters, we assumed it was a rat – or worse yet, a colony of rats. We were in a tizzy, buying and setting traps everywhere we could. We even bought some sonic repellents, plugging them into 4 outlets in and around the kitchen. Yes, we were that desperate.
But when Deanna finally caught a glimpse of the culprit scurrying up the drying rack and diving behind the dryer, she laughed out loud.
“Mom! I saw it! It’s a squirrel!”
I think I can speak for the whole family when I tell you we breathed a collective sigh of relief. Yes, they may be known as tree rats, but who would you rather have in your kitchen?
Not that we actually wanted to have a squirrel in our kitchen, either. We still wanted it out, but not with the same passion and horror. We just wanted it to stop breaking stuff and pooping, and we didn’t think it would agree to visit us on those terms.
We spent the next hour taking turns peeking through the crack at the top of the laundry room door, oohing and aahing at the adorableness of little squirrel hands and feet and fluffy tails. We took videos and tried to get some photos.
Then we started thinking up a plan. The plan seemed pretty simple. We decided the squirrel was coming in through the dryer vent, so we would block the vent under the house and catch the squirrel while it was trapped in the laundry room.
Most of us kept watching through the crack while Becca and Kaitlyn went below to secure the exit. At their signal, I opened the door and the squirrel dove behind the dryer. I heard a scuffle and some excited exclamations: “I felt it! Did you feel it?! It went back up!” They pushed the entire dryer duct up through the hole in the floor, then blocked the hole with a rock.
Step 1 had succeeded. The squirrel was now trapped somewhere in the laundry room. We were reasonably sure it was hiding in the inner workings of the dryer.
Umm…Now what?
We obviously didn’t think this through very well.
After a little consideration, we pulled the vent off the back of the dryer and peered inside. Nothing.
I turned the dryer on for just a second then off again quickly, trying to flush the critter. Still nothing.
We put a laundry basket over the opening and found a board big enough to cover the top of the basket. We slid the board between the back of the dryer and the basket, stopping just above the vent opening, and Kaitlyn volunteered to stake out the trap. When the squirrel ventured out of the dryer, she would drop the board between the vent opening and the basket, trapping the squirrel in the basket. The rest of us left while Kaitlyn stayed behind, still and quiet. We wanted the squirrel to think we were gone.
After a few minutes, Kaitlyn called me in. She had seen movement under a skirt lost behind the washer. A closer look revealed a furry tail tip. We had been tricked! Now what?
We could have just put on a pair of gloves and grabbed the skirt with the poor animal wrapped up inside. That’s exactly what some of the girls wanted to do, but I knew that a cornered animal would readily bite, and I didn’t know how strong a squirrel might be when it was fighting for its life. I had no confidence that we could hold it like that.
I had a better plan. A complete plan. A plan that was beautiful in its simplicity. I knew how we could catch this squirrel without having to chase it or risk being bitten by a terrified animal.
While the squirrel waited for the right moment to make her break for freedom, we put the duct back in the hole. I went below the house and positioned the end of the duct inside a rabbit cage. I even draped the opening of the cage with a pillow case so the squirrel couldn’t escape in the time it took me to yank out the duct and snap the door shut.
Perfect, right? How could it fail?
to be cont’d
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Although we have lived in the country for the past 8 years, we have been very blessed. We have never seen a rodent inside the house. Well, except for the ones in cages, like all the gerbils we bred as snake and tarantula food. And also the rabbits the kids brought into the house, but they were cute and domesticated, and are they technically even rodents, or just closely related?
Anyway, I felt very fortunate that we had never had to deal with an invasion of rats or mice. We’ve had other invasions – armies of daddy longlegs come to mind – but never rats and mice.
But a few weeks ago, we came home to a kitchen that almost looked like it had been ransacked. An entire row of jars holding dry goods had been knocked out of one window sill, and another row of pint jars holding water in rainbow colors had been knocked out of the window over the sink. One cabinet door had been torn loose and was dangling from a single hinge.
We were shocked and puzzled. We cleaned up and pondered what to do. It was a very busy week, and somehow I managed to “forget” about the problem. This wasn’t quite as hard as you might imagine, since there were no further signs of occupation. No poop, no chewed packages in the pantry, nothing. It never happened, I told myself. The jars must have fallen, somehow. Maybe the cat was taking liberties on the kitchen counter, and the dogs had challenged his right to be up there.
A week or two passed with no further signs of unwelcome visitors. We had family from out of town staying with us, and all of us left in 3 vehicles to brave the crowds and do a little last-minute gift shopping. I returned home late in the afternoon with a few of the children, and we found that there had been a poop party in the kitchen. The entire counter was littered with rodent dropping, and things were moved about. I was horrified, and we bleached every surface in sight, throwing away any food that might have been accessible.
Now it was obvious that we had been invaded. I became obsessive about hiding every scrap of food before we went to bed at night. I was concerned that hiding the easy food sources might encourage the critters to invade the pantry, but it never happened. I checked the pantry constantly for signs of rodents, but found nothing. I bought and set some old-fashioned mousetraps in the kitchen, placing them along the window sill, against the wall, and anywhere I had noticed a heavier share of droppings.
The next morning all the traps had been sprung but we hadn’t caught a single varmint.
Aha, we thought. RATS. We needed the big snap-traps. We bought the big’uns and set them all over the counter. Instead of relying on the prebaited traps, we smeared peanut butter on them. Just for good measure, we also bought some rat-sized glue boards. We wanted to be sure this time was successful, because I was afraid our invaders would get smart and avoid the traps altogether if we didn’t catch them soon.
