When I'm the Guilty Party.

   Do you ever have days where you are cursing the stupidity of your spouse only to realize it was YOUR fault?  I did last night. 

   My husband and I like to have learning fun with the kids, so we make games out of learning tools.  When Girl A was little we created a Color Catepillar.  She LOVED it.  We glued one to a poster board and had it laminated along with a duplicate copy of the caterpillar that we cut out and made it into a matching game using velcro dots to get the pieces to stick together.  As a result we spent at least an hour every morning and afternoon playing this game with her and listening to her giggle as she would put the wrong colors together and say "No!" and rip it down as fast as she could.  She knew all her colors by two and a half and by three was learning how to mix colors to get a new color.

   Well, the caterpillar pieces were slobbered on by her new baby brother and destroyed so we threw the whole came out when she decided to color on the poster with sharpie markers.  After 2 yrs of being without, we finally made another Casey the Color Caterpillar...he was a hit. 

(Please note: the cords right there aren't usually there...it's for the treadmill that tubby here doesn't use as often as she should!)

  With the success of Casey, we decided that numbers would be something to benefit all the kids, so we wanted to make a number snake in the same fashion. Poster board, velcro and laminating.  I printed, I cut out and I glue sticked.  I even ran to the office store on my break from class to get it laminated.  I came home with Girl A and was soooo excited to get the snake up and running.  As I was cutting out the laminate pieces she was trying to tell me the numbers by sight (she can already count to 20, but doesn't know them by sight).  Then came the moment when we were ready to apply the velcro...except...Where is the velcro?

   I look in all the Logical places, the junk drawers, the crafting baskets and on top of the fridge, no luck.  I call the Hubs, certain he was the one to put it away...he suggests he put it in places I've already looked.  I'm getting mad.  Not because I can't find it, but because I am certain my husband has once again placed it in the most illogical place!  He always does, and can't recall where he put it on the phone, but give him 10 seconds at home and he'll find it, "Here it is Hunnie!  I told you I put the  TV remote in a make up bag on the back of the toilet.  Sheesh, why didn't you think of that?"....uuuuuh, because normal people don't put the tv remote in the bathroom!!!  ANYWAY, I am cursing him out left and right to myself, my girlfriend whowas unfortunate enough to call while I was looking, my sister (again, called while looking) and my friend who I am making a diaper cake for, asking all of them "If you were my Hubby, where would you put it". 

   I finally find it, in my knitting bag!  Because, you know that's the best place for Velcro...around a bunch of yarn!!!!  More curses, more "What was he Thinking!?"  Then the guilt comes.  The more I think about where I found them, the more I start thinking "I think I put it there, it feels vaugely familiar"  Yep, I put it there, in all my stupidity, I placed the damn velcro in the knitting bag thinking to myself "I'll just set it here and in the morning I'll open up the craft cupboard and put it away" never remembering that thought and thus placing the blame on my poor Hubs.

   When he gets home I tell where I found the velcro.  He instantly apologizes with "WTF, I'm sorry Hunnie I don't know what I was thinking"  me, all red in the face, says "You weren't thinking, because I put it there."  So Ashamed!!! Even worse, the Hubs went right along with my assumption of guilt!  Have I really just forced blame upon him so much that he just assums responsibility, or is he just that fabulous a Hubby he takes responsibility so I don't feel stupid?  Either way, what a great guy, such a keeper!  Sam the Number Snake has Joined Casey the Color Caterpillar as games we play over and over and over, happily learning our colors and numbers through play.

THE END!

Dishes, my Nemesis

 Who remembers the scene in "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" were the brother is told to do the dishes and you cut away to him skeet shooting the dirty dishes from the roof? 

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Yep, wish I could do that...but I am a terrible shot and well, dishes are expensive.

I hate doing dishes for several reasons.  It's not my assigned chore, Hubby does the kitchen, I do the living room.  However that doesn't mean that sometimes he slacks on his chore to the point where I end up doing it, so when I do have to wash dishes..I'm flaming hot mad.  My Hubby is incapable of scraping a dish before setting in the sink or on the counter, so all the left over food is there waiting for me.  He is also a fan of filling things with water to "soak" for days at a time letting the water get super scummy and smelly.  He's not the only one guilty of these offenses, I occasionally do it too, but if I'm going to do the dishes, you better believe they all get done. 

