The last thing I should be doing at nearly 1 a.m. is writing here, but I'm not tired yet, I have a bed full of kids next to me, and I don't really need to leave the house until 8:45 tomorrow, I think. That means I can sleep until 8:25!

Rutledge just got bumped into a "reading group" at preschool. In some ways, this feels like a ridiculous and American concept. He's not yet in kindergarten, and yet it felt like he was "delayed" and therefore somehow deficient because he was one of the last holdouts in a class where he is definitely not the youngest. I tend to be of the philosophy "better late than early" when it comes to this kind of thing. Of course, saying that, I'd really appreciate having just, say, one "early" in a sea of lates so that my heart would beat a little more regularly. If he was in a Waldorf school or a European-inspired environment or even a little more hardline NAEYC preschool, this wouldn't be an issue at all, but I can't help having my brain wander over and think about how other kids seem to get this whole reading thing at all the "wrong" time so why won't mine?

But now Rutledge is making progress in that area. He knows all the letters and their various sounds. He can read the words "see" and "I" and has memorized the text in his little book he brought home. He is working through Headsprout reading (www.headsprout.com) and getting 96% or more correct in each lesson. This is the program that moved Frances from a low 1st grade level to beyond a 3rd grade level in reading in about three months. I don't expect he's going to be truly reading at the end of it, but he perhaps will have some ideas planted in his head that he will find useful at a later time. What I can say is that he is proud of his ability to sound out some words, he is pleased to be in a reading group, finally, and he does have that doofy Hooked on Phonics tape memorized.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this Vitamin D thing, and I've determined that my official feeling, at this point, is that sure, it may be a problem, but it is a red herring. It's not the REAL problem behind why Walter is of short stature. There seems to be little causal relationship, barring a more severe situation like rickets, between small size and low vitamin D. We're forging ahead with him taking about 15 times the RDA of it anyway, but the jury is kind of still out. Meanwhile, I've been continuing to make a serious effort to improve our family's mealtimes and nutrition. In particular, this has meant seriously limiting the treats and sugary food that, unfortunately, I crave with unstoppable fervor. It is revealing to me yet again, as if I need more revelation, that it is just really darn expensive to eat the right foods. Fifteen cups of fruit a day, which is what we need to cover everyone in the family, is just, well, a lot, and it costs a lot. And it takes a lot of cutting and processing and creativity. And a lot of trips to the store. If we all drank as much milk as we should, we would be going through a gallon and a quarter a day (we're not all doing this, though; I'd be truly ill if I drank 24 ounces a day without consuming half a bottle of Lactaid). I also still don't believe anyone who claims that those baby carrots taste like candy. No they don't! They taste like carrots! I really like my chocolate, thank you very much. But I have been good.

My mini-goal lately has been to move Bilbo closer to being accident-free in the house, and I cautiously can say that there has been small progress. We have been taking him for walks 3-5 times a day, and we have been making an effort to have him walking about 2-2.5 miles a day in an effort to help him lose weight that he has gained this winter lounging around the house and stealing food from the cat. I have sliced his calories way down by making one simple change (I should sell this secret on the Internet!). He is no longer getting any cat food. I put up a gate in my closet door that is so tall that even the cat can't get over it! I also switched him over to "weight control" dog food, now that I'm not having to balance needs with a dog who was too skinny. His multi-mile walks are also mine, and my goal is to move us both up to running the whole way in the near future. I'd settle for just having a walk without a thunderstorm in the middle of it, though.

