Rocky Mountain Horror Show

(I found this sight after climbing out of a ten minute shower one day....hard to see, but a little girl had snipped her hair-- evidence at the bottom of the photo, and a little boy had gotten into my makeup, including sticking his whole hand into the Vaseline jar....but it got worse....a few days ago, I emerged to find Vaseline everywhere, all over the carpet, and laundry strewn across the room-- the work of a few minutes!  I'm still learning you see :) )  Good thing they are so adorable!  And I'm thankful its a sign they have a healthy dose of curiosity and energy!

We've had one of those weeks.  Not a bad week, per se, but a very interesting one.  It has been so fun having the kids home from school, and we've had a couple of adventures so far (on Monday, we went to Epic, and on Tuesday, we went to a reading thing at the library with a friend).

But laced among the adventures have been some, well, adventures.  Adventures with bodily fluids, mostly.  I have two kids with sinus infections, who have been coughing so hard they throw up.  One of them, in the car on the way to the doctor's office, in his cupped hands.  I was summoned to the bedroom of an entirely different child in the middle of the night to clean sheets and carpet from another such accident.  An hour of cleaning later (and multiple dry heaves suppressed), I went to bed, not thinking much of it, only to witness her have a similar accident all across the kitchen floor first thing this morning (sorry this is so graphic).  When a four year old recognizes she is having the urge to throw up, there is no running to the bathroom, it is happening NOW.  Poor girl.  She keeps asking me how she can make her tummy feel better.   Aw, so sad that the revelation there is nothing to be done for stomach bugs comes so young.  A different child has started getting sudden bloody noses in the night.  Since she lives on the top bunk it is also hard to get to the bathroom, so her bed cover and sheets looked like WWIII.  She slept with half a roll of toilet paper, all balled up, as a preventative measure last night.

Weekend

(photo cred belongs to my dear mother)

We had an eventful weekend around here.  On Saturday I helped my parents remove some wallpaper in a home they are buying (five minutes from my house!  how exciting is that?), went to my oldest son's soccer game (he is a great little goalie, only he is not so little anymore!) while I kept an eye several places (my girls were taking very good care of E., mother-henning him all over the place, but when he got tired of that, he enjoyed splashing through a long puddle several times in a row.  After a busy work day we got cleaned up just in time to help at my cousin's wedding.  The wedding was the perfect Pinterest wedding, if I may say so (but I didn't have my camera!).  It was in a barn strung with white globe lights and two beautiful white chandeliers.  The tables were decorated with vintage eclectic flower vases filled with Redbud branches in full bloom and other assorted spring flowers (and a light farm animal scent for ambiance, too).  Gorgeous photos and little chalkboard sayings hung around the room; the bride and groom stood in front of a large chalkboard with their names artistically rendered in beautiful clean white chalk across the top.  I got the best of all the worlds, because I got to serve milk and cookies in a cute apron with my sister while my husband chased the baby outside on the grass (by the time we left he was convinced we should buy the place, and it was cute but...) and my other girls helped (sometimes a little over-enthusiastically) pick up after people who were finished with their milk and cookies.  And we got to sneak some treats for ourselves here and there.  I thought it was funny how many sheepish older men felt they needed to apologize for or explain to me why they were taking chocolate milk (huh?  is chocolate milk unmanly or something?).  It was dreamy, I kept kicking myself for not bringing along my camera.  When we were all finished, they let us take an antique vase home.  Trust me, I got to listen all weekend to a little girl who somehow felt cheated that her sister had gotten the cutest vase and why oh why couldn't she just giiiiiive it to her?  (there were many tears over this)

Saturday night we were awakened in the middle of the night to some eerie sounds (not the wind, it was doing a number outside), only to discover that Maia was puking her guts out in the middle of the hallway.  Of course the ruckus woke up the baby, so I sat with him for a few minutes (praying that he would go to sleep?  or praying that he wouldn't?  so I wouldn't have to face the...) while my husband dealt with the throw up and the thrower upper.  Pretty soon, though, my baby duties didn't exempt me from throw up duty.  (thank heavens he got the worst of it! I  have the worst possible constitution as they say, for vomit.  I can clean up pretty much anything else, but trust me, I contribute to the mess when I have to clean that stuff up)  So we spent the next hour or so cleaning spots from her bed to the bathroom, no small trek if you ask me.  The baby got up again (I guess I have to stop calling him "the baby" now?  He is two after all, ha.), and started hanging on me and begging to watch Mater, so I set him up watching Mater's Tall Tales in the middle of the night, it was actually pretty cute, he wanted to watch it on the tablet while he laid on his tummy, elbows propped, on a single stair leading to my bedroom closet, with the glow lighting up his little face in the darkness.  (and I tell you what, Dad Gum, that show cracks me up, Mater and Mator)

By the time we got it all cleaned up and I started to get him back to bed it was 5am, after he fell asleep I figured I may as well get up for the day, since I had things to do.

