They Really Ought to Give Me a TV Show

This is what Mason's room used to look like. (well, with a red headboard and black furniture, but this was the wall.) I painted it when he was four, and crazy about super heroes. But now that he's a worldly gent of seven and a half, he's outgrown Gotham. As sad as I was to paint over the cityscape mural. I was excited to have a new project.

He wanted to go full-on Star Wars; printed comforter, curtains- the works, but I convinced him to go a bit more sophisticated in his choice of bedding. After all, you might not want a Star Wars comforter when you're 12. But I was fine with him going whole hog with the accessories. Especially because it gave me a good excuse to fire up my crafty mojo. 

 I think the gray walls and simple black and gray bedding will grow with him.

And when he's tired of Star Wars, we can change it up easily.

We framed a couple of Star Wars posters that we bought, but I painted everything else on canvases. (They were on sale at Michaels, so I spent a grand $20 on supplies to make 4 pictures. Can't beat that!) All I can say is, thank god for Google Images, and crafty nerds creating Star Wars pumpkin carving patterns. I can't draw a stick figure, but I can cut with an exacto knife and trace with the best of them!! I could save my self a whole lot of time and tedious tasks if I could just learn how to draw! 

                Even Darth Vader has to walk his dog..

Vader in all his evil glory, and some silhouettes. I looove silhouettes.

I also used pumpkin patterns to turn a $5 lampshade and a $6 pillow into Darth Maul and Storm Trooper awsomeness.

What Star Wars room would be comlpete

without a remote controlled lightsaber light?

 I decided to start this project Friday morning. I did not have a single thing, including paint, until 4:00 Friday afternoon. (That required slogging with all three boys to Target and Walmart in a trip so heinous that I can't even bear to relive it in blogland. I spent Saturday morning buying paint, bedding and art supplies, so I didn't actually start painting his room until 3:00 Saturday afternoon. So y'all had all better be super-impressed when I tell you that I had everything done- walls and trim painted, all art and accessories made, everything in the room, by 7:00 Sunday evening. Tone down your applause a little- I didn't get the framed pictures hung until Tuesday. But only because I didn't have frames, then Hays got strep and I couldn't make it to the store until Tuesday evening. But other than pictures, I had the entire room done in less than 48 hours, and it cost under $300!!

I mean , seriously, doesn't that deserve a tv show? At least an hour-long special? The people on Trading Spaces got $!000 dollars, two days and an entire crew to redo a room! I did it in a day and a half, on less than half the money, BY MYSELF, and I had to stop multiple times to feed/ clothe/referee three children. I'd watch that show. HGTV needs to call me.

Sleep Is for the Weak, Right?

Pardon me if this post is only semi-coherent. My insomnia is becoming insurmountable, and I'm so tired that semi-coherent feels like it might be a stretch. I am honestly starting to wonder if I will ever get a non-medicated night's sleep again.

For the last 3-4 weeks, I have fallen into this horrible sleepless cycle. In the past, if I had trouble falling asleep, I could usually rely on Benadryl or melatonin to do the trick. It didn't always work, but most of the time it did. And then, all of a sudden, it didn't. I found myself lying awake night after night, and no combination (or amount) of my old sleep-inducing friends seemed to help. It felt like no matter how tired I was, my brain just wouldn't let me sleep. I'd start to drift, then, BAM! Wide awake.

There I am, lying there, mind spinning, and the only thing I can focus on is Matt's breathing. His loud, constant, INCREDIBLY ANNOYING breathing that invariably turns into snoring. And that is literally all I can hear. Even when it's fairly quiet, it seems so loud that I wonder how the children can possibly sleep through it. So then I start kicking him, or elbowing him, or hissing "Would you please, please SHUT THE F**K UP!!"  (sorry, but being wide awake at 2 am makes me mean.) He finally got sick of it to the point that he moved to the couch- and I'd be fast asleep within five minutes. And once that happened several nights in a row, I got convinced that I could not fall asleep with him breathing beside me. Thus began the mind games that had me starting to worry about sleep at approximately 8 in the morning. And when you've psyched yourself out about it all day, there's no way you're going to sleep at night.  We started taking turns moving to the couch once I'd given up all hope of ever falling asleep beside him. And this sort of worked, but seriously, who wants to sleep every other night on the couch? It was time to bring out the big guns- a prescription for Ambien.

