When momma ain't happy...

I shudder at the first sign of my child getting a runny nose because I know that in less than two days I'm gonna be layin' in bed with the chills fighting off a fever. But along with said fever, I'll still do laundry, make dinner, wipe kids' butts, continue to clean runny noses and still master the art of making macaroni and cheese. I will say, that I do have a great hubby who definitely helps out and actually shuts the bedroom door for me when I need to get some rest. But my guilt kicks in...that little voice inside my head that says..."get up lazy butthole and do something". So, on we go...and yes, I still have a fever. Damn thing won't go away.

My baby turned six. What the..

The first baby boy that sprung from my loins broke my heart and turned six this week. This whole growing up fast thing is a crock...I should be in charge here. I should be the one to say how long he stays and when he can go. He starts kindergarten two weeks ago, then he turned six and I bet he'll graduate high school next week. At least I really enjoyed his birthday party. I thought I'd post some pictures for you.

He LOVES gymnastics, so we had his party at a gymnastics place which was very cool. The only problem I had was when I went to get plates and napkins and order the cupcakes there wasn't one single thing that was gymnastics for boys. The only stuff I found was of a girl doing gymnastics in purple...not cool for a six year old boy. So, I had to come up with my own nonsense. I really do have to give props to www.designdazzle.blogspot.com. That website is such an inspiration for parties and decorating your kids' room. Please be sure to check it out. I have absolutely no affiliation with the owner of the site, I just check it every day...seriously.

The favors were red, white and blue cups with patriotic tattoos, a ring pop and a gold medal.

The food. I made these with scrapbook paper and my computer.

I made the cupcake toppers from an idea I saw on the design dazzle blog (see above) out of printed cardstock and a scalloped 1 inch hole punch. I glued a plain white one on the back and put a toothpick in the middle...voila!
Hope you liked it!

D

Get by with a little help...

I found this website in this month's issue of Family Fun. It's a great way to design your own chore chart and you enter in online the points that the kids receive so they can build their own virtual cat and play games. I'm sure you can make one for your significant other too.

http://www.handipoints.com/

D

I did it! I mean...he did it!

My first born baby was off on his first day of kindergarten today. He did great...me? Not so much. He even said "Are you gonna embarrass me and cry your eyes out?"...you bet! The day couldn't go fast enough. It was like waiting for happy hour on a Friday night after work. As I was winding my way around the carpool lane, I could see him sitting there waiting with his friends chit chatting away. I loved it. He looked so happy. I'm okay with him going back tomorrow...I think.

My baby can read...WTH?

Okay, so I've seen the infomercial about "My baby can read" about 973 times during my insomnia nights, but seriously...wth? I'd really like to hear from some of you out there to see if this really works because I'm a skeptic. Actually, I'm sure it works, but do I really want my baby to read? I like being on the computer and him not know what I'm typing. He'll start looking over my shoulder and start saying, "what does lmfao mean?". Ugh. And I'm afraid he'll be smarter than me. I like hollering out to the hubs saying "do you think we should go to s-e-a-w-o-r-l-d?" They'd be like, "hell to the yeah, I want to go to sea world!" Soooooo, I'm not so sure about all this...what do you think?

Much love to ya'...

Um...Hi...It's been a while...

My friend Molly started this amazing blog and she's inspired me to update mine...thanks Molly, love you! Hers is www.whymomruns.blogspot.com

Let me tell you why I fell off the face of the earth. I met my sister for the very first time...yep, you heard that right. Long long long story, but here's the half story...my dad was married before my mom; he had three kids; he divorced and was in a bad part of his life and let their stepdad adopt them. He married my mom, had me and I found out about the three of them when I was eighteen. I'm 31, and I met my sister, Patti and her family on June 18th, 2009. A date I will NEVER forget. I'm madly in love with her and her family and this is an extremely high point in my life right now. We're talkin' cloud 9 baby!

Hide and Go Pee

Yep...more potty talk.

Before entering the world of motherhood, I never in a million years would've imagined that giving up the opportunity to go to the bathroom by myself would be so missed.  I totally miss it...seriously.  You could take away my left nostril in exchange for me going to the bathroom by myself and I'd be skipping at every opportunity to read the 101 magazine subscriptions that I need to catch up on.  I still haven't read Redbook's November 2008 issue.  And no, I won't throw it out...there's something in there I NEED, I just know it!

