Outnumbered Two to One

When we signed up to go to Islands of Adventure for my tween’s 5th grade class trip, the big prize at the end of the interminable predawn bus ride was the prospect of riding the Incredible Hulk Coaster. Walking in to the park, the snaking green tracks dominated the skyline. The roar of the coaster unmistakable as it twisted and dove at nausea inducing angles.

My daughter’s friends were not keen on riding. They balked immediately at the idea, but she and I were itching to get strapped in to the seats and scream ourselves hoarse.

As we approached the line that boasted a brief 20 minute wait, my eager, bouncing daughter was instructed to sidle up next to the measuring post. The minimum height for riders was 54″, marked by a horizontal black and white ruler. My daughter fit comfortably under it, with barely half an inch to spare. She was turned away at the entrance.

Talk about disappointment. Talk about crushing blows.

Sure there were other rides, sure there was an abundance of fun to be had, but the Hulk and Dueling Dragons were off limits.

To add insult to injury, it seemed almost every other kid on the bus ride home was bragging about having ridden the Hulk coaster at least twice.  So our return trip wasn’t lightened by excited chatter about how great the park was, instead it was tainted by my daughter’s soured expression and brooding silence.

Bummer.

Don’t worry, it wasn’t all gloom. We did manage to get on Dr. Doom’s Fearfall ride, among others. My biggest gripe…lunch. Seriously, it was like prison food. You’d think with the exorbitant amounts they charge for admission they’d at least be able to serve something decent at the in-park eateries. The “grilled” chicken sandwich I had was more like a dehydrated chicken nugget with sear marks on a stale bun. Thank God for condiments, without the help of the eight mayo packets I had to lubricate that chicken with I don’t think I would’ve been able to choke it down. Yikes.

At least she was able to muster the occasional smile…

After braving morning rush-hour traffic yesterday (I’m so grateful I don’t commute anymore), my tweeny-bopper and I (along with a surprisingly accommodating toddler) made it to the county wide spelling bee she qualified for late last month.

It was a pretty big event, roughly about 200 kids competed in a written competition for about 25 spots in the oral bee. They allowed parents and teachers to sit, while 50 words were pronounced for the participants who had to scribble them down on a sheet. My charge in the mean time was keeping a two year old from shrieking his way through all 50 words.

Luckily I had pennies and a baggie of cereal at my disposal, not to mention threats that the authorities were going to whisk him away if he got too loud. I got the occasional glares from various corners of the aisle I was sitting in, but what kind of mom would I be if I hadn’t learned to ignore those by now.

The spelling words started off harmless enough - “ballerina, hyphen, caboose“. Then gradually built up to “kahuna and hygiene“. The sentence they used for “quell” made me chuckle just a bit since it involved storm troopers and rebels, I’m not kidding. Later there was “gulag and boysenberry“, “ubiquitous and commensurate“, not to mention a couple I still can’t identify, something that sounded like “car” but wasn’t and a word I can only identify as “bat-ter-soy“. They wrapped it up with “mukhtar, pfeffernuss, and hoomalimali” just for fun, I think.

In the end my little girl was not in the top 25 selected for round 2. But she wasn’t terribly disappointed, she got out of school for the day, got BK’s for lunch, and didn’t have to deal with any homework all afternoon.

She also spent the rest of the day proclaiming, “I’m still a winner!” to anyone who’d listen.  Me and her dad both agreed. Her teenage sister…not so much.

And the winner is…

Sometime this morning my ten-year-old daughter won her school spelling bee. I was sitting in the front row of her school cafetorium on pins and needles as she and the other remaining student duked it out for five rounds. My daughter won out in the end with the word “percolate”.

Late last night was when we finally got around to reviewing her word list. As we went about tidying up, I quizzed her verbally. For the most part she did alright, although she did get hung up on certain words. “Innate” with one “n” instead of 2. “Exhilarate” without the “h”. At some point today, I knew her success would not only rest on her powers of recall but on the luck of the draw as well. For example, getting the word “lucid” over “colloquial”. You should have seen the poor kid who had to spell “colloquial”, the most he could muster was a series of squeaks and a final letter of “o” before finally creeping back to his seat.

“Percolate” in the grand scheme of things, was not a bad option. It’s spelled like it sounds, right?

Except when the teacher reading out the spelling words pronounces it “per-coo-late”. Percoolate? Really? This is an educator we’re talking about, with a better than average grasp of the English language. I assume. I might be mistaken.

Perhaps it was the slight shake in my head that tipped my daughter off. The look that said, “That’s not right.” Or maybe she remembered reading it or spelling it before. Either way, she called out the correct letters in the correct sequence and was proclaimed the winner.

Woo to the hoo. I really had to restrain myself from doing a victory dance, and not just because of my long dissolved dreams of being a spelling bee champion myself.

