Frog Legs

When it comes to my home, I'm not terribly good at decorating.  Yeah, I have ideas, but it's not very often that those ideas actually turn into real projects, and even less often that those projects are presentable enough to use.  I see pictures of other peoples' homes and how they have decorated, with all coordinated colours and art and stuff on the walls.  Looks nice!  It's not my house though.  When it comes down to it, it's a matter of budget combined with space restraints.  I don't really have any window ledges or open shelving around to put things on, and chances are, my kids would knock it down anyways.  Perhaps one day I will have more time, money, and energy to put into decorating, but for now I'll just focus on keeping these darling kids of mine fed, cleaned, and somewhat happy.  I wouldn't mind having my kids' rooms looking a little more kid-friendly, and I did put up some alphabet wall stickers around the perimeter of their rooms, but that was about as far as I got until I saw some cute adhesive mirrors in the dollar store a few months ago.  I picked out a package of three frog-shaped mirrors and carefully stuck them to the wall in Nate's room.  What a wonderful idea!  My kids could oooh and ahhhh over these amazing mirrors, and look at themselves, and have lots of fun with their reflections.  Yeah, it was a nice idea.  Well, needless to say, they didn't last very long.  Besides the fact that I had to try three different kinds of adhesive material to get them to actually stick to the wall longer than five minutes, I didn't realize how attracted my youngest son is to frog legs.  Perhaps he has a thing for french cuisine, or perhaps he just likes needless destruction, but in any case, he ripped one frog's legs off one by one and the poor frog has now been reduced to a limbically-challenged reflective blob stuck to the wall.  So far the others have remained unscathed, but I have a feeling their doom awaits them when their reflective surface catches a certain young boy's attention...

My once-lovely decorating job

 Poor Mr. Frog  Blob

 Carnage in the bedroom

Embarassing Confessions of an Unofficial Amnesiac

A few weeks ago, I was in Hamilton and had the opportunity to go shopping with my Mom for a new pair of jeans, as my favourites had developed a hole in an "inconvenient spot".  Thankfully, I noticed this hole myself and didn't need to have my attention drawn to it as my husband's students so graciously did for him a few years ago with a note left on his desk:

I digress.  But this is the subject of my post in the first place, so I suppose I am allowed to digress.  I have, since my childhood, been a somewhat scatter-brained and forgetful individual.  I find that this condition has not become better with age - in fact, it has become worse with increased distractions.  I constantly forget things and leave things behind, and my multi-tasking during the day usually means that lots of things get half-done.  I'll start washing dishes, go to change a dirty diaper, then clean up toys in the living room, check the weather and clean the bathroom.  By the time I make it back to the kitchen an hour or two later and discover that I didn't in fact finish washing the dishes like I thought, the dish water is cold and I have to start all over again.  I will blame this on "Mommy-brain", although in all honesty, it is probably just a worsening of my original condition of forgetfulness that I have had since I was young.
This "Mommy-brain" not only has influence on my forgetfulness, but also my perception of the world.  The other day, Peter came home with a colouring sheet he had worked on at school.  He had written his name at the top, and I took a look at it and noted that although it was a little bit messy, and perhaps the second "e" was written backwards, it was definitely readable and I was impressed that he was writing his name on his own now.  It wasn't until Mike got home and pointed it out that I saw that he had written his whole name right to left.  Yeah, I didn't even recognize that my kid wrote his name backwards.  It looked perfectly fine to me...

Back to the story of the jeans.  So, I was shopping for new jeans, you know how that goes.  I picked out a number of jeans to try on - I probably had about 6 or 7 pairs, and I made my way over to the change room.  Once I had locked myself in, I turned to the pile to decide which one to try on first.  To my surprise, my pile was not what I thought it was.  Instead of 6 or 7 pairs of different jeans, I had a pile of 6 or 7 pairs of identical jeans.  All the same size, length, colour.  Hmmm.  That was not how I shopped.  Mom and I did a store-wide search for my original pile, which was discovered on a table where I had inadvertantly switched it with the stack of jeans for sale there.  Whoops.  So I tried on the jeans, and after a while I found a pair that I liked and we went to pay for them.  We were almost out the door when Mom asked me where my coat was.  Hmmm.  That's a good question, Mom!  I have no idea.  Backtrack through the change-rooms that I had used, and I found it in the first one.  I don't know how I manage to go grocery-shopping with all three of my kids and consistantly come back home with all three, as it is apparent that in my absent-minded condition, I can't go shopping without leaving things behind me in an amnesiatic blur. 
Well, I think that's about enough embarassing revelations about myself for today.  What embarassing things have YOU done recently?        