We had a few peaceful days with no signs of visitors at all. Then we left again for a daytime outing. When we came home, all the rat traps had been sprung and the bait was untouched. The glue boards were empty – except for a few footprints! They looked like this:
And they were surprisingly big. We briefly wondered if we were dealing with a very young raccoon, but thought it would have been far more destructive. It was a big rat, we decided. And since the droppings varied in size, maybe it was a mother accompanied by her half-grown offspring. I felt a rising sense of panic. Did you know rats can have up to 20 young in one litter?
We gave up on the snap traps, but left the glue boards out just in case. We caught 6 flies, 2 geckos, and our 12yo cat, Tim. He was not happy about this.
Our invaders grew bolder. We began to hear noises during the day. We heard them behind the refrigerator. We heard a big scuffle when we opened the laundry room door.
We considered our next move. Should we get a younger cat, maybe a female with some hunting experience? I wasn’t entirely ready for the longterm commitment of a new pet, but was ready to consider the possibility.
Perry came home with a battery powered trap shaped like a small mailbox that would electrocute rats. We were seeing a lot of droppings on the dryer, so set it up there and baited it with cat food. It was much too small for the cat to fit inside, so it seemed fairly safe.
Finally, it happened. Deanna was the first to actually lay eyes on our visitor. She was carrying a basket to the laundry room and as she swung the door open, she caught her breath.
“Mom! I just saw it! It’s not a rat. Do you know what it is? Do you know it is???”
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Will you hate me if I confess that I don’t like the holiday season? That’s not to say I don’t like Christmas. I am unspeakably grateful for God’s gift of His Son, and for the salvation that flows out of Him. But I don’t like all the stress and tension and busy-ness that invariably accompany the holiday. Six weeks of…
Sometimes, I envy the Ingalls and their blizzards. A quiet Christmas at home with little fanfare and one small gift apiece for immediate family sounds appealing. But who am I fooling? Quiet, with 12 Coghlans trapped inside? I can hear the maniacal laughter already. I know that the problem is with me and my attitude, because much of the tension flows out of our blessings:
And if we didn’t have a Savior, we wouldn’t have to concern ourselves with how to celebrate His birth.
photo credit: Patrick Q
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Last week Kaitlyn noticed that Perry’s first adult tooth was coming in behind his baby tooth. This happened to me and a lot of my siblings, so I feel blessed that most of our children so far have their father’s perfect teeth instead of my very crowded, cavity-prone teeth.
Nonetheless, we had to do something about Perry’s tooth.
I explained to him what was happening and that he would need to give his baby tooth a lot of help, wiggling it until it fell out.
His sister Megan presented an alternative plan that would take less time and less work. She told him to use a string to tie his tooth to the door, then slam the door. Megan did this 3 times and assured him it wouldn’t hurt. In fact the first time she did it, she didn’t even realize it had worked!
Perry was a little reluctant, but he also wasn’t excited about all the work involved in loosening his tooth manually or about having the dentist pull it, so he resolved to give the door method a try.
This morning, he used a piece of upholstery thread and tied his tooth to the front door. Then he stood there with the door wide opening, gathering his courage.
He pushed the door, and in slow motion it swung closed. No go.
He stood there with the string on his tooth, stalling and chatting, negotiating for rewards, and finally karate kicked the door.
NOOOOOOOO! Parker was standing right in the open doorway!
Parker went flying out, unlike the tooth. He was fine – only slightly shaken, but the string had slipped off the door, leaving Perry standing there fully intact. Strike two.
But the third time was a charm, and that’s the one we caught on video. Take a look and congratulate our brave young man.
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I learned a few things about myself on the ropes course over the weekend. For example, I used to think I was a little nervous about heights. Now I know that I’m actually terrified of them. Strange, since I spent much of my childhood climbing really tall trees, but I never tried jumping off of them. Just looking down was enough of a rush for me.
That knife that twists in my stomach when I’m up high looking down? Apparently not everyone gets that.
Nonetheless, I like to face my fears. I don’t like saying or even thinking the word can’t, so if something scares me I’m even more determined to do it. Also, I was sure it couldn’t be as difficult or scary as it looked. For goodness sake, there were 12 year olds making a good go of it!
All the way up there, huh? That’s really high.
“Just to make sure we’re clear: I don’t care if all the kids think you look like Jesus. You drop me, I kill you before I hit the ground.” OK, I didn’t actually say it, but doesn’t it look like I’m thinking it?
Up the pole. This is the easy part. I like climbing. Climbing is fun. Climbing is my favorite part. Why can’t we just have a course that goes up? Why do we have to have the down parts?
Oh, we can actually use the safety rope to balance? In that case, this part isn’t as hard as it looked.
Now to cross the cables. Difficult but not so scary, even if I don’t lean on the safety harness. Walk on the bottom cable and hold the upper one. The upper cable comes down and joins with the one I’m walking on, so balancing becomes more and more difficult. Then another cable rises from the one under my feet, and I tranfer my grip to that one as I continue to slide my feet slowly to the left, one at a time.
Slow, slow, sloooowww…I am totally focused on keeping my balance. I have tunnel vision. All I can hear is the reassuring voice of Jesus Dan at the other end of my safety rope, and I have no idea what he’s actually saying to me.
I’m past the hardest part and feeling more confident. The hand cable is rising instead of falling. Now I can speed up. Oops. I lose my balance and my feet shove the lower cable straight out. I throw my arm over the upper cable, catching myself before I fall. That’s gonna bruise (it did – I have a big nasty group of bruises on my inner arm), but at least I can climb back up without aid and finish.
Made it! Almost done!
