I Should be Packing

I'm off work today, because I worked on Wednesday since I had an important client meeting to attend. That's worked out well, because now I have the day to pack up the family for the weekend.

It's the Eleventh Annual Ski Trip weekend for our little group. I can hardly believe we've been doing this for eleven years. Well, that's not true. Ben and I actually missed the inaugural ski trip in North Carolina, mostly because my back had been dramatically injured and I was unable to move. But since then, we've not missed a trip. Even when we took Travis at 5 weeks old.

This year, our gracious families have agreed to spend the weekend with our kids - Ben's parents with Sophie and my sister Susan with the boys, so we will not be bringing them along. Soon enough, kids, soon enough.

Us about 5 years ago, I think.

Last year

Through eleven years, we've had a lot of interesting adventures; new skiers, old skiers, snowboarders, kids, no kids, barn house cabins and school house cabins, card games and Cranium games, spaghetti dinners and omelette breakfasts, football playoffs and Wii tournaments, lost ski poles and busted shoulders. You know how no matter how much things change, some things always stay the same? One thing you can always count on.....

Ted skis in Carhartts.

Middle Child Syndrome

I'm a middle child.

Thus, according to conventional wisdom, I'm likely a misfit recluse with trust issues and no sense of belonging. Truth be told, I never much suffered from feelings of inadequacy as a child due to my birth placement....not that I wouldn't use my status as 'forgotten middle child' to my advantage when the situation warranted (sorry, mom and dad).

But, as a middle child-turned-parent, I try to focus at least a modicum of thought towards how my attention gets pulled in one direction over another. In my home life, I think we've struck a good balance.

But I sometimes wonder if that plays itself out in this blog. Travis, being the oldest, has the most "stuff" going on, with school and sports and whatnot. Sophie, as a newly-established two-year-old, has a lot of personality and character development going on these days. They tend to each find themselves featured in their respective endeavors throughout the blog.

Which is not to say that Noah's not interesting. In fact, I would dare say he has one of the most dynamic personalities I've ever seen. So, Noah, this one's for you.

I decided to give him one of those kid-surveys -- I saw one of those on a blog recently, and thought that would be a perfect way to capture some of Noah's essence.

1. What is something Mom always says to you?

A. She loves me.

(Good answer. I promise there were no bribes or re-takes involved on that one.)

2. What makes mom happy?

A. Giving her a bo-bo.

(Noah often plays this game with me, where he comes up and asks me if I'm sad because I don't have a bo-bo, or I don't have anyone to cuddle with me, or something else along those lines. I answer yes and pretend to be sad. Then he saves the day by giving me his bo-bo, or cuddling with me, or whatever.)

3. What makes mom sad?

A. Being mean.

(I'm not sure if he means when he's being mean or when I'm being mean. I'll give it to him, though, both of those make me a little sad.)

4. How does your mom make you laugh?

A. Doing silly things.

(Okay. That's a pretty generic answer. So I pressed a little further. Like what kind of silly things, Noah? Ummmm......telling me I'm Travis?? Oftentimes, at bedtime, I'll pretend like I can't tell which one is which, and order Noah up to Travis's bunk and vice versa. And I'll get all confused when Noah is still in Noah's bed, and I have to ask him how old he is, or whether he sleeps with a bo-bo or a moose, in order to figure out which one he really is. He gets a real kick out of it.)

5. What did your mom like to do when she was a child?

A. Play on the iPad.

(If only, Noah. If only.)

6. How old is your mom?

A. Ummmm. Fifteen?

(Yikes. Not that I mind having my age understated, but that's quite a stretch.)

7. How tall is your mom?

A. THIIIIIIIS big!

(I'm not sure what possible answer could be expected from this type of a question to anyone under the age of ten. I'll take that one.)

8. What is her favorite thing to watch on TV?

A. Grown-up TV.

(This comes from my explanation to him when he sneaks down the stairs after he's in bed, and I pause the TV and explain to him that no, he cannot cuddle with me and watch TV with me because it's grown-up TV. Enough said.)

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?

A. Leaves me alone.

(Not sure what to think about this one. I suppose when he's not around me, it stands to reason that I'm leaving him alone. Not LEAVING him ALONE, mind you. You know what I mean.)

10. What is your mom really good at?

A. Making me laugh.

(Good one. I'll take it.)

11. What is your mom not very good at?

A. Taking care of the dog.

(It took a while to get to this one. His first response was that I wasn't very good at silly things, but when I pressed him further, this was what he said. He's probably right, but only because this dog is impossible to take care of.)

12. What does your mom do for her job?

A. I'm not sure.

(No problem, Noah. I'm not sure Ben even really knows.)

