The Importance of Being Rested

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I am NOT a morning person.
In the past I've been able to train myself to wake up early when necessary but if I'm left to my own devices I naturally will default to staying up too late and dreading the sunrise.

Of course, there have been times when my preference (or my tendency I suppose) just didn't matter one bit, for example high school. Classes started at 8 am or whatever, and I had to be there on time. That's not saying there weren't times I was late. I was also pretty ecstatic when we had to split time on one campus with our rival high school because of earthquake damage to our school and we got to go to school at lunchtime. Those were good times.

But I digress. I've held jobs that start WAY early, both the bakery AND summer camp started at 6 am. As did before school day care. But I've ALSO had jobs that required me to be up until the wee hours of the morning, mostly newspaper jobs. I learned to deal with either scenario.

Now that I have three kids, one of whom is in kindergarten in the morning, it is becoming readily apparent that I have to enter into a phase of time management restructuring, again.

Despite the fact that the nighttime is the right time for so many things (silence, solitude, great TV) I'm going to have to give all those things up in favor of an early bedtime so I can handle the early wake-up whisperings of my soon to be 6 year old telling me that her grandmother can't take her to school that morning and she has to leave, uh, like NOW!

Or alternatively, so I will have enough good quality sleep on my head when the (no longer really a baby) baby decides that he's topped out at 5 am and really WOULD like to get out of bed and eat waffles, uh, like NOW!

Or when the inevitable happens and my husband is finally able to find work and he and my mom are both out of the house by 7:30 am for work and SOMEONE has to get up to supervise the kids and the dog, lest there be another "incident".

Bottomline, Christmas vacation really spoiled me and having my mom here as a morning facilitator for Elizabeth has REALLY spoiled me and before I get too complacent (which inevitably will lead to the destruction of this carefully crafted system in which I wake up at 8:30 even though my kid starts school at 8 am) I have to become prepared to once again shoulder it all on my own.

It's a good thing that I've already stockpiled coffee.

Top Ten Lessons Learned While Living With My Mom....Again....

10. Do NOT leave the garage light on. Ever.

9. Unless it's Sunday, get the mail.

8. If there is a lag in interesting programming on the television, be prepared to watch HGTV.

7. I really do suck at keeping up with laundry.

6. HOWEVER, I am a fantastic cook.

5. Sidewalk chalk is ONLY for the FRONT YARD sidewalk.

4. Thou shalt not run out of Cuties.

3. Grandmas like to give full tanks of gas as gifts.

2. If you use it every day you must clean the coffee maker every day or face the wrath.

And most importantly....

1. DO NOT attempt to do the NY Times Crossword reprint. It is NOT for you.

Graduation Day

My baby just graduated from preschool!
Oh my! The first of many educational milestones, hopefully to conclude with her PhD!!

For today though, the kids sang "Tony Chestnut Knows I Love You", one kid had a meltdown and though I didn't graduate I did get TWO certificates of appreciation for having nothing better to do than hang out at school and go to field trips and help in class constantly....

On to the pics!


The Triad


Elizabeth and BFF McKayla


Graduated!


Miss Terry and Elizabeth


Dylan and Miss Terry

First School Program!

Because I'm a dorkface and left my camera in the car, I have no pictures of this. But my sister in law does and as soon as I can talk her through the download/upload process I'll put a picture on here!

Anyway...Elizabeth's class had their first little song and dance program last night. It's really just an incentive to get parents to come to the parent committee meeting, but hey, it works!
There's 18 kids in her class and I think all but a couple showed up for the performance, which was great! Her teacher was very nervous that noone would come or that the kids would freak out. Only one little girl had a minor breakdown, so that's a success! It was totally not the kid I thought would freak out either.

Elizabeth did great! Her aunt did her hair all beautiful and curly and like half the family showed up to watch her. Grandpa Mike even braved the freezing windy weather to see her sing!
When the show was all over she got flowers and a big balloon and that just made her day.
I was so proud of her, and proud of Dylan for not causing a ruckus during the show. Yay Dylan!
AND Ben is cutting ANOTHER tooth! He hardly lets me see them, he covers the teeth up with his tongue when I try to catch a glimpse. So getting a picture will be hard I think! Maybe after they pop out all the way?

