Night Night

I think this one will win some kind of Exciting Blog award so hold on to your seat.

How many times to do you get in bed at night and have to get up again because you forgot to turn the heat down, or take your medicine, or turn the garage light off? I for one am sick to death of it. I’m trying to go to bed, not get my exercise wandering all over the house in the dark.

I’m making another list tonight. It’s my new going to bed list and it doesn’t include getting ready for bed because for some reason I always remember to do that.

1. Close the garage.
2. Lock the doors.
3. Turn the lights off.
4. Turn the heat down.
5. Take my medicine.
6. Fill my water bottle.
7. Cover the angels.
8. Make sure all the food is put away that the kids have snuck in to.
9. Take my planner and cell phone and reading book with me.

I think that covers it but I might have to update it if I think of something else. What is on your list?

Have you ever noticed this?

One year olds are so fickle. One minute they’re screaming to get in the bathtub and two hours later they’re screaming to get out. It’s like they’re just looking for something to complain about.

I Think I May Be Coming Down With Something

I do this really funny thing now. Tell me if you’ve heard of it. When I get home I clean all my junk out of my van, shopping bags, mail etc. I come in the house and before I go to bed I put all of it away, clean out my purse, re-fill anything that needs filling like tissues, diapers, etc. and I tidy up the living room. I think maybe normal people do this but I’m not sure what it’s called. I don’t know if I need some kind of medication for it or if it will go away on its own. I’m going to wait and see if it gets worse before I seek professional help.

Some other symptoms include, putting my shoes away, cleaning off the washing machine and bathroom counter when I’m done with them, making my bed and tidying my bedroom every morning before I leave it. I haven’t had any sort of a fever along with these other symptoms and all other areas of my life seem completely ordinary. I’m still impatient with my kids, demanding with my husband and irritated in checkout lines.

I’ll let you know when this clears up. I wouldn’t want to expose anyone else in case it is contagious.

Sunday Rush

Why do Sunday mornings have to be so difficult? They really are and I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going about the whole thing wrong. Somehow I got it into my head that Sundays were a day of rest. Now I know that means, “For people who have real jobs.” Those people get to lay around and rest while Mothers, who we all know are on vacation the rest of the week, watching tv and taking bubble baths, need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and get to work!

Now that I have acquainted myself with the facts I have a new game plan. Saturday night I made a list of everything I wanted to do Sunday morning and wrote a schedule for getting it all done. Then the next morning I tried to follow it to the letter. Everything went according to my well laid out plan without any surprises, except for one thing. I thought I would get it all done a lot faster and I would be left with an hour at the end to read to the kids. That did not happen. My morning went something like this:

8:30 Start bread
9:00 Shower, etc.
9:30 Do my nails
10:00 Give the girls a bath, dress Lovely
10:30 Knead bread, dry hair, put on make-up
11:00 Get dressed, curl hair, put Lovely down for a nap
11:30 Form loaves, set to rise, do Persistence’s hair
12:00 Bake bread, eat lunch, yell at Victor to get ready for Church which he is, 5 minutes later
12:30 Pack church bag, wake up Lovely and feed her
12:55 Leave for Church and arrive in class 5 minutes late.

Five minutes people! Why am I always five minutes late?

I know what you’re thinking. Why did your lazy butt stay in bed until 8:30? Fine. I could have gotten up an hour earlier but I can guarantee that I would have still been five minutes late for Church. Why? I didn’t do anything that wasn’t on my list and I was still late. There were some things on my list that I could have done the day before like painting my toenails and giving the girls a bath. But I think my biggest problem lies with my expected time of departure.

Every Sunday morning I figure we absolutely HAVE to be out the door at 12:45. Then when I’m doing all those last minute things and I leave 10 minutes later than that, I’m late for Church. This doesn’t happen to me when we’re going to the gym. I always give myself 15 extra minutes to get there. Then when I leave 10 minutes late, I’m still 5 minutes early.

I think that’s my problem whenever I’m late for anything. I underestimate the time it takes me to get there. So here’s my new plan. Decide how long it’s going to take me to get there and then give myself 15 minutes more. I always carry my sewing or a book with me anyway so I have something to do if I get there early.

And I’m sticking with my Sunday morning schedule. I may have been 5 minutes late but I still got everything done on my list. Usually I’m five minutes late AND I didn’t get my hair curled, Persistence’s hair is in a pony tail, I’m wearing the same chipped toenail polish that I had on last week and the kids don’t get a snack for sacrament meeting. Sometimes Lovely doesn’t even get lunch and I’m feeding her a piece of bread and a banana in the hall.