Photo Update

 The birthday boy opening one of his gifts in the morning - Playmobile! 

I had a lot of fun creating Peter's birthday cake, and he was pretty impressed! 

I had the opportunity to observe in Peter's classroom on his birthday, which I really enjoyed.  It was nice to see the class in action, and to discuss things with the teacher afterward. 

 Playing in the leaves on a crisp fall morning

 Wheeeee!

 Start them on yard work early, I suppose! 

 I hyped the kids up this morning to take a trip to Happy Rolph's petting zoo.  Peter excitedly clutched the bag of old bread as we drove out there, only to find the gates locked.  Whoops, should have thought about the possibility of closing for the season.  So instead of the petting zoo, we went to the beach.  First a stop off at the playground for some swinging:  

 And then off to the beach to play in a HUGE sandbox. 

 I like how this picture turned out, even 

though he's pretty serious-looking

Six Years Ago Today...

We were sitting at the table today when Mike remembered that six years ago on this date, he was on the road with three other young men carpooling up to an overnight men's conference at Campfire.  The first snowstorm of the season was wreaking havoc on the roads, and they decided to take a shortcut to avoid the slow drivers on the main road.  This shortcut, unfortunately, eventually ended up hurtling them off a boat launch and thirty feet into a lake.  While this event provides excellent narrative potential for my husband, we are very thankful that everyone was ok that snowy evening and that we can now sit back and laugh about it.   

I picked him up that evening from a friend's place, and he never did make it to the conference.  However, the two of us drove up the next morning to see where the whole thing took place, and to see if they had managed to extricate the car from the lake yet.  The car was gone when we arrived, but we did have to laugh as we drove down the road toward the boat launch, as we could clearly for at least a kilometer that the road ended in a lake.  Amazing what some snow can do to your perception.

I'm not sure of the exact route, but it went something like this:  

And the trip ended here

 Too bad they flew past this warning sign without time to read it

Breaking the Laws

Mike and I were in the basement this afternoon, both busy working.  Of course, if we are in the basement, so are our dear boys, who find the basement to be a very exciting place to be as long as they are not down there alone.  I found their behaviour somewhat hard to understand while we were working, as it didn't seem to fit within logical constraints.  For some reason, they were much more interested in helping Mike out with his work than helping me out with mine.  After all, MY work was breaking basic laws of thermodynamics and entropy.  While things are naturally inclined to move from a state of order to a state of chaos, folding the laundry is a task which actually turns chaos into order.  You would think that such an amazing feat would be recognized as extraordinary, and that my children would be entranced by what I was doing, and would certainly want to help.  No such luck.  For some reason, the wall that Daddy was ripping down was much more interesting to them, despite the fact that this moving from order to chaos is typical according to the second law of thermodynamics, and should not cause any undue excitement to anyone observing.  Should I expect my children to ignore any phenomenal exceptions to natural laws in the world around them?  Perhaps I should introduce them to the wonders of folding laundry...

Happy Birthday, Peter!

Our first baby is FOUR!  Happy birthday, Peter!  We hope and pray that this next year continues to be filled with happiness and blessings for you!

Happy Palindrome o'clock!

