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.