I am volcano

I feel very ashamed to admit this, but my fuse with G is about a millimeter long.  Far, far, far shorter than it is with N and M.  And I hate this.

I hate it that he has the uncanny ability to set me completely off by his whining.  I hate it that I can't just shut it out.  I hate it that when he wakes me up at 6:00 a.m. every morning and then wants to lean on me when I'm eating my english muffins and drinking my coffee that I shrug him off and become highly irritated (and irritable) that he keeps wanting to make physical contact.  I hate it that I feel like I am constantly apologizing to him for yelling.  I hate it that at least once a day my blood pressure feels like it sky-rockets off the charts because of him just being him.

The only thing that brings me any solace is remembering my mom and my brother when he was a kid.  The blowouts those two would have.  The time when I heard him making a "glug,glug" sound in the tub when he refused to cooperate with bath and getting the soap out of his hair and mom just dunked him under water.  His near constant ability to poop in his pants even after mom asked him repeatedly if he needed to go (which G seems to have inherited from him).  How at least once (and probably more often) a wooden spoon was broken (over his head?  his butt?) when mom went after him.  How my Uncle E referred to my brother as "Turd" for reasons that I fully get now that I am an adult and a mother of a son who also qualifies as a turd.

My brother turned out to be a decent, normal guy.  A man who has a good relationship with his mother.  A father who has sons who also push his buttons in maybe the same way he pushed my mom's buttons.  In the same ways that G pushes my buttons.

Every day I strive to be more patient with G, to not allow him to set me off.  And every day I fail.
Miserably.

Who needs Pinterest?

I don't know much about Pinterest.  Given what a time suck Facebook is to me, I'm none too eager to discover more about Pinterest.  I know friends who get lots of cool ideas for home decor and baking and such from it.

But I don't need Pinterest because I have really cool ideas of my own.

Like this for N's room.

I took an old shelf from the garage and used decoupage glue to put small pieces of tissue paper all over it.  I purchased unpainted wood letters and 2 painted cutesy wood attachments (cost around $3 total).  Then I painted the letters, and used gorilla glue to attach it all.  I nailed in a wall-hanger to the back and voila!  A cute initial picture.

N had drawn some pictures and taped them to the closet, which looked messy, so I bought a $5 piece of thin aluminum and cut it into strips. I then used gorilla glued magnets to the back of glass beads.  I screwed the aluminum strips onto her closet and now she has a neat way to hang her drawings in her room.

I also nailed a strip into her bookshelf, which she can use for her reading log.

The story of a room

Our home is about 12 years old, and we have been in it for almost 11 of those years.  Despite all the ways in which D and I have changed in those years, and how our family has changed, I have never really thought of our home having much of a history.

Until recently.

A couple weekends ago, D and I painted the room that has served as a nursery for all three children.  It is now N's "big girl" room.  Since 2004 its walls have changed from fleshy peach to moonlight yellow (N's nursery wall color) to bright orange (the boys' nursery wall color) to dahlia purple (the big girl color).  

N's nursery.

The boys' nursery

As I was painting I remembered how I had the room decorated when it sat empty for a few years between us purchasing the house and making it the nursery.  I remember buying N's crib and changing table/dresser.  I remember working on a cross-stitch wall-hanging for her room that I didn't complete until she was 6 weeks old.  I remember her as an infant in that room, in her crib, on the floor.  Laying on the changing table reading a book, or the two of us reading together in the rocking chair in that room.  

N in her crib.

And I remember the boys in that room, in the crib, on the floor.  Nursing all three of the children every night before bed.  Groggily wandering into the room in the wee hours of the night when they cried and whined and needed momma's tender touch.  

G in his crib.

G crawled for the first time in his nursery.  

Monkey M in his nursery, prepping for Halloween 2010.

As happy as I am to be done playing musical bedrooms (for a long time until one or the other of the kids decides to sleep in the downstairs guest bedroom that now serves as a playroom), it also makes me a little sad to know that my nursery is gone, that my babies are no longer babies.  That my big girl feels "like a teenager" now that she has her own room (which she wrote to Nana in a letter).  

She gets it from her momma

Since I was a girl, I have been told I am a good writer.
I think my daughter might hear this a bit as she grows up.
Tonight she wrote the following 2-and-a-half page (double spaced) story using her spelling words.
I'm pretty impressed with it since she's only in 2nd grade.

A Silly Fairytale story

Once upon a time in a land far away, there was a farm.  And that farm had alot of dark art work.  The park they had was very delightful and sweet.  A person named Lorax had a car made out of an actuall star!  Lorax was a man who worked a movie theatre.  His part was to start the movie by telling some jokes.  Alot of people wore dark clothes, but not Lorax.  Lorax wore crazy socks every day and always had crystals and stars on his shirt.  It was hard to get dressed everyday and put all his jokes together for work.  He had to keep writing jokes so much that his arm hurt.  He started to work for the Easter Bunny!  When the Easter Bunny said yes, a disco ball and some music suddenly apeered and they had A ROCKING AWESOME PARTY!!!


Parka's appeared on their bodies and it started to rain!  They took those parka's off and a scarf appeered on both of them.  The scarves had many properties like rough fabric, and fluffy fringe.  The words rough and fluffy that I just used are called textures.  The scarf's luster would be sparkly.  The sun was shining on the sparkles so it looked like crystals.  The Easter Bunny pulled of his scarf and it ripped.  Lorax told him that it wasn't durable.  They did all that the day before Easter.  They all had a happy easter.  Especially Lorax!

