WTF?

As Phil on Modern Family says, "why the face?" Well, at 5am today it was slightly different, what the frog? It was Patrick who woke me up then and when I went in the bathroom I was greeted by a frog. Okay, technically it is a toad, but much like how tortoises are always turtles, toads are always frogs around here. It's too hard to explain to a 2 year old. Anyway, no idea how the frog made it in the house, other than the most often shouted phrase around here is "shut the door". How Anna didn't notice the frog after it made it in the house is beyond me. She is obsessed with them and was pretty ticked this morning that we didn't keep it until she woke up at least. She now thinks we should keep one on staff around here to get the flies that mysteriously also reside in the house.

Let the record show that I did not shriek when I saw this (instead, I got the camera and it jumped into the shower), but a toad is the only thing that is acceptable in that situation. Much like how I felt a bug crawling on me in bed one night but it turned out to be a lady bug, no big deal. Now if it had been a cockroach, well, we would have had to move. And thus if I had found a snake in the bathroom I would have had a busy day getting the house ready to sell. And no, I do not think those tropical homes with the walls that slide open are lovely. I look at those and wonder what all is sneaking into the house... lizards, huge bugs, snakes, the list goes on. Hopefully the toad is our critter for this year. A salamander a couple years ago did make me shriek.

Boys in Green

All ready for Notre Dame 2010, thanks to Grandma Marjie! Too bad we gave up those ND season tickets and didn't even bother to buy any single game tickets.... counting down the days until we get direct flights from Manhattan to Chicago, the 2011 season is looking promising. In the meantime, we will enjoy the K-State season tickets we split with some friends. So much closer and cheaper, but I don't think these shirts will work.

Doctors Stick Together

I just referred someone new to town (Bridget, this is your friend) to my doc since she is due in August and she asked me what I thought about him advising her not to fly as she's 33 weeks. Did I have any issues like this, she wondered. Let's all laugh together.... did I even get to leave city limits when I was pregnant?? Of course that is related to the other 3 children and Sean's 2 jobs. Now, I did tell her that my doctor had no problems letting Sean fly at the end of my pregnancy. Every time Sean had another trip come up I would get checked to see if the baby was making progress and then I would tell him he could go. Seriously though, I don't think there is a doctor out there who would make a ruling that would interfere with Pebble Beach. "Oh, well, you're only 7cm dilated and those contractions are a good 4 minutes apart, I'm sure that baby will hang in there 3 days, tell your husband to have fun!"

For those keeping score at home, Sean is planning another Vegas trip this summer. I did insist on the whole family crashing the golf trip this year though. Watch out Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, the chaos is coming...

Return of the Drama

The big girls arrived home Tuesday afternoon and it has been a blur since then. At least Nana was here to help with the adjustment. Anna quickly and frequently announced her state of boredom now that she was home and was so disappointed that I didn't just let her watch all the shows she missed while she was gone. I am certain that she's seen every single episode of Arthur so the "new" ones are just repeats of course but that won't stop her. They were so busy in Virginia that I had hoped they would be catching up on sleep for a while.

So we are right back to our summer schedule with a few random activities here and there that really add up to a lot of frequent fights to get Patrick buckled in his seat. He is finishing up "swim lessons" this morning and then we will stay to swim with friends before heading off to art classes. Somewhere in there Emily will skip a nap or two and get crabbier as the day goes on. I am wondering if caffeine would help us both. I make my own iced tea and have been doing decaf varieties (Republic of Tea is my favorite, not that they will give me a kick back if you go order any), but it is so tempting to grab the regular kind each time I make a pitcher. Must be how a former crack addict feels when they run across the old crack pipe in the junk drawer. Anyway, Emily has been so sensitive to even the "light caffeine" of green tea that I just don't risk it anymore. No point in having lots of energy to get stuff done if it results in having to carry Emily around the entire day and late into the night. I can do a lot with my one free arm but it's still a pain. But today might be a good day for both of us to be fired up as Nana left this morning and it is game on with all 4 in the rotation!

Like Puck on the Real World

You know how there are scenes from TV or movies that stick with you over the years, long after you have forgotten what the show as a whole was about? Well, there was one season of the Real World on MTV that had a guy named Puck on it and Puck thought that it was perfectly acceptable to eat peanut butter from the jar with his fingers. The communal jar of peanut butter. Various housemates did not approve. Yes, that used to pass for scandal in reality TV. Last time I saw an episode of what passes for Real World I believe there was a group shower going on and it was no big deal. The demographic has changed.

