Ah, that Sophie

When I first began my blog I did so mostly so I could have a place to vent about how insane life was. I had a one year old, three year old and five year old and a husband that was rarely around to help out. Kylie and Audrey were pretty easygoing, but Sophie? Ah, she was a completely different story.

You know you love me mom.

At home she was just an angel, but nine times out of ten if I tried to go out in public with her it would result in tears. I remember calling my husband at work many times and asking him to please bring home some milk so I wouldn't have to take our precious darling to the store. Yes, it really was that bad. There is one shopping trip that particularly stands out in my mind. We were in Target and I was trying to hurry up as quickly as possible and get my groceries and get home. Sophie was screaming so much that an old lady followed us all over the store. I can only assume that she was waiting to see if I would lose it completely and beat the child so she could whip out her phone and call child services on me. She was shopping with a friend of hers and the friend came along and yelled at us to get out of her way. I turned around in tears and practically ran to the register. It was truly horrible. And the bad thing? I ended up forgetting half of the things I had gone after in the first place. 

I want to go outside now!

Luckily since then things have gotten much, much better. My husband is still rarely around to help out with the girls, but they have gotten older so taking them places is generally pretty easy. Or so I thought. Yesterday I had to make a return to gap. So Sophie and I set off on our merry way and had a really great time at the mall. We went into several stores and shopped and she was fantastic. Then as we were leaving I asked her if she wanted to stop by the consignment sale. I didn't need anything, I was just curious if some of the things I had put in the sale had sold or not. She told me that she wanted to go and off we went. Things went well until she saw this thing:

 

 She was convinced it was going to be hers. I was convinced I was not spending $40 on a toy for her. Tears ensued. I finally wrangled her into her carseat and drove all the way home with her kicking and screaming. I'm pretty sure my husband felt a sense of deja vu when he received a phone call at work yesterday with me crying about his spawn precious child and blubbering on about needing a drink. 

Who me? I would never throw a tantrum.

 I'm hoping that yesterday was just a weird fluke type thing because I truly think I'm getting too old for this kind of thing. But just in case we will be staying home today.

Anything boys can do...............

Who says a girl can't climb trees? And in a skirt no less.

 

Fall? Is that you?

Did you hear that loud noise this morning? That was me whooping with joy. When I went to take the kids to the bus stop this morning it was in the seventies. Seventies people! I think we might actually get a taste of fall. I know some of you are already wearing jackets, but we've been in sundresses, sandals and tank tops here forever now. I finally broke down last night and started pulling all the sleeveless things from the girls closets since October will be here this week (eek! How did that happen?!?). And yes, I fully realize that it will probably be in the eighties by this afternoon, but for now I'm happy.
Saturday I took the girls to Michaels for some arts and crafts. I've been hearing for ages now that they offer workshops for the kids on Saturdays, but just haven't really given it much thought. In other words I've been too lazy to haul myself out of bed and schlep them around town when I don't have to. A friend gave me the heads up that this Saturday they were doing an American Girl craft so I knew we needed to try to go. I'm so glad we did. The girls had a fantastic time.

 By the way, that my friend would be a cake for an American Girl doll. They also made party hats and banners so you guessed it. We've been having doll partys this weekend.

Other than that we pretty much stayed home and did nothing this weekend. It was glorious! I love having things to do, but sometimes it's really nice to just stay home and not have to go anywhere and do anything.

Guess HGTV will have to find some new design stars

I have come to the conclusion that my husband and I suck at the whole 'cutesy decorating/home repair thing'. It think it's pretty obvious after seeing my hand at arts and crafts that I won't have to worry about people beating down my door for help. And after this latest foray into home improvement (yes, I'm snickering as I type those words because well.... you'll see) I've also come to the conclusion that my husband won't have to worry about people calling on him for his services either. You see several a few weeks ago we decided that after ten years it was time to finally get around to doing some work on one of our bathrooms.  The work we were doing should have taken most people a day to complete, a weekend at most. Not us. It's about three weeks into this little project and we've still got work to do. Don't get me wrong, we can actually use the bathroom, but it still needs some things done to it. Like the door needs to be painted, some of walls need to be touched up, and we still need to buy some kind of storage cabinet thingy for the wall. That's right a thingy. It's a real word. Trust me. Anyway, Wednesday my darling husband did not have to go to work until 2:00 so I asked him if he would please put towel holder up so the kids would quit throwing the hand towel in the sink every time they washed their hands. He did and this is the result:

 Is it just me or can anyone else see the problem here? Hmm, anybody? Yes, that bad boy will be getting moved soon. Also, notice the mirror? Yeah, you only have to be about six feet tall to be able to see yourself in it. Which I guess for me is a good thing when I think about how much weight I've put on lately (damn those Hershey's!) so maybe I won't complain about that one. Too much. So for now I guess the powers that be at HGTV can rest easy because it looks like they won't have to worry about juggling their schedule to find us a time slot. Unless they want to add some comedy into the mix in which case we will proudly say "bring it on!"