This week we also seem to have gotten back into our routine of reading and getting regular schoolwork done. All of the appointments and labwork and morning engagements last week really cut into our time, but this week we've hit all major subjects, and we are making good progress in Walk Two Moons, a book that could not be further from what I thought it would be about. Somehow I thought it was going to be about a Native American girl, but instead it's a pure example of the "trailer park" genre of Newberry winners--right in there with The Higher Power of Lucky and Because of Winn-Dixie. They can get to be a little formulaic. Some themes that are really a bit much for the intended age group (8-12), quirky characters with a mysterious pseudo-profound air about them, mothers who leave their own children because of their complicated issues, children who blame themselves and try to understand the coping of imperfect adults. I am kind of anxious for it to end, just because it isn't engaging me all that much. But I'm going to stick with it. We're also reading Island of the Blue Dolphins at the same time. And I honestly do want to finish Heidi and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. It's kind of interesting reading several things at once and also revisiting books that I've read with one or more children over the past few years. I had wondered how I would handle it when Frances and then Rutledge got older and I had already read everything, but I guess the answer is, it's never a bad idea to reread aloud something that you already know. The ones who have already heard it are free to leave, but they are liking hearing about Ramona or Fudge again.

I still feel so fortunate to have the time to spend in copious amounts with my children. It is becoming more clear each day that the older ones are truly going to grow up. They aren't going to be sitting around listening to me read forever, and I can see that these really are the wonder years, the ones that I'll miss deeply when they are gone. It's good to keep that in perspective on the frustrating days and to really treasure the days that we have.

Hokie Clendenon
1994-2010

Today was one of the hardest days. We have known for a while that Hokie was not going to live forever, and over the past few months, he has lost an incredible amount of weight and had become emaciated. He was blinder, deafer, and didn't always have his balance about him. But he still was living a decent beagle life--dumping our kitchen trash can, valiantly defending his food dish, checking out the back yard, roo-rooing at other dogs. For the past two weeks, I actually believed that he might be putting on weight again (he had a voracious appetite, and we were feeding him 3-4 times a day trying to add anything back to his frame), but on Friday, he started to look very, very gaunt. Friday night I found him hiding underneath some blankets and clothes on the floor of our laundry room. Saturday morning, before I left for my Dad's house in Pulaski, I had to guide him into his crate because he was wandering aimlessly, and he felt like he was hollow when I picked him up. Then Kerry called to say that he knew why Hokie was looking so skinny again--he wasn't eating or drinking. He had been given food several times, and he just walked away. Anyone who has beagles knows this is a sign of serious trouble.

Last night was rough. Hokie went outside and went under the house and wouldn't come back out. I was out of town, but Kerry was afraid that he was going to have to send a child under to get his body. But he lived until morning. And then he started vomiting, and it was deep, smelly vomit coming from his intestines. He went to the emergency vet, who concurred with what our vet has suspected, that he has liver or stomach cancer. We could have taken him to a veterinary oncologist tomorrow, but chances are, his condition couldn't be fixed anyway, and the treatment would just be further trauma. And then, when I saw him when they brought him in from the back of the office, it was clear that he was not likely to live until morning anyway. Poor boy was actively vomiting while they gave him the injection, but now I know he is out of his pain and he will not have to starve or dehydrate to death, nor would he have to die without us if he had to stay for treatment. We were able to be there with him in his final moments and to pet him afterwards. We were given some clay pawprints from him.

Hokie was my baby long before I had human babies. I got him from the Rio Hill pet shop back in my last week of my first year of graduate school. I know better now than to buy a dog from a pet store, but in his defense, he was from a local breeder who was not a puppy mill, and though he may not have necessarily been bred with the utmost care for health and conformation, he was a gorgeous, healthy, perfect-tempered beagle, and we had been to shelters all over the state looking for the right dog, and he was it. I hid him in my apartment and slept with him in the tiny bathroom there so that he would not howl at night or pee on my floor that week. When I took him for walks on Montebello Circle, I would have to carry him home because his tender pink pads on his feet weren't callused yet and the road was too rough for him. He lived with me on 14th Street, and he worked with me every day of his first summer, when I was helping to edit Piers Plowman for an electronic edition. We went up to Shenandoah National Park several times a week for most of his first year and a half and hiked every hike under seven miles. He had many good buddies at the dog park and at the park down the street from us.

