Eight feet

I am proud to announce that I was able to complete EVERYTHING on my to-do list today.

1. I went to lunch with a dear friend of mine. We don't get together often enough so it was fun to catch up with her.

2. I bought milk. And chocolate.

I had to laugh at the comment left by Jo, who said that I should add "eat chocolate" to my list.
Dear, sweet Jo,
Reminding myself to eat chocolate would be like reminding myself to breathe.
It's something I do automatically, and I couldn't live without it.

I also say Thank You to the ladies who offered to go to lunch with me.
I'm flattered.
Name the time and place, and I'm there.
Seriously.
You have my e mail.
You know who you are.

I love this picture, I put it on Max's birth announcement which read;

Our family has grown by two feet!

I really love these little feet. They aren't so little anymore.

What I love most is what Max calls his feet.

Feep.

And when you take his socks off, they become...........

Behw feep.

I honestly think "feep" is the cutest word I have ever heard.

Today, Max stuck his foot in the air and said "Look Mom, My shoe ate my feep"

And in case you're wondering, the plural form of feep is;

"Feepers!"

And what do we do when we have bewh feepers?

We put "yockies" on them! And shoesies!

We have so much fun with Max's feep. He has his own version of "This little piggy" it goes;
This little piggy went to Costco,
This little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy had roast beef,
And this little piggy had a Costco hot dog,
And this little piggy went wee, wee, wee, wee, wee ,wee, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee,
all the way home.

Yesterday, I bought Max a new pair of Crocs.
(O.K., not the REAL Crocks, but the imitation kind from Payless. We took advantage of the BOGO sale and got a pair for Brielle also.)

They are the brown camoflage print.
We haven't been able to see his feep all day!
(Ha ha, that joke never gets old!)

Max came up to me several times today and very lovingly said "I wuff my new cwogs"
He showed them to anyone who cared (and many who didn't)
"Wook at my new cwogs! My owd ones awe bwoken!"

Unless you didn't notice, Max sometimes replaces the letters R and L with W's.
However, sometimes, he throws us a loop by sometimes replacing an L with a D, as in
"I reedy reedy wike that!"
(translated, I really really like that)
My favorite is when he replaces the L with an R, and then claps his hands and says;
"Look Mom, I'm crapping"

That one always cracks me up.

Look at the first photo again.
Look at the pair of feet on the left. They belong to CJ.
If you think they look big in the picture, you should see them now.
CJ is currently wearing a mens size 10 1/2 .
Today, he told me his shoes are getting too small.
CJ is twelve years old.
The kid is growing 1/2" every three weeks.
He is currently 5'7".
I am 5'8".

Within two months, my baby will be taller than me.

Weird.

You know how you'll see this cute little puppy, and then you'll notice how big its paws are, and you know that this sweet little puppy will someday be a huge dog..........

Looking at the size of CJ's feet, and the rate with which he is currently growing, I'm afraid that when the growth spurt finally stops, his height may end up being................

Eight feet!

New list

After my post from yesterday, I decided to scrap the previous overwhelming, unrealistic to-do list.
Here's my list for today.

1. Go to lunch with my friend.
2. Buy milk.

I think I might be able to get everything done today.

Daily Distractions

Yesterday morning was feeling very ambitious. I made myself a to-do list.
#1 on the list - Call the orthodontist.

Did I call?
Of course not.
Why?
I don't know.
I was busy all day, but somehow managed not to complete a single task on my list.
This seems to be happening to me quite a bit lately. I just can't seem to focus on one thing long enough.
I remember thinking that I needed to call and make the appointment with the orthodontist. I took the phone into my office and went to call, but then realized that the phone # was in the kitchen, so I went to the kitchen, got the orthodontist's business card and on my way back to my office, I noticed that Max smelled funny.
I took Max into his room to change his diaper, and noticed that his clothes hamper was full, so after the diaper was changed I took his clothes and put them in the washing machine. While I was in the laundry room, I found Brielle's sweater that she was looking for last week, so I took it to her room as I started to walk back upstairs, I saw the other cordless phone laying on the floor of the family room, surrounded by toys. I picked it up and started towards my office to call the orthodontist. As I sat down to make the call, I noticed the phone was dead, so I started toward the kitchen to put the phone in the charger, and Max was wanting me to put together a puzzle with him. I sat down on the floor to help him with his puzzle, and he got up and left. I started to go back in the kitchen.