WARNING: TOTALLY INRELATED SIDE NOTE, SKIP AHEAD IF IN A RUSH!

When we started dating, my first trip to the Hubby's house (yes, he owned a house when we met) I was scared to find all his dishes were dirty in his sink.  He asked if I wanted something to drink and I replied "yes, but not from that kitchen" I went to the party store and bought us both some...beverages.  I should have known that he wasn't a good dish washer.  The next time I ventured to his house his kitchen was immaculate, which was a good thing since he offered to cook me dinner ( a man that cooks you try to hold onto), so when I arrived he said "Ok, before I can cook we need to go to the store and buy some new dishes and pots and pans" "Ok...what happened to the ones you had?" "Oh, I decided just to throw them out and buy new ones instead of washing them all, I never really liked those ones anyway"  (please imagine a very shocked, jaw-dropped look, because that's how I looked at the end of that sentence). 
After buying new dishes, he managed to hold onto those for a couple of years and then after a series of moves, we lost them and decided to buy new ones.  

Back to the nemesis thing... I have a strange ability to always, ALWAYS soak myself when doing the dishes.  You would think I never learned how to play at a water table when I was little.  I don't know what it is, I can see that I'm about to drench myself and my brain is going "abort, abort, abort! Water coming in, About to get wet, ABORT!" but the relay system must be slow because I always end up wet.  I am about to take a vinyl table covering and fashion it into a waterproof apron for myself just to save me from myself and my inability to keep the water in the sink and on my dishes.  I beginning to think the dishes have some alien super power that allows them to override my brain's abort command and watch me dump water all over myself and giggle.

I imagine it goes something like this:
   Dish 1: She's been doing really good on washing us, but this is so boring.
   Dish 2: Yeah, back on planet Dishian we would be doing cannon balls and splashing water everywhere.
   Dish 1: Hey!  What do you think about using our super powers to override her brain and get her to 
dump water...on herself!!!!
   Dish 3: Hey, what are you guys talking about?
   Dish 2: Dumping water on the washer here by using our super powers.
   Dish 3: Sounds great, I'll get the rest to help out...
Insert evil giggle here.

We even have a dishwasher and I can't load that without getting soaked....fail.
Just ridiculousness.

Get Off My Chair.

I have a favorite chair,  a very comfy chair, a chair my Loving Hubby bought me when I was pregnant with Girl A...but I have a problem with the chair.  It attracts children who want me to rock them, hold them or to just wiggle and squiggle and piss me off.

Every night after baths I sit down in this chair, I read or knit or do homework, but its always in this chair.  Every night I am interrupted by a kid.  Now, I love the little boogers to death, I really do, but really?  During the day when I'm just sitting there between loads of laundry or between dishes or vacuuming or what ever else I have going on, no one bothers me, but if I sit down to do something...oh...hell..no.  They descend on me like vultures, circling their prey.  They don't always climb up on my lap, sometimes,and worst of all, they'll just sit off to the side, leaning on my arm rest.  This doesn't bother me because I was utilizing the arm rest, no, it irritates the hell out of me because they rock me when I don't want to be rocked, or they stop me from rocking, or worse yet, they just "jiggle" the fricken chair. 

At first, I say very politely, "Please get off of mommy's chair, I don't like it when you do that."  This usually buys me about 5 min of piece before, and it's always the same kid, they come back and are back at the annoying game of "Piss Mom Off".  Second time around sounds more like, "Now that's enough!  Please get off of my chair, I don't like that it makes me mad".  I consider this fair warning to the little lovies that the next offense will have me yelling.  Ten minutes tops and they're back at it, this time it sounds like "GET OFF MY DAMN CHAIR! I DON'T LIKE THAT, IT MAKES ME MAD, BACK OFF BEFORE I SPANK YOU!!!" 

Now, this is where the tears start.  Oh my GxD mom...just...yelled at me!!!  BaaaaaaaaWaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!  Cry me a freakin river you little twirp.  We go through this every night.  When it first started happeneing I always felt instantly bad and would scoop them up and rock them and love them, but now...get over it.  Every Night!  Every single night we have to play this little charade, and it comes as a shock every night!  Really?  Kid gets a burn from a flat iron I told them to stay away from and now they won't even come in the doorway when I'm doing my hair, but sit in a chair and yell at them every night and the memory is wiped out every morning!??!?!?!?!  Maybe I should sit armed with a flat iron instead of a laptop and sarcastic words?!

