Girls, Girls, And More Girls

If you ask anyone in my family, they will tell you that I have had a major case of baby fever recently.  This was triggered when I visited a friend in the hospital who had just had a baby and was compounded when I realized that my "baby" is sitting up and on the verge of crawling...not really a baby any more in my opinion.
Noah and Jonah both have their own opinions on having another baby.  Noah has put in his order for a girl.  If you ask Jonah if we should get another baby, he violently shakes his head NO!
This week I filled in for two days at Noah's school.  They put me in a room of ten three year old GIRLS.  NO BOYS!!!  I nearly went crazy trying to figure out how to tie scarves, attach hair bows, and clip those stupid little barrettes so that they actually hold hair.
I have now been officially scared out of trying for number four...a least for a little while!  What would happen if we ended up with a little girl?  I would be so in over my head.
Hopefully the pain of subbing is like the pain of childbirth.  Time may soften the memories and one day I may will once again experience baby fever.

Clutter Bugs

Noah helped me "clean up" today...AKA get rid of clutter.  We were packing up old toys to take to Goodwill and had the same conversation that we have every time we decide to weed out toys.

Me:  Noah do you want this?
Noah:  No 'mam.
Me:  Well then please put it in the basket to give away.
Noah:  I can't.
Me:  Why not?
Noah:  This one is Daddy's toy!

AAAK!  Daddy has more toys in this house than all the other boys combined!

Wordless Wednesday

What A Mess!

Jonah loves cheese popcorn.

Seriously...he really loves cheese popcorn.

Me???  Not so much!

Bountiful Blessings

I have said before how much I love living in the country. This summer we were blessed with a great garden and even better family and friends who let us harvest out of their gardens as well. We have eaten fresh veggies and fruit all summer long and even been able to put some up for winter. Since deer season is upon us, I decided to take this afternoon and organize my freezer to make room for meat. I did not realize how much we actually had been able to put up from the garden until I looked at it all together!

This is our bounty:
42 quarts of corn cut off the cob
17 quarts of field peas
16 quarts of green butter beans
3 quarts of speckled butter beans
9 quarts of string beans
6 quarts of squash (It was a bad year for squash)
9 quarts of pears
3 quarts of peaches
29 quarts of okra

Wow, right!!! I was feeling great about this and then I remembered that I put up canned goods in the pantry. I checked there and discovered 20 quarts of tomatoes, 4 quarts of hot peppers, 3 quarts of green beans, and 31 jars of jam. The boys and I had a great time making jam this summer. We made peach, strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, and my favorite...cinnamon fig. We have enough apples in the kitchen to make some apple jam this week. I would say we are pretty well set for the winter.
I have to give a BIG thanks to my Mom who was my canning partner this year. It sure makes the work go so much faster when you have someone to share the load. THANKS MOM!!!

Lost Keys

Yesterday morning was not the best morning for me. It started out okay, I actually was early getting everyone fed, cleaned, dressed, and buckled into their car seats ready to take Noah to school and then do some shopping in town before picking Noah up after school. As I climbed into my seat and reached to turn the ignition, I realized that I did not have my car keys. I had used them once already that morning and knew that I had put them in my pocket...but alas, they were not there. I remembered that I had spilled something and had changed pants since using my keys earlier so I ran back inside to check the pockets on my other pants...not there either. I began searching frantically inside the house, outside the house, and even in the car. All this time, my children are being little angels sitting in their car seats waiting for mommy to get her act together. (Really, I'm not being sarcastic...they were being great. I was the one whining and crying!) I was getting more and more panicky that I was not going to find them and Noah was going to miss school. Noah on the other hand was calm as he could be, saying that we could just walk to school because the exercise would do us good. (I don't think he realizes that twenty miles is quite a long way!)
After searching for about ten minutes with no luck, I finally called my Mom to come get Noah and take him to school. When she got there to get Noah, I took Jonah and Micah out of their seats and took them inside to play. I left them there to go back outside and check under the car to see if they had fallen when I was getting in...nope not there either.
As I walked back in the door of the house, I was met by Jonah. He said, "keys?" and handed me my car keys! I asked him where he found them and he walked over to his ride on toy and put them in the ignition. I guess he had found them earlier and was using them as his own.
Moral of the story...When you lose something, always ask the toddler first!

