Itches

It's THAT time of year, the kids are back in school and yep, the "head lice letter" came home from school a week ago.

 Now,  the past few years it's been the letter and one or two students who you hear about who have it and within a few days it's all gone. Not this year, a week later and more and more students are dropping like lice eggs. 4 kids in the twins class were sent home today, one of whom had a birthday party at her house on Saturday that, oh joy, the twins were at.

I checked princesses hair yesterday, I checked it today, so far nothing, but she says her head itches! Well welcome to the club, my head itches, my face itches, DH's head itches and he has no hair on it! Can anyone say psychosomatic? Hell even the monster dog seems to be itching! Oh that's not a good thought, can dogs catch lice? Guess what I am off to Google....be right back.....

Aaaaand I'm back, phew no apparently lice are species specific, so I won't need to be delousing the dog if the worst happens.
For now though I am going to hope for the best and try not to scratch, and sorry if I made you itch, go on, scratch your head, you know you want to.

Underwear

Why do we wear it?

 Not that I am advocating for us all to suddenly lose it all, although it would make make life interesting. I was asked this question by Diggle.

 You see he hates wearing underwear! He loves to go commando. I leave his clothes out for him in the morning so that when he wakes up he can get dressed for school and meet me downstairs for breakfast.  I know I leave underwear there, and yet somehow they never make it onto him.  I find them discarded, hidden behind the chair in his room. I asked him why, his reply? He says he does not like wearing them, and he does not understand why we should have to wear them. He is wearing pants and the pants go in the wash basket when he takes them off. It's a perfectly logical argument, I agree. However society dictates we wear them. 

Who am I though to stifle my sons creative genius. Ok I admit that may be reaching a little there, but seriously I have never been one to play by the rules, so what do I do? Agree with his logical reasoning, (it's not like anyone knows he is not wearing underwear under his jeans), or lay down the law and do an underwear check before leaving for school in the morning?
Yes, I am going the underwear check route.... Cause while it may be cute that a 7 year old is commando, when he is 16 or 18 it won't be so cute and I don't even want to go there!

Maybe there is time still to train him.

I'm Back!!

Wow, I suck at blogging!  Or at least I sucked at it over summer.  This summer seemed a lot busier than the past years.  We did lots of camping trips, the kids were older and more open to reason, (or perhaps took my threats more seriously?) and overall the summer seemed to fly past quickly.

We did a total of 6 camping trips, got to see moose, bears, raccoon (who knew the plural of that is raccoon?  spell check just taught me something - should I be embarrassed?) and even did a fair bit of canoeing and fishing.  I never fed any of my family or the monster dog to the bears and we all made it home  in one piece...pretty successful I think!

I now have (and for the past month have had) 8 people living in my house.  4 adults and 4 children....its crowded and noisy but for the most part has run pretty smoothly.  The twins are loving the extra friends, that are their cousins in the house and although their room looks like a dormitory they are all coping with it quite well.  There are also distinct advantages to having two Moms in the house, if one is not around the other will feed and tend to the kids and even yell and threaten the kids, and who knew, sometimes kids listen to the Aunty Moms threats a little closer than their own Mom.

Anyway the reason I am back now is.......they are back at school, I can think again!  I can even go grocery shopping in peace and today I took a nice long walk with the monster dog and my iPod and did not wonder if the house would still be standing when I got home!

I think fall is my favorite season!  The days are cooler, the nights crisp, the leaves change to pretty colours and the kids are back in school....yes fall is definitely my favorite!

How to look unprofessional in 5 minutes

Well I should have known better, but I had been trying to chat with a work colleague for over a week now, and we had some important stuff to hash out, so when she messages me and said can we chat now, I ignored the fact that my niece and nephew were here with my kids and said sure. The first half of the call was fine, then the phone rang (I was on Skype) and it was my SIL, so I asked my colleague to hold on a sec as I needed to know when the kids were getting picked up. While that is happening Diggle gets his fingers slammed in the door. Add much screaming to the calls, my SIL yelled I'll be there ASAP and hung up.

I managed to calm Diggle down a bit and sent all the kids down to find ice for his fingers and tried to resume the call. Now add in the kids yelling up to me that they can't find ice.....sigh...the colleague does not have kids she probably thinks I'm a bad parent for yelling back, tough then you're going to have to wait! We got back to the call....then the phone rang, it's DH, so I hit ignore and sent it to the answering machine. So he leaves a message and straight away calls my cell. At which point I gave up and told my colleague that we were done and I would call back with anything further.

Now as much as I insist to her that this was NOT a normal occurrence at my house and that I can usually be professional when there are only two kids around, she does not have kids, hands up how many people think she really believes that?

Running in the rain and jiggly bits

I ran my second official 5K today.  Woke up to thunder and lightning and torrential downpours.  And while that was  a nice break from the ridiculous heat we have been having it was not great knowing that I was about to head out for a run.

Fortunately my running buddy did not bail on me, and her showing up ready to run made me go ahead with the plans.  It in fact turned out not bad.  It rained lightly during the run, and got pretty hot and humid towards the end, but I took a full 2 minutes off my last run time, so I was ok with that.  I felt my knee twinge a little at the 4k mark, and was a little concerned since both the physio and Dr have warned me that I can easily blow out my knee as I have never quite corrected all the damage done to my ankle since I had all the pins and screws put in, but it held out. Both my knee and ankle are a little sore at the moment, but nothing they wont recover from with a few days rest.

The downside to the light rain was DH did not take his camera....although I will give kudos to him and the kids for still coming to watch and support us.  I gave them the easy out and told them they could stay at home, but they chose to come and stand there with umbrellas and cheer us on.  Anyway with him not bringing his camera, I only have one picture to prove I ran, it was snapped on DH's cell phone as I am about 10m away from finishing, and although I am smiling, (the kids were hanging over the railing on the side waiting to high 5 me), I look huge...its horribly unflattering....so no pictures will appear online from todays race!

