Mercifully, 3 1/2

My dear and sprited, curious and independant, free-willing, bright, (and all those other euphemisims for WILD BEYOND COMPREHENSION) darling baby Casey is turning 3 and 1/2. It is about time.

You see, many many older-style baby and child development books concur with my personal experience with the phenomenon that is the major shifts that can frequently accompany turning 3 1/2. Why 3 1/2? Whats the difference from 3 or 4? With some children, it can be monumental. For example:

Casey at 3 was still very much "if you put him down on the ground (meaning out of the high chair, stroller, or cart) he will most likely run away to China." He didn't care one iota for numbers or letters. He did not care too much for storytime. Or rules. Or me. Or clocks. Or clothing. Or danger avoidance. He did wierd things at all moments, and talking to him about it felt about as useful and futile as, well, talking to a little cat?

I know lots of kids, Greta and Mickey included, who did the colors numbers letters shapes thing at like 19 months. this isnt about that as much as it is about no matter what baby-circus tricks they might be trained to parrot back, the 3 1/2 year old seems all of a sudden to genuinely care about this stuff.

Casey, who literally plugged his ears when I sang the Alphabet Song, who, when asked how old he was would say something like "BooBeePooPeeBum" or perhaps give you a raspberry with tightly shut eyes, now sits down and tries very hard to write! He draws. Letters. Shapes. He wants to make you a letter, he wants to write his name, his age. He wants to know where Miss-a-gan is on 'da globe, and wants to cook and measure according to the recipe, not what he feels like throwing on the floor.

In other words, he has rapidly and dramatically "caught up with" where I kind of thought most 3 1/2 years old "should be" (i know, i know, we are all unique flowers but still I worry) literally overnight. So cool!

He wants to be good. To do right. Way more than he used to. He IS rascally, he IS a class clown, he DOES march to his own drummer, and he DOES NOT live to make Mommy So Proud. this is very different from Greta and Mickey, and very difficult sometimes. But I am so glad that he is the way he is, and this new positive attitude is so welcome! If someone gets hurt, he immediately cares, goes to see if they are ok, and sadly he did not do this before. I worried! I thought he might be mean for real. I thought he might be irrepairably damaged from the arrival of his brother Charlie at such a tender age. He was just turned 2, we were planning on quietly homebirthing a little baby for him to oogle in the morning, and instead, Mommy goes to the hospital for a WEEK and can't walk or play with him for a MONTH. It was really hard for him, the whole Baby Charlie thing.

I even secretly thought he was goin to jail sometimes. But now, I really see the light. I am happy for Casey. I think he is the most like me, we are both fire signs, and when I was a kid, that LAST thing I wanted to do was behave. I placed the value of making the crowd laugh over ANYTHING, often to my own detriement, even well into adulthood. Can you imagine?

; )

Looking forward to 4!

bye bye babysitting!

Today is our last day of babysitting my niece, Ava, so we are doing "just books" today. We have had too many tussles and tears (sometimes mine!) trying to do too much when she is here--and it isnt that she is "bad", its that it is all really insane. She cries, then Charlie cries, then she needs a bottle then he wants to nurse, then Casey dissapears for a looong time into the bathroom to do wierd bad stuff with soap and makeup and electricity, then Mickey begs for snacks, then Greta is pouting that no one even cares about her drawing....then Ava poops then Charlie poops but it didnt stay in the diaper, at all, so bath time, excpet Casey wants one too, do we have that many dry towels? Why is Mickey crying? Oh my god Steve is here for lunch--except ummm tee hee sorta forgot to make lunch for 7 people, too busy with poo-baths..... and don't get me started on musical naptime crib rotation!

Its too hard.

Wwe are watching little movies about clouds on Cosmeo and doing Dinosaur spelling, making times tables, calendars, watching History of Valentines Day, and How They Make Straws....but I still dont like how crabby and hectic it has made me, so today---just books. Story books. Fairy Tales, the good old scary kind. I am all for these archetypes of good and evil and the kids LOVE them. It is something I can do with one hand on the one baby's bottle and one hand keeping Charlie where he needs to be. I usually need a kid to hold the book for me but hey thats not too much to ask when you get such a nice colorful dramatic listening experience!