Just across this pole, switching handholds from one dangly rope to the next. Harder than it looked from the ground, but refreshingly easy after crossing the cable.
Did I mention how high this whole thing was?
And a quick jump off a perfectly good solid platform into nothingness. I like ziplines, but this? I was shocked at how hard it was to make myself jump. I wasn’t just sliding off the platform with a zipline handle in my hands. This was a leap of faith. There was a lot of slack in the harness that ran between me and the cable, and this was my first experience with freefall. I stood there for 15 seconds that felt like an eternity before I finally just mentally shut my eyes and jumped.
I let out a whoop on my way down, but Perry insists that it sounded more like a scream of raw terror. It was a whoop. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
After that, it was on to the so-called Pamper Pole.
Did I really promise to do this if Perry did? Did anyone actually hear me say it? Unfortunately, there were witnesses.
Fine. I’m almost done anyway, right? I like climbing. Going up would be relaxing if I wasn’t haunted by thoughts of what would come next.
Those gymnastics lessons 28 years ago are finally paying off. I’m scared silly, but I could stand here all day. Balance is not a problem. Actually, I can’t stand here all day. Eventually that old guy holding the other end of the rope will want to go home.
OK then, on a count of 3…
Oh, you said 3 already? Once more. 1…2…
AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!
Never. Again.
Well, maybe next year.
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Confession: my house is often a mess, even 10 minutes after we straightened and picked up.
I’m sure the underlying problem is that I have not sufficiently taught my children to put things away as they go through their day. While they are very capable at cleaning up their messes, they are not at all capable of preventing a mess in the first place.
Mothers of young ones, learn from my mistake!
The younger ones learn from the older ones, and bad habits are learned much more easily than good ones. It’s usually easier to pick up after little ones than to teach them to do the job themselves. It’s even easier to let the mess accumulate all day and clean up just once after they’re in bed. But you may find a heavy price to pay in coming years.
Don’t just teach them to clean up their messes; teach them to put away each item as they finish and before they get out a new one.
If your children are older and you have already made my mistake, just move to a country with a very long driveway so you can see company coming in time to do the QUICK! CLEAN UP! That works too.
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I’ve often been asked how I got through each day back when we had lots of little ones and no older children to help out. I have written about those bygone years before, but it’s been a long time and there’s no harm in revisiting old subjects is there?
The easy answer is that I got through the days one at a time. Anyone can run a house with 6 little ones for a day, right? Just one day? All it takes is 3 meals (2 if you cheat or run so late that breakfast turns into brunch), a load of laundry (better make it whites!), a few baths (or send them out to play in the hose; who will know the difference?), and straighten the house after they’re in bed. Somewhere along the line, squeeze in a few minutes each of Bible reading and reading lessons. It’s not ideal and it won’t work that way forever, but you can do this. Some days you can do a little more, and some days your 4yo will tell you she was out of undies 2 days ago.
Don’t fret about the fact that you have to do it all again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next…Matthew 6:34 says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
God doesn’t give us the grace, or the energy, or the patience we need for the whole upcoming year all in one dose. He measures it out for us day by day, like the manna He gave the Israelites in the wilderness. Planning ahead is good in general, but when the Israelites tried against God’s command to gather enough manna for the following day they found it rotted. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Do your best today. God’s way keeps you coming back to Him. If you start feeling like you can do this all on your own, things are about to go downhill.
I said that was the easy answer, but it’s not the only answer.
Things went better if I worked hard and made good use of my time. I had more energy back then and got by on less sleep than I do now. We sometimes made cookies instead of doing laundry, but more often it was the other way around. I once made a full round of fancy Easter dresses, working late into the night. Never again, but some of those dresses are still in circulation. Those days were often a blur, and I have mercifully forgotten much of the hurry and bustle and exhaustion. I have also forgotten many of the good times, but that’s ok. I have living and visible reminders all around me, and they remember.
Things went better if I reminded myself that this was only a season in life. Sometimes it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but remember those busy days won’t last as long as they feel. In a year or two, you won’t have the same crew of Littles you have now plus a new baby. Your whole crew will be a year or two older. They will all move up a step, and the baby will have a new name and face. In effect, you’ll have a new oldest child, not a new baby. This realization was an epiphany for me when I felt like I was at the end of my rope with 4, 4yo and under.
Things went better if Perry and I stayed on the same page, and on good terms. We had times when our relationship wasn’t the best, and I’ll readily confess that these times were hard not just as a wife but as a mother. There is a trickle-down effect, and parents need to realize that their relationship with each other and with God deeply affects their children. I was and am a Christian first, then a wife, then a mother. I am His, then his, then theirs. I do the children no favors when I allow my priorities to become skewed.
Things went better if I was consistent in the children’s training. It’s so much easier to mother a child who obeys commands the first time than one who tests every boundary, every time. I know every child is different, but a challenging child is not an excuse for ineffective parenting. It only means we must – must – work harder at parenting effectively. Invest time early, and your days will go much more smoothly. That’s the blessing of consistent rules and discipline: if the boundaries are clear and firm, your children will learn that it’s fruitless to test them. There is no need for 2′s to be terrible.
Things went better if I got sleep. This is more easily said than done, but sometimes we fool ourselves. I tell myself that I need to wind down after the kids are in bed, but before I know it, it’s 1 AM. It’s so easy to vegetate in front of the TV after a long day of chasing toddlers and putting out fires, but even now I know that my day will go better if I don’t allow myself that free time in the evening. Go to bed! Yes, you might need to wind down, but 40 minutes of winding down in bed is better than 3 hours of winding down in front of the TV or the computer.
