So…..(and yes, this post needs to start with the word “So”)…..

So….I was getting the kids their breakfast the other morning before school…..I could barely peel my eyes open, and I’m certain I was still half-asleep. I was stumbling through our kitchen with a hope and a prayer that the boxes of cereal I had put on the table were indeed Cocoa Pebbles and not Minute Rice.

I have never been a morning person, but I really thought that would change as I got older and had children.  I mean, the days of staying up half the night and then getting to sleep in until noon have passed me by decades ago already, so I figured that eventually……eventually, I would have no problem hopping out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn each day.

I had an image of what mornings would feel like once I made the adjustment and joined the “early bird” club.  You know the image….birds chirping as they place my robe upon my shoulders and tiny little critters nudging my slippers towards my feet.  I would hop out of bed without so much as a hint of longing for my nice, warm bed….stretch my arms into the air and breathe in deeply with a smile on my face…..excited and eager to welcome the day before me.

Well, it’s been 13 years since I had my first child….since sleeping in was exchanged for children lobbing empty Sippy cups at my head yelling, “Mommy, Mommy, wake up…I want some milky” …..and I am STILL NOT A MORNING PERSON!  I am night owl through and through.  And no matter how exhausted I am in the morning when I drag my sorry butt out of bed….or how tired I get right around 2pm every day….I always seem to hit my stride right around 8pm and I’m raren’ to go until at least midnight each night.  My body screams at me to go to bed….especially when I’m this pregnant, but my mind is never on the same page at night.  I get my best ideas, my biggest inspirations, and my largest burst of energy right about the time everyone else is turning in for the night.

SO….when the alarm clock is SCREAMING at me to wake up when I’ve merely just fallen into a deep sleep, I struggle to keep a level head in the mornings.

Anyway, as I was saying….I was gathering the numerous boxes of cereal for the kid’s breakfast, and much to my chagrin, there were no clean bowls in the cupboard.  I glanced down at the dishwasher just praying to God that the “clean” light was on so I wasn’t going to have to try and wash dishes by hand with only one eye open as my other eye refused to cooperate quite yet.  You can picture my joy….sheer joy…..when I saw that bright, red “clean” light lit up like a Christmas tree.  I grabbed the kids their bowls and spoons, everyone scarfed down their breakfast, and we were out of the door on time for a change.

SO….you can imagine my surprise when my husband, Corey, came home that afternoon for a rare lunchtime visit…..opened up the dishwasher and said, “Wow, I guess using soap really does make a difference!”

Me:  ”What?”  ”Could you please repeat that?”

Corey:  ”Well, we were out of soap last night when I was doing the dishes so I just loaded the dishwasher and ran it without soap anyway.”

Me:  silent….mouth hanging open…..

Corey: “I guess I didn’t think the soap really did that much.  I figured it was more the hot water that cleaned the food off, but looking at these dishes, I can see that the soap really makes a difference because these are all still really dirty!”

Me:  still silent….jaw still dropped open…..and utterly speechless that the dishes I served my children’s breakfast with were dirty….speechless that I was so out of it that morning that I didn’t even notice that they didn’t look clean….and utterly dumbfounded that my husband was so unsure of the necessity of soap that he rolled the dice and decided to run his own little experiment with our dishes without notifying his sleep deprived wife of his latest science experiment!

What else could I do but LOL…..

This is one of those Laugh out Loud moments that only your child can give you…..

Avery, my youngest son, is not a big fan of cereal.  He has never eaten it…..prior to this week.  He has always been more of a “meat and potatoes” kid (even at 7am), so when he was downing bowls of Cookie Crisp all week, both my husband and I found it rather perplexing. As I was removing the box from the table this morning, I was shocked to see that he single handedly finished off the entire box in 4 days time.   And then the light bulb finally went on…..

There is a dinosaur mask on the back of the box that he asked me to cut out for him earlier in the week.  I told him that I would cut up the box as soon as the cereal was all gone, figuring that eventually his brothers and sisters would eat it.  But waiting on others to get a job done is not something that Avery is known for.  So Avery being Avery….instead of whining and begging me to do it right away….or waiting around for his siblings to eat the cereal…..he quietly realized that there was a job to be done, and if he wanted that mask he would need to step up to the plate and get it done.

I cannot believe that he worked religiously at eating that box of cereal every morning even though he hates cereal just to get to the reward at the end of the “grueling” task.   I laughed out loud when I realized what was going on……and to Avery’s tenacity, determination, and work ethic….I solute you my little 7 year old diplomat!!!  I am truly impressed  ;o)

We learned a hard lesson this evening:  NEVER CAR SHOP WITH A 14 MONTH OLD WHO NEEDS TO BE PHYSICALLY ACTIVE OR EATING EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY!  Yes, that is the difficult lesson Corey and I learned tonight as we took Natalie with us to test drive a few vehicles.