Why was I going into the kitchen?

I went back to my office, and then remembered "Oh yea, the phone is dead."
But I didn't have the phone. Where did it go?

I head back to the kitchen, and Max wants to watch TV. I put in a nice video for him, and he asks for popcorn.

O.K.

I put a bag of popcorn in the microwave, then notice the dirty dishes in the sink. Apparently whoever was on dishwashing duty the night before had emptied the dishwasher, but failed to fill it up.
I start putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.
The microwave beeps. I take the popcorn to Max.


What was I doing?

I don't know. So I go check my e-mail. I have an e mail form a friend I haven't heard from in a while, so I start to type a reply letter. I get stuck and can't think of anything to say, and I notice a few work projects that I need to finish this week, so I start working on one of them.

20 minutes later Max comes in. His movie is over. He is hungry. He wants Mac-n-cheese for lunch.
I go back towards the kitchen, but as I pass the TV, I notice some popcorn spilled on the floor. I clean it up, and go to put it in the garbage can, and notice that the garbage can is full, so I take the garbage bag out of the can and put it in the garage where I will take it to the outside garbage later.
In the garage, I see the freezer, and remember that I'm making enchiladas for dinner, and I need to defrost the meat.
I get the hamburger out of the freezer and take it into the kitchen. I notice the dishes still aren't finished, so I continue loading the dishwasher.

Max comes up and reminds me that he wants mac-n-cheese for lunch. I offered to make him more popcorn, but he didn't like that idea, so I made the mac-n-cheese.

I go back in my office to finish the letter to my friend.

Max comes back in. He has mac-n-cheese all over his face. I take him into the bathroom to wash his face, and notice a toothpaste mess in the sink.

I wash Max's face.
I wash out the sink.
I notice how dirty the floor is around the toilet.
I make a mental note to make the boys clean up the bathroom floor today. (now you didn't really think I was going to clean that up did you?)

I go back to the kitchen to.............What? Hmmmm. I can't remember.
I start back to my office, and see Max's puzzle still in pieces all over the floor. I sit down and start to put it together so we don't lose any pieces, and Max comes and helps. We have a fun time with the puzzle. (The kid is really good at puzzles.)

I go to the kitchen and notice the dishes still not done, and the now semi-frozen hamburger on the kitchen counter.
I put the hamburger in the microwave to finish defrosting it.
I put a few dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

Lucky for me, when the microwave is finished, it beeps periodically to let me know there's something in there.

I start cooking the meat.
(sidenote- If I don't have dinner fixed before I pick up the kids from school, it usually doesn't happen, so I make it a point to at least get some of it done before I get the kids)

I realize I haven't had lunch so I make myself a sandwich.

I close the dishwasher, because the door is in the way.

As I'm sitting at the kitchen table, I count 3 pairs of Brielle's shoes on the kitchen floor.
I get tired of looking at them, so I take them down to her room, and notice that she has left her ballet clothes and shoes sitting on her bed.
I take the clothes upstairs and out to the car. I pass the bag of garbage I took out earlier, and make a mental note to take it out to the can later.

I come back in the kitchen, see the cooked hamburger in the pan, and make the enchiladas, and put them in the fridge.

I start to go in the other room and notice that Max has dumped out the 48 piece puzzle and is getting a bit frustrated. I get down to help him.

I look at the clock, and realize that it's time to go pick up the kids from school.
I put Max in the car, and we go get the kids.

We get the kids home.
Brielle goes to ballet
I try to convince CJ and Aaron to do some homework.

A while later, I notice a call on the answering machine.
It's the orthodontist's office.
"Hi! This is Ruth receptionist from Dr. Orthodontist's office. Dr. dentist sent us C.J.'s x-rays, and after looking at them, Dr. Orthodontist wanted me to call you and make an appointment"
How bad do you think this is going to be when the orthodontist is calling US?
I call them back and get an appointment for next week.

So it's now 5:00, and I've finally completed the first thing on my list. :0)

When DH gets home, he wonders why there's a bag of garbage in the garage.
Why the cordless phone is dead, and sitting on the couch?
Why Max's puzzle is all over the floor?