During later years, after the Shenandoah Era, which ended with Tucker, who wasn't very reliable off lead and who got carsick, he shuttled back and forth between Charlottesville and Craig County, where he had the opportunity to chase horses, romp in fields, and play with our kitten. He was always gentle, tolerant to a fault, and affectionate. His only vice as an adult dog was that he could be aggressive toward puppies. As a family dog, he put up with all kinds of pulling and dragging and falling on top of him. Like most beagles, he was a couch potato, but if called to action, he was more than ready to leap up and stay with you as long as you needed him to be rugged and athletic. During his prime years, he was the kind of beagle that people who stop us on the street to walk to because he had such a beautiful coat and square muzzle.

It feels odd to be in a house that doesn't have Hokie in it. The picture above was from just last year, when he still had a healthy looking body. At 14.5, our vet called him "The best looking fourteen year old beagle I've ever seen." Bilbo is pretty subdued tonight.

I am putting my energy now into helping Bilbo become the dog he should be. I have not been a good pet owner with him. I have done a very poor job of training him. He's a sweet, affectionate, calm, tolerant beagle as well. But after the previous owners' dogs marked the carpet and floors and then Tucker had trouble in his old age and then Hokie backslid when Tucker did, he isn't the best housebroken dog. I recognize that this is my fault. We have a crate, and to some degree we have "crate trained," but I know I haven't done it by the book, and I've let him out unsupervised too often and we have also slacked off because we have a fenced back yard that he can go in while we aren't home or while we aren't watching. Just because he goes outside doesn't mean he's not going to go in the house, also. In the past few weeks I have started regularly walking him for a mile or two a day, trying to get in a short morning walk and a longer evening walk at the least. I've never had to walk a dog in order to housebreak before, but this is a new dog, and we're always being asked to adapt and learn, aren't we? I'm also being meticulous about having him in the crate when we are not able to active watch him. So far I haven't seen any accidents, but then again, I may be missing some of what happens upstairs. Since we are getting new carpet in three weeks, even though we will gate the stairs so that he can't go up, I would still like to feel like I have not been a complete dog failure. Over the past few weeks I've been researching dog breeds and thinking about what our next dog might be, and it has really hurt me that even close friends have said that I should absolutely not get any more dogs because I have been such a bad owner of the ones I have. The immature side of myself wants to get one just to spite them (not that they care...I'm the one cleaning up the messes), sort of a "ha, I'll do what I want." I'm not the best human parent, and I'm not the best dog parent, and it is perhaps selfish of me to want living things as a comfort and companion for myself, but I can say with all honesty that my life has been much, much better for having had Hokie in it, and the sixteen years I spent with him not only would not have been the same without him, but have given me so much love and so many wonderful memories that I wouldn't trade them for clean carpets or even an intact sense of accomplishment as a trainer or person. Hokie, may you find much peace and happiness over the Rainbow Bridge, and I hope the bunnies are plentiful there.

My garden is gorgeous. In fact, my lettuces are ready for harvest and taste scrumptious. However, I have a confession to make. I AM the biggest loser. Excited by my lovely bounty and the tender crispness of the salad blend up front, I bought Kerry a few leaves and forced him to eat them. The next thing I knew, he was vigorously spitting them into the sink! I was offended! He said it was "dry." Hmm?

So I went out to get a few leaves for myself, and soon I found myself spitting into the kitchen sink.

When I went to the garden and picked up the marker, what did I find but "Petunia!"

Now he is so angry and terrified that he is going to die of petunia poisoning that he is not speaking to me. Now he is sick. I'm afraid. And it's all my fault.

Which is kind of a shame because this is the first time we have been home with no children (they are watching a movie with a neighbor) in probably, well, ever.

I have researched the toxicity of petunias, and the flowers are not toxic. What's less clear is whether the leaves are; no one touches this subject to my satisfaction. They do seem to be okay for turtles and deer and dogs and cats, but I don't know much about people. Plus I noticed that the pictures of petunias didn't look at all like my leaves. My leaves looked like crinkle-edged lettuce, and online petunia leaves are small teardrops. I fear that I have no idea what I ate! But it is sticking in my throat and still feels like it is there.

Who said gardening is for wimps?

And who has been moving my garden markers?!