For the rest of today, maybe they will be doing a little more leveling-up of their pokemon than usual, but hey, its all good.

School and sledding

We have been babysitting again this week, but I am used to it now---besides the fact that the only little chunck of sparetime I get for relaxing, blogging or cleaning are gone, having another baby here is OK.

We have been doing more and more worksheet type stuff on Enchanted Learning, this week was more French, more arithmetic, and finishing up some crafts that have been half finished. The kids have been playing their videogames as a number one choice for free time, over spongebob or anything---Mickey is advancing on his Pokemon, and his racing games, and Greta is doing Pokemon Colleseum along with typing more in her story she is working on.

We did some "Bell Curve" experiements with 100 dice rolls and they helped me write a grocery list and menu.

It has finally snowed here, and so we went sledding Wednesday night in the pitch dark of our favorite park, and to say it was a BLAST would be an insulting understatement to the magical evening.

Sometimes when you are having a really special and genuine life experience, cool stuff comes out of your mind and through your mouth. So many came out that night that I tried to remember much of them. Here are some QUOTES from the children while we were sledding that night.

Casey: I love trees so much. Trees love children and they always live here. Trees are so so so big, bigger than Dada. I love this park so much. Can we sleep in the snow?

Mickey: I love our life, Mama. I love to be alive. I have never had so much fun, ever. This is my favorite day of my life.

Greta: Look at all those cars. They don't even know we are in here (the park). People are so busy, they are too busy to wonder. Too busy to wonder about anything. And then they wonder why they are so sad. I think little kids are gullable, but I am not anymore. i am formed now. If I went to school, I would be okay. I wouldn't be all like I have to love Barbie. I want to show people that frogs and bugs are for everyone, not just boys. But I still would rather learn outside than in a building. I think little kids don't know who their parents are, they dont know if it is the TV, the kids at school, or the teacher or their Mom and Dad. They dont know right and wrong, but I do. I wouldnt do something bad just because some kid told me to. But littler kids might. They shouldn't go to school until they are formed, you know, like they are solid.

Have a great weekend!

lights out!

Last week our power went out around noon. I was home alone--well besides the FIVE children whom I was taking care of. My own four, and my baby niece. We went about our day in relative same-ness, except for the absence of white noise such as humming fridge, humming fans, and humming computer motor. It was very peaceful and I was struck hard by the fact that we use too much electricity (duh, but still...) and that I wanted to really push this to a new level once we survived whatever it was that we were about to survive.

I wanted to call someone, DTE energy for a start, then Steve to complain/commiserate..but our phone was out, since it plugs into the wall. We had an old-school phone but since we just moved (haha August) it is in some box in the garage in the dark cold. I have a cell phone, but darn it, it was in Steves coat pocket at work. I had no car to take us all out of there, as our van is dead. Hmmm. SO we played simon says. Charades. I'm thinking of an animal that starts with ___. And so on. We started to get a little cold around 3 and we did excersizes. Jump jump dance dance, again, I wanted to try to remember to do this all the time, it was fun and funny. The sun was still shining and we were pretty ok. My niece's feet were icy in her socks and so I wrapped her in a blanket. Charlie had a cold nose so I put his warmest sweater on him. He kept wanting to nurse, which he is prone to do if things are "weird" for comfort, and I was getting less and less excited about lifting my shirt in the cold room---brrr!

A main reason I did not freak out about the prospect of the part of the day that was fast approaching called DARK, was that my friend Amanda was on her way over for a scheduled visit around 4:30. She had a cell phone, and she had a car. Not that we could have all legally fit in it or anything, but I felt great comfort at knowing she was on her way. Steve worked until 5:30 that day and so woulndt have been home until maybe 5:45 and we would be in complete darkness by then. Do we have flashlights? Do we have candles? No.