Oh Ambien, glorious Ambien. It works like a charm. Pop one of those babies, and 20 minutes later, I am gone. It is wonderful and I love it so much. Problem solved, right? Nope, not right at all. See, Ambien becomes less effective the more you take it. And if it stops working, I may as well give up on sleep for good. So I can't take it every night, lest it lose its magic powers. And the nights I don't take it are, if possible, even more miserable than before. Last night was one of them. Of course I couldn't fall asleep. I moved to the couch and spent an hour and a half trying to drift into dreamland. No dice- back to bed. I kicked and  hissed at Matt for an hour before kicking him out to the couch. (He went, but not without a few choice words. Can't say that I blame him.) And even once I had the whole bed to myself, and no one was breathing but me, it still took a while to fall into a restless, fitful sleep from which I woke after less than 2 1/2 hours.

So here I am, tiredly blogging in run-on sentences, already wondering how I'll sleep tonight. I'm hoping that sheer exhaustion will put me out without pharmaceutical help. But if not, I'll gladly drug myself into oblivion, because I can only go on like this for so long!

More Than I Can Bear

Well, I just finished putting my three year olds to bed for the last time, and I'm about five seconds away from losing it. I'm talking ugly cry here, folks. My babies will be four years old tomorrow, and I don't think that I can stand it. I mean, seriously, four years old? That's not even a little bit of a baby anymore. That's frighteningly close to big kid territory. And I am NOT ready to not have babies anymore. Yeah, sometimes they make me so crazy that I want to tear my hair out, but these are my sweet, snuggly babies. They give leg-hugs, and climb into my lap for a cuddle, and giggle when I kiss them 6 million times in a row, and every day that they get older puts me one day closer to the time that those are nothing but sweet memories. And I simply cannot bear it.

And as if I wasn't already holding on by a thread, tonight at storytime, Will brought me a book that one of his nurses made for him when he was at Egleston. It has pictures of him as a tiny baby, and notes from all of us in it. I seriously think I deserve a medal for not breaking down right then. I could barely read past the lump in my throat. Don't get me wrong- I am sooooooo very glad to be past those days. I had to hug Will so tightly he could hardly breathe, just because I was so heart-crushingly grateful that he was by my side, ready to be bear-hugged. But oh man, do I miss those baby days. They were hectic, chaotic and tough. And sometimes I can only remember them by reading my old blog posts. But I don't know that I've ever seen more cuteness squeezed into a day.

And they still manage to squeeze in an awful lot of cuteness (amidst the fighting and yelling). But I'm afraid it's slipping away. I know they'll always be cute and sweet, but they won't always be little-kid cute. And I loooove little-kid cute. The past few days, as this birthday approaches, I've just wanted to stop the clock. Freeze my family just as it is right now. We're happy and blessed, I have all three of my babies in hugging reach, and they'll all still let me hug and kiss them, everyone we love is healthy and happy. I just want it to stay that way. Is there a pause button? Please? 

While I'm crying, you can enjoy these pictures from their birthday party (click on it to make it full-size). We had it at a bouncy place with a few friends from school and our big, wonderful family. They had a ball and said it was the best birthday ever!

I can't let the twins'  birthday overshadow Mason's awesome accomplishment- he won second place in show at the Pinewood Derby!!! I was so incredibly proud of him (especially because his car came in last every heat last year!) But this year he did well in his heats, and rocked it with his cool design. And he had his wonderful Grandaddy by his side, helping him with his car, and helping setup and run the derby. How lucky we are!!

Facebook, I Love You, but I'm Starting to Hate you.

I read this article today http://gawker.com/5886003/where-did-that-what-people-think-i-do-meme-come-from-and-how-can-it-be-stopped, and it got me thinking. See, I love Facebook. As a stay at home mom who often doesn't venture further than the grocery store for days on end, it is a welcome lifeline to the outside world. It also allows me to keep up with friends from every era of my life, some that I haven't seen in decades. And sure, a lot of those status updates are completely pointless, but as a bit of a voyeur, I love that peek into the lives of others. Go on, tell me what you had for dinner- I'm game. But my love for the truly human parts of Facebook can only be rivaled by my hatred of the recent tidal wave of impersonal, recycled, generic crap cluttering up my news feed.

I despise the constant reposting of cutesy pictures of mischievous kittens, or life-affirming quotes. An occasional share is fine if it's truly witty or original- I've shared a few of them myself. But 99% of them are completely tired and pointless. And please stop with the accusatory and judgmental, "repost this status unless your to cool to care about ______." Ummm, no, refusing to repost your badly written, grammatically incorrect status does not mean that I don't love God or care about children with cancer, I just don't like to be goaded into reposting spam. And quite frankly, if Jesus wants to visit me, I don't think He'll change His mind if he checks my profile and sees that I didn't repost the picture of Him standing in front of a door on the world's tackiest doormat.

