New Dress

Grandpa ElRay and Grandma Susie heard about Tess growing out of all her dresses and sent this one so we wouldn't have to take her to church in her jammies.

Is she not the most darling thing ever?!? (I might be a bit biased...)  And the dress is just as darling! 

Tess enjoyed all of the attention and compliments paid today at church about her new outfit.  She even smiled for one or two people!  (Unheard of!)

Thank you, Grandpa and Grandma!  Hopefully she won't grow out of it too soon.  (No, really.  The child will be 10 months old this week but is already wearing size 24m clothes. Perhaps I should wean her from her diet of bacon grease and Twinkies... Quit growing so fast, baby Tess!)

Because NOTHING is Ever Simple

On Saturday Lance and I painted our master bathroom.  This is a project that I had wanted to tackle for quite a while because the paint in there was so bad.  Actually, the paint in the whole house is awful, so we're going to be doing a lot of painting in the next few months.  But that's another story.

Anywho, we painted and painted and painted (because bathrooms take a lot of edging, which takes forever), and a little more than halfway through we noticed this:

Yeah.  *&*$&%!!!  (I don't have the words to express my feelings, so *&*$&%!!! it is.)

Apparently we have some sort of leak in that corner.  (It's the corner right above the big bath tub that the boys like to play tidal wave in.)  The paint just kinda slid off of there and showed the original paint. (Which was not that dark of a brown.  Picassa was having issues with my photos.)  I think there must be issues with the length of the corner, because it's doing the same thing in the corner underneath the windows.  Just not as much, thank goodness!

So tomorrow I get to call around and see if I can 1) find someone to come out here and diagnose the problem, and then 2) see if I can find someone who won't charge an arm and a leg to fix it.  Lance and I have zero experience in stuff like this, so I'm not sure if fixing it ourselves is even an option.  (Maybe after we get a diagnosis we'll feel braver.  Who knows?)

I don't even know who to call for something like this.  A roofer?  A fix-it man?  Who knows.  Guess I'll find out.

I'm pretty ticked about this.  I want to shake my fist to the heavens and yell something along the lines of:

"All I wanted was a greyish-blue bathroom!  That's it!  Just to paint it and be done!  But no!  NO!  Now I have a leaky roof or wall or whatever that needs to be dealt with!  Can this family not go ONE MONTH without having $1000 worth of repairs?!?!  Seriously, we've been married for close to 12 years and we've never had this many unexpected expenses so close together!  Can't we catch a break?!  I'm supposed to take my family to Disney World in 2015, but that's pretty hard to save for when I'm spending all my money on car repairs and new sewer pumps!!!  I'm just sayin'..."

I'm sure this story will be continued.  Because what looks like a simple leaky roof will probably lead to the demolition and reconstruction of my bathroom - in the middle of February in Indiana - with my luck. 

Stay tuned.

Ladies Man

The kiddos and I (sans Spencer, of course) are driving home from preschool.  Joshie and I are talking about me signing up to be a "Mystery Reader".  (That's where you get to go in and read a book to the class at the end of the day - it's a mystery to the kids who the reader will be until they walk in.)  (Awesome sauce.)  The following conversation ensues:

Me: Can I bring Cole and Tess? (*note: I already know the answer to this, I just want to see what Josh says.)

Josh: Yes, they can come.  Tess will be good and Cole will be crazy!

Me: Would you hold Tess while I read the book?

Josh: What?

Me: I would put her on your lap.  Would you hold her for me?

Josh:  YES!  Then all the guirrels [girls] would come to sit by me.  Guirrels love babies. And Tess is cute.

I've always said that that boy is a lover, not a fighter.

Unlike Cole, who is most definitely a fighter.  He took on a five year old twice his size this morning while we were at aerobics.  He got at least three good punches in before I ran to intervene.  This child will be the death of me.

Why It Takes Me an Hour to Vacuum

It is 8:03 in the morning.

I get the vacuum out of the closet.

Then I realize that I need to get some laundry done.  Since Spencer hasn't left for the school bus yet I tell him and Josh to bring all the laundry baskets up to the laundry room.  Then I have them sort the laundry: whites, reds/browns, greens/blues, towels.  They've been doing this for several months, but it still takes them forever.  Seriously, what takes me less than 10 takes them at least 20.  I clean up after breakfast and remind them again and again and again to get back to work.

The boys finish sorting and I start a load of laundry.

Spencer leaves for the bus.  Cole tries to follow him and throws a tantrum when I deadbolt the door so he can't escape. Meltdown central.

I get Josh to help me pick up all the toys and such off the floor. This is usually the part that takes the longest when vacuuming.  We pick up one room only to discover that Cole has dumped toys out in another.

Growl.

I send Josh and Cole downstairs with explicit instructions to not come back up any time soon.

I head towards the vacuum. Tess starts to fuss because she can't see me.  Apparently, if I can't be seen the world will end.  I put her on the couch with a few toys.

I actually start to vacuum.  For about 60 whole seconds.  Tess fusses louder and louder.  The world is ENDING!!!  WHERE IS MY MOMMA!??!

So I pick Tess up and put her in her crib with some toys.  Ah, this is new.  Usually cribs are just for sleeping; she's not used to sitting up in the crib.  (Yes, she's nine months old and still very immobile.  I love my immobile babies!)  She happily starts to attack the mobile and I get back to vacuuming.

