These Crazy Things!

No school today! Yeah!

It's icy and cold cold cold outside. Like 29 degrees...at NOON! This does not happen often to those of us who live south of the Red River.

And my lovely children, in an afternoon fit of creativity and imagination, decided to "go swimming."

The Wallpaper Thing

I've spent the last 3 hours of my sacred three-day weekend scraping this off of our bathroom walls:

It's glue from the wallpaper border that used to hang on the bathroom wall, and it has hampered my plans to have the bathroom walls re-painted by the end of the day. This day.

Let me urge any of you homeowners out there who are tempted to glue pieces of paper to your wall to let it pass. There are so many other viable options out there: paint, plaster, wood paneling...

Wallpaper just plain stinks when it comes time to redecorate. This wicked covering was on our master bedroom walls and our kitchen walls, both of which I stripped (with quadruple the pain and anguish) the first year we lived in this house...four years ago. The memory of the scrubbing and scraping must have temporarily fled my memory when I decided to tackle the border in the "other" bathroom.

So my plan was to take down the border and tape off the baseboards yesterday and apply two coats of paint today. Oh, Wallpaper, how you had other ideas! I'm now 24 hours behind schedule because your sticky and nasty layers of paper and glue we're oh so attached to our bathroom walls.

Seriously people, wallpaper must be the WORST excuse for wall decor. It's too permanant. Have a new color scheme hit you in the middle of the night? With a nice, clean painted wall, you just get yourself a gallon of Behr semi-gloss, a little blue tape, and your set. Viola! A new look in less than twenty-four hours. But with wallpaper, it's a wet and sloppy mess before you even get to crack open the lid of the paint.

Honestly, I just don't have the time for that.

So I'm warning you right now, homeowners, you put that mess up on your walls, I'm not buying your house.

On a more positive note, I did repaint the kitchen island that looked like someone had painted it with "Lost your Lunch" color paint. I'm still not totally satisfied with the new color, so I'm not inviting guests until I get it right.

But y'all are always welcome to drop by unannounced and uninvited.

A Language Thing

Okay Friends, this post is brought to you courtesy of my dear sister, Kim. She lives in Iowa and has a darling family that drives her nuts, too. One of our favorite things to do is embarrass our kids (hopefully, someday) by telling each other the crazy things that our kids do. Kim has a 6th grade step-son, Evan, a five year old boy, Ty, and a three year old little girl, Bryn. They do and say some funny stuff.

Here's an email that I got from Kim last week. And I even asked her permission to post this, so no one even try to sue me for plagarism.

Ah, the joys of language acquisition...

I have a funny story about bedtime prayers….. Allen Mathes and his wife had their baby the day after Christmas. We went over to their house on Saturday to visit them and the little guy. His name is Beckett Wilkes Mathes and Ty kept wanting to call him ‘Bucket’ instead of ‘Beckett”. He was getting frustrated every time we would correct him that he finally said, “I’m just going to call him “Baby”. Okay, whatever.

Last night when I asked Ty and Bryn each who their special prayers were for, Bryn said, “My special prayers are for baby Beckett.” (Who she calls Bucket too). So after our prayers were over Ty asks, “Mom, is his name ‘Fucket’? To which I let a laugh escape and said, ‘No. It’s Beckett. B..B..Beckett.”

“Well, that’s just a stupid name.”

I said, “Ty, that’s not very nice to say. Would you like it if someone said you had a stupid name?”

“But I don’t have a stupid name. I have a nice name. It’s just Ty.”

Hard to argue when they make a valid point.

Thanks for the great material, Kimmy. Winks ;)

The Morning Thing

Let me tell you about Wednesday morning.

But first let me preface this whole post by saying that Monday and Wednesday mornings suck, and through dealing with them, I have come to totally appreciate the fact that Mom and Dad didn't lock me in a closet and leave me there. Or lock themselves in a closet...