So she got there and we told her the whole thing, and she immediately went to the dollar store, and invited Casey and Mickey to come with her, which they loved. I got to use her phone to call Steve, who immediately got on the case of DTE through his work phone. We lit ten vanilla jar candles and it smelled really nice, despite the coldness that was just starting to become noticable. Again, if we had a car, we would have all made a fun night of it at the mall or restaurant or something, anything!

We didnt beg Steves parents to come rescue us, nor would my parents have without elaborate and grand to-do, I can only imagine, and we didnt have enough money for a hotel, which would have been soooo fun and nice, so we just settled in. Amanda was here and her husband arrived seperately from his work, and we lit a fire. We have a great fireplace, but I couldnt do it with all the little babies and tots. It is right on the ground, you can walk right into the fire, and it takes more than one grownup to tend and guard, similar to camping.

Since it got dark at 5ish, we sort of tricked the kids into going to bed at 7:15, and after 2 hours of pitch dark fire-gazing, they were ready to sleep. It was so awkward having NO white noise of any kind, and keeping the big kids from waking Charlie was hard. Charlie had a fitful night, waking and nursing almost hourly, and he was really cold. It was so dark, so cold, and so scary and tense. He didnt understand what was going on and neither did Casey, who woke at 4:50 am and started talking loudly to us--waking the baby whom there was NOTHING to do with---think about it, his life is crawling on the floor--cant do that---playing in his highchair with toys---not really the same in blackness, eating--we didnt have much that didnt need to be cooked---so he nursed and cried and hit me and tried to go to the fire and I had to wrestle him...tensions were now climaxing, sleeplessness settling in, and I all of a sudden barked at Steve to call his parents (at 6 am)and ask them for the use of their minivan for the day. They said yes, and I suggested to Steve that he take the little boys and drive them to his moms. I needed them out of here, they needed to get warm in the car, and so they went.

I called my sister around 645am who was bringing her baby back at 7:30 am to say through chattering teeth that, ummm, you really cant bring your baby here it is like 40 degrees. I told her we were going to have use of a minivan today and so she suggested we spend the day babysitting at her place---hooray!!! If she wouldnt have said this I was going to maybe try to go to Ann Arbor or Great Lakes Crossing or something far away with the kids for the day---although the logistics escaped me, with my niece needing warmed bottles for formula and special nap routine of dark rocking chair and silence...I was afraid of how to do all that at a mall???!!!

I woke up Greta and Mickey and had them come sit by the fire while we waited for Steve and the little boys to return, I fumbled for toothbrushes, outfits and girl scout vest in the dark back rooms for them...

Steve returned with a gloriously fancy minivan (Leather seats, DVD player, 100 gadgets and buttons, OnStar, rear heaters, etc) and we all piled in. Despite its fanciness, GOD is that van a pain to access the third row! I am sure the makers of it thought if you have more than 2 babies then maybe you should get a different car. We have two "babies" in carseat-speak, meaning needing to be buckled, etc, but with Ava, we were going to have three.

It is the kind of van where there are two chairs in front, two chairs in middle, and a bench in the back. (MY minivan has two benches with easy walking access to all spots) But how do you reach the back? How can a grown up get back there to do up a baby or toddler's seatbelt? It is SO HARD! You like blow out your spine, how would an old person do it? Do they really expect you to like crawl back there like some insane cave dwelling gymnast? What if I had nice clothes on, some little work dress or heels-n-hose? With my big butt sticking out, popping buttons and bulging my eyes out? What if we had multiple errands and had to get in and out many times??? Maybe this is why the wierd rich people never take their kids anywhere, maybe they have captains chairs in their fancy vans hahaha