Anyway, I was having Puck flashbacks this morning when Patrick got out the brand new jar of peanut butter. I figured it was fine since it was sealed, surely he couldn't unseal that. Ha. Ha. Ha. Next thing I know he is bent over the jar on the floor, licking it like a dog. I gasp and he looks up casually, notices the alarm on my face and realizes I am coming to put a stop to this, so then quickly puts his head back down and licks in double time. Huge protests when I take it away so I had to offer up a peanut butter spoon and peanut butter toast. Here he is after that, using his militant pointing finger to instruct me to get him some more. Not a good day for swim lessons to be cancelled.

Swim Lessons for the Prince

I figured we would skip this round of swim lessons at the club since the girls were going to miss most of them but then a friend asked if I was putting Patrick in them. Oh yeah, the 3rd child, hmm. It is at a convenient time and it's pretty darn cheap babysitting, so I signed him up. So nice to have 30 minutes to sit at the pool without having to be within arm's reach every minute. On Friday he also tried out his friend's little yellow swimming inner tube device thing and he did pretty well with it so I decided to come home and order one, such a great idea. So as we are walking through the garage when we get home Patrick spies something in the big pile of garage chaos and he says, "that mine?". Umm, yeah, there is HIS little yellow swimming inner tube device. It was such a great idea that future me went back in time and ordered one last year. That is the only explanation for how this happened. I am not that absentminded... oh no.

But now the garage chaos is prepping itself to rise up as my new nemesis if I ever tame the storage room. Don't get too cocky, garage chaos, you are too close to the garbage can and even a tired, lazy person like myself can manage that task. Just need to get the swim gear out of there first.

ps the caption for this photo is, "can I float without getting my hair wet?"

No Time 2 Blog

I think Emily was afraid I was going to send her off like the girls so she has been clinging to me all week like a monkey with really big thighs. She does at least nap on occasion, unlike Patrick who now only naps if I drive him around after he hits the irrational stage. So, I pretty much got nothing done like I planned to do with the girls gone. I did however do a very in depth tour of Manhattan one day and then today I went to Council Grove for the first time as I heard rumors of a lake there and thought I would check it out. Thankfully Patrick did not wake up once we got there as there was a county fair or something going on, all those carnival rides right next to the road. Keep sleeping, keep sleeping! Then came the street lined with funnel cake trailers, some next to very convenient parking even, but I resisted for fear that the smell of delicious fried dough would wake the precious children.

Oh so precious when they are sleeping quietly. So unlike the child who screamed for 20 minutes after leaving the pool because I didn't let him go all the way back to the toy basket to put the water gun in after I put it in there during his fit about leaving the pool in general. Patrick has to redo many things these days, like if anyone comes over and gets in the door before he has a chance to open the door... most guests are quite understanding and will go back out and let Patrick open the door again. They understand that if they don't then they will have to listen to the screaming and crying for a long, long time. Really, I am surprised that they don't just take that opportunity to flee the property in general, never to return.

Sean has realized that he will never get a full day of peace and quiet on the couch like I promised him as his Valentine's gift many months ago, but he keeps trying to cash it in. Today better have at least counted for a half day because I am not going to keep granting these until he succeeds in the full day. Next time I am giving him a punch card based on hours. He continues to relive his Pebble Beach trip by watching the US Open and frankly, I have heard about and seen this course in so many different media forms that in twenty years I will swear that I also went on that trip. I even got to watch him "play" the course on his xbox or wii, one of those things. The children were cheering for him but I drew the line at that.

There are many things that should be cleaned before Nana brings the girls home on Tuesday and the LeBoeufs come to welcome Jay home from Iraq (I saw in the paper that it should be soon!). At the very least I should remove the dead "cricket" that I found in the guest room. Hey, I at least picked up the 1700 legos and playmobil pieces. I am too sore and tired from yoga to haul the vacuum down there but maybe tomorrow. And Sean can rest easy knowing that I will never find the energy to investigate the ever growing pile of boxes that various electronic things have come in. The storage room is my nemesis. I was also going to finally send some gifts to the many people who deserved them in the past 4 months and the first website I went to ended up having technical problems. So now I will forget all about this for another month. Sorry Dunn family, maybe we will hit those birthdays next year...

