Yesterday we also purchased more candy than one should ever have available in their home at any given time ever.
Today I had the kids get their pillows and blankets and pick a sucker. Olea and I took turns reading books to the younger ones. I was proud of her, she does read well. She also likes to pan the book for all the audience to see the pictures. Zurich and Nev kept trading suckers.
We read through a pretty good stack of books. Calling it a read-a-thon also upped the coolness.
We needed an intervention. I called Gary at work and he told the kids to go gather sticks. Zurich went out for ten minutes but came in when Olea went out. She was so worried about trying to get him to do his job she wasn't doing hers. So I assigned him an inside job to keep them separated.
Then the incessant doorbell ringing started.... And ditching....
I was not my best mother today.
An experience last week opened up some of the things Olea is feeling. It can pretty much be summed up in two things: 1) the move has been hard, 2) she misses the way things were when she was three. That is the way she says: I wish Mommy liked me, had time for me, I wish there weren't other babies.
Apparently, I need to figure out her love language.
There are things I can't and won't change. For instance her siblings will not become orphans. So to make things better for my baby girl I'm doing the best I can to help us both enjoy where we are, to enjoy each other, improve our relationship, be grateful for what there is, what we have, where we are. I don't know what to do. I have no idea. But I'm trying, and that's got to be worth something. That is the major reason I started this summer's end project. Tonight with the spirit of trying, especially after a worthless day, I told Gary that Olea and I would go do the shopping after he got home.
I didn't take a picture. I was too busy back tracking and re-directing. So when we got back and Gary asked me if I had a good time, I was honest. "I hope she did, I hope it meant something to her, because I am exhausted."
I realized something though, I don't know if I remember the last time just her and I did something, just boring old stuff, together, with no one else. We need to.
I need to keep searching. Parenting is the hardest, most cryptic job ever.
The kids love to help in the kitchen. I suppose you could say that I am not that confident or talented in the kitchen. I cook from scratch, I cook from cans or boxes, whatever fits the day and the need. I do not love it. It is not a hobby. It is a necessary task. So it is hard for me to let the kids help because that always draws a project out and I'm just trying to get the job over with.
However, Olea has been very impressed with a friend of hers who can bake stuff all by herself. So feeding off of her interest I had her read the recipe and gather the ingredients and the appropriate measuring utensils. She mixed up the dry egg and got things ready I helped keep her focused as I made dinner. We were to have the missionaries over tonight.
When everything was gathered we called Nev and Zurich down to help. They each took turns measuring and putting in the ingredients. As I have mentioned before, gathering all the ingredients is a big help and a major stress reducer.
They love to scream when the mixer is on.
I do not love it.
But I can't stop them so I let them have at it.
They had a good time and the mess was minimal. Success!
The cookies were pretty good too. But I need to make them again when I have all the right ingredients... And milk.
(As a side note, dinner managed to turn out pretty delicious too. But now that I have been in the kitchen for pretty much the last 7-8 hours, I'm done.)
Work. -z
What do you want to do at work? -c
Do something great. -z
What does daddy do when he goes to work? -c
Sometimes he works and works so much. -z (Amen, son)
What are you going to do when you work? -c
I want to get motorcycles! Oh! And a race car! Oh! That would be so cool. I want to drive a race car. And go really fast. I dont want to push the slow button it will make me too slow. I want to be the best race car driver ever in the whole world. I want to get dad a race car, Nev and Olea and Giddy and you too Mom. I will put fast gas in it so it will be so noisy so people will say, 'oh my gosh, that is so fast a race car!'
Now he's all fired up and can't sleep. Even if my little guy doesn't still want to race cars when he grows up I am certain he will be great and do something great.
I let them each pick a neon piece of paper and then stamp, color or sticker their papers. These were to be their journal cover pages. The end results are nothing fancy to look at but the kids had fun and that, my friends, is the beginning and end point of all this. Nev mostly used stamps and two sheets of stickers sometimes layering the stickers. Zurich used stamps and black colored pencils. Olea was all about the curly letter, floral stamps and gold.
Zurich started talking about the fun things we have done so I wrote down on the back of his paper the things he said. I asked him about the activities he didn't mention so he has little journal entries on the back side of his paper.
Olea was very interested in the glitter gold ink pad I have. She also liked the glitter I wasn't able to hurry and dump back in the jar and tried to glue it onto her page. Her paper doesn't even have her name on it which was the only directive (besides don't smush the ink pad so hard) I gave them.
When they were done, we put them in plastic sleeves in a binder.
We did a bunch of side projects today too. Olea typed letters to some of her cousins and friends. And off and on I prepped for tomorrow's project with off and on help.
