Apparently All my Kids Say Weird Stuff...

Apparently All my Kids Say Weird Stuff...

Monday night we took Marshall to get her ears pierced for her birthday. She has been begging for some time, and we decided that we would surprise her with it for her birthday. It was a big surprise she didn't know it until we got her in the chair...(this was just a trick of real wizardry on my part, I knew that she would get scared and talk herself out of it, if I didn't just take her and do it.)

I have plenty of reason to believe this as we have taken her kicking and screaming to do many things, and afterward she laughs with delight…diving off the side of the wall at the pool, jumping off the diving board, going on a rollercoaster, ice-skating…pretty much anything that she can think too much about and realize that she could get hurt. I suppose it is a good thing to have a healthy awareness of your mortality, and it will probably serve her well when she is a teenager…I could have used some of that!

Anyway, she did it; she was fine, other than shaking for about ½ hour afterward.* And of course she was so excited.Later at dinner, Marshall informed us, when she is really emphatic about something she always wants to say "stinkin'" as in "I just got my stinkin' ears pierced, and I am stinkin' happy"

hmmmm....I just don't even know where to start with that…apparently all my kids are weird…

That stinkin’ apple needed to fall further…

*I will have to post the picture later, because the one Jamie took was very blurry.

Wood Creatures

So, I know that I am a little weird with my theories* and my husband always just drops his head in shame...but I have a new one!



I think that animals come back as wood knots!



(OK, so not really, but these pictures are really cool)


So now you are going to have to put on your warped PIE imagination...I know it is stretching here...but just try.

Here is an OWL:

Here is an Ostrich...the big knots are the eyes...and its beak etc... or if you look at the big knots as ears, it could be a mouse that has an unfortunate facial defect of a misplaced eye...

Here is a Horse with a go-go- gadget eye...

here is my Dragon Fly:

And here is my favorite...the Lemur...Jamie got a little tired of me singing "I like to Move it Move it"* every time I picked this board up...I am pretty sure that he puts up with me because there is a secret 3 million dollar life insurance policy on me...

I promise there were no illegal substances involved in seeing these objects....it was all me....pretty frightening isn't it!

* For those of you who don't have kids, that is the song from Madagascar that the Lemur sings through the whole movie.

I Just Don't Even Know What To Say.

I am not one to talk potty talk, but seriously, sometimes you just have to.

Henry is my challenge...well, all of them are a challenge in their own right, but Henry...he is special in so many ways. One of his "special" things is his outright refusal to poop on the potty. He has been potty trained for over a year...other than the pooping thing. I am not sure if he thinks that the toilet is going to hijack his butt or what, but I am about at my wits end with laundering gross underwear.

I am leaving to go to North Carolina with my sister for my father’s surgery, and am leaving the pooping bandit with my in-laws. This is stressful because I know how sick of it I am, and I am his mother. (If I wasn't, I think I would have returned him to the store already.)

So I took away thing that he enjoys, TV, Computer time, etc… until he uses the potty for going number 2. We have had a couple of successes, but no permanent change. HOWEVER…. The boy actually had a tiny (and I mean do mean minuscule) happening into the potty the other day…he proceeded to turn around look in the potty and say:

“Wow, look at that big Turd” (sp?)

Now mind you, I am giggling right now and barely able to type…but I still don’t know WHERE HE LEARNED THAT WORD. Now most of the time I will own up to stuff… The S bomb…yup, that was totally me. I knew it, and tried to correct it.

Jamie, I am thinking this one is ALL YOU BABE. I am cringing imagining him dropping the T word at Preschool…but its OK, I will just blame everything on Jamie…he doesn't show his face all that often around there, and won’t even notice the disapproving looks when he does.

What Happens When...

You are an impressionable 3 year old boy at a girls sleepover party?


When they have makeup?


And High School Musical?

You have pictures that will forever be used for blackmail....

Oooh Yeah...these are SO getting pulled out when he gets too big for his britches in High School...