Mail Box Drama

We used to have three mail boxes. One for our personal mail, one for our business mail, and one is our shopper box.
Now we have our personal box, a jagged post where our business box used to be, and our shopper box.See what I mean??? Sometime between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning our business mail box seems to have had an unfortunate accident. The post was splintered and the box ended up laying in the ditch. The drama began when I discovered my mail box like this and started trying to figure out what happened. I mean, it seems really strange that just the middle mail box would be destroyed. You would think that if a car had swerved off the road, it would have hit the first, third or all the boxes...not just the middle one, right??
I called the post office to ask if maybe the mail man had anything to do with it and was told that no, he did not break my 4X4 post in half but had noticed it on his route Wednesday afternoon. I was told that I needed to contact the sheriff's office since tampering with a mail box is a federal crime. I was hesitant to call it in because my last call to 9-1-1 really did not turn out so well. Anyway, upon calling the sheriff a dispatcher took down my name and number and said that a deputy would be in contact. When the deputy called me he said that there was no-one available to come out to look at the damage, so he was going to just get my information over the phone.

Please allow me to stop here and have a little rant....Why on earth is it that when I am the one calling in about a crime I have to give not only my full name and date of birth, but my DL number, SS number, hair color, eye color, height, and WEIGHT!!! Come on, shouldn't they be more worried about getting that information from the person who committed the crime instead of the person reporting the crime?

After getting all of my information, the deputy called back with a case number. I'm not really sure what to do with the case number...but I have one for when I figure it out. Yesterday, Joe and the mail man were discussing the mail box and reached the conclusion that the trash man must have backed into the post Wednesday morning when he turned around in my driveway. They had a whole list of what I would consider circumstantial evidence at best, but insisted that I call the trash company and ask if they had demolished my mail box. If you can remember back to last November, my last call to the trash company did not end well either.
I called the trash company and found out that the regular driver is no longer with the company and they had a different guy driving the truck on Wednesday. Aha...now we are getting somewhere! I asked to speak with the Wednesday driver to see if he remembered anything in particular about my house (such as a loud thump or crash) and was told that the driver on Wednesday was actually the OWNER of the company and was not available to talk. The person I spoke with promised to investigate further and get back to me but so far I have heard nothing, and I really don't expect to hear anything.
No other mail boxes in the area were reported to be vandalized. This even has Noah stumped. He keeps coming up with ideas of what happened but then proving them wrong! Any ideas on what could have happened?

Odd Child

Noah is terrified of shots. Upon hearing that he would have to visit the Dr. for a flu shot, he immediately went into a panic, inventing all sorts of reasons that he would not be able to get one. This has been going on for a couple of weeks.
This morning he woke up with a stuffy nose. He walked out of his bedroom and said, "Momma, I'm ready to go get that shot now, cause I can't be getting sick and missing school!"

First Day (A Mom's Perspective)

Okay, today I feel like that crazy Mom that no-one ever sets out to be, but somehow ends up there anyway. Of course yesterday was Noah's first day of school. When we arrived at the school, I was a nervous wreck. I was trying to hold it together so that my anxiety would not be apparent to Noah (who by the way was so excited himself that he probably would not have noticed if I fell to the ground writhing from despair that I was sending my firstborn off to school). As we waited outside for the doors to open (yes, we were THAT early!) I noticed a lady about my age watching me. She seemed vaguely familiar but I was really concentrating on not crying in front of Noah, so I did not give it much thought.
As the doors opened, I reached into my purse to grab the camera for one last picture before entering the school. I got the camera out, turned to tell Noah to smile, and realized he was gone! I looked around and saw Noah halfway between me and the school...running towards the open doors!!! (Come on...is home life really that bad?) That brought a laugh and held the tears at bay for a while. When I finally caught up with Noah he had already hung his backpack on his designated hook, found the seat with his name on it and was sitting down waiting for class to start. I saw him sitting there and could not hold back the tears any longer. I called out goodbye, blew him a kiss and hurried out of the classroom.
When I got back out into the hallway, I literally ran into the lady that had been staring at me earlier. She stepped back and said "Are you Denise?" At that point I realized she was a girl that I had gone to school with from K-5 up until 7th grade. We had been best friends many many years ago. Now let me say here that this person has not crossed my mind for probably fifteen years. It is not like we weren't on speaking terms, but I wasn't pining for my long lost best friend or anything either. When we got outside the door, I reached out, hugged her, and cried like a baby. I am so embarrassed that I did that, I mean I hugged and cried on a lady that I had not seen in nearly twenty years! Turns out she was dropping her son off for his first day of school as well and we were probably experiencing some of the same emotions.
I can't help but wonder what Noah would have thought had he looked out the window of his classroom at that moment. No wonder the child was running toward school... he has a crazy woman for a mother. I also wonder what my childhood friend is thinking. I am going to be seeing a lot of her this year if she is active in the school. Not a problem for me, I will enjoy getting reacquainted with her, but I wonder if she will feel the need guard her "personal space" or to bring tissues to PTO meetings.
Yes, I believe that somehow I have ended up being that crazy mom...the one I swore I would never be!

