Fire, fire!!

Will tried to burn the house down yesterday. Okay, that's not entirely true. I don't think he actually was thinking "Hahaha, I'm gonna burn this sucker down," but since it was his actions that led to a small kitchen fire, I'm blaming him.
I was making dinner yesterday and I turned on the oven to preheat so I could make some biscuits. While it was heating, I went in the playroom to waste time on Facebook. Mason said, "Mom, something smells like roasting marshmallows." I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, so I said, "Oh, that's just dinner cooking." I few seconds later, I got a whiff of something distinctly campfire-ish. I turned around to see smoke pouring from the oven vents. Uh-oh. I ran into the kitchen to find a flaming potholder burning away in the oven. After a moment's panic of "Oh God, fire, kids in the house, what do I do?!!" I grabbed kitchen tongs, told Mason to keep his brothers out of the way, pulled out the burning potholder, threw it in the sink and ran water over it. Crisis averted.
We have Will to thank for the smoky kitchen and blackened mess in the sink. He's discovered that he can open the oven, but I didn't realize he was filling it with kitchen supplies! Now I guess we'll have to get a lock for the oven and it can join the ranks of the locked dishwasher, cabinets and pantry. But until I get one, I guess I'll be checking the oven before I try to preheat it again!!

Facing my addiction

Chair before.....

chair after!

(the distressing looks better in person)

No one is safe from project mania!!

The footboard that we turned into a fabulous headboard!

Hi, my name is Cameron, and I am addicted to home decorating. It has been almost 24 hours since I have painted or reupholstered and already I'm getting antsy and anxious.....

If there was such a thing as home decorators anonymous, I would sooooo be there. In the last few weeks I have painted until my hands feel like they might fall off. I don't know what it is. I always like to have some kind of crafty project going, but lately, I've taken it to new levels. It all started three weeks ago when I decided that the deck on the front of the house and the shutters needed painting. Then I decided we really ought to install window boxes in all the windows. That fun little adventure stretched over two weeks, and it's still not completely done, we've got one window box left to install- trying to drill into brick is much harder than I thought. It was an insane amount of work, but yielded lovely results. I'd take some pictures, but it's raining, and like I said, we still have one window box to go.

But somehow that project started this whole ball of home improvement rolling. The next weekend brought the quest for kitchen chairs. My crappy, cheapo chairs were falling apart, so I decided to go junkin' to find some new ones that I could fix up. Sure, I could just buy normal, finished kitchen chairs that required no work, but where's the fun in that? The finding of the chairs was easy enough- found 'em the minute I walked into my favorite junk shop. And I didn't have any trouble finding the fabric to reupholster the seats either. But the amount of work it has taken to refinish them is insane. I wanted kind of a shabby chic look, so after I spent several hours painting them with three coats of white paint, I took sandpaper and scuffed them all up so they would look old and beat up. One might wonder why I didn't just buy some old beat up chairs to begin with? Well, duh, that would never do. I can't just have any old raggedy chair, they have to be beat up in a certain way! There's a science to this.

I claim no responsibility for the project that snowballed off the chair search. I blame that one entirely on my mother in law. After we found chairs, she mentioned that she had a seen a chest of drawers that might look good in Mason's room and offered to buy it for him. Sweet! But then we started worrying that this nice, new piece might make the rest of his furniture look crappy. Obviously that would never do, so what could she do but buy him a new nightstand and shelves? Which meant that he would need a new headboard. And we would have to paint his bookshelves. And hamper. And install new blinds. And while we found a headboard, it just wasn't quite right, so we decided to use the footboard as a head board and mount it on the wall- after I painted it. You understand right? We had no choice. It simply had to be done. On the upside, it looks fabulous!

See, it's like a drug habit. You try just a little bit, then you need just a little bit more.... then it spirals out of control and the next thing you know you're standing in Lowe's with a cart full of tools and supplies begging the guys at the paint counter to mix just one more color. And if I'm not redecorating, I'm thinking about it. Sometimes thinking about a new project will literally keep me awake at night. I know, I know, it's ridiculous. But I can't help it, it's an addiction!!

But I'm trying to get it under control. I'm nearing the end of project-palooza. All I've got left to do is refinish the kitchen table and reface the kitchen cabinets, and then I'm stopping. I promise. Maybe. Unless the the gussied-up kitchen starts to make the playroom look shabby and tired.....

Pay up, Tooth Fairy!!!

Today is a big day for the Mase-man. He lost his first tooth!!!!! And since he's one of the last among his friends to lose a tooth, it's a really big deal. He'd been worrying about it for about six months, and I promised him that if he hadn't lost one by Christmas, we'd go to the dentist and ask her about it. But no worries now! He is officially a member of the snaggletooth squad!!

I'm a little worried about the Tooth Fairy's going rate these days. In our house, she will be giving $5 for the first tooth and $2 for subsequent teeth. I think that sounds reasonable, but who knows? I swear if he goes to school on Monday and some kid goes, "Five dollars? All you got was five dollars? The tooth Fairy left me a twenty." I'm going to go to that kid's house and punch his/her parents in the face for being an idiot and setting a bad precedent!