Now mind you…I’m not new at this whole parenting thing.  It is not my first time around the block.  I’ve been here…at this age and stage…a time or two (or perhaps 4 times) before Miss Natalie.  So I truly was prepared…or so I thought.  Sippy cup, snacks, diaper bag loaded with distractions…I had all the makings for a successful outing.  I changed her diaper before we left and fed her a hefty portion of Mac and Cheese and raspberry yogurt for dinner before heading out on our expedition.

I was leery, but I really did think all would be ok.  Boy, did I under estimate my little girl’s ability to scream so loud that the sale’s guy at the dealership was concerned about the windows of every vehicle on his lot spontaneously combusting from the sheer decibel of her wailing!  She apparently had decided that no amount of bribery…not even mommy’s cell phone (her favorite “toy” in the whole world) was going to rattle her conviction that she DID NOT want to be car shopping tonight!  We tried to test drive a couple of vehicles but by the second stop, she was out of her mind angry and screamed so loud through the rest of the test drive that whatever noises we were supposed to be listening for…the “bad” noises…would have been music to our ears over the shrill of Natalie’s wrath in the back seat.

We high-tailed it back to the dealership, I threw her car seat and her flailing little self back in our car, Corey ran…and I mean literally ran….to let the guy know we would “think about it”, and did what all good parents would do after the hour of hell we had just lived through….we drove straight to the nearest drive thru and bribed our stubborn, tantrum-throwing, angelic monster with FRIES!!!  It worked like a charm too!  The second we hit the drive thru window she instantly stopped screaming.  She looked at me with a huge smile on her face…but did not make a peep for fear if she made a sound, the woman taking the order from daddy might not hear him correctly and she would not get her “nummies”.

We drove away with fries in hand and our little Miss Natalie was as pleasant as could be the rest of the ride home…..fry in one hand and a smirk on her face a mile long that spoke volumes!!

So I guess the bigger lesson learned here tonight:  get the damn fries BEFORE the test drive!  ;o)

I have been hearing about how we are all out of salt in this house for over a week now.   The kids were whining at me…”There’s no sea salt…there’s no ‘regular’ salt”.  And God forbid we eat anything without pasting it full of salt first…after all, my children are in a steep competition with one another to see who can completely clog their arteries that fastest…. so I understood the agony they were in.  I was sure we had some of each type in the cabinet, but when my husband, Corey, chimed in and announced that indeed the kids were right, we were out of salt, I did not bother looking and just added it to the grocery list.

I have also heard about how we are out of butter for the last week as well.  The kids kept whining that they couldn’t make toast or pancakes without butter. And they certainly couldn’t make one of their favorite snacks…popcorn…that was a double whammy…no butter OR salt for the popcorn.  I asked Corey at one point while he was digging in the fridge if we had any sticks of butter towards the back, and he insisted…”There are no tubs of butter…there are no sticks 0f butter…we have nothing in here”.

Ok..ok…clearly I need to go grocery shopping and pick up some of the staples.  I was getting even more concerned about my memory though because I was certain we had both salt and butter…but I chalked it up to the B12 not working and moved on.

Well, low and behold…I dug in the cabinet today to grab some pasta that was shoved in the back and guess what I found…An entire container of sea salt…AND...an entire container of “regular” salt!

I then moved to the fridge to grab the parmesan cheese from the back and sure enough…I found 4 sticks of butter right next to it!

So….the next time you people living under this roof want to chastise me for being senile…just remember this! ;o)

I read somewhere that Vitamin B12 is supposed to help with memory issues.  Since the birth of child number 5, I cannot remember my name most days, much less anything important…so I decided to stock up on B12 and see if it helps.  I had a bottle of chewable tablets that my husband discovered….and subsequently helped himself to nearly 3/4 of the bottle.  Not sure why he felt the need to down the bottle within the last week as he never has issues remembering anything…I mean, I can ask this man on what day I got my last tetanus shot 5 years ago and he will pause ever so briefly and whip out the day…time…and what color shirt I was wearing!

Anyway, because the bottle was gone, I went to Walgreen’s and they did not have any chewable tablets so I just grabbed a bottle of the old-fashioned pill form that must be swallowed whole.  My husband found the bottle on the counter last night and decided to help himself AGAIN to my B12….

The catch….

He thought they were the chewable type, so I came into the kitchen only to find him gagging and spitting feverously into the sink.  At first I thought he was throwing up, until he finally stopped spitting frantically to explain what happened.

I couldn’t stop laughing!  That’s what he gets for stealing my memory tablets ;o)

P.S.  I’ll keep you posted if they actually start helping with my memory issues…if I remember!

May 12, 2009

I received a text message today from some kid stating, “Hey, how are you?  This is Tyler.”  

I sent back, “You have the wrong number.”

He came back with, “Oh, sorry about that.”

Now I know I’m no psychic, but I had a pretty good hunch this kid was some High School boy messing around during class.  So I came back with…

“No problem.  But you really should get back to paying attention to class rather than texting.”  

His response was classic…

“Ok, I will!”  

….LOL….I could almost see the shade of white he turned, and I really wish I could find his mom and tell her what an obedient son she has!