I ask the kids to set the table for dinner, so they go to the dishwasher, and the dishes are still dirty, because I didn't finish filling it, and they didn't get washed.

I am exhausted. I was busy all day long, but didn't seem to accomplish anything.

WHY?

61 bits of wisdom

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet some fellow bloggers. I had so much fun, we ate, we laughed, we gave awards, we laughed some more, we watched a small dragon dive headfirst into a cup of butter...............
(Hopefully, someone will post a photo of that)
Anyway, Thanks ladies! It was a great day, it will be fun to get together again sometime!

I've had a few people ask me what's wrong with CJ's teeth.
Basically, He's 12 1/2 and his 12 year molars are nowhere near growing in. After two sets of x-rays, it was determined that they were indeed growing, however, none of them are actually growing in the correct direction. One is even growing directly towards one of his wisdom teeth.
Tomorrow I need to get an appointment for the orthodontist, and our dentist mentioned that we might need to get the oral surgeon involved.

Great.

True to form, CJ is blaming me for the whole situation.
"See mom, I told you we should have gone in earlier for that follow up appointment at the orthodontist!"
We are about a year overdue for his check up. He has had his braces off for almost 4 years, and I'm supposed to take him in for an evaluation every now and then.

So basically I'm a bad mom.

Never mind that there would be no way that the orthodontist could have seen this coming a year ago.
The dentist assured me that it would not have made any difference if the orthodontist had seen him earlier, and it is NOT MY FAULT!
(Neener neener to you CJ!)
Feeling the need to blame someone for the problem with his teeth, we have decided to blame my brother.
If any of you have any suggestions on a good way that we can make my brother responsible for this mess, I'm listening.

One thing I have learned from being a parent is that my kids will always find some way to blame me for everything that has gone wrong in their lives.

Here are 61 other things that I have learned since I have become a mom.