Things went better when I thought of “me time” as a gift, not a right. If I didn’t feel entitled to “me time,” it was a sweet gift when it came. Grocery shopping alone in the evening, volunteering to mow a lawn for a summertime customer while Perry stayed home with the kids, a late-night in-house movie with my sweetheart: these were welcome times, but if they were few and far between that was ok. In the high-power career of Motherhood, you are a highly valuable asset to the corporation. The hours are long and replacements are rare, expensive and poorly trained. You knew that when you signed up for the job, right?
Things went better if my attitude was good. And now we’ve come full circle. It was easy to stress about tomorrow, and worry that because we didn’t do reading lessons or Bible today our children were doomed to grow up ignorant heathens. But all that was really required was to repent if I was squandering time or making poor choices about priorities, then try to do better in the morning.
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You know those amazing stories about women giving birth when they didn’t even know they were pregnant?
Kim Brenneman of Large Family Logistics almost had an experience like that. If my recollection is correct, she made it to 25 weeks without knowing, then had a preemie just 2 weeks later. You can read about it in the preface of her book, Large Family Logistics.
But almost only counts in horseshoes, as they say, and Kim did have just a bit of notice. Anyway, I know somebody in real life who has experienced this. She and her husband are very good friends of my brother and his wife, and we all spent an evening together last weekend. I heard the whole story from the husband, then couldn’t resist going straight to the wife to get her version. Of course they matched perfectly except for the varying levels of panic, hilarity and hysteria expressed or implied.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened: Jake came home from work one evening to find Diane suffering from back/stomach pains. They assumed she was sick, and went to bed hoping she would be better in the morning.
During the night, Jake awoke to the sound of Diane crying out in pain. He insisted on taking her straight to the emergency room, but hurt his back carrying her across the parking lot. She felt better for a moment and finished the trek herself, then the pain hit her again.
Inside an examining room, Diane told the nurse, “I’ve never hurt so much except when my daughter was born, but I’m not even pregnant now!” The nurse put 2 and 2 together and did a quick check, finding that Diane was 9 centimeters dilated!
They called for a doctor who arrived with just 12 minutes to spare. Jake and Diane left the hospital with a healthy 5 lb, 4 oz. boy who they estimated was 7 weeks early.
Really. You’ve seen stories like this in the news, and now I’ve met at least one woman who lived it.
Diane said her first pregnancy was very typical, which made it all the more shocking that she never suspected she was pregnant the second time.
She had regular cycles throughout the pregnancy. She was at the doctor several times in the preceding months for other reasons.
She was overweight, but not dramatically. She had been dieting, so she actually lost weight during the course of the pregnancy.
Jake confirmed that neither of them ever suspected pregnancy at any point before the nurse said the word dilated and centimeters.
Now she is expecting a third child and having a completely normal pregnancy. With 7 weeks to her duedate, you could never miss the fact that she is expecting.
What do you think? Incredible? Or have you heard or even experienced something like this yourself?
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I made a new rule a few weeks ago: if anyone leaves the door open when they go outside, it gets locked behind them. I instituted the rule during a cold spell, when the kids were often making a quick run to take out the trash and planning to run right back in. Coats are often left behind on these trips, and because they’re in such a hurry they also don’t make sure the door closes all the way behind them.
Understandably, they want back in fast. They don’t like finding the door locked. They don’t like being forced to knock and wait – oh the humiliation – until somebody hears and unlocks the door. Also, when you live in the country and doors rarely get locked, there’s something infuriating about finding the door locked. Because of this, the rule was surprisingly effective. It was so effective that we forgot about within a couple of days simply because nobody was leaving the door open any more.
This morning was cold. I went outside in short sleeves and socks to see Perry off to work and everything was sparkling with frost. I was cold because I had stood out there for several minutes helping him load odds and ends into his car, but then I had to run out once more to take his forgotten keys.
Can you see where this is going? Congratulations, because I didn’t see it.
As I ran into the house for the keys and out again, I left the door slightly ajar. When I turned back to the house, the door was shut and locked. Locked.
I knocked – oh the humiliation – and after a long 10 seconds, The Boy opened the door, smiling innocently as if he were pleased to see me. I scolded him, “You don’t lock the door when I’m outside!”
He looked a little surprised and truly puzzled. ”But Mom, you left the door open. You said we’re supposed to lock the door when somebody goes out and leaves it open.”
One of these days, Boy. One of these days.
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We have a mystery in our house.
On Sunday morning, Perry and I woke up under our silky-smooth chocolate brown top sheet. It matches our silky-smooth chocolate brown fitted sheet and our 2 silky-smooth chocolate brown pillowcases, as one would expect.
This is our only set of sheets in daily use. We do have another set, but I choose to forget about them. They’re old and flowered and scratchy, and when I wash the good sheets I just hang them to dry and put them right back on the bed. No scratchy sheets.
As I said, on Sunday morning Perry and I woke up under our top sheet. We left for church that morning , then went to my visit my parents and siblings and some relatives visiting from out of town. We didn’t get home until 8 or 9 PM.
I didn’t make the bed before church, but I did when we came home that evening. I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary.
And then, when it was bedtime, our top sheet was gone. Just gone. The comforter was neatly on top as it belonged; the fitted sheet was neatly beneath; the pillows were neatly arranged over it all. But there was no chocolate top sheet.
Was it there when I made the bed an hour ago? I can’t swear to it, but think I would have noticed if it was missing.
None of the children knows where it is.
It’s not in the laundry.
It’s not under my bed.
It’s not being used as a tent on the deck.
My house is small. There aren’t many places to hide something that size, and no reasons I can think of for it to be gone in the first place. Am I the victim of a practical joke?
