Angry feet

This morning started out like any other morning. I woke up the older kids* then dragged Max out of bed.
Max is not a morning person (a trait he inherited from me) and I stood him up on the floor, holding on to him until his eyes opened a bit, and he stopped swaying.

"I'm awake mom" he croaked, then stumbled off to the bathroom.

I went back downstairs to wake up the other kids again (apparently they aren't morning people either) and when I came upstairs, Max was sitting on his bedroom floor, staring into space.

"Are you playing with your blocks instead of getting dressed?" I asked.

"No!" he growled, jumping up and grabbing his school pants.

Ten minutes later, I went back into his room to check on his progress.
He was now wearing pants, and holding a shirt.

Progress!

When I came back ten minutes later, his shirt was on and he was holding one of his tennis shoes.

"I can't find the other shoe!"

I helped him look all over his floor, behind his door (a favorite hiding place for his shoes) and under the blankets on his bed. (9 times out of 10 this is where we find his shoes) (seriously)

We couldn't find his other shoe.

I sent him to the kitchen to start eating his freshly toasted frozen waffle, and I continued to look for his other shoe.

Logically, I thought that it would probably be somewhere near the place where he found the other shoe, I looked under all of his block piles, behind the door again, in between all of his stuffed animals.......
I even looked under his pillow (remembering that time when I was Max's age and didn't want to go to school, so I hid my shoes under my pillow)

The shoe was nowhere to be found!

The time was getting late, so I grabbed his church shoes and brought them out to the kitchen.

"Sorry Max, I couldn't find your other shoe, you'll have to wear these."

"BUT NONE OF THE OTHER KIDS WEAR THEIR CHURCH SHOES TO SCHOOL!!"

The shoes are brown, and perfectly acceptable to wear to school. I pointed this out to him as I removed his one tennis shoe.

I looked up to see his arms folded across his chest in defiance, and he was wearing his angry eyes.

He refused to put the shoes on, so I put them on his feet for him. He spread his toes as wide as he could, just to make it as difficult as possible.

Fortunately, after raising his older brother, I knew how to deal with the uncooperative toes and still managed to get the shoes on, with Max giving me the evil eye the entire time.

"Oh yeah!" he growled "well then I just won't eat!" and he refused to eat any more of the waffle.

I guess he showed me.

And then I put his jacket on him, handed him his backpack, and he walked to the car...........very slowly........

Because, apparently, church shoes are incapable of moving as fast as tennis shoes.


When he gets home, I'm going to tell him that Naughty Bird ate his shoe.



* OK, CJ woke me up first so I could take him to school at 7:00, otherwise I would probably still be sleeping.....

The missing link???

Tonight our doorbell rang and when we answered it, there was no one there.

Until the big gorilla jumped out from around the side of the house, waved his arms around, screamed, then jumped into a waiting car and sped away.

About 20 minutes later, the above scenario was repeated.

The boys filled a big bucket of water and sat it by the front door, just in case he came back, because gorillas ringing on doorbells after dark deserve a big dousing of water.

They never did come back a third time, so CJ and Aaron went looking for them, accompanied by the huge, bright green paper mache' alien head from CJ's Halloween costume a few years back.

Never a dull moment.

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Today as we were driving in the car, we were listening to Christmas music, and I was singing along to "Let it snow" when Max said "THEY KEEP SAYING LET IT SNOW BUT I DON'T WANT IT TO LET IT SNOW!!!"

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Best quote of the day by Aaron "So basically, calories make stuff taste good!"

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Max: "Today friend Hunter poked my friend Garrett in the eye!"
Me: "Oh, that's too bad, I'm sure it was just an accident."
Max: "No it wasn't an accident, he meant to do it!"
Me: "Well why would he do that?'
Max: "Because he's mean."
Me: "Do you ever play with Hunter?"
Max: "No!"
Me: "Why not?"
Max: "Because he's MEAN!!"

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I just realized that it's Wednesday, unfortunately, the day is almost over, so just for this week, Word Verification Wednesday will be changed to Word Verification Wednesday/Thursday!

Here's how to play:

1. go to the comment box.
2. look at the stupid word verification code.
3. come up with a (hopefully funny) definition and leave it as a comment.
4. refresh the page and play as often as you wish.

It's a way to make typing in the Word Verification code just a little less annoying.

Cold showers, experimental fudge, illegal drugs, the evils of texting, and other random stuff.......

Apparently, my theory is true about our appliances signing a suicide pact earlier this year.

Today we came home from church to find that our water heater was leaking and had caused a small flood in the basement. (Fortunately, we caught it before the water got too far.......)

Here's the dead appliance list for this year.

Oven/stove

Dishwasher

Disposal

Refrigerator*

Water heater

*I don't think I blogged about the refrigerator. It stopped working a few months ago, but it wasn't very eventful because it didn't cause a flood, just slushy popcicles.

When we first discovered the water leaking, we turned off the main water valve, and told the kids not to use any water until we turned off the water to the water heater then turned the main water back on.

Max has been freaking out all evening because he isn't sure whether or not he should flush.

Super.

We finally get him to actually start flushing the toilets, and now after not being able to flush for an hour, he's back to not flushing again.

No matter how many times we tell him it's OK to flush, he still won't and also when he turned on the bathroom faucet, it made a spitting sound, so..............