If this keeps working out, I may get crazy and adopt a schedule for the rest of my week. Or maybe I’ll just start wearing my roller blades in the house so I can get more done. Heaven forbid I get a day off from my labors.

Read To Your Bunny

Ok I will!


Most of the time I’m just trying to get through the day as best I can without any of us crying ourselves to sleep. Sometimes though, I’m so organized I give myself chills. I read a review about a book yesterday and decided I wanted to read it. I immediately went to my Library’s website and requested a copy. When we go to the library on Wednesday for chess club it will be there waiting for me along with three other items that I’ve requested.

I do this with all my reading now. Now that I think about it, I’m going to have the kids start doing it with their book lists too. With a one year old that pulls every book off the shelf that she can reach from her stroller, I don’t want to spend a lot of time hunting for books. The shelves are too close together to keep her away from them so she has full access to every book on the second shelf, on both sides. When she gets tired of this game then she begins her pleadings to be released from her rolling prison. They’re more like screams but I’m sure she means it in the nicest possible way, not the “My Mother is torturing me, please help me, anyone!” way that it sounds.

One week I tried letting her out for a moment. She was happily pulling books off the shelves until, as luck would have it, a pile of books leapt from the shelf directly above her and landed right on her head. Really. What are the chances of this happening? Do you think they are about the same as flushing your keys down a public toilet? Twice? Her sobbing, although justified, was a little bit louder than Library etiquette allows. Upon investigation I discovered that the event wasn’t spontaneous at all. A teenage girl peered back at me from the other side of the book shelf and then proceeded to run away, unrepentant, as fast as she could.

Another time, my little Bunny was pushing her stroller around while I checked our books in. When I turned around again there was the stroller but no Bunny. After searching the immediate area and not finding her I enlisted the help of the library staff. Three of us searched the entire first and basement floor for what seemed like 3 hours instead of three minutes. This is not some small town library. This is a city library with gang members smoking outside and a homeless person sleeping around every corner. It’s a scary place to bring kids.

I headed outside to look for her when I decided to say a prayer and ask the Lord to help me find her. The moment I finished the prayer the thought came into my mind, “You didn’t check upstairs.” I turned back inside only to be met by a Library worker telling me, “She’s upstairs!” Prayerfully thankful, I ran up those stairs to collect my Bunny, safe and sound from her second floor adveture although slightly annoyed by all the hugging and kissing.

We’re going to go the screaming Bunny, happy Mommy route from now on.

The Lazy Organizer’s Club

We had some great Show and Tells at our September meeting. People brought their notebooks and organizing kits and they all looked fabulous!

Your project for this month is to start getting your recipes organized. The easiest way to do this is to put the recipe cards you already have into a three ring binder. Just buy a package of photo page protectors with two or three sections per page and insert your recipe cards or torn out magazine pages.

Label each category with a self adhesive index tab stuck right to the page protectors. Organize your categories using labels such as Beef, Bread, Chicken, Pasta, Pork, Salad, Soup, Vegetables, etc. Instead of Cheese Bread, I will title the recipes this way;

Bread, Cheese
Bread, Cheesy Monkey
Bread, Corn Sweet
Bread, Zucchini

Chicken, Cacciatore
Chicken, Pot Pie
Chicken, Ranch Thighs
Chicken, Teriyaki

It makes them a lot easier to find.

If you have recipes that you use frequently from your recipe books, start writing these down and adding them to your Recipe Organizer so you have them all in one place. This will save you so much time and also shelf space since you may have an entire cookbook with only one or two recipes in it that you actually use. Now you can store that recipe book on a bookshelf in another room instead of giving it valuable space in your kitchen.

If you want to go a step further then you can start organizing your recipes on your computer and printing them out. This is great for making meal plans, shopping lists and sharing your recipes. My Aunt was recently visiting and wanted all my favorite recipes so I just printed them all out for her. It’s also simple to add recipes to my blog or e-mail them to friends.

I use a large font so my recipes are easy to read while I’m cooking and I put them into page protectors so they wipe clean. I like to write notes on my recipes of exact cooking times, substitutions and changes I’ve made. It’s a pain to pull the recipe in and out of the page protector so just write on a little sticky note and slide it in with your recipe. You can update your recipe on the computer later when you have several of them.

Of course if I were you, I would splurge on the ultimate computer recipe organizer, Mastercook. If you like working on the computer you will love this software. It does everything you could ever want to do with your recipes for only $20.

Last but not least you really have got to make a Lazy Meal Planner. You’ll be so happy that you did!

