Add a little color to your life
Living in a “key” state has proven to be pretty annoying. The constant phone calls, tv commercials, people knocking on the door…
I am soooo ready for this election to be over. I don’t care who you are voting for, it is time for a little humor - and seriously what is more funny than Will Ferrell as G Dubs? Love him.
Ok I can barely roll out of bed in time to get my kids fed, lunches made, and out the door each morning so the idea of doing this is way beyond anything I can imagine (like when a friend of mine tried to get me to do an exercise bootcamp at 5am three times a week. NO WAY). Anyway, I thought it was just an amazing thing to do. What a cool cool dad.
There are some really great parenting magazines out there these days with great articles about people like the guy above. And you know I love magazines. Cookie is one that I pick up every now and then. I love how they always tell you about great affordable places to vacation. I am thinking Mexico
The other magazine that I picked up again recently is Wonder Time
I actually just picked this one up for the first time since I saw it in my OB/GYN’s office last year. I love the photgraphy and interesting articles. So much better than the magazines that were out when my older boys were babies.
Last year I posted the article about the Unhurried Child.
I am going to repost that blog entry as a reminder to myself, slow down, relax, and enjoy the now.
Posted 9/07
Last week while I was waiting for a doctors appointment I picked up a magazine called Wonder Time. I can’t remember the last time I read a parenting magazine. I stumbled across an article called The Unhurried Child. For many years I lived by the philosophy that was presented in the article. But as my kids grew and were involved in more and more activities, and then there was one more kid….well things became a little hurried. Bedtimes are always the worst. Hurry up and brush your teeth, hurry up and take a shower, hurry up and get your pj’s on. Then in the morning, hurry up and eat your breakfast, find your shoes, find your backpack, etc.
So I’m reading this article and it’s like a wake up call. Especially when I came to this part
I picture a recent bedtime. Ben scoots along the floor, tummy down, toward his pajamas, announcing, “I’m a prowling crocodile!” I have no imagination left on this particular evening, so I don’t say, “Let’s pretend those pajamas are your prey!” or even “Scary!” What I say is: “I’m setting the alarm for 15 minutes. When it goes off, that’s when I turn the lights out, whether or not we’ve read our chapter yet.” It’s a miserable idea. Yes, he gets ready lickety-split, but the cost is too high: I see his hands shaking while he pulls his pajama top on, the worried knit of his eyebrows when he scuttles into bed. It’s one thing, of course, when you’re late for work or school or your flu shot, and you really do need to prod the little slowpokes into action. The world can’t always wait just because your children would prefer to lie on Coat Mountain rather than put on their jackets. But this? This is another thing; it’s just bedtime.
Wow. That could be our house on any given night. But it wasn’t always this way. We used to live a slower paced life. There was a time when there was no rush.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately. A couple days ago the workers cut our power so Cole and I sat out front and looked for bugs. We found a snail that was so small, tiny really. He named him Gary after the snail on Spongebob. Then when the snail went back in his shell we decided that he was taking a nap. Cole thought it would be a good idea to sing some songs to try to wake him up. We tried his favorite, “hey hey you you I don’t like your girlfriend” but it didn’t work. We then tried some Green Day and out popped the little snail. We then decided to rename him Billie Joe (after the lead singer of Green Day). But in the end Cole decided that his name should be Anakin. We built him a little house out of sticks, found him some rolly polly friends and a few ants as well. We had a great time. I had a great time.
Today we had lunch together prior to his first full day of preschool. We were pressed for time and just as I was about to tell him to eat faster when the mom behind me started rattling off a bunch of commands to her son, “eat faster or we will leave right now, wipe your mouth, don’t talk so loud (although everyone in the place could easily hear HER), sit still, are you listening to me?? And it just kept going. Cole and I sat in silence, listening to them and then he looked at me and said, “do I need to eat faster??” I smiled at him and said, “take all the time you need buddy.”
Because being late for preschool really isn’t the end of the world.
Having some blog issues lately but hopefully it is back in working order.
We had a great visit with the Grandparents, thanks for coming to see us!
And besides that we had some fun in the leaves.
I am the last one holding out around here as Andy came down with it yesterday.
Good thing he was chugging the Gatorade at football yesterday
Because he started puking late last night
The last game was a win- and the sign was a hit.
Gramma and Grandad are heading up from Texas in a few days- hoping to get this bug out of the house by then!
Got the bleach working overtime!
