BABY TALK

Anthony and I had some down time today in the car on the way to preschool, so I thought it was a perfect time to talk to him about the new baby. You know, try and convince him that this baby will be a good thing, and that he will love being a big brother again. Maybe you recall his total lack of interest in adding another baby to our family from this post I wrote not too long ago. He was pretty clear that he wanted nothing of the sort, and I was hoping to change that.

"What do you think of us having this baby Anthony, are you excited?"

"What is it going to be?"

"We don't know for sure yet."

"I want to know what it is going to be Mom!"

I know from past experience that Anthony will not give up on a question until he has an answer, so I gave him one. I figure it was a pretty good answer being that this is what the Sonographer thought.

"They think that it is going to be a boy, but we don't know for sure."

"Oh good, I want it to be a boy."

"You, do? You don't want a baby sister?"

"No Mom, I want a brother."

There was a moment of silence before he added:

"One that has a penis."

Looks like he doesn't need any convincing in the whole having another baby category, just as long as it is a boy; with a penis. Apparently he still does not understand that all boys have those - guess this is something I will have to work on with him.

COMING SOON TO THE SHELTON HOUSEHOLD....

a new baby to love, August 13th 2010.

We are just thrilled to be adding another baby to our family; a baby boy possibly?? The Ultrasound Tech seems to be pretty confident that it is. Look closely at the picture below....

Mom, Dad, brothers and sisters are all anxiously awaiting babies arrival!

THE BIG 7

Goodness, I cannot believe you are 7 years old today! It seems like just yesterday that I held you in my arms after 30 very long, but very well worth it hours of labor. I am sure you will hear me say this every year on your birthday, as really, time does fly right on by as I watch you grow up. Sometimes I wish there were a pause button, so I could freeze time to really sit and revel in all the sweet little moments.

So I just want to say, happy birthday my Ava Marie. You are such a beautiful, strong willed, independent, helpful, and loving little girl. Over the years I have been able to see you grow, change and slowly become your own little person, and I have enjoyed every moment. I am so looking forward to this 7th year of your life, as I know there are so many more wonderful things in store.

Momma loves you to the moon!

WHAT A WAY TO START THE DAY

I dragged my lazy bones out of bed this morning to get the kids ready for school. I believe the only thing that was really motivating me was the thought of a nice hot cup of coffee, otherwise I may have just said, to heck with the kids getting out to the bus and to school today. That is really how much I wanted to curl up in a ball and stay in bed underneath my nice warm covers all day long.

Anyway, as I made my way into the kitchen to make that glorious cup of coffee I needed to wake myself up, I saw this.

Yes, after a very busy first day at the boat show, the Mr. managed to find time to stop at the store and purchase these beautiful flowers and this sweet love note for me. And for no apparent reason, just because. Well, maybe not, maybe there was a reason for this lovely display of affection - more on this later. ....

Whatever the case, this really just made my day. I love this man, he is the best.

AN EXPERIMENT OF SORTS

I decided last night that I was going to try something. Something that was going to be very hard for me to follow through with as I am a self proclaimed serial picker uper (I know, it is a made up title.)

Let me explain.

I have a serious issue with random "stuff" just laying around the house. Having four kids makes this little issue of mine very hard to control - I am sure you can imagine. I am constantly finding blankets laying on the stairs, matchbox cars all over my kitchen floors, random toys strewn throughout every room in the house (even though we have a very nice playroom that is supposed to house all the toys). You know, all normal stuff you would find in a house where children reside. This I deal with silently as heck, they are kids, and what kind of Mom would I be if I constantly ran around the house after them yelling, "pick that up!" or "put that away" or "you kids are making a mess!" A pretty crumby one I think. So I spend my time walking around the house constantly picking up and putting things back in their places, and I am just fine with that.

But the Mr, is a whole other story. This sort of behavior is simply not acceptable coming from a grown adult. Nope, not at all. Don't get me wrong, I love him to pieces, but he has a serious problem when it comes to picking up after himself, and he is also sort of a clutter bug. He won't admit to it - actually he is adamant that he is nothing of the sort. But I have proof that can tell you all he is wrong, so very, very wrong: Mail piles up next to the computer (stuff he goes through, then leaves right where it is; garbage or not.) When he comes home on a business trip, his suitcase sits and sits somewhere on the main floor until I take care of it. His closet is a complete disaster, which houses clothes from the 80's and other random clothing that for some reason he can't part with. When he tries something on and decides he does not like it, it gets thrown on the floor in a pile. The pile grows and grows until I can't stand it any longer and I pick it up. When he gets undressed at night his dirty clothes fall right next to the laundry basket. Not in it where they belong, just next to it.

You get the idea, no?

Now I must say that this post is not meant to be dedicated to griping about my husbands faults, or my children's issues with picking up after themselves (as kids will be kids) - 'cause I have many faults of my own. Many. It's just that this particular "thing" drives me a certain sort of crazy that is beyond anything else.

SO, on to my experiment.

