Jenny is a Beauty Shop Guy----NOT!

Jenny cut her hair. She hasn't cut it in SOOOOO LONG. Actually no one has cut their hair in such a long time that I was starting to believe my speech about "how only mom or the beauty shop lady cuts your hair" had worked.

UNtil Saturday morning.

And it is virtually unhideable. Seriously. Right smack dab in the front all the way to the scalp. I left it for a day thinking that maybe if I just parted her hair really far over to one side and combed it across that it would help hold the spikeys down, but no such luck. So this morning while we skipped church (I know, SINNERS, right??) I cut her some bangs. It looks a tad bit better, but still that one spot is like bald mountain!

If she lives to see her 8th birthday, it will be a miracle!!

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!

No more gum!

I hate gum. No really, I hate it. Furthermore, I hate having to cut gum out of long brown hair. Don't worry, it wasn't MY brown hair. It was the long brown hair of my spastic 7 year old. I am pretty sure that she could possibly be scarred for life now and never want to chew gum again. Let's hope so anyway. Because, really, having to strategically cut gum out of hair first thing in the morning is not my cup of tea. At all.

And to top it all off....Friday is picture day. Fun times. Hope the bald spot doesn't show.

Mud bath and facial anyone?

Last night I was reading Fablehaven. If you haven't read it yet, then you must. It's so good! Anyway, my mom called. We talk every Sunday. I answered the phone and began to talk to her. I was not worried about being "unavailable" to anyone else in the house, because I thought that daddy had it covered. He had Jenny and Jonathan out jumping on the tramp, and he and the two older girls were playing on the piano while Sidney crawled around in the living room. Anyway, like I said, I didn't worry about what anyone else was doing. Probably my first mistake. Mom and I were talking and Mike comes into the room and whispers that I need to come see something. I whisper back that I am talking. He says,"No, really, you need to come see something." Whatever, it better be good.
I follow him outside and he points to Jonathan on the tramp who is COVERED in mud. Oh yeah, and since the kids were all ready for bed, he is also wearing his JAMMIES!
I couldn't help it. I started to laugh. My mom asks me what is funny and I am trying to explain the scene that I am seeing. She and I giggle together for a sec and then I say, "I bet that I know where he made the mud at. I bet he turned on the faucet in the flowerbed and made mud." I turn that direction to look at the flowerbed and SURE enough! That is where he made his little mud bog at. We currently don't do much with this small flowerbed. It houses the electrical box thingy for the sprinklers and we don't have anything planted in it yet, so we have just been letting Jonathan dig in there with his toys and stuff. Apparently he has moved beyond just digging.But the funniest was yet to come. The fence right next to the mud bog is also COVERED in MUD!! I couldn't help it. At that point I just bust out laughing so hard! And it's hard to be mad at your kid and enforce any discipline when you are laughing, just in case you all wondered. When I was explaining to my mom about the mud on the fence, Jonathan piped up, "I was painting it brown, Mom".


So there you have it. Apparently we needed a brown fence and Jonathan gave himself a spa treatment!

What can I say. He is ALLLLLLLL BOY!

It's a spectacle!

At our house, dealing with "spectacles" is definately a "spectacle".



I have completely lost count as to the number of glasses that my "sweet darlings" Meghan and Rachel have had and/or broken. Frankly it's too many to count. But since they need them to see and therefore function in society...We just keep getting them pair after pair after pair after pair.....
Anyway, Meghan's broke (she helped them along) right before her birthday, which is coincidentally, RIGHT before CHRISTMAS. So, for Christmas Eve, we went to Walmart and picked up her new ones. She likes them. They are Hannah Montana frames! That sentence had an exclamation mark simply because you need to imagine that a 9 year old is telling you that bit of information. I hear it a couple hundred times a day. (Oh yeah, Meghan is the blond on the left)
And Rachel's broke a week after Meghan's broke. These two have a tendency to do this sort of copycat thing. ANYWAY, we couldn't afford to buy TWO new pairs right at the holidays, so we taped Rachel's up (she broke them on the earpieces), and told her to hang tight for a month or so. Well, last week she and I went to Walmart and had her eyes examined. Her prescription has changed quite a lot. (That's probably why she couldn't see the board at school) And she also got her new glasses. They are Hannah Montana frames TOO! LIke, Oh my heck!
(Rachel is the blond on the right)
They are both thrilled and we are poor and we'll see how long these glasses last.