If he was going to let his sister and her friends do this to him, he should have done it with nicer parents. OOoowaahaahaa

3 Year Old Logic

"What is a Cold Dog?" (as he is looking at his 'hot dog' )

"Can we drive through the fire tunnel on the way home?" This one had me stumped, until he said "yeah" as we drove on our road through a patch of road where the trees cover it and had turned yellow...it did kind of look like a fire tunnel.

"let me tell you a story mom. It is about a sheep that jumped out of a tractor and a cow that flipped out of a cow." (I couldn't' follow this one very well, but you get the picture.)

Just thought I would share what my conversations in the past 30 minutes have been like.

Since he is not allowed to watch TV or play on the computer due to some unfortunate circumstances, (ie...his crappy attitude), he is following me around the house asking me 100 questions, as I hang shower rods, toilet paper thingies (that IS the technical term), go grocery shopping, bake a cake for Marshall's birthday, and attempt to finish cleaning the pit I like to call home before 3.

Not to mention I had better take a shower because I am pretty sure that I am leaving a grease slick behind me as I go about the house. And I may scare off some of the parents. I figure I am safe with the Tween's, they are still in that denial phase of cleanliness. You know, they get gross and smelly, but still think they don't need to take a shower...I know I know, I should be fine with it, because shortly, (and I remember the switch going off in myself) they will be showering every 10 minutes as well as changing outfits.

Off to finish a cake....and shower? Maybe? I am sure he will stand outside the shower and talk to me the whole time I am in there...he is standing beside me right now talking as I type....

Little Shop of Horrors

OK so at our Shaw’s, or as I prefer to call it, "The Place That Will Empty My Wallet with a Loaf of Bread and a Gallon of Milk", they have these miniature carts. They are cute little carts that fill your head with nice little images of mothers perfectly coifed, and their well behaved offspring, pushing their matching carts in search of organic and healthy alternatives to Spaghettio’s.

Yeah, they CLEARLY never actually tested this principal.

If I have taken out a small loan to go to Shaw’s, and Henry is with me, he always insists on pushing one of the little carts. I generally concede to this. The alternative would be the “car cart” that inevitably doesn’t steer correctly, and will take out entire displays or other small children that cannot dodge the monstrosity approaching them fast enough. So I don’t argue. Little Man gets his cart.

My problem is, Henry seems to think that this is an opportunity to practice for his stint in NASCAR when he is of age. He starts out all normal and calm, but then he sees that wide open isle in front of him, and you can see it, he just can’t help himself, and off he goes running, and laughing pushing his cart like a wild man. Making the break noise as he veers around corners "EEEEEEERRRRRKKKK"

This ends with lots of disapproving looks from parents of yester-year with their thoughts of “I would never have allowed my child to misbehave like that.” To which my response is:

“YOU DIDN'T HAVE STUFF THAT WAS KID ORIENTED. You didn’t have to worry about it. Come on Lady, between balloons, little carts and happy meals, it is a freaking romper room of terror for mothers out here…have some heart.”

We tend to actually get through the grocery store, but I have to tell you, we got up to the check out, and Henry was unloading his cart…there were a few things in there that I had to explain weren’t mine, and I was terribly sorry could they put it back?

The checkout lady rolled her eyes as she took the Depends Undergarments, Feminine Wipes, and big bag of Milky Way Minatures, and put them in that cart they have for unwanted items.

Yeah, it was really a fun trip…*Note: Dripping Sarcasm*

Creeeeepy

Is it me or is this just border line creepy...I am not sure what person has these, and I am terribly sorry if you do, but there is something about having a stalker felt man attached to my toilet, who techincally would be looking at my butt when I go potty....OR I would be sitting in his lap as I do my business...um....eeeeewwwwwww

um....

My 3 year old boy just told me to put the covers on him "correctly." I don't even know where to start with how wrong that is...but using the word correctly? He is definitely his sisters brother!

I Guess if You Don't Read This I Will Just Have to Quit Writing...

I tend to be a fairly tolerant person…(or maybe not so much, it all depends on who you ask.) There are a few things that absolutely make me want to pull my hair out…and one of those things?... passive aggressive behavior, or manipulative, I think I may group those together, even though that may not totally be accurate.