Mason's actually had lots of big days lately. He's playing soccer again, and this year he's on a team that actually wins sometimes! I mean, sure, it's all supposed to be fun whether they win or not. But let's be honest, winning is always more fun.

He's also joined the cub scouts. I signed up to be the assistant leader- partly because no else volunteered, and partly because I need to learn some boy stuff. As a girly-girl with no brothers, a have a shameful lack of knowledge about stuff like campfires and bb guns. If you need somebody to put tiny shoes on Barbie's feet or braid My Little Pony's tail, I'm your girl, but tell me to tie a square knot and I'm sunk! Hopefully this way I'll learn some useful skills.

School Daze

How cute are these? I did the letters myself!

No, Mommy! No picture!!!

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to school I go

Come on, Mom! Let's gooooooooo!!!
(And that's where the pictures stop. No cute going in the

classroom shots, because there are two of them and one

of me, and that equals not enough hands to take pictures!)

Since I gave up blogging for the summer (it was too hot and boring- nobody wants to read two months of posts complaining about the weather and my whiny kids), you haven't heard about the twins latest adventure: preschool!!! Three weeks ago they took the first step down their educational path and began preschool one morning a week for three hours. Thus far, it's been glorious- three beautiful hours to myself (and I think they're having fun, too!)

I was a little nervous about starting them so young- Mason was three when he started and they're only 2 1/2. But I figured, they've got each other, so it's not like I'm dumping them alone in a roomful of strangers. Of course, the sobs you hear as I walk out the door would make you believe otherwise. This is a typical drop off: We get ready and they're all excited, "Yay, backpack! Yay, school! Yay, Miss Angie, Miss Diane!" We get to school and they dash to their classroom, run in the door, wave to their teachers, and...... burst into tears, but according to their teachers, they settle down quickly. And I get to walk out the door, free as a bird, for the first time in, well, ever. See, when Mason started preschool, I was newly pregnant with the twins. So instead of enjoying three hours of freedom each week, I used his school days for the 900,000 doctors appointments that crazy, medical mystery of a pregnancy required. But not this time, my friends. These three hours are mine, all mine!!!!

Sadly enough, three hours goes far too quickly and I generally use them to do something totally boring, like clean house. (And the fact that I can't manage to finish cleaning it in that three hours should tell you something about the general state of my house!) But still, it's three hours of quiet. Three hours of bathroom doors that can stay open, three hours of pet food that can stay on the floor, and sometimes I can even carry on an entire phone conversation without having to stop and yell at anyone!! And then, before you know it, it's 12:00 and I have to pick them up and the peace and quiet fades to a lovely memory. but I have the promise of next week's preschool morning to sustain me!

Batman

We've got a bit of an embarrassing problem in my house, and it's getting to the point that I'm not sure we can take Hays out in public anymore. I'm not really sure how to explain this without coming off as the world's biggest racist, but I swear we're not. I'll start at the beginning....

A few months ago, Hays developed a real fondness for his older brother's action action figures, Batman in particular. And who can blame him- Batman's a cool guy, he's got the cape, the mask, the Batmobile. The problem is the way his fondness for Batman has translated into real life. You see, we live in a pretty non-diverse community, and Hays hasn't had a lot of exposure to those that are not of the caucasian persuasion. I didn't ponder this too much until we went to Sam's a month or so ago and Hays greeted the cashier, who was a black man, with, "Hi, Batman!" At first, I was confused. Batman? Why Batman? Then I realized, Batman has a black mask covering his face, and this guy is.... Oh, crap, this is not good.

I hoped (and prayed) that this was an isolated incident, but no, of course not. For the past several weeks, every time Hays sees a black man, he yells out a friendly, "Hi, Batman!" Most of the time I try to keep walking and hope they don't hear him, but sometimes that's not an option. Like when we go to Publix, and invariably see the one black guy working there (seriously, the lack of ethnic diversity out here is kind of embarrassing) who is now familiar with Hays' s "Batman" routine and seems less than amused by it. Especially now that one of the cashiers has caught on, and asks Hays every time we go in (2-3 times a week) "Where's Batman?" I want to yell, "For God's sake, don't encourage him!"

This weekend it got to the point that something absolutely had to be done. Mason was playing with two little boys from the neighborhood, one of whom was black, and Hays was following him around saying, "Hi, Batman! Batman, hi!!" And seriously, enough is enough, so the following conversation took place:
Me: Hays, that's Raymond.
Hays: No, Batman.
Me: No son, not Batman, Raymond.
Hays: Batman.
Me: Raymond. Say Raymond.
Hays: Waymond.
Me: (clapping) Yes!!! Raymond!! Say, "Hi, Raymond!"
Hays: Hi, Waymond!
So I'm hoping that will end our unfortunate Batman confusion. Of course, now he'll probably call every black guy we see Raymond. Sigh........ Maybe we'll just stay home until we're all a little more politically correct.

The Great Closet Battle of 2010....