Don't even get me started on the asinine "games" played in the name of cancer awareness. I'm lucky enough to have never lost a family member to cancer. But I have lost friends that I love and respect. And I refuse to trivialize people losing their mothers, wives, and sisters by participating in anything that uses sexual innuendo or trickery in the name of cancer awareness. If you want to try to trick your friends and family into thinking that you're pregnant, or moving out of the country, go ahead, but don't attempt to legitimize it by calling it cancer research, and don't ask me to play along.

That being said, I'm not trying to offend you if you're one of those compulsive re-posters. I still love you, and I still truly want to hear about the things going on in your life. But if your Facebook contributions dwindle to nothing but a puddle of "share" vomit, I'm probably going to hide you. So, come on, folks, help me out here. Restore Facebook to it's former pointless but personal glory! What did you have for lunch?

Book Worms

Anyone with little kids knows that when they get hooked on a book, you'd better be prepared to read it a thousand times or more. The twins' favorites cycle in and out, and the current must-read is usually phased out within a matter of days. But the two current faves seem to have some staying power.

For the last week or so, they have demanded several-times-daily readings of two particular books. The first is The Devil You Know, by Nathan Hale. The second is Chicken Butt, by Erica S. Perl. I have to admit, as far as kid books go, these are pretty darn great, especially The Devil You Know. Both are funny and irreverent- two qualities I prize in literature of any kind. They're clever, and Hale's story is remarkably sophisticated for a child's book. But despite all those good qualities, after approximately 200 readings this week, I'm starting to get a little tired of them. So tired, in fact, that my brain groans when they want to read "the little devil." At this point they can both recite them almost verbatim, and they start asking for them about five minutes after they wake up.

And I know that repetition is good for kids, and that reading their favorites over and over helps foster a love of books. But for the love of pete, can we get a little variety in here???? I realize that it could be worse- this beats the hell out of the time that they were hooked on Everybody Poops- but I wouldn't mind switching it up a bit. But I've learned by now that no matter how much I love a book, once it becomes a twin favorite, it's all over. They've already ruined The Giving Tree and Love You Forever to the point that I don't think I'll ever recover my former fondness for them.

But there's one thought that gives me comfort through every repetitious reading. Oddly enough, both The Devil You Know and Chicken Butt were gifts from my sister (who shares my love of irreverent humor). So I'll pass these on to Sawyer in a year or two. And then it will be her turn to hear "Hey Mommy, guess what? CHICKEN BUTT!!!" from morning till night. Bwahaha!

If you'd like to check out these literary gems for your own rugrats, here are some links:
http://www.amazon.com/Devil-You-Know-Nathan-Hale/dp/0802789811

http://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Butt-Erica-S-Perl/dp/B0051BNX16/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329438305&sr=1-1

And I highly recommend last week's favorite, I Want My Hat Back
http://www.amazon.com/I-Want-My-Hat-Back/dp/0763655988/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329438359&sr=1-1

They're all guaranteed to be funny for both kids and parents for the first 50 readings. And really, what more can you ask for?

Pinterest, What Have You Done to Me???

Last year, I wrote this whole post about how I'm totally not into Valentine's Day. It's a cheap, commercialized holiday designed to force people to buy candy, flowers, and tacky stuffed animals. (Here's the link if you want to revisit my rant http://theamazingtwinadventure.blogspot.com/2011/02/valentines-insanity.html) I refused to but into the madness, and was quite proud of myself for doing so. That was last year. That was before I discovered Pinterest.

Pinterest, for those of you that have not been sucked into the time-wasting vortex, is a social network where you can "pin" pictures of things you like, recipes, and crafts, and people can follow you, see the things you're pinning, and "re-pin" the things they like. There are thousands of people on Pinterest, so you can spin endless hours pinning pretty things or things you'd like to make. Do a search for "valentine's Day" and you will bring up hundreds of ideas for decorations, treats, and more crafty things than you can imagine. This is what broke my anti-Valentine's resolve. There was just too much cute stuff to resist, so before I knew what hit me, I was making a Valentine's wreath for the front door, and filling the window boxes with glittery red and pink hearts. 

But it didn't stop there. I had to make cupcakes for Mason's class party. Now, I've always enjoyed going all out on cupcake decorations, but this year I went so far as to make my own glittery heart-shaped candies to top the cupcakes. Then evil temptress, Pinterest, taunted me with a recipe for homemade oatmeal cream pies. Well, we need teacher gifts, right? Bam! Ribbon- bedecked treat bags full of oatmeal cream pies. Was that the end of the baking madness? Of course not!! How could I resist trying to make heart-shaped cinnamon rolls for Valentines breakfast. (Those, by the way, were a big, blobby failure, so I didn't snap any pictures!)