I vacuum half of the living room.  Cole comes upstairs.  With his hands up in the air.

And poop on his face.

"Uh-oh," he says.  "Hands in pants!"

This is his latest thing.  He likes to take his clothes off.  This leads to him taking his diapers off.  If his diaper's not off then his hands are down his pants - especially after he's pooped.

The boy is slathered in poop.  All over his hands, on his face, in his hair, on the clothes he's only been wearing for about 15 minutes.  I try not to gag.

I lead him to the bathroom, wrestle his clothes off of him, wipe him up as best I can, and throw him into the shower.  For the second time in less than an hour.  I hand him a bar of soap, tell him to wash the poop off of him, and hope that most of it will have come off on its own before I have to get in there to scrub him.

I clean the poop off of the parts of the bathroom he touched.  I clean the poop off of the parts of me that he touched.  I go downstairs and hunt for more poop.  Miraculously, I find none. I pray that he didn't decide to hide his poop anywhere.

I go back upstairs, check on Cole, and start vacuuming again.  Two whole minutes pass.

Cole starts screaming from the shower.  He's gotten soap in his eyes.  (I know, you're thinking "Well, duh, you gave a two year old a bar of soap!" to which I would explain that he's used lots of soap in his short life and knows all about it.  This time it was just an accident.)  Anyways, soap in eyes, crying, rubbing hands on face, getting more soap in eyes.  I try to help him get it all rinsed off, which pretty much soaks the arms of my long sleeved shirt.

I wrestle Cole out of the shower and towel him off.  He runs away and of course ends up on my nice living room couch.  Tess freaks out because she has seen me and the magic of sitting up in the crib has worn off.

I get out new clothes for Cole and hunt him down.  He has decided to pee on the floor. 

Growl.

I try to tell myself that the silver lining in this is that he didn't pee on my nice couch, but it's not very comforting.  I wrangle him into his clothes - he fights tooth and nail once he sees he has to wear overalls.  (You can't put 'hands down pants' with overalls!)  I send him downstairs again and then clean up the pee.

I start vacuuming again.  I vacuum the rest of the living room, the little hall, and the boys' room.  And then I hear Tess really freaking out.

I go into her room and discover Cole in the crib with her.  He's knocked her over and she's stuck against the railing.  She is Not Happy.  (For once Tess has a real reason to cry!)  I rescue Tess, chuck Cole out of the crib, and start vacuuming her room.

Cole is not happy about his unceremonious eviction from the crib.  He decides to unplug the vacuum while I am using it.  Three times in a row.

By the third time I swat his bum and send him on his way.  (Yes, I should have just stopped everything and put him in time out.  But I didn't want to have to police the time out chair.  I just wanted to FREAKIN' FINISH VACUUMING!!!!)

I put Tess back in the crib with a couple of different toys.  She cries when I leave the room but I ignore it because she's the fourth child and her cries have no effect on me at this point.

I start to vacuum my bedroom.

Josh starts freaking out about some stickers in the book he's coloring.  OH NO!  One of the pages in his coloring book has come out.  OH NO!  Now another one has.  I try to patiently explain to him that it's okay and no big deal.  Oh, and if he doesn't like the pages coming out he probably shouldn't pull them out.

I go back to vacuuming my bedroom.

Cole jumps on the bed.  Cole falls off of the bed.  Cole cries.  I stop vacuuming, pick him up, console him, and then tell him to Go Play With Josh.  NOW.

He does.

But not before unplugging the vacuum.

I contemplate running away.

Then I finish vacuuming our bedroom, bathroom, and closet.

It is 9:14 in the morning.

Super Bowl Sunday Smiles

Remember when I couldn't ever get Tess to smile for the camera on Sundays?  I no longer have that problem.  In fact, I have a new problem - the goofy way she smiles every time she now sees the camera.

She puts on this big fake smile and tilts her head back all the way!  It's actually pretty funny and pretty cute, but really, how many pictures does a momma need with a pose like that?

Do you like her new church dress?  She outgrew her other ones, so I bought this one at Target a couple of weeks ago.  I originally got it in the 18 month size, tried it on her, and promptly went back to the store to get the 24 month size!  (Yes, she's 9 months old and in size 18-24 months.  That's my girl!  My giant, giant girl!)

She loves sitting in front of the windows and watching the world.  There's not much going on in the world of our backyard right now, but that doesn't seem to bother her.

I know I claimed the other day that she can't wear headbands anymore.  Don't be fooled - the headband was pulled off more than once during this photo shoot!  (It didn't even make it to church!)

Hair

After several months of being pretty bald, Tess now has hair!  And, I don't know if it's because she's a girl, but I swear she has a ton more hair at this point than any of her brothers did.  (And she'd have more on the back of her head if she stopped rubbing it all off.  Just sayin', Tess.)

In fact, she has so much hair that she can wear little barrettes in her hair.  I only figured this out because the headbands I have for her look weird now... Lance says it's just me, but I'm the mom, so I say what's cute or not. Besides, she kept pulling them off her head, and what's the point of a headband if the child keeps pulling it off?

Don't worry - she's just mad that I wouldn't let her have the camera.  I'm so mean!

It's Been A Long, Hard Day...

... on all of us.

We'll see you tomorrow.  Hopefully.