Princess Cup

What do you do when your little princess isn't drinking enough now that you've thrown all of the sippy cups away?

Buy her a princess sports cup,  of course!  Okay,  I know it's pretty much a sippy cup,  but I had to do something.   She was seriously not drinking enough and getting dehydrated and GROUCHY. Well,  grouchier.  I'm hoping once it gets hot outside it'll be easier to get liquids into her in a regular cup.

p.s. I love that Tess is a girly girl and a Tom boy at the same time. That football shirt is one of her favorites,  and lately she had loved playing rough and tumble with her brothers.   While in a tutu.

Milk BOMB

I just accidentally dropped an entire gallon of milk off of the banister and down a flight of stairs.  That's a good 10-15 feet.

The explosion - and the mess - was as spectacular as you could imagine.

I will admit that in my rush to get the wet-dry vac I stopped for half a second and thought about taking a picture.  But then decided against it and started sucking up all of the milk.  Now I kinda wish I had, because the carnage was pretty impressive.  The jug exploded nearly in half and milk dripped down the walls, higher up than I am tall.  It was like a cow horror movie.

Thirty-five minutes later and everything is as cleaned up as it's ever gonna be. 

As far as messes go, this ranks right up there with the time Spencer threw up all down the wall and onto Josh when he was on the top bunk.  I had to clean everyone and all the bedding up in the dark.  Didn't wake a single child, so kudos to me.

So... how's your day going?

St. Patrick's Day

I would be more into the whole St. Patrick's day thing if anyone in my family (besides me) liked corned beef and cabbage.  But they don't.  Plus, I read somewhere that corned beef isn't really even that Irish; only the Irish immigrants in New York made it kinda popular.

Anyways.

But I am into shaking things up a little now and then, and I'm also really into my gel food coloring, which works like magic.  So I used some of it in our oatmeal this morning.

Okay, at second glance it looks more like an April Fool's joke rather than a St. Patrick's Day celebration.  Whatever.  We all got a kick out of it.  (Well, not Josh.  He threw a huge fit and refused to eat it and generally made everyone's morning miserable.  I pretty much booted him out the door when the bus came.)

For dinner I made little individual shepherd's pies that were so yummy and cute!  (Not cute enough to remember to take a picture of them.) Lance and I ate them, while the kids turned their noses up at them and ate applesauce and bread and jam.

The bread, if I do say so myself, was pretty awesomesauce.

Pinterest is awash with rainbow bread recipes, but ain't nobody got time for that around here.  (It was a two-color bread busy day.)

This evening we had one of the most anticipated Family Home Evenings of the year: emergency preparedness.  I don't know why, but the kids always get a huge kick out of it.  We had fire and tornado drills and talked about what to do in different emergency scenarios.  I also talked about what to do in case of an emergency at school; I didn't want to come out and be straight-forward about school shootings because Josh is pretty sensitive to things like that and I didn't want to freak anyone out.  So we talked about always listening to the teacher and if she says hide then you hide in the best place possible away from the door and you stay as still and as quiet as possible.  The boys surprised me by telling me that they have lots of "lock-down" drills and they knew what to do.  I wonder if they talk specifically about shootings during these drills?  This both reassures and disturbs me; I'm glad they're prepared, but sad that they have to have drills for that sort of thing.

For dessert we were supposed to have Mint Chip Ice Cream Brownie Squares, but, again, it was a busy two-colored bread kind of day, so they weren't all assembled and beautiful.  The children did not care and gobbled them up, quick as you please.

Spencer's getting so big.  Seriously, child, quit with the getting older.

Cole was SUPER HAPPY about the dessert.  Plus, he loves getting his picture taken.  (Looks are so deceiving - this kid was something of a monster today.  I wish I could convince myself that this is just a phase, but I'm pretty convinced he just has a tough, uber-stubborn, super-defiant personality.  Oy.)  Highlights of the day included him and Tess flooding the bathroom - again - and him getting ahold of my perfume and spraying a ton of it.  Silver lining: my bathroom smells fantastic.  (And probably will for weeks.)

This one is putting me in Pooping Purgatory.  We'll just leave it at that.

And this one refused to have his picture taken.  Perhaps he's a leprechaun?  Or maybe just a punk.  (My money is on the punk.)

Couch in Time Out

My kids have gotten totally out of control as far as climbing and jumping on the couch is concerned.  No amount of yelling, screaming, ear-flickings, threats, bribes, time outs, sweet talk, or downright beatings (there were no beatings) seemed to work.

IT DROVE ME NUTS.

I didn't go through all the effort of buying this nice couch (not to mention spending all that money!) only to have my children destroy it.

And destroying it they were - the edges were getting frayed and I can only imagine what all of the jumping was doing to the springs.

Plus, whenever they went to someone else's house they seemed to think it was okay to jump on the couches.  WHICH IT IS NOT.

It was seriously like a compulsion or a habit; half of the time they didn't seem to to even realize they were doing it until I pointed it out.  Cole is by far the worst culprit and was the instigator at the beginning; but just last week I had to get after both Spencer and Josh several times each, and they are both certainly old enough to know better and control themselves.

So the other day I got fed up and took matters into my own hands.

Yes, the couch is now in time out.

It was either this or murder the children.  (I'm kidding.) ((Mostly.))