I Survived!

Oh yeah... Noah did great too!

Attn: Mrs. Carter

When you walked up to me at open house Thursday night and asked me if there was anything special that you needed to know about Noah, I looked down at the small pad you had in your hand (with about an inch of room under Noah's name) and thought that you must be kidding. I mean...you were kidding right?? Of course there are special things about Noah, far too many to fit on that little piece of paper you were holding.

For starters, Noah is a very bright child. He talks non-stop and uses his imagination in the most amazing ways. He thinks outside the box...sometimes way outside the box...sometimes he can't even see the box. He loves his brothers with a fierce devotion. He cries when he watches Homeward Bound. He thinks mayonnaise should have its own food group. He isn't really good at tying his shoes. He loves math. He was born a little tongue tied and still has trouble pronouncing certain letters. His favorite color is orange...always has been. He has a horrible gag reflex. His Daddy is his hero. He believes in Santa, The Tooth Fairy, and The Easter Bunny. He has yet to learn that there are mean people in the world. He has a minor obsession with trucks and tractors. Tight pants "cut off his blood pressure" and he refuses to wear them. I could go on and on...there are so many things to know about My Noah.

Then again, I know those special things about him because I am his Mom. Should you know them as well? You see, I have never put a child in school before and I am a bit if a wreck right now. In just a few hours I will be waking Noah and getting him ready for his first day of school. I should be in bed but I sit here with tears streaming down my face wondering how I am ever going to do this. I am not worried one bit about letting him walk through that door to your class room, instead I wonder how am I ever going to get myself to walk back out without him.

New Words

Jonah is talking so much lately. He understands most everything that we say and can usually tell us exactly what he wants us to know as well. This afternoon Jonah walked into the living room chewing on something. I knew that neither Joe nor I had given him anything to eat, so I asked him what was in his mouth. He looked at me and said, "My teeth".
See what I mean about telling us exactly what he wants us to know?

Velcro And Laces

Noah still can't will not tie his own shoes. It has not been a big deal up until now because he either wears Crocs, Velcro closing shoes, or I tie his laces for him. Since Noah will be starting school next week, it is starting to be an issue and I was hoping to finally have him perfect the art of shoe tying before school started.
We went shoe shopping this week for new school shoes. Every style that Noah picked out had two versions; Velcro for up to size two and then laces for the larger sizes. Of course Noah is in the larger size!
So I say to Noah, "They just don't have Velcro in your size, do you know what this means?"
Noah replies to me just as serious as he can be, "Yes Mam, we're just going to have to shop at another store!"

Six Month Check-Up

Yesterday, Micah went for his six month well child visit and shots. I have never had a child react to shots the way he did....he actually laughed at the doctor! The doctor had to do a double take to make sure he had actually given that shots because there was NO crying at all.
Micah weighs 18lbs. 10 oz. and is 26 1/4 inches tall long. He is in the 42nd percentile for his height and the 68th percentile for his weight. What a chunker! Now if I could only get him to sleep through the night again!

Wordless Wednesday