You’re not a lady if…
This morning I awoke to some sort of weird ceremony taking place on my bed. Aidan was in our bed, hiding under the covers when her brothers came in. They climbed on the bed, stood there very proud like and yelled a lot. When they stopped yelling they could hear Aidan yelling under the covers. It must have been some sort of top secret “go ahead” yell, because they immediately raised their duplos to the sky and cheered, then began to dance around in circles stepping on their father’s legs. This carried on for some time. I didn’t mind because Ben was the one getting stepped on and it was entertaining to Zoe. It was almost like an additional 15 minutes of sleep.
Ben had to be at work at 11:30 today, so we didn’t go to church and I ran out early to get the grocery shopping done. I made the mistake of saying “you guys” in Wal-Mart instead of the traditional, “y’all.” The lady looked at me confused, like she couldn’t understand what I was talking about. The same way my family looks at me, when I talk.
And listen to me, please. If you are a southerner and a lady, I don’t want to see a bumper sticker on your car that says; S.L.U.T.S. Southern Ladies Under Ton of Stress. If you have one of these on your car, you may find me in the parking lot one day, with a scraper and some finger nail polish remover, removing that ridiculous sticker. You’ve been warned.
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Friday’s are my favorite day…if Ben is off. He started working 4 10 hour days a while back. It’s been awesome. First of all, it saves us a little money in the gas and lunch department PLUS he can take Aidan to school for me and I don’t have to get 4 kids ready just to take 1 to school. That makes me happy.
This morning Ben was laying in bed and feeding Zoe for me. Zion walked in our room and said, “Mommy! It’s your friend Ben!” I giggled.
I have a plan today. Plans scare me because I am a procrastinator. Also, this plan involves the boys, and well, they’re crazy, but the plan is to start the boys on some activities and get them in a “schooling” mode. The boys hate any type of writing. Andrew usually falls in the floor and proclaims he can’t do it. Which is kind of crap, but true because he still doesn’t have lots of control over his hand when it come to writing, but he’s not interested in writing. I mean, how does writing help you pretend to be a pirate so you can kill princesses? Don’t worry, my friend Aaron gave him a talk about NOT killing the princesses, and how you want the princesses around. I think Andrew thinks princesses are bossy and complain a lot. I wonder who in our house could have given him THAT idea? So the plan is to read and build letters. Hooray! What a fun day!
I went to Aidan’s school the other day because they needed moms to volunteer to help paint snowmen shirts. The kids put their footprint on the shirt and then we turned it into a snowman. I was under the impression that I would be helping Aidan paint her snowman shirt, and she was under the same impression. But all the kids got to do was walk in, put their print on a shirt and go back to class. Then me and a bunch of moms painted these snowmen on these shirts.
This really made no sense to me. First of all, I expect to be getting some calls from the moms who were not there asking me to refund the amount of money they paid for their shirt. We had very limited supplies, and the shirts look like they were painted by Kindergartners. Second, why could the kids not help? All of their important morning stuff was over, and when I was leaving the kids were eating a snack and watching a movie. Could they not have bypassed movie time to paint a scarf and a hat on a shirt? This may be bothering me more than it should.
Because Aidan almost cried, her teacher told her to ask me if I wanted her to leave when I left. That was nice, but in the process her teacher said she was “very dramatic.” Well duh! But this is the first I’ve heard of her crying a lot at school. Her teacher has always just told me how sweet she was, which is great, but I asked Aidan if she cried a lot at school and she said, “yes.” Why did I not know about this? I could have been talking to her about it.
I am not trying to be all, “What did you do to make Aidan cry?” I know she’s dramatic. I feel like they led me to believe she wasn’t having any problems at school. Her report cards have been perfect, she hasn’t been in trouble once. They’ll let me know that she needs help on her academic stuff, but no one told me she was crying at school. As a matter of fact, they’ve told me she’s one who never “falls apart.” Which is just confusing. I am going to write a note to the teacher as soon as I have all this figured out in my head.