1. It IS possible for a two year old to memorize three ENTIRE episodes of Spongebob. (Does that make me a bad mom?)
2. A band-aid will make a bruise feel better.
3. Whenever you really do need a band-aid, they will be all gone.
4. A two year old can get the lid off of a huge, brand new Costco bottle of shampoo, and dump it all down the drain without making a single sound.
5. Your child who will always eat ANYTHING will suddenly decide that lasagna is "yucky" while you are visiting your inlaws, and your MIL has spent the entire day making homemade lasagna.
6. If you decide to go ahead and get the really expensive front row seats for the circus, so your two year old can see everything up close, he will fall asleep in the first ten minutes, and miss the whole thing.
7. No matter where you hide your make up, it will never be safe from your toddler.
8. Two year old girls believe that mascara goes directly on their cheeks, eyeliner on their lips, and lipstick is to be firmly twisted inside the cap.
9. It is possible to get nail polish out of hair.
10. The worse the word your child has learned, the more likely he is to use it during a quiet moment in church. (In my defense, he learned the word from a neighbor and made up a little song with it. Sang it in church, he did)
11. Macaroni is flammable.
12. As soon as you take your sick, feverish, limp and listless child to the doctor, the fever will disappear, and the child will run around the waiting room at full speed.
13. Even if you are positive that your baby does not know how to drink from a straw, they will figure it out if you let them chew on the straw in your Diet Coke, and you won't notice until almost half of it is gone.
14. Caffeine will keep babies awake.
15. WD 40 removes crayon from walls.
16. Tape will not fix broken crayons.
17. Tape will not fix broken crackers.
18. A toddler does not understand that tape will not fix broken crayons or crackers.
19. You will always be out of tape.
20. Babies do not like it when you are wearing a clean shirt.
21. A child can survive indefinitely eating nothing but mac-n-cheese.
22. If a child leans on the screen door long enough, it WILL break, and you will spend the next 3 hours in the emergency room getting his chin stitched up.
23. If you leave a toddler alone just long enough to go to the bathroom, he will climb on the kitchen table, and fall off, and you will spent the next two hours going to the doctor to get the gash in his ear glued back together.
24. If you have toys scattered all over the floor, and you buy a nice toybox to put all the toys in, the kids will take all the toys out of the toybox and scatter them on the floor, so they can play IN the toybox.
25. Even if you feed your kids a full seven course meal right before you take them to grandma's house, as soon as they walk in the door, they will be hungry.
26. Grandma will always feed the kids anything they want.
27. Even though the diaper box says "Up to 10 pounds" the diaper won't really hold that much poop.
28. It's not a good idea to wash disposable diapers.
29. If you do accidentally wash a disposable diaper, it takes forever to get all of the little gel pieces off of the clothes, and out of the washer.
30. Polly Pocket shoes are edible.
31. Bananas don't flush.
32. Polly Pocket clothes do.
33. Toothbrushes flush just far enough that you can't reach in and pull them out, but not so far that they won't cause the toilet to clog.
34. It costs over $200.00 for a plumber to come in and remove two toilets from the floor, and retrieve the toothbrushes.
35. Toddlers don't really care where a toothbrush has been.
36. A sequin can make it all the way through a child's digestive system.
37. Even if a child swears that they have no homework, they usually do.
38. If you think that a child might have homework, look in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, or under the cushions on the couch, you will probably find it there.
39. Spend the extra money for the leather seats in your car. It's so much easier to clean up if you have kids who are prone to carsickness.
40. Always travel with a bucket, a roll of paper towels, and a can of Lysol.
41. If you give your children Benadryl because your doctor recommends it for carsickness, it will just make them throw up purple.
42. Apparently, I don't know anything.
43. A twelve year old boy can eat an entire pizza.
44. It's always my fault when someone can't find their shoes.
45. Children really like to play with the controls on the refrigerator, so your lettuce will always be frozen.
46. After your child gets himself a popcicle always check the freezer in the garage to make sure the door is closed so it won't stay open all night, and you lose a freezer full of frozen food.
47. You will never know where all of your pens are.
48. While potty training, a child can sit on the potty for an hour and nothing will happen until 5 minutes after you put a diaper back on him.
49. Floods happen.
50. Butter isn't just for eating.
51. A toddler considers themselves fully dressed if they are wearing nothing but a hat, gloves and cowboy boots.
52. Toddlers like to undress themselves pretty much anywhere.
53. It is possible for a four year old to trash your internet off of your computer.
54. Four year olds think it's funny to watch mommy scream because they have trashed the internet from the computer.
55. Computer passwords are a good thing.
56. Kid's safety scissors can cut more than you might think.
57. Never leave any important documents where a toddler can get to them.
58. Toddlers love paper shredders.
59. No matter how many times you put your books away in the bookshelves, five minutes later, they will be all over the floor.
60. If you just got new tile, and you haven't sealed the grout yet, and a child gets tired of his grape popcicle, and puts it in a cup, the popcicle will melt, the cup will spill onto the unsealed grout, and it will leave a stain.
61. No matter what I have learned from having my kids, I wouldn't trade them for anything!!

Love you guys!!

(Yes, my kids read my blog)

Freak of nature?

What's the #1 thing you DON'T  want to hear your dentist say while looking at your son's x-rays?

"WOW................... I've NEVER seen anything like this before!"

(I don't even want to know what this is going to cost)

Conferencing with the teachers

Yesterday was parent teacher conference.
We received good enough reports from the teachers, that we have decided not to send the children away to military school ;0)
Our last conference in the fall didn't go so well. You would think that out of three kids, at least one of them would have had a good report from their teacher.
Nope.
My favorite part of the last conference was when we sat down with a teacher and she said "I'm sure that after seeing the report card you are aware of several concerns that I have.

"Report card?? What report card??"

Apparently this child had neglected to give us the report card that had been sent home days earlier. When we saw it, we understood why :P
Also, last conference, we had several comments from the teachers like "The work that is turned in is usually 100 % correct, there just hasn't been much work turned in."

This conference was much better. Most of the work was turned in, and we actually saw the report cards before parent teacher conference.
Aaron said "I figured out, that if I just DO my work when I get it, instead of staring at the wall, it gets done a lot faster"
Brilliant.

The kids have been working much better, and have shown an improvement. All of them!

YAY!!

Now for the funny things their teachers had to say;

CJ's teacher "He's so quiet. I wish he would talk more and participate in class discussions"
CJ's response.....................silence...................
(To be fair, CJ is a very quiet kid and when he does decide to talk, he usually says something very profound.)

Brielle's teacher- "She's so quiet. I really wish she would talk a little more in class. We hardly get three words out of her all day."

