They Will Make a Gun out of ANYTHING!

Clearly anyone who believes that a child is born a "blank slate" and we mold them thru nurture only, has never had children.

I am the only female in this house, and I do not even know how to make boy noise. Nor do I want to learn.

I don't know how to break a stick until it looks like a revolver, nor do I know how to eat a sandwich until it resembles a truck. But my boys do and they did not learn that here, from me or their dad.

David was playing with some buddies at the park a week ago. They were ducking into bushes, checking out cool hiding spots. I saw them running in and out of the rows of bushes playing some sort of GI Joe deal. When I got close enough to be "discovered" I was ambushed by them. I like to think I know how to play along, but mostly I think they are rolling their eyes at me when I am not looking. (Can I get and A for effort?)

I throw my hands in the air and say "I surrender!" One of the buddies pulls out his stick (it really does look like a shot gun - how do they do this?) He makes the shot gun cocking noise and says " AAGGHH I'll shoot you anyway! POW. (The girl in me is alarmed - someone call Miss Manners!)

Before I can comment, out comes the other buddy. He doesn't even ask for a surrender, he just shoots me on sight with his revolver. (also a stick) BANG.

2 seconds later David jumps out and he has this teeny tiny little stick in his hand. (I actually have the thought that he is being "robbed" of his chance to shoot me) So I inquire - don't you have a gun? To which he exclaims. NOPE! I have a hand grenade. KAPOW!

Now, just imagine what it would be like if we allowed him to watch PG movies.

' Leave it right there

Putting the boys to bed tonight had me remember one of those
"I have got to write that down" memories.

When David was 3 years old he was such a joy to put to bed.
We would have great special moments where you can see right into his heart.
It was like a window to his spirit and it was always filled with good things.

One night, we finished our bible story and prayers and I gave him a kiss on the cheek. As he was drifting off to sleep, he reached his hand out, placed it ever so gently on his cheek where I had just kissed him and said: "I am going to leave it right there." and proceeded to pat his cheek and smile until he fell asleep.

A mom can live a whole life for a moment like that.

Caleb Potty Training Story # 2

So Caleb is out of diapers for about 2 weeks. We go to a few garage sales and he has to pee. A park is near by so we stop there. To our disappointment the bathroom doors are locked.

No problem, I have boys. Except Caleb has not yet learned to pee standing up. So I convince his older brother to "show him how to do it." I accomplish this by telling Caleb he and David can "cross their pee streams over by that bush." Dont forget I am holding their wiggly 8 month old (at the time) brother too.

Caleb of course thinks this is the best thing since sliced bread, so he tries it. Both boys have a successfully fun time "crossing their pee."

The trouble came the next morning when Caleb determines to never sit on the toilet to pee again. He wasn't tall enough to stand and pee (and actually get it into the toilet) at home. No problem he thought - we have a stool!

Ok so it is 7 am and we are having a clash of the titans over how pee is going to get from his body into the toilet. Mind you he doesn't wear a diaper over the night, so this is the 1st morning pee and it is alot! Not only are we fighting over him standing on the stool naked, he is also doing the potty dance during the fight because he HAS TO GO!!!!!.

I had just gotten out of the shower. You know sometimes my day just never even gets that far. But this day I was up early (with Nathan) and I had decided to not go back to bed. I had on my makeup and the whole nine yards. I am kneeling on the floor holding my sleepy, dancing, naked son. I agree to him peeing standing up (this should have been my 1st clue - I KNOW better than to ever let him win!) .

He of course begins successfully, but gets overconfident. You guessed it - he not only falls right in to the toilet, he lounges his right hand all the way to the bottom flush hole. Getting most of his upper body into the pee filled toilet. Falling off the stool, splashing pee all over me (did I mention I had JUST SHOWERED!), the floor, himself. Oh and yes he is still peeing. You know once you start you can't stop. So that is all over the linens, the floor, the wall, the shower curtain, and the tub.

Now this in itself is enough. But even after that disaster he says: "See I can pee standing up." in the I told you so voice.

Oh you are right honey - why did I ever doubt you?

Boogers, Poop, and Stale Urine

Ok. Being a mom is full of "AUGH GROSS!"

I am convinced that our bathroom needs a urinal. After all, why not just flush the wall if they insist on peeing on it anyway. I am constantly walking around this house asking myself : "what is that smell?" "where is that coming from?"

Now I am no domestic cleaning goddess, but let me tell you this place is clean enough to not smell like "THAT".

The longer I am a mom, the more I could actually develop OCD. If going to your local Dr office for your "well baby visit", and 2 days later no longer having a well baby doesn't do it for you, just take your boys to the local supermarket. This is where you can get your weeks worth of groceries and the daily supply of someone elses bodily fluids. Gross!

