I pretend not to notice, when they stretch out on the sofa, lounging around instead of sitting upright at the table eating their breakfast, like proper school boys. The alarm is set early every morning, for this very purpose. The older boys come straggling down later, and they are on a time crunch: they do sit down and eat their breakfast, rushing to get the milk back in the fridge, gulping down their cereal to ensure they’ll have enough time to eat, and get their teeth brushed. No need to push the little ones, I decide… their day will come.

Just a few feet away, the little boys, aren’t even quite sure what day it is, nor do they care.  They’re still wrapped up in last night’s dream, or the big win at yesterday’s big kick ball game during recess, and ask if they can have any of last night’s dessert for breakfast. They are dressed and ready for school (didn’t they just put those clean clothes on as their PJs last night?), yet their toes are still bare. “Not ready for shoes, just yet, mom.”  I try hard not to watch them too closely… for fear my heart might skip a beat, and I’d never get anyone to school.

TV is not what they reach for during this twilight time.  Out of respect for them, I keep the kitchen quiet… no radio, no TV… just the sounds of two sets of morning engines running through the kitchen, while they other boys dot the silence with,  ”Mom, can you sign this?” “Where’s my lunch?”

I try to prompt them back into this time zone by the simple request, “Have you brushed their teeth,” but they ignore me. Only when they’re good and ready will they stand up and put their own internal “Puff, the Dragon,” aside (whatever that may be for them) and make that transition toward school boy. I can tell when they’re ready when they start telling each other what’s on the elementary school lunch menu. Lunch is the call that stirs them awake.

If I had any sanity, I would let us all have an extra 40-minutes of extra sleep in the morning. But, then, I would have missed everything. I have yet to learn how to to stopping missing them so much.

Courage, and blinders. The two ingredients you’ll need to see the end of life as a celebration. Courage allows us to feel the hurt, while simultaneously letting the joy seep into our hearts. Blinders came in handy too — you’ll need those to stop yourself from looking beside you to see that the next steps will be taken without her.  With the blinders, we can look behind and see what grew on the path when we weren’t looking.  There are now trees, (huge ones) flowers and lush things growing where nothing was blooming before — just because of the path she took. That’s the kind of permanence we’re really looking for.

Her absence faces my boys at school, and they are grappling with the vastness of the void she left, in the flesh. It’s something they can’t comprehend. My 6-year-old now calls Breast Cancer “Breath Cancer.” I’m not correcting him, because it does take your “breath;” and the breath of everyone around. I wait for the various ways the boys are processing this to tumble out of their mouths, and I am in awe over the depth of empathy they have.  But there is confusion and fear. There is the sense of feeling “out of control” and how can breath cancer be stopped.

Today, if they bring it up, I will focus on the awe-inspiring legacy she left, and show them how to stretch their hearts a little bit to see the celebration in the sorrow. The place of honor.

But I don’t. The minute I pick the kids up from school I’m hit with no less than 15 requests for play dates, queries about “what’s for snack, ” and an avalanche of forms that the school needs my signature on immediately. My mind is whirling to fit in homework, dinner, sports… and a much needed, but will not happen, nap. Afternoon and dinnertime have come, and once again, I am unprepared.

Upon my insistence that homework and their laundry be put in their closets first, I did not shuttle them off to their play dates until 4. I calmly looked the other Mom in the eye, and said, “He has soccer practice at 5 on the other said of town; so I’ll be back in… just a few minutes to pick him up.”

I walked back into the door at home, and realized I had nothing ready for dinner; my oldest son would need sustenance before his soccer game at 7:15… and so might the rest of us. In 20-30 minutes, I managed to salvage dinner with pasta, tomato sauce from a jar, and a dash of nasturtium pesto, while I built legos, and mixed ovaltine for the remaining boys in the kitchen. While cooking, I realized it would be impossible, from a time standpoint, for me to pick up my older son, and my middle son from play dates, so I threw one of those child-gathering jobs to my husband; a task he gladly accepted.

Just before dashing out the door, I put the pasta and sauce on the counter so that the next human being to enter the kitchen, hopefully my husband and older son, could eat.

As I sat in the car, with three boys chattering away, I wondered why this is so exhausting. I am sitting down – what more could I want? I saw the glimmer of a familiar face drive past me; another Mom I know, caught in the throes of her own kid’s carpool. She looked just as washed out as I did; and her kids aren’t even little anymore.