Sounds like a tornado is brewing outside, time to go open the window to the storage room in hopes that the boxes will get sucked out, oh and all the kid art junk too!!

Practically like a vacation...

Never dreamed the day would come when having a 2 year old and infant at home would seem like a vacation! I really wondered if having the big girls gone would be harder than having them here because they are helpful at times. Mostly they are helpful at tattling when Patrick is doing something naughty. Well, when Patrick is doing anything at all, oh the constant updates (worse than some people on facebook even!).

I had forgotten how much you just stay home when you have little ones because they are happy just playing around the house, no point in going through the effort to spend all day at the pool, like the big ones insist on doing. Patrick has taken a new interest in movies, Woody and Buzz Lightyear to be specific, and he loves having full reign of the big TV. Sean asked him tonight if he misses the girls and he said, "not so much yet". Not sure if he knows what that means or if he was just repeating it but it was entertaining nevertheless.

I am doing way less laundry, also helped to have Major Three-Outfits-a-Day gone for the weekend. P90X man, I hate the laundry that results from your workouts. That is laundry that can't sit around either. The house is staying clean, in fact I cleaned the girls' rooms and the bathrooms and then locked them so Patrick couldn't mess them up (and drink from the faucet). No worries, I did tell the sitter where to find the key so she wouldn't have to go the bathroom outside like the construction workers next door.

Oh, but the most amazing thing with having the girls gone this week is that Patrick slept until 9am and Emily slept until 9:30am today. Now, she was up at 1, 4, and 7, but going back down until 9:30 made up for that. She gets shots tomorrow so at least I don't have to worry about those messing up her sleeping through the night... ha ha. She has a new cheesy grin that is hilarious, squinty eyes and showing off her two teeth. Haven't caught it on camera yet but will post it when I do.

Sean is working a ton this week and I am hoping to finish Domers which was written about our freshman year at ND. I couldn't bring myself to read it until now, but having gone to the ND Club meeting last night got me in the mood finally. It's reminding me that I used to have goals, so now I am working on a list of places to go, things to do, in case we get time and energy someday for a real vacation (not just one with half the kids gone). Feel free to send suggestions!

Typical Firstborn

Megan, brushing up on the safety procedures, on her way to Camp Keenan in VA. I assume that the 2nd born was snacking or playing Leapster.

Mom Dementia

I'm not talking about the kind of Mom Dementia where you start a task and then get interrupted and never finish it. That's well known, no point in rehashing that. No, I am talking about when you forget about events and activities that you have planned and even have on your calendar. Take for instance yesterday when we got home from tennis and I finally pinpointed the smell in the van (reactivated by the heat). Duh, it is of course Patrick's car seat. I figured it was a good time to finally clean it since we had no place else to go that day. So I used everything I remembered from engineering calculus (which is exactly nothing, just like when I was taking exams in there) and took it apart and put the cover in the washer. Hand washing, whatever, like that would work?!

Anyway, when there were 57 minutes to go on the cycle I realized that we did indeed have someplace to go later, the art classes that the girls go to every afternoon... starting in 97 minutes. So much for "line drying" the cover, that baby got partially dry in the dryer and then I had to reassemble that contraption and install it again. Mission accomplished at the exact time the class was starting and once again, love living in Kansas because most things are less than 7 minutes away so we were barely late. Megan claims that the smell is still there but she is probably smelling her own seat. Now that I think about it, they do sit in them with their wet swim suits a lot, that can't be good.

I have other examples of Mom Dementia but of course I can't remember them now. I need to get packing for the girls' trip to VA and then plan for the massive purge that I will do of their junk while they are gone. I am a little too excited for this and I haven't even watched Clean Sweep in years. I will miss the girls being here to tattle on Patrick though. He is at the smiling defiant stage. This morning he moved the chair over so he could reach the upper cabinets and when I walked in, he turned to me with a big smile and said innocently, "oh hi!", with my allergy medicine bottle in his hand. Oh hi, indeed. He hasn't mastered childproof bottles yet but it is only a matter of time. He also enjoys spraying the bathroom with the faucet, spreading cereal around the house, and carrying a golf club everywhere, with the occasional long drive. He has an obsession with the scissors and pays close attention to them when the girls have them out-- and watches me put them away, no doubt plotting how to retrieve them when I am feeding Emily later.

