Circus

This weekend Jeff and I watched The Wolf of Wall Street. I had picked up the book at an airport bookstore last spring and ended up reading it at an embarrassingly fast pace. Knowing that it was at least mostly autobiographical, it was both fascinating and deplorable. How could one person be so vile? And such a great writer? I was sucked in to the horror. What I wasn't quite expecting as I watched the movie was for it to seem, at least at some level, well, familiar.

Don't get me wrong. As much as I would sometimes (often, always) like to scream obscenities, I am generally pretty good, especially in front of the kiddos. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I was driving with the kids when the brakes decided not to work as I got to an intersection with cross traffic. I may have shouted an obscene word or two, and I was so surprised by my cussing, that when I mentioned it to Jeff, I shared my choice of words and didn't think to include the whole issue with our minivan not actually being a safe family vehicle. (For the record, we did finally stop, mid-intersection, and the car coming at us swerved. Phew.)

Back to the movie, then there is the drug use. Nope. It sounds nice, but in addition to the whole illegal thing and the health risks, drugs require extra money and free time. Ha! Enough said.

Gratuitous nudity. I suppose we do know that. At least once a day, the three youngest children in the family tend to streak through the house at bath time. Actually, streaking would be an improvement. It is more of a casual lounging in the nude. Especially if Wheel of Fortune is on. My little nerds are addicted, and they think nothing of heading to the bathroom, taking their clothes off before their showers, and then wandering back out to watch a puzzle or two. It's special. On the bright side, at least they don't have any body issues.

But the part of the movie that actually reminded me of our lives in the whole crazy circus atmosphere. I am pretty sure the only reason we don't have roller skating monkeys and midget tossing contests in our living room is because no one has thought of it yet. But give them time. Natalia is only three, after all.

I promise, I really try to keep things simple and calm, but then things get insane without me even trying. Take last Tuesday, for instance. I know it was going to be a little weird. This year I promised myself I would volunteer in the big kids' classrooms once a month, and it was my day to volunteer in Ree's classroom. I usually volunteer on Fridays when I work from home to minimize driving time and work interruptions. But they were desperate for a second volunteer to help with their Thanksgiving pie party. I could handle that. It meant going to work in the morning, taking a long lunch to volunteer at school, and then driving back to work. So the schedule was not perfect. But, hey, there was PIE involved! Oh, and, uh, community service with my daughter.

But things got more complicated. On Monday afternoon I found out the boys were having some Thanksgiving thing at 8:30 in the morning and they wanted me to be there. And after skipping a play in Ree's class this year because I had no idea it was a play until I got the video afterward (oops! parenting fail!), I am hesitant to skip events where my children tell me I need to attend. So here is how my day actually played out.

