Two Toddlers Two Kittens and a Partridge in a Christmas Tree

We are experiencing a strange Christmas phenomenon at our house this holiday season. Our Christmas trees won't stay decorated. Every morning when we get up they are undecorated and we rehang the ornaments and get the lights working before we leave the house for the day, then before we go to bed at night we have to decorate the darn things again. Now we have been doing this since the day after Thanksgiving and it is getting OLD. We all knew having 2 new kittens and 2 toddlers in the house that it wouldn't be easy to get them to leave the trees alone, but we felt certain that they would get tired of messing with them by now. Yes, we could spank the kids and the kittens for tearing it up every day, but they are just curious babies and it's their tree too. The Hub whom likes to be prepared for anything was smart to wire both trees so they would not fall over.The Hub can't stand a preventable disaster!
   Last Christmas on Christmas day we went to spend time with family at my sisters house. Her three kids last year were 6, 4 and 2 years old. Her Christmas tree looked like it had been run over by a truck, shook real hard and then abused some more for good measure. I asked her why her tree looked so bad and she told me that the kids and the dog had knocked it completely over 3 times, and once the two boys were pushing each other and the younger one ended up in the tree breaking several branches. They should have wired their tree.
  Well, when I wake up in the morning I'm sure I will step on the various ornaments that the kittens knocked off the tree and played with all night. Then when I come home from work tomorrow I will see what the grand kids couldn't resist any longer, and now grandpa has in his (to be super glued) collection because it is now broken. Luckily, we were smart enough to hang the important ornaments high on the trees and no one is losing their mind over how the trees look. Some people can be very annal about this kind of thing. No tree or ornament is more important than the children's happiness, we will even put up with those 2 darn kittens. THAT'S HOW MUCH WE LOVE THEM!!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

It says in the opening statement for my blog that we are all trying to get along so we can be apart of our grandchildren's daily life's. This week the Princess had her daycare teacher put on her turkey that she is thankful for her grandma and grandpa. SO worth it!. But last Friday night I had plans to go out and the parents had plans for me to baby sit, which they had not asked me about and had just assumed that I had no life so I would do it. NOT Worth it. Together grandpa and I have changed the little Prince's diet and started him on dietary supplements because of his autism. I work with him daily now and we can see some improvement. SO worth it. The PARENTS still don't do their fare share of the dishes or litter box cleaning, but I get to read bed time stories to both kids every night and get all the hugs and kisses a grandparent could ever ask for. Living together like life and marriage and so many other worth while things is a matter of give and take. It isn't always easy, but it is always worth it. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

The Unexpected Things In Life

You never know what life is going to deal you. Some cards are dealt and you say wow that was incredibly lucky that I drew that card. That would be the class I get to teach third grade to this year. The nicest group of students I have ever had. I look forward to every day with them, and though I know teachers are suppose to feel this way about every class they have, truth be told most don't because a few children that have horrible behavior ruin everything you try to do every day they come to school. Then sometimes you get dealt a card that seems terribly unfair such as the dreaded CANCER card. And on occasion you are dealt a card in life that  makes you say, Man I didn't see that coming and now what do we do?" Our little Prince that wouldn't walk until 18 months and doesn't talk much seems to be autistic. Luckily, he is very sweet and does let us hold him, but he doesn't communicate. Even at 2 years old he won't tell us he is hungry or thirsty. And he flaps like a baby bird trying to fly out of the nest. SO now I am like a grandma on high alert, I am manning the battle stations. He gets speech therapy and play therapy and I am pushing to get him behavior therapy.
I am also reading books on diet changes that might help and enzyme treatments. Yes, I didn't see it coming, but now that it is here I will do everything possible to help my little fellow. I know we all will because that what family has to do when less than fortunate cards are dealt, especially to a child!

Little Squirrel Nutkin

The Prince that won't eat his food has found something at daycare that he loves to chew on and he is driving his teachers crazy. He chews on (acorns)! He packs his cheeks full of them until he looks like a hamster planning to run away from home at night fall. When you go to hug him at school acorns pop out of his mouth like he is a gumball machine that someone just put some money into. Even when they go inside from the playground and should be in an acorn free zone, the boy still manges to find at least one acorn to pop into his mouth. We have tried everything to make him stop putting acorns in his mouth, they are after all a choking hazard, but he won't stop. I got the brilliant idea to make a container that he could collect them in, but after he pushed the acorn through the top he couldn't get them back out. The other kids loved collecting acorns and pushing them into the special container, the Prince still preferred popping them into his mouth best of all. I'm not sure what we are going to do with our little Squirrel Nutkin, but I did make sure that all the teacher's have a current CPR card at the daycare, just in case!