Anyone who has seen me in the past three weeks has the same question. "What were you painting?"

I can't seem to paint the walls without painting myself, too. But the answer to the question is, "I'm painting my family room." And I'm painting it turquoise. The tank is dirty in the front (overflows of salt water leave behind a lot of salt!), but you're really supposed to be looking at the amazing color behind it.

I also painted my stairwell, upstairs hallway, and the area below the chair rail and breakfast counter in my kitchen, as well as the super-high wall where I can't reach the top angle.



Nobody in my house sleeps alone. And who can resist a guy in candy striped jammies?


I hope that my prominent memory of these years will be how there were always lots of extra people in my bed. This is what every morning is like--everyone makes their way to my room and we all watch Spongebob or Toot and Puddle together. Now it's still kind of true that some of these cuddlers in my bed are still doing things like lying there, lazily peeing in a pull-up instead of hauling their little butts out of bed and going to the bathroom. But this is still may favorite moment of each day, and we are fortunate to have the luxury of time to wake up slowly before heading out into the busyness of the rest of the day.

I just cannot finish one of these entries lately to save my life! I sit down to write, and the next thing I know I'm distracted and never return, and when I do, my whole Firefox session is over and I don't think about blogging, and the cycle continues.

There are so many things going on, both good and bad.

The bad: hanging out today with a friend, and Frances comes to me with a half gallon of ice cream and tells me that it is a liquid. Suddenly, the information I forgot from earlier-- the ice and water dispenser were not functioning when I went to fill Rutledge's school water bottle, after we spent about $350 in December getting them fixed--had a bearing on the ice cream situation. A major reason that the ice and water cease to work is that the temperature gets too high. So we threw away a lot of food, and really, we should throw away more. I'm willing to pay a pretty high price not to get food poisoning. We made the best of it--made a huge amount of baked chicken with the stuff thawing in the freezer, reacquainted ourselves with the blackeyed peas that were frozen, are finally going to eat the chili we had canned and that now needs to be consumed ASAP. Still, to pay several hundred more for a new computer for the fridge really wasn't something we needed to do when we just put down a 50% deposit on the carpeting that is supposed to go in three weeks from now. The fridge problem was the computer board that governs the cooling system and its readouts. Who knows why it spontaneously decides to go on the fritz, but I estimate the unit could have been failing to cool from sometime during last night or during the night to 3:15 when I discovered the problem.

The other bad news is that Walter may have some deficiency disease. Like rickets or a vitamin D deficiency. I feel just terrible, like I should have put more effort into feeding and supplementing. We all know the ruckus about breastfed babies and vitamin D these days, and Walter was lucky enough to be breastfed for about 27 months. He has always spent a lot of time outside...probably more than some of my other children, and definitely more than the average child who is in school all day. And I'm not a big user of sunscreen, I blush (burn?) a bit to admit. I definitely have never used it in any season other than summer, and I have been guilty of not using enough of it and having my children get tan. And, ironically, I do give him a specific calcium and vitamin D supplement, but apparently not enough (I just follow package labeling, but I now know that there really isn't believed to be a toxic level that is easily reached). What I don't do is give him a lot of milk. Milk is something that we use in fits, rather than on a daily basis every single day of the year. This is my fault. During my entire childhood, I was forced to drink a small glass of milk every morning and every evening, probably only about 6 ounces each time, and I'm fascinated by Walter having an issue like I did with the last half inch or so of milk in a glass--it just tastes yucky for some reason. For me, the forced milk was difficult. I thought it tasted bad, no matter how it was presented (chocolate, etc., though most of the time it was just white) and no matter how local and high quality the milk (we had it delivered to a little insulated metal milk box on our porch by Yoder Dairies, a super company that left the business in 2008). And worse yet, it made me feel sick a lot of the time after. It made it hard to eat the rest of my breakfast because my stomach would be upset, and I left for school with an upset stomach many, many, many days. Of course, being a girl, I believed that it was "stress" or something like that. But in adulthood, I've realized that no, it wasn't stress, it was lactose intolerance. The only time I've really been able to tolerate milk and ice cream well, without Lact-Aid, was during my pregnancies, where I drank prodigious (to me) amounts of milk. Now that I know how much milk many nutritionists and the food pyramid currently recommend, I was really not drinking too much more than what is recommended for everyone, but I thought a half-gallon a day was kind of over the top. Surprise, surprise, I ended up with four children who were then sensitive to dairy while I was nursing in the early months. Going off dairy was a fundamental remedy for Ollie's chronic ear infections; it was my last ditch effort after seeing the ENT and getting scheduled for ear tubes, and it worked--he has probably had four ear infections, if that, since we did that (and yes, he drinks incredible amounts of milk now...). At any rate, I have been guilty of not pushing large amounts of milk on children who express extreme dislike of it. Right now, only Ollie and Rutledge drink high amounts of regular milk, and Rutledge is still kind of sporadic. Ollie drinks what seems like his body weight in milk...whole milk...and he's still shorter than most of his friends. Who knows what his Vitamin D is like. And yeah, I'm very familiar with websites like www.nomilk.com, which on some level I can deeply identify with.