You would think, that out of the 1,500 kids, combined, that attend the two schools my kids go to, we could just throw balls around in the parks and backyards in our own neighborhoods. Why must we criss-cross our way around time to fit into society’s newfangled sports forum? Suddenly, our city just seems too vast.

I put a Nancy Drew book on tape into the CD player just so the kids would stop that incessant chatter that was exhausting. This is when I have fantasies about what 5:00 looks like if you don’t have children. Going for a run; maybe uncorking a bottle of wine to let it breathe before dinner, or maybe meeting friends at an actual real restaurant and relaxing. From there, my mind went blank; I really can’t imagine what life would be like at 5 o’clock without kids.

When I made the 5 o’clock drop at soccer practice at 5:05, I moved on to the grocery store with the two little ones. I’ve learned to act like a zombie in the grocery store, pushing my cart, looking neither left or right, and pretending to be deaf while the kids ask, “Can I have this?” It works. I left with exactly what I came in for.

In the car, my little guy started singing a song he learned in preschool. His other brother wanted to know where he learned it; and then he said, “No fair, you learned more songs than me.” For a brief second a shuddered… why am I rushing this? Why can’t I savor this instead of counting the minutes until bedtime?

I made it back home at 6 to find that my husband and older son ate the entire dinner I had prepared. There wasn’t even a stick of limp pasta left. I guess that’s good — they liked it; but I scrambled around to make cheese sandwiches for everyone else. And, that’s not what they wanted. At 6:15 my husband left to pick up the one finishing soccer practice. I started to clean the kitchen and put the groceries away… and then I looked at the clock. It was 6:20, and the next soccer game started at 7:15. I had time. I definitely had time…

So, I rolled out my yoga mat at the front door, and made sure everyone was busy doing something harmless inside. Then, I flipped open my phone and started doing my yoga. There’s nothing quite like uttanasa, or forward bend, to drop that stress hanging around my neck. I arrived at the soccer game with my hair a little mussed.

The nice part is, tomorrow, at 2:50, I get to practice all over again… until I get it down.

A defining moment of motherhood comes when you feel as if you’re getting a “break” when you’re down to two, rather than four, kids. I still laugh when I remember that a break was Daddy coming home to watch the baby, just so I could get a shower.

My blessed break came this week when the older boys left with Dad to go back home for basketball camp. My mind is suddenly free to focus on one age group – rather than four. When the two little ones are together, they morph into their own age group– make-believe.

We are living it up. The weather is unusually cold, rainy and windy, so we’re snuggled indoors, with ITunes set to our favorite Read-Alongs, like Big Red Barn, The Lovely Present, and Green Eggs and Ham. We listened to an extended book on CD of Mercy Watson, which inspired us to call it a complete supper with hot buttered toast with Nectarines. (The nectarines were our idea, not Mercy’s.)

We warmed up the kitchen by making Monkey Bread with yeast, so we had something to wait for,

and drank hot chocolate with our big campfire marshmallows, without the campfire. When they were busy building forts out of picture books for their stuffed animals,

I cleaned out the pantry, the garage, the freezer and the bookshelves. They never seem to run short of props – they even found a use for a stack of washcloths. It’s a bed for the horse—Princess and the Pea style.

When they started to squabble,

I pulled out a picture book that they had used to make a castle for an animal,

and read them a story, an instant antidote. Then, their souls appeased, I was able to go out and work in the garden for as long as I liked, while they played contentedly beside me, catching the toads.

Life with two means that I can focus on one thing at a time – or as much as is possible for a Mom.

I realize that life with four boys is much more mentally exhausting than I had thought. The age span makes thing tricky. Meals are a challenge – no way would my 13-year old settle for hot buttered toast and nectarines. In addition, there is no way the little ones would settle for beef stew.

Then, I gather the little ones to take their baths, brush their teeth, and we snuggle into one big bed together, while they both kick me all night long.

The boys wanted to pack these cookies before we left for the lake today, as the lunches from Tuesday have been devoured by now. These no-bake cookies are a great last-minute snacks.  Karen asked if I have posted this recipe, and I haven’t until now because it’s so common — yet this recipe is often missing from all but one cookbook in our house.  Once you know it, you know it.  So, I’m posting the no-bake cookie recipe for all of you searchers trying to find that same recipe from you elementary school cafeteria.  This is it — warm peanut buttery, chocolate goodness.