The one in which I don't know what I've gotten myself into...

Last night was the parents' committee meeting at school.
I figured, since all three of my kids will probably be going to Head Start, I've got a good four more years at this school, so maybe I should go to the meetings.

Bob and I and all the kids went. They had child care set up for the kids to play which was awesome.
About midway through the meeting, they announced that they needed to elect a representative to the regional Head Start committee that meets every six weeks in Flagstaff...

Now, as my mom always says, I don't want to be IN a club unless I can be PRESIDENT of the club.

So I asked Bob if it was OK and then volunteered myself.
*Shockingly* noone else volunteered! (I don't mean to be mean, but some of the parents, wow.) At least they came to the committee meeting. There were PLENTY of parents who didn't show up. There's probably about 80 kids at that school, in the four classes. So, 80 sets of parents.
There was maybe 20-25 adults there at the meeting, so about 25 percent turnout. Not terrible. But wow, not great.

I was elected unanimously, yay! So now I'm the Show Low representative to the regional Head Start parents committee. I'm still not sure at all what that means, besides going to Flagstaff every six weeks for a meeting. Hey, it's only two hours or so away and I can shop at the "mall" while I'm there!

Also, the dad who heads up the male involvement activities at the school (just dads coming in with their kids and doing a craft or something dad-like) told Bob that they were moving away in a few months...maybe Bob will take over the male involvement?? Probably not. He's not MUCH of a joiner. But I think it would be fun for him and not much work.
Last time the dads and kids carved pumpkins. Next time it's building a pre-fab wooden crayon box. All the supplies are donated, so it's free and fun. We'll see how that goes.

HOLY COW!!!
LIVE BLOG UPDATE!

My computer is right by the front door, cozy.
I just heard some crows realllllly loud out there, so I knew they were either on the porch or on the house. I hate crows, they had to go.
I opened up the front door and two HUGE GIANT DISGUSTING HUGE crows flew away from the house. One was on the roof, one in the tree right next to the porch.
Right in between them, on the porch railing was my kitty Louie! They were trying to attack Louie!!!
Thank goodness I scared them off, they were as big as he is!
As they flew away I said to Louie, "Are you OK?"
He jumped off the porch railing and ran into the house and said "Meow."

School is Stressful...and other things

Not for Elizabeth, for me.

On Monday when I dropped Elizabeth off at school I also had my first parent-teacher conference. It made me sort of nervous.

Thankfully, Elizabeth is great at school. The teacher said that Elizabeth is very smart, friendly, interested in school. She knows the rules and routines and follows them, she behaves well and is helpful and she's doing great.

Now, I've volunteered a few times in the class and the boys and I have stayed for lunch a few times, so I've seen Miss Elizabeth in action and saw that she was one of the more "together" kids. Some of the kids in her class are still learning how school works and can't seem to sit still for anything. These are mostly the younger kids and the boys. Sorry guys! You're all twitchy when you're 4 years old.

I was just glad that Elizabeth's evaluation was in line with how I thought she would and should be performing in class. It's nice to know that other people can see what you see in your kid, you know? Otherwise I might start to think I was delusional and she wasn't really as awesome as I think she is...thank goodness, that's not the case!

On Friday we're having a home visit from her teacher and the school director.
Not because we're special or terrible...all the students are getting home visits.

So, today I started cleaning, like, really cleaning, like super duper hands and knees vacuuming under the fridge cleaning.

Elizabeth's teacher said they don't come over to evaluate the cleanliness of the house, but I'm not taking any chances.

Besides, my house could probably use the attention. As my former roommates can attest, I'm not the worlds-best house cleaner. I'm faaar from the worst, but I'm certainly not the best.

I hate chores and chore charts, and I do terrible things to them. Messy, dangerous things.

