Monday Mayhem

Most of the time I look forward to Monday.  I don’t know why I’m not this week, but there it is, I’m not looking forward to it. 

We had a nice anniversary though.  Sure, we couldn’t go anywhere or do anything, but we did play with the kids and really, isn’t that the best reason to remind you of what an anniversary is about?  Your wedding’s birthday – and look what our getting married has accomplished!  These 2 awesome babies who are the light of our life. 

We worked on a project together – not sure what – if anything – will come of it but it was nice to have a joint effort thing going on there. 

And I was so distracted by other stuff that I forgot to get my football picks up in time – which is a real bummer because I would have done well in the early games.  Thankfully my beloved Patriots beat the Dolphins so that was happiness. 

Beyond that … nothing.  My kids were pretty low-key this weekend, meaning no funny stuff.  Darc made me laugh a few times with some wise-acre crack he made at the TV but I can’t recall what exactly it was he said that made me chuckle. 

Oh yeah – the weather was beautiful this weekend – a rarity here in Chicagoland in November.  We got up to 70° on Saturday, so that was awesome.  And since I’ve been reduced to talking about the stupid weather, I’m stopping now!

Have a great one!

PS – Of course, after I post this, my daughter does something I think is amazingly sweet for a 4 y/o.  KnytLite was bemoaning his lack of chocolate milk – he’d already gone through his quota of the day.  MiniNess heard him and said, “I still have some left Knytie, you can have mine!”  This child is just too sweet, thoughtful, and generous to have come from me!  Share chocolate milk?  Never!  And yet she does so – gladly.  Lessons from babies, no?

Monday Mayhem

My son, Mr. Saturday Night, approached every open door with his hands in the air like a Las Vegas crooner, and announced, “Happy Halloween!”  I kept waiting for him to say, “Try the fish and be sure to tip your waitress!.”  He was so happy that it was Halloween, his “favorite day of the year.”  Until the next one.    He’s got a birthday coming up in a couple of weeks, and I’m sure that’ll be his “favorite day of the year,” for the next little while, until Christmas.  Oh the joys of 7. 

My daughter, bright and shiny while we were still at home, and who also couldn’t wait to go trick-or-treating, became strangely shy once we got to the neighborhood houses.  She loved seeing other kids out, but going to the door herself?  Not so much.  She got all shy and quiet.  She got a lot of “awwww’s” though, because those curls under that helmet were absolutely adorable – if I do say so myself. 

At one house, the lady grabbed some candy out of her bowl and put it in my son’s bucket, then had to reach back into the bowl, which was just inside the door, to get some more for my daughter.  My son, ever the bold one, asked in alarm, “Did you forget my little sister?”  Talk about parental mortification!  I shushed him, made him say thank you, and when we got to the sidewalk, had a little talk with him about rudeness and manners.  I confess I was a little on the pleased side though, seeing him so protective of her.  He’s a good brother, if he still hasn’t quite learned when that’s appropriate.  He’ll get there.   

The people in the neighborhood we went to seem really nice.  We saw a lot of parents talking to each other so there was a good sense of community.  And lots of kids. 

All in all, the kids seemed to really enjoy themselves and that makes me happy. 

Which reminds me, later that night I heard my son say to my daughter, “Halloween’s all about having fun, MiniNess.”

“No it’s not, KnytLite!” she retorted, “It’s about the candy!”

**********

We were watching an older episode of Medium, and in this one scene, a character seemed to change into a demon’s face.  Me and the kids were on the floor and Darc was on the couch, so the coffee table blocked his view, but I got the whole thing.

When the demon face appeared, my son made this sound like a moan and a shriek combined.  “WUH!” he cried and snatched a blanket over his face.  Darc busted up laughing and then MiniNess quipped, “It looks like a Saber tooth Tiger.” 

They never react like I think they will.  

**********

I found out this weekend that Roots was a total fraud.  I didn’t know that.  I never thought it was entirely real, oral histories being subject to a lot of embellishment and all, but I never suspected plagiarism either.  And not plagiarized from someone else’s history, but plagiarized from fiction.  I was shocked, to say the least.  You can read all about it here. 

**********

And how was your weekend? 