He did actually take a nap today, hence the computer time. Shocking as I left him sitting on the chair in his room (which he can now unlock) with his baby (which he does now pretend to nurse). I just checked on him and he somehow tucked himself into his bed and passed out. Yesterday I found him with the room trashed and underwear on over his diaper. Oh hi!

Can't Let Megan See This

There are many reasons I don't let the kids watch the news or read it online... so many nightmare causing stories, things they don't even know to be afraid of yet. So, when one of their nightmares does come true after I assured them it never would (much like the tornado, whoops), I have to take extra care to hide it from them. I don't know how to get links to work on here so you are going to have to google it yourself if you don't believe me, but on cnn.com the other day they had a story about a fox in London who snuck into a house and attacked 9 month old twin girls in their cribs. They were in serious condition in the hospital, luckily the mother heard the cries and chased the fox away. I am not kidding you. If Megan found this out she would insist on sleeping in Emily's room from now on as we have seen foxes in our yard. She might even start carrying a fox gun. CNN's motto should be: All the things you don't want to know (and celebrity news to make you feel good about yourself).

Toddler Version Mailbox Baseball

Patrick insisted on taking his golf club with him when I put him in the stroller this morning for our walk. I wasn't sure what he had in mind, other than insuring that a neighbor child wouldn't sneak over and use it while he was gone. At times I thought he was making gun noises (along with the rat-tat-tat from the army range) as he pointed it at various things (but thankfully not at people as we passed them). I think the real reason he brought it though was to hit weeds as we walked through overgrown areas, which made me think of mailbox baseball. I never did that (no arm strength back then) but I can figure out how it works and no doubt, so will Patrick. Just hoping that by the time he can drive gas will be so expensive that kids won't be driving around for kicks. Really hoping he is the type of kid who goes out to the driving range instead, making his grandfathers and great-grandfathers proud!!

How we roll

This is why even people with just one child should consider getting a double stroller. So handy in the summer when neighbors emerge from their bunkers and want to relax.

Put the gun down

Patrick is obsessed with his squirt gun and I now manage to "forget" it each time we go to the pool, otherwise he ends up drinking pool water from it the whole time.

Quality Time

Just a little quality time with Woody in the exersaucer.

Summer Schedule Starts

Now that Sean has gone back to work it seems like the kids are really on summer break. How to explain to Emily that it's going to be full time chaos from here on out? Yesterday she had reached her limit and I could tell she wanted her usual Monday routine, which includes napping from 9am until noon. It's the only time all week that I can count on her to nap well, as she needs to recover from the weekend. Gives me time to make a dent in the mounds of junk littering the house, so I look forward to this. A small dent. Like shoes and mail.

Speaking of trashed houses, I have some bad news for a new mom who has been lamenting the state of her house since the baby was born. Someday soon, that baby is not only going to use up the time needed for cleaning, but that baby is going to make a huge non-stop mess too. All I do with my "free time" is walk, no, make that jog, around the house putting things where they go. Some of it is OCD related, like pillows on the right chairs, but for the most part it is things like putting the grilling tongs back in the kitchen (not the bathtub) and shoes in the freaking shoe drawer under the washer. You know, it's not like I'm asking the kids to put their shoes in some organizer thing, no, just throw them in this huge drawer and shut it. And yet I constantly find shoes in every single room of the house, which is some sort of magic since they are supposed to take them off at the door. Kind of like how in college you could have alcohol in your dorm room, but you weren't allowed to transport it on campus. It was okay as long as it magically appeared in your room.

Anyway, we are trying a few new activities this summer in small doses, rather than committing to an entire season of a sport they may hate. The girls are doing 3 days of tennis this week and if I can keep Emily from getting smacked with a racquet then I will consider it a success. Patrick spent most of his day yelling that he wanted to hold one and Anna spent an hour trying to play with a plastic ball in the garage, like some sort of ghetto racquetball court. Megan is mad that she couldn't immediately master serving the ball. I can't help her out there but maybe someday as the outfits are so cute that I may just have to get lessons myself. You know, when all the kids are in school and I have tons of free time. What's that? The laughter of all the moms who have their kids in school all day? I will never have free time again, will I? Don't snuff out that light at the end of the tunnel, just let me think it will happen someday....