Recurring Nightmares

Our kids are normally pretty good at sleeping through the night.  As long as everyone is relatively healthy, they go to sleep easily and wake up at a reasonable time in the morning.  With Aaron recently toilet trained, he occasionally comes out of bed in the middle of the night and wakes one of us up for some gladly-rendered assistance in the bathroom, but he's pretty content to go right back to sleep.  The last little while has been a bit of a struggle with Nate, as he has a few molars coming in and this has made him miserable during the day and night.  Most of the time though, we have it pretty good. 
Every once in a while, one of the older boys will wake up very upset in the night - I don't know if this has happened more than once or twice with Aaron in the last year and a half but Peter has always had a flair for the dramatic, and there is no exception for this in the middle of the night.  If something is bothering him, it must certainly be accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Last night was one of those nights.  We woke up to the sound of Peter wailing in deep distress, and both got up to go see what the problem was and to try to quiet him down before the other two woke up.  Through loud sobs, we learned that the poor kid had experienced a nightmare.  When he told us what he was upset about, we recalled that about a month or two ago, he had woken up screaming in the night from the exact same nightmare.  And what is Peter's worst-case, recurring nightmare about, you might ask?

"AARON IS TAKING ALL MY BANANAS AWAY!!!!"

Some Photos

On October 22, we went to a Touch-A-Truck event held at the Ancaster Fairgrounds.  The boys had a fantastic time, and it was fun to see them so excited!  There were all kinds of trucks and machinery there, from tractors and transport trucks to fire engines and tree spades.  We would definitely take them to an event like this again.  I don't think the smiles came off their faces all morning!

I think Aaron is sitting in the paddywagon in this photo

 "Driving" a skid steer

 In a transport truck - watch out for your ears, 

Dad, when he honks that horn!

 Nate dwarfed by some wheels

We'll call this one a "FAIL" in the "Mom-trying-to-get-an-artistic-

shot" category.  Examining the photo more closely afterward,

it was no wonder Aaron wasn't extremely pleased with me, 

 as I was covering up his face, haha. 

 This boy has talent, I tell you!  The day he learned to 

hang a spoon on his nose.  He's better at it than me.

With that spoon-hanging gift, he's bound to get a few more of these!  Peter received a Superstar Award during an assembly at school for the month of October.  No, it wasn't actually for spoon-hanging, it was for learning how to print his name.  I have found his name printed all over the place, and not just on paper... strange how a kid will deny writing his own name on the wall in crayon, as if he could pass the blame for that to one of his brothers... Thankfully "Peter" written all over our deck in sidewalk chalk will be more easily removed than crayon once we get a good rainfall.  It's exciting to watch him learn these new skills.    

Excitement reigneth on Rexleigh Crescent!  One morning we woke up to see water spurting out of our neighbour's lawn - the water main had sprung a leak.  I almost kept Peter home from school, as the backhoe showed up just as we were leaving home to drop him off. 

This doesn't happen every day - a backhoe parked in your driveway.  Needless to say, Aaron didn't have a nap that afternoon.  Thankfully it was still there when we picked Peter up again from school at the end of the afternoon. 

It even returned the next morning to fix the chewed up part of the lawn.  The boys enjoyed breakfast in the living room with the best of entertainment.  As for myself, I was just somewhat amused that it took a backhoe, two dump trucks, and six men over an hour to rake out some grass seed on an area about 3 meters square.  So glad we pay those taxes... 

You might guess that it was not actually me who was attempting to make this phone call... dear Nate is quick to grab things off desks or tables that he KNOWS he is not allowed to have.  I'm not sure who he was trying to call, but I'm not interested in finding out what the long-distance bill might have been...

ONE good picture of ONE boy sitting still is hard enough to accomplish.  The task of taking a good picture of TWO boys sitting still is exponentially more difficult.  Trying to get a good picture of THREE boys sitting still is quite certainly near impossible, especially when they are 1, 2, and 3.  Here are a few of my attempts. 

On Time

I have just realized that all three of my kids' birthdays fall on a Thursday this year.  I checked it out for next year too, and they will all be on a Saturday in 2012.  For the next 10 years at least, they will all be on the same day in any given year.  In 2013 they are on a Sunday, then the next years they will be on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in 2021. I wondered at first it it was just a fluke, but if it's steady for 10 years I suppose it will be like that forever.  Can't really figure out why the leap years didn't mess it up, but I'm not exactly good at the whole time-fiddling concept.  I thought I was all on top of things on Friday with the time change and I put my kids to bed half an hour early to help get them adjusted, only to realize the next morning chatting with my dear hubby that I was supposed to put them to bed later instead.