Inner Diva Exposed

Most mornings I am good and making sure my kids are staying on task with getting ready for school. This morning I was distracted by the neediness of my kids and lost track of Molly. The time came for her to leave (7:30 and she walks 1/2 block-this is crazy early) I ran to find out where she was. I found her in the bathroom in panic mode because she had not brushed her teeth or done her hair. When I asked what happened she started to cry saying "It's all my fault, I was singing in front of the mirror." It has made me smile all day.

Hooray for handy friends!

I mentioned my plumbing perils to some friends over pizza after our practice for the primary program on Friday. Devin Hunsaker called Reed while I had the girls at HSM3 (a fun Saturday diversion) and said he would come and take a look. He figured out the problem. Turns out we just needed a new wax seal on the toilet. When the tile was installed in the bathroom before we bought the house the toilet had been installed incorrectly, so it has been leaking for a really long time. The cost $7. This was a sharp difference from what I was anticipating. There is a lot of damage to sheet rock and potentially the lumber that has been soaked, but we are drying it and will see were we stand once it is dry. After Devin left Reed spent a fair amount of time reveling in Devin's handiness and his knowledge of all things construction related.

I had to give Tanner a bath tonight because he was stinky (two trips to the park today and lots of running around outside). Heidi got in to clean her feet and the face paint on her cheek . I don't mind the face paint. The disconcerting part is that she went over to the Dostals and had it done and I didn't realize she was gone until she shows up with a butterfly on her cheek. As she was getting in she told me "I'm not a real Gymnast", but what I heard was "I'm not a real Genius". I told her that maybe she could be a real genius when she grows up and she just looked and me really funny and then corrected me.

Ouch!

While pulling out Halloween decorations yesterday I noticed water on the floor under the workbench in the garage. A little investigation and I found something leaking copious amounts of water on and around our downstairs HVAC unit. I knew instantly that this was going to be expensive. The repair people were just here-they think there is a supply line leak and they can get to it by pulling out the HVAC unit (their other option is to cut random holes in my walls upstairs-fun). So fun to be a homeowner. And yes, it is going to be expensive.

Sleep deprivation

One of the things I like about blogging is the ability to make comments on every day little events and drama that happen in your life without feeling the need to write an epic. The last two weeks have been filled with vacation, work and recovery from both. Reed is experiencing the "quarter close" and some related deadlines (which is meaningless to anyone unless they have some corporate/finance background) in the wake of vacation and me working. The big side effect of all this fun is lack of sleep. Turns out when you are not sleeping you don't really notice the cleaver little things your kids say and do. Your exhaustion translates into lack of patience and then everything your kids say and do sounds like whining and you get a lot of drama (you probably get drama anyway). Of course as I am typing this Heidi has spilled milk and Tanner has dumped out a container of raisins and I got a decent nights sleep last night so all this stuff happens anyway. When you are tired you just don't write it down.

what your kids do while you are filling up...

We made it all the way from Albuquerque to Phoenix on one tank of gas (details of trip to come later.) This, of course meant that my first stop today was for gas. My kids found the camera in my purse, and because I now can, I am going to share with you what they were doing.

Firetrucks, and more poop

Today was the firetruck parade in Glendale, so we decided to shirk all other duties this Saturday, and go to the parade. We had beautiful weather-overcast in the mid 80's. Highlights include-parking by a candy factory and picking up some treats for the parade, sitting by a Mexican restraunt and getting more treats for the parade, watching Tanner reach for a group of golden retrievers to pet them while his sisters cowered in their chairs and the owners tried to pull the dogs away, lots of loud sirens that Tanner mimicked. While we are not overly patriotic people, I do believe in showing respect to the flag and standing up when the color guard passes. So we all stood up and covered our hearts and then started anticipating the beginning of the parade. The problem we had was that every group of military recruits, every VFW group, every boy scout troup had their own color guard. Do you stand up for every one? I was grateful for the one cub scout troop that only had their troop flag, so I didn't have to worry about it.

This afternoon we were busy making and cleaning up messes. While I worked on a costume for Zoe, Molly was working on something for Heidi. I should have been more aware of what was going on, I quickly became aware when Molly started crying because she had accidentally cut through Zoe's sheets. We put away the scissors, mended the hole and then headed to the back yard to clean up the mess that was left this morning. Molly had tried to clear the dishes, but had lost her grip and everything had tumbled to the ground. We had to do some sweeping and hosing to clean up the mess. Molly did not have a chance to squirt the hose (mostly because she was inside until she saw the project was getting fun). I devised another get wet project-Molly and Zoe could scrub off the outside table and then squirt it down. They very quickly began to fight over who got to clean off the crayon (the non crayon mess was essentially bird poop.) Zoe ended up storming off when Molly wouldn't concede her ground, and Molly ended up with the responsibility for the whole project. After hearing her fake sobs for a few minutes I went outside. She got more mad for me being there, so I finally gave her a talk. I assured her that life was full of poop. This got her attention. I told her I would love to guarantee that she would never have to deal with it, but for every fun task there are a lot more poopy ones. As I was talking I was wiping down bird poop. She started to cry again and got mad when I was behind her chair. She asked haughtily what I was doing. When I told her I was wiping the poop off the back of the chair so that she wouldn't get it in her hair when she slumped in the chair as part of her tantrum she immediatly stopped crying. While I had been speaking to her metaphorically, I don't think she realized until that moment there was real poop in the story. That ended the rant. The table got cleaned off, the girls played in the hose and pool and all was well until our next crisis (Trip to Gilbert to help a patient who banged a tooth-other docs are in priesthood session and not available.)

Side note: Reed and I went out for dinner last night. Tanner threw up for the sitter.

Oh Poop!

I love it when my kids want to help. Tanner wanted to help this morning while I was eating my breakfast (whole wheat toast with homemade apple butter-I was really enjoying it, until...) Heidi came up to me and announced that Tanner was swirling the toilet brush in the toilet and there was poop in it. Arghh. Apparently one of my kids did not thouroughly flush (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt), and Tanner wanted to help clean up the mess. What a mess it was. It could have been worse. I banned him to the stairs for a time out while I cleaned up and sprayed everything down and then wiped it again (spray wipe spray for those of you with an infection control background). I then went and talked with Tanner about the toilet not being a toy and how we don't play with poop. But he is two so did it sink in?
So we went on a walk to the park and Heidi was being careful not to run over dog poop on her bike. She pointed out one particularly impressive chunk to Tanner as a precaution. He was lagging behind and when I turned around shortly after to encourage him to keep up he was holding the previously mentioned dried piece of poop and examining it.
Ick.

bubble bath

Tanner has not been feeling well today. He was up around 3am and never really went back to sleep. This of course is a lot of fun for mom. We got everyone off to school and he went down for a nap around 10am. I am unaccustomed to such quiet in the middle of the day. I was able to finish Tanner's Halloween costume. I had to wake Tanner up to pick up Heidi from preschool, and then when we got there Heidi ended up going home with someone else for a play date. When we got home I offered to give Tanner a bath to help him feel better. His response "Can I have princess bubble bath?" Do they make superman bubble bath?

Zoe's Poem

I found this with Zoe's papers and thought I ought to share it

all I am

I am a lirner

I am a first grader

I am a friend

I am a nabor