If you’re looking for a way to introduce your kids to kitchen basics, as I am, this no-bake cookie recipe is a great one to start with. The sense of accomplishment they get from creating these masterpieces is unsurpassed. However, there is some skill involved. They need to learn how to identify the difference between a simmer and a full boil, set the timer, and watch the cooking process very closely, and make good use of hot pads — all great introductory cooking skills.

If you haven’t had success with no bake cookies the reason lies in the boiling time. Start the timer for 1.5 minutes the second the pot reaches a FULL boil — simmering won’t cut it. You’ll end up with cookies that don’t set up if you start too soon. If you over-boil, you will get cookies that crumble and don’t form at all. And your child will have instant feedback on whether he missed the mark or not.

With those instructions, here is the recipe for no bake cookies:

Ingredient List

• 1 3/4 cups white sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup butter
• 4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
• 3 cups quick-cooking oats
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. First thing, pull out the waxed paper on the counter and have it ready.
2. Pull out the hot pads so they’re ready.
3. Figure out which kitchen timer you’re going to use, and instruct your child how to use it. Do a practice run for 1.5 minutes.
4. Set out all your ingredients, and measure them.
5. In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, milk, butter, and cocoa.
6. Bring to a full bubbling boil, and set timer for 1 1/2 minutes.
7. As soon as timer goes off, turn off heat and remove pan from heat.
8. Stir in peanut butter, oats, and vanilla.
9. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto wax paper. Let cool until hardened.

As parents, we have done a respectable job of teaching our four boys that smoking is a dirty, smelly, dangerous habit that is highly addictive and one that could ruin their lives. I think our plan has worked; our kids are repulsed by the smell of smoke — not just the smell, but the very idea of breathing harmful chemicals sends them reeling in disbelief. “Why would anyone ever do that?”

My sons have visited the hospital room of a dying relative, a life-long smoker, who had his voice box removed because of cancer. The facts from this post were referenced from my 7th grade son’s persuasive essay homework assignment.

I don’t think we have been too harsh in our portrayal of creating smoking as the evil killer that it is. While smoking directly kills, the Centers of Disease Control say that each year 65,000 people die from secondhand smoke in the United States alone. In just 20 minutes, secondhand smoke can do great damage to person’s health. Secondhand smoke is unfiltered, making it more harmful than inhaling a cigarette. That filter, that protects the smoker, blocks some of the 4,000 chemicals (250 are toxic) that are released when the cigarette is burning. The result is cancer, respiratory illnesses and heart attacks.

Because they have faster breathing rates, children inhale greater amounts of smoke than adults and inhale more chemicals. “A child who spends just one hour in a very smoky room is inhaling as many dangerous chemicals as smoking 10 or more cigarettes.”

I have no problem with the smoking ban in public places.

The ramifications to recent smoking bans have, presumably, wrecked havoc on tobacco companies. Understandably, they are fighting back with a vengeance. “You don’t like smoke? Fine. We’ll take the smoke out of the cigarette.”

The R.J. Reynolds Company has responded with new smokeless tobacco products. Camel Orbs are similar to breath mints. The same breath mints my kids like. Camel Sticks are like toothpicks, and Camel Strips are similar to mouthwash strips. The packaging looks similar to gum and candy packs. It’s handy, small, and appealing to small hands.

These new dissolvable tobacco products leave no smell behind — cleaner than cigarettes or chewing tobacco. There is no hacking cough, and no odor. They are specifically designed to dissolve quickly in the mouth and disappear entirely. These products do not carry the health ramifications associated with second-hand smoke, because there is no smoke.

The Camel Orbs, Camel Sticks and the Camel Strips deliver up to three times the nicotine dosage of a single cigarette. Nicotine is found naturally in tobacco. It has no odor and no color. It is, however, both physically and psychologically addictive and makes you its slave.

Despite its ability to appear as almost invisible, nicotine carries grave health consequences, more so without the smoke. Smokeless tobacco provides a more efficient means of delivering carcinogens into the body through the bloodstream. In the August issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, researchers at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center report that users of smokeless tobacco are exposed to higher amounts of tobacco-specific nitrosamines — molecules that are known to be carcinogenic — than smokers. In a study comparing 182 oral snuff users with 420 cigarette smokers, the Minnesota researchers found that snuff users were exposed to higher levels of NNK, a carcinogen known to produce cancer.

So, while I may have done a great job of teaching my children the dangers of smoking, I have failed to pound home the dangers of toothpicks, mints and breath strips. The tobacco companies are poised and ready to create a whole new generation of addictive customers: our children.