Now we’ve been instructed to study the Scripps booklet because she’ll be moving on in a month or so to the countywide bee, which includes words like “mukhtar”, “nachtmusik”, and “voortrekker”.

Makes “colloquial” kind of seem like a walk in the park, doesn’t it?

Thanks to my mother-in-law’s generous nature (and about $300 in Target money) we are now the proud owners of this…

along with this…

When my mother-in-law gave the children, as well as my husband and I, $50 gift cards to our favorite store this Christmas, he and I made an executive decision to pool our funds and buy a Nintendo Wii, rather than have the kids spend all their money on miscellaneous crap that will likely end up at the back of their closets or possibly impaling someone’s bare foot in the middle of the night. Unfortunately for the last several weeks there have been no Wii’s in stock at any of the Target stores in our general area. Nor online for that matter. They were in the sales circular this weekend and so we ventured out today to see if we’d get lucky.

The first store we went to was completely out but through the magic of telecommunication the clerk was able to direct us to another nearby store that still had about 29 in stock. Strangely enough when we got there, there were about four moms pushing strollers waiting for the stock guy to unpack a box of Wii Fits.

As we were paying for our game system, the cashier asked me confidentially, “Are you sure you don’t want one of these too, because I don’t know when I’m getting another shipment.”

She went on to tell me how her daughter lost 13 pounds on the Wii Fit, and how she herself loved it. Behind me in line three more women were waiting for their own Wii Fit accessories and looking rather impatient that I was contemplating the idea for so long.

“$90, huh?” I pondered aloud.

Essentially our Wii was free since we didn’t have to front our own money, so what’s a little splurge right? I looked to the bacon bringer for input.

Then he said those two dangerous words that have always been our downfall…”Why not?”

“You heard the man, wrap it up.”

The cashier nodded and scanned the items. “You might want to ask for some diamond earrings since he’s feeling generous.”

I have to admit we had a lot of fun playing this afternoon, before the kids took over, that is.

My five-year-old son beat the pants off his ten-year-old sister at boxing. I thought she was going to have a stroke by the time she got K.O.ed. I’m grateful these games at least get their little butts off the sofa. I was starting to think they were getting fused together.

Here’s a photo of their match.

It’s definitely better than them actually pummeling each other…

At some point this evening I hear this from across the house:

“Ow you bit me you little jerk! You broke the skin!”

I’m in the kitchen making dinner and shaking my head, waiting for the next installment. The voice in question is my tween’s, it rises steadily as her indignation increases tenfold. Eventually the skirmish will travel from my bedroom where they’re watching television to the kitchen where I, judge and jury, stand with wet hands and a jar of salsa.

“What?!” I inquire as my five-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter bustle in through the entryway, both talking at the same time.

“He bit me on the leg and he broke the skin and it really really hurts.”

“She bit me too but I don’t remember where and she’s being really mean to me.”

“Nuh-uh I only bit you after you bit me…”

“Because you grabbed me…”

“But I was playing…”

In unison now… “Mooooooooooooom.”

Ugh. Down comes the gavel.

“You’re both punished, keep your hands and mouths off each other, and go cry somewhere else. No video games till Thursday.”

Obviously neither of my children was paying close enough attention to the Yo Gabba Gabba episode where Muno bites Foofa for craps and giggles, then gets chided in song until he learns this valuable lesson.

“Don’t bite your friends.”

Or your siblings for that matter, it’s just not sanitary.

My five year old is scared of the dark.

Because clearly that’s where the monsters lurk. Everyone knows that.

We’re working on this fear one day at a time. Our bedtime ritual consists of me kissing him and his brother good-night, him begging me to lay down in bed with him, then me promising to come back to check on him approximately every two minutes and make sure he hasn’t been eaten by something large and toothy.

He is always asleep by the time I make my first round, which is usually the ten minute mark. Since he technically does not tell time yet, I am not bound by the two minute constraint. Yes, I know, I’m a cheater.

The problem is not my five year old’s fear of the dark. The problem is tonight my toddler, having apparently caught wind of the lurking nocturnal beasties, proceeded to pitch a terrified fit the moment I attempted to leave the room. In his sweet toddler speak he very clearly said “monster” and “scared”. Then shrieked at the top of his lungs until I sat on the edge of the bed and promised not to leave.

Now a scared five year old is one thing. I can bargain, however irrationally, with a five year old.  A toddler, on the other hand, is not falling for a two minute monster rule. His grasp on the English language is somewhat tentative. I leave, he screams. There is no discussion. Unfortunately, it is infinitely easier to perch on the edge of a bed for fifteen minutes until he nods off, rather than listen to him scream for an hour until he either throws up or exhausts himself.

Sometimes, you’ve got to pick your battles.