The kids were so excited to get letters in the mail today. They LOVED the stickers. It's funny to see their different techniques to get the envelope open. Zurich: letter opener
Olea: carefully so as not to damage the sticker seal
Nev: obliterate the envelope somehow leaving the contents intact
Jobs had to be done first today... I'm mean like that.
Then we mixed up the oobleck.
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryhowtoguide/ht/oobleck.htm
Lucky me I had just enough corn starch...
I let the kids each choose their color. Nev was napping but due to wake soon so when Olea picked pink and Zurich picked blue it was perfect. We did have to let it rest in the fridge for a bit while we read the story, that helped it firm up a bit to the right consistency.
They played a bit and then Nev woke up so we poured some pink and blue oobleck into a bowl for Nev. She did not dive in to the dirty as quickly as the others. She poked at it with a finger tentatively, she giggled over it but didn't dive in till I gave her a spoon. Now that I think of it, I never told her not to eat it and she never tried. Surprising. Olea liked the idea of mixing colors more so she started stealing spoonfuls from Zurich's bowl. She suddenly desperately wanted purple oobleck. The kids really enjoyed it and Olea suddenly remembered that she had read the book and played with green oobleck at "my old school." (She sounds like DA from the Magic School Bus).
Gary left at about 4 with all the kids. They had been really good all considered but Gary got a glimpse into my world and felt like a circus freak.
I was still waiting.
I knew they were running well behind as Gary wasn't called back till an hour and a half after his scheduled appointment. So I was trying not to get pissy and impatient. But after running out of Tatting thread and my ipod battery dying I had little patience left. Knowing full well that Gary was likely going crazy at home with the chillins. "My appointment was over two hours ago, is there any chance of being seen today?"
"oh he called you back. He had your chart." "When?"
"About 45 minutes ago, we figured you went home with the rest of your family."
... What?! You just figured, you didn't come into the waiting room to find out, or call a phone number that I spent my beloved time filling out on the chart? Or raise your voice or try again or anything, you just figured.
Brilliant.
"I was here the whole time, I haven't gone anywhere. Does he have a soft voice or something? I was waiting, I was listening." I heard everyone else be called back.
So he took me after his "5:30" apt. I got home at 7 pm to a very hungry baby, frazzled husband making dinner and bored/hyper children.
But my teeth feel awesome.
So today what did we do? All of my cool plans aside;
Spin on the dental chairs for fun.
Today, we were set, things were good, we were set to go... And then we get to the top of the driveway and there is this across the road... Our only out on our dead end street.
That's a pretty big stumbling block.
The trees here are huge. The branch here was about 1.5 feet in diameter. The branches delicately opened our mailbox and were all around it but it was generally unscathed. It was apparently a county tree but on our across the street neighbor's property. Our neighbor could tell we needed out as we were all fancy ready for church so she offered us a route through her property that went through to the next street. We were late. But we were there. :)
When we got home from church I was all excited because the road was clear, but then not because the county had dumped all the tree toppings on our property. (that's a nice way of saying, "all the huge leafy branches")
Thing is I knew at 5am this morning that a tree was down. It is a sound and shake that I have learned since moving here 4 months ago... but we couldn't see it in the dark of night and when Gary circled the house this morning and didn't see a tree down on the property we figured it was a neighbor's and not and issue to us.
Silly rabbit, trix are for kids.
( and for those who noticed that Nev is wearing the same clothes as yesterday, for what it is worth she has worn five different outfits between those pictures and these today...)
So this morning she was saying everything to get under my skin. Things that were rude, critical, and disrespectful. Gary delivered a hefty chore load for the day.
"Whiiiiii?" the whine began.
She went out to rake without issue... But some hours later she still was out there and not done. Her and Zurich were mostly playing. Here's a secret: as much raking as there is, it needs to be done but the major goal is to get the kids outside. So the fact that they were playing isn't a bad thing. It just would have been better if they finished their job first then played. Either way, it was time for lunch and about to start raining, so I went out to let them know and Olea hurried to finish filling the last barrel.
The funny thing is we all have the same problem that Olea does. We procrastinate jobs that we don't like. Or draw the misery out for hours... Which she did with her next jobs.
Eventually I was tired of waiting and so I took the younger kids to the laundry room for their beating. Just kidding. The laundry room has the most metal and we needed a large metal space to play Magnetic Poetry. For the younger kids we used the letter set that has pictures of the beginning sounds of a letter on one side and the letter on the other side. Olea came in to see what she was missing out on, and then expedited her efforts to finish her job. Nev enjoyed naming the pictures and Zurich would try to guess the letter the picture started with. Olea then joined us and she worked with the word magnets.
I got the sets while I was in high school and realized I haven't brought them out for a very long time.
