No News Really IS Good News

Have you watched the news recently? I haven’t. I don’t watch any kind of broadcast television, but I have listened to the news on the radio…and I do get daily emails with current news headlines. There is a disturbing trend that I have noticed in this regard. Most of the news is bad news…Depressing news…News that keeps you awake at night…News I don’t want to hear (or in my case…read). I took a quick peek at the last set of headlines I got for September 25 and 26 2006, and the closest thing to positive stories I could find was that a family of six was saved by their smoke alarm, although there was extensive damage to their home and their possessions, a pond in a park that has been drained for years is being refilled, and the other somewhat positive story was that someone in Iowa bought the winning 200 Million dollar Lottery ticket. That’s not something I really view as positive, but at least it wasn’t a murder, kidnapping or worse.
A friend of mine recently wrote in his blog about social capital. He talked about how people socialize less with each other, and trust each other less as well. He talked about how we need to reach out and get to know our neighbors and people in our communities. His ideas seemed like good ones, except that I can’t get over my lack of trust in humanity as a general whole. To check out what my friend wrote go to http://sansauto.spaces.live.com/ and read the entry for his blog on September 26, 2006. (Feel free to read the rest of his blog as well, especially the day by day log of his bike ride from Astoria, Oregon to Spanish Fork, UT found in the July and August Archives.)
I think that reading the news every day hasn’t helped my problem with trusting very much. The world is a scary, scary place. But is it also a really good place? I think so. I think we need to be looking for more good in the world around us. That is not to say that we should ignore the many problems in that world. Of course we need to find solutions to the state of the world. I think looking for some good in it is a place to start.
If you are tired of reading all of the bad news…check out http://www.happynews.com/ where all the news is good news, all the time. Some of it may be cheesy, but it’s still good. And please start today to look for something positive in your own world. It can only help.

Okay, So I Am Behind In My Blogging...

It was a busy weekend. And I have been distracted lately. I have actually done everything I need to do for my next review, but since we did the review as a family I am waiting for D to be ready to write out his take on things. Hopefully sometime later this week we will post our family review.
I don't have a particular topic for today. I am just blogging to keep from feeling guilty for not blogging for a few days. I am not in a writing mood to be honest.
However, I hate to disappoint, so I thought I would put a link on my blog today, for anyone who is bored. If you have internet (which I assume you do since you are reading this) and access to a printer, you too can while away the minutes, hours and days creating your own fun paper models. Just go to http://papertoys.com/ and you can find a variety of free paper models including airplanes, various cars, paper dolls, and many fine tourist attractions. Go to Paris, Washington D.C., Australia and more! Models vary from simple one page models to elaborate ones that take several pages of printing. You can even build Bill Gates' multimillion dollar home and display it right on your kitchen table. So get out your scissors, glue and crayons (although some color versions are available if you don't feel like coloring it yourself). If you have always wanted a Ferrari of your own...this is the place for you.

Where Have All The Table Knives Gone?

They seem to have disappeared. Well, not quite all of them. I think there is one floating around the kitchen someplace. I just don't understand it. I washed every dish in the kitchen, and brought the ones out of the living room, and yet, when I was finished there were no table knives to be found.
I am pretty sure I know the reason. Of course it could be something more obscure like the rats have been stealing the knives to make slides for their inner wall playground (except we haven't seen or heard a rat since we caught the one, and our traps have yielded no dead ones either). Or maybe the boys threw them all out of the second story window. (I haven't seen any knives in the yard though.) More likely, all 12-16 of those knives have been used by the boys to pick the lock on the bathroom door. I bet I will find some slipped underneath the pile of folded towels in the linen closet, or just on the floor outside the bathroom door, in the corner, or under the sink in the bathroom. One of the joys (insert sarcasm here) of having only one bathroom is that invariable more than one person needs to use it. Even our three year old knows how to pick the lock, and he isn't even potty trained. At least one, and often two or three of the boys will need to use the bathroom when I am in the shower. They knock, and after they figure out that I am going to stay in the shower where they can't see me, and I can't see them, they will pick the lock and come in to do their business. I can only hope that I am lucky enough that they won't come in when the hot water is almost gone, because then I have to stand there in the shower stall, dripping and freezing until they are out of the bathroom.
Maybe tomorrow I will offer a reward for the return of the table knives. Lucky for me the boys are easily bribed and they will do all the work for me. Until then, I will continue to butter my bread with a chopstick, or any other handy knife-like utensil.