So today is picking up all toys and vacuuming every floor and clearing off the kitchen counters of accumulated junk and reorganizing the shoe rack by the front door and dusting and reorganizing the bookshelves day.
We're about 30 percent done. It's going to be a long day. Oh, and laundry has to get done today too. Wow. It's going to be a loooong day.
I've been at it since 7 am, burning off all my pent-up election frustration.

Speaking of which...I stayed up until 11 pm EST watching the election returns come in. I was initially upset that the networks (all the networks) were calling states 10 seconds or less after the polls closed. I mean, they were calling New Mexico for Obama when the returns were still showing that McCain had a lead...that lead eventually went away and the state DID go to Obama, but still...

And before you post, yes I know that they have detailed maps of the precincts and exit polling and they have a pretty good idea demographically how each precinct is going to vote based on voter regs and all that and so they can look at what precincts have and have not reported and figure out pretty reliably how the vote totals are going to line up before they're even reported and thus can fairly accurately call states as the polls close....but still. It was ticking me off.

PS This electoral college thing is really irritating.

Elizabeth is happy though.
I told her this morning it was President Obama and she sat up in bed and said...

"My guy won?! Yay! I win, you lose, I win, you lose!"

My LORD!

So I didn't get any pictures at the field trip because it was a crazy mob scene of 4 year olds and Dylan. Yikes!
There were other siblings along for the trip who were around his age, so I didn't feel weird about taking him. There was even another baby!
But, Dylan is clearly a handful, so my attention was focused on him and not, I repeat NOT on the cute firemen. Not at all!

Here's the recap.
We started out at school where the kids got a sack lunch and then sang some songs while we waited to go over to the fire department.
This was a WALKING field trip, the FD is right around the corner from the school.
So, picture about 40 four year olds all holding onto those ring lines like from "Jon & Kate Plus 8" yeaaaah.
Then add in the five or six younger siblings, the two babies, all the moms, the frazzled teachers...
It was quite a scene.
When we got to the fire department all the kids got to climb up into the cab of a fire engine and check it out and then come right back out the other side.
My kids loved this part.

Then we climbed up these HUGE stairs (which made me sort of queasy) and watched a movie about fire safety featuring Donald Duck. I'm 99 percent sure that I watched the same movie when I was a kid.
This time around though, I noticed that the movie featured a very young Mark-Paul Gosselaar and I think Brian Dunkleman. Weird. Very weird.

During this part of the field trip, the baby got restless so he nursed in the back of the room. Dylan demonstrated the fire safety techniques he learned from the film by crawling all over the floor, presumably to avoid the invisible smoke gathering in the upper half of the room.

Then we had to go DOWN the big giant stairs, which was slightly MORE quease-inducing and made more than a few kids freak out.

Then a fireman slid down the fire pole, to the delight of all the kids. I think some moms will be scrambling to change Halloween costumes at the last minute after THAT display!

After that it was all over and we walked back to the school without incident.

I let the kids play in the playground for a while, but school was over and we left after about a half hour of playing.

This is where the story gets ugly.
I stopped off at the store to pick up some meat for dinner. I had $7 in my wallet and some PayPal money.
I picked out some chicken breasts (on sale, 50% off!) and almost 6 pounds of hamburger meat for about $10. Not a GREAT deal, but not bad.

I got up to the register and found $2 left in the change return. Thank you self checkout!

As I got ready to be a booper, Elizabeth demanded a push pop as compensation for the lollipop she let her brother have her brother stole from her and ate in 5 seconds.

When I went around the checkstand to get a push pop, Dylan stole an apple off a nearby fruit display and bit into it. I didn't NOTICE because Elizabeth started yelling about how she changed her mind and wanted a donut instead.
No donut! No way! Push pop only!

I scanned my items, still oblivious to the apple theft. And tried to pay. My card wasn't working...I slid it through again. Didn't work. Again. Nothing.
Gah!
I put my $7 and the $2 from the change return into the machine. Then I slid my card. That time it worked.
I'm bad at math I guess and overestimated my PayPal balance. Oops!

During that melee, ELIZABETH shoplifted an apple and started eating it!