Your assignment for this month is to make a two week meal plan to share with everyone. This will include 5 main course recipes per week, for a total of ten. I want everyone to include two crockpot recipes and two other extra easy recipes for those busy days when we don’t have a lot of time to cook.

If you have the energy to figure this out, include recipes that you can prep together. Example: cook up a pound of bacon to use in strips one night and chopped another night. Chop up a couple onions and peppers that you can keep in the fridge for a recipe later in the week. Just make sure they are tried and true recipes that most people will enjoy. So that’s:

· 6 regular recipes
· 2 crockpot recipes
· 2 extra easy recipes

You have until our next meeting on October 5th to E-mail your recipes to me. You don’t have to do the shopping list. I’m going to do that part.

If you haven’t been able to attend our meetings or you are just reading on-line you can still participate and you’ll receive a copy of all the meal plans that we do. Just get me your recipes by October 5th.

As organized as my recipes are, I’m still not good at making meal plans. The only time I really do it is when I’m going to be having company at my house. I’m hoping that making meal plans with the class will get me motivated to keep it up. Now get to work organizers!!!

I'll Be Back

I want to blog. Really I do. I'm just too sick. It's not that I'm laying in bed all day. I'm still up and about doing things but my brain isn't working well enough to blog. The blogs I have been posting for the last week have mostly been things I had already written.

I have a lot of things to write about. Another parenting book I read, a new shelf I built, The Lazy Organizer's Club and other such things. Hopefully I'll be back soon when I'm feeling better.

Grown Ups Just Don't Understand Anything

Persistence, looking out the window one day says, “Look at all those birds on-line Mom. Get it? On-line. It’s like they are on the internet but they’re really on that (power) line out there. Get it Mom?”

Me, “I get it. That’s funny!”

The next day, “Mom, all those birds are on-line again. Get it Mom? They’re on line, like they’re on the internet. It’s a joke. I don’t think you get it do you.”

Me, “Yes, I do get it. They’re on-line. That’s funny.”

Day after day Persistence tries to explain to me about the birds on-line. Sadly, try as I might, I just never quite grasp the concept like she wants me to.

Then one day as I’m walking past the window I say to Persistence, “Wow there are a lot of birds on-line today.” She excitedly runs to look at the computer. Moments later she comes back into the room with a funny look on her face.

“Gotch ya!” I say.

She says, “You got me! Now you finally understand about the birds on-line don’t you. You finally get it. You said the birds were on-line, like they were on the computer, but they were really on the line outside. Yep, I think you really do understand it now.”

Whew! I’m so glad I finally get it! Sometimes I just get so confused.

In which we learn about hair removal and the facts of life.

I am in hairless heaven! I’m sure this is more than you want to know about me but my handy-dandy Emjoi Gently Gold Caress Epilator was delivered this week. It’s not as an Emjoiable experience as the name would have you believe but it’s not that bad either. It’s definitely worth a little bit of pain to have a hairless body without shaving every day. Not that I shaved every day. I am WAY too lazy for that. So basically I just walked around hairy, hoping not too many people would notice. I had to be careful not to stand in direct sunlight and keeping my body covered like a Shiite Muslim helped.

Persistence was so eager to get this new toy delivered. She declared that her legs were way too hairy and she was going to have to use it every day. When it arrived they were so excited that I made them do their chores before we opened it. Hey. I’m not stupid. Any chance I can get to have them work without fighting, I’m going to take it.

We opened our package, I plugged the epilator in and the fun began. Hair was flying. Kids were jumping up and down. They wanted to try it too but stood back in horror after I held it to their skin for 1/16th of a second each. “Ahhhhh! How can you do that? Doesn’t it hurt? I can’t believe it doesn’t hurt you.” I took this opportunity to teach them a very valuable lesson about life. Beauty is pain. Hmmmm. Not exactly what I had had in mind for today’s Homeschooling lesson but it would have to do. I was having too much fun to stop.

They did eventually agree to pitch in and help me do the backs of my legs. Victor kept saying, “Gross!” I’m not sure if he was talking about yanking the hair out or looking at my legs. Whatever. Just as long as he was thorough. I wouldn’t want Lovely to see a stray hair back there when we’re getting dressed together. It’s not like there is anyone else around to see or care. Maybe I should send Stranger a picture.

Lovely didn’t want to miss out on the thrill. If you are a one year old you can have fun running this device up and down your legs. But when it’s turned on you are smart enough to keep your distance. Especially after you’ve learned the meaning of the word, “Ouchie!” when your Mother granted you your sincerest desire to try it for yourself. This is one of those few times in a one year olds day when no means no instead of yes, sometimes or maybe.

