Good Grief!!!

Ok, so my morning was quite pleasant, as I shared earlier, but boy how things change. God is allowing a little testing to take place at our house today. Let me recap the past hour and a half.

Elijah got ready to go early, as he always does. He got up at 6:30 (though he can't come out of his room until 7:00 except to go to the bathroom) was delighted to see the snow, got his chores done and ate breakfast then went on a hunt for his snow gear. Nice. Calm.

Levi was woken up at 7:15 in a good mood which very quickly turned sour when he realized that before he could go outside in the snow, he had to do his chores (big shocker being that he's had to do them since we moved in the house 6 months ago or so) so now he's crying and whining that he wants to go outside and all that drama. Making his bed is the first thing to do and in his haste and terrible attitude he rips off his comforter (which was for the most part neatly on the bed) because he had to get to the flat sheet. Levi has inherited the trait of making mountains out of molehills and so now, the simple task of making a mostly made bed has become this monumental task of de-lumping and crying and getting angry and punching the lumps. You get the picture. By the way, I sat with him to gently remind him that his choice in attitude is making a simple task take all morning to do and consequently he'd have no time for playing outside before leaving for school. More wailing and gnashing of teeth!

Eden came in our room last night sometime so I woke her up and she got going in slow Eden fashion. The world waits for her.

Titus got up and his pull up was dry, so I said we needed to go potty. Remember that wailing and gnashing of teeth mentioned earlier? This is wailing and gnashing jr. The other pea in that dramatic pod.

Micah was a bit attitudinal this morning too. She carried her blanket to breakfast and screamed when I wouldn't let her have it in her high chair. Once I got her Chex and bananas she was happy again.

Ok, so breakfast gets over but by now it's 7:50 and time to get in the van. Levi gets dressed and starts crying all over again when he learns that he can't go out and play. Instead he has to go outside and tell Elijah that it's time to get in the van.

I get the kids coated and in the van, I got the diaper bag packed for the gym (the kids still had jammies on) and somehow all that takes almost 15 minutes and it's 8:04. Levi and Elijah are not in the van and they're not answering when I call them so I'm beginning to get a bit irritated that my older kids aren't listening to me. I know it's the first snow and all, but they still need to obey, right?!?

I find the kids out in the lot next door and I loose my patience. I tell them (nice and quietly and kindly, I'm sure) to get in the van and eventually we leave. We get out of our subdivision and I can tell that the van isn't running so well. The battery light was on, and I thought it stalled out. Also, the steering is bad. It's almost like the power steering went out...again. It's very difficult to steer and there's about 6 inches of snow at least on the ground so it's slippery and let's just say, not easy or safe to operate. Such is life with our van. I got out of the van to see if there was just too much snow built up in the wheel wells, but there wasn't. Nice thought though.

We got about a mile from the school and all my dash board lights went on, the van started hiccuping and I'm trying to put it in neutral to give it gas to keep from stalling, trying to break for stop signs without sliding into the person in front of me, which almost happened. Ugh.

Next thing I know something is beeping, the radio lights are out, all the dash lights are on and I'm dead in the road. Right in the middle. Why today? I've got kids in pajamas, a little girl who brought her jacket instead of a coat and we had several blocks to go to get to the school. I guess we're walking. Double ugh.

I bundled everyone up and found that someone from school had pulled over to help. Yippee! Come to find out that there was a two hour delay at school that I wasn't informed of...that would've been helpful information! Well, at least we don't have to walk. That would've been an experience!

I'm back at home now. The van has been towed and is in the shop. Now we are praying that it will be a minor fix or we will be up a creek without a paddle. Good timing. God has always provided in the past. I believe he will provide now.

That was my morning. How was yours?

Good morning Winter!

I awoke to this sight this morning... Well, actually I got up at 5 this morning and it was dark and still snowing, but once the dust cleared, so-to-speak, this is the chilling sight that remained. I am so thankful for heat and blankets and a house and warm clothes and all those things that we all take for granted. Those were the first thoughts to go through my head after the initial "Ugh" for the beginning of a Chicago winter. It is always beautiful in the beginning. But for the Gary smog, I'd go eat some right now! Well that and the fact that no one needs to see me in my nightgown, robe and black socks outside eating the snow. I guess it's time to find a new blog background.

Happy first snow to you all!