Where is my silky-smooth chocolate brown top sheet?
I have offered a $1 reward to the first child who finds it – after she does her chores and reads her Bible. I’ll pay a bonus if they can solve the mystery of how it got there.
I’ll give a virtual high-five-and-hug if you can guess where and when it will turn up.
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Early this morning, I heard a conversation that included several different children – older children – saying things like this:
“Of course deer come up on our deck! We hear them tap-tapping around on the deck. Last night one was bumping on the door.”
“Mom, you knew that. I told you I saw one last year!”
“So did I! You weren’t surprised when I told you.”
I’m not sure what to think. Our deck is completely railed, and 12-14′ off the ground. It is accessed only by a single staircase. Wouldn’t that smell like a trap to any self-respecting deer?
Of course, the deer around here are rather tame. Some of the neighbors feed them, so they are used to human presence. They do come into the front yard and watch us. Sometimes they wave and say hi. I’ve seen them in the chicken house, helping themselves to the laying mash. They’re really not concerned about us unless we head straight toward them.
My mom even has an adopted orphan buck. He shed his baby spots long ago but still sneaks into her house at every chance, not convinced that his bottle-fed days are over. He also plays with the highly territorial family dog, and chews on bones. Deer bones. Rupert is not your average buckling.
But does that mean that the unnamed whitetails around our property are bold enough to wander the deck at night, peeking in the windows and knocking on the front door, asking to use our restroom? And exercising the courtesy to abstain from our 40 lb. box of apples that was out there last night? Do deer do these things?
I’m not sure about this. Would you buy the story?
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Rachael just woke up, popped her head out of the rubbermaid tote, and did something really funny.
Yes, she was sleeping in the container where we usually store the Christmas lights. Does that seem strange to you? That wasn’t the funny part. You obviously need more children.
She asked if she could be done with her nap, crawled out of the tote and stumbled straight past the bathroom to the laundry room door. As we watched, she wrestled the door open. It sticks, and she was frustrated, but she did it. She disappeared inside while we shot each other puzzled and amused glances.
After a few long moments, she stumbled back out with her undies around her ankles and her ballerina costume hiked up. She looked angry.
I managed to blurt out helpfully, “Honey, we moved the toilet into the bathroom, right there.”
She gave me an annoyed look. “Yeah.” Apparently she didn’t appreciate my stating the obvious.
As she shuffled to the bathroom, she glared at all our faces, contorted with restrained laughter. “What?”
Needless to say, she decided to lie down for just a few more minutes. She’s back in the container now.
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Our water sometimes freezes. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not a huge problem – it probably happens twice every 2 years. Usually we remember to leave the faucets running a little on the Really Cold Nights,the ones that are predicted to drop below – gasp, shiver! – 32 degrees.
We also have all the pipes under the house wrapped. But we do have some exposed sections out at the well, around the pump and the pressure tank. We’ve wrapped them in the past but it just never holds out there, even with duct tape. There are a lot of very short sections and too many joints. If it freezes, this is where it happens. And it always seems to happen on my birthday. Happy birthday to me.
But today, as Megan was untangling Christmas lights and hanging them on the deck rails, I had a flashback to a radio program I heard over the weekend. The speaker was telling how a listener protected her delicate saplings from freezing by covering them with a sheet and hanging Christmas lights on them to generate enough warmth to keep them from freezing.
Now I’m thinking we should decorate our well and pressure tank with the extra lights. I don’t think our display would win any awards, but we can throw a tarp over it to trap the heat. I would sure enjoy a hot shower, a flushing toilet and a cup of coffee on my birthday.
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Posted by: Deanna
I just want to make sure everyone knows
FREEZING (40′s) COLD RAINY WET WEATHER IS DISGUSTING!
(bleah, shiver, shudder)
As much as I love cool, chilly, or dry weather I am firmly of the opinion that cold, WET weather is
DESPICABLE, PERVERTED, and REPULSIVE, WORSE THAN THE MOST HUMID OF HUMID AND HOT DAYS.
I SPIT UPON RAIN THAT DARES TO INTRUDE UPON MY COOL WEATHER! (ptooey!) I TRAMPLE IT INTO THE COMPOST PILE!
BAH, HUMBUG!
whew. Just had to get that out of my system. All right, rant over. You may return to your normal daily life.
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We left the house for church right on time yesterday morning, but I nearly hit a tarantula.
He was right in the center of the narrow country road, and as I passed him I heard myself yell, “Whoa! That was a tarantula! Did I hit him?!” Lydia looked out the back window and assured me that he was still crossing the road (why did the tarantula cross the road?), so I hit the brakes. We need a male tarantula, you know. Kaitlyn’s pet Shelob is lonely.
There were 2 cars coming behind us, so I had to keep going until I found a driveway to turn around. As I headed back, we rummaged around the van for a plan: styrofoam cup, no lid. Hmmm. No coffee can for carsick kids…empty Burger King bag? We had a plan.
We reached the tarantula again, half-expecting to find him squished by the cars that had followed us but he was still standing in the middle of the road, deep in thought. Maybe he forgot why he wanted to cross and was reconsidering his plan.
I set the styro cup over him and gently slid a notepad under. He obligingly stepped up onto it. I felt myself cringe. He moved! Ugh! He moved! A car slowed and swerved to avoid me and the girls noted the grinning driver and his laughing passenger. I wondered briefly if they guessed what I had gathered in the cup as I held it at arms’ length on my way back to the van.
I felt the cup vibrate gently in my hand. He moved again! eeeek! I calmly climbed into the van.