“The vibrating agents on the side help to eliminate discomfort.” That means they are trying to trick your skin into thinking it’s getting a friendly massage. Let me tell you. My skin is not that stupid. It knows when it’s getting its hair ripped out by the roots. The truth is this. In some spots it tickles. In some spots it stings and in some spots it will make you bawl like a baby. But every spot will be soft and smooth and worth it.

Just when I thought I had run out of spots to epilate I took it right between the eyes. I’m not saying it wasn’t scary because it was. One wrong move and I could have lost an eyebrow. For weeks. Luckily my eyebrows remained intact so I didn’t have to go buy myself any little eyebrow wigs. Can you get those at Target? Just wondering.

Now go buy an epilator for yourself. You know you want to and your lazy self will thank when you can jump in and out of the shower without shaving. You can use the time you save to finish folding your laundry. JUST KIDDING! We all know you’ll use it for blogging. Now that I think about it maybe you should just wait till they make epilators with internet access.

Working The System

Ten days. That’s all you get. It used to be fourteen days but now it’s only ten. That’s how long Old Navy will give you to obtain a price adjustment. Did you even know this was possible? Probably, but I doubt very many people take advantage of it because the sales people always look surprised when I arrive at the counter with only my receipt and demand for a refund.

I stopped by there on a Saturday afternoon which was a big mistake. I usually let everyone else have Saturdays and I do my shopping on a week day to avoid the crowds. I walked out of there with an armload of clothes. Some of them on sale in addition to using my Gap card and getting an additional 10% (I think) off. Then ten days later I went back with my receipt and got a refund. Here’s how it played out:

Original ticket - $206.49
After discount - $154.99
After refund - $127.21

So I got almost 25% off originally and another 18% off for stopping by their store for five minutes.

I do this everywhere I shop for clothes because they get marked down so fast. As I’m checking out, I ask how many days they allow and I mark it in my calendar. Then I plan my errands for that day so I don’t have to make a special trip to town. I always know right where my receipt is of course and it’s almost always worth the small bit of trouble. Don’t we all love to save money? Besides, if you don’t do it then you’re just a Turkey Noodle Brain.

Family Time in the Tub

Have I told you lately how much I love my kids? Ya. I do. After a terrible day on Sunday, we all kissed and made up and took a Jacuzzi tub together. Yes, we have a BIG bathtub and yes I was wearing Clothes. I don’t get naked in front of my kids anymore.

It all started so innocently. When my eight year old was about three, I drug him into a Victoria Secret dressing room with me while I tried on bras. As soon as I took my shirt off he declared in his loud little three year old voice,“You’re fat!” “What!” I replied, in my mad, I want to yell but I can’t so I’m whispering, voice. “You do not ever tell someone they are fat!”Again with the loud voice, “Well, your boo-boos are fat!”

Thank you! I mean, “SHHHHHH!”

It went downhill from there. “Ewwwww, that’s disgusting!” while my six year old points to my sagging body parts, is not something I want to hear in the shower. I have never showered with her since. I’m not trying to win a beauty contest here. I would just like to take a shower without grossing people out. That’s all I’m asking.

Persistence can’t figure out why bathing with her isn’t my favorite thing to do but I’ve discovered that a little less nudity in the tub really helps the situation. We can even invite Victor to join us. Which we did. After we made him bring us our breakfast. Then we needed hot chocolate. Then we decided we wanted to watch a movie while we soaked. He is helpless against his three favorite women. He doesn’t even put up a good fight.

A Pretty Rock Makes a Great Birthday Present

My blogs are way too long. I hate long blogs. When I see one on someone else’s page I usually don’t want to read it. Three or four paragraphs are about the perfect length. But I have so much to say! I usually write a blog and then cut out about ¼ of it as it is. However, I’m going to try to keep them shorter and sweeter from now on.

Persistence and I are both sick. There is nothing longer than a Sunday afternoon when you stay home from Church. It’s my own fault really. I have all these Sunday rules that are supposed to promote spirituality. But really. Are they doing us any good when I end up screaming at the kids because they’re bored and driving me crazy! You can only read scriptures for so long.

There was a knock at the door at 2:00. It was a little neighbor boy inviting the kids to his birthday party that started 10 minutes ago. The kids start bouncing off the walls, “Can we go? Can we go? Please, Please, Please!!!” Without thinking I say yes and then as they’re running out the door the thought hits me, “Should a girl who stays home from Church because she's sick, really be going to a birthday party? Are birthday parties at all conducive to keeping the Sabbath day Holy?” No and no. At that point I was so frustrated with them (or myself) that I would have dropped them off at the nearest amusement park just to get rid of them, “Here’s 50 bucks. Don’t talk to strangers and don’t forget, you’re not old enough to buy beer and cigarettes,” so off they went. And off I went for a nap.


