Why, yes...

I am a good aunt.

Every nephew of mine must have their own quilts.

One for Ethan

and

One for Evan.

02.07.2010

02.07.2010

The date my nephews are due to arrive.

What a blessing it will be if they can just wait until 01.01.2010.

There is a history with our children.

Each child is always born on an even year and exactly four years apart.

If my nephews will wait until 2010, the tradition will continue and the numbers will even out.

3 girls/3 boys.

The Little Yellow Lab

Remember the Little Yellow Lab?

He was included in the gift bag at the fundraiser we attended.

The dog was was made of soft, squishy material and was the perfect size for little hands.

From the moment Addie saw another little girl holding one of the dogs, she had to have one.

I don't believe that her initial intent was to maul the dog to death, nor do I believe that the incident that took place after we left the party was performed with malice.

The party that we attended was just minutes from our home.

We were not more than two minutes from our home, when I heard Addie trying to talk to me.

I looked back at her and found that she was a bit distressed.

She was holding the decapitated body of the Little Yellow Lab in her left hand and the decapitated head of the Little Yellow Lab in her right hand.

She was trying desperately to reattach his head.

I reassured her that everything was okay, that we would be home soon and that I would take care of him (by disposing of him in the trashcan as soon as she fell asleep).

Addie continued to try to talk to me and at one point became a little more assertive with her attempt to communicate with me.

I looked back at her to find her desperately trying to show me the decapitated head of the Little Yellow Lab.

I reached back and took each part of the dog in an attempt to show her that I would help.

It wasn't until I took the head and body in my hands that I realized what exactly Addie was trying to tell me

The head of the Little Yellow Lab was missing one very important part.

I glanced back at Addie as she was putting her hands to her mouth and saying "yuck".

"Yuck" was right.

My sweet baby girl had decapitated this poor dog...then proceeded to bite off his nose and swallow it.

Poor dog...

I tried to convince myself that the nose that was now soaking in my baby girls stomach acid was made from 100% natural paint products.

I also tried to convince myself that this nose and the head that it used to be attached to was made right here in the good old U.S. of A., not in a country that could possibly rhyme with Dinah.

That poor Little Yellow Lab is now resting in peace.

Yet one more reason why we don't own a dog.

Game four - Win three

Julien and his team played a fantastic game tonight.

They won 31-13.

My throat actually hurt by the end of the game from all the yelling.

For me being such an incredibly shy person, I sure do have a set of lungs at a ball game!

I'm going to have to check into that.

Lack of eye contact with a specific person = even skin tone, loud yelling and stomping of the feet.

Eye contact with a specific person = blushing, stammering of words and loss of intelligence.

Hmmm...weird.

Monkey was so proud of Julien. She stayed up two and a half hours past her bedtime to watch all the boys (all from our town - it seemed like most from our neighborhood) play ball and let me just say...those kids can play some ball!

It was like driveway ball had been transplanted into a gym with bleachers full of parents, siblings and friends.

It was one of those times when you cheer when the opposing team makes a good shot just because the boys are so fantastic.

We are so blessed for this community that we are a part of.

By popular demand

I have vaguely edited the post below.

Minor details are given regarding last night...but no, I still cannot name the store in question. Although I would love to give thanks where thanks is due, I have a history with this store and can't risk being blacklisted.

:)

I like pea soup

It is just one of those weeks...

Not that anything is wrong or has happened, but nothing is going right.

It just has been a go figure kind of week.

I will spare you most of the boring details and skip to tonight.

I decided that tonight was the perfect and only time to make our way up to a shopping area to buy a few Christmas presents.

What I failed to realize before entering one of my very favorite stores, was that I had apparently ticked off the god's of grace and good behavior.

I had something happen to me in a store tonight that in my entire eleven years of Motherhood, has never happened.

I left my youngest child under the watchful eyes of my husband and oldest child in order to go to the front of the store to find someone to help us. I was waiting ever so patiently for my turn, when I heard a ruckus behind me. As I was turning to see what that ruckus was, my brain had already processed the sound of glass shattering. There was that tiny part of me that was hoping it was the nearby aluminum canteens falling to the hardwood floors and that my ears just thought it was several martini glasses that had been resting quietly on the shelf perfectly placed to the height of my two-year-old daughter. As Monkey went for one of the glasses, another individual (no names mentioned here) tried to grab the Monkey and pull her away instead of gently grabbing her hands to redirect her. As this individual grabbed Monkey, her arm hit the above mentioned glasses.