The empty Burger King bag was behind my seat so I twisted around awkwardly to deposit my new pet, a little unsure how to do it. No kids were volunteering to help. I lowered the cup and notepad into the bag. First, I just slid the notepad out from under the cup, expecting him to drop the short distance to the bottom of the bag. I didn’t feel any movement, so I was suddenly struck by the possibility that he was standing on the notepad in my other hand, which I couldn’t see from my angle. Maybe he was even crawling up toward my hand. I held the cup aside and let the notepad drop into the bag. I peeked in and didn’t see him standing on the notepad. Uh oh. Maybe he had dropped in at first, and I just squished him with the notepad. Nope. Where was he?
IN THE CUP. The one that I was carelessly holding upside down off to the side. I tipped it up and looked inside. Yup. Tarantula. Eeek!
Once I actually knew where he was, it was easy to get him into the bag. We fastened the top with a hair pony and were back on the road. The whole event didn’t take more than 5 minutes.
We were 4 minutes late to church.
Oh, did you want to know the answer to the question? “Why did the tarantula cross the road?”
Female tarantulas live a very long sedentary life, hidden in burrows. Male tarantulas spend their very short adult life tirelessly searching for females. This guy was out hunting for a woman. He met Shelob last night, and they will probably get together again several times over the coming weeks. Maybe we’ll have 50-200 cute little baby tarantulas in a few months. Who wants one?
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If you follow us at all on Facebook, you might have known that some of the guys from Vision Forum had a friendly little showdown with some of the guys from College Plus.
It took the form of a football game. My Incredible Hulk played center – the guy who hikes the ball to the quarterback and protects him from oncoming traffic. He’s #61. In case you can’t tell, the good guys are wearing white shirts and the bad guys are in red.
Consulting with the quarterback…
…and tackling every moving object that tries to get past him:
The nemesis, Tommy Funcle. He’s the children’s Fake Uncle Thomas, since they already have a real Uncle Thomas.
Little cheerleaders:
The front of their signs:
Even littler cheerleader:
Let’s all run this way!
One player performs the highly advanced Grande Jete
Later, the same guy nearly had his shirt torn off:
Big spectators
and little ones:
Who’s got the ball?!
Dog pile!
One guy was just MEAN.
Well, maybe more than one:
They may have ended the game 4 points down, but they sure look like winners, don’t they?
There were quite a few bruises, one guy said his jaw was popped out of joint and back in again, and Hubby’s nose got broken on the top of someone’s head. There was blood everywhere but he wiped it away and went right back in for more.
In the end, the score was 18-22. See more pictures posted by the Bad Guys here.
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…to shut the door!
The weather has cooled beautifully here in south Texas. The sweating has come to an end, and we’re enjoying the sort of fall weather that leaves us with silly grins on our faces. But the mornings can be chilly sometimes, and we’re putting off the trip to the storage shed for the heaters. So far we have stayed very comfortable if we remember to close all the windows before bed.
But today barely topped 60 degrees, chilly by our standards. It’s time to break the summertime habit of leaving the front door wide open!
I’ve been issuing reminders right and left for weeks now:
“Close the door!”
“Don’t leave that door open!”
“Close the door!”
“I don’t care if you thought somebody was coming behind you. CLOSE THE DOOR!”
Even the baby has taken to bellowing at her sisters: “Dose-duh-doooo!”
But it just isn’t working. Why is it that children refuse to heed repeated verbal warnings? Why must they provoke us to real action before they decide that what we’re telling them is really important?
My blood runs thin and I’m afraid of the cold. I’m a desperate woman driven to desperate measures. I’m now charging a $.25 fine for each infraction. As always, if the perpetrator doesn’t have cold hard cash she is given the privilege of working off her debt. Making my bed, starting a load of laundry, or swatting 5 flies are 3 ways to earn a fast quarter. If necessary, I can come up with others.
I suspect this will work well over the next several days but today it had an unexpected side effect and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Those of you who think my plan is too mean will be relieved to know that I’m losing money on the deal.
It works like this: every time I demand the fine from an offender, she remembers that I actually and legitimately owe her money, so I end up paying out money to the offender. As of now, I think I’m at least a dollar in the red even though I’ve collected 6 or 7 fines today. Sigh. Another great entrepreneurial idea gone awry.
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I’m tired just from watching the kids work the past 2 days! They weren’t satisfied with what they accomplished Wednesday, so on Thursday they begged to be allowed to take down the other set of bunkbeds and move the dressers into the final bedroom. In the process, we filled a 40 gallon trash bag with goods for the thrift store. We also thinned our books a bit in the hopes of making room for the stragglers that are still scattered about the house. We have 3 boxes to add to our For Sale page, and I took 3 boxes to the thrift store. Now our library is complete – until we’re ready to build shelves on the walls and finish the floor. Heh heh. I’ll add it to my list of future unfinished projects.
The bedroom is very similar to the final layout we have planned but of course the wooden bunks will extend nearly 11.5 feet instead of a measly 6 feet like the shelves they’re using now, so they won’t need the twin mattress on the floor. We’ll also be finishing the floor, and maybe we’ll even get fancy and do baseboards and trim the windows like them-thar city folks.
The living room is cleaner than it’s been in years. It almost looks like it did when we first moved in, before we had to time to accumulate our current abundance of worldly goods. Part of me wants to fill in that empty spot with a nice end table and fill the walls with family pictures, but part of me is reveling in the emptiness.
At any rate, we seem to have done most of the prep work for our Great Idea. Everything is moved, rearranged, decluttered – well, sort of… there’s a lot more we could do. I’m glad we won’t have to tackle all of this when we finally get to build our beds. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into! Hey, I wonder if we could keep the storage shelves against the opposite wall in the bedroom. Then we would have room to sleep 12 children. We’d be set for years! Who thinks I’m getting a little carried away?
