Rowan's been out of pull-ups, the night-time diapers for older kids, for a few days now. I'd say her dry/wet percentage is about 50%. It's usually a good idea for me to pick her up in the middle of the night and put her on the toilet. I didn't do that last night.

She came out of my bedroom this morning. (she had crawled into bed with me in the middle of the night as usual) with a look of controlled fear on her face and came straight to me.

"I will get a big towel, Daddy. I will get a big towel and clean up your bed."

I guess I haven't been very restrained sometimes when she's had an accident, and it was evident that she was afraid that I was going to get really mad at her for peeing in my bed. I felt horrible, and vowed to myself to control myself better, so that my children wouldn't have to fear my response in the future.

I love Rowan very much. I hugged her and told her it was ok, and that we'd find a towel to clean it up.

Everybody's cheerful in the morning. Griffin is like Pan, a mischevious little smirk pasted upon his angelic face. Berit wakes me to tell me that he's up.

Berit, Pam, Griffin and I hunker into the futon in the guest room... chillin. Griffin looks at me expectantly and declares, "Poo."

"Poo?" I ask. "Pee pee?" I inquire, using Griffin speak to refer to the product of defecation.

"Poo." He repeats, and then I recall that Griffin has just recently begun an infatuation with Winnie the Pooh. He loves it when I sing it to him, and when I read him the books, and when I don the Pooh hand puppet. He evidently is making a video request.

"Pooh... Winnie the Pooh?" I probe.

"Yah." That's a big 10-4, Daddy.

I'm all for early morning videos, as we've long since given up on making Griffin the pure child, the TV-free child. If anything, Griffin will only degenerate faster into television worship, with two older sisters as personal TV guides.

So we watch Poo.

Friday night, after reading "The Magic School Bus in the Solar System," Berit asked if she and Rowan and i could be the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. So we took turns in the living room - one of us would stand in the center as the Sun, while another would walk around that person as the Earth. The third person would hurry around the Earth as it rotated around the sun. It was a kick – good idea, Berit!

Different children have different names for the process and the product of defacation. Griffin, who is now 18 months old, refers to this as "pee-pee." Confused as this may seem, he gladly notifies us of it's presence as "pee pee." It could be in the diaper, or on those free-wheelin occasions when we let him run around the backyard naked, he might come running in the house with a hand full of goodies outstretched and announce rather obviously, "pee pee!"

Sometimes he is more enthused about this, adding an exclamatory modifier to his announcement, as in, "Pee pee, Yay!!"

We are certain that someday the content and the emotion of his exclamations will take a drastic turn, for better or worse, and we currently revel in Griffin's appreciation of life's more mundane aspects.

Rowan has gone to bed without "pull-ups," night-time diapers for older kids (she's 3), for the past 4 nights now and has awoken dry every morning. Since we neglected to go the rubber-sheet route, I'm still waiting for that other shoe to fall.

I did it again - getting all up in Berit's mug about counting money. It is frustrating, you know. Even her kindergarten teacher says she won't go down certain paths with the kids. After we worked it out, I told Berit we could work on counting the change I have in my pocket when I come home at night, and if she counts it correctly then she gets it. She liked this idea.

Berit comes into our room in the middle of the night and asks me to move over. I'm not very good with being awakened in the night and groggily try to explain that, if she's going to be joining us at this hour, the best policy is to quietly find an empty spot on the bed.

I attempt sleep, but she's got a persistent cough, so that finally (might have been an hour later or five minutes... I don't know) I get up and give her a dose of cough suppressant. I then grab my pillow and kiss her goodnight.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going into your room so I can get some sleep." I say, rather grouchily.

I do go and lie down in her bed, but I'm feeling too guilty about abandoning her like that. I figure it's probably my job to shower my kids with love, especially when they're not feeling well and even if it's impinging upon my sleep.

So I get back up with my pillow, head back to bed and lie down next to Berit. I kiss her again, hold her hand, and we quietly fall asleep.

On Friday, we took the kids camping up in the mountains. They did very well with it all, despite some unprepared ness on my part which resulted in not having a working camp stove and having to spend a good deal of time chopping wood with a borrowed hatchet and making a fire to cook turkey dogs on.

They enjoyed running around in the surrounding woods and they definitely enjoyed the somemores we made for desert. Pam coached the girls in the fine science of marshmallow roasting.

Berit seems to me insightful beyond her years at times. As we prepared for a hike the following day, Rowan was throwing herself on the ground for attention. Berit turns to me and quietly remarks, "Rowan falls down on purpose a lot."
"Yes. Why do you think that is?" I reply.

"She wants more love."

I am floored by this adult insight on her sister's behavior.

Our walkabout is a short one - we don't want to spoil their fun by taking them on a long forced march. We're only staying for one night, so we break camp later that day. With three kids, it's just enough time.

By the way, the right reaction to Berit's whininess this morning would have been to stop and breathe and then tell her that it frustrates me that she says she doesn't want to go camping, since we've been excited about it all week long, and I've been working hard this morning to make it happen, and the last time we went she seemed to like it. So can you help me understand why you don't want to go, Berit?

And then I would have found out that she was scared of the Bears.

And again. I don't even work today, but I'm reacting to the kids all over the place. I react to Griffin's fit; I get visibly upset when Berit whines "I don't want to go camping in the woods;" and when Rowan breaks down because contrary to what she wanted a moment ago, now she doesn't want Berit to help her make her bed, I get upset with her.

The common element here is me reacting. And I need to change it. Change it now when Berit is only 5, Rowan is only 3, and Griffin won't even remember me getting upset. I really do want to be the Buddha Dad. But how?

Pause when agitated. Take time out. Breathe. These are all really good things to say but not always as easy to apply. I want to apply them... I really do, but I seem to need more than that. Maybe it really is about prayer. Asking the universe to help me, reinforcing that I need the help. I think just praying and meditating on a regular basis would help me be in the mind frame to pause when agitated, take time out, breathe. I don't think writing about it hurts either, and I'll keep you posted how it goes. I'm going to start... now.