• It started as a regular morning. I got the big kids off to the bus, then came home and worked on my laptop on the couch while Natalia watched TV. That worked for 15-20 minutes, then she got weirded out and started climbing all over me. Among other things, she actually climbed on my head.
• We were getting ready to leave for the boys' class, and I told Natalia to go to the bathroom. When we got there, I told her to take off her pants. She did. Unfortunately, because none of my children are currently functioning well, she did not take off her panties. At least she was on the toilet when I looked over and saw her peeing all over them. I quick cleaned that up.
• We got to school. (Jeff and Natalia also joined in the fun and stopped on their way to preschool.) The boys were having a Thanksgiving feast. That's it. Just eating. We felt silly when we arrived for being there, but lots of parents were there, and the boys were happy to see us.
• Mike freaked out when we said we had to go. He started crying hysterically. Great, big tears. I calmed him down then headed to work.
• I got to work, put away my lunch and computer, and chit chatted with my coworkers. After about 15 minutes, I noticed my phone was ringing.
• I looked at my phone. I had three missed phone calls, two voice mails, and three texts. Uh oh. It turned out to just be the school nurse. Mike had an angry belly. I called her and then called Jeff to pick up Mike.
• Amazingly, I got some work stuff done. Then I got a long series of texts from Jeff. My parents' house in Wilmington was infested with ants. Not just a few ants. The entire pantry was swarming. Awesome. Jeff had Mike in tow and Jeff was recovering from the flu himself, so I told him I would take care of it after work.
• I left work again at 11:45. I took a coworker to the airport to pick up a rental car for her Thanksgiving trip and then returned to the kids' school.
• Ree's class was insane. The "play" was a poem that each kid had one line in and took less than two minutes to read. The kids had apparently all hyped it up in the same way to their parents, because the classroom was packed. (Jeff, Mike, and Natalia were also there, stopping on the way home from preschool.) There was no way I could do my official pie serving duty. It was every man, woman, and child for themselves. Thankfully, I managed to secure some good pie for my children. No sad pecan pie for them!
• As we were getting ready to leave (me to return to work, and the rest to go home), Natalia peed on the floor. Not a little. A huge, great lake. She was completely embarrassed. I was able to find a roll of Bounty paper towels and some Clorox wipes. We were good. In the meantime, Ree was running around telling everyone that her sister peed on the floor. I'm sure that was her own embarrassment, but it was not helping things. 
• At that point I noticed that Jeff not looking so great. I told him I would go home for awhile to help get Ree and Leon off the bus and get lunch for Natalia and Mike since it was already after 1:00 pm and no one had eaten anything but pie.
• I came home and did the mom thing. I gave Natalia a bath to clean her and Mike a bath to calm his belly. I made them lunch and folded laundry. I picked up the kids from the bus, let them unwind, read to them, and tucked in the three little ones for quiet time.
• Then I headed back to work. I was planning on taking care of a couple things, grabbing my laptop, and then heading to my parents' house to do some ant battles before coming home and making dinner. I got sucked into an hour long meeting that was definitely needed, but I did not get all the work stuff done I had planned. I left work at 4:45, quite a bit later than planned.
• I hit insane traffic on the way to my parents' house. Thankfully, I was able to bail at the last minute before getting stuck on a highway that was at a dead stop.

Mercifully, the rest of the day was uneventful. But, like in the movie, the circus was not just one day. The next day's circus took on a new flavor when Natalia showed up in our room, when it was dark and early, demanding to get dressed because she was ready to get up. I yelled at her. And yelled at her, and yelled at her (at least as much as one can yell when whispering). After about 10 minutes, she relented and went to bed. That's when I looked at the clock. It was 3:30 a.m.

Perhaps I should reconsider the recreational drug thing...

Mom Time

Ree was about 8 months old the first time I took a day off from work to just be a mom. I got up that morning and tried to get ready for work...and I couldn't do it. So I prepped her food for the week and we puttered around and I took her to story time at the library. It was such an enjoyable day and I was so happy I almost cried. (Then again, nearly everything made me cry. In the six months I had been back at work, she had taken to getting up 3 - 4 times each night to check on me. The cumulative sleep deprivation was getting scary!)

Since then, I have taken days off when I can to have mom time. Sometimes they are planned and sometimes, like that day, I suddenly realize how desperately I need them and I just find a way to make them work.

Today was one of those days, and thankfully, I had already planned to be off. The big kids are on fall break from school, and I have managed to squeeze in a long weekend. We've been busy all weekend, and today we were supposed to go to the Children's Museum for our one "big" adventure of their break, but it was closed for renovations. Amazingly, when I asked the kids if we could, instead, go next Friday and spend today at home decorating for Halloween and making cookies, they were excited about that plan.

So that's exactly what we did, and somehow those activities filled the day. Cookie making alone, was quite an endeavor. The kids had to be warned multiple times that this was a three step process. First we would make the doll, roll it out, and chill it. (Random side note: I have learned to roll the dough between sheets of wax paper and then chill it. It makes such a difference! No more battles with flour and a rolling pin!) Then we would cut out our cookies and bake them. Finally, after they cooled, we could decorate them. Thankfully, aside from Natalia getting way too excited before we made the dough and right before we decorated the cookies, things went pretty smoothly.

Natalia is finally attempting to learn the alphabet, and we are always covertly trying to encourage her. When it was time to decorate the cookies, I was really excited when I found some sugar letters in the pantry that were left over from decorating a birthday cake. (I decided not to focus on whose birthday cake and for what birthday these were purchased nor the fact that the (relative) healthiness of the homemade dough was completely canceled out by these little chemical gems.) She was really excited to add them to her cookies.