Some cuteness to brighten your day!

Titus sucks his thumb, right!?! (He does) Well because of that, he tends to get a little blister on his upper lip and then he peels it off. Why? I don't know. He's a boy. Now, call me the meanie mom, but I generally don't keep bandaids in the house. Somehow bandaids heal the body like smoke and mirrors. All they do is add to an already dramatic event and we are all sold out on drama here. However, my mom sneaks the bandaids in the house, generally of the superhero or princess variety adding to the NEED for the smoke and mirrors. At any rate, Titus got into the linen closet (surprising, I know) and got the bandaids for his boo-boo on his lip. Being the sympathetic mommy that I am, I agreed to put it on for him. My unusual compliance to bandaid usage had nothing to do with how goofy he would look afterwards. Really.
Micah has a double ear infection; her first ever, so she has been unusually lethargic and sleepy which allows for even more cuddle time with her. Daddy takes advantage this time. Lucky (totally like Napoleon Dynamite)! Next we have the little devil hiding in my unfinished laundry room sneaking...can you guess...c'mon you all know him by now. Yes. Candy! (I'm sure it helped that he actually has a sucker hanging out of his mouth)

Nothing special here. Just a cute baby girl using an available car seat as her own personal lounge chair. Besides, I don't need a reason to take a picture of this precious little thing! So there. With the boys in school, I've really got to get snapping pictures at night or they may start to feel left out.

Behind, as usual

We are around here somewhere. The next post chronologically is the trip to Indy for Elijah's surgery. You know when you are dreading uploading all those pictures, but that you first have to go through all 200 of them to figure out which ones you want to keep in the first place before you can upload them on the family blog??? That's where I've been lately. It doesn't help that I had the blessing (in disguise) of 2 full weeks of transcripts. It helped out tremendously with school, but with up to 4 hours of typing a day, that left little time for anything else. Really. I tried ignoring the kids for some of those days, but they don't take too kindly to that! Trust me.

Let's see...I have missed a lot. I will probably just bypass the Indy trip as it seriously has about 200 pictures to sift through. I will just say a long overdue thank you to all of you who prayed for Elijah and his doctor through the whole event! He recovered wonderfully; probably typical for a 7 1/2 year old little boy. One minute he was moaning and groaning. The next minute quite literally he stood up and said, "I'm ready to get dressed to go now." Tim and I laughed and then helped Elijah get ready. Little did he know that his body wasn't in the mood to cooperate with a boy fresh out of surgery wanting to move that fast!

We will know better by his 2 month check up whether or not he may need surgery again. Our goals were to straighten his eyes vertically and to get him to hold his head straight. We have a stronger prescription to get his eyes to straighten up horizontally. We pray that is all we will need. I just got the bill in the mail. Before insurance it is $7593.53. Thank you, God, for insurance, but look at that number. Holy smokes. His eye cost more than 2 kids' deliveries.

A few days later we had Halloween. Our church had a Trunk or Treat at the Harvest Celebration, so we geared up and walked our freezing selves up and down the aisles of cars for precious chocolate loot. Every year the Goodwill store has costumes for sale and if you wait until half off day, you can get costumes, still in the packaging, for under $5 a piece. That's what we did. I figured that with as much as Eden loves Princesses and the fact that she has several dresses, I didn't need to buy her a costume because naturally she'd be a princess. No! That was not to be. She saw a pumpkin and wanted to be that for Halloween. I tried to convince her of the Princess, but she is her mother's daughter and she had her mind made up. I decided for $2 she could be a "Punkin" and bought the costume. I am not wise enough to know the "punkin" enthusiasm wouldn't last.

Here is our unhappy pumpkin an hour or so after I told her she'd go as the pumpkin she insisted on getting or she'd go as nothing. $2 or not, she was wearing the bloomin' pumpkin costume. After all, I'm a woman of principles, or something like that. Besides the precious pumpkin we have a motocross dirtbike rider, a carebear, buzz lightyear and a ninja, the ONLY costume at the goodwill that was even close to Levi's size. It was a long night and Titus got overloaded with sugar, but we survived to eat candy another day.

Friday night we went to the apple orchard because all their activities were free. Tim had to work late so my mom and dad went with me and we had a really good time. However, before we left the house, our little Titus must have been feeling a little feisty because he had to go and grab a marker and VanGogh my living room wall. Can you see it??? It's very light marker. I was half tempted to frame it and leave it there, but it wasn't my color.