"What are you doing!?!"
I had already paid, had NO more money and my kids were eating forbidden fruit!

The manager gal came over and said "It's ok, they can be samples."
So nice.

I did give them a good harsh talking to out in the car about not stealing.

"You cannot steal apples from the store!"
Elizabeth said "But I was hungry" and took a bite of the apple.
"So! You have to PAY FOR the things you want!"

Ugh!
I gave up trying to teach them this fine point and just started the car and headed home. I think I'll leave the rest of the lecture to their dad. I'm exhausted.

They were gooood apples though.

Trippin'

Today is Elizabeth's first official school field trip!
The kids are getting a tour of the Show Low Fire Department, so fun.
Of course I'll be going along as a parent volunteer. The brothers will come along too, I asked Elizabeth if she wouldn't mind first!
Respect!

After all, she does say that her favorite part of school is "getting away from my brothers"...
Kindness!

She's in her closet right now picking out just the right outfit for the field trip. There ARE potentially hunky firemen involved! I don't blame her for wanting to look extra fly.

And that's not ALL the excitement going down this week either!
On Friday the kids and I are packing up and heading down to Scottsdale for the weekend. My mom is meeting us there and we're all staying at a hotel and going to the zoo and hanging out.
My mom had this three day weekend and she wanted to actually go and do something instead of just staying home. So after ruling out a bunch of trips she could take by herself, she decided it would be the most fun to visit us! The drive all the way to our house is like nine hours from Simi though, a bit much for just a weekend.
But Phoenix/Scottsdale is only about five to six hours, totally doable.

We've done the Phoenix Meet-Up trip before. It's fun. My kids love staying in hotels.
In fact, the last time we did this, they thought the hotel was my mom's "other" house.
Elizabeth went on and on about how Nani has two houses...her regular house and her hotel house!

She's crazy!
So anticipate some cool field trip photos AND ZOO PIX!
Whoo hoo!

In other news:
Did anyone else watch the VH-1 Hip Hop Honors last night.
Dude. It was RAD.
I like all kinds of music, but I really love the hippity hop.
Snoopy Snoop-a-Loop is my dogg.
Anyway, they bestowed the Hip Hop Honors to, among others, Cypress Hill...ah memories.
My freshman year roommate and I would study for finals and listen to Cypress Hill. We were totally Insane in the Membrane.


In OTHER news:
I got my hair cut. Whoo wee! I had to take both the boys with me. Ben sat on my lap chillin'. Dylan spun around in a "salon" chair, illin'.
(I say "salon" because it was at WalMart, hey, $13 haircut. Can't beat it!)
Anyway, I'm just surprised that it came out straight considering all the "one-two-three-ing" I had to perpetrate on Dylan. The kid is crazy. He had this old lady getting a perm cracking up with his antics though.
Sidebar question: Why do all the old ladies get perms? Hmm.

Kindness Helper

At Elizabeth's school each kid picks a job to do every day.
Some of the jobs are line leader, table setter, fish feeder, song leader...there's even a job where the kid gets to be the puppet Chef Combo and tell the kids what is on the menu for snack and lunch.
FUN!

But by far Elizabeth's most favorite job is Kindness Helper.
Probably because it involves a magical princess wand.
The Kindness Helper, at a designated part of the school program, waves the Kindness Wand over all the children and thus infuses them with Kindness for the day.

I think it's a sweet job and Elizabeth is well suited for it. She loves magic wands and she loves telling people what to do. Checkity check.

She's so enamored of being Kindness Helper that she rushes over to the job board to secure her nametag to it under the Kindness Helper banner every morning.
Yesterday on the way home from school we had the following discussion...

Me: Don't you think it would be kind to let another kid be Kindness Helper one day?
E: Oh yes. Yes yes.
Me: So what other job do you think you want to do? Line leader? Song leader??
E: No. Just Kindness Helper.
Me: But I thought you just said it would be nice to let someone else try it?
E: I just can't do it.
Me: Why not?
E: Because I LOOOOOVE IT!