By 9 p.m. Thursday, I had not a drop of inspiration for my newspaper column, due at 9 a.m. the next morning.  Then, a snippet from a conversation that night carried the article –all she said was, “And we have graduation parties next weekend…”  Then it hit me.  I was looking for a way to share Maya Angelou’s quote about focusing on what you love, and doing it well, and realized it was the the perfect news for any new graduate; and for the Moms, like me, who are saying goodbye to preschool for the last time. We need something hopeful in response to the sadness we feel for the years we have left behind.

So at midnight, the house finally quiet, I began to write. I finished by 2 a.m. Friday morning, and checked for edits at 8 a.m. before sending the final copy to my editor.  Then, I got my little preschooler ready and took him off to school for his last day of preschool.  Here’s my recent newspaper column for the Suburban News Publication.

Spring is that season we associate with new beginnings. Yet, it is primarily a time of endings.

The flowering of the crabapple trees heralds graduation — whether it is from colleges or preschools. Time is moving. Lives will change and familiar faces and places will be banished from our established daily routines.

This migration affects everyone, from the grocery store that looses its high school senior grocery baggers to the preschoolers who migrate to the public school system. Spring means life changes everywhere for everyone.

We’re careful to take snapshots of the faces that mean the most to our hearts. We promise “never to forget,” to “stay in touch,” while we exchange e-mail addresses and post notes on our Facebook walls.

We do forget. This is unintentional, of course. Our lapses are merely a byproduct of the new lives we have stepped into; we make friends with new faces, we have new routines and divergent pathways unfold in front of us.

We have new choices to make; and suddenly we seek advice from new sources — people who know what we’re going through now. This allows us to form bonds quickly with people we barely knew a month ago.

But before the new friendships are made, there is that awkward, uncomfortable transition phase. The part where one foot is stuck behind, as in cement, in the old life, while the other foot is stretched forward, ready to leap into the new world. Except, there is nothing solid there to form a sure footing — yet.

In his book, Stress and Mental Health of College Students, M. V. Landow found that students rate moving away to college as being more stressful than severe traumatic events they experienced within the same year. For many, it’s the first day of high school or middle school that creates the trauma. For me, it will be that day this fall when I send my last boy to kindergarten.

We naturally just want life to revert back to the way it was; when we were so comfortable, life was predictable, and familiar faces dotted our view. Yet this life of certainty never really existed. Just as we have become unaware that the Earth is constantly spinning on its axis, we forget that our lives run like a river, constantly flowing form one phase to the next. The only constant is change.

In the face of so much uncertainty, there is one way we can carve out some power and comfort for ourselves. We can create rules, or specific constants, that we can carry through our lives, regardless of where we spend our days, and with whom. Mother Teresa has a great rule, and it’s one that I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you stole: “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.”

It’s a remarkable feeling to remember that we do have the power to make choices, and we are not victims of transition and change. Life is not happening to us; we are creating our life all day long. We need constructive life long rules to get us through life’s transitions.

Another rule to incorporate is Maya Angelou’s wisdom: Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you. All the other tangible rewards will come as a result.

The kid’s are reluctantly shuffling off to bed, I’m mopping the floor, and then, I hear it: That grating vibrato of a wanna-be soprano belting out the lyrics for the judges. That pitch, that amateurish sound, that is the hallmark of the show, is grating on my nerves.

I just spent an entire day with smaller people, that I love very much, who have auditioned parts of future roles they may or may not play when they’re all grown up. Everything from caped crusader, chef in a candy store, virtuoso on piano, the violin, (is my neck tense, or am I just gritting my teeth?) the science experiments, and the basketball shots that I am asked to lift my head up from the stove and watch. The sounding board for their frustrations, their aspirations, their hopes and their doubts has been, none other than, yours truly.

They are small men, testing out their lives, and this growth leads to mistakes, trials and tests. The cello and violin have been off-key, the homework is not always carefully read, the tests are not always graded with an A, and there is a pile of spilled sugar on the floor. Here, under my eyes and ears, they have the space to spread their wings and try.

Most nights, sibling rivalry, and a disparity of ages, leads to an evening wrapped in frustration as each child discovers his own limits, and comes to terms with the reality that what they imagine about themselves is not always in harmony with reality; well, for today, anyway.