Did you know that there is actually a clinical diagnosis? PAPD, Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder, I prefer to call it Pain in the Ass Person Disorder.

I guess we all do it to some extent...But I have always tried to be of the mind set, own your feelings. (I believe this may be what made other kids quiver when I marched out onto the field as an angry, field hockey stick wielding, teenager.)

Anyway, the same person who turned me on to the misquotation marks blog also told me to check this one out. This particular entry I didn't find offensively passive aggressive really...I thought of it as more border line snarky and sarcastic...which, well, if you have read my blog very long, you may realize I majored in, in college.

Too Funny

OK so this is totally not a religious statement of any kind...just a funny website (The "Blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks)...and sign...

(Thanks to my friend Penny who put it on her Facebook page)

I know I know, I am totally a Pot and there is absolutely a kettle in the room somewhere...I am the queen of horrible English...hey let me use one more... ... ...

Guilty Pleasures

OK, so we all know that I am certainly no saint here...and since my mom felt the need to out my head lice, apparently I am a gross AND unsaintly! (Thanks Mom) But I ask you, in a world full of Spaghettio's and meat on a stick, is it so wrong to relish in those few not so nice things that you do selfishly????

I mean who am I hurting when I wait until the kids are in bed to break out the ice-cream or the popcorn so we don’t have to share? I mean, all day I share, share, share. Seriously, I can’t even go to the bathroom by myself with out having to put a ponytail in for one kid and give fashion advice to the other at the same time…talk about un-necessary multi-tasking.

In the grand scheme of things, is it so wrong to take pleasure in one of my secrets from my kids???

Marshall, (my eldest,) however, has been on to us for a while. Even when she was younger and she would smell the popcorn cooking.* All of the sudden we would hear her at the top of the stairs. She would say in her very small, pitiful, starving child voice… "I smell something yummy..." and then wait for our response.

Mind you, this could be 2 hours after she had been asleep. That kid has some sort of witchery when it comes to food she likes. It is like a cat who is sleeping somewhere in the house…you can call them 100 times, and they won’t come, but break open a can of tuna for lunch…they are at your feet with in milliseconds. (My cats can even hear it when they are outside…they come running to the door. I have never figured that one out.)

Our response to Marshall when she was younger and couldn’t roll her eyes at us was generally, "Um, no you don't, the cat must smell funny." (They slept with her.) Or even more crafty, "Are you sure you aren't having a stroke? People smell funny things when that happens..."

Now I think she is a hypochondriac, I am pretty sure that I may have something to do with that. The other night she came down stairs to look for her book, and totally caught me with my spoon in the ice-cream jug.

She was all "THATS WHY THERE IS NEVER ANY ICECREAM..." looking at me all indignant and I am pretty sure that she rolled her eyes and looked directly at my butt...

So I was all, "So what are you trying to SAY?" and she was all "What ever..."

(By the way, when did 10 become the 13 of the 1980’s???? I am not sure, but fairly positive I didn’t learn the eye roll, head tilt, “whatever”, until I was 13…or perhaps I just had a healthy knowledge of mortality and my dad until then…not sure.)

But as God is my witness, I will sneak goodies in the wee hours as long as my jeans shall fit, and I will hide it all from my kids…”let them not eat cake” I say, and I will continue this until I can be in the bathroom ALONE.

(This ought to buy me some time, because I still barge in on my mom when she is getting ready for something and stand there and talk to her…I am pretty sure that this is why she is thankful that I don’t live in NC!)

*What is UP with that smell? I can make microwave popcorn, and for the next two weeks everyone and our house smells like popcorn no matter how many times I use the pressure washer to wash them and their clothes off.

Nits, Germs and Other Elementary Warfare

I am not sure exactly why we concentrate so much on the terrorists and nuclear weapons, when from my understanding it very well could just be a dirty elementary school and some rampant bugs that do us all in.