It turns out, the kids were all excited to use the letters, although Leon was the most excited. He wrote "Leon" on one cookie, and then he spelled out "Mike!" on another. (And, yes, he used the exclamation point. His brother is THAT exciting!) Then he attempted to spell out "Happy Birthday" with no worries about where the letters might fit.

In the end, we had a very colorful display of cookies.

Having finally cleaned up from that project, I am looking forward to one more day of mom time. Tomorrow I am off to drive preschool carpool, and crazy as it sounds, I couldn't be happier.

L.A., Part IV

Hi!

I miss you guys sooooo much! I can't wait to get home tomorrow night (even if I do get home after you go to sleep). Then I will be home for 3 days. Yay!

Yesterday my friend April gave me a giant tour of the area near my hotel. Our first stop were the canals in an area called Venice. The canals are little rivers that flow through the neighborhoods instead of streets. Everyone has their boat tied up in their front yard.

Next we went to Venice Beach. There is a long boardwalk that runs along the beach, so you can walk without having to walk in the sand. Plus there are little shops all along the boardwalk. We also saw some crazy street performers. There was a group of men doing crazy flips - two of them would build a pyramid, and a third man would jump over and do back flips. It was crazy! This is me on the board walk.

After Venice Beach, we went to Hollywood. Here's one of the stars on the sidewalk.

You can also see the hand prints and foot prints of famous people.

Finally, we ate dinner in an area called Santa Monica. We got food from a Mexican place like islands and sat aside to eat. 

I hope everyone feels better soon and you have a great day tomorrow. Leon and Mike, have fun on your field trip! Natalia, have fun at preschool! And Jewel, just have fun! :)

Love,

Mom

L.A., Part III

Hi!

I hope you had a great Tuesday. Natalia, I hope you enjoyed your first long day at school! (And I hope everyone else had a good day!)

Last night we went to the Santa Monica Pier. Here's the beach below the pier. That's the Pacific Ocean.

The pier has a little amusement park. There are dolphin-shaped bushes to greet you.

I rode a big ferris wheel with my friend Cynthia and her family. We went on it after dark when it was all lit.

Here's what the ground below looked like in the dark.

We didn't play them, but there were games where you could win prizes. They had a lot of Helly Kitty backpacks!

There were penguin friends for Percy and Waddles, too.

My friend April who used to work in my office lives in California now, and this afternoon she and I are going on an adventure. I'm sure I'll have more pictures from that. Have a great night!

I love you and miss you all!

Mom

L.A., Part II

Hi guys!

I hope you had a great Monday! Dad said you liked the pictures from the airplane, so here are a couple more. These are pictures of Los Angeles. Can you find the houses and roads?

There is a mall next door to my hotel with lots of really fancy stores. They have a Justice, too, and I found this awesome shirt in there. (No, Jewel, I didn't buy you anything. Too much to choose from!)

I had training (my grown up school) all day today, so I haven't gotten out to do much. I thought you would like to see some pictures from our hotel. There's a really big pool.

Even fancier than the umbrellas at Gran and Gene's pool, they have private rooms you can go in by the pool to get out of the sun.

This is one of the buildings you can see from the pool area.

I love you!

Mom

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I'm in L.A. this week for work. For my family, at least, this is a long time and a long distance to be apart from each other. For Natalia, it has been emotional. She spent Friday clinging on to Jeff all day and then to me in the evening. Saturday we attended a birthday party for a good friend, which served as a good distraction (even if it meant the kids were crazy all day!). Due to post-party exhaustion, Natalia went to bed with little fuss by Natalia standards, but at 2:30am Sunday I found her sitting in her Elmo chair in her room just SCREAMING. When I went in, she burst into tears and just said, "I'm going to miss you!" I told her I would miss her too, promised to wake her when my alarm went off, and headed back to bed. She was back up 30 minutes later, at which point I tucked her in on the couch. At 5:30am, she asked to climb in bed with us. I was too tired to argue, so I ignored her and hoped she go away. Nope, she just crawled in bed and laid down right on top of me. By 5:50, I gave up on resting and the two of us got up.

