Friday, March 23, 2012

what to expect

I was cleaning off my bookshelf, ok truthfully the boys cleaned off my bookshelf because stacked up books made a great support for their beam bridge, and when I was cleaning the pile back up I found an old book I'd forgot I had. It's a book about what you might expect for the first years of your children's life. A potential timeline of milestones. Sometimes I think I should write a book, something to the effect of, "No Really THIS is What to Expect"

Expect to be tired and expect to become dependent on caffeine.

Expect to have food and some other things smeared on your clothes at all times.

Expect to, at least once, have your child barf or pee all over your bed in the middle of the night and be ok with just throwing a towel over it until you can deal with it in the morning.

Expect to catch some kind of bodily fluid in your hand at some point

Expect to pour a lot of cups of coffee and expect to find them half drunk all over the house in places you left them and walked away from them.

Expect then to learn to hang onto your coffee cup better.

Expect to dance around with a colicky baby trying to make their belly stop hurting

Expect to dance around like a moron when they grow up to try and entertain them in the kitchen while you're trying to make dinner and all the wheels are coming off every ones attitude but you just need a few more minutes.

Expect to some day be awoken by either a book being slammed into your face, or a car being driven up the side of your head

Expect to have the crap scared out of you when you open your eyes and your child is all of a sudden standing beside your bed in the middle of the night with their face just inches from yours and you hear a quiet little "mom"

Expect your heart to triple in size and then melt when your little tiny person learns to say "I yubbo too"

Expect to pick up things a lot, either pick them up or step on them

Expect to feel like a pack mule on occasion

Expect stepping on little tiny toys to hurt a lot

Expect to turn on your treadmill sometime to blow all the Thomas the Train tracks and engines off the back of it so you can get on

Expect to do the same thing with animals tea parties that have been set up because the treadmill is just the perfect shape and size.

Expect people to tell you to make sure you enjoy it

Expect to wonder why people choose the most unenjoyable days to tell you that

Expect to wonder how it is that time is passing so quickly

Expect to forget what you were trying to do or say

Expect to have really irritating songs stuck in your head for days on end.

Expect to look for things a lot

Expect to find them in the laundry, the toilet, or the garbage

Expect to be interrupted a lot

Expect to wonder if your children are deaf or you've become mute

Expect to have nothing on the lower shelves or the lower cabinets...nothing you like anyway.

Expect to think the world is going to crap

Expect to doll out a lot of band aids

Expect to clean melted crayon, melted chocolate, and melted other unidentified things off your car
floor or seats

Expect to be ridiculously proud of your kids as they conquer the milestones in the other books

Expect to be fascinated by how their brains work.

Expect to google things a lot

Expect to realize that you should have paid far closer attention to your vocabulary a while ago as you hear it coming out of your children's mouths.

Expect to laugh a lot if  you choose to see the laughable-ness of it all, it really is hysterical.

Expect to try not to laugh sometimes as you know laughing at what they just said or did is not what they were going for.

and Expect to enjoy it, or at least most of it, but you have to choose to sometimes.

There's more...but I really don't have time to write a book... :)

Monday, March 19, 2012

scalene triangles

Often, my mornings get away from me and I'm left having lunch time sneak up on me with no real great plan. Dang it no leftovers, and crap I've been working so hard at the gluten free-ness but yet sandwiches are so easy.
Enter nachos, the kids new favorite mom-doesn't-have-her-act-together lunch.
Now nachos aren't just tasty..no no they're very educational, for me.

Ryan: Hey Mom this one is a scalene triangle.
Me: Oh wow ya look at that (heads to google to try and remember which one's scalene again)
Ryan: And mom look this one's a trapezoid, haha that's funny Trapezoid
Me: heh heh ya...funny. (again thanks google...)

I really have some remedial shape recognition to work on.

Nadine and Ryan, well and Braeden too but it's a bit trickier for him, really like to Wii sport. Ryan is the Wii bowling champion. Nadine believes he's cheating because he always wins. Braeden likes to Wii sword fight anyone who is willing to suffer his wrath and you must also be willing to set up his Mii as the point at the screen and hit A is tricky.

Ryan has recently taken up Wii tennis. Now one thing I love about Wii is the Wii Mii's look a lot like the actual living character they're supposed to represent. I love Ryan's Mii. I wish I knew how to post a picture of it here.

Ryan has taken up Tennis and being the smarty-pants that he is he creates a 4 player game and makes all 4 characters the Ryan Mii.
Ryan: Oh man I'm going to lose
Nadine: No Ryan you're everyone so you're going to win for sure!
when the game ends there's a winner standing in the foreground with a big YOU WIN across the screen, and a loser who is in the background hanging their Mii head in shame. With all 4 characters being Ryan...well
Nadine: You win some, you lose some.

Oh man what a group.