Ever have a good laugh with a one year old? Lovely thought this was as funny as I did! I guess you had to be there.

Got Milk?

I told Stranger I wasn’t going to blog tonight. I was going to bed. I was headed that way but then I started picking up and I ended up following the trail of clutter back to the computer so here I am and it's going to be a quickie.

I was talking to someone the other day about her daughter trying to decide what to study in college. She’s as clueless as I was back then. I never wanted to work. I wanted to be a Mommy when I grew up. Back then you couldn’t go around saying things like that or you would be shunned. Of course I said it anyway. I don’t mind humiliating myself in public. That's why I make the perfect blogger.

Why do you have to decide when you’re 18 what you want to do for the rest of your life? It’s just not possible unless you want to be miserable forever! I think I’m going to tell my kids to pick something they want to do for about 12 years that will make a decent amount of money. Then in the future when they are older and figure out what they want out of life they can pursue a new path.

Now that I’m all grown up I have two things I want to do when I’m done being a full time butt wiper. I want to own a reception center (to make money) and I want to design organized houses (to have fun). I’m sick of men, who don’t know anything about how a household runs, designing and building houses. Does anyone have a house they need designed? Let me at it!

And can I just say…

You know you’re old when you put ice cubes in your milk, just like your mother did and it drives your kids crazy just like it drove you crazy.

The Pie Whisperer

The kids and I just finished reading (listening to*) The Man Who Listens to Horses by Monty Roberts. The kids love horses and they loved this book. I’ll warn you, there was one violent scene where a man gets beaten to death. There were also a few damns and hells but all in all, nothing worse than a Saturday morning cartoon.

Young Monty loved horses so much that he would spend entire days just sitting and studying the wild horses. How they communicate, how they learn and how they teach. That’s how it happened. That’s how he learned to watch and listen and know them. How could the horses not respect Monty, when he had so much respect for them?

Monty gave the kids and I a lot to talk about. Horse whispering. It’s like unschooling with horses. I’ve already read The Baby Whisperer, which had some great ideas in it by the way. Now I’m all set to read The Child Whisperer, The Husband Whisperer, The Snotty Women at Church Whisperer and in a few years I’ll need The Tween and Teen Whisperer.

I went to another cooking class last week. We learned Pies. The secret to making a pretty Pie crust has eluded me for years. Well no more! Here’s the secret. Leave an inch of crust all around the pan. Then FOLD IT UNDER and pinch the edges all ruffley. There. Now you have a crust with a nice thick, appealing edge. My sister called as I was making crusts today for fresh peach Pies. (No I didn’t eat any.) It was lucky for her because I let her in on the big secret and saved her from one more pie casualty.

Of course that makes sense. “Why?” we asked each other. Why didn’t we figure that out on our own when it seems so obvious? But how could we have known how to make a beautiful Pie when we had never taken the time to KNOW the Pie? It's difficult to experience the subtleties of the Pie when you’re so busy pigging it down.

What we needed was a bit of Pie Whispering; to study the Pie, to listen to the Pie and above all, to respect the Pie. Who could have imagined the communication possible between woman and Pie? With what I have learned about Pie Whispering, I can now take a wild, high-strung pie, who has never been handled and persuade that Pie to accept a roll, and a flute in thirty minutes.**

Or I could have just looked at this web site.

* I highly recommend books on tape in the car for the “If the fighting doesn’t stop I’m going to take my seat belt off and drive the van into the mountain because it would feel better than the pain in my ears” syndrome.

**It’s possible that some of this blog may have been pilfered directly from the back cover of The Man Who Listens to Horses. Like a good artist, I don’t copy ideas. I steal them.

Name Your Own Price

I stopped at Arby’s Wednesday because we made a mad dash out the door to get Victor to chess club and I forgot Lovely’s lunch. It was just one of those things. I started building an ironing board hanger and forgot the time. Then I was showering off the sweat and wood chips and throwing kids in the car and forgot the food.

After dropping Victor off, Lovely and I went to an Arby’s drive-up. I ordered her some mozzarella sticks and a Jr. Roast Beef Sandwhich which was completely ridiculous considering we’re lucky if she’ll eat two bites in a row of anything. I don’t know why, I just saw it and ordered it. Then as I’m driving away from the order board I hear, “That will be $5.27.” What! I am not buying a $5 meal for a one year old!

