Notes from the weekend

We revisited the pants issue with Jacob again this weekend. Since our last episode they have stayed securely in the bottom drawer of his dresser and he has enjoyed wearing shorts. It's only been chilly enough (by South standards) to wear pants a couple of days and I'm sure he wasn't the only child at school that received the looks of "your mother didn't check the weather report, huh? Poor baby." Oh, I did check the weather and my other two children wore pants; Thanks, and have a great day.

It's OK though, he was in his face contorting, arm flapping, bird flying world and oblivious to anything else. He wasn't holding jeans off his nether region and all was right with the world...until Saturday morning. We had Emmy's soccer game and it was chilly and I knew eventually he would need to make the switch and it had to be now. I made him put on the jeans and we all endured the temper tantrum that followed. I joke about it, but I do feel for him. He has a tactile sensitivity that the rest of us don't but I also know as his mother that we go through this with every season change and after one day he will be over it and everything will be fine. I pushed him through it and refused to let him wear shorts. He was mad for about 45 minutes and then forgot he had jeans on. About 2 hours later he said "Mom, a good thing happened today." I looked at him and said "Oh really, what is that?" He told me "I got used to wearing jeans!" Hmmm...Imagine that.

Sunday Night Dinner:

Emmy- Knock Knock
Jacob- Who's There
Emmy- Interrupting Cow
Jacob- Interrupting Co..

Emmy- MOOOOOO

Roars of Laughter. This has become the joke of the house and we've heard it no less than 30 times since dinner last night.

The timer

We bought a standard tick tock kitchen timer to help with issues such as teeth brushing, homework, time out, etc. The kids have decided it is much more fun to wind it up and hide it somewhere to try and scare whoever is around when it goes off, notably Mom and Dad. One night we heard the "tick-tock" in our bedroom and found it hidden behind our TV. Last night we heard it in the living room after the kids were put to bed so we deliberately turned it to 0 and set it off which was followed by 3 uncontrollable giggles from the hallway. Today I dropped the kids off at school and came back to update my blog, only to be interrupted by the familiar ring of the timer. The sneaky monkeys set the timer before they left for school as a trap for me. I sense a case of school-age revenge coming on.

Heart Happy

This happened a year ago, but I must share it because it made my heart happy, as I think it would make the heart of most women happy.

My daughter, Emmy, has played soccer for 3 seasons now. At first she was a bit uncoordinated and we giggled slightly on the sidelines when we watched her play. She was cute and she tried as hard as she could but her feet and brain just didn't communicate all the time. Then something happened in the second season; it was like a big light switch turned on in the soccer department of her brain and it all clicked and synchronized. Besides getting very winded and not liking to play when its cold (and TN had some very cold soccer seasons!!) she started playing very, very well.

Last season we had all three children in soccer so on a Saturday we would spend 3-5 hours at the soccer park, depending on if the games were timed together or spread out. One particular day Emmy had her game to play (1 hour, no substitutes) and then Jacob had his shortly thereafter. Jacob's team didn't have enough players and the coaches were desperate for more players so they wouldn't have to forfeit the game. Emily was standing there with us so Jeramie offered her up to play for the all-boys team (after asking her if she would). The coach agreed and then the boys all looked at her with those "she's not playing with us, is she?" looks. Now, Emily is tall and was the same height as the boys 2 years older than her so they didn't actually know that she wasn't their age or the looks probably would have been much, much worse. We told Emily to not be intimidated to play with an entire field of boys, just to "get in there" and go after the ball. While we were pumping her up, we overheard the boys asking Jacob "so, is your sister any good?"

The game starts and Emily played with 2 teams of boys and was not intimidated at all. She played better than most of the boys out there who were 2 years older than she was. By the end the boys were cheering for her, as were all of their parents. My heart was so big and proud I just wanted to cry by the end of the game. The next week when we came to Jacob's game the first thing his teammates said to him was "Is your sister going to play with us again this week?" I couldn't stop smiling.

The fun, yet expensive camping trip

I’ve been planning for the family to take a camping trip for a couple of months. The kids have cheered, the hub has groaned at every mention. We’ve done it in the past (think long past) but he says that was because it was cheap entertainment. Well, it wasn’t cheap entertainment this time. We decided to get the kids sleeping bags this time, they enjoyed those and it proved to be a very good investment because they were warm the first night. I bought a screen tent to put over the picnic table which I now highly recommend because we ate “bee free” and I heard a few less “the bugs are buggin’” from my children. Then of course you figure in all the food, equipment and last minute supplies you realize you need and it all adds up. But, when you pack up the van and take off everyone is ready to have a wonderful time and none of that matters. Hub and I set up the tent and the screen tent, try to start a fire with very wet wood (didn’t work well) and then I go through all the supplies he unpacked from the van. I found the sleeping bags but not the blankets for our bed. Hmmm…after looking a bit frantically I realize I left all the blankets to our bed sitting in the hallway at home. Hubs decided that navigating unknown county roads at 9pm without a detailed map would not be a good idea (something about his aviation background) and we called upon the towels to pull double duty as blankets. The low reached 55 degrees that night making it a L.O.N.G, cold night. Every time the deer hunter neighbor of ours woke me up I had wished I would have taken a sleeping pill to put me out of my cold misery. At last the sun arose and we got in the van and cranked the heat. After breakfast we all packed in the van and drove 20 miles to the nearest town to find a Wal-Mart and bought 2 more sleeping bags. That turned out to be a very good thing because the next night the low reached 43 degrees!