13. What is your mom's favorite food?

A. Peanut butter and jelly.

(Not true. If the question was what kind of food I made the most, however, he'd be dead on.)

(For the record, the answer is probably cheese.)

14. What do you and your mom do together?

A. Play.

(Um... naturally.)

15. How are you and your mom the same?

A. Sometimes, our shirts are the same color.

(If that happens, it's totally coincidental.)

16. How are you and your mom different?

A. I like Backyardigans.

(Well, truthfully, I kind of like the Backyardigans in the grand scheme of animated characters for my three-year-old to watch on TV. But he's right that I don't care about them nearly as much as he does.)

17. What does your mom like most about your dad?

A. Playing catch.

(We'll just leave that as it is.)

18. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?

A. Work.

(Well, from his perspective, I sure do go there an awful lot, so I guess that makes sense.)

There you have it.

I guess we'll go golfing

You may recall that we had to cancel the sledding part of Travis's sledding party, since all the snow melted the day before his party. Naturally, a few days after the party, the snow came back (and has kept coming since) so that we now have about 3 feet of snow on the ground. That three-day span at Travis's birthday was literally the only time we haven't had snow on the ground in the last two months.

We ended up doing mini-golf at our local MegaPlay, which turned out to be quite a success. Travis loved it and I think all had a good time. I didn't get many pictures, it was somewhat chaotic. But here's a couple.

His Cars cake

Opening presents

Sophie really loved the helium balloons

There she goes. It's a wonder she wasn't floating a foot off the ground.

And also, a couple family pictures from New Year's Eve, with everyone in their matching crowns:

Me & Kaity - the "red or orange or orangish-red" crowns

Noah and Ben -- like royalty in their purple crowns

Sophie, Justin and Travis - the Blue Crown Crew

Made-Up Words That I Just Can't Stand

Agreeance -- I've heard this a lot lately, as in "I'm in agreeance with that." Sorry, I am not in agreement with your idiotic use of the made-up word "agreeance".

Irregardless -- I'm astounded that anybody still thinks this is a word. Regardless, they do, and it annoys me.

'Of' as a helping verb, e.g., "I should of gone to the store today," or "You wouldn't of hit your own car with your husband's truck if you only would of paid attention while you were backing out of the driveway.", etc. How anyone can construct a sentence and believe that the word 'of' belongs in there is beyond me. It's a preposition, people!

Significant other -- Okay, it's not a made up word, but it is used entirely incorrectly, and now it's perfectly mainstream to use it incorrectly, and that bothers me. I don't know why. It just does. "Significant other", as I learned in college psychology, is a term that means the person from your childhood after whom you model yourself, or from whom you gain an understanding of societal norms -- generally a same-sex person. Like your mom, or a teacher, or a favorite uncle. Now it's used to just denote the person with whom you're in a relationship. It just seems wrong to me. Morally wrong.

VIN number. I work in commercial insurance, and clients give me "VIN numbers" for their vehicles regularly. That would mean "vehicle identification number number". No. It's just a VIN.

Same goes for "ATM machine" or "PIN number". Either use the acronym or don't. Enough.

Orientate. People don't go through orientation to get orientated. I promise.

I could go on and on about my grammar peeves. For example, 'its' doesn't always need an apostrophe! The possessive 'its' means 'belonging to it'; much the same as 'hers' means 'belonging to her'. You wouldn't write, "The fancy new cell phone is her's." Would you? Because if you would, we can't be friends.

Oh - and there is a difference between affect and effect. You can't just use them interchangeably at will.

Grrr.

(Oh, and by the way, the example sentence above about hitting one's own car with one's husband's truck? Yes. That was me. Whoops.)

Pobody's Nerfect

The nice thing about this blog is that I can pick and choose which moments to capture for posterity. And, while my blog writings are truthful, and I try not to leave any important details out, I still have final authority about the picture that gets painted.

If I wanted, I could just limit my blog postings to cute little stories about the kids, ones that only reflected positive, organized, first-class parenting moments.

But that's not what this house is like.

I could write a story about the time I let the kids go to bed without brushing their teeth because I was out of kids' toothpaste and didn't feel like dealing with it.

Or the time I put Sophie back in her bed minus a crib sheet when she'd had a diaper mishap in the middle of the night, because I was too sleepy to change it. And it stayed like that for over a week.

Or how I routinely never get clothes put away before they are worn again, beyond folding them in piles on the bedroom floor.

Or how Travis and Noah found the craft bucket of yarn in their room and used it to turn their bedroom into a full-blown obstacle course, somewhat resembling those laser beam security systems, all Mission:Impossible-style.

Or how Sophie got into my purse while we were shopping at Meijer, and while I wasn't paying attention, managed to peel all the stamps out of my book of stamps and affix them haphazardly to her shirt ("ooh, stickers!").