That last part was all sing-songy...read it again if you have to get the full effect.
I LOOOOOOOVE IT! La la la!


So, Her Royal Highness of Kindness then proceeded to tell me about the "bad kid" in her class.
We'll just call him M. to protect his fragile four year old identity.

E: M. was so bad today. He pushed a whole line!
Me: That's terrible. What are we going to do about this?
E: Throw him in the Dumpster!
Me: (Laughing so hard I can barely drive) What?!
E: Yep! Throw him in! And his mom!!
Me: (more laughing) Why? His mom too! That's pretty harsh!
E: So what! They can eat garbage!!

Ha! Kindness my ass!

OH! This was just explained to me...
When she waves the wand over the children and gives them kindness, she does NOT wave it over herself also. Ah ha!

First Day in Pics

The Poser ~ she picked out her own outfit and decided on her hairstyle all by herself. Since they don't bring lunch and can't bring toys, her backpack holds a crayon roll and a total change of clothes and socks and tennis shoes. Just in case.


Oh brother, you'll miss her! I hairsprayed her pigtails, and Dylan insisted that we spray his hair too, so he got a Faux-hawk.


On the way...that's Ben's leg in the corner!


Finally!! We're here!(a half hour early!)



On the playground waiting for the classroom to open


Dylan's getting sad....


"I want to go to the classroom tooooooo!"

Ohhh, back to school, back to school....

to prove to dad that I'm not a fool...

Today is Elizabeth's first official day of official school. Real school. Not daycare fake school.
I drop her off in three hours for the first time.
Oh, I'm gonna sooooo bawl.

It's a great day for it too, cold, overcast and rainy. The rain can hide my tears! :(

I don't think it's that she's going to school that's getting me sad, because I know she is going to love it. She's getting so bored here with the little brothers. It's only 3.5 hours a day, four days a week, so it's not like she's gone all day. And LORD KNOWS I could use a break from Miss Thang.

It's more that this is the last time she's gonna be all mine. I don't even know if that makes sense. But it's like, once I release her out into the world, I can't scoop her back out and have everything back the same.
First it's preschool, then next year kindergarten...
She'll start making friends and enemies. Other adults will be influencing her development. Then before I can blink, if the next almost five years go as quickly as the first five did, she'll be in fourth grade! And that's freakin me out.

I feel like today is the first tiny step of a million tiny steps that takes us both to a place where she's not my little baby girl anymore.
Thank goodness she won't be my little baby girl any less either. At least not in my heart, where it counts.

Time flies when you're totally swamped with crap to do

Sigh...
Vacation's over folks!
We came home to Arizona on the 11th. The trip went VERY well and took about 9 hours give or take. The only real snafu was just before the AZ border when Ben decided that HE MUST EAT NOW NOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And forced an unplanned pit-stop in hotter than the Devil's balls lovely Blythe, Calif.
There was gas to be pumped (at $4.47 per gallon, for REGULAR! ugh) and then Ben ate his lunch. Then I moved the car to block off the women's restroom door so I could run in and pee real quick. That went incident free...I am NEVER traveling with three kids alone again...at least not without adult diapers and the feeling of freedom to actually use them. Just for No. 1s. I don't allow anyone to go No. 2 while we are driving. It's just a law.
After a brief chicken nugget stopover at the Blythe Mickey Ds we were back on the road to Arizona. Ten minutes later we had crossed the Colorado River and were back in the land of cheap gas, evidenced by the fact that regular gas was a still ridiculous mere $3.87 at the Love's in AZ. Gah!
Damn money wasting baby!

The rest of the trip was A-OK fine. The kids LOVED driving the 202 Loop through Tempe and Mesa because it's right in the flight path for Sky Harbor, so every two seconds there's a jumbo jet right above your head. Pretty nifty.