To Eat or Not to Eat That is the Question

The Princess is a "foody". Grandpa cooks for the whole family nearly every night and Grandpa is a very good cook. Tonight he made a recipe with a special kind of goats cheese and the Princess flat out said "that stuff stinks!" Now she eats very well for a three year old and is not the least bit fat because she bounces, jumps, and talks all her extra calories off. And when she likes something every one knows it because you can hear her saying mmmm, yum this is so good, or this is delicious. Yes, she does use the word delicious because she is after all a 3 year old  foody. I couldn't even tell you her favorite food because she loves so many things, (yet another sign of a true foody).
    Her brother, the Prince on the other hand hates everything. He approaches each meal as if he is entering an enemy camp. His fork is held tightly in his hand incase he has to kill something or quickly flip something on to the floor, not because he intends to eat with it. Occasionally he will decide to eat something on his plate, but ALL the other things on his plate must get off  before they contaminate the CHOSEN ONE. So he takes one finger and flips all the things he feels he would never eat, not even if he were a starving child in Africa, quickly on to the floor. This is aggravating to us, but a pure joy for our 4 cats which know this rain of food happens at least 3 times a day and all they have to do is sit and wait for it to begin. A friend of mine suggested a cook book that tells you how to make food that has nutrition hidden in it. Such as vegetables in hamburger patties. I laughed and said if they don't tell you how to hide nutrition in a McDonald's chicken nugget Happy Meal then that book won't help us at all. I often wonder how can two kids from the same parents be so different?

Laundry Disasters

CW was feeling bad today because she had a small laundry disaster. She washed her new red sheets with a couple of white towels and a t-shirt. I told her not to feel bad that nearly everyone has a laundry disaster story of their own to tell. When I was a young newly wed I had a love affair with bleach. My husband was in the restaurant business at the time and I was determined that his white pants and shirts would always be crisp and clean. What I didn't know was that it only takes a small amount of bleach to accomplish this and I always thought more was better until one day when my husband put on his work pants and they literally disintegrated as he zipped them up. I also had a few bad accidents with getting bleach on things that weren't white, which is never a good thing. At one point my husband actually told me not to wash his work clothes and to please not touch the bottle of bleach ever again. I actually often look at the bottle of bleach still to this day and think I wonder what would happen if I poured a little in with my underwear or my sheets and then I reach for it and a little voice inside my head says NO DON"T DO IT!!! So I usually don't touch it thank God I have recovered from this terrible affliction enough to put the bottle down. My sister also known as Aunt B says one of her worst laundry disasters was when she accidentally washed a disposable diaper in with her baby's clothes. She said it came apart and turned into sticky lent that would not come off the kid's clothes. She also said that she hates that you don't know that you have washed crayons with your kid's clothes until the clothes come out of the dryer, and then you know you have a big problem. She had a laundry disaster recently that was caused by her potty training 2 year old. He went to the men's room with his dad and experienced a urinal for the first time. Later that day Aunt B put clothes in the dryer and when the clothes came out of the dryer they all smelled like urine. The 2 year old admitted that he had peed in her dryer. And here is one last laundry disaster story told to me today by a friend at work. She said that this past winter that she had purchased 3 lovely white super soft throw blankets for her family to use. One day she decided to wash them and she threw them in with a batch of white towels. She didn't realize that she had a laundry disaster on her hands until her husband dried off with one of the towels and ended up looking like the abominable snowman. He was covered in white lint from head to toe, it was even stuck all in his whiskers on his face. It was kind of funny to her, not so much for him. As I told CW everyone has a laundry disaster story.

Screaming With Cats

If you have been keeping up with my blog you might have read about the super powers of toddlers, and  you might recall that the Princess has the super power of THE SONIC SCREAM. Now that she has turned three, I must say that she has nearly perfected the SONIC SCREAM. I am sure you have heard kids scream before when they have wanted something they couldn't have or things didn't go their way, but those kids usually scream words like "I WANT IT" or "IT'S MY TURN". Our Princess uses the SONIC SCREAM to punctuate her demands or commands and there is no words involved. She sucks in a deep breath and then screams in a high octave that nearly shatters glass, for longer than a well trained opera singer could ever hold a high note. IT IS KILLER on the eardrums. I actually kind of envy her. How many times in your life have things gone wrong and you just wish you could scream at the top of your lungs  for a few minutes. We might all live longer if we did. The Princess did learn one valuable lesson this past week, and that is that screaming with a kitten in you arms is a really bad idea. Princess holds one of our new kittens so much that she sort of forgets that she has her in her lap. This week while holding the kitten she asked her mother for something and was told the dirty 2 letter word that the Princess never wants to hear, NO! So she repeated her request and then punctuated it with the SONIC SCREAM. It scared the heck out of the sleeping kitten and sure startled the Princess when those claws went up her front and down her back. I think they call this in child development a natural consequence. I wish I could report that as a result of this event that she has stopped screaming, but she hasn't. I wish I could  tell you that she at least learned not to scream while holding a cat, but she did it again yesterday. I will tell you that we send her to her room when she screams and after a short while in her room she always strolls out looking fresh and completely composed and says "I am OK now guys.  I usually respond, with something like, well thank goodness I was really worried about you. As if she was recovering from sort of out break. Some days it's hard not to laugh.