Yesterday I took David, Caleb, Nathan and Olivia outside to play. I open the sandbox cover and Caleb goes "EW that smells yucky." I found cat poop in our sandbox.

Is now the time I tell you how very much I dislike cats? Disgusting creatures. Had a cat once - Name was Nightmare. Was a fitting name.

My neighbor has a cat. She better keep it in her yard. I just can't be responsible for what might happen to it if I find it near my sandbox again.

As if I needed one more thing to clean up! We shoveled all $35 worth of sandbox sand out. Scrubbed the toys and the dinosaur sandbox and it was time for lunch. Poor kids.

The other day Caleb sits on the big boy toilet to go pee. However, he is still so sleepy he forgets to "aim down" Pee all over the opposing wall, floor and my linens! URGH. He now stands to pee. There is of course another story to that - will get to that sometime soon, before I forget.

This morning I am making muffins. Everyone is sitting happily at the breakfast table. Then Nathan sneezes. Boogers everywhere. To which Caleb begins belly laughing. Nathan of course starts laughing too because he doesn't want to be left out. Got a picture of it.

That is my life - I am reduced to boogers, poop and urine. Here is a clip we saw the other day - had a good laugh over it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4-vrI9xxcQ

Exhale!

Whew!

The birthday parties are over.

The guests are gone.

The ultrasound of Nathan's heart is done.

The cake is eaten.

The left overs are neatly put away.

The floor is clean.

The toys all have new homes.

The kids are bathed and ready for bed.

Stick a fork in me - I am DONE!

This must be why God made the seventh day, a day of rest. I need it!

Yesterday, friends of ours had their 1st baby.(on David's birthday - at the same time we were celebrating Davids 7 years, they were beginning their first moments as parents)

I smile at the journey they are just beginning and reflect on just how good ours has been.

7 years I have been a mom. I have been changed forever.
What a beautiful family I have.
God has blessed us beyond measure.

David turns 7 today!

In a few hours I will have 12 kids (BOYS no less) running around my house with water balloons and glow sticks. David chose to have a Ben 10 party with his friends. (2 boys are sleeping over)

So, today we have 12 kids coming and tomorrow we have 15 relatives coming. I have made 2 Ben 10 cakes, 2 omnitrix pizzas, 45 water balloons and all the meal fixin's for tomorrow.

Both David and Caleb are pumped and are counting down the minutes.

Now, I just have to make it thru Nathan's Cardiology appoint and get back in time. But I heard the flooded road is now open so that should help!

I can hardly believe it has been 7 years since I became a mom.

Oh how the years go by..........

Is Anyone Maning the Store?

We have 3 families on our block that have kids. 2 of us actually watch them.

I am amazed that 5 year old kids are running around for HOURS and mom and dad have no idea where they are or who they are with.

Below is a picture of only some of the neighborhood kids. Notice, I gave them something to eat.

Well, today it happened. What Tara (the other responsible mom) and I have been saying for months. Some day "that kid" is going to get really hurt.

I heard the ambulance come this afternoon and I thought for sure Evan was hit by a car. I have yelled at him a few times and his sister too to "GET OUT OF THE STREET!" He doesn't even look!

Evan does not live on our street but a block over and he is allowed to ride his bike, with training wheels,all the way over to us. His parents have never met me, nor do they know anything about me. I could literally take Evan and his sister for a "ride" and they would never be seen again. Mom and Dad would not know. SCARY!!!!!!

Well he did not get hit by a car - just a falling brick. That's right folks. The house that doesn't watch has a tree fort. You guessed it - some of the older kids were on the fort stacking old landscaping bricks into a tower and knocking down to the ground - can you imagine?!

Guess what? Evan walked right under it and SLAM right on his head. Blood everywhere. Neither the mom of the house nor the mom of the kid were watching. It takes a neighbor boy to get him some help. Kid was taken to ER with neck brace and on a stretcher.

So David says to me. OH BOY! I guess that is why you don't let me play in their backyard.

UMM YUP that is why. (well that is one of MANY reasons) Like their middle child jumping from the 2nd story window "pretending to be Superman"

Well, let's just say he was no Man of Steel. More like Boy on Pavement. Lucky the kid lived. GEEZ!

We had a prayer time for Evan as the ambulance drove off. 'Was a great learning experience for my WIDE EYED Caleb ( Mr. No Fear) and my very concerned David.

