Who shot Humpty??

When I was a kid, my mom sewed us these super cute dresses. She made these quilts which people bought for lots of money. She made the cutest cakes for our birthdays. My dad painted these awesome pictures. He could draw anything!

Last year in Micah's preschool class, these mom's would make these flowers and objects carved from fruit and amazingly detailed bunny's out of cupcakes for their kids' birthday's. Valentines day found these amazing homemade valentines in my child's basket, and at Halloween one mom admitted after thousands of compliments that yes she did make the amazing gypsy costume her daughter could have won awards it and was up at 6 to do her hair!

I tried to honor my mother by sewing one time, now my husband saves up his patching needs until my mom comes to visit. I tried drawing, my kids thought my dog was an alien. For birthday's I bought a giant cookie and had them write my child's name across it. For Halloween, my kids wear whatever costume I find on sale at Walmart.

This Monday Micah informed me that they were supposed to wear nursery rhyme costumes to school on Thursday, and I broke out in a cold sweat when I saw the words "homemade strongly encouraged" on the paper. Strongly encouraged is not mandatory and I was convinced that if I did try next years paper would read "homemade strongly encouraged, except for Micah's mom". My dear son had his heart set on Humpty Dumpty so I began scouring stores and websites for the perfect costume. It didn't exist, and with two days to go I decided I better start looking at EASY ways to make a costume, GULP.

I found some rather simple instructions and set out to find white sweats for my little broken egg character. No one in their right mind dresses little kids in white, therefore no one carries anything in solid white. After 4 stores and 3 screaming kids, 1 leaking diaper, and a husband who was muttering inappropriate language under his breath, I found white leggings....in the girls section.

I took Micah into the dressing room and tried on the white shirt with the leggings. All was good until he noticed the thin line of lace around the ankles. "What is that??" he hollered. "is this girls pants??" The store associate who had helped me locate them could be heard laughing hysterically outside the stall.

I hauled my howling son out of the dressing room and paid for the lacy leggings and listened to threats from my five-year-old about running away from home all the way to the house. I sat down right away with the T-shirt paint to fashion a little Humpty bow tie. Hmm maybe I could do this. My husband walked by and leaned over to look at my work, putting his arm right smack dab in the middle of the red paint, smearing Humpty's suspenders and making it look like he was shot off the wall instead of falling.

As I tried to quick wash out the extra red spots, I realized the manilla envelope I had put underneath was bleeding into the white shirt creating a yellow spot with a red center. Uh oh Humpty's yoke was spilling from his bullet hole! Kevin sweetly encouraged me saying "its really not that bad for your first time."

I gave up and went to bed.

This morning I wrestled my 45 pound child into the lacy egg white leggings while he insisted that everyone would laugh at him and he would not get out of bed tomorrow if I made him wear them.

Micah assured me that every picture of Humpty had him dressed neatly in blue pants so we gave it a try. Notice the much happier expression on my stubborn kids face.

I am sadly outnumbered in my vote for the white egg like leggings. Oh well at least my kid will have some sort of costume tomorrow along with the rest of Mother Gooses cuties. And hey, I got to shop in the girls section at Old Navy for once!

Expendable...um extended family members

Recently we hesitantly, tentatively, squeamishly, under much force of pleading, decided to expand our family. (Um no I'm not talking about the growing watermelon that has turned me into a small whale)

We inherited two female guinea pigs. Or as they have been most affectionately called by myself, freaky little rats.

I found myself having a conversation with Kevin a few days ago along these lines. Kevin: "hon I think the guinea pigs are hungry." Me: "really? I fed them like....oh 4 days ago." Kevin: "I think they have to eat ever day!" Me: "but they are little, they shouldn't have to eat so much!" Kevin: "Shell, you know that when the baby's born even though he's little he'll have to eat like every 2 hours right???"

I know nothing about these things except I probably should feed them more and they like to run around their cage at the most intense parts of movies and the darkest times of night.

My boys think they are the coolest! Micah will sit and hold them and pet them and talk to them and thinks its dumb that they have to have names like "sugar" and "honey" and has renamed them "Tom" and "Jerry". The other night I heard him laughing hysterically. I came out to find him crouched over the cage trying not to wet himself as he held his sides and doubled over. I asked him what in the world he was doing. He told me that if you only give them one carrot they chase each other and play tug of war with it. The squeals that were coming from them did not sound normal. Yeah I think we need to feed them more. This is now Micah's favorite feature of our new family members. That they fight!

Kyler loses interest pretty fast if they don't do something cool right away. He has discovered if you growl at them they go running to hide. They become much more interesting to him if he can catch them emptying their bowels. I am somewhat concerned about the number of times I have had to remind him that we cannot let them out of their cage to play hide and seek at will throughout the entire house, or the number of "what would happen if we put them....." questions I answer every day.

Caleb's approach to the little rodents is, "Lets see what else she'll eat!!" If it fits between those little wires, its fair game!! Legos, cd covers, cards, you name it! Recently my little explorer has discovered the amazing joy of watching things fly down the stairs. The bigger the object the faster and louder and bigger the hole in the wall at the bottom and he loves it! This particular cage is supported by wheels. The cage sits several yards away from the stairs, but that is not an obstacle for this determined experimenter. Fortunately I have always discovered the "maiden voyage" before it takes off.

These animals came to us from a very sweet family of older, calmer, quieter kids who would take the time to sit and pet and spoil them. Every once in a while I catch the "rats" looking at me, and I can't decide if its hunger or sheer terror that is staring at me through those beady little eyes. I really hope the people who entrusted us with their tender loving care never read this blog!

Firsts

I have had a lot of firsts recently, and some, I hope, are onlys. Like chicken pox... twice.... after having vaccinations. Or camping....pregnant! A couple of weeks ago Micah had his first day of Kindergarten. After watching his mommy go through an inhumane amount of Kleenex leading up to the actual day, he sweetly requested on the way to his first day of class, that if I had to cry, I could only cry a few drops, after all he wouldn't' be gone too long and he would miss me too. This resulted in a whole box of used Kleenex.

His brother followed me around for the first week, asking me what I was doing, begging me to play dinosaurs with him, and pestering his little brother just to see if he could set a new record on how loud he could get him to scream. He informed me with exasperation one afternoon that he couldn't go play since he had no Micah's!

God smiled at me when I cried every day for the first week as I watched my little, tiny, big boy climb out of the car with his slightly too big backpack bouncing on his back, and head confidently into school. So to remind me why it really was a good thing that 5 year olds leave their mommy's for 3 or 4 hours every day to learn stuff they may or may not remember a year from now, he gave me a week of chicken pox.

As we spent the week disappointed about the school activities we were missing, watching a ridiculous amount of Veggie Tales, and breaking records on things to fight over, I found myself asking when he could go back to school and I could cry from missing him yet again.

Today I kissed my second boy as he looped his little back pack straps over his arms and headed off into the exciting new world of crayon wrappers and glue sticks. As he looked up at me and said "I'll really miss you mommy" I was convinced he was only making sure that he could squeeze tears out of me as efficiently as his big brother did.

The knock you over hug I got from him when I picked him up assured me that he really did miss me, and made me feel like all those spankings over looked, all those imaginary friends I brushed teeth for, every 20 goodnight kisses each night, were worth it.

My very wise mother assured me today that there really was no way of slowing time down, instead I needed to treasure every moment. I think I will take her advice as my 5 year old reminded me, that my 1 year old baby gets to go to preschool next!