Natalia and I had our usual morning battles until about 7:20, but when I went to finish packing, she was a whole new child. Suddenly, she was Helper Girl. She wanted to assist me. In addition to the usual clothes and toiletries, she packed a few other things she thought would be helpful. I started a tradition several trips ago of taking one of Leon or Natalia's stuffed animals with me when I travel solo. This time, in addition to packing Bunny, Natalia packed Bunny's blankie for me. Natalia actually got quite carried away, and I had to stealthily sneak things back out of my suitcase. Currently sitting in my closet at home under a pile of clothes waiting to be ironed are a baby doll, a Barbie, a Little People dad, and what Natalia calls her Harry Potter book which is a hard-backed journal on which she has "written" pages and pages of stories. However, in addition to Bunny and her blankie, I did end up with a few bonus items that made the transcontinental trek. My hotel room currently includes an Angry Bird, a chair for the Little People dad, a My Little Pony, a pair of working miniature binoculars, and a "guitar" made out of a Jello box and rubber bands.

Housekeeping is going to think I'm nuts, but I shouldn't get bored in my hotel room this week!
 

L.A., Part I

Hi guys!

I made it to California! I mostly spent the day waiting around or riding on planes and shuttles, so it wasn't too exciting. Here are a few pictures, though.

First I flew from Wilmington to Charlotte, then I changed planes and had to fly from Charlotte to L.A. There were lots of planes in line in Charlotte waiting to take off.

 This is what the tops of clouds look like!

What the ground looks like from way up high. (We were flying at about 32,000 feet or about 7 miles up!)

Bunny likes her new bed!

Angry Bird and Pony had dinner.

Can you spot Bunny? She was relaxing on the balcony outside my hotel room.

I hope you have a good night and a great day at school tomorrow!

Love,

Mom

First Day of Preschool

Natalia's first day of preschool was yesterday. To minimize drama, I didn't actually tell her when her first day of school was until bedtime on Monday. As her siblings were getting ready for bed, I told her that she also needed to set out clothes for Tuesday since she had preschool. She immediately started with a long list of questions, but thankfully, none of us lost any sleep over school starting. (In comparison to the boys, who stopped sleeping for about two weeks before kindergarten began. They had trouble falling asleep, and Michael especially woke up screaming with nightmares every night. We are still recovering!)

Yesterday morning there were some initial protests, but by the time we were ready to leave, Natalia was dragging me out the door, encouraging me to hurry because, "The teachers are waiting for me!!!"

It is clear that Natalia loved her first day, but getting the details of what actually happened at school has been a bit tricky. All she would tell Jeff about school is that they didn't go outside for recess. So I tried to extract some information from her when I got home from work.

Me: How was preschool? Did you have fun?

Natalia: (Smiling) We didn't go outside.

Me: Oh, okay. If you didn't go outside, what did you do?

Natalia: Everything!

Me: Wow! That sounds fun. What kind of things did you do?

(silence)

Me: Did you paint?

Natalia: No

Me: Did you play with blocks?

Natalia: No

Me: Did you play dress up?

Natalia: No, they don't have that.

Me: Hmmm. Can you tell me ONE thing that you did at preschool?

Natalia: (Still smiling) We didn't go outside.

Me: Did you have circle time?

Natalia: Yes. Two circles.

Me: What did you do in the circles?

Natalia: We didn't go outside.

And then Natalia ran off to play. So first day of preschool was successful. But what actually occurred is a mystery!

Hand Me Downs

We have always been lucky when it comes to getting clothes for the kids. When the boys were newborns, Jeff's cousin sent down boxes and boxes of clothes for them. She had a co-worker with twin boys who were about six months older than them, so not only did we inherit lots of clothing, they even had coordinating outfits.

As they've gotten older, they have a hand me down fairy. At the end of each season a friend packs up her son's clothes and sends it to us. A friend of my mom also periodically sends us bags of clothing, and collectively, the boys are set (especially when you factor in gifts from the grandparents). I was able to fully appreciate the pre-made wardrobe this weekend while I cleaned out their dresser.