We had Greta and Mickey go in the back row. They can do their own seatbelts. We put baby Charlie and Casey in the 2 captains' chairs. Yay. We drove dada to Panera with us and I ran in for a sack o bagels for us all in the car. We took him to work and then headed east 20 minutes to my sister's house. We spent the morning in welcome warmth, playing with someone else's toys, and kind of just relaxing. We didn't do any real school work that morning, but we did watch a great show about these boys who raise up puppies to get adopted out, and how hard it is for them to let them go. We ate lunch. Then we got to experience the thrills of three "babies" in the magic leather van. OH MY GOD. First of all, I had two non-walkers, so I had to run out to the car and back in the house for various babies. I didnt know who to seat where in this idioticlly designed thing! DO I put the baby Ava in her bucket in the third row? How will I get back there to put the seatbelt all on her carseat? To do so I would have to uninstall my little boys' seats. So I could kneel on the seat to lurch over the back of it to do all this, with my bum smashing against the ceiling of the van...Do I put baby Ava in the middle row in one of the captains chairs and have Casey go in the back row and see if Greta can shimmy back there to do his seatbelt???ARGGGG

The place we were going to was about 4 miles from there, thats what really stunk. We made it, and Greta learned tons about weather and made a barometer. She even emerged in a good mood when it was all over. I will spare you the rest of the ordeals, but we did not go to mcdonalds like is customary during girl scouts. We already ate, we spent too much at Panera as it was, and I looked about as good as you would expect me too from esentially pulling an all-nighter in my living room with yesterdays makeup and yesterdays tiny ponytail and well we just werent going to mcdonalds with 2 babies who cannot walk.

By the time afternoon rolled around, after many phone calls to our house, the answering machine picked up, and so we knew we had power again! It was fantastic to come home to warmth and lights, and we all cheered and danced and shouted.

I have been fanatical about turning lights off now, and have lit the candles every night as a reminder of what we went through, and what we don't "need" and what we do. Who knows, maybe our energy bills will decrease, but thats not the point. I was so disgusted by the thinking about comforts that we all can SO quickly and easily take advantage of, warmth, light, electronic products, little conveniences like nightlights and remotes, fans and CD players...I felt greedy, guilty, somehow lazy and spoiled. I am going to do more soul-searching about this, and apply more of whatever it is that I need to discover, to our lives.

Chili

Yesterday we finally got to do some good solid work learning about Time Zones. Again, the Enchanted Learning website has proven itself to be a real shining star as far as little worksheets are concerned. We learned when and why the 24 world time zones were invented, and how that affects us here and now. Steve told us about how when he was in Wyoming, they were on Mountain Time, and it seemed to be the neglected time zone as far as Television was concerned---nothing really came on when it said it was going to, and we also talked again about NewFoundland Time, and about the cities that do not participate in daylight savings time and how odd it kind of all is!

They continued work on their basic arithmetic, and we finally finished the Christmas Thank you cards! Day after day of layered glue, glitter, more add-ons...now I have to make envelopes with them and mail these things out before spring : )

We did more with Roman Numerals, and hopefully their rediculous (to me) "inability" to read a standard analog clock will finally be a thing of the past! (we did Roman Numeral clock-games and for some reason that was ok)

We went bowling with our friend Beth and her son Dionte, which was very fun and funny. Casey got to bowl, of course, and memories of last year bowling league came up...how was that a year ago? It feels like a few weeks...and yet a lifetime. We went to a cute cute tiny bowling alley by our new house, but it was expensive! Nowhere has decent rates for Saturday or Sunday, and with three kids it adds up fast.

Greta is done with Charlotte's Web and I am anxious to see if she likes the Beverly Cleary books which I want to steer her towards, as much as I did as a child. I feel like a bit of my affinity for the 1950s stems from those books, along with Nick at Nite and hours of thumbing through my grandma's vintage Good Housekeeping magazines!

Today they were so quiet and so serene, just making stuff and playing together at the tablem that I just let them do their good work of childhood, and did the breakfast dishes, put them all away, chopped up everything for Chili and had it all cleaned up and simmering by 10 am! VERY ABNORMAL---but great. They were making all sorts of stuff out of craft supplies, and being super pensive and it is sunny and gorgeous and every single thing within sight is covered in ice, sparkling sparkling ice...I did not have on my jazz or any music, no TV, just 4 happy little ones working and doing their thing. It reminded me so much of the rare quiet art classes I had back at Liggett, where we were "allowed" to just use the medium provided and do what we wanted...it was so perfect. Even the dawn dish soap had a blue light-shadow that stretched across the whole sink from the sun beams that pour in the entire long-side of our house. It has been raining almost continually since August, so I didn't even truly realize how much sun comes in a south-facing house in the northern hemisphere. It is all day long. SO so so beautiful.