I think I will give running a bit of a rest, like slow down to once a week for a bit and try and squeeze some p90x workouts in to try and firm up some of the jiggly bits.  Jiggly bits??  Yes that's exactly what Princess said to me the other day when I was outside tanning.  In a loud voice she announced "Mommy your belly is jiggly!"  I think I heard the neighbour snigger on the other side of the fence....

I actually did something wild this week, I bought a bikini!  No, don't anyone panic.  I have no intention of wearing it out in public.  I thought that while the kids are splashing in the pool in the backyard I would try and tan my ghostly white stomach for a change....my thinking is that tanned jiggly bits may look better than white jigglys?  Why I worry about that I have not idea, its not like anyone actually sees that except DH, and he knows better than to say anything, especially if he ever wants to get laid again in his lifetime.

Anyway hence the need to perhaps start the p90x, maybe if I can lose another 20lbs and firm up the jiggly bits, one day I may just be able to wear that bikini out in public!

Ahhh Summer!

3.5 days of school left!! I am feeling a little anxious about the summer.  Its not that my kids are naughty or even require a lot of attention.  Its that they are home and I feel guilty for not giving them the attention.  I feel like I should be taking them places, doing things, entertaining them, playing with them.  My downfall is that I am not one of THOSE moms.  You know the perfect Mom who does all of the above, or at least says they do all of the above and loves to tell everyone what fun they have with their kids everyday.  In retrospect I really should have thought harder about this whole parenthood thing before I committed to it.  I wanted kids, I really did.  Hell I paid enough to get my kids!  Its just sometimes I don't know if I am cut out for this.  However let me say and make this perfectly clear....I love my kids, I would not change it for the world now that I have them, they are the best kids in the world, and I have every faith that they are going to do amazing things with their lives. (As long as Princess never decides to take up dancing!)

I suppose I must be doing something right.  My kids are not brats and most people tell me they love them.  They are polite, they listen, they rarely have meltdowns (I could probably count on one hand the number of times anything like that has happened) and they are very loving and understanding of me when I tell them I am busy working.  So reading this you must all think I am a terrible Mom.  Why would I not want to spend my summer doing fun things with them?  The answer is...I don't know.....I just like my own free time, I'm selfish I know.  To be brutally honest I find it draining to have to do stuff and go places and watch them all the time to ensure they are safe and not in danger.  Even grocery shopping becomes more taxing, and more expensive, I find myself agreeing to buy things just to bribe them and get through the trip quicker, and sometimes out of guilt that I never treat them enough compared to their friends.

Now don't get me wrong, its not like I never do anything with them, we go camping, we do lots of trips over the summer, we canoe, we bike ride, we spend time on the beach and I love it.  BUT I also love it when I can have some quiet time, some time to myself when I don't have to worry about who is doing what, who needs lunch, who is outside playing in the street, and where is the other one, and then with the constant opening and closing of the front door...has anyone let the monster dog out into the street, cause if so we are all in trouble.

Regardless I am going to try this summer to be a better parent.  To take them to the splash pad, to let them have friends over for play dates, and if it means I have to work more in the evenings and have less time to read and relax then so be it.  I will try and look at the positives, no more rushing in the morning to get everyone breakfast and get lunches made. Peanut butter is again an allowed food selection for lunch and of course no more last minute trying to get homework done 5 minutes before walking out the door in the morning!    Of course....that does not mean that I will not be happy when that first week school in September gets here!


And yes I am aware the above paragraph is hi-lighted in white...I have no idea why, and I don't feel like deleting it and retyping it!

random musings

Firstly let me apologize for the lack of posts.  In fact I have had so little time lately I have not even been reading the blogs I follow, and have a good 27 or so posts to catch up on.  I started a new job, well sort of new.  Its a volunteer position that I had been doing since March, but have ended up being promoted? taking on a whole bunch more responsibility.  Sadly I have come to realize that when I am doing a job I enjoy, I am a little bit of a work-a-holic.  Hence the lack of blog posts.

I have no real topic to write about today, so will give you some random musings.

• I have the strangest dog.  Her taste buds extend past shoes, plastic and dolls. She goes frantic over bananas and watermelon too!  
• I have finally lost it with being woken at the crack of dawn by giggling and loud talking.  (always by the Princess - but they both get the blame as she would not be awake if Diggle did not wake her up!)  Therefore from today they lose out on treats everyday I get woken before my alarm clock. - They were not impressed when told this 1st thing morning.  Lets hope for my sanity and beauty sleep that it works!
• I think I have lost my mind cause I signed up to run another 5K, this time in two weeks, middle of summer, and I don't do well in the heat!  I am praying for a cold front to sweep through on this weekend!
• I am  feeling old!  All the people I work with are younger than me.  I guess its a good thing I won the weekly draw from a fancy skin care place this week...maybe they have a miracle anti-aging cream that can take 10 years off me.
• The kids have a future in crime.  Well cyber crime.  I heard them discussing in great detail how to hack into the school system to see the teachers network???  They are 7!! What?
• 4.5 school days left till summer break!  2 whole months, 9 weeks of the kids at home!  I don't need to say more on this topic do I?  You may be getting more blog posts out of me, either that or I will be locked away in a padded cell before long.

• 7 weeks till my household jumps from 4 to 8.  Yes we are getting another two kids and two adults.  Should be fun?  My brother is immigrating, so his family and him need a place to stay till they have jobs and find themselves a house.  Padded cell anyone?  - It's looking more and more inviting.....no I jest (or do I?) I love my brother and have not seen him in about 6 years so I can't wait to have them living close. I may have to give them names for the blog though!