March 13: The Comfy Chair

We have done five-month photo shoots with all the boys, a short black and white indoor session at a studio we admire. I was grateful there was a photographer in town who could do that, and the seven of us headed up. Caleb was by far the easiest of the boys (I think one son peed on me, and after one son I left the shoot thinking, "Oh, well, that was a bust." It wasn't, but it did not feel triumphant at all). But after an hour and ten rolls of film, he was so over-stimulated he could do little but wave his arms.

He did push himself up, though, almost into a crawling position. Thus far, he has been able to support himself off the ground for a few seconds when we set him down, but this was the first moment he actually pushed himself up.

We picked up the new tire (yay!). And our ice cream maker was waiting for us at the post office. There was great rejoicing. I respect the recipes and reviews by Cook's Illustrated, and we got their recommendation for an ice cream maker that has an internal freezer. (I don't think I have the mental energy to deal with salt and ice on a regular basis, though I know those types work well. And I have had a freezer bowl type, which worked nicely, except it made a limited amount at a time, required a 24-hour freeze before each batch, and took up a good bit of space in the freezer itself.)

For the first day, I was underwhelmed. The lemon ice cream was quite tasty, but took about twice as long as expected. The instructions didn't specify how much liquid to include for a final product of "two quarts," and it didn't include any recipes so I could estimate. My internet was down (in all his cleaning, Phil moved the router or something) and I couldn't look anything up. The chocolate peanut butter was almost too rich. The vanilla too sweet.

After spending my afternoon with ice cream and sugar, by evening I was overwhelmed. Between photos and ice cream, I hadn't read to the boys or worked. How could I possibly get everything done?

Phil and I had a long conversation. The end result was that we are going to hope to move to more of a schedule. I haven't had any luck having a schedule since graduating from college, and I so highly value the opportunity to wake at any time needed....

But I can also see that I have no systems, and I should probably reduce my mental stress a little by building some schedule systems so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. That has been adequate, but with five boys, there is less of me to go around, I think, so any helps I can give myself are probably worth it.