So we had this bone age scan last week that showed Walter has a nearly 3 year delay in bone age. This is a semi-subjective test, so I have to have it re-read by the endocrinologist, but 2 years difference from the chronological age is what is considered within the "normal" range. Tuesday we saw the endocrinologist, which was a humbling experience. I felt like a really bad parent. And I told lies. Lies that made me appear worse than I really am. For some unknown reason, I said that Walter drinks soft drinks 5 times a week, which really isn't true at all. I'm sure there has been a week sometime--like when we visited my Dad and were traveling, when this was true, but I'm not sure why this number came out of my mouth. I'm awaiting CPS with bated breath. He also had eaten primarily a lot of Canadian bacon and eggs in the two meals prior to our visit. Now to be fair, the Canadian bacon is really just what we'd call ham, and it was very lean ham at that, with only 1.5 grams of fat per serving (though I didn't know that until I looked at the package at home). What we didn't have in those meals was fruit or vegetables. Now don't get me wrong--this doesn't mean that none were consumed, just not at these meals. And he asked what Walter had for lunch the day before, and it was really embarrassing: the hot dog and drink deal at Costco. I don't shy away from hot dogs altogether, and this was a very blessed hotdog, which I think adds a little bit of nutritional value to a "bad" food, but I truly don't think I've ever had lunch at Costco before with them. I was kind of representing us on our worst kind of day. Sigh....

The good news: My garden is totally rocking. We have incredible looking lettuce and cabbage and broccoli growing. My spinach is trying. But my one 4x4 garden is producing beyond my expectations. I can't wait to start harvesting, which we should be able to do soon. The rain today can only improve it.

Frances is loving playing softball, and she's really good at it. She has a very good eye, has far, far better hand-eye coordination than the rest of the family (though Rutledge might well be our best...), and she has a strong throwing arm. Tonight was her second game, and it had a lot of drama. Crying girls, gloves thrown down, Frances getting hit in the eye with an errant pitch. I wish that I wasn't always having to ferry people to other activities instead of watching her games.

Walter and Ollie went on their first Boy Scout camping trip this past weekend. The campout was, ironically, held at my friend Amber's former house. Actually, the house was one she rented, and it was on kind of a family compound, but it is a beautiful setting, and thankfully was very close to home. Their next campout is going to be at Dutch Gap, near the Citie of Henricus, and this is a longer one and they'll be able to take the kayak and canoe (note to self: get kayak out of impoundment and figure out how to remove spraypainted graffiti). I'm ready to not attend these weekly Boy Scout meetings. They are enormously boring (sorry to those who are volunteering--I just have a lazy attitude and want to be consumers here rather than attending 1.5 hour meetings every Wednesday). But I think that they will have a lot of opportunities here, especially if they can find some friends and stick with it for a while. Last weekend was cold and wet at the beginning. We definitely need an equipment upgrade as far as their tent and sleeping bags go. I don't know if I should get them an adult-sized sleeping bag or not. Who knows...they just might grow some day soon, and a child's bag will be outgrown. Or they could be half a decade away from puberty and never fill a big bag. Right now I have 2 man Eureka tent that Kerry and I bought at an outdoor store in Afton fifteen years ago. It's not the most rugged tent, but it packs up nice and small. But I think I'm going to replace it with a different Eureka tent, the Apex, which gets great reviews and is pretty affordable from Amazon.