I could tell the story about how we went to a New Year's Eve gathering at a friend's house; I was getting the kids ready to head over, and noticed that Sophie had put her own boots on. She had been barefoot a couple minutes earlier, so I felt inside her boots to see if she had also put on socks. Affirmative. When we get to said friend's house, Sophie took off her boots and had one pink and one lime green glove sticking off each of her feet.

The point is, my life is not always storybook moments.

Sometimes, this family is a wreck.

Most of the time, our house is chaos.

My kids wear gloves on their feet to social gatherings.

But, we're cute.

This is Why I Love Wednesdays

This morning, Sophie couldn't get enough loving. She repeatedly wrapped her arms around my neck, said, "mom, I yuv you" continuously, and snuggled against me as much as possible.

This afternoon, as we were picking up Travis from school, Noah waited excitedly for his big brother to emerge from his classroom. Once he did, Noah jumped up and down excitedly and screeched, "It's Travis! It's Travis!" and hugged Travis enthusiastically right in the middle of the hallway. The other parents and teachers smiled down at them and I went right along with the charade that my kids always get along that well.

On the way out of the building, the three of them insisted on holding hands with each other. Me, then Sophie, then Travis, then Noah. As we weaved our way through the hallways and doors and out into the parking lot, the three of them giggled about all sorts of random nothings. They jumped together from the curb to the parking lot and laughed about the snow in the fountain outside the school.

At home, we agreed to watch Toy Story 3 while mom did some cleaning. They all three cuddled together in the recliner, of their own accord.

Once they realized I was taking their picture, they started squirming and wriggling and getting uncomfortable and decided that arrangement would just not work. So, they moved to, appropriately enough, the Toy Story couch, and princess chair.

Still cute.

Story Time

Tonight, as I was putting the boys to bed, Noah insisted on telling me a "silly story". It went like this.....

(P.S. In case you're not aware, Noah calls his little security blanket a "bo-bo". That is important to the story. I didn't want you to be confused, and Google it, only to find out that the interweb definition of a bo-bo is either a locomotive in the UK or a restaurant in New York City.)

And now the story.

"Once upon a time, there were a hundred bo-bos. And one bo-bo said, "I want Santa to eat!" And the last bo-bo said, "I want everything to eat!" And then the bo-bos came to my house and they ate all the stuff. And we were out!

The End."

Not to be outdone, Travis declared that he also wanted to tell a silly story.

"Once upon a time, The End."

[Cue uncontrollable giggles from both bunks.]

Good night, boys.

Snowmageddon

Got about 28 inches of snow last night and today. Needless to say, we spent a cozy day at home. Well, me and the kids did. Ben spent a fair share of the day outside, braving the elements....from snowblowing, digging out cars and Jeeps, and even a run into Aldi's for some milk and bread.

Ben's truck

Canada was overwhelmed at first - the snow was over his head. But, after a few tries out and back inside, he finally barreled a path under the slide, and then between the pine trees, where he found a safe haven.

The back deck. Note the treehouse that is entirely filled with snow.

Backyard

Kids, marveling at the snowfall

Justin, trudging his way to Erin's house. There was no way he was going to be able to drive his car through the unplowed streets. Ben tried to drive him over there in the truck, but the road to Erin's house was even worse than this.

Cell Phone + Water = Oops

I narrowly escaped disaster this week. I almost destroyed Ben's phone.

See, it was my Wednesday off, and I was sitting on the floor of the living room with Noah, working on a Lego creation. We were quite intent. And by that, I mean, I was intent and Noah was alternating between having pretend Lego fights with pretend Lego superheroes and tormenting Canada by batting balloons at his face.

Sophie walked up to me with a plastic cup about 1/4 full of water that I'd been drinking from earlier that day. She apparently found it on the kitchen table and thought it would be useful to cart with her around the house.

I, in my infinite wisdom, snatched the cup away from her and said, "oh, thank you Sophie," in a truly patronizing tone that I'm sure drives her crazy, and fully intended to put the cup away somewhere where she couldn't reach it. Only, because I was also in the middle of this very intense Lego construction, instead of getting up and putting it in the sink or something along those lines, I glanced quickly around for a reasonable 'hiding' spot. I decided on the arm of the recliner that was directly next to me. It is one of the those recliners where the arms open up, and one of them has a deep storage cavity inside. I set it in there.

And promptly forgot about it.

I really meant to properly take care of it as soon as I completed my state-of-the-art Lego design. But, as per usual, I got distracted and was soon consumed with my normal daily activities like prying Toy Story figurines from Canada's toothy grip, chasing Sophie out of the kitchen drawer where she's discovered that a box of matches is super-fun to play with, and stopping Noah from lining up all our DVDs along the floor to use as lily pads in his pretend frog world.