 

Monday Mayhem

It was a decidedly uneventful and unexciting weekend, no mayhem at all, which is just the way I like ‘em.  Usually, exciting events don’t turn out well for us. 

I worked a little on a poem about my brother, because it would have been his birthday this weekend.  It’s been a long time since he died but I think about him quite a bit, especially during this month, not just because it was his birthday month but also because it’s the month I got the news about his death.  For a long time, the whole month would be bad somehow, but those days are gone.  For me, it’s less about the dead resting in peace and more about those left behind living in peace.  Wounds heal.  You are never whole again, but wounds heal, and you have a new normal, and you adjust.  Life goes on, and my smart ass brother would be the first to say that.    But I still miss him on his birthday. 

I had a nightmare.  That was more excitement than I wanted!  It’s breast cancer awareness month.  There was a hoax a couple of years ago about breasts and lotus seed pods.  You can do the Google search if you want.  Lucky me, my brain put 2 and 2 together.    I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. 

My son is finally taking showers on his own.  And now he sings in the shower.    Tonight we were serenaded with that song from Phineas and Ferb I told you about a few days ago, the Evil Love song.  He likes to mimic the evil inventor.  Boy, he can sure belt ‘em out!  LOL

I did well – so far! – on my football picks this weekend.  Woo!  I’m only down 2 games of the 12 played so far.  One more left tonight.  If only I’d gone with my gut and picked the Cardinals, but no, I figured the Giants would want vengeance for getting stomped on last week.  Still, I’d rather the Cardinals beat the Giants.  I hate the Giants.  The teams I love the most are the Patriots, and whoever’s playing the Giants, Jets, Dolphins, Bills, Chargers, and Brett Favre. 

The other day, the mini-Ness went into the kitchen to grab something to eat.  A few moments later we heard, “The hot dog peed on me!”  Yeah, that’ll cause a double-take!  It was just the stuff from the package dripping on her, but boy she sure does put a spin on things! 

And how was your weekend?

Life’s always better with sleep

Finally!  I finished it!  My Vince Flynn book that HAS to go back to the library and can’t be renewed because someone else put a hold on it.  That meant I had to crash read it, which meant I’ve been staying up all night and doing the zombie thing during the day.  Yesterday was the worst!  I pretty much spent the whole day on the “snarl” setting.  At one point, I got a couple hour nap in, and I woke up to the kids giggling on my bed.  They were mimicking daddy who’d been mocking the Chicago accent. 

See, last week when we went to the store, the road we typically take is under construction.  Big surprise, it’s Chicago!  When isn’t a road under some sort of construction?  As we were driving rolling slowly past, we could see they were using some huge machine to make the new lane flat.  Darc quipped, “Mek it flaat, dair, niiice and flaaat.”  I wish you could hear it, it’s so funny the way he just nails the accent.  I don’t know quite how they do it, but Chicagoans tend to make the short a sound in the back of the throat and push it out through the nose.  Think Dennis Franz.  As we drove by, one of the kids said, “They’re working!” and I said, “Well, one of them is, the other nineteen are standing around.”  We figured that must have been the new guy.  We don’t really wonder why it takes them years to finish a road around here.  Seriously, they’ve been working on this 2-mile stretch of road since last October, and they’re still not half-way done with it.  “Mek it flaat!” 

And remembering that reminded me of when I finished the pretty pretty princess’s cake last week and the handsome prince said, “Hey mom, I like the font you used on the cake!” 
“The what?”
”The font!  You know, the writing.”

That boy!  Oh he cracks me up sometimes! 

So I passed out last night even before the kids went to bed, and actually got a full night’s sleep in.  I’ve had my drugs already, (caffeine and nicotine) and I’m ready to hop in the shower and get dressed to hit the library.  More books!  Yay! 

Cake!

It was mandatory that we head to the store yesterday, because today is a certain pretty pretty princess’s birthday.  So mommy had to get cake mix and a gift, and all that jazz.  The bummer was that the 10 minute trip home ended up taking 45 minutes.  I don’t know why traffic was so backed up – the best guess we could come up with was there was possibly an accident on the freeway that was causing traffic to divert to the road we typically take. 

The extra time in the car gave us more time to listen to our kids chatter. 

“We’d be in trouble if we had ice cream,” muttered the handsome prince. 

