Can I have a do-over?

I HAVE HAD IT! I want to start this day over, because most of it blew chunks. I always know it will be a bad day if it starts out this way. We talked about Matthew staying in his room until 7:30am on the weekends. It's been the rule in the house for a while now, since our kids seem to love the 6 o'clock hour, even though they don't during the week. We've been getting lax on this rule, so we thoroughly went over it again at bedtime. So about 7, Miss Ellie begins crying, which she does lately when she wakes up. No more sweet sounds in the form of crib jabber. No, it's crying, and it's I'm-not-going-to-stop-crying crying. While dealing with her, Mister Matthew saunters out into the hallway. And this is where I knew the day was bound for disaster. I say, "It's not 7:30, go back in your room." "But I don't want to." "It is not 7:30 yet, go back in your room until 7:30." "But, Mommy, it's sunny out." "I don't care. It's not 7:30, go back to your room." Staredown ensues. Oh dear.

The whole day followed in this direction. Do you ever have one of those days where your sparkling 3-yr old is bound and determined to say no to everything, and argue about everything, and throw a fit twice at an outdoor carnival-type thing, etc, etc?!!! Have you ever had to climb into a Vikings helmet-shaped bouncy house to retrieve your sparkling 3-yr old who is the only one who will not come out when his time is up?

Have you ever been so fed up that you snapped at everybody around you, in full on Kate Gosselin style, and wanted to crawl into a hole and never be seen again, and felt like a huge jerk? That's about where I'm at. Only it didn't stop there. It continued after we came home and after naps, and this time I very nearly exploded! God help me! I can't handle these children today! I should say THIS child. Having little kids is the hardest thing in the whole world, I'm convinced.

We're tearing down our fence, perhaps I need to go give that fence hell some more. Oh, but wait, our neighbors are having a party, perhaps that won't be a nice sight for them... Hmmm. I know, how about laundry? That would be A-W-E-S-O-M-E.

What a negative nelly. I can't believe I'm admitting all this for the world to see!!! Seriously, all I want is a do-over for the day. Anyone have a rewind or retry button? I know! How about the Staples easy button?! OMG, please someone find me an easy button!!!!

I used to be calm. Honest, I did.

You know you have a girly girl, if.....

At age 1 and a 1/2, she pukes away from herself! If you don't like hearing about puke, stop reading now. About 4am last night, I was up washing sheets and cleaning up puke. And it didn't even bother me much (beyond the gag factor). Incidentally, that's also how you know you've been a mom a while. When getting up to change pukey sheets doesn't really bother you that much anymore. ANYWAYS, so I go in Ellie's room, and find a puke puddle in her crib, and her, sitting away from the puddle with hardly even a mess on her. She cried, and I truly think it is only because she was grossed out by the mess. Man, this girl amazes me! As soon as I had her out of her clothes and a new shirt on - AT 4AM - she grinned and started chattering. This girly girl pukes away from herself and only cries about some getting on her hands? And then smiles and is totally happy again? What the heck? With Matthew at that age, it would have required a bath and extensive carpet cleaning and lots of comforting!

Don't get me wrong, the last thing I like to deal with is puke clean-up, but maybe with my girly girl it won't be so bad. I'll cross my fingers now.

By the way, I don't know if Ellie is sick or not. She seems fine today. She's probably just waiting for the full-blown flu since this is a 3-day weekend. And what better way to spend it than with the flu? :)

Hooray for Heat!

I think they're a little happy about heat. Yesterday hit the high 90s for the first time in ages! Can you tell they were excited? I came home to these smiley faces, shorts, pigtails, and bare legs from Ellie in only a onesie. Sleeping wasn't so great, I have to admit, so today the AC is on! I love my smiley kids!!!

My dream, realized

I am very much not fond of the bushes in front of our house. Yuck! I've been saying since we moved in a few years ago, that I couldn't wait to chop the bushes down. Let me explain. We've got 3 equally hideous structures resembling foliage front and center of our house, each of them completely different than the other, and each beyond unruly. You know the kind of evergreen that is REALLY prickly and has strange, little grayish-green-what-look-like-berries that under normal circumstances isn't that bad? Well, when said evergreen takes up 72 sf, it becomes less than attractive. This particular beauty you see here, is a different type of evergreen that grows upward, but gone untrimmed, becomes too heavy to stand upright and is tied together with twine. In between the coniferous beauties, lies a deciduous-nothing-special bush, that grows abundantly each year, despite being trimmed to nothingness each year, and looks more like mini trees with weeds coming out of the branches. Again I say YUCK! The funny part is, I've been dreaming of chopping these things up (well, removing them actually, but let's take it one step at a time) for so long now, and apparently discussing it so much, that the hubs bought me a hedge trimmer for Christmas. While that might horrify your average reader, I was delighted!

Saturday I treated myself to realizing a dream. However, it was much harder than one might think. It looks nowhere near good yet, but at least now it somewhat looks like a work in progress. I had to abandon my work partway through the 72-square footer, before my arms fell off! That's okay, though, it felt good to actually be able to do some yard work for a change. This is the year I have a date with landscaping.... I think.... More dreams.

That's hot!

16 Going on 16

At 16 months, Ellie is mastering the art of walking in heels...

That's my girlie girl. Dainty resides in our family at last!

Future athlete?

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This is going to be a great summer!