Tornado warnings and children are always an exciting combo in our home!  This past week we had some seasonably normal weather….70 degrees one day and then a swift 20 degree drop in temperature to end the day with 50 degrees and sudden severe weather.

We were at the park enjoying my daughter’s last week of softball games when the dark clouds started rolling in.  Now, many people in my extended family are not fond of a good thunderstorm…tornado sirens or not, they head to the basement just in case.  I, on the other hand, LOVE a good thunderstorm as long as I am safe and sound, nestled at home with my family by my side; however, being at the ball diamond as the storm moved in rather abruptly was less than ideal.  As soon as Kylie’s game was over, I quickly gathered her and my other little ducklings who were playing on the playground nearby, and we scampered home like little mice.

All the way home the children were murmuring about the black clouds that appeared to be following us. They were giving me a hard time about how excited I must be for the ensuing weather and asking me how in the world I could love a storm. I was explaining to them that it’s because my mom always loved thunderstorms when I was growing up so instead of making them scary for me, she developed within me a sincere appreciation for all of God’s weather….even the thunderstorms.

(as a side note) I cannot thank my mom enough to this day for her love of storms and instilling that same love within me. She always taught us to take the weather seriously and not look into the eye of a storm with anything less than respect for the damage it can bring. But with that, she also taught us to appreciate its strength and even the beauty of the lighting, the sounds of the thunder, and the smell of the falling rain.

Since having children of my own, I have tried to instill that same kind of appreciation for the weather in them. So to witness them on this stormy night getting “excited” for it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Let’s just say that the warm and fuzzy feeling was short lived!

As we pulled into the garage and the rain started coming down, I went to close the door and my husband kindly reminded me he was just dropping us off and headed back out for his haircut appointment. To be honest, I was a little annoyed that he was leaving because it was 7pm already and the kids all needed to eat dinner yet, get homework and baths done, the baby needed to be fed, etc. etc. But I do understand that he needed to get his hair cut, so “be off with you” I said, and headed in the house to get things rolling.

So….Corey is gone

My cell phone is dead and my home phone is dead as well

The kids are in the midst of eating the first frozen pizza I made, and the second one was in the oven

Their homework was strewn across the table

I had whipped up batter for some homemade strawberry shortcake and was just waiting to toss that in the oven as soon as the next pizza was done when the baby started wailing because in that moment, he just couldn’t bare to wait another second before eating.

And….the tornado sirens went off! This is the part where my evening went from hectic to completely hysterical to any outsider looking in at the circus act I was running.

I start ushering everyone down to the basement with their plates of pizza in hand (hey, we were already behind schedule, and I couldn’t afford to waste any more time so eating downstairs was now the only option). I was a bit concerned that I didn’t have a working phone and that my husband was getting his hair cut in the midst of a tornado, but there really was nothing I could do about those tid-bits so we headed for “shelter” and hoped for the best.

As I sat downstairs trying to nurse the baby so he would settle down, I was a quiet observer to the rest of my children.

I’m watching my 8-year-old scurry around the house to gather every single candle we own just in case the power goes out (smart thinking on his part).

I see Natalie climb onto her brother’s bed (which is located downstairs) with pizza sauce all over her face and hands, and I realize that perhaps bringing the pizza downstairs to finish dinner was not the best idea I’ve ever had.

My oldest son is watching the news report and tracking the tornado’s path while my 10-year-old son is mumbling under his breath, worrying himself to death, because I won’t let him bring down every item in the pantry just in case we are marooned downstairs for any length of time.

And my 13 year old is frantically receiving and sending texts to all 200 hundred of her closest friends that reads, “If we don’t make it out of this tornado alive, please know that I love you. Forward this onto to the friends you love!”

(Yes, I know…..so much for me instilling a sense of reverence and tranquility regarding storms in my children)!

When all was said and done….

Corey strolls in the house after the tornado warning has been lifted for our area. The pizza that was in the oven is charred and the shortcake batter has been sitting on the counter way too long. No homework or baths have been completed and it’s now bedtime. My son’s sheets need to be changed as to avoid the pizza sauce wiped all over his bed. And my daughter is feeling rather “loved” by all the friends who cared enough to send her a message in their final minutes of life!

Some days you have to look around you and just laugh out loud! Nobody ever said life with 6 children was going to be dull :o)

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!