It started simply. I am sick of seeing the boys get dressed for school each morning and they are wearing slipper socks, teensy little infant socks, or two horribly clashing socks. (Although I'm not sure the horribly clashing socks aren't intentional. Ree spent two years of her life wanting to only wear "mismatch" socks to school.) So I cleaned out their sock drawer, which resulted in an entire grocery bag of socks to donate to Goodwill. Then I moved on to their other drawers. When I got to long sleeve tees, by the time I purged everything that would no longer fit over Leon's giant noggin, there were two sad little shirts in the drawer. Pants were even worse. I had Leon try on several pairs of pants from last year. Every pair ended just below the knee. We were covered on rainy days, but I thought perhaps we might want some longer pants on frosty mornings.

So I went out to the garage where I keep the extra clothes we receive. Hello, instant wardrobe! I was able to refill their drawers with at least enough clothes to get us through the school week. No shopping required! Phew. Now the task is finding families to take the bags and bags of purged shirts and pants...

A Day at the Beach

We are quite spoiled and go to the beach all the time, but it's often just a quick (and somewhat tiring) break between other things. However, two weeks ago we managed to have an actual relaxing day at the beach. My uncle and cousins were staying at Sunset Beach, which is just a little over an hour from here, and we were able to spend a whole day with them relaxing and enjoying life.

We arrived around 10:30 that morning, and after my children roused the last two sleepy heads out of bed (nothing like waking to the gentle sounds of a herd of children running through the house screaming in excitement), we were on the beach by 11am. We played until around 1:00, and then we stumbled back into their beach house for a late lunch. We we hermits all afternoon, staying inside while the sun was its hottest. Both of my brothers and my sister-in-law arrived around 2:30 that afternoon, and their appearance just encouraged our air conditioner time. By 4pm, the kids were zombies from too many hours of video games, so we wandered back out to the water. We played for a couple more hours before eating a monster seafood feast. The only strange part of the day (aside from the fact that the fish for dinner was imported from Lake Erie!) was remembering that we actually had to return to real life the next day.

Charleston

We ran away from the kids. See Part 1 of our adventures here.

Hey Jewel, Leon, Mike, and Talia!

Yesterday we walked, and walked, and walked. We left our hotel around 10:45 in the morning, and we didn't get back until about 5:45 last night. In between, we saw lots of downtown Charleston. We stopped for food, too. We had lemonade at Chick-Fil-A, lunch at an Irish Pub, and we found a Godiva store that served swirl waffle cones dipped in chocolate. (The ice cream cones were bigger than your head!) Here are a few of the things we saw yesterday.

We walked by the campus of the College of Charleston. Their mascot is a cougar.

The city sits on a peninsula, like Wilmington does. The Cooper River runs alongside, and there is lots to see in the river. A famous battle in the Civil War took place at Ft. Sumter.

You can see a battleship.

We drove over an enormous bridge to get to downtown. (Jewel, you would've loved it!)

There are tons of big, old houses. They are really, really tall.

You can take carriage rides to see the houses.

You can see old battle stuff, too.

It was lots of fun, but even we wanted uppies after walking all day. We relaxed for awhile in our room, then we walked to dinner, which thankfully, wasn't too far away. We went to a local restaurant that had the best fried chicken EVER. Dad also got some collards, and I got okra and tomatoes. It was awesome.

Today we are off to Charlotte to see Liverpool. See you soon!

Love,

Mom

Myrtle Beach and Charleston

Jeff and I have escaped for a weekend away from the kids. We realized it was the first time we've traveled alone together for fun since our honeymoon!

Hi Guys!

I hope you are having a great time with Gran and Gene. We stopped for lunch today at a place called Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach. It's like Mayfaire where you walk around outside and go to stores and restaurants, but it has crazy stuff.

Like a castle.

And a candy store with the world's largest gummy bear. (It's hard to tell in the picture, but it is at least as big as your head!)

And a whole wall of candy.

There was even an upside down building!

 After lunch we drove to Charleston. It rained a lot while we drove, but it had rained even more in Charleston. Lots of the streets were flooded.

When we got to our hotel, we discovered that you could see a Burger King drive thru from the window of our room. Then we realized you could also see a McDonald's and a Wendy's from our room. (And, no, we haven't visited any of them yet.)