I got to go to church with just one little girl, since everyone else was still sleeping when it was time to go (I couldn't bring myself to wake them up, since we had lights and noise going on in the middle of the night, in one of their rooms), so we had a good little date.  She brought her little vase of orange flowers from the wedding and I was too tired to care.  We had a few touch-and-go moments in church, as she wanted to hold the flowers up above her head (several times?  you'd think since she was unhappy with her vase she wouldn't be wanting to show it off to a whole congregation of people?) She spilled the water a few times but she always ran to the bathroom right away to get some paper towels to clean it up.  :)

Sunday afternoon I took a delicious nap, only interrupted a couple of times.  After a loud and laughing mashed potato dinner (I can't remember what was so funny?  But I do remember looking around and feeling so happy that everyone was so breathlessly amused and talkative all at once), we went outside and played soccer, the oldest two and I.  I just love how pleasant my oldest son always is.  He laughed every time I scored on him (what is so funny about that?).  And my oldest daughter, she was a good sport too.  Maia came walking out in her pj's with her throw up bucket, which was soon to blow away, unattended.  The baby kept wandering in and out of the field of play and so did the cats.  He spent a few minutes crouched next to the porch, where they fled from him, watching curiously and wondering how he could get to those cats (loves them!).  Pretty soon the littest three were bouncing on the neighbors trampoline (sorry!) while we next tried a creative game of baseball. Creative, when you only have 1-2 players on a team, and both members of your team are on base.  Who is supposed to bat?  My husband came out and joined us and we enjoyed some mutually competitive taunting.  Then we trailed in our balls and bats and throw up buckets and made our way upstairs for a twilit story or two, and I finished the day with a little knocked out nursing baby (love him!  there is something so magical about a sleeping baby, too) and we finished the movie Lincoln that we had started the night before.

How was your weekend?  I really enjoy getting a break from the daily tasks, but Mondays are extra work because of it (we let everything go south on Sunday). 

I am really happy about this month's goals.  So glad to get a break from trying to be good at something I'm not (the discipline and the schedules, which I will get back to, just not quite yet), and just focus on showing love to them through spending time together (my favorite).  

Funny Little Sayings, Take 22

Some funny little sayings around here lately.

E., who is now 19 months (not fair, going too fast I tell you), and who has never been interested in more than a lick of TV (5 minutes his whole life), has suddenly become obsessed with Bob the Builder.  He usually finishes out the night in our bed, or I finish out the night on the floor next to his bed, so I know the first things that come out of that little cute mouth.  One morning, while he was still in the act of sitting up, bleary-eyed, he said: “Bob!  Maia.”  Then he ran breathlessly off to his sister’s room, found her in bed and said “Maia!  Bob!  ‘Mon! (come on!)” with the cutest little fingers- curling-toward-his-little-chubby-wrist gesture.  He has learned to enlist his sisters any time he wants to watch “Bob,” which is a lot.  The morning after his first Bob awakening, the first thing out of his mouth was “YEH HE TAN! ("yes he can!" from “can he fix it?  Yes he can!”...said right before he tumbled off the bed to go find his sister)  Right now he swaps out all his “c” sounds for “t” sounds, so car is “tar,” you get the picture.  It is so stinkin’ cute. 

My three year-old had a dream that she grew a mustache and couldn’t remove it.  Then she ate a red  tortilla chip and her whole body turned red (not her clothes, she said with great emphasis, just her skinnn).   She turned purple when she ate a purple chip; even the underside of her tongue was purple.  This is the same child who just asked for a bow and arrow for her birthday (more later this week). :)

This same three year-old, taking a cue from her older sister, asked for a pony for Christmas.  When I gave her the same answer I had given her sister (maniacal laugh), she said "okay, then, I'll take a baby horse.  Not a wicked (she is the one who added the emphasis, not me) baby horse, a nice baby horse, that I can ride on." (where in the world did she learn the word "wicked"?)