PS ( I have said "Get Off Of My Chair" at least 5 times since I started writing this...)

Ping Pong Clean Up - the greatest game EVER!

   My house is a pig stye, I am not even going to try to pretend I have a clean house.  I would love to be one of those people whose house is always company ready, but I have never been a super cleaner to begin with so add me,my not so cleaning Hubby and three never pick up a thing kids, and you have a terribly messy house!

  So this past week, I set out to change that.  My sister gave me an idea she had seen on T.V.  You take ping pong balls and write chores on them, then you very nosily drop them in a bag and everyone picks out one ball at a time and that's your chore.  I got bright colored ones for my kids, and plain for me and the Hubs.  Girl A LOVES it.  She actually asks to play it.  Of course her ping pong chores are like "Pick up the shoes out of the living room" or "Pick up all the books".  We make it super fun by trying to do it as fast as we can, and so far the living room is clean every night before we go to bed!  The Hubs and I are a different story...not once have we drawn our own ping pong clean up game.  Well, maybe this week we can change that. ;-)

Don't touch me I'm sleeping!

   The best and worst thing that could have ever happened to me when having children was to get children who are snuggley!  I LOVE to hold and cuddle and snuggle the little lovies all day long, and when they want to be "holded" as Girl A puts it, when going to bed.  But that's where it ends.  As the title suggests, don't touch me when I'm sleeping.  This has been a sore subject between me and the Hubby since we started sharing a bed.  I don't like to be touched...period.  I sleep on my stomach, arms folded underneath me and facing out to the left, away from my hubby.  He HATES it.  He's a snuggler. 

   The kids like to climb in bed with us every once and a while, and I love it and hate it.  I love it while I'm awake and can hold them and snuggle, but when I want to go to sleep, they don't go away.  Take Girl A for example.  I move away from her and for a while she sleeps on her own, but before too long she rolls right up next to me, crowding me.  I scootch her back over, and a little while later her knees are in my side.  I scootch her back and on and on it goes, various parts of her kicking, hitting or snuggling me.  I can't sleep.

   Take Boy, this kid is a nightmare.  He is so darn snuggly, and I have a super soft spot for him because he's my boy, but dang it, he doesn't take no for an answer.  Once I roll over to go to sleep, even if he is already asleep, the little jerk is immediately on top of me. Not just trying to lay next to me, literally on top of me, laying on me trying to get me to hold him.  So I roll onto my side facing away from him, he lays perpendicular to me and throws his legs over my side.  So I roll onto my stomach, he moves so that he can lay between my arm and my body, like a true snuggler. He's definitly his father's child.  So I roll onto my side facing him.  Boy snuggles in as close as he can to you.  I need to metion that this kid is a furnace.  It's 62 degrees in our room at night and I am sweating.  I finally find a position I can sleep in, only to be woken up about every half hour to a knee or a foot in my back or face or my kidney.  Nightmare I tell you, nightmare!

   DON'T TOUCH ME WHEN I'M SLEEPING!!!  It wouldn't be so bad if they would give up and go snuggle their own kind, but no.  They never leave me the whole night to go snuggle their daddy.  Instead they torcher him with the same kicks and hits I get, only more frequently because they use him as leverage and push off of him to get closer to me.  I'm just not a sleeping snuggler I tell you.  Girl B is a mystery, she's too little to sleep in our bed unless she's sick and then there's not a whole lot of sleeping anyway and whole lot of snuggling.

Snow and Hungry Kids don't mix.

    Tuesdays and Thursday I have classes on Campus.  This also means that on those days Girl A is on campus with me, but at the childcare center.  

   Today started out well enough, it was 40+ degrees when we left at 9:15.  By 12:45 it was less than 30 degrees and by 2:30 it was snowing.  Not a big deal except I wasn't leaving campus unti 5:00pm and didn't want to be driving in the snow with the a-holes who seem to forget how to drive in the slippery, fluffy white stuff.  So by 5:15 when had collected and loaded Girl A into the van the roads were in a less than desirable condition.