Proving how truly weird I am I pulled up to the window and said, “I don’t want those cheese sticks. You don’t have any prices on the board so I didn’t know they were going to cost $3.” The manager replied, “Tell you what, I’ll just charge you $1.99 for them. We make enough money on this stuff as it is.”

So there you have it. You didn’t know you could negotiate a deal at a fast food restaurant did you? Next time you pull up to McDonalds say, “I’ll give you 2 bucks for a Big Mac and large fry. Take it or leave it.” This could start a whole revolution. Grease Line - Name your own price for fast food.

That was so much fun that I decided to take on another national chain, REI. I’ve been shopping for a Bob stroller for some time, looking for one on sale. For some reason $360 is a little more than I want to spend on a stroller! But Bob. Come on. I have to have a Bob! I chased some stranger down at the park on Tuesday and asked him where he got his. REI amazingly was having a sale! So the next day after my successful negotiations at Arby's, I call REI. Well apparently the sale ended on Monday. So I ask if I can get the sale price now. No. I let the guy sweet talk me a bit, trying to convince me to become an REI member and then I ask him again if I can get the sale price on the stroller. No. I asked if I could talk to a manager about it and he said he was the manager of that department. That was the end of that conversation as you might imagine.

Undaunted, I called back and asked for the store manager. Aren’t I obnoxious? After telling him my sad story about how my last dying wish was to own a Bob stroller but I couldn’t afford to pay full price and couldn’t he just give me the sale price on it, the answer was again, No. What was the deal with these guys? Are they heartless? They obviously didn’t get the same superior training as those lovable guys at Arby’s.

It was this same Arby’s btw that I had previously visited five years ago. Picture me with two starving little kids. That wasn’t the sad part. The sad part was that I was starving and you know how I get when I’m hungry! It’s like the oxygen masks on an airplane. If I haven’t put mine on first, I can’t help anyone else with theirs. In fact, if I had to go another 5 minutes without my oxygen mask I was going to be dry-heaving out the car window. I pulled up and ordered my food only to get to the window and realize I didn’t have my purse. I think I almost started crying. Penniless and hungry as we were, Arby’s did not turn us away. “This one’s on us,” the clerk proposed. I think I shed some happy tears at that man’s kindness!

Apparently REI doesn’t do freebees. Let’s not ever shop there again. If those people don’t know how to give away a stroller to a woman who is so obviously in need then they don’t deserve our money!

Talented and Trying

I stole this from Miranda on an unschooling forum and I thought it was fun. “What quirky, or unusual skills and talents have your children developed... and lest we all be intimidated by your kids' prowess, please follow your brag with a compensatory unbrag.”

I’ll go first but I hope you’ll play along.

My six year old was swimming at the age of three and jumping off the high dive. She can climb to the top of a 25 foot light pole and sit on the top of it BUT she thinks everything is embarrassing and she has never apologized to anyone in her entire life.

My 8 year old is amazingly creative; writing poetry, songs and taking pictures. (He took this photo of his Lovely.) He is good at naming things and pronouncing words BUT he can't open a package of hot sauce at Taco Time and he can't find his shoes when they're right in front of his face.

My one year old has a unique sleeping talent. She has been sleeping through the night since she was a week old. Even now she sleeps from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. and takes a 4 hour nap every day. Yesterday she didn’t get her nap so I put her down at 5 p.m. She slept through till morning. She also has a water fetish. Not a skill particularly but quirky just the same. Everywhere we go she will find the water and play in it now matter how cold or muddy it is. Sinks, sprinklers, toilets, drinking fountains. You name it, she is playing in it. The only way I can get her to hold still while I do her hair is to give her a squirt bottle so she can squirt herself in the face with it until I’m finished. BUT…I’m sorry. I can’t think of a single un-brag about her. She’s perfect! (so far)

Picnic Organizer

I got to use my Lazy Picnic Organizer today when we went on a field trip to the Tracy Aviary. When we got home I re-packed it and put it away for next time. The grocery bags are for garbage. If you tie one around your baby's neck by the handles it makes a disposable bib!

Paper plates
Paper trays
Napkins
Spoons
Forks
Knives
Baby Wipes
Plastic Grocery Bags

What else could you put in a picnic organizer?

You can buy my Lazy Organizing Bags here.

Sweet As a Peach

Intuitive Eating

This is an issue I don’t really like to talk about anymore. If I don’t talk about my eating disorder then maybe it will go away. I’m tired of facing it and now I just want to turn around and say rude things about it behind it’s back. I’m going to get all my friends to snub it too and maybe it will figure out that it’s never going to belong to the popular crowd and it will run home crying.