I spent part of the weekend in one of the most beautiful places I know--Front Royal, VA. Alas, I spent the very vast majority of the day-8:20-4:30 indoors with no windows at a business training session, but the drive was breathtaking. Front Royal lies at the gateway to Shenandoah National Park at the north end, and there is just something that absolutely stirs me about getting that first glimpse of the Blue Ridge as you are driving down a road from the eastern part of the state. I get tears in my eyes and feel like I am home when I see Shenandoah or any mountain looming ahead of me. The town itself is not an affluent one, but it is cozy, and there is still a bit of the flavor of the more upscale areas right to the east--Middleburg, The Plains, etc. I love the little stone walls near fields, the rustic homes, the rolling meadows. The training itself was also very inspiring. It's just so different from what I have been used to either in previous training for various jobs and in teaching. I have kind of set myself apart from Christian organizations in the past, partly because I've always felt like maybe I just don't fit in, but I met such wonderful people who really have such a strong belief that we were led to this particular job and that we won't be doing it alone. Classical Conversations is a very organized organization, and this is just what I need at this point. I've had some understandable qualms about what I've taken on, and this really put my mind at rest and has me eager to be engaged and be part of the community that I hope we will find. Still, it was a tiring, very long day, leaving at slightly after 5 and then turning around and driving back again right away.

The so-so, neither good nor bad: I'm really interested in getting another dog. The breed I have identified as a good fit for us is the German Shorthaired Pointer. This dog seems to have little drawback, other than a high activity level, which isn't a drawback, I suppose, if you have one yourself. But they seem to point, retrieve, like water, like people, be intelligent, learn quickly, enjoy challenges, get along well with children and dogs. Plus they look cool. Unless you are my husband, who thinks they look like two or three different dogs put together like Legos. I think partly he has to not like them because I found them, and there's always a power play going on. He can't like them. I wish I had played my own cards a little differently (or that I wasn't playing cards at all...), so it might be a little too late. I'm just feeling lately like I'd rather go for more of an A student dog than a C student. Beagles--gotta love them. But they're a C student. It's not that they aren't smart, they just, well, have some other priorities. And boy are they fun to party with! You can't help but want to just hang out at their place all day and night! But having cleaned up at least 2 major shits in the house today (the latest party involved eating about 2 pounds of peanut and raisin trail mix), I'm just kind of thinking that I'd like a dog with a little more passion about trying to please and be obedient. Maybe even to have some self-control. Of course, the RIGHT answer is that I shouldn't have a dog at all because I don't deserve one. And because it is sure to create more and more and more tension in an already screwed up relationship. But there's a space in my life begging to be filled by something fuzzy and cute that I could hang with. Whoever told me that you could have three dogs in Chesterfield County now should have kept her mouth shut!

It's official. I really want to move. I practically need to move.

I need the mountains. I need a smaller town. I need a landscape to connect with.

For whatever reason, and I'm not defending it, Richmond doesn't do it for me. It lacks an ocean. It lacks a mountain. And the James River, well, it's just not my type. When I drive west of here and hit that first moment when you see the Blue Ridge rising up in front of you, my overwhelming feeling is, "Ahh, I am home!" It happens on Route 17 as you head through western Stafford and into Fauquier. It happens on Route 460 a bit past Lynchburg. It happens on Route 29 just north of Charlottesville. Even when I lived in some of these places, every time I would see that first real glimpse of the stacks of blue, one one top of another, my breath would catch.

I should be content where I am. I have friends here. I know the lay of the land, where things are, where to go. We have amenities. We have proximity to the kinds of places I dream of actually living--we're just about two hours from them wherever you head. And yet I still miss what I don't have.