The following morning he was at it again. This is what came of wondering, "Where's Titus???"This video is terrible for some reason. Unfortunately I stopped the video just short of his finding out that he was not alone anymore. He rolled over and tried to hide everything by laying on it all. What was he thinking? It was rather funny. Well, all but the part where he had an obscene amount of chocolate in a short amount of time, all before 10am. That wasn't so funny. What also wasn't funny was the spanking he got for it all. We're done with sneaking food (especially candy) around here.

While we're on the topic of Titus and food and spankings...can any of you offer some solace or maybe just wise words or something...? The other day Titus took Levi's candy out of his backpack (candy that he "earns" for napping at school...what's up with that?). Nonetheless, Titus has been told time and time again not to do that and yet he persists. This day, he ate the candy, I saw the chocolate teeth as evidence and yet he chose to lie about it. Big no-no.

My strong willed little fiend battled with me for 55 minutes before he finally broke and admitted (in a whisper at that) his wrong doing. Have you all been in that closed bedroom one-on-one with a strong will? I will admit that I won this battle; I was, as some of you may say, a prayerful Larry the Cucumber through it all, but unfortunately we had to stay home from the nursery on Sunday due to evidence of the confrontation. Have you been there? Am I a psycho mom? Share your story to this mother who stuck to her guns and almost gave up thinking that this kid doesn't even know what he did wrong. By the way, God was gracious enough to show me that Titus knew full well what he did was wrong because when he finally broke and told the truth, he followed it up with, "I going to tell Levi I sowry." I asked him why and he said, "for eating his candy." Need I say how long that 55 minutes felt or how much I started to doubt everything I thought I knew about discipline? I pray that I won't have another one of those anytime soon!!!

More old news to come. Hold on to your pumpkins!

Just another day...

Ok, so it's been very busy around here. I'm not exactly sure what all we've been doing, but I can tell you that Titus has had his share of fun.

Here he is in his favorite spot in the kitchen doing his favorite thing. Sneaking food; Pringles this time. No, he's not supposed to be there and yes, he will probably find his way back in there in the next hour or so, but for now I will seize the moment and rain on his parade, after I take the picture. Naturally.

Micah has found her favorite spot in the kitchen. She loves to just sit on the dishwasher door. I guess I would find it fun too, if I were her. The funny thing is that she will sit and "talk" to me, rambling on and on. It's very cute. We are running out of nice days to go for walks and bike rides, but there's no better time than fall to go outside for some football!!! Some of my favorite times as a kid was playing football in the fall! Sure enough, Titus made his way back to his little Atlantis of sorts. He opened the pantry door and pulled up the chair with his booster seat in it. Fortunately (for him) the open door hid him and I didn't find him until he was pretty much done. He found the hones, as you can see, and he also managed to down 2 granola bars. It was about then that I realized that I was hearing (but not totally noticing) some package crinkling and almost as if realizing for the first time, I remembered that I hadn't heard Titus for a while and the scene started to unfold in my mind. I wonder just how much honey he drank anyways.
I don't even remember what I was doing during this episode. Really, does it matter anymore? Actually, I think I was enjoying some bathroom time, but the problem was, Tim was too and no one was watching our beloved Titus as he was in our bedroom with a bottle of lotion... He got it everywhere! He must have just been squirting the bottle as he was walking through our room, because not only was it on every surface you could see, but even on some that you couldn't see (it blended nicely into my Maurice's bag). My carpet was "soft."
My dresser was "soft."My glider was "soft."My comforter and bedpost were "soft."
Even Titus' favorite Big Foot truck was "soft." I was so irritated by the end of finding all the "softness" that anything that wasn't on the floor or my bed got left right where it was. I actually ended up using some of it on the kids after their baths that night. It was still good lotion and I wasn't about to waste it! Now, lest you think our creative genius is all crazy and no cute, here is evidence that he does chill out once in a while. Strawberry Shortcake looks good on him, don't you think?
Not to be "out cuted" by her brother, Eden had to have her glasses and wanted a picture taken. I indulged her. After all, she's kids cute too.

There's more excitement to come. I am a bit behind, but don't have time to post everything, so stay tuned. I'm sure we won't disappoint!