“Yeah, it’d be heading south by now,” answered dad.

”I wonder what would happen if it headed west?” pondered the prince.

That boy!

So today will be busy with baking and decorating a cake – all chocolate of course.   

Three was so much fun, Lord only knows what four will bring.  I can’t wait. 

But they’re sticky!

It happened just as Darc and I were discussing our respective blog posts … “What are you going to blog about?” … “I dunno … what are you going to blog about?”

Right then my kids asked us a question.

See, this afternoon at the grocery store, my son heard his name being called from a shelf near the bakery section of the store.  He spied the box of doughnuts.  Glorious red and blue glazed, star shaped, what more could a boy want?  He begged me for them.  “It’s only $5 for the whole box, mom!  Please can we get them, pleeeeeease??”  I caved, naturally.  You should see how big his eyes can get and how long his lashes are, and his huge gap-toothed smile.  Resistance is futile – he’s like the Borg. 

Later in the evening he and his baby sister had their doughnuts while their dad and I were discussing blog potential, or the lack thereof. 

“Can you cut up my doughnut?”

“Yeah, me too, me too!”  Guess who said that? 

I stared at my children, as I was trying to wash some dishes.  “Wait … you want your doughnuts cut up?  Like in pieces?  And you want to eat them with forks?  What is wrong with you people?  Seriously, how can you be my kids and want to eat your doughnuts with a fork?”

“But they’re sticky!” was the excuse.

“They’re doughnuts!  They’re supposed to be sticky!  That means you can play in the sink afterwards while you wash your hands and faces.  Nobody eats doughnuts with a fork!”

“We do, we do!”

“I have my blog post for tomorrow,” I announced to my husband.

Daddy cut up their doughnuts, they did indeed eat them with forks, and they still played in the sink afterwards while they brushed their teeth. 

I have decided I have the prissiest kids on the planet. 

 

Bits and pieces

As is pretty typical, it was an uneventful weekend here at The Darc House.  Ran a couple of errands, watched a few movies, talked a lot.  That’s what Darc and I do, we talk.  We basically never shut up.  Amazing how after all these years together we still don’t run out of things to say.  What’s kind of interesting – to me anyway – is that we mostly agree with each other.  I used to hear that in a marriage, you wanted a spouse who disagreed with you on lots of things, so that you’d always have something to “talk” about.  I found that kind of talk mostly leads to arguments and eventually divorce.  So if I were handing out advice, and when am I not? I’d tell people, “Find someone who agrees with you about almost everything.  You will always have an ally.”  That’s my 2¢.

Anyway, Darc was watching some program on what would happen to the earth if there were no longer any people on it while I was going through my Reader.  Out of the corner of my ear, I heard the narrator say, “And the eighty thousand miles of roads in Texas could circle the globe five times!”  Something short-circuited in my brain and I said, “Wait a minute …”

Darc responded, “Wait … that’s not right!”

And then we were off and running about how stupid must a show be to think that 80k miles of roads could go around the earth 5 times.  Then we got off on a tangent about “Environmentalists” and actually came up with a game show I just might propose to ABC.   

Later on, we caught part of a show on “ghostly places” or something to that effect.  Someone on that show made the comment about how ghosts are attached to old places.  That spurred Darc to ponder, “At what age does a building become eligible for a ghost resident?  Is there like a minimum age requirement and does it need ID?  And what do they mean by “attached"?  Is the ghost screaming, ‘I’m stuck!  I’m stuck!  Guys, you go on without me, this building’s like quicksand!  Save yourselves!’” 

After that I wandered around the house for maybe an hour muttering, “I’m stuck!” and holding my sides in from laughing so hard.  Seriously, I almost did a spit-take the 1st time he said it.  About spewed my coffee everywhere. 

Today we return some movies to the library.  I have to tell you, those of you who like Depp, don’t EVER rent his Dead Man movie.  It sucked. 

And how was your weekend?

A picture of our place ended up on lolcats – not sure how that happened … 

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

 

~~Ness~~

Marriage and money

I did something stupid.  Yeah, quit nodding your head and laughing, it doesn’t happen all that much. 