I've never really been fond of mornings where you have to be at certain places by a certain time (which is about 95% of the mornings of my life). I call myself a morning person because I wake up and fuction in the mornings. But let me tell you, I have a very loose definition of the word "function." We get ourselve together and get out the door, but there's not a whole lot of organization to the whole routine. Because, I've discovered, my two preschoolers also have a very loose definition of the word "routine."

In high school, we had 6 women in our house--okay, one woman and five girls, and the youngest was not even in school yet, so does she really count? I think so. We all had to be at the same school at the same time--8:15 a.m. Our house was chaotic to say the least, with us either fighting over clothes, fighting over the last of the milk, fighting over toothpaste, fighting over the curling iron, or fighting just because we were grouchy. My favorite morning was the tantrum I threw because I couldn't find a clean sports bra in the dryer. For 20 minutes I ranted and raved over who stole my clean sports bra. Then I looked in my dresser. And found one.

Dad had to be at work at 7 a.m. He left the house at 6 a.m. for his 10 minute commute to work. Let me remind you that we lived in rural southeast Nebraska, and traffic helicopters never graced our airways. He was just a smart man to get the heck out of Dodge before the stampede came through town.

Mondays and Wednesdays now mean Pat has left the house before 6 a.m. to go to morning wrestling practice, and I'm left to get the kids together and out the door all by my lonesome. We'd been doing a decent job of it until this past Wednesday. Try to follow along as I tell you about the chaos that transpired...

I get Parker out of bed and on the couch so he can watch cartoons while I get breakfast for them. After many "I don't knows..." he says he wants dry cheerios. I get a bowl of cheerios and set them on the coffee table. They don't move. I get Peyton out of bed and her clothes on while she shoots down my every suggestion for breakfast (which is not uncommon now-a-days--rarely does she eat breakfast like a champion). I tell Parker to get busy with his breakfast, and he declared that he wanted PANCAKES! NOT CEREAL! for breakfast. Not a big deal--see how I'm taking all of this in stride?--I can grab a couple of pancakes from the freezer and get them ready in 5 minutes or less. Peyton sees me pull the two pancakes out of the microwave and says WHY ARE THERE TWO PANCAKES?!? PARKER CAN'T HAVE TWO PANCAKES!

Do you wnat one? I ask.

Yes, she replies.

Deal!! I say.

I'm feeling pretty good about myself, because it's not even 6:50 and I've got two kids who are dressed and happy about their breakfast. Obviously they aren't going to finish their pancakes by 7, so I figure we'll just eat breakfast in the car (again). So I get their shoes together, and just as I am finishing tying Parker's shoes, all heck breaks loose.

Parker: I DON'T WANT MY SHOES ON I DIDN'T GET TO EAT MY BREAKFAST WHILE I WATCHED CARTOONS I DON'T WANT TO GO YET I WANT TO FINISH WATCHING CARTOONS WHILE I EAT MY BREAKFAST! I DON'T WANT TO WEAR A JACKET TODAY MY LIFE REALLY REALLY SUCKS! (not that last part, but the rest is quite accurate)

Petyon: I DON'T WANT PANCAKE I DON'T WANT TO EAT BREAKFAST I DON'T BLAH BLAH BLAH WHINE WHINE WHINE.

So we're walking out the door, two out of three of us screaming, and I'm trying to juggle two plates of pancakes because by golly they're going to eat what I fixed for them and I am thinking to myself this is not a good way to start our morning.

As I'm shuffling our things and the kids into the car, I remind Parker that he's the one that changed his mind, and if he wants to eat breakfast while he watches TV then he needs to decide earlier what he wants to eat. And not change his mind. Because it's not my fault that he didn't eat when I told him to.

And I tell Peyton that she's the one that said that she wanted pancakes and if she doesn't eat her breakfast it's a long time until lunch and she's going to be pretty darn hungry.

