Daily life....

Life is interesting to say the least around here!  I am learning that boys... boys are wild, amusing, bewildering, creatures; free spirited, muddy, silly, and slightly insane.  Boys wll be boys, and several times thoughout the day they make me want to pull my hair out, but many more times I just want to wrap my arms around them and squeeze them tight and laugh over their crazy mischievious ways.  Sometimes all I can do is laugh... like this morning when I awoke to find Caillou hovering over me with a bag of chocolate chips and a corn on the cob skewer, he then pointed behind him, with a devilish grin... making me aware that he had tied my ankle to Ollie's crib with my bathrobe tie, saying " stay there mommy, don't get up until dinner, you don't take these away from me" shaking his chocolate chips over my head.   There are days in which I am exasperated to no end... like Monday when we were in the emergency room.  Poor Jasper had to have a gash under his eye glued shut, after Caillou threw a toy train at him.  There are moments when I feel like I must be out of my mind... like today when I decided to go to our town's quilt show, with my 3 boys, and nearly every woman there said " you are very brave" or "my... don't you have your hands full"  I smiled, I nodded, making my way through the crowd, thinking," Ladies you really don't know the half of it."  I think they learned the other half, when an unsuspecting quilter shrieked "SHAME ON YOU", after Caillou mischieviously,without any warning, poked a straight pin into her thigh.  Life is never boring... it is interesting, exasperating, amusing... but never boring... or QUIET.  This week Caillou began yoga... yes yes, I can hear you all chuckling wondering WHY? and WHAT is she THINKING?  And no.... Caillou was not calm, he put the magic yoga rock in his mouth, Jasper carried off the Buddha, Caillou spends half of class either climbing on top of his teacher or making odd noises and throwing yoga mats... but oh what a wonderful teacher she has!  A very patient, calming, enthuisiastic teacher, determined to help my wild child enjoy yoga!  Having a child with ADHD is frustrating to say the least, but I will tell you, as crazy as this boy makes me, he is truly the most enchanting and delightful child you could ever happen to meet.  Jasper is equally endearing with his funny antics and his ever so gentle and loving ways towards baby Ollie.  Jasper is such a great big brother!!!!  Oh Jasper, he is such a snuggle bug and such a sweetie pie.  And funny too, I love how he crinkles up his little nose at me, and yells  COW when he is mad.  And Ollie, oh Ollie.  Getting bigger every day.  Five months old now! Where is the time going!!!???!!  I sewed him a sling this week from some lovely fabric from my bloggy friend Gail.  Ollie loves his new sling and being able to be snuggled right up against me, even if most of the day he is bobbing up and down as I chase after his wild big brothers. This week has been a busy week... we moved dirt, made mud pits, and replanted my strawberries in elevated dirt rows.  We shopped at natural food stores, began making magic " calming " tonics with fish oil, vitamin d-3, lemon balm and chamomille.  We learned that Jello can be oh so wonderful to a two year old with a boo-boo.  And that a day at the beach with friends is the perfect place to go when you feel like pulling out your hair.  We learned that muddy laundry begins to smell rather quickly, and that planting seeds in paper cups of potting soil on the dining room table is maybe not such a great idea.  I have learned that a soon to be 4 year old boy just will not give up about wearing fairy wings for Halloween... peter pan with fairy wings... he will only be little once!  We have discovered that litte boys who are good and go to bed when they are told... awake to find cookies, and butterflies and pixie dust in their door ways, that the fairies delivered in the wee hours of the morning.  We have done a lot this week and learned a lot to.  We have gone through lots of frustrations and upsets, but had lots of giggles and merrymaking as well.  I have learned when I feel like "I just can't do this anymore" or that I am about to go crazy... I can do this, I want to do this, I love doing this, and I think I kind of like this  crazy, crazy life we live!

I swear I'm not dead....