Bloody Feet

Recently CW and our Son went to Epcot Center. This was a behind the scene tour that was work related for Son, but he was welcome to bring CW with him. He told CW that there would be a lot of walking involved and that it would be hot. When it was time to leave their hotel for the tour CW came down stairs in high heeled shoes. My Son said honey go up stairs and put on some different shoes, or you are going to be miserable. CW said, "I am not changing my shoes, I will be fine, Let's just GO!" So off to Epcot they went. After about half an hour CW started to quietly grumble that her feet hurt. After about an hour she was desperately trying to find some place to sit down every few feet. After 2 hours she said I can't walk any more in these shoes. Son said, Oh do your feet hurt? Well that's too bad. After 3 hours she begged Son to buy her a different pair of shoes to wear. He said if we can find some that aren't too expensive I will get you some. Then he offered to take off his socks so she could try wearing his socks to keep her shoes from rubbing on her feet. Needless to say the whole time she is suffering Son is delighting in it because CW is always extremely hard  headed and doesn't take advice from anyone usually. Finally, after about 4 hours she tried walking in just the socks with her shoes off. She had blisters the size of large grapes popping up on her feet and she was beyond cranky. They wanted to ride one more ride before leaving Epcot and while standing in line a young zit faced  Disney employee that was in charge of the line for the ride told CW to put her shoes back on.  CW said, my feet are bleeding and I am not putting my shoes back on! The park employee threatened to call security if she didn't put her shoes on. CW glared at the punk and said when you call security tell them to bring something to take me out to my car because I am not walking if I don't have to. AND you better go back to your little line leader job before you get in trouble. As they were leaving the park they saw a stand with flip flops and CW got an over priced pair of pink Minnie Mouse flip flops. Hopefully, she learned a lesson about being so hard headed, though I highly doubted it!

NEW KITTENS

We had a sad thing happen in our family recently. Our 16 year old cat got cancer and when it got bad for her we had to have her put to sleep. She was my son's cat and he had her since he was about 10 years old. He was heart broken over the whole situation. He couldn't even bring himself to deal with it when the time came to put her down. So his dad and I took care of it. However, I thought how sad it is to leave with a cat in the pet carrier and then come home with it empty, so I brought home a kitten that the vet had rescued from under a dumpster. He was a pitiful tiny fellow that really needed a good home so I took him to our home were kids and cats rule. Now, some people think we should have taken more time to grieve over the loss of the old kitty, but we had been sad about her the whole time we watched the cancer take its toll on her and I felt it was time for a new kitty. When CW saw the new kitten she complained that she wanted a kitten too. CW had been wanting a kitten or a puppy for sometime now, but none of us believed she would take care of it. We asked her if she were to get a kitten, did she promise to take care of it and clean up after it and of course she said that she would. BIG SURPRISE! So we went to the local animal shelter and adopted another kitten. So now we have 2 new kittens. I really don't believe CW is going to clean the litter box twice daily as a matter of fact we have had the kittens for a few days now and she already can't seem to remember to clean it. Maybe I can teach the 3 year old Princess to do it for her. The Princess already keeps her room cleaner than her mom's. Who knows maybe the Princess is responsible enough to take care of a kitten.

Off To School?

Today was the first day CW and Son had to get up and on their own get both kids ready for daycare and themselves ready for work so they could all get out of the house by a certain time. Up to this point the little Prince has not gone to daycare (Grandpa or a babysitter has taken care of him at home) and all summer Grandma has taken care of both kids. Grandma is a teacher and alas I must go back to work.
Aunt B. gave CW a little advise over the weekend. She has 3 young children of her own to deal with every morning. She advised CW to get clothes out the night before including shoes, get up before the kids if you need time for yourself, to blog, look at Face Book or mess with your hair and have anything that needs to go out the door with you in a bag or in back packs by the front door, She said, "You have to be organized!"
Well, I will give CW credit for this she is consistent. She consistently has shown over and over again that she will not take advice from anyone. To her credit they were all up and dressed in plenty of time this morning. She didn't however put the 3year old I spent all summer potty training on the potty and she left her in her pull up from bedtime. Then I heard CW yelling because she couldn't find the Prince's shoes, and then after they were all loaded in the van it occurred to her that for the Prince's first day of daycare he might need a few things so she runs back in the house and frantically started collecting things like diapers and a sippy cup. Luckily for her I came around the corner in time to tell her that I had already taken everything the kids need at daycare to the daycare last week. All they had to do was drop off the 2 children!
Now I will add that Son isn't perfect either. I have told him for several weeks that we have an issue with who has the 2 vehicles with the car seats. I need one because I do pick up from daycare every day and I am the one in town closest to the kids in case of an emergency, but they both work out of town now and the car they like to drive doesn't have any car seats in it. So at 7:00 AM on Monday morning Son says there aren't any car seats in the car we usually drive to work. Well, DAH!!!