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Well, it’s Wednesday and we haven’t started our crazy new bunkbeds yet, so I guess we’re not going to get it done this week but it’s not my fault! No, I’m not blaming morning sickness, though I might play that card soon enough.
Right now I’m blaming hubby. Well, sort of. He insists that we launch our 2 e-books before we start yet another project. They’re already done. We just need to add a few images and decide on cover designs and choose a final title for the cookbook, and…well, maybe we’re not quite done. But we’re so very close and we really want to cross the finish line on that project!
In the meantime, we have a set of storage shelves that just happens to have the very dimensions we have proposed for our bunkbeds – 4 shelves, 2 feet wide, with 2 feet of headspace – so we’re taking down the bunkbeds in the middle bedroom and setting up the shelves in their place as a trial.
By the way, when I say “we,” I mean the children are taking down the bunkbeds.
The kids will take turns sleeping on the shelves to make sure that they have enough space before we start constructing the official wooden beds with hinged storage, etc.
Since the shelves will take so much less space than the old beds, we can also begin moving bookshelves into the middle bedroom, our future library. If all goes well, our living room may feel far more spacious by the end of the day. Or maybe the other bedroom. Or my room. I wonder how many bookcases we can fit in there right away?
Oops. We have a change of plans. Or rather, a miscommunication. The kids want to move as many bookcases as possible into the library right away and put the sleeping shelves into the bedroom where we will be building the wooden ones soon. They’ll all start sleeping in one room tonight. I’m ok with that! It means I can get the shelves out of both the living room and my bedroom today!
It took them all of 20 minutes to assemble the shelves with no real assistance from me.
And they couldn’t wait to pile on, even though it’s only officially room for 4 children.
But I’m not quite as happy as they are. Does your living room look like this?
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On Wednesday while I was sequestered in my bedroom working on the last chapter of my ebook, he colored Bethany from front to back and top to bottom with a permanent marker. The really stinky kind of permanent marker. I’m not sure how we missed the odor, but somebody also marked up the siding on the front of the house and several patches of the deck, which we just stained this summer.
Questions were raised about who should have been watching and what they were doing instead, but we’ll just pretend it never happened – except when we’re out on the deck.
Or maybe when I start thinking about it, I’ll distract myself with the memory of what he did 2 days later – opened the van door into the shiny silver Toyota next to us.
I assessed the damage: no dent, no scratch. Just our white paint on the door of the silver car. It was a nice car, but I did spot several small scratches and chips farther down the side, worse than what we had just done. I wetted my finger and rubbed. The white paint didn’t go away, but I was hopeful that it would buff off.
Nonetheless, that note was much less fun to write than the one I sent to my bank the day before.
My 3yo opened the door of my van onto your driver door, leaving a bit of white paint just below the handle.
If you are concerned, please call me at 830-***-****. Or you can look for me inside the Goodwill. I’m the guilty looking woman with a little girl and a little boy.
So Sorry,
Kim
A few minutes later, a woman rushed down the aisle next to me, sounding angry and distraught: “Kim! Kim!“ My stomach sank. Then an employee who seemed to know her spoke in a soothing voice: “What is it, Kathy?”
“I’m lost again!” Kathy replied. I breathed a sigh of relief and resumed looking guilty, but nobody came looking for this Kim, and the car was gone when we left the Goodwill.
No calls yet. So far, so good. How long would you wait before you breath a real sigh of relief?
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Wow! Thanks for the great response! We may be close to our goal already but we still have a lot books left, all discounted by at least 50%. I just finished adding new ones and breaking up the Elsie set.
Remember, everyone who places an order of any size will be entered in a drawing for a free Liberty Doll, also from the Vision Forum clearance shelf in the retail store. Just go to our little online shop to place your order (it’s all easy and automated now, with Paypal checkout) and leave a comment here to let us know that you want to be entered.
I’m hoping to start the grand project next week, but here’s a before image of the bedroom. Ready? Are you sure? We’ll start gradually, by just peeking in the doorway.
This currently houses 5 of the 9 children.
On the left wall, we have the beds, with the dresser tucked behind the door. Deanna sleeps in the twin bed on top. Megan, Natalie and Perry share the full size bed on the bottom. The cat sleeps wherever he falls.
They all share the dresser and closet except Bethany, whose clothes are in my bottom drawer and a small section of my closet. The drawer with stuff hanging out? That’s Natalie’s. Let this be a lesson to her.
Standing in the doorway and panning to the right, we see this. This is after they cleaned their room. I’m not kidding.
Bethany sleeps in the playpen. The basket is Megan’s laundry and other stuff that people have been nagging her to put away. Let this be a lesson to her.
The Boy’s toys are in a 5 gallon bucket, since most of them stand upright like wooden swords, foam swords, baseball bats, rifles, and popguns.
The book shelves minus all their accompanying clutter will move into the other bedroom, which is going be converted to a library. In the big jar on the right is Henry the tarantula - Harry for short.
He might move to the future library, along with the gerbils and snakes. I’m sure the predators will enjoy watching the gerbils care for their juicy pink little babies.
If all goes according to plan, we’ll soon have 4 navy-style bunks, each 11’3″ long.
The top 3 will each be divided in half, one end 5’3″ and the other end 6′ long. The bottom will be divided into three parts for the 3 littlest children. Each bed will be hinged and will flip up to reveal a wide shallow storage area. Mattresses will be 3″ memory foam with slipcovers made from sheets. I have no plans for lockers like in the photo above, though the kids would love it. I did set up an automatic search on craigslist so I’ll be notified if any lockers come up for sale in our area.