I’ve been trying to set up FireFox and other programs on my own profile that my Beloved set up for me on his computer.  You know I love my FF add-ons!  Well, they had a new one for something called Buxfer.  It’s a financial site that tracks all your finances.  You can set up bill reminders, bill payments, balance your account, do budget stuff – all kinds of neat things and I recommend it to those who are interested.  You can go to www.buxfer.com for the full site, and you can find the FF add-on here.  It wasn’t setting it up that was stupid – it was not discussing it first with my husband.

See, here’s the thing: we keep all our financial stuff separate.  It’s something we learned after going though our respective divorces.  It wasn’t a “prepare for the worst” type of thing, it was a protection type of thing.  Our past credit history was tied to our exes, and if anything either of our exes did messed up one of our credit histories, if we had anything in joint credit, it would mess it up for the other.  Boy that came out confused!  In a nutshell, if my ex got into financial trouble, since my credit past was tied to him, if Darc and I had joint credit on anything, something my ex might do could potentially affect Darc.  Make better sense now?  Keeping separate credit on everything is something I highly recommend to married couples.  No joint financial stuff – not even the house.  You can set up other legal documents in the event of death or divorce.  If one of you loses your job, then your spouse is safe, and you may need the safer credit to help rebuild your life.  It’s just a practical thing.  And that’s a long way to explain that our finances are separate, but now you understand why.  That being said, I’m the numbers person in the family, and while our financial stuff is separate, I do ALL the budgeting and bill paying.  Essentially I run Darc’s finances. 

So I set up his financial stuff on this Buxfer site and didn’t ask him first if he was okay with that.  He’s not big on keeping financial data online, for obvious reasons.  He was falling asleep and I didn’t want to bother him and frankly, since I’ve been doing all the financial stuff for over a decade now, I just didn’t think he’d have a problem with anything I did.  And after the meltdown of my computer this week – my computer that contained ALL our financial – I figured keeping that kind of stuff in an online-accessible place was a good idea. 

Well, Darc wasn’t happy with me, and told me so, in the nicest way possible you can tell somebody that you’re not happy with something they did.  I apologized, and he understands my reasons for doing what I did.  And I wouldn’t have even considered signing up on the site if they didn’t have a nice little delete button for those who change their minds about it.  Keeping financial stuff online is a risky venture.  Not keeping it online where you can get to it in the event of a computer failure is also a risky venture.  It’s all about picking  your poisons and knowing you’ll have to choke down one of them.  In a perfect world, my bank would have a FireFox add-on I could use.  In the meantime, we’re going to give Buxfer a try.  If for any reason one or the other of us gets uncomfortable with it, it’ll be deleted pronto.  Surely it can’t be any worse than when our bank got hacked into, right? 

Right??

~~Ness~~ 

Bits and pieces

I’m a little stunned.  I was going to comment that I haven’t missed a day blogging since May of last year, but as I was scanning through my little calendar thingie, it said I missed a day last June.  How could I have missed a day??  I am stunned, because I was sure I’d been faithful and consistent since last May. 

I guess this weekend sort of kicks off the start of summer, right?  Memorial Day Weekend.  Lots of people have plans, barbeque and stuff like that.  I’m thinking of making nachos.  What about you?

I learned something last night.  I learned that my son needs his toenails cut.  It must have been 4 or 5 this morning when he climbed into bed with us.  I was still reading, and asked him if he’d had a nightmare.  No, he just didn’t like waking up when it was still dark and quiet – it makes him feel too alone.  He plopped his head down on the pillow next to me, snuggled into my back, and once he fell back to sleep proceeded to kick, punch, and scratch me with those dang toenails all night long.  Darc and I say, politely, that he is a physical sleeper.  And I have the scratch marks and bruises to prove it!

And my son spent the better part of a day being upset that I was making him go barefoot in the house – because it’s been warm and he goes through socks like other people go through toilet paper.  My boy just can not stand naked feet, period.  I finally relented and let him put his socks back on.  What is the deal with males and socks?  I just don’t get it – my daughter’s not a big sock person, like her mama, and she used to pull them off all the time when she was a baby.  My son, on the other hand, acts like socks are a part of his anatomy and that I’ve amputated his feet if he can’t wear socks. 