TOO BUSY!

Well, I am a bad blogger, I have been so busy taking care of my grandchildren this summer that I have had time for little else. We put up a large tent in the back yard to keep the sun off of us and put a small wadding pool, sand box and their painting easel inside the tent, along with a chair and a fan for me. We have spent a good chunk of every day outside under the tent. I planted sunflowers and zinnias with the kids a few months ago. We have dried the sunflower seeds to feed the birds and have cut zinnias all summer to make arrangements for the house. A friend came to visit and asked the Princess what she had planted in her garden and she looked at him like he was stupid and said "seeds". We had great grandma to dinner and she asked the Princess what are we having for dinner? The Princess said, "I think food". Gotta love little kids.

Thank God for Good Grandparents

The Hub and I have been gradually learning over the past few years that there are a lot of young people that don't know how to do a lot of stuff that almost all of us (50 and over at least) had to learn when we were growing up. Now granted this younger generation can slay fictional bad guys, and dragons on a video game better than any previous generation and boy can they text message, but a lot of what this younger generation is good at has no real world application, and part of the blame for this goes to the parents of these young people. It is easier to let a kid sit in front of a TV, or a computer playing a game than it is to take them outside and teach them how to fix a car or to grow a garden. It's easier to let your kid text message friends or surf the Internet for hours than it is to teach them to sew, cook real food or to even properly do their own laundry.
Teaching your child to do things that they don't usually learn in school takes several things from a parent. First, the parents have to give up their free time to spend it with their kid teaching them how to do things. Second, the parent needs to be willing to allow the child to have a little freedom to try the new skill they are learning without fear that the parent will get upset if they mess something up. Third the child has to be in a stable enough home that they have time and a place to work on these new skills. OR they need really good grandparents living close by to teach them all these things. Luckily, for my grandchildren the garage is pretty close.
When I was growing up my mother allowed me to use her sewing machine to create and sew Barbie doll clothes for my Barbie and later to sew things for myself. If the thread got jammed in the bobbin she would have to come and fix it, but she didn't usually fuss at me. I don't really like to cook that much, but I love to bake. I went through a stage where I wanted to make cakes from scratch. They sometimes were good but occasionally they turned out flat, or just down right nasty, but my parents didn't stop me from trying. I learned to knit well enough to knit a few things. I Macraméd a bunch of potted plant holders. I grew various things outside in the summer. Most of which died. I painted my bedroom by myself and picked out wallpaper with psychedelic butterflies on it and hung it by myself. I could play every common card game or board game there was at that time. Because my mother and other grown ups spent time with me and showed me how to do these things. When I was growing up kids were shown how to unclog the toilet, and how to put radiator fluid in their car,and other simple car and house hold repairs as well.
The problem is now we have a generation of adults that don't know how to do hardly anything like this for themselves and they can no longer afford to pay someone to fix every little thing for them because times are tough. AND I blame their parents.
Our own beloved CW didn't know how to properly do laundry when she joined our family,she has poor organizational skills because of being dragged from home to home and she claims she can cook, but she really doesn't know how to cook any kind of raw meat or most fresh vegetables. She admitted yesterday that she had never snapped green beans or shucked fresh peas. She thought it was some sort of raised in the south skill, which she was not privy to due to living mostly up north!
My mother is still alive and teaching grandchildren to sew and bake. And I will be sure to teach my grandchildren everything I can before I leave this planet. Maybe what I teach them will turn out to be just something they do for fun or as a hobby, or it maybe something that they need to do and doing it themselves saves them money during a financially tough time. But hopefully many years from now when I am gone they will think about me as they do the things I have taught them and remember that grandma loved teaching them new things and spending time with them.

Turning 50

Well, I recently had a birthday and turned 50. I normally have a crisis every 10 years on the birthdays ending with zero. When I turned 20 I was depressed because I wanted to have a baby. That happened when I was 24. Then when I turned 30 I was depressed because I never finished my BA degree, that happened when I turned 38. Then when I turned 40 I guess I was depressed because it had become a tradition with me by then(actually I can't remember exactly why I was depressed, but I think it was the whole now I'm middle aged thing). So you might ask, what was I depressed about this birthday? And the answer is NOTHING!
Oh, my life isn't perfect and I could have probably made myself depressed if I had dwelled on all the things in my life I am not exactly thrilled about, for example I live in a renovated 2 car garage for heavens sake, my hair is completely gray(all of it), my boobs and my belly button are best friends now because they hang around with each other so much and I often feel grateful that MOST of the teeth in my mouth are still mine. BUT I am also old enough to know that we don't live forever, and we don't know what the future hold. So I decided I wasn't going to waste a day that I could spend loving my family and being happy, by worrying about stuff I have no control over(like gravity). I also feel 50 is old and young enough to be a grandparent, which is the most important thing in my life these days.
So in short, I had a nice birthday, it was spent with family and that is all that matters!