After we tear down the current bunks but before we build the crazy new beds, we’ll need to finish the floor under that area. This will include laying down another layer of plywood, leveling it, sealing with paint, and applying vinyl tile. I’m hoping we can also trim the window while we’re at it.
So we’ll need to:
Who thinks we can get this done in a week, starting next Monday? Who thinks we actually will get it done in a week? What about just the first 13 steps? Who is laughing at me?
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I woke up with The Best Idea Ever.
Remember when we were wondering how to fit our kids more comfortably into their 2 smallish rooms? We talked about stacking them higher, or building a loft over the bedrooms. We kicked around the idea of triple or even quadruple bunks, and where to put them.
We even talked about finding a way to fit them all in one room and turning the other into a library, thus freeing up all the space in the rest of the house that is currently cluttered crowded consumed by books.
Here’s what we’re going to do:
The 2 bedrooms are nearly 12×12 each, and each houses 4 children plus assorted pets and a baby. The beds are, of course, the biggest piece of furniture in each room: bunkbeds with a full on the bottom and a twin on top.
We’re going to build-in a set of shelves that runs the entire length of the room, just behind the door. They will probably be 24-28″ deep. It will be over 11 feet long, and 4 levels high. Each shelf will sleep 2 children, feet-to-feet. If they enjoy each other’s company and/or want to share a booklight or alarm clock, they could choose to sleep head-to-head.
The beds will be built of wood, probably similar to the storage shelves the girls and I built under the house for hubby’s birthday, though these won’t be hung from the ceiling. We will buy thick comfy mattress pads to cut down for mattresses. We have already done a bit of research for this part. Three king size pads will be more than enough.
We will have 8 beds – or even 9, since 3 small children could sleep on the bottom level – on one side of one bedroom. The kids love the idea!
We’re still working on other details:
Now, who thinks we’re crazier than ever? Who wants to see pictures of the project when we start it? Who wants to see my fundraising idea?
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I think we all have this list tucked away somewhere, and everyone’s list looks different. Here’s the Headmistress’s list. I would love to know what’s on yours.
First, a few basics:
And some specifics:
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Who’s with me on this crazy little trip?
It’s been 3 weeks since I used shampoo – unless you count the egg shampoo – and I’m really wondering if there’s going to be a happy ending to this tale. I did try a shampoo bar, using just a touch of suds right at my scalp, but I didn’t like what it did to my hair.
I see more wave in my hair than ever, but also more oil. I can and do wear it up in a clip, so nobody knows but my own household. But when will the oil end? I certainly don’t want it to feel like this forever! Just for the sake of giving it a good try, I want to stick with it another couple of weeks, but I’m not sure what to expect or hope for. I’m afraid this works best for curly hair that tends to be so dry. My 2 curly tops now have softer, shinier hair than ever. Those of us with straight hair? Not so happy, but mostly me since my hair is far oilier than that of the children.
I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression. I haven’t been miserable. My hair is soft and wavy. It feels almost sticky when it’s damp from the shower, but once it’s thoroughly dried I can run my fingers through it. I can’t decide if it feels nicely moisturized like skin after applying lotion, or if it just feel like somebody dumped a cup of Wesson Oil on my head. Sometimes I think it looks healthy and shiny, but then I give it a swing and it separates into strands. Ugh. Back into the clip. Pictures? I don’t think so.
I have been using baking soda and vinegar every day. This week I think I’ll back the baking soda off to every other day, probably with just a vinegar rinse on the off days. Maybe I’ll just rinse with warm water. I might do the egg shampoo again too, just to give myself a break.
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2009 U.S. Poverty guidelines by number of persons in household:
1…………………………………………………$10,830
2…………………………………………………. 14,570
3…………………………………………………. 18,310
4…………………………………………………. 22,050
5…………………………………………………. 25,790
6…………………………………………………. 29,530
7…………………………………………………. 33,270
8…………………………………………………. 37,010
9…………………………………………………. 40,750
10……………………………………………….. 44,490
11……………………………………………….$48,230
I’ve expanded the original chart to show our family size. If you are even crazier than we are, keep adding $3,740 for each additional person. Before you ask, let me add that this is only for the 48 contiguous states. The figures are significantly higher for Alaska and Hawaii.
It’s interesting to note the change in how poverty has been defined:
Webster’s 1828 Dictionary said this:
Poverty 1. Destitution of property; indigence; want of convenient means of subsistence. The consequence of poverty is dependence. The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty. Prov.23…
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Since we have 11 people in a smallish house, we are forced to think outside the box. We’ve often toyed with the idea of stacking bunk beds higher than the standard 2 high.
OK, that gives some people the heebie-jeebies. But what about a triple bunk? I think it would be tremendously practical, especially since we have a vaulted ceiling over the children’s bedrooms. This one is sweet, though I’m not sure how many real children would fit.
Here’s a life-size option:
Nice, but still pretty pricey. For a very modest price you can buy plans and/or hardware to build this yourself:
I think we could save even more space if we skipped the twin mattresses (after all, it’s called twin because you can easily put 2 people in it, though my children don’t believe me) and just went for a single size. And a thin foam mattress would be much easier to handle than a heavy spring-y one.
I’m really in love with this design:
It’s clean, simple, and sensible. If we could figure out how and where to get the foam mattresses, it would probably be very cheap. And it looks strong. Even with girls, that’s important. Judging by the sounds when our sweet young ladies crawl into bed at night, I’m pretty sure they’re practicing their vaulting skills.
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