The Mr. came home from a business trip last night and plopped his suitcase down right next to the stairs. Same old same old. The difference this time around is that I am not going to pick it up, unpack the dirty clothes, put them in the hamper, and make sure that the suitcase gets put away. Instead I am going to leave it right there to see how long it sits until he realizes I am not going to take care of it. When he comes to this realization, I am hoping he will take care of it himself.

My bet is I am going to be waiting a long time, possibly until his next business trip when he will need the suitcase and be forced to take care of it.

This is all sort of my fault, as for the past 10 years I have taken care of his suitcases, and all the mail that piles up, and his clothes that end up in mounds on his closet floor.

Old habits die hard, don't they?

THE HONEY DO LIST SEEMS TO GROW AND GROW AND GROW

Living with 4 little kids makes it pretty much impossible to keep this house looking nice and put together.

Our off-white carpets (I have yet to understand why the previous owners of this house would have installed white carpets in a house where kids resided) are totally ruined. So ruined you can't even attempt to clean them any longer. Our walls are smudged with little handprints, dried splatters of chocolate milk from spills I missed, and some nice wall art done with crayon courtesy of Liv Grace. Our couches have been peed on, puked on, spit up on, drooled on, eaten and spilled on. Our wood floors have dents and nicks from the kids racing, and dropping heavy toys on them. The list goes on and on.

Most recently we have noticed that the two drawers that house all the kids arts and crafts and electronic equipment (PSP's, chargers, Leap Frogs, etc) were starting to show some wear and tear. Well, not just some, a lot. The whole front of both drawers were pretty much ready to fall off. The Mr. has talked about fixing them for some time now, but just has not had the time to get around to it. And unfortunately, I think it is too late.

Yesterday Ava went to get her PSP out of one of the drawers when I heard a crash.

"Mom! Look what happened!"

I turned to see what had happened - When Ava went to pull the drawer open the whole front of the drawer, handle and all, ripped off of the rest of the drawer, and landed on the floor in front of her. Turns out one of the drawers decided it could not hold out any longer for the Mr. to come and make the repair.

So now I have a drawer that houses all of the kids electronic toys, phone chargers, and other such things open for the whole world to see. And knowing my husband (love him dearly), and his track record as far as fixing broken things goes, it will stay this way for a very, very long time.

Just another thing to add to the Honey Do list. What can you do? Nothing, really. Just wait, and pray that the Mr. will get to this project (and the many more that can be found on that list) sooner than later. And I can remind myself that one day, these kids will be grown and won't have the propensity to break, stain, or ruin everything in their path. One day.

MASTERING NEW SKILLS

The Mr. has been spending some time at the ice rink with the kids teaching them how to skate. Each time they arrive home they run in to the house with smiles on their faces proud as can be to tell me all about how well they did. I am never able to make it to watch them skate as I have to stay back with Miss Liv, who is still a bit too young to strap on the ice skates. So I told The Mr. today to bring along the camera to get some pictures of them so I could witness their success.

He did follow through, and actually came home with something better. A video of Lucas and Anthony ice skating.

I must admit, I was pretty impressed with how well they were doing as this was Lucas' second time skating and Anthony's very first. The Mr. mentioned it was really not all that hard and that kids do generally catch on pretty fast when it comes to ice skating. This surprised me as I tried to ice skate when I was little and never really did master the skill. I was that awkward one you see out on the rink, hands straight out to the sides, ankles bending inward, slowly trying to make it across the rink without falling on my face.

Whatever the case, everyone seems to be happy. The kids are happy that they are finally learning how to skate [they have been asking to learn now for 2 years], The Mr. is happy that the boys are well on their way to becoming little hockey players, and I am happy simply because the boys were fortunate enough to not inherit my horrible ice skating skills.

AVA'S MUSINGS

Lately, Ava has become very fond of writing out sentences and drawing a nice picture to accompany that sentence. This is all fine and good as it helps her learn how to write and spell better, but when her little mind gets a running she tends to come up with some less than appealing things to say.

I have seen such things as "Lucas is not my friend anymore", "I hate Lucas" [she got in a big ol' heap of trouble for this one], "Lucas is a meany", "Lucas is a poopy head", etc. etc. All of these little sentences were obviously written out of anger after she had gotten into a fight with her younger brother. Nevertheless, they are not nice things to say.

This behavior has landed her in the time out chair, in her room for quiet time, and even ended in T.V. privelages being taken away (no icarly for an evening can really hit a 6 year old where it hurts). I have told her over and over again to stop as it hurts her brothers feelings. I have even given her the how-would-you-feel-if someone-did-that-to-you speech. Obviously this has all been to no avail, as the notes just keep on coming.

Yesterday I was vacuuming when I heard Lucas crying and yelling "That is not nice Ava!" Followed by an evil sounding laughter coming from the mouth of Miss Ava. I stopped the vacuuming in order to go investigate as to why Lucas was so worked up. When I walked into the kitchen, I saw Lucas holding up a piece of paper. I quickly read what it said and was for a moment stunned. I composed myself rather quickly and ran into a speech about how inappropriate that was and followed up by asking where in God's name she would have learned something like that.