After chili lunch, which Steve was so, so happy to see instead of more bread bread bread, I put Charlie to bed and took Casey outside to "sled". I pulled him all over the property, and up and down the sidewalks. I told Greta and Mickey to yell if Charlie woke up. So after at least 30 minutes, we came in, and I could hear Charlie SCREAMING. The oldest 2 seemed so oblivious, I was quite surprised. So now it is 2 oclock, no naps yet, and I just dont get it! I am going to lay him down again in a minute here and start shushing everyone again.

We may or may not be fixing the minivan instead of replacing it, but until we have money, we can't even diagnose it. A few more weeks, at least.

Tomorrow I start babysitting my 9 month old niece again. We need the money, but I am afraid of how it will all work out. She needs this super quiet naptime, two of them, and I do not get how Charlie's naps will fit in, or if Casey will even be having nap at all. Without the hope of taking them somewhere, with no car, I get a bit panicky. I am trying, trying everyday to have a serene heart in everything that I encounter, and this babysitting will be a true test of a skill that is only really in development phases! There will be crying, there will be disruption, but it still beats delivering pizzas in the slushy snow, or working some cash register with snotty teens at night...so I am grateful.

very sad news

Today we do not get to go to Campfire Scouts, as our minivan is dead. I blew the transmission or something. I am a leader and I can't go. I am really upset about this.

We are looking to get a little church bus type of VAN-van with our tax return, if we get a tax return. We are looking at Ford Clubwagons and Chevy Expresses. It would have to be around 2 or 3 thousand bucks, and again, that is IF we get money back. It would be great to have four kids and their bikes and strollers and even a pal or two to fit in the new van....I feel like an adulteress even talking about a "new van". Poor Poor Vanny, so cool with her bumper stickers.....

I cannot even begin to say how sad and bad this is for me and us and homeschool. Plus I never ever wanted our BELOVED minivan to "go out" like this.

More to come....but this morning we are going to do our activity we had planned for Campfire (which I wrote) and learn more about Time Zones and Area Codes and Zip Codes.

week in review

Hello there!
So far this week, we have done alot of schoolwork-at-the-table. We are getting over various infections and illnesses and are staying home, which is fantastic and difficult. Its hard to go out, but then it is so fun to be out, you know?
But this week has been very classic, breakfast, school, lunch, freetime, crafts, clean up, dinner, tv/videogames, baths, stories,nitey nite.

This week Greta has been studying about George Washington and Charles Darwin, who they were and what they did, etc. She has been VERY into dinosaurs again, so she has been working on a 2007 dinosaur calendar. She has started to do "Logic Puzzles", which we did with a dinosaur theme. She has started to do verbal analogies, such as Glove:Hand ---Hat:Head. She is working on a French vocabulary book which she has to cut and color herself and then put together. She is continuing in daily drill of borrowing and carrying without tears, and today we started Roman Numerals. It goes without saying that she continues to draw and sketch constantly, and her characatures are looking better than the actual thing...at risk of sounding idiotic, she really might have a career or at least a life long love, of drawing, for real.

This week Mickey has been studying about George Washington, and has been working on a 2007 Ocean Animals calendar. He also started easier logic puzzles, which he adored. He also started doing verbal analogies, and did better than i thought, only got a couple "wrong" due to not knowing the words Monsoon and Equivalent. The Roman Numerals was his idea, and he loved learning them as well. We went up to 50, "L" and are going to do lots more, perhaps even a segway into a ROME Unit which I would adore! I wanted to "Do" Greece before Rome, but whatever. He has been continuing in daily drill of plus and minus, and can carry but not borrow at all, and shows great interest in mulitiplication and we do more of that than anything else right now. He is making his own little French book of numbers, and enjoys coloring now, something he did not like at all until this past year. He is learning the parts of a sentance, and starting to draw characatures as well.