Hopefully this won’t become a recurring theme. Just yesterday and for the past year, he’s gone to bed happily without a hitch. But all this talk of monsters has apparently worked its way in to his little brain and created a very dangerous wrinkle. One that threatens to blow our whole bed time routine out of the water.

I suppose we could always sleep with the lights on…

To add insult to injury, I was also summoned by my teen to kill a cockroach that was threatening her sanity…not to mention her bathroom time.

I hate roaches. I really, really, hate roaches.

I killed it, because I had to…what she doesn’t know is that I used the bottom of her sneakers.

Apparently I live in a house full of chickens, monsters and cockroaches.

I don’t know how they did it, I just know that it happened.

This morning I sent off three well behaved, bright eyed, neatly groomed offspring to their respective schools. I kissed their ruddy cheeks, wished them a beautiful day, and watched them skip off toward the steel reinforced double doors of their public school education.

At some point during the day, something must have gone terribly, horribly wrong, because what was returned to me after dismissal were not the cherubic darlings I’d dispatched that morning, but some angry, gritty, whiny, mouthy replacements that looked and smelled like my kids but were possibly hardened ex-convicts or perhaps mental ward patients.

Seriously.

We had such an uneventful weekend. It was quiet, it was easy, it was unexpected. Maybe it was our approach - no responsibilities, no obligations, no expectations. We lazed, we ate, we joked, we watched TV. Now suddenly it’s Monday again and everyone is supposed to snap back in to submission, acquiesce to the strict constraints of time and authority. I guess it’s enough to make anyone hostile. They had their brief taste of freedom and of course they’re thirsty for more.

Who bears the brunt of their rebellion?

Why that’s Mom of course.

Because Dad is conveniently at work, and I am left with the chore of beating everyone in to submission. I’m sure he did it on purpose.

Should it take until almost 11 o’clock for a certain brood to finish the day’s homework assignments?

No, it shouldn’t.

I blame the school. For all their guidelines and curriculum and discipline…all that boring stuff that makes school such a drag.

Like my darling teen says, “I’d love school if it weren’t for all the learning.”

Yep, it’s gotta be the public schools.

Most of the time, my kids are fighting.

Their battles run the gamut from minor skirmishes to full on wars. Simple disagreements escalate quickly to shouting matches that then explode in to shoving matches that subsequently get even uglier than that. Eventually it ends with one or both parties or occasionally three or maybe just everyone, crying and sobbing and trying at the top of their lungs to plead their cases to mom or dad, who at that point are so NOT listening.

Today…

Today was not  one of those days.

Possibly the planets were righteously aligned. Maybe it’s some sort of karmic pat on the back for years of stellar parenting. More than likely my children have been replaced with alien facsimiles of themselves. Either way I’m good with it.

While we sat at the dinner table tonight, everyone seemingly satisfied with their meals, the children began joking and giggling and actually *gasp* enjoying each other’s company. The common theme? The joke that had everyone in stitches, literally rolling with laughter and unable to contain themselves?

It was the uttering of a single, lunatic phrase.

Complete nonsense.

And totally inappropriate for civilized dinner conversation.

Butt nipple.

I apologize in advance if your kid picks that up from my kid.

They were having so much fun with it. Seriously, who was I to rain on their weirdo anatomy parade?

Eventually it turned in to Monkey Nipple, but even I can’t say that without cracking a smile.

For more WW visit here and here .

Our elementary school’s PTA was hosting a Harvest Festival fundraiser today, complete with “rides” and a petting zoo. I think they’ve sent home fliers every day for the last two weeks trying to work up some hype. Needless to say my five year old and ten year old (aka the tween) were working themselves in to a froth at the prospect of attending the big event.

The big event in question was a series of eight different inflatable “rides”, a rock climbing wall and a bungee trampoline type contraption. For this they sold $12 bracelets that gave you unlimited admission to all the “rides” except of course the rock climbing wall and the bungee, for which you were only allowed a single shot, extras would cost you a buck a pop. Oh and they had a hand cranked hamster wheel thing that was pretty popular as well.

I wasn’t too happy about shelling out the $24 for bounce house entries, but it went toward a worthy cause, so I bought each kid a wrist band and set out on my way to guard shoes while they frolicked.

I’m not a big fan of crowds personally, and hordes of restless children make me antsy. Especially since nobody knows how to wait their turn and I’m always compelled to run interference for my offspring just so I can muscle any stray line cutters back a place or two. Being mother hen gets a little exhausting actually. Pecking other people’s kids in the shins and such because my own kids are either too distracted or too shy to mark their territory.

They had a good time for the most part. Although that good time mainly consisted of spending an hour manhandling farm animals, and running the same inflatable obstacle course at least 17 times. It’s all relative I guess. Hopefully the PTA will earn the money back they had to spend renting all those air powered amusements.