Is Halloween a Holiday For Kids?

I can already hear you saying "Of course!" But really, lets be serious here. Have you been shopping lately? If you haven't then I challenge you to go to a store that has a Seasonal section and look at their Halloween decor and costumes. You will probably find some cutesy plush costumes for kids in there, but look closer...I mean really delve in there and see what you find.

I used to work at Fred Meyer. The originator of One-stop shopping. Groceries, Home decor, Housewares, Automotive, Toys, Apparel, and more all rolled into one big store. Part of my job when I was working there was to do resets. Resets involve moving and rearranging merchandise on the shelves according to a planogram sent by corporate. This keeps all the stores under the corporate umbrella somewhat similar since they have to follow the same plans.

One of the ever changing things about resets is the seasonal section. Last year I got to help with the Halloween reset. Costumes and accessories was one of the first things we set. I decided right then that I didn't want to take my kids anywhere near that aisle. It was something that would probably give them nightmares. Monster masks, fake wounds, fake blood, etc, all with semi-realistic depictions of the wounds and etc on the packaging. Burns, bites, scars, and even bullet holes. Those are not things I want my kids to think are cool. Then the masks...I don't even want to go there, some of those things are just disgusting, and I don't find anything at all pleasant about them.
On the next aisle over we have Halloween decorations. These include a severed head in a crystal ball (not my idea of fun or appropriate), those candy dishes with hands that grab you when you try to take a piece of candy, and things that make shrieking or other scary noises.
I am NOT anti-Halloween. But I like celebrating it in a more toned down fashion. If people want to have a big scooby doo inflatable in their yard, or a fake cemetery...I don't really have a problem with that. Last Christmas there was a cool snowglobe inflatable with Santa in it and fake snow blowing around in there. I thought that was pretty neat. This year there is a Halloween version with the grim reaper, and fake leaves blowing around inside. I don't really know why anyone would fork over the money for something like that. Last year it seems like a lot of the inflatables for Halloween were on the tamer side. This year my three year old is afraid to go down that aisle. The giant skull with a pumpkin on top bothers him, as does the chest with a skeleton that starts to climb out, and then retreats back inside.
I am all for carving a pumpkin. In fact, its a family tradition to get together at my sister's house every year for a pumpkin carving party and to show off our costumes (optional). Its a fun family time that the kids look forward to. In fact, I think that this year we are going to make it our main celebration. They will get their costuming out of the way. As for Trick Or Treating, how many parents actually let their kids eat all that junk? I don't. I have been known to hide the candy and dole it out here and there, and eventually I forget about it and run across it somewhere around Christmas, then I usually end up throwing a lot of it away. This year we are going to just hang out at home. I will get some goodies, and we will watch some Halloween episodes of shows we have on DVD. Somehow I don't think my kids will be missing out on anything. We will have some good quality family time...and they will still get some candy (only I will have control over what kinds). I think that it may be the start of a new tradition. I am looking forward to it.

Not As Smart As I Thought I Was, but Not As Dumb As I Could Be

This morning our family was all piled into our van to head out on an outing. For the last year or so our van has had small and sometimes odd things go wrong with it, so much so that we kind of expect weird things to happen. My husband started to get into the van, put the key in the ignition and turned the engine on, then went back in to get something he had forgotten. You know how in newer cars when you leave the door open with the key in it will have that obnoxious ringing sound? Well of course that was the case, only the tone kept getting louder and LOUDER. Great, I thought, the van is doing weird things again. Imagine my consternation when D got in the drivers seat, and closed the door, and the loud tone continued! He turned the engine off, and the tone stopped, of course. But when he turned it on again, the tone was back, even though the door was closed. I was frustrated and said, lets just go! So we started backing out of the driveway, and I reached over to do something with the radio, and WOW! When I turned the volume down, the tone went away. For some reason, whatever radio station it was tuned to, was playing the obnoxious tone, which is miraculously the exact same pitch as the door is open tone. I wonder if scientists had to determine what would be the most grating tone to make people notice things like that. I bet someone got paid to come up with that sound.
I guess I shouldn't feel so dumb...at least we didn't take it to a shop to get it fixed.