Are you serious? Brielle? The "POWER TALKER"?
This is the child who begins talking as soon as she gets up in the morning and doesn't stop until she is asleep at night.
Brielle's response to this comment. "I save all the talking for home. At school, I'm just recharging".

Aaron's teacher had him read to us the comment she had written on his report card. It went something like "It would be great if you could use your calm nature to help you to focus better."
At the point where he read "calm nature" DH and I burst out laughing.
The teacher said "Isn't he calm at home?"
(Um ......NO!!)
I reply "You are the only person who has EVER used the word "calm" to describe Aaron."
DH says "He's pretty much the opposite of calm."
The teacher says "One of my children was like that. He was quite a challenge. A teacher of his once said to me "Aren't you glad he feels comfortable enough at home to act like that?"
(I then asked Aaron what we could do to make him feel less comfortable at home.)

What I want to know is how can my children be so different at home and at school?
I guess I should just be grateful that they choose to behave at places like school and church.

Clone me..............please!

Alternate title to this post:
"Tag team Parenting"

Yesterday, I woke up at 8:10 with Aaron standing next to me saying "Mom, I'm ready for school, can you take me now?"

Panic sets in.

School starts at 8:25.

"Aaron," I ask, "are the other kids awake yet?"
"No, I don't think so. I haven't seen them."

Great.

I now begin the mad dash to wake up the other kids and get them ready for school.
This is not an ordinary day, because;
#1. Brielle has ballet right after school, and needs to have her waist length hair put in a bun.
#2. CJ has a daytime performance for the school play today, and I need to show him how to wear his costume. (The one I was up until 4:45 am making for him. This may have been the reason that I slept through my alarm?)
#3 CJ is also going on a field trip this morning, and he needs to be to school on time.

I dash around madly, trying to get everything ready, forcing Brielle to eat breakfast while I fix her hair, showing CJ the finer points of his costume while carefully folding it and putting it in a bag, and making sure Aaron had all of his homework in his back pack. As I'm walking out the door, I notice the jar of peanut butter on the kitchen counter, and remember that CJ needs a sack lunch for the field trip.
I make the world's fastest peanut butter sandwich.
I get them to school only 10 minutes late. Not bad. One nice thing about getting to school that late is not having to deal with other people in the drop off zone.

I get back home, feed Max breakfast get ready to go out for the day.
I have several errands to run, including buying Brielle a new dress and tights for her first piano recital tonight. I go to K Mart because it's close. They only had two dresses with sleeves in them, so I get the pink one, then remember that she doesn't have any white shoes to match, so I go to the shoe department, and find two cute pairs. I can't decide which ones to get, so I let Max decide. I get a size 3, because she wears a size 3.
I go to the sock area to get her some tights, and they don't have any in her size.
GRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!
I find a cute pair of ruffly anklets that say they fit up to a 3 1/2 shoe size.

On the way out, I walk past the Valentine's day candy marked 50% off :0D

That's all I'm going to say about that. (CJ, I have hidden it where you will never find it!)

We get out of there just in time to go to the school for the daytime performance of CJ's school play, which I will attend instead of the evening performance, because Brielle's piano recital is at approximately the same time of the play.
CJ did a great job. He looked dashingly handsome in his costume. He was the tallest in the play, and as far as I can tell, the only 6th grader with facial hair.
After school, CJ tells me that the evening performance is at 6:00 instead of 7:00.
DH now needs to get off work early to get to the play.
I take CJ to the school by 5:30, and come home right after the ballet carpool brings Brielle home.
The new dress fits, but the shoes are too small. The cute little anklets are also way to small, so we scramble to find a pair of tights, and fix her hair for the recital.
I spend much too much time looking for the camcorder, and we get to the recital just as they are starting.
Brielle performs beautifully.
I lean on the back of my chair, and the back breaks completely out of it.
No, I'm not embarrassed.
As we're leaving the recital, I call DH who has managed to get CJ to his karate class that we thought he would have to miss because it was the same time the play was supposed to be.
He picks up a pizza on his way home, and we finish eating at 9:00 p.m.
Just in time to start the homework.

Tonight we have parent teacher conference along with several other activities that we need to attend at the exact same time.

Come back tomorrow to see how we figure out how to be in three places at once.

Wish us luck.