It's Mother's Day and I need a Nap!

Here is a little bit of a down side to living in the same house as the grandchildren. At 3 AM the little Prince was screaming so loud that I got up to see what the problem was. His mom was trying to get him back to sleep, but he wouldn't settle down. As soon as he saw me he grabbed hold of me and wasn't letting go. So off to my bed I went with the 19 month old. He is teething and he has been very cranky. He rolled around in our bed clawing me with his scratchy little hamster nails for about an hour. Finally, I got back to sleep at about 4:30 AM. Then about 5:00 AM my bedroom door flies open and the Princess announces herself and tells me she has monsters and ghost in her room so she will be sleeping with us for the rest of the night. I gently and quietly tell her that her baby brother is already in our bed so perhaps mommy and daddy's bed might be a better option for her. She seriously says move him over and I brought Sponge Bob (a medium sized stuffed Sponge Bob doll) and he needs to sleep with us too. Well, I was able to make enough room for her to sleep on the outside edge, but Sponge Bob kept falling out of bed. And every time he fell out she would wake up and exclaim "Oh no, Sponge Bob fell out of bed, we have to get him". After about an hour of this silliness, she says I need breakfast.
Now I normally get up about 6:00 AM, but it is Sunday and Mother's Day so I really wanted to sleep until at least say, 7:00 AM. I ask her to please go back to sleep for awhile, but she's wasn't having it and then she told me that she was very hungry. I remembered at that point that she had not eaten very well at dinner time the evening before so guilt that she might actually be really super hungry gnawed at my brain until I said OK lets get up. As, I left my King sized bed I looked back and saw the Hub and the Prince spreading out to enjoy the space now available to them and I thought that must be nice. Now I wish I could say I wasn't sorry that I got up extra early with the Princess, but she quickly made me very sorry that I had gotten up with her. She didn't like the options we had for breakfast, then shoved the plate away and pouted. She then decided we should watch Blue's Clues. She didn't even eat! I felt Hoodwinked by a 2 year old that just wanted to get up early so she could watch TV and it irritated me. YES, it was my own fault, But sometimes Grandparents are SUCKERS!

Old Folks

Well, I'm busted CW found out about my blog. I just want to say if I go missing consider her as a prime suspect. All kidding aside, I love my daughter-in-law. She has grown up a lot in the past 4 years, she is a beautiful young woman and she has a good heart. And if she makes my son happy then that is all that has ever mattered, and he loves her dearly. I might also add that most women are crazy at least some of the time and few women would put up with their in-laws living in their garage. I saw a sad thing on TV the other day where a couple had to sell everything and live with their children due to sever health issues that had caused them to go bankrupt. They had worked their whole lives and put 4 kids through college. AND their children were complaining about having to have them live with them and the best they could all agree on was that every three months this poor couple would schlep their stuff to a different kid's house so no one had to take care of them for very long. It was very sad. In many cultures the oldest child is expected to take care of his/her aging parents. I don't think any other society outside the US puts as many of their elders into nursing homes. And many of our elderly spend many years of their lives stuck in some sort of home, not just a short time near the end of their lives. My son and daughter-in -law swear they will never put me in an old folks home. BUT if they do have to put me in a home it better have cable TV, high speed Internet, an in house massage therapist and descent food, or I promise to come back and haunt them after I die.

Putting a Hole In Your Tongue. WHY?

I was standing in line at Wal-Mart when I over heard two high school age girls talking. The one was excited because her parents were going to pay for her to get her tongue pierced as a graduation present. Of all the things someone could give as a graduation gift a hole in some one's tongue would have never crossed my mind. Let me just say, I don't get it. My entire life I have always tried to avoid doing anything that might make me accidentally put a hole in my tongue or any other part of my body. SO why would anyone pay someone to put a hole in their tongue? I have talked to many people with a hole in their tongue to try to get some insight to this trend, but I have yet to get an answer that makes any sense.
CW, many of her family members and most of her friends has a hole in their tongue, and they love taking pictures together with their tongues stuck out. I think it makes most of them talk funny and they look stupid with their tongue hanging out in pictures. CW finally decided to remove the tongue barbell thingy. She also removed the ring through her lower lip a long time ago. I guess every one has to grow up sometime. I think these people with piercings enjoy pain and if that is the case I would be happy to put some holes in them for free. I keep offering,free holes to CW, but she always turns me down.