Darc was teasing me earlier.  I’d bumped my elbow – not to where it hurt, but he started laughing.  I must have shot him a dirty look because he said, “This is the point where if it was me, you’d be going, ‘Are you all right?’”

So I shot back, “Yeah, and you’d always yell back at me, ‘If I was all right would I be screaming OWWW!?!?’  Geez!  Make a girl sorry she asked!”  I don’t know why but that made him laugh even harder.  I never ask him anymore if he’s okay when he yells.  I always wait until he quiets down, and then ask, “Are you all right now?”  I figure if he’s capable of making a smart-ass crack, he’s fine. 

Now to finish listening to one of my favorite songs (for you Love!).   

Have a great weekend!

~~Ness~~

Mom-ness

(hey!  I should use that as a blog title and do just mommy-blogging stuff there!)

I live with a songstress.  She fills the house with music every day.  She twirls and dances, spins and skips, and sings the whole time.  She knows the words to several of the songs on one of her kids computer game CD’s, and she sings those with abandon, repeatedly.  She also knows the words to the theme from Deadliest Catch, which also happens to be Wanted, Dead or Alive, by Bon Jovi. 

I can’t get her to sing into the mic at my computer, and I have no way to get video from the camera to the computer either.  That makes me a little sad, because I really wanted you to see how adorably cute she is when she’s doing her thing.  I thought if I could at least get her recorded through my mic, I might be able to make a video with still pics or something.  At 3, she knows how to put passion into her songs.  No matter how many times she sings them, she never loses that enthusiasm.  Ever.  She can sing the same song a thousand times and is just as joyful the last time as the first.  And she’s pretty good at staying in tune, too.

I also live with a smart-alec.  Well, 2 of them – one a pro, and one apprentice.  *rimshot*  My son makes wise cracks to the TV now.  Just the other night when we were watching Paranormal State he quipped, “Yeah, Paranormal State makes me para-annoyed.”  He saw the commercial for the Obama Chia Pet and said, “Hey, it’s Barrack O’Hair!”  Sometimes I get the “Yeah, right” response when I tell him something – although he is learning that smart-ass remarks to one’s mother are not in one’s best interests.  Other times he snorts at me.  Yes, he actually does that *snort* thing.  I’ve even gotten the line, “But I already know all I need to know,” during homeschool.  At 7.  I thought we had a few more years until the ‘tude began, but no, it’s here now.  Only trouble is, most of the time he’s just being funny, not rude, and I can’t help but laugh at the things he says.  I know this only encourages him, but come on, Barrack O’Hair?  How can you not laugh?  He’s getting his flirt on already too.  Last time we were at the store he told one of the stock girls that she was pretty.  He already knows how well this works on mom, now it’s time to test it on the world, I suppose. 

My kids are awesome and they make me look good, most of the time.  I’m not afraid to take them out in public, although we did have a 3 y/o mini-meltdown the last time we went to the grocery store but Daddy cut it short with a suggestion to go hunt down cookie treasure stolen by pirates.  Other than that, they’re great to have around.  It amazes me sometimes, how complete they are.  They are themselves, and they just seem to know who they are.  They embody pure joy, and I love having them around. 

I’m still working on that screaming thing they do though, but other than that, I got the cream of the crop. 

~~Ness~~ 

The Best Medicine

I scared the living daylights out of my son last night. 

He and his sister were playing in their room, and he had his back to the door.  I popped in to hang up some clothes in their closet and he didn’t see me as I was passing behind him.  He was talking, then he turned around, caught a presence behind him and practically screamed the ceiling down.  For a moment, he had a look of sheer terror on his face, then came the, “Oh mom, you scared me!”  He started chuckling then, and I lost it.  I was almost rolling on the floor, literally, laughing so hard I could barely breathe. 

I staggered back into the living room, tears streaming down my face, and my husband asked, “What in the world is going on in there?!”

I told him what had happened and he quipped, “Isn’t that look of horror the funniest thing you’ve ever seen?  That’s what always gets me.”  So says the horror writer.

No doubt the neighbors think we’re butchering our children and eating them in here.  I didn’t scare my boy intentionally.  I was just trying to hang up some clothes.  But man, I’m going to be laughing about this one for years! 