What eating disorder you ask? The one where I eat too much food and it makes me fat. The one where I eat too much sugar and it makes me cranky. I might as well admit to everyone that I haven’t eaten sugar for over three weeks now. I don’t count carbs or eat food with pretend sugar in it. I haven't given up fruit or white bread or anything stupid like that. No sugar means no refined sugar. No brownies, no chocolate, no candy, no anything of the sort. Peaches yes, ice cream on the peaches, no.

I talked my kids into doing this with me. I decided that my family should be more supportive of my sugar problem. If they didn’t want to be more supportive then I would “help” them be more supportive. If I were an alcoholic would they be drinking margaritas in front of me? Then why is it ok for them to eat twinkies in front of a sugar addict? It’s not and I have put an end to it. I always thought that this was my problem and I needed to deal with it myself. Well what are families for if they can’t help each other with their problems and be supportive? I’m doing this for them anyway, to be a better Mother. When I was single I could be as depressed and grumpy as I wanted and no one cared but me!

Here are my new rules: I will not be buying or making sweets. There will be no sweets in the house. No one will eat sweets in front of me. Unless it’s something I don’t like. Like soda, suckers and hard candy. That’s basically it since I like everything else. Heck! If it’s got sugar in it, what’s not to like!

Both of the kids were all set to do this with me. We hit our first snag on the morning of the first day when Persistence figured out that not eating sugar meant we weren’t going to be eating any sugar. She spent the next three hours in her room crying.

After she emerged we discussed the whole thing again. I explained that she didn’t have to do this with us but that all the same rules applied. “Well I can’t have treats in front of you but I’m always with you so then you are FORCING me to do it too!” That’s pretty much it little girl! I’m glad we’re all clear on that now.

Victor will do anything to please me. He went sweet-less for five days but that five days was enough to get me going strong and I’ve done well on my own ever since.

When Stranger was here we went to the Chinese Buffet. Everyone took turns getting their desserts and eating them on the other side of the restaurant. Except Persistence who hid behind Stranger, eating her ice cream and giggling. That was as far away from me as she could force herself to go. I appreciated the sentiment.

The most amazing thing is how sweet everything tastes to me now. I don’t like carrots in my pot pie because they make it too sweet. I tried the kids’ Pringles and couldn’t eat them because they were too sweet. We have been eating a LOT of fresh fruit to make up for our deprivation. I picked up a 25 pound box of peaches last Thursday and we ate the whole thing in five days so I bought another box today. We are in peach Heaven!

Motherhood Feels Like Chinese Torture

I’m a crazed Mother of three little kids. In spite of my best efforts my house is a wreck 23 hours and 45 minutes a day. It actually takes less than 15 minutes for the kids to mess it up after we get it cleaned but let’s just pretend. 15 minutes of cleanliness. That’s all I get. Once a day.

Why can’t I be this lady? The last one, who doesn’t seem to care about the mess? Why do I have to care so much? I don’t care enough to have an immaculately scary-clean house. I just care enough to be sickened by the chaos and make slight, useless efforts to do something about it. I think I have learned not to make excuses for the mess but I still don’t want to live in the mess. I despise the mess!

I get tired of hearing that thing that all of us Mothers of small children hear thousands of times. You know. That thing? The lecture? “Don’t worry that your home is a death trap. They’re only short for a small time (or is that small for a short time?) and when they’ve (finally) grown up and moved out you’ll miss the poop smears on the walls and the old pizza slices that the “little ones” played Frisbee with in the garage. You’ll be sorry that you spent so much time scrubbing paint and mud and chicken poop out of their clothes instead of helping them color your walls with permanent magic markers.” Isn't that how it goes? I think there is even a poem written about it. I hate that poem!

What about quality of life? What about being able to walk to the bathroom at night without breaking your leg tripping on a muddy rubber boot? What about being able to open the fridge door without getting honey all over your hand? What about people being able to walk out your back door without looking at a pile of poopy diapers that the kids have thrown there instead of in the garbage can that’s sitting right next to it?

They’re little things yet they mean so much. I am not one of those Mother’s who yearn for yesteryear. My oldest two can wipe their own butts and noses and I thank Heaven for it. I don’t miss cleaning up an infant that looks like it took a shower in banana flavored cottage cheese right in the middle of sacrament meeting. I can live without the all night vomiting you get when you let your 2 year old eat an entire box of raisins during a 4 hour car ride to the cousins house.