Okay for any of you who still keep an eye on this abandoned ghost townish of a blog, I am still alive.  I don't know what it is, but I just can't seem to get into a blogging groove.  I am constantly tired, from the time I get up in the morning till the time I go to bed.  I think a big part of my tiredness comes from the anti-depressants that I am on.  YES, I take crazy pills... I am sure there are quite a few of us out there!!  Honestly I really don't know if they are doing what they are supposed to do, I seem to feel blue while I am on them and blue when I am not.  I have tried several different prescriptions through out the years, and some seem to work for a while and then some seem to not work at all.  It is so hard to tell what is working and what is not, especially when the pills list irritablility, anxiety, and depresssion as some of the side effects!  Anywhoo, they make me tired.  I could also be tired because I fear I may be in a sugar coma.... my children would be astonished to see the amount of ice cream and homemade cookies mama cosumes while they are quietly sleeping in their beds.  One evening a few weeks ago I made 19 pounds, yes 19 pounds of my homemade cookie dough... rolled it up into balls froze them in oodles of ziploc bags, and now whenever I want cookies, which is rather often, I just go to my freezer, and in about 20 minutes I have a rather speedy and efficient cookie fix!  I may also have neglected this blog a bit because I have become addicted to watching Desperate Housewives, yes I know, trashy, but I do not have cable, and at the end of the day, I just want to sit down and relax.  And all the past seasons of desperate housewives can be watched online.  I would much rather sit down and watch my HBO series Big Love ( shhhh! yes i know that I am a Mormon, and there is a bit of irony in me watching this show, but lets just say it is a darn good show!) but renting this show at blockbuster is too pricey and just the thought alone of taking my dear, busy children into blockbuster video makes me feel a bit nauseous and stressed.  Wow! haven't I gone off into a tangent!  So, long story short, I have not blogged because as soon as my children go to bed, I take my crazy pills, consume large quanitites of chocolate ice cream, bake me some cookies, and watch trashy t.v. till the wee hours of the morning.  Okay..... I also may be a bit tired because Caillou has been diagnosed with ADHD and ODD, I have chosen at this point in time not to go the route of medication.  Caillou is an incredibly smart, creative, and curious child, he is also incredibly busy busy busy!!!  Everday is a marathon keeping up with him, and of course little brother who wants to be just as silly as big brother.  I could go into detail.... in the past month since I have blogged, my children ran their tricycle into the ice cream man, Jasper tried to snuggle him to death, while Caillou ran off with the push cart of ice cream handing out far too many free ice creams to count. WHERE WAS HIS MOTHER???? I was running as fast as I could across the park, half topless...with poor Ollie trying his very best to continue nursing away at his afternoon snack.  We had an incident with Caillou running away in Target from Grandma, Caillou wants to constantly be with mommy, which I do love, I love having a child that adores me so much and hates to be away from me, but it does make it difficult when I can't even go to the potty whithout him running away.  There was also an incident at Arco with a GARDA armoured truck, oh Caillou, my dear busy boy. We had a lovely day in Julian celebrating the first day of fall, we may have made a mistake visiting a pioneer cemetery ( Miss. Virginia Hamilton, I do hope we put your grave marker back with the right Hamilton family, but if perhaps we misplaced your marker, maybe a change of scenery after 150 years in the same spot will do you good.) Life is busy, and maybe I am a glutten for punishment taking my children out in public when so many would nod their heads in unanimous agreement that my children are SOCIALLY UNACCEPTABLE, but as insane as my boys do make me, and as slightly off beat and busy as they may be, BOYS WILL BE BOYS, they will only be little once, and I refuse to waste their childhood hiding them away, simply because they are very active and not entirely well behaved.  I can say this much, as horrendously horrid as they may be at time, you will never NOT hear them say please, thank you, may I please, or offer a prayer for their food unprompted.  Naughty little boys, but they do have an angelic side to them!  Back to Caillou and his ADHD, I took him in for testing to a preschool program designed to help children with ADHD, to help them better adjust socially and to help with learning directional and listening skills.  This was a tough step for me to make, because I truly want to homeschool my boys in a more creative, less conventional environment ( that being said... in my schooling attempts, it seems that while mommy is giving instructions for cutting out shapes, the children are busy glueing and glittering eachother to the walls.) Any whoo, we are still in the application process, but this past monday we went in for testing.  Caillou was asked a series of 500 preschool appropriate questions from work books and out of those 500, he answered 493 correctly.  So no longer do I have just a naughty little boy, but I have a GENIUS OF A NAUGHTY LITTLE BOY! This is something that I have always known about my Caillou, he has always been an exceptionally bright child, some may have difficulties seeing this, past his wildly busy and entertainingly crazy hyper antics, but he is smart, incredibly smart, brilliantly smart.  AND OH SO EXHASUTING TO HIS MOMMY!  I may also be a bit tired because I have been single mommying it.  My husband has a new job, he has returned to truck driving, and has been gone for the past five weeks.  This is a GOOD thing, and we are all quite proud of him and his hard work in this new job.  So it will be a way of life for us, gone for weeks at a time and home a few days then back on the road.  Oh and if there are any CRAZY PEOPLES out there who are quitely blog stalking me, and think AH HAH! She is home alone, we can finally come do her in and dig a hole in her back yard and bury her in it.  THINK AGAIN!  I actually do quite well when on my own, I would have to say I do enjoy wearing both the pants and the apron in my house!  Well, now that I have had my crazy little rant for the day, okay for the month, it has been that long since I have been away.  I suppose I should share some pictures off all our adventures...EXCUSES AS TO WHY i HAVE BEEN TOo TiRED TO bLOG??

 

ALLRIGHTY THEN! So that is what we have been up to!  Busy busy days for me and my lovely little boys.  I have been secretly planning a new blog.... ssshh, with as slow as I am on this one, it may take a while before the new one is finished.  But the new one is in the works, and will share my day to day zanies with my boys as well as all the homemade things in our little world.  I will be excited to share this with you all, "homemade" is a big big part of our daily life ( that is when we are not in McDonalds drive thru....) well I must bid you all farewell for now, my timer is ringing.... that means my cookies are ready!