The End of Morning Clothing Arguments

When the kids leave for school each morning, they must have clothes on. On this point, the Big Guy and I agree. Just what exactly they should be wearing is a point of contention. We both agree they should have matching, clean, and well-fitted clothing on that is weather appropriate. Our concepts of matching are miles apart.

Now, getting the kids out the door each day in matching (according to varying definitions), clean, and well-fitted clothing is nearly impossible. Like catching a greased pig impossible. Clean clothes suddenly disappear. Shoes migrate under large pieces of furniture. The kids will swear we never owned coats, gloves, or hats on the first cold morning. It is a some kind of law that spirit wear shirts will fall into the black hole of hell the night before they are needed- I swear they will slip their clean little cotton selves right off the hanger and just dis.a.ppear.  Gone. Vanished without a trace.

This year, I decided we would end the before-school clothing battle before it even started. The youngest kids are required to have 5 full outfits (shirt, jeans, undies, socks) on hangers, in the closet by Sunday evening. To help facilitate this unreasonable demand, I made daily organizing tags for their closets.

You can find cute little tags and beautifully organized closet spaces all over Pinterest. The clothes are all ruffly and adorable and the hangers all match. They are precious. I, was not going for precious. Nope. I was going for simple, fast, and functional. I am all about functional. (This momma ain't got time for precious.) 

I used a free CD label template in a Word document and printed 2 images to a page on colored cardstock. I spent about an hour cutting out 2 sets. I used 2 of each day (Monday through Friday plus Weekend) back-to-back and glued them together with a glue stick. I ran them through a hot laminator, 3 to a page and spent another half hour cutting the shapes from the laminate. I left a decent amount of laminate (plastic?) in the center so they would grip the closet rod. 

I figure I just saved the Big Guy and myself 171 hours of rather-poke-yourself-in-the-eye-than-search-for-another-lost-shoe early morning arguments about clothing.   

Oh, so worth it.   

Fortune Telling

Little Bean: Press the button and ask a question.

Tuna: Am I going to be rich?

Little Bean: If you marry somebody rich.

Oh snap. 

Little Bean: Dad, press the button and ask a question.

Big Guy: We don't believe in the practice of fortune telling. 

Little Bean: I don't have any practice!

Boom!

Party #66

As I prepared this afternoon for Rough Stuff's birthday party, I asked myself why I just wasn't feeling any stress about it. Not feeling rushed or stressed can mean two things- either I've totally got it together and the event is so well-planned that there is nothing to stress about, or I've totally forgotten some huge detail and the crap is about to hit the fan. It is usually the latter. I said to myself "Girlfriend, which is it this time? What have you done, or not done?  Think, Lady. THINK!"  

And then something came to me. I said "Girl, you've done so many parties, you're a pro. What are you worried about? You could pull a party out of your behind on an hour notice. Quit stressing."

As I hung upside down, drying my curls with a diffuser (I do most of my serious thinking in this position) I did some quick calculating. This particular birthday party is number 66 for us. SIXTY-SIX. I've planned 66 birthday parties for my children. This does not include trick-or-treating parties, cookie-exchanges, sleepovers, or classroom parties. Just birthday parties.

I've not actually hosted too many classroom parties. I think I'm on a room mother black list. They stopped asking me to host after that big 5th grade Halloween party in the gym when the firemen showed up and evacuated the whole elementary school. We mothers were not actually pointing fingers. We weren't going to openly admit to bringing the fog machine that set off the alarms. Then the cute firemen called the all clear and my kid entered the gym with a throng of 5th graders and screeched "it was YOUR fog machine, MOM!" No more room parties for me.

But birthday parties- no problem. People still send their kids to my house for birthday parties. Some even send them back more than once.

Birthday party #66 was a gummy bear party. A what? Yeah. Gummy bears. How do you do that?

Well...

You start by making gummy bear-printed  bookmarks with little gummy bear-shaped glass beads. 

And you fill little baggies with gummy bears so you can send your guests home with additional sugar. Have your kid help with the 'thank-you' tags because you know you will never get thank you cards sent. Heck, you couldn't even get the invitations mailed out, Girlfriend. Wait...am I talking to myself again? Ahem. 