So my middle kid wakes up this morning and her eye was stuck shut. After the initial shock of not being able to pry her eye open with out ripping out all of her eyelashes, some calming words from mom ("Hold freaking still or this won't work"), a warm wash cloth, and a few "OH my gosh is that your EYE???" comments from her sensitive older sister, we assessed the situation and decided that the PINK EYE had invaded our child’s head.

Now I realize that most of you parents out there are saying. What is her problem... every kid has to experience their eye being cemented shut in order to truly pass into adulthood, and really it is not this one instance in particular...but rather the barrage of "notices" on bright red paper that seem to be being sent home in droves from the school lately.

First it was to warn people about getting the flu shot because our germ ridden offspring, who clearly have anxiety of antibacterial soap and washing their hands, touch everything and bring it home to infect the household.

Apparently now, we don’t just have flu like “yeah! I get to stay home from school and watch bad game shows on TV” like when I was a kid…it is now, “you are going to get a fever, your heart is going to expand and eventually blow up and your head will pop off, flu.” So if you are anything but a 25 year old, marathon running, tea totaller you are expected to get a flu shot or die.

Then came the next blaze Red form warning of the lice outbreak in school. You know that the one kid they found it on is mortified and everyone knows who he is. He is going to be graduating from high school and everyone in the audience is going to be whispering...

"Do you remember when he gave all our kids head lice???"

"Yes, I had to wash our entire house down in that horrible smelling shampoo and I still instinctively itch when I see him…see these hives????"

Then yesterday, yet another cherry red from the school, it warned of the EEE (Eastern Equine Encephalitis) they found in mosquitoes near the school. So now we have to either send our kids to school with a mosquito net over their heads or spray them down heavily with DEET so that they won't die…(if the DEET doesn't do the job first.)

So you may understand why, when my kid woke up this morning with her eye glued shut I was starting to have issues.

I am starting to come to the conclusion that it isn't global warming, nuclear holocaust, or terrorists that are going to do us in...it is all the crap that lives in elementary schools and on our dirty little "I don't NEED a bath" children that are going to get us.

Want to win a war? Just air transport in all our elementary school kids to the country of choice. They seem to be host pods for all sorts of nasty little diseases and infections…nit, mucus and germ the opposition into submission…just a thought…

Welcome to my Nerd World

I know that I am a total History and Discovery channel nerd and the other night they had a, I don't know, like, 400 hour marathon on Russian History. It was so fascinating...and no I am not going to break into song, or dance about my Russian experience...

There was a story about the time after Ivan the terrible when he had killed his only son, (heir to the throne,) and there were all sorts of people trying to take over running for Tsar of Russia. Apparently a Polish politico went to Russia undercover and tried to get into the ruling position. When it was found out that he was from Poland and trying to infiltrate their government they burned him at the stake, took his ashes, loaded them into a cannon and shot him toward Poland....

Now that is just plain justice Russia style. Jamie laughed, he thought it was awesome...you know, minus the torture and death part...I just thought it was fascinating, that we today think that we live in such a violent terrible world...

OH and the other really cool thing that I got from that show....Tsar means Caesar in Russian, and the first Tsar used it because he was trying to model Russia after the Roman Empire and rule it as the Caesar of Russia....kind of interesting huh?

It makes me wonder why, when I loved history so much, I had to have a history professor that made Ferris Beuller's teacher look facinating...there has to be a better way of teaching history that relays how utterly fascinating the subject is....*SIGH*

Sporting Events

I remember spending a lot of time at the soccer field at the age my girls are now. I don’t remember much about the sport itself (sorry Jen). I do however, remember the smell of the autumn leaves, picking dandelions, jumping up and down and making faces at my parents on the sidelines, (who were covering their faces and cheering on the neighbors kids hoping no one would realize that the space cadet running in the wrong direction was theirs).

This is not to say that I was a bad athlete. I ended up holding my own fairly well in the pool, or when I had a field hockey stick in my hand that I could pummel other people with. I think Soccer just wasn’t my thing. So I am fairly sympathetic when my middle child starts playing with her ears in the middle of the soccer game, looking for four leaf clovers, or pouting when she is in goal too long. I think that Soccer just isn’t going to be her thing; however she insists that she loves it.