Man

There are times my husband drives me batty.  Kreestee says she sometimes calls her husband Mr. Grumpypants, and there are times I think mine ought to be called Mr. Crank-a-butt.  I say her and I send the two of them off together someplace so they can irritate each other and not us.   What say you, Kree? 

Last weekend, for reasons I’ll never fathom, Darc decided that anything he could do that would annoy the crap out of me might be especially fun.  He mocked everything I did.  If I said one thing, he said the opposite.  When I jumped at a loud noise on a TV show, he teased me – told me I had “delayed reaction jumping syndrome” and deliberately made a loud sound himself just to see if I’d jump again.  Later, he sneezed loud enough to blow the walls out, and then laughed at me for jumping at that. 

I have a box of baking supplies I keep on the top shelf since I don’t bake as often as I’d like.  Being the shortie that I am, I keep the edge of the box extended just over the edge of the shelf it’s on so I can get my thumbs under it to get it down – otherwise, I have to get a ladder because I can’t reach it.  When Darc was helping me look for some ingredient I needed, he pulled the box out to look inside it, then pushed it back in.  “No, pull it back out please, just over the edge, or I can’t reach it when I need it.”

“The door won’t close if I do that,” he argued.

“Yes it will, just please pull it out a little so I can get leverage on it.”

“You mean … like this?” and he pushed the box all the way in the back of the cabinet as far as it would go. 

“Damn!  You’re such an ass!”

He laughed.  Then he pulled the box out so far it almost fell out of the cabinet while he mocked me.  “You want it all the way out, like this?”

“Cut it out!  Why are you being such a dick?  D. I. C. K.  Dick!  Knock it off!”

All. Weekend. Long.  If there was a chance to mock or tease me, he didn’t let it pass.  He was like the proverbial little boy who dips the little girl’s pigtails in the inkwell.  I’ve had to chase him with my backscratcher – see, it’s an old bamboo one, and it extends my reach by about 18”, and if we’re sitting at our desks I can reach him with it.  Smartypants leans his shoulder over to me when he sees me coming, mocking me smacking him, “Make sure you don’t miss now!”  Oooooh that man! 

So just to get even, when he saw this over on Blame it on the Voices and asked me if it was worth watching, I said, “Yeah.  It was interesting.”  I feigned nonchalance.  (Heheh, pretend I said that with a British accent!)  [Kreestee, you might want to suggest that link to Mr. Grumpypants.  ]

Then I laughed my butt off when his head hit the ceiling.   

~~Ness~~ 

 

My St. Patrick’s Day

Caffeine!  Woo!  We were down to only decaf in the house for the past few days but we managed to make a grocery run yesterday and stock up a little.  Coffee in the house!  Hopefully the caffeine-withdrawal headaches will go away now. 

I thought it would be a nice treat to pick up some McD’s for St. Patrick’s Day, get the family some shamrock shakes … would you believe my local golden arches was out of shamrock shakes?  OUT of shamrock shakes on St. Patrick’s Day?  What kind of shoddy operation are you people running there??  You don’t run out of shamrock shakes on St. Patrick’s Day!  That’s just … just … sacrilegious! 

The library didn’t have any books by an author I’ve recently fallen in love with either, even though their web site said they did.  They lied!  I’m telling you, this guy is good – so good in fact even my beloved live-in critic liked his work.  Now that’s saying something!  The book I read recently is called “Empty Ever After” by Reed Coleman, and it’s the latest in what is called the Moe Praeger series.  It’s a gritty detective book, sort of noir I suppose.  The prose was tight, the characters – and there are many – were well written and full of depth, even if their scenes were brief.  While the story was intense and dramatic, some of the lines were amusing and even funny.  I heard Darc chuckling and when I asked him what made him laugh, he read a line: “I wondered if that lazy fly buzzing around the bar was wearing a nicotine patch.”  To be honest, I was a tad surprised when he said he didn’t think it was my taste.  I’m the girl who used to read Lawrence Sanders with his curmudgeonly Edward X. Delany character; and Robert Ludlum with all his spy intrigue and Bourne and Osterman; and devoured the complete cases of Sherlock Holmes.  And I read true crime like it’s going out of style – which sadly it’s not – why wouldn’t I love detective stories?  Hmm.  Anyway, no Coleman for me this trip.  I think I’ll try putting some books on reserve for next time.  I did manage to find another of the funny Irish doctors series by Patrick Taylor so I’m happy about that.  I’m going to try someone new, too.  Can’t think of her name right now and too lazy to get the book bag.  I also found a mystery “anthology” book, so I’ll let you know how all those turn out.  Mmm, fresh meat – I do love trips to the library!