Wordless Wednesday-Attitude

Linking up with Angry Julie Monday

Hershey is evil

Yesterday I had to run to target for some basic essentials. I thought I was doing so incredibly well not buying extra crap. That is until right before check out. There they were sitting on an endcap. Just teasing me. I could practically hear them saying "come on, you know you want me."   And I truly have no idea how it happened, but when I was putting my items on the conveyor at checkout there they were. Looking at me smugly because they knew they would win their fight with weak willed me. And they did. 

 

This and that

I'm a little slow going on this hotter than hell beautiful Monday morning so I'm using the ol' bullets today. 

• This weekend was drop off day for one of the big consignment sales in our area. Dropped the kids off with my mom an dad, came home, took the carseats out of the van and loaded that bad boy up! Now I'm crossing my fingers that everything sells because I have no clue where it will go if it doesn't. 
• Also made several trips to drop stuff off at goodwill that I just didn't have the time or energy to bother tagging. Is it wrong that I can't stop thinking about all the pottery barn kids bedding sets that I sent away? 
• It's 10:20 and my child is just now crawling out of bed. The rock star lifestyle is so hard.
• After two extremely crazy, busy weeks this was supposed to be my slow week. Apparently someone forgot to relay that little message to my calendar. We've got storytime, teacher conferences (Oh and trust me you'll probably be hearing about that one soon!), a field trip, and a bunch of other crap that I can't even remember right now. Oh, and I've allowed us to run out of toilet paper and milk so I'm going to have to kick it in gear and run to target soon. 
• Finally got some fall decorations out. Umm, yeah. It's still in the upper nineties here so I'm kind of thinking I may have jumped the gun a bit on that. 
• I gave in and let Sophie get her first webkinz this weekend. Not a smart idea considering we only have two computers and three kids all of whom now want to play online. Might have to dust off the wii so they'll quit fighting.
• I just pre-ordered the new Charlie and Lola dvd. This is one of the few kids shows that I can actually watch without wanting to stab myself in the eye. My kids and I love Charlie and Lola and they are going to be thrilled when it arrives!
• I'm on a search for some new itunes music. Any suggestions? 

And that is it guys, hope you all have a fantastic week!

Mommy is in trouble again

I have a confession to make. I swear. Not on an everyday basis, but sometimes things happen and a word or ten two may slip out. My husband keeps telling me that one day it's going to bite me in the butt and well.... I guess that day came.
First let me give you the back story. Last week my sidekick Sophie and I went to do some shopping. When we were leaving the shopping center a bus ran a traffic light and almost hit us. Scared the hell out of me. Needless to say the bus driver got an earful.  Then two days later we almost were run over by another bus. I kid you not, I could not make this up if I tried. I was running errands with the kids and as we were leaving our neighborhood they noticed a bus in someones yard dropping them off. They thought it was strange that a bus would pull into someones driveway and I was explaining to them that the bus was from a local group that works with mentally challenged adults. As we neared the exit of our neighborhood the bus driver started backing out. I guess he/she figured that being in a neighborhood as opposed to on the highway they didn't need to you know, look behind them. I had to slam on brakes to keep from being run over. Once again words were screamed spoken.
Apparently someone was listening in. Closely. You see, yesterday my husband had the day off work. Sophie was playing in the living room and basically minding her own business and for some reason he thought it would be funny to tease her. Why he insists on doing this I don't know, but he does. I wasn't in the room so I didn't hear exactly what he said but he later told me it had something to do with telling her that he was going to trade her in for a boy. She called him a stupid ass. He actually came into the room to fuss at me about it because according to him he knows exactly where she picked it up. Can you feel me rolling my eyes here?  I mean really. You act like one, you're gonna get called one. Apparently he doesn't agree with me so now I'm the bad mommy yet again. Oh well, I guess there are worse things I could be. Like a stupid......never mind, not gonna go there.

Wordless Wednesday

Multitasking

It starts early

Linking up with Angry Julie Monday.

For your viewing pleasure...........

