Don't Assume Anything

This also could be entitled "Assume Nothing" but that's more precise, efficient and to-the-point, none of which describe children and therefore, it bears the longer, aforementioned title.

Earlier today, a few things happened that has lead me to adopt a new philosophy in my motherhood journey. First, C asked for a drink of water. I know this child. He won't take a sippy cup and as he was handing me a specific cup, I put about an inch of water into the bottom. His newest M.O. is to take a drink and then dump the rest on the floor and while this is slightly annoying, I also recognize that it's the main tool by which my floor gets cleaned so I'm rolling with it. So he takes his drink and then does the dump so I hand him a towel and together we clean up the mess. He does an excellent job for a 20 month old. I was impressed. Later, I noticed that yet again, M did not finish cleaning up from his lunch. This is not new. This is a conversation we've had every day for the past...forever, it seems. I say "make sure that you completely clean up from your lunch when you're done." He rolls his eyes and says "OKAYYYY!!! in his 9 1/2 year old way. And then he doesn't do it. I can understand the frustration of being nagged about something that you do perfectly every time but this is something that he does 1/2 of each time. So I try to avoid the call-back and remind him up front that he needs to do it all and yet I still end up calling him back into the kitchen with him yelling "WHAAAAAAT?!?!?!?! just for me to point out that the floor is covered with cheese and beans, the cutting board has clearly not been wiped off (although he insists that he did it...seriously?) and the counter still bears the can opener, spatula and food remenants. His dishes, however, are housed in the dishwasher...I'll give him that.

So I decided today that my new motto is "Don't Assume Anything" which basically means that I need to not assume that any of the children knows how to do any job in the house fully and correctly. I don't mean this in a rude way, I just realized that I assume that the older kids "should" know how to do things and that the babies shouldn't. Maybe I need to assume that they all need a good rundown each time. I think that would certainly be fair for the older boys. Let's face it, they have a lot that they're learning right now from Latin to Math to How to put that new Bionicle together to How you can kill yourself with just about anything (a conversation that he and his all-knowing friend had on speakerphone this morning which was put into the context of "should you kill yourself if you've been captured by the enemy and know that you face horrible torture and then death?" Yep, good 9 year old things to contemplate). I mean, their brain cells are chock full of information and perhaps it's only fair of me to assume that they need a refresher course each time. Sometimes you can look at the 9 yo and see the hormones starting to rage. I know that this is NOTHING compared to what's coming but sometimes it still amazes me. So this is my new motto. I'm trying for patience and right-sized expectations with this and we'll see how it goes. I have a feeling I might be floating in a sea of eye-rolls but maybe they'll be able to look past it to the good intentions I have for all of us....maybe.

Dilemma

Hypothetically, there's this mother who has twin boys. Say about 20 months old. She gets the batting big brown eyes from one twin who says "diaper, off?" Blink, blink, blink. Suppose this mother agrees and takes the diaper off and then returns to her book as this may or may not be a common practice in their household. A few minutes later, the other twin comes over and asks to nurse. The mother puts down her book and agrees but suddenly smells something funky. It's then that she looks up and sees the poop on the floor and on the foot of the other twin who has his diaper on. She has a dilemma: do you take the pooper twin in to clean him up and leave the non-pooper twin at the scene of the crime to potentially create a bigger mess or do you deal with said (alleged) scene of the crime before cleaning up the pooper child risking him sitting down and creating more of a mess? She (hypothetically) chooses the first option. She gets pooper child all cleaned up before feeling something on her leg which turns out to be...more poop. She cleans up this new addition and then hunts down the offending leg poop on the foot of the pooper child. After cleaning him up, she then follows the path of poop (on every other foot) from the living room, down the hall and back out to the screen porch where the trail ends because this is where the mother had supposedly picked up the pooper child in the first place to bring him to the bathroom for the alleged cleaning up.

After finishing the clean up on pooper child and the floor, she returns to the alleged scene of the crime to see that non-pooper child is still amazingly sitting on the couch where she left him. That never happened before this moment which is what makes one question whether this story is actually true. She then proceeds to clean up the S.O.T.C. (scene of the crime) and then chases down pooper child with a diaper before he can strike again.

Not that this happened to me today. It's totally hypothetical. It happened to my friend...yeah, that's it, my friend...

Birthday Time!

G-man turned 8 on Monday. We spent the day showering him with attention and he just ate it up. He asked for everything he could think of and rarely got a "no" which he loved. Yestereday, we had 2 parties. 1 in the afternoon for the friends and one in the evening for the family and then some of the friends stayed overnight. We love to do up birthdays big in our family. It's kind of our thing. We love making the birthday people feel as special as they are to us and G's birthday is dear to our hearts also because he shares it with Grandma Joni so we have two very special people to honor on that day.

So yesterday turned into a massive sugar fest. As in diabetics in training sugar fest. It was obscene. We started our day by going to Costco to pick up the cupcakes that we ordered. These are no ordinary cupcakes. They're almost as big as a child's head and have about a pound of buttercream frosting on each one. The very second I put them into the cart the babies came alive with begging "biiiite? meeeee? peeeeeese? hmmmmmm? biiiiiiite?" They were asking and signing and turning themselves inside out. It was adorable. I put the cupcakes under the cart and grabbed a box of Cheese-It to appease them which worked surprisingly well.