Then, you mesmerize them with sugar. 

After visiting 2 stores trying to track down a bear-shaped cookie cutter, you give up on the bear-shaped sandwiches and feed them pizza rolls. This will disturb you more than them. If you're super talented like we are, you will mix up the cheese and pepperoni pizza rolls on the pans and terrorize your vegetarian children. (I'm sorry, girls. Your dad did it.)

Add a craft. We chose to fill bear-shaped honey bottles with colored sand because we figured our kitchen could use a healthy dose of sand. 

We wrapped the whole thing up with a dance and karaoke session to the gummy bear song. I will spare you the details. If you do not know the gummy bear song, DO NOT GOOGLE IT. Don't do it. You will never, ever, get it out of your head. 

I will be hearing that song in my sleep. 

I'm a gummy bear. Yes I'm a gummy bear.

I'm a yummy, tummy, funny, lucky, gummy bear. 

And I'm a party pro. Yes I'm a party pro. 

I can make a party happen on the go.     

Yes, I've gone a little left. Hey, after 66 birthday parties, I've earned it.  

    

Mom Failings

Every Sunday, I stand, iPhone in hand, and update the calendar on our dry erase schedule. And then we live by the schedule. I do ask all family members to double check the schedule and ensure that their events and activities are accounted for. That works quite well. (Riiight.)

The BOARD.

This week's schedule included a birthday. See that? Up there on Thursday?

Yeah. Only Rough Stuff's birthday was actually on Wednesday. Mom Fail.

But wait...there's more. What did we actually do on Wednesday? We had a slumber party for Tuna. We invited the whole color guard team for a sleepover complete with pizza and movies, on Rough Stuff's birthday. Ultra Mom Fail.

But wait...it gets better. We baked a birthday cake. Yes we did! For another kid, whose birthday was on Wednesday. We did not bake a cake for Rough Stuff. Because on the schedule, her birthday was on Thursday.  EPIC Mom Fail.

Yes. I'm hanging my head in shame.

Thank heavens my mother called to tell the kid happy birthday at 9:00 AM or I might not have even realized my scheduling snafu. But then again, if Mom hadn't called, I might have just slid right under the radar on this one. Did my mother save my butt or call me on the carpet here? Tough call.

Also...

I missed getting a back-to-school registration on the schedule. Yep. Thank heavens for those phone trees. The school actually called with one of those voice recordings designed to help parents like us remember to show up. There were two back-to-school events scheduled for Thursday and we are currently sharing one vehicle so the Big Guy got to drive the golf cart to the elementary school. He's super cool like that. It was rainy.

But, the Fish and I made it to the middle school and decorated her locker with the One Direction paper I found and since Harry Styles is so sexay  that makes me a pretty cool mom. So I was sort of able to redeem my bad self. (All opinions expressed about Harry Styles are those of the Fish.)

Wonderfully blurry locker pic.

So there.

The Big Guy picked up BBQ ribs for Rough Stuff's late birthday dinner (in the golf cart) and I created a layered black forest-ish trifle-like thing. Rough Stuff was a happy girl.

Happy 11th birthday Rough Stuff.

So, I'm not winning any Mom of the Week awards this week. There's always next week.
   

Put On Your Big Girl Shoes

We did some serious back to school shopping this weekend. We took 5 kids shopping in 4 different stores on Saturday. We also attended the high school marching band's family picnic and an American Girl tea party at the local library just to balance out the day. Saturday was like a three-ring circus and The Big Guy and I were the ring masters- kids like clowns doing donuts and wheelies in the aisles.

This shopping trip was a bit special. We were purchasing all of the typical school supplies- stacks of post-it notes, reams of paper, cases of binders, a truck load of pencils (I'm so kidding- we only bought 9 boxes of pencils)- but we were also bringing home a brand new razor for the newest shaving member of our family. Oh the joy. She could hardly contain it. She couldn't wait to get to the razor aisle but then...