Ben, as per his contractual agreement with my mother, began getting fussy once we crossed into our county and really kicked things up a notch at around Heber-Overgaard...aka about 40 minutes from home. NO WAY am I pulling over 40 minutes from home dude!
Oh, I forgot...my total mileage for the whole trip...everything between pulling out of the driveway and pulling back in...was just over 2,600 miles. All that driving in a month! Wow.
Also, all that incident-free driving! No crashes, no dents, no nothing...until...
About 45 miles from home we were following a work truck and I'll be damned if that dang truck didn't somehow kick up a cinder that landed on my windshield with a "CHINK!!!" that was the unmistakable sound of doooooooom when you have a $250 deductible.
Gah!
Soooo, yeah, I was pretty freaking pissed that I drove ALL THAT WAY and it wasn't until Forest Lakes that my car was damaged. There's a lovely cross shaped ding in my windshield now right behind the rear view mirror. THANKS WORK TRUCK!!!!!!

We got home fine though, and though Bob swore he had cleaned the day before, I couldn't see it.
So I started cleaning immediately. After nine hours of driving. Yeah, I'm a bit insane.
No wait...I'm not insane. There were plates and silverware out on my front deck and soda cans strewn about the house from what I can only imagine was Tropical Storm Dr. Thunder.
No, I'm not insane.
Though the floor was vacuumed, but I later found out that he had our niece vacuum soooo....
Eh.

PS this is my 11 year old niece who is now TALLER THAN ME. Fuck the world. That's just rough.

Anyway...The next day (Tuesday) I discovered in the huge pile of mail (thanks Bob) the letter from the ENT scheduling Dylan's tonsillectomy FOR THURSDAY! Do the math, that was two days away!
Yipes!
So I had to whip up an action plan real quick for that. What we ended up doing was sending Elizabeth to a slumber party at her Aunt Amy's on Wednesday night and the boys and I woke up at 0'DarkThirty on Thursday morning to head to the Surgical Center and get the proceeeeeedure.
All went well, Dylan did better (waaaay better) than Elizabeth with the anesthesia. He woke up like easy like Sunday morning, where she woke up like midnight on Halloween and the ghosts are breaking into the house...if you catch my drift.
Though the anesthesiologist did mention that Dylan has a heart murmur...here we go again. So we have to keep an eye on that, even though it's probably an age-related flow murmur, blah blah blah....We've never heard about it before, so it's likely not a major problem and he'll probably grow out of it, literally.

Now we're in day five Post Surgery and he's doing well...except for at night when he wakes up crying out and tries to get in bed with us to cry in our faces. No thanks. After the night his crying woke up the baby, and sent Bob cursing to sleep on the couch (he wakes up at 5:30 am) we've been trying to keep Dylan in his own bed. It worked last night so, yay!?!?

In between the tonsillectomy and yesterday was just cleaning, cleaning, cleaning...putting away our clothes, more cleaning, laundry, laundry, cleaning and more cleaning.
I made an apple pie from scratch. MORE cleaning.

Yesterday evening was the orientation for Elizabeth's preschool! Yes, my dear angel (ahem) is going to start preschool next Tuesday. I was surprised to learn that it was a four-day a week program, so she'll go Monday through Thursday from noon to 3ish. Not bad. Except that the school is 15 minutes away from home and I have to drive her, so, it's gonna be interesting to see which days I end up spending the whole three hours in town and which days I go back home for two hours and turn around and come back...
Thank GOODNESS that gas prices are FINALLY starting to really drift downward here!
When I left town in July, gas at the cheapest station was $4.07 for regular. Blech. Now at that SAME station it was $3.53 on my way into town last night at 5 pm and dropped to $3.47 on my way OUT of town at around 8 pm! Yay!
So we've gone down 60 cents in a little over a month. Keep going!!!! I'll be happy when it gets back to $1.65 per gallon (is that ever happening??)

Anyway...today and tomorrow we're doing a whole lot of nothing. I'm making spaghetti sauce, cleaning and cleaning some more. The kids will be right behind me making new and exciting messes for me to clean I'm sure.
Then Thursday is Elizabeth's dental checkup (to which the WHOLE crew will be going, fun!) and then Friday is Dylan's post-op appointment, which will take me a half hour to get to and get us all inside, then another half hour to get back home, all for an approximately two-minute long appointment. Sigh. House call?