Bringing Balance to the Force

As many of you know, I grew up in a family of all girls. My mom is from a family of all girls and, well, my dad is the only male in a family otherwise made up of girls. That's 10 girls to 1 boy in the last two generations. Until along came Evan and, shortly thereafter, Andrew. Score: 10 girls, 3 boys in 3 generations. Next came Caleb and Grant. Score: 10 girls, 5 boys. Scott says we're restoring balance to the force.

We had an ultra-sound on Wednesday and had the opportunity to find out the gender of the next player of Mangum gender roulette. Scott had been thinking girl, while I was doing my best not to think about it at all, since whatever I guess inevitably turns out to be wrong. We (or really, just I) had thought about not finding out the gender this time, but in the end we decided to go ahead and ask the doctor to tell us. Score: 10 girls, 6 boys. We are, of course, very excited. But as we were leaving the ultra-sound I also told Scott that the likelihood of us having four kids just increased significantly.

Evan is very excited. He asks every night to feel the baby. Here he is with his BFF Colby in the most adorable picture ever! (Courtesy of Julie, since the last time I uploaded photos to my computer was after Christmas.)

Caleb is confused and can't figure out why I keep pointing to my tummy and saying something about a baby, especially when he lifts my shirt up but doesn't see any baby. Now he sometimes points to his tummy and says baby. Here's a fairly recent picture of him as well, again courtesy of Julie.

I've Noticed an Interesting Phenomenon*

I know a lot of people about our age who began the odyssey of parenthood about the same time as us, or even a little before. Some of these friends live near us in Boston; many are people I keep in touch with on-line (mostly through blog reading). Some are even people I don't know personally at all but who are friends of friends or family of friends. But almost all of them share something in common: they have two kids. Not one, not three. Two. Even people who had their first two pretty close together seem to have stopped (or stopped to take a breather) at two.

Once I noticed this pattern, I decided to observe it more closely. I decided to watch to see whether, at some point, there would be a massive burst of gestation. While recognizing that some members of this "Two's Company" group doubtless planned to become permanent members (and others, sadly, might be being forced into membership by circumstances), I felt certain that many were just resting for a bit before making the next jump. And so I waited. I waited to see who would take the plunge and tell the rest of us that the water was fine and the jump wasn't as far as it seemed. (Or that we should run far, far away from the ledge and wait awhile before approaching it again.)

Well, my friends, very few have yet to jump. But when they're ready to, we'll be there to tell them the water is fine and the fall was fun. Or maybe, come the beginning of September, we'll tell them to run.

*Disclaimer: I hope that anyone reading this blog would know me well enough to know that I do not mean any of this as a judgment about when other people should be having kids or how many they should have, but in case you don't, let me reiterate that point. I have enough trouble figuring out for us when we should have our kids and how many we should have, without trying to decide that for anyone else!

Cakes

I don't feel like working. I'm tired but it's not quite late enough to go to bed. So I am blogging instead. And probably not about anything any of you care to read. Over the last few years I've gotten into baking, and more recently cake baking and somewhat sporadic attempts at cake decorating. I'm really excited because I have a very sweet husband who got me private cake decorating lessons for Christmas. Now that Scott is done with Quals I should actually have time to take the class. So here are my before pictures of cakes I've made recently, and then after my class I'll post pictures of what my cakes look like after.

Baby shower cake.

Scott's birthday cake (yummier than it looks).

Caleb's birthday cake (this is what happens when the buttercream frosting under the fondant is too soft)

Caleb's birthday cake again.


Another baby shower cake.

Success!

Scott passed Quals! He is now an official MIT PhD student. This means they will not be unceremoniously kicking him out to go find a job in the worst job market in my adult life, nor will he have to spend another month basically living at school studying to take the test again in May. So now we're really hoping Scott can be graduating with his PhD in the summer of 2011. That's the goal. We'll see what happens.

In other news, we also recently hired a new nanny (long story) and the kids are getting so big. Caleb has been walking full-time for awhile now and is talking and signing some. Evan potty trained himself a couple of weeks ago, almost out of nowhere, and is now in underwear except at night. He still makes us laugh quite a bit as well. A few weeks ago he wanted me to get him breakfast, and I was trying to finish something first, so he said, "Mommy, I'm going to count to three and if you don't get me breakfast you're going to have to go to time out." I just laughed and laughed.

And finally, here are a bunch of pictures from the last couple of months.


In front of our little tree. Evan w/the best train track I've ever built.

The boys watching the first snow.

Another pic of the train track because I'm that proud of it.

Evan was the only kid not scared of Santa and the first to climb onto his lap. He told Santa he wanted two airplanes.