This weekend, I drove up to Front Royal for a training session and it was honestly all I could do to turn the car around to take it home. I promise myself, solemnly, that I am going to get back to mountains some day.

Keva blocks are a constant favorite item in our house. Tonight, while I was reading _Heidi_ to the kids, Walter built "the wolf" above. This was just one of many fabulous representative and architectural wonders that I saw. Our reading has been slower than usual lately. Walter, Ollie, and I just finished reading _The Sacrifice_, a book about the Salem witch trials, and all four of us have been reading _Heidi_, a very slow book, and _Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing_. The boys and I also are working on _Carry On, Mr. Bowditch_, a book that didn't really take off with them when we started it a few weeks ago, but that I'd like to finish. Before that we read _Huckleberry Finn_ and _Misty of Chincoteague_. Next on my docket is _A Wizard of Earthsea_, which I'll admit is outside of my favored genres and outside those of my children. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised.


When I'm not reading, I really feel like the worst parent in the world.

I am seriously beginning to question my most basic parenting abilities. I was mentioning to someone this week that I still feel like I'm faking it. That I'm not really a mother of these people, but that I'm just someone bumbling her way through a role and not convincing anyone, least of all herself. "Legitimacy" is the word that came to my mind--I just don't feel legitimate. The deeper I get into trying to figure out if Walter has a growth issue of some kind, the more guilty I feel. I am a veritable cesspool of guilt. I feel like me, the mother-faker, have either zoned out so severely that I've starved my child into some nutritional stunting out of sheer inattention or divided attention or something like that OR that I've somehow failed to notice warning signs of something over the years.

Today we got back the results of his bone age hand and wrist scan that he had done yesterday, and it wasn't surprising that his "bone age" is considered significantly delayed. I have been reading around about what the possibilities are. Obviously one of them is a growth hormone deficiency. In this case, often the child has a face that looks young for his chronological age, but they tend to carry more weight and appear cherubic. Walter doesn't fit that particular morphographic or whatever you'd call it. Another option is what is referred to as "constitutional short stature," which would leave a child with a delayed bone age, but they will catch up to their expected adult height in a longer amount of time than the typical child. They tend to reach puberty later than their peers, and they tend to grow for a few years beyond the time their peers stop growing, but they eventually get there. They primarily need emotional support as they may be teased, self-conscious, or treated differently because they do not physically mature in the range of others their age. Then there seem to be a couple of conditions that we can rule out right away because some bloodwork has been done in the past few years or because he truly doesn't fit the profile at all. And then there's a very outer edge possibility that it's malnutrition.

I think I feel so guilty about his nutrition because I don't micromanage his intake. I know he doesn't always finish what's on his plate, and I haven't made a big fat hairy deal out of it. I don't always pay attention at lunchtime because we are often out and about and busy. He may not get a full and varied lunch with a variety of high calorie foods if I leave him to fend for himself in the kitchen. My others can be relied upon to make themselves a sandwich, microwave a corndog, or toast a bagel with cream cheese, but Walter currently can't eat those kinds of foods, at least not as easily as gluten-eaters do (gf bagels are really only a "bagel" because they are round and have a hole in the middle...). My calorie counts have been going fairly well--about 2000-3700 per day, depending on whether he encounters a calorie bonanza (did you know that a Cold Stone chocolate fudge shake, the small size, is 980 calories!). Still, I wonder, are there days when he hasn't had enough? And I feel awful that I've let him have some candy some days. I get lazy. A Snickers is something that we can buy when we're out somewhere that doesn't have much that is safe for him. It's not all that often, but there have been times, the type where the other kids might be eating doughnuts or cake at a party, when that's been the most readily available near-equivalent. I could just about kick myself to death for letting him have something with no nutritional value and all kinds of bad things. I am so very bad at bringing along fruit or even keeping a constant stock of GF bars, which tend to come in packs of 4 or 5, cost 4 or 5 dollars, and are gone in less than 4 or 5 bites. No sooner do we buy some of these than we have none left. Meanwhile, I can buy a pack of 48 or 64 chewy granola bars at Costco for less than $9. This same amount would be close to $60 in GF bars! I'm not stingy, and we must eat, but that's the cost of GF convenience!