We get home and start preparing for the party. The bounce house had arrived on Monday and some preliminary bouncing had been done. The rain stopped in the late morning and the older boys went in with towels to try and dry it out as best they could (M concentrated on the ceiling). Then set out glasses and 2 pitchers of water, put the babies down for naps (they actually cooperated nicely) and we were good to go for party time! We started off the party with some bouncing and general playing, then on to sno-cones, then more playing to work off that sugar and then head-sized cupcakes followed by more playing but no puking...impressive. That party ended and I had 1 1/2 hours to reset and prepare dinner for the second round. I managed to get that all done and the other guests arrived and commented on the ginormous cupcakes.

We did a kebob bar which turned out to be awesome. Everyone built their own and Tim manned the grill in a very manly way keeping everyone's kebobs in order and none burned which is more than would have happened if I had been manning the grill. He'd agree. Then it was time for massive cupcakes but most of the kids opted either for a half or skipped the cupcake in favor of a sno cone. I was impressed by their self-control...something that not all of us adults exhibited to be sure! After all of the partying and all of the eating and all of the sugar loading, I was exhausted. The babies were exhausted but wired so they didn't zonk out until after 10:00 but we all slept hard for 10 hours.

G successfully turned 8, the babies learned how to jump (the definition of adorable) and a good and sugary time was had by all. Happy Birthday my little man!

What's up?

You never quite know what C is thinking...or doing. Those huge brown eyes and glowing smile can be very decieving. Here, he had a mouthful of marbles.

Rites of Passage

In some cultures, there are elaborate Rites of Passage that kids go through to enter a new stage in their growing up or to enter adulthood. Some are horrible, some are wonderful and some can pass you by unless you're paying attention. M had a Rite of Passage this summer...

G-Self Portrait

Blue-eyed boy

S won the genetic lottery in our family...Tim and I both have brown eyes but both have blue-eyed mothers. We're suckers for these baby blues...

Destructobots

These babies are full-fledged destructobots. When the older boys were this age, I admit I was a bit of a freak about certain things. I HATED having books destroyed. I HATED it when they step on a toy on the floor, just because it's there. I HATED losing pieces to toys. And I really HATED it when stuff breaks or looks all tattered and torn. Times have changed. This stuff still really bugs me when I focus on it but most of the time, I admit that I'm willing to sacrifice a few things to the name of discovery (yeah, that's it). Actually, they just have me outnumbered. Here is a short list of the things that the twins have destroyed in the past year or so:

- books: I have a pile to be repaired; several I've repaired multiple times and given up on and a new one missing a cover this morning. M is lying on the couch screaming that C just ripped his library book. The kicker was one day when C ripped the cover off a book and then S came by and peed on it. Nice.

- Lamps: we have no lamps in our livingroom. 3 have been destroyed. Seriously, destroyed. Uggh.

- Food: I don't know how many boxes of cereal and crackers have been dumped onto the floor. The 5 second rule is fully in effect at this house.

- Toys: many pieces missing despite my best efforts to the contrary. On the other hand, I'm always very excited when I can actually find all of the pieces to something and was thrilled to see that a red ball wintered perfectly outside and is now back with its mates in the livingroom.

- Toilet paper: we have lost many, many rolls despite our "leave the bathroom door shut at all times" rule.

- Laundry basket: not sure who did this one. The older boys are kind of tight-lipped about it but the bottom is completely cracked nonetheless.

- Sunglasses: they can only open so far before they break.

- My cell phone: it creaks, the back constantly falls off and it has been oddly reprogrammed several times. So far, no calls to China.

- The house phone: it no longer beeps but oddly enough, you can still talk on it and hear through it. That's good news.

- Countless games: many, many bent cards.

- Computer games: they don't work so well with numerous scratches on them.

Yes, I know what you're thinking...just don't give them those things. Watch them more carefully when they have them. Nice in theory and I've thought it many times myself but when you're listening to yet another screaming fit (in stereo) and you just want to get through the grocery store...you give them the cell phone. And when you are trying to do school with the older boys and impart a bit of well-deserved attention onto them...you turn your head to the toys being flung across the room and when you see those cute little bare butts being flung over the arm of the couch with glee, you sometimes ignore the crash of the lamp. In the end, they're just things and if I was that attached to them, I'd leave them locked up somewhere. For now, I value my sanity too much for that. But man it will be nice to have lamps again some day.

Vacations

I've learned a few things about vacationing with 4 kids including toddler twins this year:

1. Despite all of the immunity boosters, face masks, locking them in individual rooms and using anti-bacterial everything, someone will get sick either right before or while on vacation. It often involves puke.

2. Taking your toddlers to Mexico while they're on a water strike is not fun.

3. It takes a week to get a family of 6 out of the house for a vacation and another week to get them all home and settled again.

4. Even when you plan to do laundry just before you come home, someone will hide their pile and you will still end up doing 4 loads when you get home.

5. DVD players in the car are ingenious.

6. Schedules don't count when you're on vacation.

7. Pack extra comforts lest a "kiki" get sacrificed to the ocean. Lingerie comes in handy in a pinch between the sacrificial ceremony and the time when auntie and grandma search out a replacement. Don't tell the kid it's lingerie or it might cause other issues later in life.

8. Mom's don't get vacations. There's just a slight reduction in the amount of work that they normally do. I think this is ultimately a good thing. If we were relieved from all of our responsibilities, we might not come back from vacation.

9. Travelling with a sitter is our best idea ever.

10. I try to keep in mind that even when we think we are crazy for doing this, we will someday look back at the pictures and think back on it fondly, have a good laugh and think...we must have been crazy for doing that! Those are the things that create some of the best memories.