We did have a lot of fun though. For a mere $20 we rented a boat for the entire day/night and the kids went on several gator searching trips. Emily saw many alligators and Jacob argued every time that they were "just" logs. Matthew had a grand time pushing Dad back out into the lake 3 times when he wanted to be pulled in to shore instead. We toured the old grist mill where they still grind corn for cornmeal and occasionally wheat and finished the evening with a big fire and smores. They are already asking when we can go camping again.

But, the most expensive part of the trip…about 30 minutes after getting home I realized I had lost my diamond necklace sometime during the weekend. Yea, that sucks.

Disconnected (Posted from Panera)

For 4 days now I have been disconnected from the world. Comcast has decided that our household doesn’t have anything worthwhile to contribute to the World Wide Wait so they cut us off on Sunday night. The service technician came out on Tuesday but said the problem was “so bad” that he couldn’t fix it and the maintenance technicians would need to come out. The next day the powers that be decided it would be a good day to rain—we haven’t had rain in a month, biggest drought in years but my internet is broke so let’s rain NOW! *Sigh* So, we are entering day 4 of being disconnected and I will have to find another meal to eat at Panera Bread to get my email fix again today. This will get expensive soon.

Halloween is getting close

Watch Out!

Looking for a funny?

The Sunday comic page has found a new home and new use in our house. Somehow I don’t think this was the original meaning of “reading material” in the bathroom although I might get to clean the mirror less this way. Let me tell you why you now must stand taller than 5’5” to see yourself in the hall bathroom mirror. Our oldest son thinks he is the next Jim Carrey (OK, maybe I will eat my words some day) and contorts his face into images you can only imagine. He has a grand time watching himself and is completely oblivious to the 3928179239 times we tell him to brush his teeth and get out of the bathroom. If he isn’t trying to pop his eyeballs out he is watching his arms flail and hiney sway as described in my post below. So I came up with the idea of covering the mirror to cut down on his temptation. It has semi-worked. He doesn’t show everyone the lining of his nose anymore but he also doesn’t spend any less time in the bathroom. I now find him leaned over the sink, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, giggling at comics. He has a motorized toothbrush so I guess if it’s in his mouth it has to be accomplishing more than the face contortions do. But, we still holler 394875929 times to get his teeth brushed and get out of the bathroom.

Falling back

Finally it feels like fall here in Georgia. We woke up to a brisk 53°, the kids ran around here for the third morning in a row wondering if I'd somehow shut off the sun's rays to this part of the Earth and we even watched a woman walking in the neighborhood with a coat and stocking cap on. I literally had to chuckle at that; it was 60° by that time and the people this far south think we might actually see some frost soon. The projected low for tonight is 45°, I wonder if we will see bed sheets covering the flower beds tomorrow morning on the way to church. I should watch the news tonight, they might tell me to keep an eye on my pets and ederly. Try out MO and IA folks, they walk when it's freezing...literally.

Emmy had a soccer game this morning and they finally got in the groove and spanked the other team. Emmy played well and got a goal of her own; I think the soccer Em of last year finally showed up. We spent the afternoon enjoying fall activities. We made our own caramel apples and the kids reminisced the entire time about the times we made the apples in TN with our wonderful friends. After that we moved on to homemade pizza and we enjoyed a blanket picnic in the living room while watching a movie.

Our moments with chaos today:
*Jacob freaking out after putting on a pair of jeans. These are the same exact jeans he wore all last spring. We tried every brand and the boy can only wear 10S, Levi Loose Straight. (I buy my underwear a K Mart) But now they are too baggy in the groin region and we watched and snickered as he ran around the house in his own world grabbing his crotch while attempting to hold the jeans off the nether region. Reasoning didn't work; he wore shorts to the soccer game and then complained he was cold.
*All the kids were told to brush their teeth before bed. Instead, Jacob was waving his arms and shaking the glutes like a drunk 21 year old girl at a club. Yea, great visual.
*Before bed Matthew was building with Lincoln Logs, Jeramie and Emmy were taking turns setting up dominoes and I look over and see Jacob on his back with both legs straight in the air doing the synchronized swim routine, except out of water. I just had to watch; maybe he'll be a choreographer some day.