So, the next morning, as I'm getting the kids ready, Noah confiscated Ben's phone. It's a Droid, which Noah can navigate about ten times better than I can, and he regularly finds it, grabs it, and goes off in a corner somewhere to play some Mario or other weird little game.

The scene: Noah has the Droid, mindlessly tapping the screen while he walks into the living room. I'm getting Sophie dressed. Noah sees me, grins widely, opens up the arm of the recliner, drops the phone in, shuts the arm, and merrily goes on his way.

That's when I remembered.

Noah didn't intend to cause any trouble. He had no idea there was a cup of water in there. I think he was trying to prove what a super kid he is by putting the phone down before I had to ask him to.

I immediately abandoned Sophie, one arm through her neck hole and the other arm trapped inside her shirt, to retrieve and recover the phone. Ben was upstairs in the shower -- so before I broke the horrible news to him, I shook the water loose from the phone and tried to turn it on.

Ben told me later that was a horrible idea.

Some weird black screen appeared that didn't look normal at all, with weird gibberish-like words, so I quickly turned it off and popped out the battery.

Ben was not terribly excited to learn of the morning's adventures.

But, we sat it in rice for a day and a half, tested it tonight, and it has been fully salvaged. Hooray.

Terrific Twos

In the mayhem of the season, I didn't really post any Sophie-turns-two updates.

Here's her eating some cupcake-cake. She was pleased. She repeated, at random intervals during her devouring session, "it tastes good!"

She got sufficiently girly presents from the family, which is good, since her age-appropriate toys are now currently all hand-me-downs from the boys. That's the unfortunate thing about a December birthday, all significant gift-giving occasions happen all at the same time. The dilemma is more pronounced during these super-young years, when what she wanted to play with at one-year-old is quite different than what she wants to play with now.

(To be sure, she still totes around Buzz Lightyear and makes laser noises and shouts "infinny and eyonnnn" (her version of "to infinity and beyond"). But she also loves her new baby doll, tea set, My Little Pony, Barbie, and other gender-stereotypical toys. She's very well-rounded.)

Her adventurous streak is only more pronounced now that she's officially two. She gets into all manner of mischief. Removing and lining up all the game pieces from our Sorry! board is one of her favorite pastimes, as is leaving trails of dog food throughout the house. If there was a competitive sport based upon unraveling rolls of toilet paper, you'd be hard pressed to find a champion more skilled than our Sophie.

Another thing - she's taken to climbing out of her crib. This means hiking one leg up and vaulting over the top, dangling by her hands and then letting go and falling to the ground. She did this no less than three times last night. The first time, it was about ten minutes after I'd put her to bed, and I was in the boys' room tucking them in for the night. I heard her making noise in her room, and it sounded suspiciously like she was causing trouble. I cracked open the door and peeked in, only to find Sophie sitting in the middle of the floor amongst a pile of her blankets and stuffed animals that she had tossed out of her crib before unceremoniously tossing herself. She was holding a book, looked up at me innocently and said, "hi mom! I'm reading!" as if this was a perfectly normal occurrence and I should think nothing of the fact that she's now decided it is completely acceptable to drop herself from a height at least twice the length of her own body.

So I guess it's time to switch to a toddler bed. This crib is one of those that modifies to a toddler bed, but in its six years of existence in this house, it has been in crib form only. Travis stayed in a crib until just after age two, when I moved him to his big boy bed in preparation for our new arrival. I did this several months before Noah was born so that he wouldn't feel "displaced" by the new baby. I didn't think that much about it the next time around. Noah was 17 months old when Sophie was born, and shortly thereafter he got dumped into a big boy bed out of necessity more than anything else.

At any rate, my point is, none of my other kids attempted any high-risk crib stunts, and I hadn't even really thought about switching Sophie to the toddler bed. Every other time its been decided for me. So I guess she just wanted to make sure I was paying attention.

A few more pics from Sophie's party:

Anastasia reading to Sophie

And now Sophie, reading to Anastasia

Sophie loving on Xanthi

After the cake & presents.... Noah and Tom teaming up to play Kinect.

What You've Always Wanted to Know

If you've ever wondered what two-month-old rotting broccoli smells like, particularly rotting broccoli that has been concealing itself in a hidden, recessed corner of the trunk of your car, let me make an attempt to solve this mystery for you.

It smells like an aging warthog that has crawled into the undercarriage of your vehicle to die, but not before it ate a generous helping of limburger cheese and raw catfish.

It's bad.

You're welcome to test me on this, but I recommend that you just take my word for it.