Ava stared at me in disbelief and said, "Geeze, Mom, it is funny. I just said Lucas has hairy eyeballs!"

Either my mind was in the gutter, or I was just to busy with my vacuuming to read carefully. I thought the note said "Lucas has hairy balls." So you see why I was so worked up at first, right? I think what threw me off was the incorrect spelling of eyeballs as "I balls". My eyes must have skipped right over that "I" and just went straight to the "balls."

At any rate, she was still given a little talking to for writing something mean about her brother. But I do have to say, I was relieved that I had misread that note as I am not sure how I would have handled that one.

MISS INDEPENDENT

Liv is going through a little bit of a difficult stage as of late. If you are a mother, I am sure you know of this ever so lovely one. The one where they decide they want to do everything for themselves without an ounce of your help.

This is all fine and good, except that every time she attempts something that is impossible for a gal her age to accomplish she gets very, very frustrated. This frustration eventually forces her to give up on the task at hand and most often ends in her throwing herself on the ground in an all out temper tantrum. And these are not your standard run o' the mill tantrums, these are tantrums of mass proportions. The crying slowly starts, then she adds a little stomping of the feet to the crying, then the crying grows louder and louder until she is all out screaming, which then leads to her plopping her little butt down on the ground and flailing about. Bad, right? And it can get worse believe it or not - sometimes she will actually lay down on the ground and kick her arms and legs about like a crazy woman while doing all of the things mentioned above.

So you see, she really goes all out when she has a tantrum.

Lately, I have been putting her in the time out chair in order for her to start learning that this behaviour is not acceptable; and it is working. Don't get me wrong, the tantrums still happen, but after spending a minute in the time out chair, she gets down, comes over to me, gives me a big ol' squeeze and plops a big wet one on my cheek. So she gets it.

Anyway, today was one of those days where she decided to have one of those tantrums of hers, and it all revolved around her attempting to get dressed all by herself.

Here she is, teddy bear butt and all, attempting to put her dress on.

Did not work out so well so she threw it on the ground and walked away. A few minutes later she went back to pick it up and try again, and again was not successful.

Surprisingly, she simply gave up and stood in the kitchen with her eyes glued to the T.V. Apparently she was very into watching The View.

All was well in the world, until she decided she was not happy about being unable to get that dress on and the tantrum ensued. And it was a doozy - she had herself so worked up. So worked up that tears were streaming down her face, boogers were running out of her nose and landing right in her mouth and she did not even miss a beat.

As I sit here typing this, she is still running around the house in her little teddy bear butt tights and nothing else. Frankly, this is just fine with me, as I don't even want her to lay her eyes on that dress that started that Godforsaken tantrum in the first place.

Before I know it she will learn how to dress herself, and do all of the other many things that get her tantrums up and running in full force. One day.

Patience is a virtue - I have to keep telling myself that.

GETTING BACK INTO THE SWING OF THINGS

I am hoping to get back into this whole blogging on a regular basis thing soon. I think having the kids and the Mr. home for over a week sort of threw me off a bit. In the sense that I had tons more stuff to do than usual - the same sort of stuff, just more of it. You know, the cooking, cleaning, laundry, breaking up of fights, entertaining 4 bored children, etc, etc.

Now that the kids are back to school (thank the Lord), I can start to get back to business as usual.

I will start by saying that we had a wonderful Christmas, and that Santa was especially good to everyone, even in the midst of this recession.

The kids got everything their little hearts desired. Ava received the ever coveted Ivy (Julie's best friend), Miss Liv got her rocking horse she was pining after,

Anthony was beside himself when he opened the Indiana Jones 2 Wii game, so much so that he was found kissing it.

Lucas received his snow board that he has been keeping very busy with outside attempting to master making it down the hill without falling down.

They all also received the much sought after pillow pets from Santa which really topped of Christmas for them.

As for Me, I received a very sweet card from the Mr. that brought a tear or two on,

a Keurig coffee maker that I love, love, love,

and some gardening tools for my vegetable garden I am going to attempt to plant this spring. The Mr. received some much needed new clothes (my attempt at getting him to stop wearing those Godforsaken Rivermarinas sweatshirts everywhere we go.) Some nice lowball glasses, and a nose hair trimmer (his request.)

Needless to say, everyones wishes were fulfilled, and everyone was happy. Very, very happy.

The Mr. and I brought in the new year by dropping the kids off at Grandma and Papa's for the evening, having a very nice dinner at Domacin Wine Bar, stopping in at WalMart to do some grocery shopping for our trip to the cabin the next day, and rounding out the night by snuggling up in bed and watching a movie. We laughed at how we spent our New Years evening, remembering New Year's past where we stayed up partying until all hours which resulted in battling horrible hangovers the next day. Hah! Funny how things change over the years, right?

So that was our Christmas and New Year celebration in a nut shell. 2009 was a very good year, and I know that 2010 has many more good things in store for this family of ours.