I just read this post on Anne Marie's blog and it totally reminded me of my everyday life.

It must be the temperament of the 3 year old boy that makes them all insane in the membrane. AMs Owen is just a few months older than Dylan, and yeah, they're like the same kid as far as I can tell.

What I didn't write about the field trip experience this week was that Dylan was sort of a pain in the butt the whole time. He wasn't really BAD or misbehaving really, he was just stubborn. He wanted his way, he wanted to do what HE wanted to do and all others be damned.

On the way over he DIDN'T want to hold my hand. Then he did. Then he didn't.
Whenever the long line of kids would stop -- to say, cross the street safely -- Dylan would FLIP OUT!

"We gotta go! We gotta go! Weeeee gotta goooooo! We gotta go!!!"

On and on and on.

Then after the kids got to hop through the firetruck, Dylan decided he wanted to hop into ALL the fire trucks and water tankers and the personal vehicles of all the fire men and woman (I only saw one gal).
Sigh.

And of course I couldn't let him run all around in the vehicle garage and play with axes... But WHYYYYYYY NOT!!!!!

He's not bad, he's just a boy. He's impetuous, impatient, curious and loud. He's interested in everything around him and doesn't understand why he can't go poke that dog in the face. He's energetic and athletic and insane...which is why he jumps off my bed into a sea of pillows about 47,000 times a day.

But he's also very sweet and kind. He loves animals and his baby brother and big sister. He's first in line to kiss an owie away, and first in line to get his owies kissed away.
He never has to be told to share. If you give him two cookies, he'll find his sister and hand her one.
When he's very sad all he wants is a big hug from mom or dad. He loves to play kitchen and make us all "dinner" and serve it up.

"Here's your mackit cheese! Here's your pizzas! Here's your coffee for mommies!"

So I love him, even though some days I swear I want to boot him out of the car and leave him on the side of the road because he just won't stop crying that his car fell and I can't get it for him because I'm freaking driving and why why whyyyyyy!!!

"I need my car baaaaaack!!"

And I forgive him, even when he kicks off his shoes in WalMart for the 18th time that day and I have to bend over and pick them up AGAIN and then when I finally get fed up with that game and throw the shoes in the cart he screams so loud that baby birds nesting in the rafters explode a la Shrek....

And I hug him, even though I think it's ridiculous that he's crying hysterically because he was scared by a dog barking about two miles away.

And I snuggle with him until he falls asleep, even though I really, really wish he would sleep in his own bed again because frankly, he's cute, but he's not the man I want cuddled up to me every night.

So, yeah, we all have our bad days, our sad days, our really really mad days. I go to bed almost every night frustrated and exhausted and wishing I knew the secret pain-free, guilt-free, therapy-free way to raise perfect children.
But it's not out there. The only secret is to love them.

It's terrible to always be second-guessing myself and wondering if I'm raising them properly. But honestly, if I or you or any mom or dad ever stopped caring whether or not they are doing a good job with their kids, that's when it's really terrible for everyone.

Two seconds later....

I was coming back home after picking up Elizabeth from school yesterday.
We live out of town, so we have to drive a bit on the two-lane highway.

Yesterday was the day that the county decided to FINALLY mow down the huge weeds that have been growing on the shoulder of the highway for months.
So they had this HUGE mower out there all day, like the size of a tractor.

Anyway, we're heading home and approaching the mower which is on the opposite side of the road.
Suddenly, something hits my windshield. I think, "OH GREAT! A rock hit my windshield."

Then before I can even finish that thought, it's a glittering shower of "rocks" all over my car. It was LOUD! It was like sparkly hail.

The car in front of me slows WAAAAY down and starts pulling off the road.
That's when I realize, oh man! That's not shiny rocks! That's GLASS!

My whole car is being pelted with auto glass.

The driver in front of me pulls off entirely and as I drive by I can see that the gal's driver side window is completely shattered!

Scary!!
I called the sheriff's department and they said the driver herself had already called. Whew! I was glad to hear that she was ok.
Then I though, oh my! If I was driving two seconds faster, that would have been MY car, and MY babies covered in glass shards! Scary!

My only thought is that the mower must have kicked up a rock or something and it happened to hit that car window just right to totally smash it.

Later on Bob drove by the car on his way home too and he was SHOCKED to hear that we were right behind that vehicle when it happened.

It's for the environment....

You may or may not recall that Bob and I have been duped into supporting the "family bed".
We have been tricked into this by our terrible children who refuse to sleep alone in their perfectly good beds.
We can get them to fall asleep in their own rooms (which I am seriously considering converting into a gym and a sewing room for me, respectively, if they don't start SLEEPING IN THERE!). However, we cannot get them to STAY asleep in their own rooms.

The baby already sleeps in our room, as it's just damn easier that way when he wakes up in the middle of the night. So we leave the light on in our closet in order to sort of slightly have vision at 3 am. That light must work as some sort of kid beacon.