But back to the lecture at hand (name that song), in my attempt to do the "duty" (yes, you can put a pun there if you'd like), I decided to get creative.  I pulled out a few small toys from the boys' toy box and hid them all over the house, some hard to find, some easy.  Then I said "on your mark, get set, go" and when they ran to find them, I ran to the bathroom.  Needless to say, I was done before they were and it was so much better hearing laughing and giggling in their attempt to find the toys than to hear fighting and yelling or have them opening the door on me.  Ah....bliss.

Pantry Raid

This is my pantry.  It's small, unorganized and I don't like it one single bit that my right brain thinking is allowing you to see this.  I feel like I'm showing you my underwear drawer.  But here's what happened...actually, I don't know how it happened.  All I know is that I was doing something, probably unproductive, and the kids pulled out all the stuff from my pantry.  And I'm cool with that...nobody screamed, nobody got smacked in the face with a fake sword and nobody whined.  It was a win win situation.

So, my left brain kicked in to gear and said "hmmm, let's organize this" and my right brain said "no, it's beautiful and artistic to see all the shapes and colors mixed together" and my left brain said...ah hell, it doesn't matter.  BUT the cool part is that my kids decided to help me and as we were looking at all the colors and letters (trying to make it a learning situation), it dawned on me that we could come up with some really cool dinner combos if we just use our noggins.  My five year old came up with a can of pineapple, a can of black beans and a can of diced tomatoes...voila, it's pineapple, black bean salsa!  Now, here's your homework...go let your kids clean out your pantry...it's like a box of chocolates (you know the rest)

You know I love ya'

Big D

It's a Numbers Game

Counting and number recognition has begun!  This little game is a quick one, but I have to be honest, I thought of it while playing Bunco with my friends (quick little shout out to my bunco babes...love ya, mean it).  So, what you'll need is dice and numbers that have either been printed or hand written on separate small sheets of paper.  You may only need one dice, die, dices, whatever the plural is for that, it just depends on each child.  The older they are, the more dice and numbers you'll need.  You'll see, so let's move on...

So, have your little one toss up the dice, or roll it or throw it on the roof and let it fall to the ground, whatever floats your boat.  Once it lands, they need to count the number of dots on the top and then hold up what number they think it is and then pray real hard that you've not only taught them the way of the world, to put on their shoes and to say please and thank you, but that they recognize their numbers and can count.  Exhale with a sigh of relief when they get it because you've done your job.  They can now go solve the world's problems all because you taught them a dice number recognition game. Hopefully you can see now that if you have an older child, the more dice and numbers you use, the harder it gets.

(I had a lot more pictures to put on this, but blogger was giving me a hard time)

Enjoy!  Cheers!

D

I'm Baaaaaack

Back by popular demand and the fact that I've sort of recovered from the holidays, I'll be posting today or tomorrow...

Tidbit

No, I haven't been doing activities lately because well, I've been up to my ears in sewing (that's a story for another day), but I do have another funny tidbit that happened with my five year old today...

Scene: Five year old has been in the bathroom with the door closed for about 8 min.

(insert the sound of a toilet flushing here)

Brandon (yelling from the bathroom): MOM...I just wanted you to know that I'm not done. I just had to flush the toilet so that I could start over!

(insert confused mom here)

What makes me cool

It's chilly this morning here in Orlando, but my friends in Alaska and Colorado, will remind me that in fact they are much colder than I. But with that, I've got my boots on, my jeans that I think are slimming, a kick butt sweater on and I actually brushed my hair...basically, I'm feeling like I look pretty cool. BUT, and that's a big BUT, I'm a mom and no matter how hard I try to look cool and put together, my kids will somehow manage to knock my cool factor down about 8 1/2 notches. I'll have smeared peanut butter on my shoulder by 2pm, I'll have dried crusty yogurt on the ankles of my jeans because the container mysteriously walked to the edge of the table, had a death wish and jumped off and splattered everywhere. I'll also end up with the smell of cheese crackers in my hair and my knees will be wet because I'll have cleaned up the 3rd glass of water that's spilled today.