Smelly Cars

For reasons I don't have time to explain I had to switch vehicles with C.W. for a few days. Her idea not mine. C.W. doesn't like cleaning her van any more than she likes cleaning anything else so just let me say I was grateful that my trip to work is short. Driving her fairly new van that was full of junk and garbage made me think about all the people I have known and loved in my life time that drive vehicles that are like rolling garbage cans or storage containers full of junk. I also thought about the fact that car manufactures should specially design a vehicle for people that have to haul small kids around. This vehicle should be designed so you can just hose it out weekly. Everything in it should be plastic coated and stuck on with the strongest adhesive possible. And for the sake of the driver it should include one of those windows behind the driver like a limo has so the grown ups in the front seat don't have to hear what is going on behind them.
I am actually used to riding in vehicles that are smelly, sticky and full of junk since at least two of my four sisters seem to have an unspoken competition to see which one can allow their kids to mess up the interior of their cars the worst. A third sister has a neat new car these days, but when she was younger she had the scariest car of all and she didn't even have kids to help her mess it up. As a matter of fact, once when she was stopped for a routine speeding ticket (yes, I do mean a routine speeding ticket, she has gotten about 30 of them in her life time and it is quite routine for her to get them), the police officer decided to bring out a drug sniffing dog to sniff around her car. Now my sister will drive fast, but she doesn't use drugs. Well, the police dog got excited and barked at her backseat floor board area then ate something he found. The cop went nuts on my sister saying she better tell him what his dog had found and eaten. My sister said well shine the flashlight down their and let me see what he might have gotten. Then she started to laugh because the dog had eaten the rest of a Big Mack she had thrown on the floor two days earlier.
I have noticed that sometimes even people with neat clean houses will have nasty vehicles, and sometimes people with spotless shinny vehicles will have dirty houses. My car is like me. It looks old on the outside, but it runs strong and is in pretty good shape on the inside. Well I guess I need to crawl around C.W.'s van and figure out were that bad smell is coming from It shouldn't be anything too horrific since both the kids and cats are all accounted for.

There Will Be Blood!

CW is a work in progress. She has conceded that she has issues and is getting help. AND for three weeks of the month, her and I get along relatively well. I sometimes now even think of the letters CW as standing for something a bit more pleasant than crazy witch. Such as, say, creative woman,Christian warrior, or even cleaning worker (well maybe not that one) but you get the idea. BUT for that fourth week of the month, the days we have come to call the preblood dark days, the crazy witch within her will rear it's ugly head. She is snappy and mean, tired and cranky AND down right unpleasant to be around. Everything my son and I say makes her mad. YOU CAN NOT JOKE WITH OR TEASE HER!!!! We do try not to aggravate her when we know she has PMS, but everything about us aggravates her so we usually just abandon our efforts to be nice and then decide to go out of our way to piss her off. Now I know this sounds wrong and maybe even a little evil of us, but we never claimed to be perfect. AND even though the Hub doesn't technically get PMS he does seem to get in PMS like moods so we do the same thing to him. The Hub and CW have a lot in common! So one day if we wake up with a knife in our backs we will have to admit that we had it coming, but it was totally worth it!

The Super Powers of Toddlers

All toddlers have at least one super power. It is usually the POWER OF CUTE, that gets most of them, what they want, but my grandchildren have a few extra SUPER POWERS besides the POWER OF CUTE. The Princess for example, has the POWER OF SONIC SCREAM! This is a scream so loud, long and ear piercing that no ordinary human can with stand it. She also has been recently developing the POWER OF THE EXTENDED POUT! She hasn't been to pleased with the results from the extended pout, but she seems determined to work at this power until it is perfected.
The Prince on the other hand is just starting to work on his super powers. He seems to prefer the POWER OF PROLONGED NOISE! He will bang something or pound on something until the ordinary human has lost their minds. AND he is also developing the POWER OF PITIFUL FACE CRYING!
Screaming, crying, banging and lots of noise in general maybe one of the reasons why living in an extended family may not be for a lot of older folk. I know I used to love the peace and quiet of my clean empty house. I can't remember what those two things (peace and quit) were exactly, but I know I used to really enjoy it.
Our 1 year old Prince and two year old Princess are extremely noisy toddlers. Honestly, it doesn't bother me that much, but it drives the Hub crazy.The princess also has a knack for finding something to use her SONIC SCREAM about right when the Hub starts to speak. Then the Prince decides if it's time to make noise he will join in by banging stuff on the table and yelling using his POWER OF PROLONGED NOISE. Finally, when the stuff the Prince is banging is taken away from him he starts to cry the PITIFUL FACE CRY. At that point dear old Pop can't even remember what he was trying to say in the first place and thus finds yet another reason to go to WAL-MART, which he does at least once a day like clock work.