Inevitably, Dylan and Elizabeth will wander in to our bedroom in the middle of the night and request to sleep with us in our bed. Since we're too tired to argue and too sleepy to get out of bed and return the kids to their proper beds, we give in.

This results in a fun puzzle of legs and elbows and a rousing game of blanket tug of war. Usually whoever shows up last has to sleep at the foot of the bed, like a dog, curled up amid the stinky feet. Sometimes when it's Dylan's turn to sleep at the end of the bed he will roll over and fall off the bed. Usually there is a big pile of laundry there to cushion his fall. That's just good planning! He usually doesn't wake up when he falls off, so we just leave him in the laundry pile until the morning. Which apparently to these kids begins at 6:30 am. JERKS!

Yesterday afternoon I tried to persuade Elizabeth that this arrangement was no good and would have to be discontinued.
She, of course, resisted and put up a rather interesting argument in favor of continuing to sleep in our room.


Me: You are going to have to sleep in your room tonight, like a big girl.
E: No, I can't.
Me: Yes, you can.
E: I can't! I can't! We have to save on the cable bill!
Me: What?
E: We have to save energy!
Me: What?
E: We have to turn off all the lights and all the things. That is called saving energy.
Me: Yes.
E: So we have to turn off the light in my room to save energy so they don't turn off the cable!
Me: What?!?
E: We have to turn off the light! I can't sleep in the dark!
Me: I think we can leave the light on in just your room so you can sleep in there.
E: No NO! We can't! We have to save energy!!!!


Ah. So green, so crazy.

Somebody's having a half-birthday today!

I just said to someone yesterday ~"I'm 30"~ and a chill went down my spine.
It's really real now. It's out there.
Gah!
Obviously I'm still not quite recovered yet from the shock of having turned 30, and now this!

Elizabeth is exactly 4.5 years old today. That's crazy.
There's NO WAY that she's four and a half. She's just a baby.
Look!



And this kid...he's going to be 3 years old in four months? No way.


That's just his bili blanket tubing!

Time is flying!

Thirty, flirty and ... oh who am I kidding....

This is my last week as a twenty-something...
I'm torn up about it.
Having a husband who will continue to BE a twenty-something until May 2010 doesn't help my very fragile ego either.

While I know that having my age start with a 3 won't really change anything about me, I wonder which of my totally regular twenty-something traits and activities will become totally unacceptable as a thirty-something...

Here are my concerns:

Can I still watch "The Hills"?
Can I still wear flip flops to the grocery store? If so, can they be glittery?
Are graphic tees and hoodies allowed? Or is that just sad? Cause I really love graphic hoodies....
Chunky highlights? Ponytails? What is still OK hairwise? Audrina hair? No?
Do I HAVE to eat Fiber One for breakfast?
Am I required to worry about my cholesterol?
Can I still rock fun colored nail polish?
Can I still say that I "rocked" anything?

I'm so confused.

Another big scary life changing realization is that the next time I buy a car it will be a big damn minivan.
My life, as measured by the car I drive, has really slid backwards!
At 20 I drove a hot Ford Mustang.
By the age of 25 I was married and driving a friggin Mazda sedan.
Now looking at the precipice that is 30, I can see that in the not too distant future I'll be rocking a minivan, in a sensible pants suit and loafers, with a nice shag bob in normal human colors, with lots of fiber in my diet and absolutely no knowledge whatsoever about who L.C. is dating and what's up with Speidi.

Sigh.

A heartwarming tale for the holidays

Last night I was relaxing after a long day of kid wrangling.
I was sitting in the family room while the kids were bopping around, working off even more energy.
Elizabeth was in the kitchen, Dylan unbeknownst to me, was also in the kitchen.
Suddenly I hear Elizabeth screaming:
"Dylan has a knife! Dylan has a knife!"

And I see him walking around in the living room with a giant chef's knife. How he got into the drawer to retrieve it, I have no idea. But no time for thinking right then.
I jumped up and raced across the house to get it away from him.
He saw me coming and walked quickly back into the kitchen, toward his sister, who then started screaming:

"Dylan's trying to stab me! Dylan's trying to stab me!!!"
As she ran through the kitchen, over a laundry basket and into my bathroom.

By the time I got there, mere seconds later, Dylan had put the knife back into the drawer and vanished. He must have ran away from that scene so fast!!
I shut and secured the drawer and then consoled my dear little near stabbing victim.
"Dylan was not trying to stab you."
"Yes he waaaaaaaaaaaaaas!!!" she sobbed.

Dylan then reappeared, and he got a scolding for touching sharp things while I recovered from my heart attack.

Happy Friday!

The B Word

I've had a patch of red skin on my leg for almost a year now. Initially, the doctor thought it was ringworm and we tried to treat it as such. The patch didn't shrink at all, in fact, it grew larger and larger.
Two weeks ago my doctor gave me Diflucan to try to blast it away. That didn't work either.

So, this afternoon I'm getting a biopsy on the rogue patch.

Yep.
Biopsy.

I'm not scared. Yet.