Some People Are Also Cows...

I don't know if this is a scientifically proven fact or not, but Cow People seem to be a common thing. On the outside, they seem like normal people, act like normal people, look like normal people, and yet they walk around chewing their cud.
By cud I mean chewing gum. Now of course there are some people that manage to keep some kind of control over their gum chewing, and then there are people like the one I saw today. I guess the word...saw...is misleading. I did eventually see the person, but I heard her first.
Son 8 (as in age 8) had TaeKwonDo lessons today, as is the case with every Tuesday and Thursday. Today though, there was a parents meeting after class, and so some parents showed up early. I always stay for the class, so I was already there. I sensed the presence of someone coming in and sitting down in the chair next to me. I hadn't paid any attention to who it was, because I was in the middle of drawing some house plans for some changes I would like to make on our house.
Anyhow, as soon as the person sat down, I heard this awful noise. This sucking, squishing, juicy noise. I think that Hollywood would pay this lady good money to stand next to a microphone and make those noises for use as a movie sound effect. Things that come to mind for its use, are the sucking sound of a bullet being removed from someone; a slobbering, drooling creature salivating over its next victim; a muddy bog waiting to pull someone to their doom; wild animals feeding on their prey; or basically any disgusting, slimy sound. However, she was just chewing her gum. I am not talking about any casual kind of chewing. I thought she might be going for some kind of loudest chewing world record.
So what is the attraction of gum chewing? Is it some throwback to sucking a pacifier? Some crazy weight loss diet? A tool devised to drive normal people insane? Perhaps she was a world champion jaw muscle builder, and she was just getting her workout...or maybe all the squeaking and sucking is some kind of alien language that other people just can't grasp. I personally think that sometime in the near future, we are going to be standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, and we will see the following headline on the cover of a gossip magazine. "Scientists Discover Freak Human/Cow Hybrids...Details and photos inside."

Don't You Miss Having Recess?