But honestly, those things were small potatoes compared to the Valentines. Oh, the Valentines..... I've always just bought a box of cards, and maybe if I was feeling really generous, went for the kind with candy, or pencils, or tattoos. But like I said, that was before Pinterest. After I gazed upon all of the magnificently adorable ideas, I was powerless to stop myself. I HAD to make these. They were just too freakin' cute. So I spent an hour cutting out foam lips and mustaches to put on blowpops for Mason's class, and another hour painstakingly crafting superhero costumes for Tootsie Roll Pops for the twins. Yup, I spent two whole hours making Valentines when I could have spent 10 minutes writing the twins' names on their cards and making Mason do his own. But seriously- look at how cute these are!!!! And the boys really did love them, so I thought it was (almost) worth the effort.

So yes, I admit it, I kind of lost my mind this Valentine's Day. Though I did stick to my guns when it came to gifts for the kids. They each got a $5 toy and a box of chocolate. So I haven't totally caved. But consider this fair warning- if you join Pinterest, you may very well lose your mind. Now I have to go buy the supplies to make a St. Patrick's day wreath that I pinned. Ummmm, yeah, I might need an intervention!

Ummm, That's Not the Kind of Special I Had In Mind

Well, there's been a good bit of stuff going on in the month since I've posted. It's one of those things that I had to get my head around and get sorted out before I could write about it.

It all started at the end of January when we had Will evaluated by a psychologist. Not because we thought there was anything wrong with him, it's just one of those you have to do when your child is prescribed Ritalin. I was kind of dreading it. What if she thought I was some crappy mother who just wanted to medicate her child into submission because I was too lazy to deal with him? Or worse, what if she thought he didn't actually need Ritalin and somehow got his prescription revoked? Or what if she thought he needed Ritalin, but only because he was being raised by crappy parents??? I would like to say I was worried about nothing, but it turns out, I was just worried about the wrong things.

Will's problem isn't crappy parenting (or if it is, her report didn't mention it). His problem is that he has speech delays, ADHD, and visual/motor delays. Speech and behavior, I knew about, visual/motor came as a surprise. I didn't really even know what that means. Turns out, if your kid can't hold a pencil properly, can't trace shapes or draw faces, and can't put together a puzzle, they're "low-average to boderline" on their visual/motor skills. Borderline what? What line are we bordering here? Nevermind, I don't want to know. We'll just say he's low-average. So, if your child is low-average (screw you, borderline) the therapist will recommend that he may be a candidate for special needs preschool.

And if you're like me, you will first get incredibly angry. "Special needs?? What the hell is she talking about, special needs? She is obviously stupid and incompetent. She was wearing black acid-wash jeans for christsake!!" Then you look up the special needs preschool program in your school district, just to prove she has no clue what she's talking about. Then the bile starts to rise in your throat when you realize that the description of the kids that may qualify perfectly matches your child. Then you cry. A lot. Then you wipe the tears and snot away, square your shoulders, and start sending facebook messages to everyone you know that can help you figure out where to start.

So that's where we are now. I've submitted all the paper work to have the boys evaluated for the special needs preschool. Hays doesn't have the speech delay that Will does, but he's right there with him on visual/motor and behavior. He isn't ADHD, but he doesn't listen and follow directions like he needs to. The school speech therapist that's been working with them for a couple of months doesn't think they'll qualify for the full preschool program, but she thinks they may qualify for some afternoon therapy sessions. If they do, they'll attend a private preschool program 4 mornings a week, then get a couple of therapy sessions a week. I've gone from praying that they won't qualify to praying that they do. I want them to get all the help they need so that they'll be ready for kindergarten. I don't want school to be a struggle for them, but they've got a ways to go before they'll truly be ready for kindergarten.
And I'm getting past the "special needs" label. It's hard. Nobody wants their kid to have problems. It's hard to face a developmental delay. It feels like a huge failure on my part, like I let them down by not doing something I should have. But I have to let that go, because ultimately, it's not about me. It's about getting them what they need. And they need a little more than other kids. They had a harder start than most kids, and I have to keep that in mind. The earlier a child was born, and the more they went through after birth, the longer it will take for them to catch up. Instead of worrying about labels, or worrying about what other kids can do, I have to focus on Will and Hays. We are blessed by the fact that we know a lot of people who can help us figure out what they need and can help us get it for them. We are not alone in this, and that is incredibly reassuring.