The Redneck PMS pack

I think she was packing for an epic journey

In case you are wondering... if you allow a just barely three year old to pack her own clothes for a four day trip here is what you get

• 10 pairs of underwear
  
• 8 shirts
• 6 shorts
• 2 pairs of long pants
• 5 dresses
• and no fewer than 15 pairs of socks

Oh, and apparently she did not plan on sleeping because there were no pajamas to be found in the bag.

If you'd been a fly on the wall....

Me: Josie what shape do you want your cake...a circle or a rectangle?
Josie: Pink
Me: No, what shape. Circle or rectangle?
Josie: Pink
Me: It can be pink. I want to know what shape the cake should be.
Josie: Triangle
Me: Uhh....(thinking- I can do that, but what in the world will I put it in or on or cover it with....)
Me: How about heart shaped?
Josie: Yeah, sure.

Birthday Party!

Here are a few pictures from the party this weekend. Andy had an angel food cake to make strawberry short cake. Josie's cake was chocolate and Doug's cake was "golden vanilla." We had it at a park and it was for all three kids. It went great! Kids played on the play equipment. We had plenty to eat and drink. We had crafts, bubbles, side walk chalk, and a treasure hunt. The only hitch was not being able to get the candles to light and I had to re-hide some treasure hunt clues that the kids found early.
Then we went home and crashed for a few hours.

Um, yeah...he's mine

Today, for some reason I can't remember I ended up sitting down with Andy and writing numbers. I did it 0 to 9 in the first row, 10 to 19 in the next row, 20 to 29 in the next row, and so on. I lined them up so he could see the patterns that numbers made.

Yeah, he got excited about it ("Mommy! Why are there so many 8's!").

He kept me writing until we got to 149 and ran out of room on that side of the paper. He would have had me fill up the other side but I had used scratch paper so there was already writing on the other side.

Yeah he is MY nerdy child....

On this day five years ago....

Even though I was sure they were fraternal, I was still surprised when I saw Doug & Andy for the first time that their hair and complexions were so very different. Little did I know at the time, but their personalities were "fraternal" also.

Bumper Crop

We have some wild strawberries that grow beside the house. I don't remember getting that many strawberries in the past couple of years, but this year we seem to have a lot. The kids like to eat them right off the vine. They are interesting to see because the are almost round and have almost spiky rather than bumpy surfaces. They can be a little bitter but the children eat them anyway. They are also very delicate. If you wash them you must do it just before you plan to eat them because otherwise they spoil quickly.

On this day three years ago....

I was in the hospital having a C-section and then meeting my daughter for the first time.

Nursery Rhyme characters

Some days I wonder which of my children is wierder....

Doug can be goofy and he often makes up words....

Josie has this thing about her closet. It started simply with "I have a refrigerator in my closet with some salad in it" (It is pretend...there is no fridge in her closet.) Now, just about anything you can think of has "been" in her closet at one time or another: her "older sister", a movie she wanted to watch, and much more.

Tonight at dinner we were discussing what nursery rhyme costumes they wanted to create (and that we could easily make from stuff at home) for the special preschool dress-up days in the middle of this week.
Here is the list I suggested: the baker from Rub-a-dub-dub, little boy blue, carry a pail and be Jack or Jill, Old King Cole (we went to BK over the weekend and the kids picked up crowns...so that would be a cinch).
My children come up with:

Doug- a sheep. It doesn't matter if it is Little Bo Peep's white sheep or Baa Baa Black sheep because he just wants to be fuzzy. I'm thinking an inside out sweatshirt and the child is going to roast since this is the South and it is already May.

Josie- she wants to be a princess but she did briefly think about being the star from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. At least someone wants to use the crown even if I can't think of any nursery rhymes with princesses in them...queens yes, but not princesses and Josie was very specific.

Andy- he is dead set on being the wall from Humpty Dumpty. Not Humpty Dumpty himself, or even have a wall with part of him being Humpty Dumpty....he ONLY wants to be the wall.

Please repeat

This week at preschool the kids are studying mothers (or something to that effect).
I don't know what Andy's teachers said to him today or what caused it, but he came home all fired up about showing me that he loved me.
He wanted to show me not by giving me hugs and kisses, but by helping me. So he was insistent on setting the lunch table by himself and helping to make lunch.
His motivation decreased as the afternoon went on but I can only hope that whatever was said at preschool gets repeated tomorrow!

The Power of 3

No I am not talking about having three kids and how that impacts your life (although it really does in so very many ways....)

I have actually managed to make a dent in my problems with "horizonalitis." You know that disease where every horizontal surface gets filled up?

Here is how I have done it. I have four problem areas (kitchen counter, dining room table, my dresser, my bedside table). So what I have done is that every time I have "a minute" I take three things off of one of the surfaces and put them away, throw them out, re-purpose them, whatever it is that needs to be done with them.
By Friday afternoon I had the dining room table virtually clear. This evening the kitchen counter is significantly clearer and I have made a noticeable dent in my dresser (the bedside table has it's own issues but is definitely clearer).
The cool thing is that as the clutter has gone down I can tell my stress level goes down. It's a constant battle because I am fighting other people in the house and it is so easy to dump the mail, dump the preschool products, dump the various flotsam that we seem to come home with on a regular basis; however, I think that I am winning the battle.