I do. I don't think I have had a good dose of recess since Grade School. Of course I have taken the kids to a park many times, but its just not the same. For one thing, I am fat now. But to be honest, playing at the park had lost some of its brilliance even before I got fat. Little kids have it all good. I can't even come close to doing many of the things I used to be able to do as a child. The climbing on very high bars without getting nervous, jumping off the swings when they got to their highest point, running without feeling like I need to keep my thighs and rear from flapping. Things change, and sometimes I feel like I can barely remember what it was like to run and play and feel free. Here are some barriers I have found to enjoying recess as a grown-up.
#1. Width. I am considerably wider than I was as a child. It seems to me that most grown-ups are wider than kids, even short, skinny, grown-ups. Width is a factor in two specific areas of playground play...The first being slides. Sure, there are some wide slides, but they are usually not very long, so it doesn't make for as fun of a ride. The second thing that width affects is one of the things I miss the most. Swings. I do still sit on the swings, and I even still swing, and get pretty high on them. But they are simply not comfortable. Its not like I am wider than the swing itself, but once I am in it, the sides of the swing bite into the outside of my thighs, and its just uncomfortable. There is no joy in a swingset anymore, just regret that I can't enjoy it like I used to. It doesn't stop me from trying. I am, in fact, wondering if I would do better on a swing made from a straight board, because that would reduce the discomfort, but I think it would change the whole feel of swinging as well. As a kid, I remember that we would have kids lay down on the ground in a row in front of the swings and we would jump off of the swings at the highest point and jump over all the kids laying there. I can't remember anyone ever getting hurt, but I would never attempt anything so dangerous now.
#2. Gravity. I guess I could put down weight on this one instead, but it feels like gravity. I don't think I have the same muscle to mass ratio as a grown up and certainly not since I got fat. Hanging on the bars is a struggle, let alone trying to hang upside down or spin on the bars. You would think that extra weight might be good on a slide, but somehow it keeps you from going as fast as you could as a child. Gravity also keeps me from climbing to the top of places and walking across the monkey bars and such...All things I did with ease as a child.
#3. Height. I can't crawl around under tight spaces the way I did as a child. I wonder if they could make a playground scaled to adult sizes where the swings, slides and general size of everything would be easier for us to navigate. Wouldn't it be great if they could make a giant playground for grown-ups? I bet they could make some money off of it anyhow.
#4. Flexibility. Lets face it...a lot of us are not nearly as flexible as we were as children. Sure there are flexible adults who practice various martial arts or do their pilates religiously. I am not one of them. I can't do nearly the number of cool things I could as a child.
#5. Experience. This one could also be found under the heading of fear. Real life and living in it has given us enough experience to understand the risks involved in running across a jungle gym at full speed while 10 other kids do the same thing. How scary it is to jump off of a swing, and having grown up, we don't have that sense of being indestructible that many kids enjoy.
So how do we get recess? For me, its more enjoying nature. Going on a hike or walking the beach. For some its going on a bike ride. I miss that too. I need to get back on my bike and actually enjoy riding again. I spent over 10 years of my childhood (from about age 10 to my early 20s without a bike, and then when my bike got stolen I spent another 10 years without a bike. I just got a bike again last Christmas and I have only tried it out briefly, a short ride of a couple of blocks. The width, gravity, height, flexibility and fear have affected me there as well. I think I feel a certain amount of envy when I go out in the yard and hear the sounds of kids playing at the school behind our house. I hope they enjoy their recess while they can...I don't think I will ever truly get it back.

Not All Ramen is Equal...

Its the truth. I know...You probably don't believe me, but you should. You may just be one of those people that buys the cheap kind of Ramen and you think that it doesn't matter because Ramen is Ramen. Well...You are greatly mistaken. Today I am going to review two different brands of Ramen in a comparative way. I am going to cover three basic areas.
#1. Packaging
#2. Nutritional Value (I know...Who knew Ramen had ANY nutritional value?)
#3. Flavor

Okay. To start out with...I am a picky Ramen eater. I generally only like two of the myriad number of flavors of Ramen available. Those two flavors are beef, and shrimp. I find the chicken varieties to be bland, and don't even get me started on that picante one...Yes, I actually tried that kind once. Today's comparison is going to involve two different brands of Ramen, both of the shrimp flavored variety.
First of all...NISSIN Brand Ramen. Before anyone gets all twitterpated about how cool it is that NISSIN is spelled the same way backwards and forwards...Lets move on to the other aspects of the packaging.

I found the Nissin packaging to be somewhat boring. This may have had something to do with the pink and white blah colors they used. But I think its an overall thing. They put their little

Nissin Symbol up there, but it just doesn't have any pizazz. And for some reason I find the term Top Ramen to be dorky. How many of us say, "Lets cook up some Top Ramen for lunch!" ? I can only speak for myself. But I usually just call it Ramen and leave the Top part out. Also on the few occasions I have heard someone else refer to it as "Top Ramen" I thought it sounded extremely dumb.

Next we have the little catch phrase "Oodles of Noodles." Again...DORKY. I understand from doing a little research on the web that when Nissin introduced instant Ramen for the first time in the U.S. (chicken flavored in case you were wondering), back in 1972, it became known as Oodles of Noodles across the Eastern U.S. for many years. Back in 2000 they thought it would be nostalgic or something to reintroduce it under that title. Personally it makes me feel like I am being spoken to in baby talk.