I have to start by saying I love my husband. He is a good man and I love him very much, but Matt and I have very different ways of doing things. My mother has always said that I have two speeds- full out and asleep. Matt, on the other hand, has three speeds- slow, slower, and asleep. It drives me nuts, but his laid back also helps balance out my frantic crazy, so most of the time it works for us. This weekend, it didn't.

Weekends around here are for all the projects we can't manage during the week, and this one was no exception. And this weekend's project was a doozy. Matt was going to tackle (with his mom's help) our god-awful disaster of a utility closet while I ferried Mason to soccer practice and the boy scout store 45 minutes away. He was going to put up new shelving, toss the mountains of junk that had been collecting dust for months and organize what was left. When I left the house at 11 am, I had visions of coming home to a nicely organized storage space instead of a cluttered closet that resembled an episode of Hoarders (minus mummified cats and rotting food). What I actually came home to four hours later was my MIL home with the kids while Matt was at Home Depot getting the shelving to get started cleaning the closet! Bear in mind- this was 3:00 in the afternoon!!!! What had he been doing while I was gone? Napping!!

Oh honey, you don't even want to know the details of the fight that went down then. My poor mother in law got to witness the door-slamming, cussing, ball of fury that I was at that point. It was not pretty. But geez, seriously? Nothing got done in four hours?? Oh wait, I take that back, he did manage to break the baby gate that keeps the twins out of the closet of danger and doom, so he had made it utterly impossible to keep them out of the disaster area. So essentially, he hadn't accomplished anything, but had instead made the situation worse, and made it so that the only way this closet was getting cleaned was if I helped him do it after the twins went to bed- arrrrgggghhhhhh!!!!!

I was so tempted to sit my big ol' behind on the couch and let him deal with that bio hazard all on his own, but being the sweet, kind, wonderful wife that I am (ha!) I got in there and helped him muck out that disaster. Four giant trash bags and 3 1/2 hours later we had a beautifully organized closet that we can actually walk in without killing ourselves. And we can find stuff!!! It's glorious and amazing, and I've almost forgiven him for being lazy and worthless- almost.

Will

After an unfortunate run-in with a poke berry plant

Will. God, help us, that boy has had a heck of a week. Not that that's anything particularly out of the ordinary, since Will seems to have a magnetic attraction to trouble, but this week has taken the cake. It all started Monday afternoon soon after he woke up from a nap. I was in the kitchen cooking some chicken and Will was sitting on the sofa, quietly watching Sid the Science Kid- or so I thought. He was watching tv, however, he was also slowly jamming a long, skinny hair barrette into his ear and twisting it to the point that he lodged it in there. I had no idea this was going on until he ran to me crying with a barrette sticking out of his ear.

A trip to the doctor's office later, we had established that while he (luckily) hadn't punctured his eardrum, he had scraped up his ear canal beyond anything the doctor had ever seen. Awesome. His ear canal is still filled with dried blood that liquefies and drips out every time I put his antibiotics in, and he still tells me every day "ear hurts!" but I haven't seen him stick anything in there since. So hopefully he's learned a valuable- albeit painful- lesson about sticking things where they don't belong.

Tuesday was the day of Houdini-like escapes. Even though we've known of his escape artist tendencies for a while and had taken safety precautions to thwart his attempts, he has gotten smarter and more wily since, so Tuesday morning while I was in his room rooting through drawers in a desperate attempt to find two matching pairs of little socks, he was in the den pushing the armchair over to the door so he could stand on it, undo the chain latch, open the door, and run across the street to the neighbor's house. And since one great escape was apparently not enough, he was returned that afternoon by a different neighbor who discovered him playing in her yard after he escaped the confines of the backyard. After a trip to Home Depot, the house and yard are now locked down better than a state prison, and if he can get past our latest safety measures, I swear to God, I'm putting together a traveling show and taking his act on the road!

Wednesday, what did he do on Wednesday??? Something- I guarantee it, but it slips my mind at the moment. We'll come back to Wednesday.

Thursday he managed to injure himself on a Rubix Cube. Seriously, his finger was bleeding. How do you draw blood on a Rubix cube? It's plastic. It has no sharp corners! But Will managed. And keeps reminding me by coming up to me every hour or so, holding up his tiny index finger and saying, "Finger hurts! Kiss?" Luckily, kisses seem to be doing the trick.

And this morning, in the span of one hour after waking, he poured creamer all over the floor while trying to drink it, grabbed a glob of butter while I was making their toast and proceeded to butter his hands, feet and hair, and gagged himself with his toothbrush to the point that he puked on the floor.

And honestly, while the injuries were a bit extreme this week, all of the other stuff is just par for the course with Will. He is exhausting. He is constantly and actively looking for ways to get into trouble. It's really no wonder that Hays' latest sentence (because he hears it so often) is, "Oh man, Will, dammit!" And yet he brings me more joy and makes me laugh more in the course of a single day than you can imagine. His smile lights up a room, and he has the sweetest, most loving heart. He is pure sunshine. And I just have to keep reminding myself of that as I clean up yet another mess, or rescue him from yet another predicament, or shame-facedly retrieve him from a neighbor's house after yet another escape!