My kids have been on a funny roll lately too.  The other day when I was setting up to watch “The Brave One” with Jody Foster (Jody = A+; movie = B-) my daughter asked if it was a scary movie.  I said, “No, not a scary movie, maybe a scary scene or two but no monsters or anything like that.”  My son quipped, “Well of course there has to be a scary one if there’s a brave one, you can’t have one with out the other, and the movie IS called ‘The Brave One’.”  That’s usin’ your noggin’ kiddo!

Then last night my daughter came and knocked on the door while Darc and I went to have a quick smoke.  “Um, are you going to watch more grown-up shows?”

“Yes, we’re going to watch more grown-up shows,” daddy answered.

“Well, um, but I’m a kid!”

“I am aware of that, princess.”

I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.    She’s trying so hard not to be a baby anymore. 

So that’s how I’ve been.  And you?

~~Ness~~ 

 

Birth of a Conservative

Have I told you how smart my boy is?  My mini-Darc?  Surely I have by now!  I know I mentioned his comment about adding unnecessary words in sentences.  Know what he said yesterday?

He was watching some show on TV, a kid show but I don’t know which one.  Anyway, the characters were doing something, a piñata I think.  One of them broke it, and the other characters scattered to grab the prizes.  My son, the capitalist, commented, “Why should the rest of them get anything?  They didn’t do anything to deserve all that stuff.” 

Now, he’s never been to a piñata party so he doesn’t understand how it’s played – one day he will understand so I’m not worried about that.  The thing that pleased me so much was the fact that he grasped the concept of a hand-out and it offended him.  In his mind, the one that broke the piñata should have gotten the prizes because he’d done the work to earn them, and the other characters had no right to just run up and take everything from him.  It offended his sensibilities that others simply took what they hadn’t earned.  For a kid who’s never had to earn much of anything, this amazes me.  The most he’s ever had to earn was a new game for the game system, and he had to earn it by trying new foods, not by cleaning his room or anything like that.  Hopefully, in a dozen years or so this will translate into him not calling home every month from college asking for more money, but simply to say hi. 

One of the things that pleases me most about this is that we don’t sit around talking politics all the time in our home for him to pick up on this kind of thing.  It’s just his nature. 

~~Ness~~ 

 

Grumpy days!

There must be something in the air.  I don’t know what it is, but yesterday my daughter was one of the grumpiest babies I’ve ever seen.  My son had a touch of it too, as did my Beloved.  It seems we were all a bit on the short tempered side and could hardly be coaxed out of it.  Especially the baby Falcon.  Nothing pleased her.  It didn’t matter what games anyone tried to play with her, it didn’t matter what she was offered to eat, everything made her angry. 

It’s hard to be a parent on those days.  It’s hard to remember to be patient.  There are moments you just want to shout back, “Fine!  Be a grump!  See if I care!”  I sent her to her room for a bit and she came out later and tried to be in a better mood.  It wasn’t too hard for her, because by that time, mini-Darc was in his grumpy phase and that took the focus off her.  Mini-Darc hates math, and fights learning it as best he can.  Darc and I spent a long time trying to explain the importance, but really, how much do you think sunk in to his 7 year old head?  Yeah, same here.  *sigh*  All I can do is plug away every day and hope something sinks in at some point.  He’s such a structured child, attached to his routines, I thought he would love math for its absolutes.  So not the case!  He’s convinced himself it’s hard, therefore he thinks it’s beyond him to learn – at least until he’s a grown up.  He believes when that magic day happens, that he will somehow also magically attain all the mathematical knowledge he needs.  Yes, that makes sense to him. 

It’s hard for a daddy to be patient when his babies are full of piss and vinegar but Darc did his best.  Me, I was the very soul of patience and understanding … and if you believe that, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you, too.    Thank goodness it’s Tuesday!

~~Ness~~