It quickly occurred to me that as a part of her therapy, I let my youngest child play with cups - all the time - she has to practice taking cups out of one another, putting them back in and stacking them.

Some of these cups are clear, plastic cups, which could easily be mistaken for the expensive martini glasses that she wanted to hold.

As I was walking towards my husband and children to assess the situation, I passed another shopper who at that moment...shook her head in what I detected to be - disgust.

As in, "how dare anyone allow their child to run amuck in a store.". As if we were ruining her shopping experience. My youngest child wasn't running around the store, my husband and oldest child just so happened to lose at "faster than the baby".

I knew in that instant that this other shopper had in fact never given birth to a child.

If she were indeed a Mother, chances are she received her beloved package as a gift from another Mother seeing as how this particular shopper probably didn't want to ruin her own body by growing a child within her womb.

This particular shopper probably also never held a sick child, gave a boo-boo a kiss and most likely shipped her child off to boarding school as soon as they were old enough to go.

What shocked me just a bit was the fact that I had a moment of realization that had she been any closer to me, I would have tripped her, allowing her to fall ever so gracelessly onto her silicon filled boobies and rhinoplastied nose .

Gasp!

Oh yes...evil thoughts were being projected her way! Who does things like that? It was an accident. Accidents happen to those of us who are mortal.

What shocked me as well was how quick the workers of the store came to help.

Not only to help, but to reassure us that everything was okay. I no more than had stepped over the shattered glass and had my hands under Monkey's arms than one of the workers was telling me that someone was on the way to clean up the mess and that it really was okay. She went on to tell us that it happens more frequently than we can imagine.

For that I am so grateful because I am still trying to recover from that incident.

Sadly for the workers of the store, I will go back soon because we left without buying one single item.

(I knew I was hitting maximum stress capacity when my husband made a comment about the store "Campus Fever", I thought he said "Wine Cellar" and felt a tinge of hope for just a minute.)

After leaving the first store (not Campus Fever or my imaginary Wine Cellar), we proceeded to my other favorite store right beside the first one.

Not only did my youngest child cause a ruckus in that store as well, but that ruckus continued until we pulled up in front of a little restaurant an agonizing drive down the road in rush hour traffic.

Dinner went well with our little social butterfly saying "hi" to all who would listen and making friends with the little boy who came to sit next to us.

I was feeling a bit less-stressed (or so I thought) as we exited the restaurant and headed to the car, until my oldest child accidentally tried to close the car door (because he didn't see me standing there holding Monkey) and managed to knock Monkey in the back of the head hard enough that I fully expected to see blood running down the back of her head.

As the god of grace sat way high up on her pedestal of mockery, I yelled into the crisp night air something along the lines of, "are you freakin' kidding me?!!!!!" as I felt the windows in Whole Foods shake, my head began to spin around while the imaginary pea soup coated our freshly cleaned car.

Are you kidding me???? Stomp, stomp, stomp, slam!

All I want to know at this point is am I alone on this planet of tantrums and "are you kidding me" moments?

All I see around me are perfectly well behaved children parading around in their little smocked outfits saying their "yes ma'am's", "pleases" and "thank you's" while helping little old ladies cross the street in the rain, scooping down to retrieve a turtle stuck in the intersection so they can gently place it back in the river with its family before picking up the plastic bottle that some moron threw out of their moving car, then taking it to be recycled after donating their weekends wrapping gifts for the needy and changing flat tires for helpless women.

Really, am I the only one on this planet?

Oh...and for the record, there is absolutely nothing wrong with silicon filled boobies or rhinoplastied noses, but there is a lot wrong with people who would rather look the other way in disgust than stop to help a child.

Game three - not a win

This is not what it looks like...really, it's not.

We understand that basketball is not a contact sport and that is not my child standing over the little boy that just made contact with my son...nope.

This on the other hand is what it looks like and we were the home team.