Today feels like a good day to do some spring cleaning. All the kids are home and awake so I can put them to work. Without them, this would be impossible. Then again, without them it wouldn’t be as necessary.

Wait, that sounded harsh.

I just wish they would keep their messes in their rooms and a path to their beds. But their rooms are way too small in this house (even if they had their own rooms, the rooms would be too small) so they can’t keep toys in their rooms. Which means all the toys are all over (plus a few they want to keep close at hand that end up in their rooms anyway).

But this task MUST be accomplished anyway. They behave better when the house is clean. I don’t actually know why but they do. And I don’t even actually mean clean – I mean without stuff out. They don’t notice when germs are lying around everywhere or when the place smells bad.

My daughter looks positively edible.  She’s currently covered in chocolate because of a horrible (for me anyway) chocolate cake incident.  So I started to take fake bites of her and it resulted in freaking her out.  Once calmed down, though she started to do the same thing to me.  Either I’ve really messed her up and she will now be a cannibal, or I look positively edible myself.  Both actually seem pretty unlikely.

My kids started school yesterday and we made it through without any tears.  Which just means I’m a bad mother because I didn’t cry like I have every year before this one.  It’s never been them crying on the first day – it’s always me.

On the bright side, I am pretty depressed about it.   I guess that means there’s still hope for me.

My oldest got his first zit.  That makes it time to look for the latest acne treatment out there on the market.  Is it Clearasil or is it Masingil?  Or is it not ill at all?  How am I to know if this is really the beginning of acne or if this is just a fellow who needs to wash his face more often?  And is it wrong that I’m proud he got a zit?

Obviously yes, it is but just how wrong is it?  Are we talking therapy for him later wrong or a mom’s annoying story level of wrong?

You know what I’m saying?

I have one daughter who grows like a weed.  You’d think I’d given her hgh or something.  They say that when you measure a kid at 2years old and double it, that’s how tall they’ll be when they grow up, so in her case we’re looking at 6’6″.  I already knew I’d end up the shortest in the family but I really didn’t think it would be by a foot.

Each year about this time I start worrying about sending the kids back to school.  I feel like I’m abandoning them.  I can see already that sending them off to college is going to be a huge problem – I can’t cut the apron strings.

Each year about this time I start thinking about how I can always home school them.  I think about where we would have class and what school furniture I would get (chalk board or white erase; desks or just sit at the dining room table).  And then I remember that I can’t teach someone to read.  I can teach them to add or subtract and I could probably teach them comprehension but I don’t have the patience required to get them to sound out words.

Which means they’re going to school and I’ll just have to hide my tears that first week like I always do.

My daughter learned a valuable lesson the other day.  She suddenly found out you can not cool off your head standing behind a fan.  A hunk of her hair was ripped from her head when it got sucked in and wrapped around the fan blade.  No blood and in her words, “I didn’t cry.  I squeaked.”   The bald spot is hard to find and hopefully it won’t be too noticeable when the hair grows back in.  And although the fan appeared broken after catching her (the blade stopped rotating) removal of the hair proved to be the cure.  They’re both now back in business.

I’m getting a spa treatment as I type – from my daughters.  The older one is brushing my hair and directing the other one to get her hands soapy and then wiping them in my hair.  If I play my cards right I may be able to work a back scratch out of them as well.

Wish me luck.

My husband has become obsessed with Legos.  He came up with a design for a fingerprint, went to a website that tells you exactly how to build it and what size and color legos you need and then went online and ordered them all.  He waited with baited breath until they arrived and went to the local Lego store to pick up some as well.  Now every night he comes home and works on it.  For some reason, it is taking  much longer than I thought it would.  It doesn’t look that big….

My kids have become obsessed with the 39 Clues books and the website.  They want to go on their accounts every day and I have to treat it like it’s video games because otherwise they would just stay on there all day long.  They’ve memorized the cards that each of them have and they’ve completed all the missions they can with the cards they have.  I thought these were books.  I managed to avoid Pokemon and YuGiO but I’ve fallen into the 39 Clues Card game trap.

(I almost want to buy the cards for myself.)

One day I will buy my husband a classic car.  Not someday soon, mind you, but someday.  When we met he had an old car and was able to take care of it maintenance wise with no problems (it seemed to me) and I know he like muscle cars which I could certainly deal with.  I wouldn’t get him anything too crazy for practicality reasons – like where does one buy classic Ferrari parts?  Getting domestic parts is probably way easier and I know he likes 60s mustangs.  I just hope they made them with air conditioning back then or it will be a winter only car.

The mirrors they put in the kids dressing rooms at department stores are pathetic. At least the one in the waiting area just outside the rooms is. The one I saw had bipolar disorder. I’m a convex mirror, no I’m a concave mirror, no I’m a convex mirror. I guess they think it will be more entertaining for kids to look at themselves in a clown mirror since they usually aren’t the one making the decision about buying the clothing. I, however, found it VERY disturbing since the only one being reflected in the mirror at the time was me.

With the holidays fast approaching (Mother’s Day and Father’s Day) I find myself hoping my husband doesn’t get anything for the former because I stink at getting things for the latter. Sure it’s fun to get a tie for my fellow “from the kids” as a joke but I know he’d rather have a….

And there’s the problem. I REALLY don’t know what to get him. In a few years I know I’ll be able to just take him to dinner and let the kids do the real work but for now it falls to me. And he always does a very good job of it and I always stress about it and then my stress make sit fall flat not because I’m too stressed to plan. I KNOW it’s a self fulfilling prophecy but I seem to have no control over it.

I’m open for suggestions though.

When you’re out looking for baby gear for a new baby you need to find high quality stuff. You don’t want to have to go through a new play pen for every child you have (at $100 a pop) so you have to find materials that will last a VERY long time. When it comes to a stroller you need to go the same thing. Look past the cute, hard to follow names like “Baby Jogger City Mini” and focus on the weight and whether or not you can push it on rocks (you’ll be surprised how often that can actually come up in our well paved world). For these things the ability to endure is more important than with clothing. A baby will grow out of clothes every few months and reusing the clothing is easy because the baby has so little time to use them.

Remember that paying more for a high quality product can end up saving you money if you plan on having more than one or two children and reusing the same items.

Finally there are enough blankets on the bed. Three for me and one for my husband. For some reason – even though he never really gets warm in the winter – he never feels cold. But he doesn’t stay warm enough to keep me warm (hence the need for three blankets) But of course it has just spiked to 80 degrees and even I can’t sleep under three blankets in 80 degree weather. It’s a normal catch 22.

One of my poor kids is sooo cute. He hasn’t been allowed to watch TV in about two weeks (did something annoying/wrong and got into a heap of trouble by not stopping after the first 5 punishments). He told me that he was crying because the other kids in the family are addicted to TV and he never gets to see them anymore. He’s resolved to do whatever it takes to get off punishment so he doesn’t have to miss his siblings anymore.

The clever boy almost made me cave! But I already know he can cry whenever he wants because he pulled a joke on me that way once (giving away what could have been a mighty weapon in this battle called child rearing).

My poor four year old daughter gets the voice of an 80 year old smoker when she doesn’t get good sleep. And last night she did NOT get good sleep. My other daughter had been crying a lot and since they share a room the four year old caught quite an earful. My boys also didn’t get sleep for awhile. Since I went to a movie and came home to a silent house well after bedtime, I didn’t know about this until this morning when I asked each of them how they slept. The chorus of “Not very well” was broken only by the voice of the crier who replied in her light fairy voice, “good”.