Everytime I take out the camera to snap some pictures of my kids they inevitably ask me to "make a movie". Sophie asked me to make one of her and I thought I would share (don't worry, it's very short). 

In case you don't understand what she's saying it is "you gotta wiggle it, just a little bit." Yep, we are so proud. I suppose I should be relieved that she didn't sing Promiscuous Girl by Nelly Furtado as that seems to be her new favorite lately. 

Weekend recap

This weekend was a special one to me. We didn't do anything particularly exciting, but it was still great for one reason. Family. On Friday one of my brothers stopped by for a visit.  He only lives about twenty minutes away, but we rarely get to see him due to his work schedule. The kids were so excited and I think it's safe to say they pretty much pulled out every toy they own just to show him. 
Then on Saturday I took the kids to see my parents. My mom and dad told the girls they had a surprise for them on Thursday and that was all I heard about for two days. I had no idea what the surprise was other than it was something my dad was making. When we arrived at their house they took us out the the back yard where Paw Paw had made the girls a tire swing. You would have thought it was Christmas morning and their birthdays all rolled into one! They all hoped on immediately and tried it out. I had planned to let the girls visit for a little while and then drop Kylie off at a birthday party, but the surprise ended up changing things. Sophie and Audrey insisted that I leave them (this never happens!) so I took Kylie to the party. She was actually a little upset that she had to leave. We did not get back to get them until 6:30 and then we ended up staying another hour so Kylie could play too. The kids have already informed me that this Saturday I am to leave them there all day long. Sounds good to me.
Yesterday my younger brother came over. So the kids got to play with him and as a special bonus for me he did some work in my bathroom! He hooked up my sink and patched one of the walls that had a huge hole in it where my husband removed the old towel rack. I love my husband, but he is the king of procrastinating and doing things half way so this was a huge deal to have my perfectionist brother take care of things for me. 
So all in all it was an awesome weekend. I got to spend time with the people I love and now I feel recharged and ready for the week ahead. Hope everyone has a fabulous week!

A big milestone

Yesterday was a very big day in our house. Audrey and Sophie got their first real haircut. Now I'm sure some of you may be rolling your eyes and thinking "big deal, it's just a haircut", but not for us. I've been wanting to cut Audrey's hair for years, but no go.

I cut Sophie's almost two years ago so she has had an actual cut, but since then she hasn't wanted hers cut either.

I did trim a few inches off of Audrey's two years ago and she did not speak to me for days. And no, I am not exaggerating. She has been getting frustrated since school started back because she said people are constantly touching her hair. She has always been hyper-sensitive to touch (absolutely no kisses and only the occasional hug) so she declared it was time to say goodbye to the long hair. Not to be outdone Sophie decided she had to get hers cut too. Can you say competitive? So here we go....

 Anxiously awaiting that first cut.

 

 The first cut!

And approximately 18-20 inches later.......

And now it's Sophie's turn!

 The first cut.

And both girls after:

Unfortunately I did not get as many pictures of Sophie as I did Audrey because Kylie and Audrey were getting antsy at this point and I was having to constantly deal with them. So far I'm loving the new hair. Not having to deal with a mass of tangles this morning before school was a fantastic bonus too. Audrey actually woke up an hour early this morning for school because she was so excited for everyone to see her new 'do. Hopefully all the responses she receives will be positive ones and she'll want to keep her hair this length cause Mommy is liking it!

Yet another reason why I'm losing my mind

This morning as Kylie and Audrey were leaving for school I noticed that my keys weren't were they normally are. There is a table when you walk in our front door to the left and I always put my keys on it or in the drawer on it. I have a bazillion errands that I have to do today including one really big one when the kids get home from school (which I will be posting about tomorrow!) so I thought I would find my keys and put them with my purse. I looked in the drawer again thinking maybe they were under something inside of it. Nope. So I looked under the table in the baskets where the kids leave their shoes. Nada. I then proceed to take all of the cushions out of the furniture, scratch my head in amazement at the amount of cheerios I find under the cushions, move the furniture, dump out my purse, look in the car, call my husband and get a little bit hysterical, go through the garbage, look in the kids rooms, under the beds, in the laundry room....... well you get the picture. I searched for almost 2 hours!
My poor husband calls me to tell me that he will come home and give me his set of keys when someone can relieve him at work.  I tell him I'll continue the search and call him if anything turns up. As a last resort I decide to go through everything one more time. I have a storage bench in the living room that I keep throws in and I started looking in there. As I moved one of the throws I noticed a brown sock. Seemed kind of weird since the kids pretty much live in sandals except for when they go to school and then they have to wear white socks. I then noticed the sock looked kind of funny.