  Girl A and I set out and skid to a stop at the first stop sign.  Whew, stopped before the intersection!  At the stop sign I hear "Mom, I'm hungry" coming from the back seat.  I say "Ok when we get home we'll have a quick snack."   Turn left onto the main street and drive .4 miles and I hear "Mom, what kid of snack will we have?"  I say, "We'll figure it out when we get there hunnie."  Drive another .4 miles and skid around a curve while listening to "I want pop tarts when we get home" coming from the back.  I say "Ok, how about we have a little quiet while mommy tries to drive in the snow." "Ok". Whew.

   Girl A and I make about 2 seconds in the silence before I hear "What's for dinner?  I want Mac and Cheese"  Slitely annoyed,I say "That's fine, can you be quiet so I can concentrate please?" "Ok".  Another fabulously quiet seconds later..."I really want a pop tart for a snack but Daddy said we don't have any pop tarts left."  "Ok, well, if the roads aren't bad around home, we'll go to the Dollar store and get some, now please be quiet"  As you can imagine the normal 30 min drive, now turned 50 min drive home followed a similar pattern with similar questions the whole ride. Until, (please read my response in that high squeaky voice I poted about earlier) "Mooooom, I want pop taaaaarts!" "FINE, NOW PLEASE JUST SHUT UP SO I CAN DRIVE WITHOUT KILLING US BOTH!!!!!!"  Probably not the best thing to scream at your 4 yr old, but it did the job.  We road the next 5 min in silence.

   The moral of the story is that Hungry Kids and Snow don't mix.  Next time I will be like my mom and save something from my lunch to feed the hungry little moster in the back seat.

Proper Attire.

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT!

   When going out in public there are things one should NEVER wear.  Here is my list of things people should avoid.  Most of them compiled through years of working clothing retail.

1) A shelf Bra Cami DOES NOT mean you can go bra-less.  Here are some simple rules to remember with that:
    Absentee A-Cup -- You may not have much, but control what you've got!
    Barely there B-Cup  --  You have enough to need support no matter what.
    Contain those C-Cups  --  You should NEVER be seen without a bra.
    Detain those D-Cups  --  Seriously, if you think of leaving the house without a bra on, I hope you hit a pot hole and your boobs fly up and smack you in the face for leaving them so unprotected!!

2) Pajama pants are not aproprate public attire, end of story.  Yes, the flannel cloud pants are so comfortable, but really? You are so lazy you couldn't find some equally as comfortable sweatpants or yoga pants so you at least look somewhat like an adult?!?!?!  Maybe you should invest on some of those "Pajama Jeans" that I keep seeing advertised in the coupon section of the Sunday paper.  You look like the type of person they are advertising to anyway.

3) Slippers are not shoes!  I once saw a girl on campus who had done her hair and make up, put on a nice button down shirt with all the layered accoutrements and skinny jeans.  She looked fabulous until I saw her choice of foot wear...Ducky slippers.  What happened here?  Did you run out of time to zip up those riding boots that would have completed the ensemble?!?  Could you not find the strappy sandles that would have made you look slightly slutty, be still stunning??  Such potential ruined by slacker-itis.  Slippers are NOT shoes people!!!

4) Leggins are NOT for everyone.  Morbidly Obese people...these are not ment for you.  They do nothing for your figure, they definitely do NOT make you look thinner, and Honey, who are you kidding, they do NOT make you look sexy. 

5) If you are fat, or have any sort of Muffin Top..WEAR A SHIRT THAT COVERS IT ALL!  Please for the love of GxD, I cannot handle looking at my own flab, let alone your stretch marked, inches think, roll of a spare tire you have hanging over your jeans (or leggins, depending on the deranged individual who thinks this is hot/sexy/cool).  Please, they make long shirts for a reason, true Walmart does not feel the need to make longer shirts, it would cost too much for its loyal shoppers, but Target or even K-mart are similar in price ranges as well as have amazing clearance sales, making shopping more fun, and they have shirts in longer lengths to cover you gut.  No excuse for bare flab.

There are several more of these to come, but these I feel are the most pressing at this time as I am doing laundry so that I have a nice, stain free shirt to wear tomorrow along with a pair of stain free jeans that are absent of wholes (these subject will be covered next time)