At any rate, we will see an endocrinologist on Tuesday who will hopefully put our minds at rest. I am still waiting to get clapped right into prison for neglect. Benign neglect, but neglect.

We have lots of other things going on:

* camping this weekend--first Boy Scout outing

* I'm attending Director of Business Training in Northern Virginia for Classical Conversations

* We had to pay a *lot* of taxes this year, for the first time. Ouch.

* The aquarium remains. And note to self: prepare for oddity when you put something on Craigslist. I'm analyzing what the aquarium represents to me that I am holding on to. But I think the God's honest truth is that what I'm holding onto is something that no one has come to my house to take away.

* Frances started playing on a softball team this week. Didn't see that one coming. I should feel more terrible about not saying no, but she's having such a good time that it's hard to be too hard on myself.

* Tennis is in full swing, ha ha. I have a win and two losses so far. Kind of to be expected, since I'm still playing way above where I should be. I was proud of my 6-8 close lose yesterday, since I played fairly well and it was a good, competitive match.

* Kerry seems to not be going to India for six to nine months. Guilty, guilty, guilty. I feel so guilty about this. I have likely ruined his career. But I still feel like I would absolutely not have the support resources in place to handle something like this. I'd prefer to be a true single parent than to have this kind of upheaval. It highlights so much how I am in a severe friend deficit. I literally could not think of a single person I could even call to stay with my kids if I had to go to the E.R. in the middle of the night. It's hard to think of how they could pay him enough for that kind of a sacrifice.

* Swim and Dive team registrations this weekend. I think that Rutledge might be ready for swim team. He certainly would be adequate for most other clubs' swim teams, since he can swim a full lap without holding the lane lines. But our team might have higher standards. And it might require too much supervision to get him to practice. Still thinking about this one. We are already at the max family cost, so he would be free.

* Square foot garden is in and looking awesome. I could make myself a very sweet and small salad already. Of course I primarily have cold weather vegetables like lettuce. But lettuce is a wonderful thing. Frances wanted us to also plant a number of flowers, so we have a much more varied garden than I typically do. I wish I had planted some root vegetables, but it's probably too late. Nonetheless, I'm pleased with the new 4x8 bed that I built a few weeks ago, and the Mel's mix that I put in should last quite a while. I'm super excited about all the plans I have for the next few weeks. We also did a little bit of landscaping in the front, and I planted a bunch of bulbs, annuals, and cleared out the unkempt looking bed in front of our dining room where I lopped out two entire bushes last fall.

* I am reading a book about improving marriage that has given me mind-blowing insights. Things that should have been so obvious but that I had never had words for before. Now don't get me wrong--I haven't the faintest clue what I'm to do with this information or how I'm supposed to act upon it, or even whether it means that there is hope, but I will say that I felt a total identification with what these authors are saying, and that I understand a large source of my own frustration and about what is wrong about me and how I have contributed to and created the strain in my relationship. I try to avoid self-help books as much as possible, so I don't know if this is just how people always feel when they read a book on this type of topic ("Wow, they really nailed it!"), or if I was perhaps led to this particular book by some higher power. But it is giving me a big wad to chew on.

* I am newly committed to walking Bilbo and eventually running with him. I will train him. I will not fail at housebreaking.

* Finally, it appears that we will get new carpet. I'm so excited I could bust out of my skin. Or invite people over for a party. I have been so terribly embarrassed by our disgusting, worn out carpet upstairs (and on the stairs) that I cannot have anyone over. If this home improvement project ruins us financially, I will still feel that it is some of the best money we have spent. Every time I look at our carpet I feel like I am a wretched housekeeper, a boundary-less parent who has out of control children, and just generally a person with low standards. New carpet may not make all of life into a bowl of cherries, but it certainly will be a glorious change.