Cole woke up feeling better after only 2 middle of the night pukes. I am still feeling ok, just getting tired of the sleepless nights with the pukers.
And if anyone wants to know what my stomach flu diet is, well it started a few years ago. The bug had gone through the kids and it was about a week or so later. We went to Florida, came home, I thought I was in the clear. The night we flew in I had a HUGE dinner. And about two hours later it started coming up. Without getting too gross here let me just say that I had that meal twice.
So now every time the bug rips through our house I scale back my food intake and try to stick to things that are not chunky, like fruit smoothies. Now obviously I can’t live in fruit smoothies because I am a girl that really likes to eat, but I try to limit it.
I have noticed that Austin is doing it all on his own. Eating very little. I hope he doesn’t get it, it always takes him out.
Laurie you mentioned wearing masks! I never thought about that. Hmmmm.
Austin has his last football game today and Andy and Blake made the final banner. Of course there is now paint all over my new desk, the kitchen walls, etc. As for my new desk- I could show you a picture but it is a mess right now, half of it is still in boxes, and it has paint supplies all over it. Ok I will show you anyway, then I can show you when I get it all put together and cleaned up.
and here is the sign
ok best of all, check out my new plate for my truck
Love this tag because Cole does 5 for fighting a lot lately. He has now decided that his favorite blue jacket player is Jared Boll, because he too spends a lot of time in the “time out box” for fighting.
Thursday morning 1am- we wake up to Blake telling us he puked in his bed. Then every 20 minutes he puked again.
On cole’s floor
On his bathroom floor
On Cole’s floor again
then finally in the bucket the next three times. By 5am he was done. We were tired. He slept. Stayed home from school that day.
Friday he seemed better, went to school. Saturday morning at 5am, he puked up pizza all over the hallway.
He is fine now. We had plans to go out tonight. But while I am out picking up dinner for the kiddos Andy calls, Cole puked.
No date night. More puking. Austin is hiding. There is no way this one isn’t ripping through my whole house. And even though I have attempted my “stomach flu diet” (Laurie you know what I am talking about) I caved and ate Mexican food for dinner. Fingers crossed that it isn’t coming up tonight!
I hate this stuff, please go away.
We have a joke around here about my middle son. I have probably talked about it before. We call it Blakey World. And it is the place where he lives.
Everyone always comments about happy he is, always with a smile on his face. And while that is well and good, sometimes it is hard to penetrate into his “world”. He doesn’t listen, and even when you tell him things over and over he will turn around and say, “huh?” We all agree and Blakey World is a happy place, and would be a great place to live.
When he started school I feared that he would have a few issues, but he has done surprisingly well. In fact last year his 2nd grade teacher told me that she really wanted me to have him tested for the “gifted” class.
I should back up and say that while I think the gifted class is fine and everyone has their own thoughts about it, I never thought it was right for our family. I chose not to do it with Austin (he excels at Language Arts) so when it was brought up for Blake I blew it off. But she pressed on and told me that she was giving him 3rd grade level work and she felt he needed to be challenged more. Blake’s forte is math. He is the opposite of Austin. I went ahead and had him tested and just got the results back.
In order to be in the gifted class for math you have to pass two different tests, the actual math part and then the cognitive part. Blake doesn’t do well with cognitive- living in his own world and all. So while he aced the math part, he scored a few points below what he needed for the cognitive. Which made me crack up when I read the letter. And smile, because really I don’t think he needed to have extra work, he can barely remember to do his regular homework.
And as a perfect example, Austin (who like to criticize his brother for everything) just handed me Blake’s math paper laughing and said, “read number 14, the one he got wrong.”
It said
Explain what the equal sign means in this number sentence.
His answer
“tells what it eqeus.”
so not only is that a perfect “Blakey world” answer, stating the obvious- but he spelled “equal” wrong even when it was used in the question and he could have just looked at that and known how to spell it.
Man I love that kid.
So here is a good reason why I don’t do the daily picture thing that I said in the below post that I wanted to do.
My pictures would look like this
Austin has a total obsession with oral hygiene. He loves to go to CVS and stock up on different kinds of toothpaste, mouthwash, different tools for cleaning his braces, floss, etc. I guess there are worse things to obsessed with and no, it doesn’t run in the family as the other two have to be told over and over to brush their teeth. So when he came to me yesterday and said, “hey look….” well I just had take his picture.
And this
my little guy I mean Master Yoda eating a nutritious dinner of pizza rolls.
but I guess documenting my weird children or my lack of good dinner choices is our real life, so there you go.