It is hard for me to remember that my older daughter was the same way at the same age, and now is doing well and loves it. And really? Caroline does have spurts of energy where she even scores. Just over all, I think there isn’t quite enough action for her yet.

I do however, now, enjoy the soccer field. It is a source of all sorts of entertainment. I mean there are the really loud, want to have Mia Hamm mothers, who start yelling at my Caroline to pay attention to the ball. you know the ones who are jumping up and down screaming "get it, get the ball, just get it, kick her, get her out of the way." You know, the parents that must take steroids to prepare for their elementary school child’s sporting event. There are the little kids that keep running onto the soccer field with no idea that there is a "sporting event" in play, and let us not forget the actual kids that are playing.

I am pretty sure that I am one of the parents that the Mia Hamm parents think is awful...because I just sit back and kind of chuckle to myself...OK that is a lie, I laugh at my kids. But seriously? I am laughing at other peoples kids too, so it isn't all horrible...(right?)

Come on…You gottah think it is a little funny when a kid is too busy waving to their parents, picking their nose, looking at another game, or scratching their butt and the other team scores. So, I am awful, I just think its funny.

To be honest, I am not sure when this all changed, and it got all serious, like their 2nd grade soccer experience was going to go on their application to college or something. I seem to remember sports being fairly laid back.

Although, I am sure that my parents probably have stories of people threatening to accost me as I laid on my back on the soccer field singing songs as loud as I could, and I just don’t remember it…I just remember the fun of being on a team.

Who Did I Make Mad...

...in the world of technical support in a past life? Because clearly I am on some sort of black list with Verizon.

Now mind you, I am on the phone with them for hours that I will never get back because I volunteered to set up a Church Website. One would think that since it is like a nice Churchy thing it would go easily... Nope... apparently this is my test in patience and humility.

After a few weeks of hopeless emails back and forth, I finally got some time to sit down and call technical support. After being on the phone with Beth* for hours, while she did everything that I said I had already done, to no avail, she told me that it was a problem that she couldn’t solve, and I had to call another branch of Technical Support. She left me with the reassuring: "We really aren't very busy so you shouldn't have to wait very long," and to call her back afterward if nothing else happens. I am thinking great! So I call the number she gave me...

This is where I am picturing a bunch of guys playing cards at a table in the work room...

Ring Ring "Ahhh just let them going to the 8000 options then we can answer it.”

So after I press the 1 for English, and then go through 10 menus of
"Do you need help? Press 1"

"Are you sure you need help? Press 1"

"Are you really, really sure that you still need help? Press 1"

"We have been having technical difficulties in your area, we are aware of this and are currently working on the situation, do you still need help? Press 1"

"We are going to make you wait until your hair turns gray and your children are grown and gone...do you still need help? Press 1"

As my one pressing digit was getting more and more feisty about pressing the daggon button, I finally hear:

"You have indicated that you still are in need of Technical Support, please hold while the next available person can assist you, your wait will be less than 5 minutes..."

Which really meant:
Despite all our warnings, you still think that you need help, so eventually we will find the most condescending, self important, computer geek to answer the phone. But he is busy playing cards with the other unhelpful people so he will answer your call when he finally decides to schlep over to the help phone. Until then, please enjoy our music that we have conveniently put half way on a station, so that you can enjoy parts of the songs, with an occasional ear numbing static. We also have a loose wire in the radio, so it will be very quiet, then when we come on to tell you it will only be a few more minutes; it will blow your eardrum out. OH, and just to make it clear, less than a 5 minute wait, is measured in Dog Years, so it is more like, oh….maybe 10 hours. Enjoy your time on your phone, are you really sure you still need help?

Yeah, the website still isn’t up…only my blood pressure. I will have to try again another day when I have some free Valium laying around. I will say it again; those are moments of my life that I will NEVER get back.

*Her name has been changed because while I am fustrated, she is a really nice lady and has been very patient...so I can't be but so mean about her.