Happy Easter!

THE END!

Pants on the ground

When I found out G was a boy, I was more than a little terrified.  Excited, to be sure, but also highly anxious.  I mean, what was I supposed to do with the penis?  From my limited understanding of the male gender, I knew those things have a life of their own.

Once G was born, I realized that he was simply a sweet little baby....no different, really, from N when she was an infant.  I felt the same with M.

It wasn't too much past the boys' infancy for me to once again be confounded by the whole penis thing.

M went through an fairly intense penis-playing phase some time ago, but that eventually passed.

About a month ago, G had a foreskin infection, which freaked me out, mostly because my brain instantly went into, "I don't want him to have to be circumcised at this age."  He can retract a bit, so the doctor said for G to retract as much as he could and for me to apply a tiny bit of steroid cream to reduce the inflammation.  Dr. B gave G an antibiotic, and things cleared up just fine.  Apparently, these infections are fairly common among little boys G's age.

Ever since, G has been very, very interested on "pulling his skin," as he calls it.  One morning after he woke me at his usual 6:30 a.m., I left him on the couch watching tv while I walked into the kitchen to fix my coffee and check my email.  I walked back to the couch to check on him and found him with his pants at his knees and him busily "pulling his skin."  I just turned and walked back into the kitchen because that is a party to which I do not want to be invited.

The boys have nekkid time on a somewhat regular basis.  I will be cooking dinner or cleaning and see G streak by.  Soon after M will come in saying "Pants!" or "Shirt" and want my help removing his gear so he too can run around in the buff.  Both Mamaw and Nana (and even my neighbor HC) have gotten pretty used to having the door opened for them and being welcomed into our home by boy parts in their glory.

Like jumping on the bed and the Wiggles, eventually kids lose interest in these things.  If it's not hurting anyone, why make an argument out of it?  Plus, what would I have to write about if it weren't for my kids' antics?

Tonight G came out of the boys' shared bedroom and when I went in to settle them down and tuck them in, I found that M had taken off his pajama bottoms, a feat of which I didn't think him capable.  I may have to resort to the onesie over the pajama thing again if this continues.

I think the only solution for "pulling the skin" is duct-taped hands.  

More ass-ish-ness

I simply cannot help myself.  I have to poke fun of the whole March Madness stuff.  It is just tooo good for a non-sports-minded person.  And fortunately my basketball loving friends have a good sense of humor and haven't defriended me.  Yet.

Here are some of my recent FB posts:

I want the good guys to win.
What are they fighting about anyway?
(Since I don't root for any particular teams, I would like good to reign over evil.)


I write cards and read cards. But I don't watch cards. They are kinda dull, just sitting there.
(A whole bunch of folks were making comments about the University of Louisville's Cards, so I had to throw in my 2 cents.)


My brackets look fine. [ See. ]
This is the only kind of bracket I understand.  


GO Honey badgers!! Wooooo! Hooooo!
(All of these animal-themed team names.  I thought I'd root for an animal that doesn't get a whole lot of media coverage.)


If I hadn't had 2 glasses of wine, I might be able to make some witty comment about the verbal basketball orgasms posted all over FB.

(Because there is no end to the Ahhhhhs and Ooooooos and other sexy sounds over b-ball.)


Who cares? (Everyone else but me....and my husband.)

(Whenever D is driving me bat-shit nuts, I remember that he doesn't give a rat's ass about sports and that is one of the main reasons I liked him to begin with.)

The piano....an update

N and I began taking piano lessons on Jan 2 of this year.  We are now into month 3, and while we still enjoy it, I admit that getting N to practice is often as fun as getting daggers shoved into my eyes.

Some of the practice unpleasantness is due to N's desire to play too quickly, which often results in her messing up, which results in her becoming frustrated.  Our piano teacher tells both of us two things over and over and over:  Play slowly and count out loud as we play.  N does neither of these when she practices at home.  I ask her to do these things repeatedly.  But as I am her mother, I am also an idiot.  Yes, that mother-daughter "thing" has only worsened since piano lessons began.

Some of this piano practice unpleasantness is due to the boys' desire to interrupt our practice by throwing books down the steps or running through the dining room and screaming.  Even if I don't lose my temper with N, I quickly lose it with the boys.

I will not be surprised if my blood pressure reads higher at my next wellness assessment.

I have committed both N and me to piano lessons for a year because I think that is a decent amount of time to get used to an instrument and get beyond the initial learning curve challenges.  In Jan 2013, we can reevaluate whether to discontinue or go on.  My hope is that N will continue, but I will allow her to stop if she chooses at that time.  I expect to continue because I do enjoy learning and knowing that I am getting better....although my own ability to practice is hampered by my daily sidekicks who often like to bang along as I'm trying to get through an etude.

Though is greatly dislike motivational charts as a means of getting kids to potty train or give up pacifiers, I have decided that a motivational chart may be the key to getting N to practice without a fight with mom.  She is supposed to practice 5 times a week, and often those practices fall between Fri-Mon (with her going back to the piano twice daily to practice on Saturdays and Sundays).  If she practices without an argument and works carefully/slowly, she will earn star stickers.  If after a month she has earned a certain number of stars, she will get a special "treat."

She seemed to like this idea, as do I, although it means one more thing for me to keep up with.

I tell myself that I don't make a stink over things like her clothing choices or other "little" things, but I feel strongly enough about learning an instrument that I am willing to fight for this.

I think.