Caleb with Santa. Not such a fan.

At the end of a long day at Disneyland.

Evan on Christmas morning with his two airplanes.

Caleb on Christmas morning.

Caleb riding a scooter (with Grandma's help).

All my boys playing in the snow. (Yes, Scott is wearing shorts. No, I cannot explain.)

Caleb in the snow. (He lasted about five minutes.)

Evan in the snow. (He lasted considerably longer.)

And from just a few days ago, Evan at the Children's Museum playing with the boats.

Caleb at the Children's Museum looking so grown-up.

Why I hate January in Boston.

Yes, it's been awhile. Yes, there are about a hundred pictures and activities I've been meaning to chronicle on this blog. But instead of cute pictures of the kids at the apple farm or stories about our Christmas travels, I am going to tell you why I hate January in Boston. It's not the snow or the ice. It's not the slush that soaks me to the skin when I'm walking from the T to work. It's not the realization that it's going to be at least four more months before I can even think of taking my kids outside to play. This January it's not even that Scott is so busy studying for Quals that we hardly see him.

It's the stomach flu, more accurately known as gastroenteritis. Every January since we have been in Boston, Evan has come down with whatever stomach bug is terrorizing Boston that particular year. Two Januarys ago, he also got me sick (sickest I have been in a decade), my poor visiting mother-in-law sick, and even Scott. (He also ended up with pneumonia that January, though I doubt the two were related.) Last January we all got it again, starting with Evan and including three-month-old Caleb (but minus my mother-in-law who, fortunately for her wasn't able to make it for her usual January visit) and Evan ended up in the ER.

Oh how I was hoping we might avoid it this January. That maybe extra hand sanitizing, fewer playgroup visits, and crossing my fingers would save us all. Alas, it was not meant to be. Evan wandered out of his room half an hour ago covered in vomit. I'm sure the rest of us will be joining him soon. I hate January.

Evan's 3rd Birthday!

Let's all pretend that it is November 6th and not November 26th (technically 27th by now) and that I am writing this on Evan's birthday and not three weeks later. Grandma and Grandpa came to visit, which Evan was very excited about. Initially I'd planned to throw a birthday party for Evan with all of his friends from church. But when it came down to it, I just didn't have a party in me. I feel guilty about it, but luckily Evan didn't have too many expectations. Cake, presents, and he was happy. Then throw grandma and grandpa in the mix and his BFF Colby, who we invited over for the evening, and it was a party to him.

The original plan was to go to Chuck E. Cheese's for pizza and playing and then to have cake and open presents at home. Ah yes, the cake. Evan requested a train cake for his birthday. I baked the cake in the morning (I was working from home) but then ended up with an urgent project at work that took up all of my time until almost 6. (We'd planned to leave for the restaurant at 5.) I still had to shower and make the frosting, so we sent my dad off to pick Scott up from school and to pick the adults up some Indian food. (Sorry Chuck E. Cheese pizza.) In the meantime, it started pouring outside. So we bundled up the kids and traipsed down to the minivan only to realize that I'd given my dad my keys and couldn't find the extra set. (Our nanny had them.) I did find a so-called "valet key," but it took us five minutes of struggling in the rain to determine that it wouldn't unlock the doors. So that was the end of Chuck E. Cheese.

We ordered Papa John's pizza instead, let Evan and Colby open and play with one of Evan's presents (a whole, whole bunch of trains and tracks I bought used for a great price), and I got to work on frosting the cake. It took F-O-R-E-V-E-R! And I didn't even have time to attempt to make it pretty. Evan was thrilled with it, though. He loved blowing out the candles and loved eating the cake even more. Also loved opening his presents. All told, the celebration wasn't over until 10. So things didn't go exactly as I'd hoped, but at least the day went better than Caleb's birthday (poor Caleb.)

It's hard to believe that my baby, my first born, is three years old. He's still got the big blue eyes he had when he was a brand-new baby.

He loves trains and airplanes and Curious George. He loves to play with other kids (I'm told he always goes up to other kids on the playground and asks them if they'll play with him.) He loves books. He's learning to recognize all the letters and how to count. He likes to pretend to be a puppy. He's sweet and loving and remarkably reasonable for a three-year-old. I just can't believe how big and grown-up he is. We love him so much!

On being a mom

Though I have lots of pictures and stories to share, including from Evan's birthday, and though Kara has thrown down the tagging gauntlet, today I read a blog posting by my old roommate and longtime friend Jessie that I found so true to my life, and I think to most women's (especially mom's) lives, that I just had to share it. I hope you'll all read it. Here's the link: http://squeezetheuniverse.com. The title of the post is "quiet house." Enjoy!