Happy Anniversary Hub

Today is a special day for me and the Hub. It is our 31st wedding anniversary. People often ask how long I have been married and then say wow, what's your secret? So I'm going to share our secret with you.
Don't get married unless you are completely no-doubts-about-it in love with the person and you are positive that they feel the same way, because true love is the only reason to get married and to stay married. Marriage is hard, and it is supposed to be a life-time commitment. And if you are contemplating marriage you need to ask yourself some what if questions.
What if this person looses their job and I have to support them? What if we have financial troubles? What if this person becomes ill or is in an accident and I have to take care of them? What if one day they are fat, wrinkled and gray or (gasp)bald headed? What if they loose their teeth, their hearing, or their eye sight?
If you stay married long enough, eventually most of these what ifs will happen. That is what happens in this funny thing called life. When things are hard, you will ask yourselves do we still love each other and can we get through this? AND if you have a true love you will say of course we still love each other and we can get through this together. AND you will!
To my Hub, I was a young and silly 18 year old girl when you married me. Thank God you were 10 years older than I was and knew a lot about life. You have always taken good care of me and I have never doubted our love. As we get old together I will no doubt have to take good care of you, and I will. BECAUSE we have always had a TRUE LOVE!

Is the Prince lame?

When I was a child I read a story called The Little Lame Prince. It was one of my favorites, but I did feel bad for the Prince in the story. Luckily, for us our little Prince was a much happier and easier baby to take care of than his sister had been. The Hub, also known as Pop, was able to take care of him when CW worked. We didn't want to put the Prince in daycare until he could walk. So we waited for him to walk. He turned one year old and didn't walk. He did crawl, but wouldn't even try to walk. He turned 14 months and still wasn't walking, his doctor was a little concerned. He turned 16 months and still wasn't walking. His doctor recommended we have him evaluated because he seemed developmentally delayed. He also wasn't trying to talk. We were told that if he didn't walk by 18 months then we should be really concerned. WE WERE ALREADY REALLY CONCERNED!
Then a few days before he turned 18 months. He stood up and walked across the living room just like he had been doing it for months. Now I have a theory about why the Prince didn't walk for so long. First you would have to know his sister the Princess(AKA the drama queen). She jumps, dances and bounces around the house like a jet powered Barbie doll. Little brother was probably smart enough to figure out that not standing on two feet until he was taller and fairly steady was his best chance of surviving. The Prince has started trying to talk recently also, mostly so he can yell at his sister.
Siblings,you can't live with them and God gets really mad if you kill them, so what's a kid to do?

Gardening with Grandma

Its good to be a live-in grandparent. Today I planted a garden with my two year old granddaughter. She loved digging in the dirt. The Hub picked up one of those $40 flower bed kits from Home Depot and some dirt from Wal-Mart. It didn't take long for the Hub to assemble the kit. It is made from a fairly heavy duty plastic so it should last a few years. The Princess and I planted Marigolds, Impatience, Sunflowers, Zinnias and 2 tomatoes plants. She then was given a small watering can and shown how to water the plants. She ran back and forth from the tub of water to the garden like she was putting out a fire. Her urgency showed just how important she knew her job was. Her little brother was actually splashing around in the tub of water his sister was filling her watering can from. He didn't seem interested in gardening today. Maybe later.

Take thee to the Garage!

Up to this point the Hub and I paid most of the bills and still did most of the house work and yard work. Then the Hub got sick and had to retire early from his job. We could no longer afford to keep the house or pay all the bills related to running a large house hold. Luckily, our son's career was going well so they decided to buy our house from us. They had been in our converted two car garage for about three years, now the Hub and I would be living in the garage.
I was very depressed about this at first, but I was amazed how much space a two car garage actually had and with some careful planning and organizing we fit the important stuff into our living space. So now the Hub and I live in the garage and I don't clean their house or do dishes or anything else I don't want to do because (insert whatever reason CW had for not doing anything for more than 2 years). I do feel a little guilty about it at times, but then I am sure CW felt very little guilt for not doing anything so I ignore that guilty feeling and slip into my nice quite garage. I am beginning to enjoy the view from the garage.

And Baby Again Makes 6

CW liked school and was doing well. The first few months flew by. Then CW decided her birth control pills were making her sick so she stopped taking them and surprise, surprise, she got pregnant again. The Hub was less angry this time than I was. I was extremely, upset over this development. She did however finish her program and graduated before baby number 2 came along. She even managed to get her drivers license. They looked at houses. They couldn't find any they really liked. CW developed diabetes, and complications with her pregnancy. SO we decide to live together a while longer. Many more people now thought we were nuts!
This time, CW did not eat everything in sight with baby two. She took better care of herself and delivered by c-section, the 2nd love of my life, a nearly 9 pound boy. After CW recovered from the c-section we discussed the possibility of them moving out of our house. Our son decided he needed to take some classes to improve his job skills so he could make more money and they asked us to help them with the babies so CW could start working. By this time, the Hub and I were so in love with the 2 grand babies that we couldn't say no, so we didn't.