So that's how it is here. We patiently wait for real spring, the opportunity to go running outside with the kids while they drive the gator. The new chickens, the garden...even the mud :) We've got a new excavator and we're quite excited to excavate. Well some of us are a bit scared of the excavating potential but that's generally overshadowed by the keen anticipation of impending excavation...Woot woot!

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The love of stuff.

There's a elated feeling that goes along with watching the snow melt. Here's how that played out yesterday.
Nadine (just getting off the bus): Look at all these rocks. There's a MILLION BILLION to choose from for my collection!!
Tim: Man one day maybe you'll be a geologist.
Nadine: What's a geologist?
Tim: Someone who studies rocks.
Nadine: I don't want to study them, I just want to collect them. I'm going to collect kitties, puppies, horses, and rocks because I like to have lots of stuff. Then one day I'll wake up and be a farmer!

Which really I'm sure you can glean from that description how one would leap to a career in farming when travelling down that path.

Now a bit contrary to a bit of that exchange was the exchange I had with my eldest when leaving for work the other day.
Nadine:  Why did you say you would go there when they phoned? You should have said no.
Me: Well your dad and I work so we can have money to buy food, and do fun stuff, and buy you guys the things you  need.
Nadine: I don't need anything.
Me: Really?
Nadine: and I don't need any food either. We have chickens mom and the chickens make eggs and we can eat the eggs and that's food.
Me: Well yes it is but what about yogurt?
Nadine: I don't like yogurt
Me: Oh? What about bananas?
Nadine: I don't like bananas
Me: What about candy???
Nadine (knowing this is a trick question as I don't buy candy): I don't like candy *grin*
Me: Well I told them I'd come so I have to go.

I wish I'd known at that time that she wanted to collect so many things and was going to wake up one morning and be a farmer. Tim and I better start saving up for that.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Things of spring.

Yesterday I noticed something interesting on my way to feed the chickens. Well it was one of those moments where you don't notice that something is interesting until a long while later when you have all the pieces available for doing the math.
When I opened the door to leave to go out to feed the chickens and get the eggs I noticed my box of sprouted potatoes outside the basement door. How odd, but maybe it's been there for ages. I thought we were going to plant it this spring but maybe it got put out a while ago? I dunno.
Then on the way  back from the coop with my dozen eggs feeling pretty darn good about life I wondered for a moment where Cleo was. She's almost always hangin around waiting for the egg collecting. Oh well, probably out and about.
Then, Oh look, the kids bike is out on the lawn. Hmmm.
So when I got inside
Me: Ryan did you go into the basement and get the bike?
Ryan: Yes
Me: Oh..

Then later, even later, talking to Tim on the phone.
Me: Have we had those potatoes outside for a while? did you move them out?
Tim: Nope
Me: Hmmm

So I head downstairs to bring the potato box back into the basement, marvelling a bit that Ryan was able to carry it outside and wondering why he did... and who should I find at the bottom of the stairs but Cleo. Yes Cleo, she's been in the basement for about 4+ hours (or that's how long it had been since Ryan had been outside playing)...How on earth did I not hear her?!
Oh Ryan.
So the fact is I've never directly told the kids they shouldn't let the dog in the basement. So I figured it's time to discuss that now.
Me: Ryan, if it ever happens again that the dog ends up in the basement you need to tell me that.
Ryan (looking into my eyes sincerely): Mom...Cleo is in the basement.
Me: ya, thanks buddy


Nadine really likes math, a lot. That's really cool and I enjoy that. She's been quizzing me on a lot of math. Sometimes it's complicated to do sort of impromptu 'mad minutes' while I make dinner. I have to get them right too as the leapster explorer game WILL let her know if I've botched 7X8. phew, so far so good. Although a couple times I've had to pretend I don't hear her right away so I can have a minute to finger...I mean figure it out. :)
While in town today I realized how much she thinks about math. She quizzed Ryan with some math. He actually did pretty good with some of them and a bit of help.
Then while we were in the Wal-Mart parking lot she asked me
Nadine: Mom why is it Wal take away Mart?
We later found the Home Depot, Pick take away Up zone.
Ya she really likes math.
So on the way home we did some more "math sentences"
Nadine: what's 100 kids take away 100 kids
Tim and I in unison: A good night sleep
Nadine: Daaaaaad, mom dad's being a turd right?

Um ya, so last week there was a boy in Nadine's class trying to throw her shoe in the garbage. Totally benign to those of us who are no longer in grade 1 but it can be hard to be the recipient of such attention. So my brilliant maternal advice...
Me: Nadine young boys can act like real turds but that's just how they are, and we just do our best to ignore them.
Nadine: Oh, ok
and she willingly went back the next day. We'll see if that explanation backfires on me somehow later.
Anyway we made the trek to town to stock up on rubber boots and crocs while they are still sold as spring seems to be about to sproing :)
Woot!!