Next is the picture on the front of the Nissin package. It looks to me like two Shrimp have decided to drown themselves in a bowl of out of focus noodles. They are even wearing matching best friends orange peel necklaces. I apologize for the picture quality. It was honestly the best picture I could find on the web and actually came right from the Nissin website. I find the addition of a lot of little chives to the picture to be interesting. Because I have never actually seen that many specks of green in my bowl when I have made Nissin Ramen before. (and in case you can't tell the big green things are parsley...But if you could look at an actual package the way I am since there is one sitting next to me right now there are also a lot of little green chivey things around the shrimp.) Okay...So I am giving more demerits for blurry noodles (even on the actual package), drowning shrimp, and the addition of orange or lemon peel to my soup. Ick. On to the Maruchan packaging.

First of all...Maruchan displays their brand name proudly, and they do it with a smile. I find the little happy face next to the M to be cheerful and refreshing. Also they have a nice creamy yellow color to offset their pink package (which is a slightly darker and a less pepto pink shade than the Nissin). Also note that it just says Ramen with noodle soup in small letters underneath for those of us who may find it confusing without the word Top there. No Oodles...Yay! Also the words Shrimp Flavor are bolder than on the Nissin brand. The focus on the noodles is much sharper, and you can see the nice gleam on the broth that is there too. In the picture of the Maruchan brand you actually don't see the chives, which I think is interesting since there are actually more little green spices in a bowl of Maruchan than in the Nissin Ramen. The shrimp are lying in a nice relaxed manner on a bed of snap peas and onions, and although they have no heads, that is to be expected since we are about to eat it anyhow. (Who knows what could be lurking under the broth in the Nissin picture. Maybe the shrimp still have their little legs and antennae.) The picture is zoomed in more too, so you can really see the noodles, and they have a nice little corner of green peas to add some color. Maruchan wins. Even if everything else sucked the smiley face would have put them over the top.

Our second category is Nutritional Value. It was a close race on this one. The two brands are virtually identical as far as calories and percentages on the nutrition facts part of the packages. Both have 190 calories. However the Nissin says that only 60 are from fat while the Maruchan says 70 calories are from fat. I find this interesting because both brands claim an identical amount of fat grams and saturated fat grams, as well as the same percentage of fat per serving. So I wonder how the Nissin has 10 less fat calories. Also both brands claim one whopping gram of Dietary Fiber, but Nissin claims that this one gram equals 5% of your daily value, while Maruchan claims it is only 4% DV. Maybe one rounded up and one rounded down. Other than that, both brands are virtually identical, except for one thing...Nissin has 15% of your DV of iron, and Maruchan only carries 8%. So as far as nutritional value, the Nissin wins. Unless you are trying to cut back on your iron.

Our last category is flavor. To each his own I say. Most people may not even be able to tell a difference. But I have always ALWAYS preferred Maruchan over Nissin for flavor. And yes, I will pay that extra five cents a package to get that flavor. I do buy Nissin, for the kids since they don't seem to care, but the first time I had Nissin as an adult after years of eating Maruchan I just didn't like the taste of the Ramen. It didn't appeal to me. It tasted somehow... Bland. This is more than just an "I prefer Maruchan over Nissin" statement. Its an "I can tolerate it, but I really don't like Nissin" statement. I have really tried, but its just too blah. So I tried to figure it out, and I even did a taste test with my oldest son J, and even he (who has been raised eating Nissin because it is cheaper) could tell a difference in taste, and liked the Maruchan more. He is not anti Nissin, but he could tell that it had inferior flavor in comparison. Why? I wondered. So I decided to read the ingredients and see what differences I could find if any. I only did this for the shrimp kind, but I do also prefer the Maruchan beef flavor, and the texture and taste of the Maruchan noodles over Nissin in general. As far as the noodles go, the only differences I could find in ingredients, are that Maruchan has soy sauce in the noodles, and Nissin doesn't. Otherwise the ingredients are pretty similar. As far as the spice packets go (for shrimp flavor)...They are very similar also, but with some more differences. Nissin brand is flavored with soy sauce, onion powder, spices, shrimp powder, garlic powder, clam powder, chicken powder, celery powder and chicken fat. While the Maruchan brand is flavored with soy sauce, dehydrated vegetables (onion, garlic and chive) and shrimp and lobster flavor. Maybe the chicken fat, chicken powder and celery powder in the Nissin brand dilute the shrimp flavor. And what about the clam powder? But the Maruchan has shrimp AND lobster ingredients. No wonder it costs more...and no wonder it tastes better. Maruchan wins two out of three, and thus, a place in my kitchen cupboard.