I can’t wait for the era of the grandchildren. Grandparents have it made. Even before I had kids I used to say I wanted to skip parenting and head right into Grand parenting. After the family leaves you clean up the honey and you don’t have to bathe in it again until their next visit. When the grandkids are tired and cranky and the parents are even more so, you are long gone, sleeping peacefully in your own bed that isn’t full of boogers and sand. When your granddaugher spends the night and keeps you up crying until 2:00 in the morning, you can load her into your car and take her back where she came from. Parents can't really do that. Hospitals don't take back criers.

Don’t misunderstand me. I love my kids. I love them to death. My own slow painful death. It’s like Chinese torture; Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom… I swear, when I hear that for the 47th billion time I will keel over dead on the spot. Every job has its risks. The crocodile hunter died on the job doing what he loved to do. I love being a Mom but I’ll be lucky to make it back to my bed tonight alive. If I crash into a toddler bike and break my head on the corner of the bathtub don’t send flowers. My family really likes chocolate chip-less chocolate chip cookie dough. A few dozen buckets of it should ease the pain of their loss.

It's Big and It's Bad but I'm So Cute!

And really...what else matters?


Every once in a while I just get overwhelmed. No. That’s a lie. I get overwhelmed ALL THE TIME! This morning was one of those times. Lovely wasn’t napping. The dishes were piled high. I was trying to get everyone ready for Church, keep the kids entertained and feed them breakfast and lunch while making dinner. 1:00 Church is a pain for that very reason. I have to do three meals before we leave for Church or we don’t have anything to eat when we get home at 4:00. Today I was making chicken pot pie which I don’t know how to make and I didn’t have a recipe. Isn’t that brilliant? I wanted to try a new pie crust recipe so that was that. I ruined my Sunday morning all for a pie crust because I ended up making it twice when it didn’t look right the first time.

I got the older two ready and took them to Church in my sweats. Then I came home with Lovely, finished up the pie, got us both ready and then headed off to Church. So what if I missed the first two meetings. It was all I could manage today. I find that I can rarely manage everything I have lined up for myself. It just seems like I should be able to do everything. Why? Why do I keep thinking I can do it all when time and again I have proven myself wrong?

I have got to cut back somewhere but I don’t know where. All the changes I want to make include MORE of everything. Spend MORE time with the kids. Get the house cleaned up MORE often. Put MORE effort into my Church callings. Make MORE meals. I haven’t done any yard work all summer because we don’t have a yard. That will just be one MORE thing on my list. I don’t know what to give up.

You would think, with a baby that takes a four hour nap, I would have time to accomplish something during the day. Well I do. That’s the time I spend with the older two. It’s the only time we can play board games together, read together and do dishes together. Otherwise we’re fighting with a 1 year old every moment.

I don’t know if there are any answers here. I think Mothers throughout time have had and will continue to have the same dilemma. But I’m ready to take a stand and here’s what I’m going to do about it! I’m going to get up, put away the pile of dishes I just washed and then go to bed! Take that big bad world!!!

 

Bobbing For Bouncy Balls

It’s 10:00 p.m. Am I blogging at the computer in solitary bliss? No. Am I sweetly reading the children a bed time story? No. Am I yelling at the kids to get to bed RIGHT, NOW!? Surprisingly, No.

I’ll give you a hint.

Can’t guess?
Here’s another hint.

Still don’t know?

We’re playing 101 Ways to Have Fun With Glow In The Dark Bouncy Balls! Don’t tell me your kids have never played it! Go out and buy them 12 dozen of these little treats! Now, woman!!! Make sure you get extra because your 1 year old will chew up every one she finds and spit it out on the floor.

#101 – Turn out the lights in the bathroom and throw the GITDBB up into the air as hard as you can. Scream your head off while you watch the glowing orbs ricochet off every wall and eyeball in the room. Bring your baby sister in to enjoy the show and then giggle while she picks up all the balls for you to do it again. 57 times. Don’t forget to make her fish out the balls that bounced into the toilet when you forgot to shut the lid.

#100 – Hide the balls and then make up a poem for your little sister to decode and track them down.

Three stacked nice
Three stacked neat
Above what you sit on
Not by your feet.

What toilet where
The one in the front
Oh, that one there
It’s a hunt

#99 – Wait until your Mother is exhausted and ready to go to bed and then make her watch you take pictures of them. Those little guys are all so photogenic!

Stay tuned for 98 more fun ideas! Hopefully the list won’t include calling 911 because the 1 year old tried to hide 14 of them in her cheeks and smuggle them to bed.