Monday...

Can you believe that it is June already? June is a busy time of year around here- school letting out (and all the extra parties, field trips, and special days it involves) soccer starts, dance recitals, weddings, birthdays (mine & Ethan's), etc. etc AND this year I am starting to baby sit my girlfriend's baby Cate at the end of the month. Wow! I guess I should replace the deathtrap Ethan calls his highchair- or least get one that Cate can sit in with less risk of injury.

Today the power went off for a little while. At first I thought it was my fault- like I blew a fuse or something- but realized that I wasn't using THAT much electricity, just the TV, lights in the kitchen and hand mixer (making cupcakes for Ethan's treat at school tomorrow). So anyway, my great Aunt/neighbor (she's both) came to my door all frazzled and said, in an accusatory tone,
"Is your power out too?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Well...." she grunted, "WHY???"
Like I did it! Like I used up all the "juice" in the power grid with my little hand mixer- UGH! You would have thought it was Armageddon or something the with her crazy tone and attitude. Pease. But peace - and our electricity- were restored shortly.....Thank God!

Sense of Self and Pie & Chips

The other day something happened that as a parent, I was at a loss- not only as to what to do, but how to feel about it.... If you've read some of my earlier posts you will know that my youngest, Ethan, can be quite a handful at times. He's a "spirited child" we'll say. He spends lots of time in "time out". SO, the other morning I took him to have coffee with my Mom at the local diner, which we do most days after I get the two older kids off on the school bus. Since he goes there often he knows quite a few of the regulars. Sometimes he's chatty and kind, other times he's withdrawn and moody and wants to be left alone. This day he was the latter. My Mom gave him the bill and some cash and he marched off to pay (he likes doing this). As he neared the cash register a customer came in, someone he knows. She went up to him and started tickling and poking him. He made a load whine, ran away and jumped up on my Mom's lap. The lady came over and continued to poke, tickle and annoy him. He said "No" twice and she wouldn't stop, so he hit her. She then said, "ETHAN! That's not nice!" and walked away. Of course I felt obligated to chime in, "That was naughty...we don't hit." But as I thought more about it- why couldn't he hit her? She was violating his space. He asked her twice to stop and she ignored his request. He may only be 3 but he has a sense of "self" and tried in a constructive way to relay his wants/needs and maybe because he's a child she ignored him? Now, it may sound like I sat idly by as my child was being molested by this lady. That's not true. There are many days when he seeks this goofy attention from "the regulars" at the diner, and this incident really happened so fast it was over before I knew what was going on. But it really made me think- I'm trying to teach my children to run, kick, fight, scream if they are ever abducted. But what if they are simply put in a situation that makes them feel uncomfortable? I was watching 20/20 last night and the story about the rapist, child molested terrified me. This man would rub up against children in Wal*mart while their parent's were in the next aisle and video tape it. Authorities only even found out about it after discovering the tapes he made, because NO CHILD, not one, ever screamed for help... there were never any reports filed concerning this. This makes me nervous. Are we so concerned about teaching our children to be polite and respectful to adults that they lose their sense of self preservation? Either that or I just can't accept that my child is a brat......

Ok- on a completely separate and silly note..... look at this t-shirt I made for Ethan. (I made one for Hudson too.)


It's the gecko from those insurance commercials. My kids LOVE him. They are always running around saying, in their best Brittish accent, "It's like getting pie and chips for FREE."

Weirdness...

You Are 50% Weird

Normal enough to know that you're weird... But too damn weird to do anything about it!

How Weird Are You?

The Bell Curve

Remember the bell curve? Named for the bell-shaped normal distribution of IQ scores... Well, it's a running joke with my dad. Whenever someone says something particularly dim (and there is usually a large amount of wine involved- although not always!) he'll say "AH...The bell curve." Well, today I had a bell curve experience....OH. MY. GOD. I was painting scenery for my kids' ballet recital, which is fast approaching, at the dance studio today. There is an interesting mix of moms there. Stay-at-home moms, corporate moms, older moms, younger moms, rich moms, not so rich moms, smart (really intelligent) moms and then this lady.... I swear this is the conversation we had, "My kids have my husband's brains, thank god....He's like SO smart. He like took 2 majors in college and is really, really smart, but decided to work at (nameless manual labor/ factory job) because he could make more money. He's like so smart- they have this genius test, I think, and he took it and got, like, the highest score EVER. And his parents, I don't know what they did, because all his siblings are smart too, and I don't know how they did it, but I'm trying to raise my kids the same way. My daughter gets 100's on everything. She's really smart too." All I could do was say "Uhhhh-huhhhhh."