"AND NOW I CAN'T WASH MY HANDS BECAUSE THE WATER IS MAKING A FUNNY NOISE!!!!"

So now, we won't have hot water until we get the darn water heater replaced.

And the noisy fans are back.

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I just made fudge, except instead of putting chocolate in it, I used vanilla and root beer extract. It was quite good! (and I say "was" because the teenager ate all of it)

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Tonight I explained to my pre teen daughter that she is required to actually speak full words instead of text speak.

Yes, I will be insisting that she speak the words "I don't know" and "be right back" instead of IDK and BRB.

We thought that not having texting on our phones would avoid such nonsense, but alas, the teenagers are now so lazy that they can't speak full words, and must speak in texting shorthand.

LOL!

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This past week was red ribbon week at our elementary school. They had an assembly where they discussed the dangers of taking drugs.

All weekend, Max has been coming up to us at random times and saying "HEY! DON'T TAKE DRUGS!!"

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I just checked on the homework that Max is doing (What? Doesn't your kindergartener work on their homework Sunday night??) (shut up)

He was doing a worksheet where there are pictures, and he is supposed to say what the picture is, then write down the first letter of the word.

For some reason, he had written numbers under all of the pictures instead of letters.

I took the paper and studied it closer. Under the ant, Max wrote a 6, under the octopus he wrote 8, the goat, table, dinosaur, cat and elephant, he wrote 4s.......

He was writing the number of legs on the object in the picture instead of the first letter of the word.

There were other pictures too, the dress had a 2 under it (someone wearing a dress would have two legs?) the house had one, the fish had 3, the ladder had 8.

I counted the steps on the ladder, and sure enough, there were 8.

I showed Max that he was doing the paper wrong, and he laughed and said "I guess my teacher probably won't like it like this!"

Then he flipped his pencil around and started erasing..........

First day of Kindergarten (and other random stuff)

Last week was Max's first day of Kindergarten. 15 minutes before my alarm went off I woke up to Max's face, just inches from mine.........

"Hey mom! I'm awake now and I'm going to get dressed really fast so I can be ready for school!"

3.2 seconds later, he was back, completely dressed in his new school clothes.

"I'm ready to go now! Come on mom! Let's go! It's time for school!"

I talked him into waking up his siblings, who unfortunately, did not share his enthusiasm.

An hour later, I dropped the kids off at school. Max was so excited, he didn't even look back to wave at me.

3 hours later, I picked him up. As soon as he got in the car he said "Mom, I DIDN'T miss you, and I don't think you missed me either."

He was wrong. (I'm pretty sure he missed me)


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Yesterday I got an email from Twitter telling me that I had 5 new direct messages. It had a convenient link for me to click on so that I could sign in.

The funny thing is that I don't have a Twitter account.

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Yesterday a song came the radio and my kids freaked out "NO! NO! Turn it off, I can't stand this song!"

"Why?" I asked, don't you like the girl singing it?"

"It's not a girl!" they yelled, "It's Justin Beiber!"

Max, the king of Kindergarten

Max just went to bed. (by 9:30! High fives everybody!) He is SO excited to start school tomorrow that he got ready for bed the first time I asked him.

He even took a bath!

Woo Hoo!!!

However, he is really worried about something.

Yesterday I asked him if he was excited for school to start, and he showed me how excited he was by smiling as big as his face would let him.

Then I gave him the news that caused him to worry.

"Max, I think you're going to miss me while you're at school."

He rolled his eyes.

"In fact, I think you're going to miss me so much that I should probably just come with you."

He shook his head "No Mom, the only grown ups there will be the teachers."

"Oh, I'm sure they won't mind, I'll be very quiet."

"No Mom, there won't be enough chairs there. You won't have a place to sit."

I thought for a moment then said "I know! I can sit on your chair, and you can sit on my lap!"

"No Mom, the chairs are too little!"

"OK, then maybe I can bring one of our folding chairs and just sit next to you."

"NO MOM! You can't come to school with me!"

"Max, I really think that you're going to miss me too much. I need to come with you."

Then he says "You should just drive me to school and drop me off at the front doors with the kids and I will walk in by myself!"

"I don't know," I said "What if I drive you to school, drop you off at the front doors, then park in the parking lot and walk in the school?"

Then he got a little testy.

"Look mom, HERE'S THE DEAL! You will drive me to the school and DROP ME OFF at the front doors, then you will GO HOME!!"

While he was saying this, he waved his arms around kind of like one of those guys who directs the airplanes to the gates. All he needed was the big flashlights. I might have snickered a bit, because really, it was funny.

Then he says "Look, I'm SERIOUS, see, I'm wearing my SERIOUS FACE!"

And he was indeed wearing his serious face, although in my opinion, it looked a little bit more like his "I just smelled something bad face"

"Hmmm" I said "So exactly what do you think I should do when I get home? I'll be there all by myself."

Max told me that I should get some work done.

"No, I think I should probably take a nap."

"Mom!" he said with a big sigh, obviously trying to hide his exasperation "You can't go back to sleep after you drop us off, because then you will just dream about missing me."

So then I asked him if it would be OK if I just stood outside and watched him through the window of his classroom.

He shook his head and walked away.

That kid is seriously going to miss me.