David's Schooling

Not that I am prejudice or anything but my oldest son is genius. I have of course known this since he was 1 day old. Thru his preschool years, David was always ahead of schedule as far as learning. He was also very obedient. I attributed these to my superior parenting skills of course. (then we had 2 more BOYS and that thought flew right out the window)

Recently, well actually quite regularly, we get flack from other people because we home school David. Mostly people will quiz David to see if he actually is doing "school work ". I love it when they do this. David doesn't seem to notice the meaning behind it all, but he is a bit of a show off when he knows his stuff, so it works out.

Anyway, the discussion is on the table of having him enter "regular school" next year. Therefore, I felt it was prudent to have him take a standardized test to show his academic placement. Neither he, nor I, had ever done this before so we were surprised with how little he needed to know in order to be at 1st grade level. We got his results back and had ourselves a little celebration.

The test scores by grade level and half grade levels. (he just finished 1st grade) He scored second and half grade in math computation. He scored 3rd grade for reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, language mechanics, language usage and structure, and spelling. He scored fourth and half grade for math concepts, math story problems, and language auditing. He is 6 years old and could have been in kindergarten or 1st grade this last school year because he has a summer birthday. Not bad for my young 1st grader.

Like I said, my oldest son is a genius. End brag.

you NEED manners!

Right now all 3 boys are at the breakfast table.

Caleb is crabby.
David is praying over his waffles.
Nathan is screaming.

Caleb turns to Nathan and says:" You be quiet - Geez - You need some manners!"

Good one Caleb!

Caleb potty training story #1

Where do I begin?

Caleb, my middle child, is an absolute boy to the core.
He is all turbo.
It is all or nothing.

The day after his 3rd birthday, he decided he was no longer going to wear diapers. He was a big boy and that was that. Naturally, I was thrilled.

It was however the last 2 weeks of David’s' home school for 1st grade and Nathan was/is STILL nursing. I have always dreamed of potty training, home schooling, nursing and babysitting (I have my friends little 2 year old girl while she works) all in the same 5 minutes. Haven't you?

That would be why I never answer the phone.
Contact with the outside world is, after all, overrated.

It was a rather warm week for April, so I decided I would just do the commando method of training Caleb. One t-shirt, no underpants or diaper. Keeping him mostly in the non-carpeted areas. I recommend this - let me tell you - they only pee themselves once or twice this way because they get all wet and it is a big ordeal to get it off their whole legs and everything.

This went well for a day or two, so I decided to put the big boy underpants on him and see if he recognized the urge in time to get to the bathroom, undress, get on the potty. He did. I tell you I was sitting there congratulating myself on successfully moving him up to big boy status when he had his 1st accident in his pants.

Parenting is humbling, you know. He was so upset about it. He went to the bathroom took off his Bob the Builder underpants and proceeded to apologize to Bob the Builder for messing all over him. "Oh Bob, I am so sorry, so sorry Bob" I had everything to do to not laugh out loud.

Is my 3-year-old boy saying sorry to his underpants? Yup, he sure was - not only was he apologizing, he was actually sorry. He has since never gone back to diapers, nor pull-ups. When he decides he is going to do something, he does it. This is really good and yet sometimes really, really bad (depending on what he decided he is going to do). More of that later.

I can't wait to tell you about when he decided to stand and pee like his big brother. But right now Nathan is crying and I have to go.

Allergy Appointment for Nathan

A few weeks ago we took Nathan to the allergy doctor at UW Children’s Hospital to find the cause of his hives and eczema and tummy upsets. For a 15 minute Dr appointment at 11 am I had to leave our house at 9:20 (and we did not get home until 4 pm). Oh yes and take all 3 kids for the fun time of "prick him till we get some reaction”

After gathering all the results and dealing with all the tears, the Dr recommended we get an Epi Jr pen in case of severe Anaphylactic reactions.

So, the Dr says to me: “I am giving him a Rx for Epi pen Jr. You would only give this to him if you see a severe reaction and suspect he cannot breathe. So reserve it for the "Oh my G-- he is not breathing moment."

Now, we are not allowed to take Gods name in vain in our house so David (again my rule following child) says as the Dr as he is leaving. " Excuse me Mr. Dr. Please don't say Oh My G - - it is a bad word!" To which this Dr replied: “You are right I shouldn't say that. I am sorry.” To which David says “Ok I forgive you.”

Case closed - world saved - everyone back on track of obedience.

David you are my hero.

Door to Door Salesman

Today is one of the 1st nice non-raining days since school has been out. So today we have our neighbor boy and David playing in our front yard as I am in the house with Olivia, Nathan and Caleb.

A salesman (who is selling educational books for elementary school kids) knocks on my door.
(I guess he must have been driving around looking for places where elementary aged kids were visible and spotted us.)

So I come to the door and he says to me “Is your mom or dad home?” You know I really don’t get any contact with the “outside world” So if God wants me to laugh it has to be thru my kids or whoever is crazy enough to come to my door.