I sidelined her in the lingerie department and announced that we would also be purchasing a bra. And there went all of  her joy.

I'm not sure when the back to school shopping shifted away from cute character backpacks and chunky crayons to bras and razors but I'm not very happy about it. I was looking forward to bra shopping with 3 girls about as much as I would look forward to kneeling on Lego blocks. The lower the age of the girl, the higher the level of pain associated with picking an acceptable bra. As painful as I knew bra and razor shopping would be, it could not prepare me for what I encountered in the shoe store.

The mission in the shoe store was fairy simple: Fit and select shoes for 2 girls while keeping the other 2 girls' hands and eyes off of all shoes, socks, backpacks, purses, and other people's belongings. Oh, and try to keep the 2 being fitted up off the floor. And get all of the rejected shoes back in boxes and on a shelf so as not to leave a trail of mass destruction in our wake.

We hit a roadblock fairly early in the game. Little Bean sized in at a girl's 5.5. That is a 7 in women's shoes. A  S-E-V-E-N. Suddenly, the cute little black Nike shoes with the hot pink stripe for $50, $25 with the buy-one-get-one-half-off deal and a 20% coupon to boot were up to $74 because Nike doesn't make those shoes in a girl's 5.5.

After I recovered from the initial shock of having to pay a whole lot more for this kiddo's shoes, I started to crumble emotionally. I wanted to cry, in the middle of the shoe store. After 18 years of shopping for little shoes, I realized I would never again shop in the kid's shoe department.

That was it. It was over. I felt cheated. Life is cruel that way.

Sometimes you just have to put on your big girl shoes and move on. 

Say What?

Fish has a beautiful smile, but it can be quite elusive. When she was just a little Fish, she never smiled in photos.

Exhibit A: Kindergarten school photo

The photo arrived with this note:

Exhibit B: Club photos

Tuna (smiling), The Boy (smiling), and Fish

It's like she had some sort of vendetta with photographers. 

I had pretty much given up hope, but then...

I discovered the magic word. 

It's not cheese. 

This is cheese:

"Say cheese!"

Nope. Not cheese. It's...wait for it...

PUBERTY!

"Say puberty!"

It is, apparently, a hysterical word. Just the mention of it causes roaring laughter and awesome smiles. 

Who knew? Not I. With 5 kids between 8 and 18, I do not find puberty to be so hilarious. 

Maybe if we say it three times fast. Puberty, puberty, puberty. Nope. Still not funny. I guess it only works in the under 18 crowd.

How does that word affect you? 

  

All Rise

Court is in session.

Today, we went to court with Flooring Guy. We were fortunate enough to be first up on the docket. The judge required us to meet with a court-appointed mediator. That was a fairly short meeting. After a prolonged attempt to add up Flooring Guy's numbers, we were excused from the meeting. There were raised voices coming from the meeting room and then the mediator emerged to announce that we would need to go back in front of the judge because we were NEVER going to work this out.

Our hearing with the judge was long and painful. Let me summarize it for you:

Flooring Guy said (paraphrasing here, of course): I'm suing them for 5 green apples because we agreed on 6 red apples and I billed them for 8 oranges and 2 grapes. But, I shoulda subtracted 1 of them grapes and then it would all equal a kumquat.    

Whaaa?

And so on and so forth we danced around the court room for the next hour. Well...we stood still looking like he'd just fell of the kumquat cart and he danced around so much the judge had to ask him to stand in one place.

When the whole fiasco was winding down he looked desperately at the Big Guy and pleaded "you remember don't you? You remember Big Guy!?"

Um, no. We are not here to plead your case for you Mr. Flooring Guy.

We said (again, paraphrasing): Um...he installed only 2 bananas. We don't know why he's asking for additional fruit.

The whole thing felt like a fall down the rabbit hole and I'm still clawing my way back out. Bizarre-O.

The judge will mail his decision so I pray that today was the last time we will ever lay eyes on Flooring Guy.

Flooring Guy, don't let the carpet tack hit ya...um...on your way out.

Yes, we DO remember. Every single time we walk by that one un-carpeted stair.