For ten points can you find what is wrong with the white throw?

So I picked up the sock and found not only my keys, but a can of potpourri spray that I had been looking for yesterday. 

I'll give you three guesses who put it there. And here's a hint,  her name doesn't start with A, K, or L. 

Unwritten rules

I have a list of unwritten rules. You know how some people go by the whole "Don't wear white after labor day" thing or "Don't speak to me until I've had my morning coffee."? That kind of rule. Rules that you realize that even though no one will actually die if they are broken, things will go much smoother if they are kept. Well this morning someone broke one of my rules. Not just any rule, but one of the top ones. They broke the 'do not call me before 10 a.m or after 10 p.m rule'. Silly rule you say? Well there are two good reasons why this rule is in place.

1. Nothing good has ever come from a phone call after 10:00 p.m. When my brother died I got the phone call at 10:00. When a friends daughter died earlier this year the phone call came just a few minutes after 10:00. See the pattern? Phone calls after 10:00 = something bad has happened.
2. When my phone rings before 10:00 a.m. it's usually not a good thing because a) my husband just got to work and realized he locked his keys in the car (in other words I've got to go across town to open his car door). b) the school is calling to tell me something is wrong with one of the kids. c) it's my mother in law.

Everyone that knows me knows about this rule of mine. My family loves to tease me about it, especially my mom. It's taken her awhile, but she's finally figured out why she always gets the answering machine in the mornings and will usually leave a message asking me to call her after 10:00. Apparently though someone from the N.R.A. did not get the memo. Yes, that's right the N freaking R A that has been calling my house for months now. The same N.R.A group that will not say anything when I answer the phone. The same N.R.A group that when someone did finally speak when I answered rudely informed me that no, they would not leave a message for my husband they would call back later. Yes, these people had the nerve to call my house this morning before 8:00 only to not even come on the line when I picked up. We don't even own guns, nor do we plan to ever own any. Needless to say Mommy aint happy.

It never fails

This weekend my husband and I spent pretty much all of our time in the bathroom. Working that is.  Now one of the reasons I have put off doing anything in this room for so long is because it never, ever fails that once we begin working on one room the other rooms suffer because of it. Why you ask? Well aside from the fact that we have to move the items out of said room until all the work is finished (thereby messing up the room we moved everything into) we also have three children. Normally our children are pretty much well behaved, but when they are not being watched like a hawk monitored, well lets just say bad things can happen. Like this:

Or this:

 And yes, this:

And you definitely don't want to see what my kitchen looked like. I told the kids that if they didn't clean up their messes then I was going to take them to T.J. Maxx today. Worked like a charm. They had those rooms back to normal in no time. Now if only my bathroom was finished I would be one happy woman. Maybe next weekend.

And another one bites the dust....

Audrey's second tooth finally fell out last night. I figure at the rate she's going she should be about twenty seven before she loses all of her baby teeth.

 I just love those gap tooth smiles!

The latest project

Yesterday my husband and I started on a project that was way overdue. The bathroom.

In the ten years we have lived in our house this is the only room that we have never changed. I don't know why we haven't changed it because it has definitely needed it, but we haven't. Until now. The cabinet was on it's last leg so we ripped it out. The flooring was starting to peel so out it came. By the way, that picture? Is after the flooring came out. The little squares are imprints from where it has been down so long. Then came the wallpaper. Yes, my friends that's right, wallpaper. Now I have known for awhile that we would be working on this room and have offered multiple times to rip out the wallpaper while my husband was at work. His response? "Oh, honey don't worry about it. The guy at Home Depot said we don't have to take it down." Uh huh. Apparently Mr. Home Depot Guy told my husband that he could use an oil based primer on the walls so that he could paint over the wallpaper. I have a pretty good feeling that Mr. Home Depot Guy was having a good chuckle last night thinking about the dumb sucker who was painting over his wallpaper. Guess what I got to do until late last night?

 So fun. And no I did not say "told ya so". After being married as long as we have I don't even have to say it. Oh, and when we took the mirror down look what was underneath it:

 Can't guess what it is? It's a piece of LOOSE LEAF PAPER COVERING A HOLE IN THE WALL!  Is that not ridiculous? I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw it. I ended up going with laughter because I knew crying wouldn't help.
So anyway, wish me luck on this project, I'm hoping to be done sometime before Sophie starts college. I hope.

Wordless Wednesday

Puddle jumping

Linking up with Angry Julie Monday.