Dance Pants...

I'm searching online for relatively cheap basic black dance pants for Hudson for his upcoming recital. Do you know how hard it is to find a pair of PLAIN black pants that are suitable for dancing for a boy (that don't cost a small fortune)? Wal*mart is getting a better selection of dance clothes for kids, but the pants all have some stupid HUGE sparkly pink design that would be impossible to hide... not to mention what it would do to poor Hudson's ego- he already feels funny at dance, but to have to wear pants with a sparkly pink design on them?! It's a good thing he doesn't realize that the pants he currently wears to class are girls pants. They are plain basic legging type pants that he has worn to every class.

They fit him really well, except for the fact that they are about 3 inches too short now (they are a size 4/5!! Skinny little thing. He's 6 and ½ years old!) and starting to look faded...and of course I can't find them anymore to even look for the proper size. They are ok for class I guess, but I wouldn't put Alex up on stage in an ill-fitting outfit. Unfortunately for him, it looks like I may have to get these. It looks like there is a small amount of writing or something put I think we can hide that.

I got to watch him in action at class tonight through the waiting room window. The instructor usually keeps the shade down, so this was a treat. I only got to see the tap portion and he actually did pretty good! He's one of the better ones in the class. I am really proud of him. The tap-dance is adorable. It's to the music "Talk to thee Animals". All the kids are different animals... he is a frog. The ballet is to Appalachiann Spring by Aaron Copeland and the kids are bultterflies. He asked his teacher if he could paint a black spot on his wings because he remembered from when we hatched monarchs last summer, that male monarchs have a black spot on their wings...

but we decided that everyone will be able to tell he's a boy while on stage. He's too cute!

Easter

We had a very quiet, relaxed Easter....which was nice. The kids were up at about 7am and Alex found all the Easter baskets (Hudson searched and searched, but he's a man, what can I say?) I was sleepy still from my very late night on Friday (I haven't seen 3am in like- forever!) so I went back to bed. When I woke up it was nearly 10am, so we missed church. Alex, surprisingly was quite upset about missing church on Easter. She is normally the one I have to bribe and cajole to get to go on an ordinary Sunday with me. Justin had the day off so we played around outside, clearing out an area behind the house that is completely overgrown with wild grape vines. I put up a tree fort the other day back there and we are trying to create a nice spot for bon-fires. So Justin was burning some of his piles, and tossed on last years Christmas tree, which was prophetic in a way- burning (on Easter) the tree that symbolizes Jesus's birth... anyway. I cooked Easter dinner, with ham, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, crescent rolls, applesauce and apple pie (ok- I didn't actually bake the pie) which the kids sort of ate. They really just like the crescent rolls- that's all I really needed to make. I've never cooked a ham before (I know- you are totally rolling your eyes saying how incredibly LAME I am) so although it was quite easy, I was still proud of it.

The kids have this week off from school, which surprisingly means I have more free time- no dance class, no enrichment program, no volunteering.... so today we are taking a friend and her baby to a park, where the moms can walk and the kids can play on the playground. See you soon!

What Bird?

Yesterday morning, Alexandra woke me up saying that she heard Ethan making funny noises in his bed. She went to check on him and there was "stuff" all over. So I go upstairs to investigate and indeed there is "stuff" all over Ethan's bed- he had thrown up and was lying in the middle of the mess, happily sucking his thumb without a care in the world. "What happened?" I asked him. He replied, "A bird pooped in my bed."

A Mouse of a Different Color?

I'm working on my bathroom upstairs and had to get some paint... we have a bout 15 cans of different color paints left over from various projects in the doorway to the basement. I reached for a can and inadvertently knocked over another can, which of course spilled all over the basement stairs. I'm not too upset about the stairs- it is a huge mess, but it's a nasty basement (our house was built in 1865 so the basement is dark, damp and basically unusable) -so who cares? BUT as I was standing on the stairs, trying to get some of the paint back into the can, I looked through the steps to the basement floor and noticed that we had caught a mouse in a trap down there...and of course it is now covered in blue paint. UGHHH!!