There is sits, forlornly against the wall, with an itchy rug on top to protect it.  So far my plan has worked pretty well.  How long will the couch have to be in time out?  Several more weeks, I suspect.  So if you come over, be prepared to either sit on the floor or use the downstairs couches.  (I'm kidding.)  ((No I'm not.))

Born Under a Lucky Star

This morning as Spencer was leaving for school I reminded him to bring home a big project he is working on that is due tomorrow.

He went to school.  He came home.  He started his homework.

He did not have the project.

I got mad.  But I did not yell, so Go Me.  Instead, I called the school.  As luck would have it, Kindergarten parent/teacher conferences are tonight, so the school was still open.

So I loaded all four children into the car and rushed down to the school, herded them into the school, checked into the office, got after Spencer several times for this obnoxious attitude, saw the vice principal (who I like) give me a sympathetic smile during one of my reprimands to Spencer, and then herded them all down to Spencer's classroom.

It was as fun as it sounds.

Spencer's teacher was just packing up to leave.  She was pretty happy to see us there, because she had noticed that he had left his project on his desk and she knew he'd get in big trouble if he didn't finish it tonight!  (She's a really great and nice teacher.)  ((And probably a much nicer mom, mainly because she only has one child and he's a baby.))

So we got the project, walked back to the car, got after kids for running, got after Spencer for being obnoxious again, lectured Josh about the difference between telling me what I need to know and tattling, and herded everyone into the car, and got home.

This was twenty minutes ago.  For the past 10 minutes I have been arguing with Spencer over his geometry homework.  Hey, I might have had geometry 20 years ago, but I got an A+ in that class and know how to find the perimeter of a dang shape.  Spencer disagrees.  He said, and I quote, "FINE!  But if I get this wrong it'll be ALL YOUR FAULT!!"  To which I had to respond, "That's fine with me.  It's not my grade.  And I'm NOT wrong, because I am brilliant."  To which Spencer just rolled his eyes and stalked back into the kitchen.

I can't wait until he's in calculus when I can just shake my head and say "Sorry. I took that in college from and Chinese TS who I couldn't really understand and never really got it, so, good luck with that.  Oh, and don't ask your father - he was lucky enough to never have to take that class."

What's the point of all of this?

I'm ready for Spring Break.

Bed Head

Tess has spontaneously decided to start taking naps again after lunch.   It's a glorious thing.   As is her nap time bed head.

Spencer's New Bed

Remember waaaay back on the first of February when we switched Tess from a crib to a bed?  And how her new bed was actually Spencer's old bed and the plan was for him to sleep on the trundle bed for a week or two while I bought a new bed for him?

Well, a MONTH AND A HALF later and the poor child finally has a real bed to sleep in!

Seriously, this whole bed thing has been so long and drawn out - I'm starting to call it the closet project of the bed world.

Fairly soon after we switched the beds I found and AWESOME deal on Overstock.com for a memory foam mattress.  So I bought it.

It came in the mail like this and it was pretty cool to watch it expand when we took it out of the packaging.  It smelled pretty weird, too. (But the smell finally went away!)

And then I found awesome deals on Target for bedding.  So I bought that, too.  And for a good month I had everything I needed except the actual bed.  My storage room was full, and every time I went down there I'd get irked by the fact that I still hadn't gotten the bed!

Finally I made it up to IKEA to get the bed.  From the website I thought that the slats that came with the bed would be enough and that we wouldn't need to buy box springs.  But once I was actually there looking at the bed I realized that that would only be okay if we didn't mind the bed being super low to the ground.  No thanks.  So I bought the bed with the idea that I'd stop buy Sam's Club some time during the next week and pick up some box springs.

**Random side note: I never blogged about my IKEA trip.  It was great!  Gigi and I had sooo very much fun, as we always do.  It was great just to have a day off and chat and laugh the whole time because we really just don't get to see each other very much anymore.  We left Chicago a little earlier than normal because a big snow storm was coming in.  We stopped in Merrillville for some dinner and decided to eat at Abuelo's, which Gigi aptly dubbed a "Mexican Cheesecake Factory".  This tickled me to no end.**

Anyway, back to the bed.  So I meant to get to Sam's Club and never did, but that turned out to be okay because Lance did some better measuring than I did and it turns out there's no way a queen-sized box spring would have fit in my mini-van.

But so frustrating!  What to do?!  We couldn't think of anyone we knew with a truck and the weather was yucky anyway.

But then the internet came to the rescue and we actually found a good deal on Amazon!  (Seriously, that site has everything.)  The boxspring kit got here yesterday and Lance put it together.  When I came home from taking Spencer to piano lessons Lance told me the bed was all done, bedding on it and everything.

What a great husband I have!

I went downstairs and found this:

What a great husband I have.  He's great at putting things together - not so great at furniture placement.  (Yes, that is the nightstand behind the headboard.)  I had to laugh just a little bit.

After a bit of cajoling I got Lance to help me move the bed to it's proper place with the headboard against the wall.  Then Spencer had to test it out.  (Dang - just realized how off-center those pictures are.)

He declared it "okay".  Oy, 10 year old boys.  It's a great bed!  And it's queen sized so guests will have plenty of room.  (We love you, Spencer, but the size of the bed is not for you. It's for the guests who will displace you during their visits.)

Not a bad looking room!  Maybe some day I'll even get around to repainting it.  And maybe even replacing the dang bent curtain rod.  (Bent courtesy of some young children who think hanging on curtains is a great idea.  Grr.)