The other thing is, she has been falling apart way more at home since she started school. I don’t like not knowing what’s going on with her through out the day. Getting a Kindergartner to talk about stuff is like pulling teeth. I imagine someone at school isn’t doing what she wants them to do and it makes her angry so she cries. I just wish I had known! I figure these teachers have way more to worry about than Aidan being dramatic, and they probably didn’t feel it was important. It’s not that big of a deal, I was just completely unaware. How can I help her with something if I don’t know about it?
::le sigh:: I have vented, and probably been slightly dramatic. Thank you for your time.
I push the button!
There is this stuffed animal on our Christmas tree that sings a Christmas song and I never knew until the boys squeezed that toy 30 times while we were decorating. After putting up the Christmas tree, we all sat down on the couch to watch it twinkle. Andrew would run up to the tree, squeeze the stuffed animal, and try to run back and sit on the couch before it stopped singing. I guess he was trying to set the mood. He realized that this wasn’t working, and then Zion volunteered to help. They were running in circles trying to make this happen. It wasn’t long before the tree was swaying back and forth, so I told them to stop. Andrew had to try one more time. Then he was told to step away from the tree, but he felt the need to try one more time..eventually I had to drag him from the tree. It was like he could not help himself. He knew that he was going to get in trouble and could care less when it came to the musical styles of this tiny stuffed reindeer. “Just…one…more…time….mom.”
After that, we were at the table and Aidan looked up with a super disappointed look on her face and said, “MOM! We forgot to celebrate Hanukkah!” So I explained that Hanukkah and Christmas had nothing to do with each other, they just happen to be celebrated around the same time. She seemed relieved.
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Last week sometime, our beloved dog Flash went to live at my other mother’s house. I call her my other mother, but her name is Lisa. I like this arrangement because if I actually start missing Flash when I start missing Flash, we can go see him. He now lives on a waterless lake (more on this at a later date), with other little friends and gets to be an outside and inside dog. They came and got Flash last Monday, after the kids had gone to bed. We were not trying to hide this from the kids, that’s just when it happened.
Aidan knew before she went to bed what was happening, but I guess I forgot to tell the boys. Yesterday, we walked in from taking Aidan to school and Andrew realized that Flash wasn’t waiting on the other side of the door to pounce on us (yes, pounce, sometimes that dog acted more like a cat than a dog.) Andrew said, “Hey! What happened to Flash?” I couldn’t believe I had neglected to tell him, it must have been all the joy I was feeling from not having a dog sneaking in my bed every night, or peeing just a little bit in the floor if we even looked at him for doing something wrong. I sort of stood in the doorway, waiting on the boys to fall apart because they realized their dog was gone. Nothing happened, Andrew asked his question and then just started playing with his toys.
Flash left a few of his parasite friends here. I am trying my hardest to get rid of them without chemicals. I just keep telling myself I’ve done it twice before and I can do it again. It involves LOTS of vacuuming and laundry, which needed to be done anyway. As a matter of fact, I only vacuum or do laundry when we have fleas.
You have to watch the whole thing.
Here’s the thing. I don’t speak Spanish, but this cracks me up.
First Annual Barn Raising
I offer water to my kids all the time. Aidan loves it, the boys on the other hand feel like they are being punished. The very mention of the word water can send Zion to floor and induces some sort of seizure like reaction.
These glasses of water that I offer are clean, purified, and sometimes even more purified with our reverse osmosis filter. This water is offered in cool Diego or Cars cups. So, can you tell me why Zion has no problem what-so-ever drinking bathtub water out of a dirty duplo?
I’m thinking of embracing this and just giving them a trough of water and throwing some raw vegetables in there. Maybe throw a barn up in the backyard, with some hay beds for them. They would think they were living the life, and I’d have a clean house. I can’t see why this shouldn’t be done. A barn would compliment my neighbors tennis courts. It would also occupy the kids and they would stop asking the neighbors why they were playing soccer and the neighbors wouldn’t have to say, “It’s called tennis!” My kids wouldn’t respond with, “Is that a soccer ball?” Everyone would be happier.