They both are very into Tamagotchi, and the Neopets website. They both draw imaginary Pokemon-type creatures and make up fantastic "stats" for them. They make pretend money, tickets, and do shows for Casey and Charlie most of the time.

COOKING is one of our themes for Winter 2007, and we have been watching many episodes of Good Eats and Nigella Lawson. We havent done as much cooking as I want to yet but we plan on it soon.

Casey, the dear little squirrel, mostly wants to be wild and do things that would work out better at a park or gymnasium. He does enjoy gluing and painting but has been fighting with Charlie so much that he seems to be forever in some type of punishment/exhile. Wish I could say something more positive but this is the true blog. He has "reverted" to running around doing idiotic destructive things like spilling and dumping and climbing and I am most dissapointed. Hope this changes ASAP, cause frankly it sucks.

His happy times are when Mickey and/or Greta play wild games with him, such as rolling, tumbling, hiding, jumping, and screaming. He likes very gentle cuddling times with me, but does not like relating to me as "one of the students" yet, at all. He will sit for stories at bedtime, because they are better than sleeping, but when we try to read during the day, he is likely to chatter....

Charlie has been hitting everyone in the face, which is naughty, but otherwise continues to like Teletubbies, Boobah, and coloring, walking around on his knees, and playing with his toys. He takes one big nap now, and goes to bed around 730 or 8 pm, with 1 or 2 nightwakings. He also throws his food and cups and that has been bad. Especially with the kids laughing uproariously, making Charlie clap and beam with pride. (I told the clappers they can clean the Ramen off the windows!)

Due to some discussion about the correct pronunciation of "Newfoundland" during lunch today, we are going to learn about time zones this aftrnoon! See how that works?

Girl scouts

Yesterday (Thursday) was Greta's first girl scout meeting of the year. This is not as simple as it sounds. It is a major production which seems to encompass a full day and even more when you count pre-work. Perhaps some of my more organized, less sleep-challenged readers will think I am some kind of hideous chaotic pitiable jerk when I tell about what is involved. Others without kids simply won't get it, or might want to never have them. The people who think "I cant homeschool" will feel even more evil towards me. But it is all normal, just hard:

Since the meetings are from 1 to 3pm, about 20 miles from our house, me and the three boys need to do something on that side of town during the meeting as it is too faraway and too short to come back home. We have settled on McDonalds everytime so far. It has a playscape that is a really good one, and we spend under 4 dollars on 2 Medium Fries and a Small pop (of which Mickey and Casey get about 50 dollars in free refills at the serve yourself thingy). So they need to look nice for the public, I want them to have non-gross socks for the shoes-off part, non crusted faces, a nice comfy outfit, clean hair, etc. I want Charlie to look super cute and have an outfit that doesnt pop all open when he crawls. He needs to be extra clean and precious for the part when the girl scouts all come oogle over him and carry him to show they are so strong, etc. So no baby food in his hair, no boogers, no earwax, no chapped cheeks, etc. So baths and shampoos all around the night before no matter what.

Greta has to have her vest, a super outfit, clean hair, any projects or materials or permission slips, and yesterday, a snack. Could I just go to Farmer Jack and pick up some damn Oreos and room temperature apple juices? No. I had to make oatmeal cookies. And package them and keep the little kids out of them and the flour and the oven and the oil and we were stepping on raisins with our new shoes and grinding them onto the bed we apparantly walk on now....

I have to look super good but beware! If I am too Hip or Wacky, these old church ladies h a t e me, I mean, HATE. So it is my call, but it really does suck when I was the big superMom that it was ok to talk to at xmas party with my layer-bleach job but now with my better hair it was the Eyebrows Raised again. Sick Hallmark losers. Old rougey-dinosaurs. They're lucky I didnt go blue yet. So I have to have an outfit planned of some sort which alows me comfort and convenience to be on the floor of McDonalds pulling Charlie out of the pipes without anything popping out that may be stretchmarked if you get my drift. So a scuba suit with mask?