Basically, I tell them to take responsibility for their own decisions and their unhappiness is their own darn fault, and there's not a thing I can do about it.

I'm sure you can imagine how well that went over. Yeah, the screaming only increased in volume and frequency.

So we're about a half a mile from home and at least we're on the road and they're in the back and I'm in the front and I'd turn on the radio but it would only add to the chaos. But, let's face it, we were all miserable.

I say, Parker, I'm sorry. I must have misunderstood you. I thought that you said "cheerios" when in fact you meant "pancakes." I'm sorry I made a mistake and you didn't get to eat your breakfast while you watched cartoons. But let's not let it ruin our day, okay?

He says, Sniff, sniff. Okay.

Then I say, Peyton, I have an apple in my bag that I was going to eat with my lunch. Would you rather have my apple?

Did you wash it? she asks.

Yes, I say.

Will you take off the stem? she asks.

Here, I say, and hand back an apple.

So Parker picks up his plate of pancakes and Peyton picks up her plate of pancakes and breakfast is finished by the time we pull into Brennans. Peyton doesn't even eat her apple because she decides she wants to save it for after school.

All because I took responsibility for their problems? And I've been thinking, am I doing them a huge disservice by fixing all of their problems? Am I raising a couple of kids who are egocentric and think that life doesn't serve real consequences?

She's the Sassiest Thing

Peyton is, in a word, SASSY.
She never refrains from conveying her disgust in her mother's stupid rules and regulations. She'll put her hands on her hips and huff, "But MOM, I said I wanted..."
Pat and I have noticed this attitude developing over the past six months or so. It started over the summer. Pat says that with her attitude, we won't have to worry about the boys she dates, or her even dating at all.

We imagine a boy coming to our front door, Pat and I sitting him down, and instead of threats of Pat's non-existant hunting skills, we'll say, "Are you sure you want to put yourself through this?"

The volleyball girls asked this fall what sports we think Peyton will play. I wonder sometimes if it will ever be an issue. I can't imagine any coach in their right mind will want to put up with her "screw you" attitude.

This attitude has gotten worse over the past month. I had some of my co-workers and their kids over for soup and snacks one night. Caleb, an innocent and unsuspecting almost 2-year-old, was playing with a doll stroller--one of the two that Peyton has in her toy collection. Peyton tried to take the stroller that Caleb was playing with, had already been reminded that we don't take other people's toys, when Caleb took his hands off of the covetted stroller to grab a handful of chips. Immediately Peyton was all over Caleb's stroller.
"Peyton," I say, "Caleb is playing with that stroller. You have your own."
She drops her hands and glares at me. (Isn't she the cutest thing?)
So we all go back to talking and Caleb continues eating, and as I'm watching Peyton out of the corner of my eye, I see her place her hands on Caleb's stroller's handles, look at Caleb, tap him on the shoulder, and smuggly grip those naughty little fingers around the purple foam covers on the handles of his stroller!

This behavior continued all through Christmas. She is queen of the castle at Grandma's house. Denise took her to Nebraska with her two days earlier than the rest of us went. On the way, she asked Denise, among many other things:
1. Is Grandpa in our hearts? because I can't feel him in there.
2. Is Grandma going to get a new Grandpa?
3. Is Jesus a boy or a girl? (she was not at all happy to find out that he was a boy...oh, feminism, here we come!)

When she got to Grandma's, she was the only grandkid there for two whole days. Denise said that she's never heard the word "Okay" come out of our mother's mouth so much. Grandma even let Peyton stay up until 1:30 in the morning! Her antics included asking Aunt Bobbi if she could have a drink, a snack, a kick in the rear, whatever, and when Bobbi would get up to get it for her dear little neice, Peyton would steal her seat! Bobbi darling, now you too are Peyton's sucker.
This behavior is precisely why Santa brought her a Barbie camera instead of the Barbie computer that she'd been asking for. That, and Santa maybe couldn't find requested Barbie computer.