This very same girl, just last night, prayed that she wouldn't have any bad dreams-- she prayed that she would only have dreams about something cute or funny.  Just moments before, in our family prayer, she prayed that her tooth wouldn't "get blood."  Thats it, the end.  The bloody tooth was the whole prayer. (sisters with minor flossing trauma a few minutes beforehand)

My nine year-old is getting over a case of strep throat, poor girl.  When we drove to the pharmacy, she noticed a new building being erected.  She asked me what it was for.  Then she said, “don’t they know they are killing like 40,000 animals?  ……Including the fleas?”  I didn’t know that she cared about the plight of animals or fleas, for that matter, or connected the dots in regards to building and animals, but I was pretty impressed. (maybe she witnessed me hyper ventilating when we went for a beautiful drive along some wetlands and saw a bunch of duck hunters carrying whole giant burlap bags full of dead ducks!  I couldn't handle this sight--ducks?  Why ducks?  But not to worry, gatekeeper man told us, there is a plethora of ducks because we are taking all of their habitats, so they would be dead anyway....stab me to the heart, why don't ya?  Ducks?  I love ducks!  Go ahead and kill the deer (with moderation, mind you, and then only if you are going to eat them), but not the ducks!  My husband had a good laugh at my expense, seeing as this was my first time even realizing that real, modern people hunted ducks by the dozen like that)

I'm kind of a softie when it comes to killing things (see here.)

A Hat

For today's viewing pleasure, enjoy these photos of my littlest two and a little hat drama.  I loved this hat my sister gave E. last year for Christmas.  So cute.  But he won't wear it, as you'll see in these pictures (see the distressed look on his face?  and how happy he is when he gets it off?).  I couldn't even stick on the hat and jump right back for a photo because it was already being removed.  It makes me laugh.  Most of my kids have had issues with hats at this age.  Anyone else?

Happy weekend!  I miss you already.  Will your kids wear hats?

Halloween Number 2

We enjoyed a gorgeous Halloween evening as the sky deepened into a beautiful indigo, lights from flickering jack-o-lanterns and torches filtering through the darkness, the shouts of excitement and children's delight hanging thick in the air.  We shut up the house, left the porch light on and our spooky candelabra flickering in the window (battery powered), set out a paper plate stacked high with goodies, and attempted to corral our excited children as we set off together.  

We made it around the block, picked up a mummy and some friends along the way, then wended our way home, where we piled in the car and drove to a friend's house.  There we found our friend handing out cotton candy.  As she swirled the colored spun sugar in cotton puffs around and around for a wiggly line of children, lit by a lone lantern, the darkness thick around the edges, some kids tried out the makeshift haunted house in the garage.  They could choose "big scary," "medium scary," or "low scary."  My kids had to try all three, and each time they came out giggling to each other.  On the ride home, we found out our nine year-old had poked one of the "actors" with her sword.  The actor then said a surprised "oh." 

We realized we have never been to a haunted house with the kids-- and had to explain that you don't mess with the scary people, as those ones are our friends and neighbors in disguise, no matter how disgusting they may appear on Halloween night.  My husband and I had a sort of horrified snort-suppressing laugh at that little incident.  We finished the night over a hot bowl of chili with some other friends and yawning droopy sugar coma voices in the car on the way home.

How was your night?  Do you trick-or-treat?  Hand out candy?  Or hide in the dark and wait for all of it to go away?  :)

Sunday's Warrior

My son wanted to go play sword fight in the backyard on Sunday (I promise we don't promote violence...the son who proposed this won't even kill a bug).  When I went out, this is what I found (I guess she overheard our conversation?):

This little one was surprisingly aggressive!  She made me laugh so hard! 

We played this swordfighting game the other day and had a good laugh.  The rules were-- nothing above the chest, and if you got "nicked" somewhere, say, your arm, you could not longer use that appendage.  So we had a great time hopping on one leg using our left hand at times.  :)

 
(had our very worst "finger" accident ever (earlier in the day)!  I felt so badly that I wasn't able to stop it!  I thought his finger was crushed.  He seems to be okay.