Not a creature was stirring…
So I figured the boys must be up to no good. I found them under their bed, being ever so still. At first I thought they were napping. Then I realized they were just trying to be invisible so I wouldn’t notice that they had gotten suckers and were eating them under the bed. So I was mean, and took their candy away.
Not 10 minutes went by, when it was suddenly peaceful again.I found them in the same spot, but they didn’t see me. I decided I needed a moment of peace so I just left them there. They’re still there, and I am enjoying this so much I may just slide the whole bowl of candy under the bed and take a nap.
I missed you guys.
I am super excited today. I haven’t blogged in days, bet you guys never even knew, right? I feel like I have so much to tell you. I don’t even no where to begin…
Thanksgiving was amazing. First of all, when I walked into Laura’s she told me to close my eyes and open my mouth. Then she put some spinach artichoke dip in my mouth. I fell in love with her. While we were eating, Friend Ben’s mom told us amazing stories of Little Friend Ben. Things like, he would read books to his little brother and that he had an imaginary….should I be telling you this? I mean..what’s Friend Ben ever done to me besides put a photoshopped picture of me on facebook. Which was just retaliation of the picture of him I put on Facebook. I give Friend Ben such a hard time, ALL the time, maybe I shouldn’t tell you that he had an imaginary friend named Regganounce when he was a boy. I guess I’ll have to give that some more thought. After we ate, we went on the longest walk known to man. Not really but when you’re out of shape and super full it might as well had been.
Friday I had planned to put up my Christmas Tree, but that never happened because we got a crazy idea to pull up the carpet in our Family Room…and we did. That was an all day project, even though I distinctly remember telling Ben that it wouldn’t be. If time would just listen to me, everything would go much smoother. My mom called and told me she needed all this help at her new office. She couldn’t get her printers to work. When we got to her office, I pulled an envelope out of the printer/copier that had gotten jammed then I plugged it up. It worked fine after that. I don’t know a lot about electronics, but what I do know I give all credit to my mom. If it wasn’t for her not knowing anything she would have never MADE me do all the electronic related things growing up. Actually, she was always trying to make me do weird things growing up. Once, I had spent the night at a friends, and at 7:00am she called me and was all, “Come home now.” She sounded angry, but I wasn’t buying it. “Why do you want me to come home, Mother?”
“Just do it Brandice!”
“This is not a Nike commercial mother.”
Then her voice changed from stern to whiny and she said, ” I can’t get this anklet on because my nails are to long.”
“I’m going back to sleep.”
Saturday, we went to visit my family. I went to see my dads mom first. She made a ginormous lunch for us, and I was telling her how her house reminded me of an I Spy! book. The longer you look around, you see more stuff you never knew was there, even though the stuff has been there forever, like MY WHOLE LIFE. She chuckled when I told her, and then she said, “You know I NEVER throw anything away.” After that we went to my aunts house, and I could have stayed all day except for the fact I had 2 more places to visit before I got home. When I got to my other grandmothers, I started looking for Zoe’s formula so I could make her a bottle. But I never found it. That’s because I never brought it. So we immediately packed back up and drove the hour home so she could eat. We didn’t even get to stop by my dads.
Speaking of my dad, when I called him later to tell him why we hadn’t stopped to see him, something amazing happened. His girlfriend, told him to ask me what I wanted for Christmas. He hasn’t asked me that question since I had kids. Trying not to go into shock, I crossed my fingers and said, “LAPTOP!” You’ll never believe what happened next. His girlfriend said, “Wait! we’re buying a new one for Christmas and the one we have is only a few years old.” Then she told my dad he could buy that one from her, for me. I think it needs a little work, but I could have swore I heard the angels singing as the whole conversation went on. Then I laughed because my dad got roped into that one. I love it when he has girlfriends. So, maybe, just maybe I might be getting a VAIO…
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