But before all that happens and I'm still sort of put together, I still can't feel cool...why? Do you really wanna know? Well, because I have a banana and a pink pig sippy cup in my knockoff designer purse. There's nothing cool about that.

Cheers,
D

Halloween Advent

So, there's only 11 days until Halloween. I should've made this a long time ago, but let's not live in the past, k? I made this advent calendar today for Brandon because he's so super excited about Halloween, that this was a great way for him to "see" how many days are left until the sugar overload begins. Please email me at delainamc@gmail.com if you'd like me to email you a copy of it. Enjoy!

Nose News is Bad News

Just wanted to let you all know that my almost 2 year old has discovered today that his index finger fits perfectly into his nostril. It's all downhill from here...

I have a story...

I'm only going to tell you this story, because it's either happened to you or I know it'll make you crack up. But watch how hard you laugh, because karma is a funny thing...just remember that. Okay, so my youngest son is almost 2. We're not potty training yet for a few reasons. I think he's too young and he's my last baby and because I'm so busy, I feel like diaper changes are sort of my one on one time with him. crazy...i know. But sometimes, because he has an older brother, J.P. will go peepee in the potty. It's just for fun and there's no real motivation there - I think he just likes how excited we all gets when he does it. So, this morning, I decided to not interupt his 437th showing of Barney and get him out of his pajamas and diaper with him still standing up. He does this thing where as soon as his pants are off, he takes both hands and rips off his diaper like it's his holster and he's all of a sudden Clint Eastwood. I admit it, it's funny. Well, he does this and as soon as I pick up the diaper, he looks at me and aims...I mean seriously uses his hands and aims at me and starts to pee. It's all over me and I shriek like a little girl - and as he continues to pee on me HE FOLLOWS ME with it. He's cracking up, his brother is in stitches and I'm covered in pee. Nothing' like a Friday morning, eh?

Hope that made you smile.

D

Pumpkin Stencils

I actually found this link in the coupon section of the paper as I was desperately cutting coupons trying my best to save money. Huggies has a section on their website that has free pumpkin stencils and a few of them are Disney characters...very cool. Click on the link and and then you can print which ones you want...or all of them!

http://www.huggieshappybaby.com/tools/games/pumpkinstencils.aspx

D

Hold Tight...

Hi all...bear with me; I'm sewing my big tushy off for the Fall in Love with Handmade show for this Saturday at Infusion Tea. I'll post some more stuff for the kiddos next week! I'll send an email to those of you on my list when I'm back to the groove of things. In the meantime, if you have an idea for an activity, drop me a quick line and I'll be able to post it...thank you all for your patience!

Love always,
D

Children of the 80's...hold tight!

A friend of mine commented that she had found Space Invader pajamas for her son and it made remember that I had bought something for Brandon that I just couldn't get over...Underoos. They're making a comeback! I don't know about you but I had Wonderwoman and R2D2 ones. The ones I bought recently were at Wal-Mart (surprise, surprise, I was at Walmart) and although I didn't look in the girls section (which I'm sure they have some), they had Batman, Spiderman and Superman ones for boys. I hope you run out to buy these, they're so super cute and...may the force be with you.

Picture book...pictures of your mama taken by your papa...

...a long time ago. Anyone else of fan of the Kinks? If not, you haven't hurt my feelings, but I'll get on with the post.

This suggestion comes from my friend Jessica who found this idea on perpetualpreschool.com. I checked out the site and I love it! So, here was her email...take digital pictures of anything in your kids lives (including, of course, them!) and then print out two copies of each shot and laminate them with clear contact paper. You have a personalized game of memory! (This was an idea that a teacher did with each kid's face in her class. Cute!)

I love this idea...thanks Jess!

Letter of the Week

I stole this idea from my son's Pre-K class. They use tape on the tables to put the letter of the week that they're working on. This week just happens to be "M". As you can see, I got out my 'ol trusty painters tape and put this on Brandon's placemat so that he can see it during breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of course, you can take this way further by putting it on the bathroom mirror, the mirror or wall in your child's room, or even on the back of the seat that your child sits behind in your car (yes, I really did that). So, here's to painter's tape yet again!

Cheers!

D