And baby makes 5

Lots of people thought we were crazy to let them stay in our house. Of course, we didn't care what they thought. The best advise I got was, keep your mouth shut because when that baby gets here you won't care about anything else. And I knew that was probably true.
SO, on a sunny day in June the newest love in my life was born and because I was a teacher I had the whole summer to bond with her. She was a big baby, she weighed over 10 pounds and was delivered by c-section. CW came home jumped on the bathroom scale and screamed. She had only lost 20 of the 65 pounds she had put on. She said, "I thought you would drop at least 50 pounds delivering a baby." She looked sad, took a pain pill and shuffled off to bed.
I wish I could tell you that it was a wonderful summer, but it wasn't exactly. That little baby girl cried all the time. Well, actually screamed. And the more I tried to step back and let her parents learn to deal with her the more she screamed and the more CW cried and my son pleaded with me to do something. Finally, after dealing with several feeding issues, including CW's frustrated unsuccessful attempts at breast feeding. We resorted to a special baby formula that was 25 dollars a can. It must have had been mixed with gold spoons or something. Finally, by the end of the summer baby girl was starting to cry less and sleep more. We convinced CW to get on meds for postpartum depression, and she decided to attend school to be a cosmetologist in the fall. And we made a commitment to live together for another year while CW attended school so we could help with the baby and provide transportation.

The Growing Year!

The Hub and I were mad at first when we found out we were going to be grandparents, not that we didn't see it coming. Our son asked if they could stay with us for a while so that CW could get a full time job and they could save up some money. We offered them the garage which had been converted into a large room with it's own bathroom. Our son thought CW would work the whole time she was pregnant, squat down in a field have the baby, fling it up on her back and get right back to work. I tried to explain to him that there were frequently issues that came up with pregnant women and that he had now drawn a wild card in the game of life. He thought I was nuts. CW did try to work at least part time, but due to health issues it just didn't work out. Unfortunately, for my son it also turned out that CW was allergic to house work. Cleaning fluids gave her a headache, pushing the vacuum cleaner hurt her arm and loading the dish washer hurt her back. So she never did any of those things. I did however insist that she learn how to do laundry and she would on occasion make a small dent in the mountain of stinky clothes the accumulated in their bathroom.
CW was a 20 year old high school graduate with no life skills or job skills (unless you call flipping burgers a job skill). She didn't even have a drivers license. So I taught her how to drive in my car and helped her get her restricted license. Meanwhile, the Hub and I hauled her to doctor appointments and everywhere else she needed to go for the next 15 months.
CW did have one thing she did well and greatly enjoyed besides vegging on TV, she liked to eat. She gained about 65 pounds by the time the baby was born. She ate the wings off a whole chicken coop full of chickens and single handedly kept McDonald's from feeling the recession until well after everyone else had. She ate so much cookie and cream ice cream that the Keebler elves threatened a strike. Her doctors told her to stop eating so much, she didn't. She got gestational diabetes and was put on a special diet, she didn't follow it. They told her the baby was getting too big, and she would need a c-section. She thought a big baby would be easier to take care of. People would ask her if she was having triplets when she went out in public and it made her mad. AND still she ate! I actually had never seen a pregnant woman get stretch marks on their knee caps before, but she did. You almost wanted to feel sorry for her. ALMOST!

How I met CW

My mother use to say the best laid plans of mice and men. And I would say, WHAT? And now I know. This blog is about how you can make all the plans you want, but there will always be unforeseeable events that will slightly or even totally change the direction of your life. And before we go any further, no I don't have any terrible diseases, and no I haven't been in an accident that has kept me from being an Olympic gold medal winner. As if! No, but what has happened to me can't ever be completely changed. Though, Zoloft does makes it bearable most days if we both remember to take it. What happened is that my one and only child married a "crazy witch" hence forth CW.
Here is how I found out about CW. Four years ago I came home from a three week trip, I tip-toed into my son's room to give him a hug and there in the bed with him was a girl. I quietly left the room and asked my husband who in the hell was in the bed with our son and why was she in the bed with our son in our house. AND that was the first time I ever laid eyes on CW. The next morning I was introduced to her at breakfast and my son told me they were in love. She had about 8 earrings in each ear, a tongue ball thingy, a nose ring and something stuck through the skin under her lower lip. Thank the lord she had no tattoos. BUT she was dressed like I believe the term is a "hoochey mama".
Now let me add here that my son is a very nice young man and had just graduated from college. He had never brought a girl home and slept with her in our house to my knowledge, so all I could think was, "you have lost your damn mind and after you take that girl home I am going to hurt you!" I chatted with the girl a bit and quickly realized that she was looking for a "baby daddy" and that she was a bit of a fruit cake. My son took her home and then asked me what I thought of his girlfriend. I told him NOT to get her pregnant, things were moving too fast. NEEDLESS TO SAY HE DIDN'T LISTEN AND CW WAS PREGNANT WITH IN 6 WEEKS.