My Son the Artist...Escape Artist That Is...

Middle son T has always been good at surprising people. Even before he could walk, he had this way of looking innocent and sweet, and yet when one of his older brothers would go by, he would, on occasion, reach out his chubby little hands, latch onto the waist of their pants, and drag them down so he could crawl all over them. I guess he has always been a little bit aggressive as well.
When he started escaping from his car seat as a young toddler, I used to joke that he would be an escape artist when he grew up. I know I could not have managed to slither my way out of a five point harness system the way he could. Even when we tightened the straps, he would just find a way to wriggle out of it. We eventually had to get a new seat for him that had a different kind of fastener over his chest, just to confuse him for a while and keep him safe when we were driving. We also used to have to duct tape the front of his diaper to keep him from taking it off all the time.
Once when I was at the store and my husband stayed home with the boys, T was looking for me. He asked where I was, and when D said I went to the store, T waited for an opportunity to escape and ran off down the street after me. He stopped at the first store he came to (luckily there is one just a few blocks away, and on the same side of the street) and proceeded to look for me. Since that wasn't the store I was at, he didn't find me, but a Police Officer from the station across the street was nice enough to drive him home (T was barely four years old at the time). Another time he escaped and went to the school to find his brothers. Someone saw him and told my husband (yes, T escapes from him often) and the search was on. He made it all the way to the school, and was wandering classrooms when he was found.
Of course I am not immune to T's capabilities myself. On one occasion I was upstairs putting laundry away, and the house got very quiet all of a sudden. I could tell he had left, so I booked it down the stairs and into the yard. I caught up with him a few houses down in nothing but a diaper and bare feet, running back towards home. I feel like I need to have some kind of alarm on the borders of our yard to alert us when he leaves its boudaries. (Actually, what I want is a fence with razor wire and a watchtower in our yard.)
He has gotten better about not leaving home. Of course he threatens to run away any time he gets into trouble, but I usually catch him out in the yard, and he hasn't left the yard in any running away attempts yet. He does routinely lose us in stores, which is why I don't like taking him shopping.
Yesterday was his crowning achievement though. The school had been warned many times of his propensity for escaping. For most of Kindergarten there was an Aide in the class who was there mostly to keep track of him, and to keep him focused on what he was supposed to be doing. This year for some reason they felt that he could do with only having Justina (the Aide-who also does a wonderful job with T) there for the morning. I think it has something to do with them wanting to spend their money on things like school buses and etc, than on having an Aide for a kid that really needs to have one with him all the time. (I plan to do a future post on IEP later where I will go into more detail about how the school gets paid double for kids with an IEP, but they don't want to spend that extra money on the actual kids it is supposed to be for.)
Wednesdays are early release days. Instead of getting out at 2:00 p.m. they are released a whopping 40 minutes early at 1:20. So at 1:00 p.m. I was sitting in the living room reading the latest ad from the local grocery store, when I heard a knock at the door. I thought, "Oh, the boys must be home"...but then I realized that they weren't supposed to even get released from school for another 20 minutes. I got up to answer the door, and the phone started to ring. I got to the door, and there was T, standing on the back porch in his P.E. shoes, and saying something about his teacher disappearing. I knew what the phone call probably was, so I answered it and it was the Assistant Principle saying that she saw T escape through the gate and head towards home. (We live right behind the school, and if the trees weren't so tall you could see our house from there easily.)
I got shoes on the little boys, and the four of us walked back to the school. As we were crossing the track to get back to the school, a P.E. teacher asked if that was T as they had been looking for him. Then she said how she and two other teachers were supposed to be keeping an eye on him. I guess I felt a small moment of pride that he had escaped from school while being watched by three teachers, from a schoolyard that is fenced except for a couple of entries, and all while wearing a bright orange shirt. Then I guess I felt a certain amount of annoyance that the school can't keep track of a kid that they know will do something like that if he gets a chance. Especially after I found out that he had partially escaped the day before (not off school grounds, just to his old classroom).
T had gotten confused when his class lined up to head back in from P.E. Actually, I think he just got distracted by something else (which he frequently does) and lost his class. When he couldn't find them, he checked the classroom (they had gone a different way, and weren't there yet) and then came home. He now knows to go to the office and ask for help if he gets lost from his class.
Maybe he should be a spy when he grows up. I certainly hope that his wearing a shirt the color of a prison jumpsuit is not some kind of foreshadowing of the future.

