A hole in the wall

… about the size of a foot.

The children (and when I say children, I am including my husband Mark) were having a contest to see who could climb the farthest up the hallway walls. This involves putting one foot and hand on each wall and shimmying up toward the ceiling. Caroline is surprisingly good at it. Not to be outdone, Mark made his attempt and put his foot right through the wall.

So the sheepish trio (Colin was an accomplice, even though his little legs weren’t long enough to reach both sides of the hall) came slinking in to tell me the bad news. When something goes wrong, confess to Mom and then assume she’ll take care of it; which, of course, I did.

I did get one last laugh though. When I repaired the hole, I bought spackle that goes on pink and turns white when it is dry. I told Mark that pink was the only color spackle Home Depot had in stock – isn’t it pretty?

The look on his face was worth it all.

Did You Know?

We picked up yogurt at the grocery store this afternoon. Colin is a yogurt-a-holic. He chose the yogurt with sprinkles, and I wondered how much extra sugar the sprinkles added. So, for your edification -- Dannon strawberry yogurt with sprinkles contains 19 grams of sugar per serving. Refrigerated Jello chocolate pudding also contains 19 grams of sugar per serving. So I made him get the Yo-Baby Organic yogurt (variety pack of vanilla and banana flavors). I got it home, and out of curiosity, looked at the sugar in this yogurt (which is marketed as a healthy babyfood). It has 16 grams of sugar per serving, the same as a serving of Jello brand vanilla cook-and-serve pudding.

No wonder Colin likes yogurt so much.

Inadvertant Epithets

As we were getting in the car this morning, I accidentally leaned on the horn and startled everyone with a loud BEEEEEP. The kids loved this and went into giggle fits. All the way to school they yelled "Honk! Honk! Honkey, honk, honk! Honk-eeeeee, Honk-eeee!" The noise was deafening, but Caroline had already had one melt-down this morning and I wasn't going to risk another over something so trivial. Then Caroline rolled down the window, which reduced the ringing in my ears to a tolerable level. It's bad of me, I know, but I figure everyone in the neighborhood has kids and they understand that sometimes children get loud. It was only after Caroline got out of the car, and I was only listening to Colin (who continued the honk-a-thon) did I really process what they were saying.

My kids were yelling "honkey" at by-passers this morning!

So Long, Osama!

Colin has a plan for eliminating tyranny in the world. He came up to me last night and said that he had made some "poison cookies." So he explained to me that now all we needed to do is "find the baddest badguy in the world. And then we need to find the second baddest badguy in the world. Then we need to trick them into being in the same room together." Then, Colin says, he will give one of the bad guys a cookie, and Mommy can give the other bad guy a cookie, and then "they will be dead!"

I think you could call that killing them with kindness.

Toothless Wonder

Caroline lost her first tooth! She actually jumped up and down with joy. It was adorable.

Unfortunately, the Tooth Fairy was caught unprepared. After all, the tooth had only been loose for two whole weeks and hanging by a thread since yesterday, so how was she supposed to know it was going to fall out? I had intended to give her Sacagawea dollars for lost teeth. Now the going rate for teeth ranges from 25 cents to 5 bucks, but Caden gets Sacajweas and Faith gets fifty-cent pieces. I tore through the loose change bin looking for Sacajaweas and didn't have a single one; but I was in luck! I found a Susan B. Anthony dollar. It was in pretty bad shape, so I ended up using an SOS pad on it to make it shine. Nothing like scrubbing coins in the middle of the night to really ensure a good night's sleep. So that is why, unable to go back to bed, I am typing this entry at 3 o'clock in the morning. Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream!

Why Blog?

I resisted this particular technology for a while. I've never been good at journaling. But someone at church suggested that I do this, to record the rather amusing events in my life. So we'll see if I'm the next Erma Bombeck or just another boring self-absorbed loser using up bandwidth.

Who Am I?

School Delays

The morning started out well. I was very proud of myself for maintaining my patience as we struggled through the usual morning circus act. I caught fleeing children and put shoes on their feet. I forcibly brushed hair and teeth. I gave clear warnings (and they were obeyed!) a la Love and Logic. Thus when I went upstairs to brush my own teeth, I felt pretty confident that we would make it to school on time and without any meltdowns. That's when I heard the crash.

Caroline, The Girl of Very Little Balance, had fallen backwards in her chair, taking her bowl of Rice Krispies with her. Now I knew that Rice Krispies on the floor are very hard to clean up. I'm pretty sure they contain Super Glue. So I now know (and how I wish I didn't) that Rice Krispies in hair are equally impervious to removal.

Long story short, Caroline needed a shower before we could go to school. On the plus side, her hair freshly washed and blow dried hair looked much better than usual when she finally got to school. Caroline's hair normally looks like it has never been brushed. It looks that way even when I have just brushed it. The only time it looks kempt in when it has just been washed and blow dried, and since she takes her bath at night, she never walks into school looking her best. Her teacher may not recognize her. Not to worry though. Within a half hour, she will be back to her ragamuffin self.