My ear has been bent as a confidant, cheerleader, counselor and advocate for so many of their efforts. I pretend not to notice when the cello hurts my ear. I’ve been doing this denial dance all day long. We learn more from praise than by criticism.

Now that the kids are in bed, I am done with amateurs. I’m ready for nothing less than perfection. A clean floor, a clean counter, a perfect book, and well-written music to match. I do not want to, cannot, hear at the end of my day, the amateur wails of the hopefuls of American Idol. I cannot encourage one more person. I cannot turn my ear in denial when you are off-key.  I have no tolerance left for goofs; I need perfection tonight. The kids will be awake, soon enough.

But what is even harder to take, is that look in your eyes at the end, when you wait for the judges to speak. Your entire lifetime of hope, hanging on their critique…  Too much drama at the end of a very long day.

Although my teenager does have this tendency to morph into moods that make me ponder, “Who are you and what have you done with my child?” overall, the lines of communication are open and clear. This rapport of ease may have something to do with the fact that he is a boy. But, the strength may have more to do with our shared taste in music. To a degree.

I can remember my own teen years, with my parents shaking their head, saying “These kids and they’re music today! Turn that off!” The division between our world and theirs become clear with a single strum of a guitar. Our generations were completely and utterly different, the divide could not be crossed — thank goodness. Secretly, we wondered why it had to be this way, while we simultaneously professed we were glad to be so unlike our parents.

We were adamant: Our music was the coolest sound in the world.

If our kids are any judge, I think we were right all along. The latest version of Guitar Hero World Tour, my son’s all-time favorite birthday present, is chock-full of our generation’s classics, like Fleetwood Mac’s, Go Your Own Way, Steve Miller’s The Joker, The Eagles’ Hotel California, and The Doors, Love me Two Times.

My ten-year old asked, “have you ever heard of Flock of Seagulls?” He was surprised, based on the sounds he heard of the band, that they have been around since before he was even born. The bands from my youth are still within ears reach: Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, The Beatles, and one of my favorites (that has still YET to make an appearance of Guitar Hero… and I’m sure it will), the 1910 Fruitgum Company’s Sugar, Sugar. Our affinity for some of the same music does make walking through the house one less stress, and a bit more harmonious, although there are still some guitar rifts that make me shudder.

When things get too heated, and I do wonder “what have you done with my child,” at least we have our music as a touchstone to bring us back on common ground. And with my arsenal of knowledge of the best hits and album titles from the band, Tears For Fears, I seem to have the upper hand on this one. Tears for Fears sang, Seeds of Love a sound that epitomizes the 80s in my heart. Who knew then, when I sang those songs in my car, that I would be doing this today? Instant credibility in the eyes of a teenager. Sometimes, I let him teach me about the latest and greatest I have yet to discover.

Hearing these songs recycled, and kids loving it as if it were the newest releases from Motown, is something I wouldn’t have expected. Although most music is all digital these days, replaying these vintage tunes may serve to feed our underlying need to recycle during hard times, and as a token green movement for our environment.

And here, is my all-time favorite 1910 Fruitgum Company hit, 1-2-3- Red Light, here. What is NOT to love about that Star Trek turtle neck, or those matching suits?! And remember, the answer all lies in “promotion.”

Posting will be minimal over the next few days. As my site continues its big behind-the-scenes-move. Nothing will change here… just all behind-the-scenes surgery.

I grabbed the wrong bag of berries from the freezer.  Instead of blueberries, I had inadvertently washed off black raspberries and mixed them into what was supposed to be blueberry pancake batter. (Can I just add here that those blueberries I confiscated picked last summer are totally worth it this horrible winter.) Anyway, there was a little boy at my table, and I won’t mention names, as I wouldn’t want to mark him for life, who hates black raspberries; just hates them, because of the seeds.

I didn’t breathe a word of my error; it was too late to backtrack, so I had to plow forward with the blackberries, knowing I would reap the consequences later when he took his first bite.

I cooked the black raspberry pancakes, placed them on the table and let them eat.  No one, even the one named above, complained. No one seemed to notice that there were not blueberry pancakes. The boy even said, “These are THE BEST blueberry pancakes I’ve ever had.”

As if on cue, Dad said, “Next summer, when you boys complain that you don’t want to pick berries, just remember how good these pancakes taste in the winter.”

Then, the boy said, “I’ll only pick blueberries; I hate black raspberries.”

I looked up at his face, smeared with black raspberry juice, and watched him continue to take bite after crunchy bite. I bit my tongue, and didn’t say a word.