Outnumbered Two to One

Real exhaustion is falling asleep in the middle of a cheeseburger.

I won’t be around tomorrow - me and the tween are taking a road trip to Islands of Adventure in Orlando as part of her 5th grade field trip. We have to be at the bus stop at 5:30 in the morning.

5:30 in the morning.

Hold on. I’m taking a moment to soak that in.

I anticipate being all kinds of cranky by the end of the day, but hopefully the excessive roller-coaster riding will scramble my brains enough to keep me moderately sedated on the bus ride back home.

Is it bad that I’m already tired and we haven’t even left yet?

I better pack plenty of Motrin and perhaps stage a preemptive strike on the migraine I already feel looming on the horizon.

Yay.

Don’t worry, I’ll take pictures.

The following is a little photo story my ten-year-old daughter recorded last week with my digital camera (while she was being punished for calling her sister an a–hole.) She was banned from the computer, television, DVD player and three different video game systems. After much crying and groaning, this is what occurred when her bored mind ignited with its own twisted creativity. The doll was a birthday gift from a good friend and the narration comes from my own warped mind…

This is my friend Zack. He came to visit for my birthday.Hi, Zack.

He doesn’t say much but he’s very friendly.

Why are you following me into the bathroom, Zack? A girl needs a little privacy.

I like you too, Zack. But why are your eyes glowing that way? Is it because you’re happy to see me?

Alright, dude. I can see we need to establish some boundaries here. I’m sure it’s very different wherever you’re from, but you need to respect my personal space.

Hey, man. Back the flock up. You’re making me uncomfortable and ew, your gums smell weird.

Not cool, Zack. Why are you getting all grabby? No means no. Stop trying to put your mouth on me. I’m married, argh, you’re the worst house guest ever. Are you trying to eat my face? What the?

No zombies (or mothers) were harmed during the making of this film.

I know I’m not the only one who obsesses about their children eating enough. If I could have liquefied his pizza and fed it to him intravenously I would have.

And why is it that food that’s all the rave to my two year old one day, is completely unacceptable sustenance the next day. He won’t even let it pass his lips. He won’t even lick a single crumb off the plate. Instead he shrieks, gags, and pushes said delicacy away with all the played out melodrama of a soap opera actress.

Seriously, he can’t live off soy milk and Hershey’s kisses forever.

Ignore the eyeball in the corner of the photo, with four children in the house, we’re always being watched.

I almost posted a photo of my darling two-year-old going to town on his right nipple , but thought better of it. I don’t really want his image available to whatever weirdos plug in that specific Google criteria.

So in honor of the upcoming greeting card holiday, here’s me and the mister looking nauseatingly happy.  (And that’s mostly because neither one of us has the plague. If you took a photo of me now my eyes would be half open and I’d probably be dripping mucous and breathing out of my mouth…so I guess the red nose is pretty accurate.)

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Can you feel the love?

Last chance.

After spending all day Saturday dressed in our PJs and rooted to the Wii, the husband and I decided that Sunday we would venture out in to the great outdoors and expose our kids to some nature, lest they start fearing the sunlight. So, we packed a picnic lunch, put on our day clothes, and headed over to a local state park to hit some walking trails.

Now, ideally this little excursion would go off without a hitch. There was nothing complicated in the equation. Sit down, eat sandwiches, walk through the woods, go home. Except of course for the fact that when you go anywhere with children, plans are often abandoned in favor of getting whoever is screaming the loudest to pipe down.

The photo above is the first picture we took, barely thirty feet in to the nature trail that curved through an open canopy of trees I could never identify (except for the orange trees, which were, you know, bearing oranges.) If you’ll notice, my two year old is not smiling. He’s also exiled himself to the opposite end of the tree trunk, perhaps correctly assuming that his siblings have the cooties.

Let me just say, it was downhill from here.

Now, you’d assume that as experienced parent’s, we would know that taking a child on an outing during said child’s routine nap time would be a recipe for disaster.

We actually do know this, we just chose to completely disregard that fact.

After several minutes of bird watching and stump sitting…

the two year old began to have a major walking meltdown. It would have been difficult to spot any wildlife within a three mile radius of this…

There was loud monkey screeching to accompany the look of discomfort on this child’s face. If there was anything alive anywhere on this nature trail, it probably headed out to the nearest freeway in favor of some peace, quiet, and a permanent asphalt nap. For a good twenty minutes, this kid was howling because he adamantly refused to let dad carry him. By this time the rest of the children were wondering aloud where the exit was, how far the minivan was from the trail, and why mom had been so dense as to leave the Gatorade in the trunk.

Almost an hour later…

Nature kicked totally kicked their butts.

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?

It’s been months since this kid got his haircut. Luckily for me he is an exemplary customer, never a peep out of him when he gets it snipped, but I’ve grown so attached to his lovely locks that I’m reluctant to get them chopped. My five-year-old has bristly straight hair, so letting it grow out was never an option, but this kid has a completely different texture. And admittedly, I love the rock star, hippie thing he’s got going on.  I just don’t know when enough is enough. There’s not much I can do with it at this point other than comb it off to the side, since he’s a boy up dos are not an option so he’s stuck with this shaggy look.

I think he wears it well, but I’m a little biased.

What do you think? Chop or not?

I’ve been trying like crazy for the past several days to eliminate the excessive amount of crap my children own. Unfortunately every time I try to banish one of their condemned toys to the “donate” box, said receptacle has been commandeered for less practical purposes. My five year old actually fits quite comfortably with room enough for his little brother to squeeze in. I might have to make an executive decision and save the box in the garage, should that fabled day ever arrive when I finally take action and ship my little band of miscreants to the circus. I can pack at least two of them in happily and still have room left for snacks.

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