Some Boys Are Just Born Male Chauvinists

I don't know if that is really true or not, but I think I may have some evidence to support the theory. And if I don't, well, at least it makes for a catchy title for this blog.
Today was the first day of school. Yay! So after I got the three big boys off to school, the two youngest and I came home, and decided to have some breakfast. Frosted Flakes was the choice of the day. Actually, for me personally, I had toast (see my previous blog about breakfast cereals)...but the little boys chose to have a virtually nutrition free breakfast of frosted flakes. K ate two bowls of it, and C started in on his bowl. He was eating it fine, but about halfway through his cereal he brought the spoon to me and said, "This is a girl's spoon." and tossed it in the sink. Well, the spoon DID have a flower on the handle, but I have never heard him have a problem with eating off of it before. I am not sure where he got the idea that silverware with flowers on it are girlie, certainly not from me, and I hope not from anyone else in our household. I proceeded to hand him a new spoon after he made it clear that the girlie one was not for him. Our main set of silverware is just very basic. There is nothing girlie about it. Its just plain, with a little v shape at the end of the handle. C was not satisfied. He rejected that spoon, as well as a different one from our backup set that has flowers on the handle. I gave up, closed the silverware drawer and told him he could go without a spoon then. Of course he didn't like that idea. He opened the drawer, pawed through it, and came out with a serving spoon (from our main set) that was the size of a small shovel. Satisfied with the manliness of his new spoon, he went back to the table and continued to eat. So does that mean, since he picked a spoon that was twice the size of his mouth, that I can add pig to the term male chauvinist?

Two more days to freedom...

In two more days...really less than that because today is pretty much over...school starts here. So I will go from trying to entertain five rambunctious and high maintenance little boys all day, to only having to entertain two of those five boys for six hours of each day. I am very excited.
Of course at the end of the school year last year I was itching for summer. I was excited to just have lots of time with my boys, having fun, playing, doing art projects etc, etc. After about a week of summer life I was missing school. I was ready to have some moments of more quiet.
Now, I don't want you to misinterpret me. I love my boys. They are fun, and creative, and sweet. They are also...loud, obnoxious, whining, spitting, clawing, kids. I know...that sounds like the bad outweighs the good. It doesn't...but everything in moderation right? RIIIiiiiiGHT. So my idea of moderation is that instead of 24 hours a day of noisy screaming pandemonium (if you include my dreams sometimes...it could really be 24 hours a day), I get a six hour break that is 3/5ths less noisy, and if you count that two of those school boys are quite a bit louder than their brothers most of the time, or that they have a knack for irritating their other brothers and causing THEM to make more noise...its like I am getting a 75% noise reduction. My head feels better already. Plus, there is the possibility that if I get to focus more attention on those two boys that are at home all day, maybe they won't be so whiny for attention later in the day. It could turn into a wonderful thing all around.
What do you bet that after a week of school I will be wishing for the next three day weekend, or Thanksgiving break, winter break, spring break, and finally SUMMER! I imagine that will be the case. But for that first week, I am going to enjoy my freedom...freedom to go grocery shopping or to the Library during the day and only have two kids to contend with. Freedom to listen to my music without having to hear the whining that they want to listen to THEIR music. Freedom to hear myself think. I am so excited.