Playtime gone wrong

I pride myself on not being the meanest mom around. I do really. However, at our house we DO have some rules that even I will admit, are a little strict. For example, we have a huge family room in our basement and we bought this ginormous couch to go in it. It cost a LOT of money and the rule is that the kids may NOT climb on or take cushions off of said couch. Guess what happens a good two or three times a week? You guessed it! Jonathan takes the cushions off the couch to climb on them. I try not to get TOO mad, but rules are rules. Today his friend Porter was over at our house and they were downstairs watching Disney and I was upstairs doing my list of a million things I gotta do today (read previous post). After a while Jonathan comes upstairs to use the bathroom and proceeds to tell on himself. That is always my favorite because then I don't have to try and figure out who did it, they've already told me! Anyways, he tells me that he took the cushions off to make a cave.



Wanna see?

Nice cave, huh?

Sitting nicely on the couch. Like they SHOULD'VE BEEN DOING ANYWAY!!

This picture is because Jonathan has days where he is the funniest kid I know. Today he wanted to wear the same clothes that he wore yesterday. We weren't going anywhere so I said sure. Plus it is one day less laundry of his for me to wash. (He did change his underwear though). But for some weird reason he decided to add his gloves. It makes quite a fashion statement, as I am sure you can see. I think maybe he is channeling Michael Jackson or something. Whatever. It's weird.

What's that over there?

"Oh, looky here. What is this? Let me get a better look."

"OOOOH! I think I want to touch it."
"If I just reach hard enough, I can grab a handful and then......."

YEP! YOu guessed it! It went straight into the mouth. And no. I do NOT have a picture of that. I was too busy trying to extricate the dirt from the cutest mouth on the planet. Maybe next time. 'Cuz I am SURE that there is gonna be a next time! Oh yeah!

What the ----?

Rachel is my sometimes sweet, sometimes naughty 1st grader. She has a fabulous teacher that tries to keep her in line during the hours that she is not with me and I am keeping her in line.

I love her curriculum for 1st grade. Each of the kids has a notebook and each week they have a new letter and number and for their homework they have to create a page for that letter and number. She also gives a few guidelines. For example, they have to write the letter upper and lower case each 20 times. They have to have a border to their page and it has to be in color. They usually have to think of an animal that starts with that letter and either draw and label it or write a fact about the animal. A few times she has wanted them to do word lists. For the letter "g", they had to have a list with words that use the "hard g" sound and words that use the "soft g" sound.

This week they are on the letter "L". There were the usual requirements: write the "L" in both upper and lower case, think of animals that start with "L" and write a fact about them, write 5 sentences about things you love ("I love..."), and write as many words as you can think of that have double consonant L in them. Like: pillow, smell, etc.

Maybe you can see where this is going....

Rachel had a great list of words. She wrote: well, tell, will, bell, fill, call,pillow, shell, sell, spell. And then she showed my expert parenting skills with her next word. Can you think of what it was? Oh yeah! She wrote....hell.

I said, "Rachel honey, you can't write a bad word on your homework. Think of a different word please."

And then I walked away and laughed.

No more mustache

IF it ever comes up at your house, here is a helpful hint for you.....

Black Sharpie marker comes off of skin when you scrub hard with a cotton ball soaked thoroughly in astringent.

The aforementioned method was thought up and used after repeated attempts at using soap alone did not do the trick. So, there you go. File that under "helpful hints".

*In case you were wondering...Jonathan was trying to give himself a mustache. It didn't work. Obviously. And no, I didn't take any pictures because he was being watched by his DAD and he was too mad to remember.

Not again...

I NEED A DAY OFF!!! Seriously...

So, on Friday my 7 year old came home from school and had cut her hair off...in the front...at the bang area...to the scalp. No way to hide that! But we did the whole "who cuts your hair?" talk AGAIN and I thought it was taken care of. Yesterday,my 8 year old calls me from school to tell me that she had cut her hair...to get the gum out of course. ARGH! (that is me screaming)

So, I got to give the "cutting your hair" talk...again. Not too mention the "gum talk".

And then today...I get a call from the school. My 7 year old is hiding under the table and won't come out. So I run up to the school with my other three kids in tow and talk her out from under the table. She didn't have her work done and she got found out by the teacher. Apparently that means we crawl under a table and hide. That'll definately help the work get done. Oh yeah! And then when I got home from that side trip, I get the mail and there is a letter from the school. Fabulous. Oh yeah,more bad news. My daughter failed her hearing screening and needs to have an audiosomethingorother evalutaion done ASAP. Of course.

I swear that my kids are really good kids and this is not normal for them all to be in trouble this many times in a few day period. Really. Maybe if I say it enough times I will also be convinced. The fact that I truly believe the school has my number on speed dial should be a clue to me...but whatever.

Anyway, I need a day off or a vacation or something. Maybe I need a new prescription of Vitamin P. Or some chocolate.