Sidney just came and threw the box of wipes and a diaper up onto my laptop.

"Are you stinky?" I asked.

"deekee" she said.

WOW! I thought. That would be pretty great if she really was and she didn't like it, I mean that would mean she is getting pretty close to wanting to be potty trained, right? Probably not, but still.

Sure enough, she was stinky. I changed her and then put the diaper out on the back porch to go in the garbage bin. Sidney got mad at me then because she wanted to throw it into the garbage. (see, that's her JOB. She pees, I change it and tell her to put it into the garbage and off she trots to the bathroom to chuck it into the garbage)

parenting sucks

Oh my kids.



Where do I begin.



Today, I encountered yet another sampling of parenting sucks. A wrong choice was made by three children ("the gang"- I call them) and I found the remnants of what remained from that wrong choice and I was in the position where I needed to give a consequence. The thing is that the consequence for said choice had already been outlined and told to them previously so that they would have incentive to NOT choose wrongly. But apparently, wants overruled common sense and "they did not remember". I reinforced to them what the consequence was supposed to be and said, "this is what I think needs to happen now. But I want you to call your dad and make it right with him and talk to him and see what he says."


I overheard bits and pieces of that conversation, but not enough to know what he said for sure. I put myself in a time-out for the safety or should I say sanity of all involved and that is what I was doing until 10 minutes ago when a messenger (one of the gang members) brought me this note.
I guess they are all "sorry". Oh and I am now proclaimed "beutiful", and if I have any questions or want to write notes, they even provided a space for me to do that. How thoughtful they are. Now if I can just get them to realize THAT before the fact then we will be good!

picture updates and milestones

Last week I did two ponies on top when I fixed Sidney's hair in the morning. So fun and so cute. She kept grabbing them all day long trying to figure out what they were.
She is the biggest copycat that I have ever seen. Seriously, she is so smart! She always takes her bath at the same time as Jonathan and just by watching him do the shampoo on his hair, she has learned how to do her own. I noticed her doing it a couple of weeks ago, but Mike just noticed it this week and so I grabbed the camera and got a couple of shots of her doing her shampoo. She can really work up a lather!
Jenny's big idea was to keep track of the scores from Dancing with the Stars on her little chalkboard that she bought at the dollar store. She is such a nerd! No actually, she reminds me of myself. Back in the old days, during the Miss America and other pageants when they gave the scores, if you didn't keep track of the highest scores you would lose track of who was in the lead. We would all sit around and watch the pageants and I remember sitting with paper and a pencil and writing down the scores so that my dad would know who was ahead for when he made his prediction that Miss California, Texas, or Maryland would win.
Anyway, now I have Jenny to do the same thing for me! She kept trying to write down the phone number for me but it went too fast across the TV sreen. I told her "that's okay, I'll go online and vote". She said, "what line will you go on Mom? I don't see a line". Needless to say, I had to explain what "online" meant. :]

Wordless Wednesday

No longer participating in....

***Warning***
This blog no longer participates in Thursday Thirteen.

It was too dang hard and I gave up! That's right, you heard me...I GAVE UP!

So, now I am going to do Thankful Thursday. It's a little easier.


ToDaY I am ThAnKfUl for:

My kids and my Sweetheart! Oh how I love them. I mean it IS Valentine's Day after all! No really, they are the light of my life and my world truly does revolve around them. Here are a few of my favorite pictures to show how fun and awesome they are.

No more naps!

Yesterday I finally got around to calling the owner/director of the Preschool that all my other kids went to about getting Jonathan in. We talked about how nervous he was and he will be starting in August when the other kids start the next year of school. I told him about this after I got off the phone and in true Jonathan form, he got all whiney and said things like, "No" and " I don't want to go to that school. I want to go to Jenny's school". So I very nicely explained that he can not go to Kindergarten until after he goes to Preschool which he will start after his birthday when he is 5 and it will be so fun, you won't even have to take a nap anymore.

These are the words that he heard:

five , Birthday and No nap

When Mike walked in the door after work, Jonathan immediately rushed over to him and said, " Dad, last night I had a birthday and now I am five and I don't have to take naps!"

Seriously, he is the reason I have gray hairs!

THE snow fort

This is Jonathan and Meghan working on their snowfort. Well, to be clear, it is MEGHAN'S snowfort, but she was "letting" Jonathan help. I was amazed at her architectural abilities with snow. She had in her mind what she wanted it to be and she was working hard at attaining that. Now if I can just channel that determination towards other things....
So there's the doorway and inside she has the laundry bucket for a chair and you can't really see it, but she also has a plate of sugar cookies that she made out of snowballs and a sheet of ice. Really clever, huh?
This is the picture window. (From this view you can see why Mike calls this snow stonehenge)

And this is Rachel's addition. I think it is the base for the swimming pool. So imagine crystal clear water in that and with it positioned next to the snow fort....what a great place to visit....if you want to freeze that is!