Well, I guess God wanted me to laugh today – poor guy – I stood there in complete astonishment that he asked ME the 35 year old mom of the house if MY mom or dad was home.

Of course I could not resist. I said “Umm no! my dad is dead and my mom lives in Wausau. I am 35 and I AM the mom here! What do you need?” Poor Guy. (no we did not buy anything.)

Nathan discovers his nose

Just a very quick post - Today Caleb was sniffing and Nathan was trying to figure out what he was doing. At first Nathan started laughing at this new "boy noise". Then Nathan sat there stone faced for a minute and tried to figure out how to do what his big brother was doing. Here is what I got on tape - Nathan discovering that he too has a nose that WORKS!

Our Courthouse Adventure

Here is one I swear I will never forget, but wanted to write down and remember from this past winter.

When I was 7 months pregnant with Nathan, I took the kids to one of my favorite places: Eugsters Farm. This is a very family friendly place. It is essentially a produce and hobby animal farm that the owners open up for extra $ to families for a "in the city farm experience." We go here every year for our pumpkin and several times a year to ride the tractors, play in the big play sets, feed the goats and see the new kittens and puppies.

Well last July we went to spend the day. While I was there having a picnic with David and Caleb a man and a women stole my purse from my van. (Our air conditioning was broken during this time and I had left the windows cracked. I have auto locks so I think that is how they got to it.) In my purse were my checks, which they used all over town. Also, David’s wallet, my cell phone and diapers for Caleb. We actually came back to the van to change a poppy diaper on Caleb to find everything gone. That was a fun ride home.

Over the following 8 months I had to deal with all the ramifications to this incident. But what hurt most was how devastated David was that someone stole his wallet. To show him that we don't always know what the "bad guys" look like, I decided to take him with me to the court date. The woman, Renee, was set before the judge for sentencing. Unfortunately for us, this meant it was the dead of winter, downtown Madison with 3 kids.

I detest driving downtown. I don’t feel safe there, you can never park and there are too many 1-way streets! Now add the huge snow piles (this was the winter we had over 100 inches you know) and below freezing temperatures (oh the great state of WI - why are we here?). What a great day to see the "bad guy".

After trudging thru 4 blocks of slippery ice (carrying an infant in an infant seat) we arrived at the courthouse - late of course. I had forgotten all about the fact that they have security there and had to proceed to get all of us thru the metal detectors. Oh yes, we all had to take off our boots, jackets, infant out of seat, car keys and such. Oh yes what fun. So now we have to get into the courtroom to see Renee.

She was sentenced to 1-year jail and restitution. David felt that Justice was served and we trudged back to our van. As we round the corner there is OLD junker Cadillac (you know the type that has the rust shaking off it due to the base playing so loud) trying to parallel park behind my van with not enough room. Good thing I came when I did. Once they saw me, they decided they really did not have enough room to get in and they drive off.

I lift each of the 3 kids over the mounding snow bank and into the van. I came around the corner to the driver’s side to buckle Caleb in only to discover that on the diaper bag, that was in the van, were hanging my keys and a certain 2 year old thought it would be fun to lock the doors. You got it. Now I am on a VERY busy street, much too close to traffic, on a slippery road, all 3 kids in the van and I am locked out. Now if this isn't funny enough in itself, a man who is trying to park across the street thought this would be a good time to ask me if I had change for a dollar for his parking meter. Oh yes buddy, let me get right to that.

I gave him the look that all mothers give to people who ask something completely ridiculous. Thankfully my 1st born is a total rule follower and was able to crawl over the bench and undo the automatic locks. We drove home without any further incident. Oh wait I forgot. I gave the guy change for his dollar. Good thing I am a woman and am prepared for the unthinkable.

My 1st entry!

Ok so it has been on my to do list for a long time. I am finally crossing off my list: "start a blog".

Since David was born, almost 7 years ago, I have heard: "You should write that down" by just about every mom that has gone before me. Since my handwriting is so bad (I actually flunked handwriting 2 times in elementary school - who does that?) I thought typing a blog might be better. Now if those boys would only SLEEP! Then I could get a chance to "write it all down".

This blog will contain the amazing and crazy moments that my life with 3 boys brings. For those of you who don't know, I have:
David born 6/20/01
Caleb born 4/21/05
Nathan born 9/08/07

Yes, everyone always sings me the "my 3 sons" tune. I don't have the heart to tell most of them that the show was "before my time" but I have heard that the mom in the show is DEAD! hmmmmm. Perhaps she died of a heart attack from all of the "hey mom, watch this!" moments her boys put her thru.

'Hope you enjoy reading about them as I attempt to mold 3 active boys into men.

Jenny