We have to have gas in the car, or money to do so. We have to have diapers, wipes, extra outfit in case of blowouts, baby Motrin, snacks in case of some kind of traffic jam, cell phone, and umbrella stroller because the girl scouts has stairs and no elevator and so i have to at one point, ( 4 points really!) carry Charlie AND a stroller. We have to have 4 dollars for McDonalds.

I realize that wearing clothes and driving to places are part of human living. But for some reason, orchestrating this particular trip always is a hard one. By the time we get up and out of McDonalds, coats back on, shoes back on, bags, stroller, and go pick up Greta, I can scarcely understand what the leader lady is saying. Its all these little girls screaming and pulling and I am being handed (in my free hand that doesnt have a 30 pound baby a stroller a backpack and Casey's scruff) I get to receive permission slips, tiny badges, little scraps of a craft they have to finish and bring back next time ( ! ) and the box from our cookies we sent.

Does my nine year old have arms? Does she have a bag? OH MY GOD DO NOT TAUNT, QUESTION, OR LOOK DIRECTLY AT OR NEAR GRETA DURING THIS APPARANTLY SENSITIVE TIME. If she is carrying so much as a sticker, do not ask her to grab something else. Thses girls are W-O-U-N-D U-P! the only way to get out of that stuffy hot little church basement is quickly as possible. If I start tryin to talk to her, even how was the meeting hon, it is tears or worse. Like a slumber party. She is like hot and riled and wigged out beyond control. We try to get to the car with little incident, although undoubtedly she will lash out at Mickey and claim that he crushed her in the door or looked at her on purpose or worse. I have to open all the car windows and just be really nice and loving. In a couple of miles she will tell us all about the meeting.

The time we have at McDonalds is usually nice. I am loving how the boys get along when we are there, and, there are usually nice kids there, although there are lots of exceptions, those kids usually being the ones whose parent is some old old grandpa who isnt even in the playare part of the restaurant, and whose angry angry beastial grandson seems to deeply enjoy torturing other kids instead of playing happily. There are other mean kids, even ones with moms, but they are always boys, and they are always incredibly, seethingly furious and angry-vibed. AND their parent is never in the vicinity.

I sit and play with the boys, and we have a great ole time. They like me to count how fast they can go from point A to point B, and they want me to Lookit Lookit Lookit. Why wouldnt I? I guess I wasnt under the impression that I was there to text message someone or to read the paper. Sometimes I do chat on my new cell phone, and sometimes I even scribble out a little list of sorts. But not to the point where my kid is secretly running an evil empire right in the red tube and I dont have a clue, you know?

So that was Girl Scouts. They liked the oatmeal cookies! Now onto Campfire Scouts...

plain little day

Yesterday Greta did alot of work on facts about Michigan. We got the worksheets off of Enchanted Learning website. We all worked more on our thank you cards for xmas but it is going to take along time before they are mailable, as it has been a 178 step process making and painting and glittering them and then we are going to have to make envelopes to fit, and then go buy stamps, etc....but hey art and writing rolled into one : )

Mickey worked on Cosmeo and some of the music and math activities on there.

Casey snapped green beans for dinner and we all took Gretas girl scout cookie order form up to Daddy's work. From there, we decided to go somewhere and went to the Troy library, since we were all cute and clothed for Dada's co-workers...this place is way cool! HUGE kids section with toys and puppets and just enormous. We have to go back very soon and load up on stuff. We have about 4 or 5 bucks in fines due and it is like this mental thing where i think we can't go to the library now...I need to just pay the darn thing, but I never have any cash on me....ok Im done for now.

repeat offender

Like a moth to a flame, like an alcoholic, like someone who gets out of jail just to go right back in, I cannot seem to get it in my head that when I get up early, before the kids, all is right on Earth, and when I actually sleep a little bit, it is a garbage dump of chaos and fury. But it sooo hard when Charlie gets up at 12, 3, and 5---with an aoccasional visit from Casey too---to then just crack out of bed in the cold cold dark to clean and risk a shower which will wake them all up too early....what is the solution? I am too exhausted to figure it out today. But hopefully tomorrow I will tell all of our marvelous plans---as soon as I can sit up awake enough to type them or find the paper plate they are written on ; )