I got cabin fever, I got cabin feeever ....

(Are you singing the Stevie Wonder Jungle Fever song in your head now? You're welcome!)

We are currently on snow day number four. IN. A. ROW. We are currently on day six of being in the house. IN. A. ROW.

Momma is slowly losing her mind.

It is so frigid here that even dragging the kids in and out of the grocery store seems like too much exposure to the elements. 

So here we sit. Day after day after day. The activities are running out. Today I actually got out streamers and balloons to make a birthday party for some stuffed animals. And I kinda enjoyed it. I need help ...

Yes, there is always laundry do it, dishes to wash (in fact I have a sink-full right now that should have been washed this morning), and a never ending stream of toys that can be picked up. Not to mention the bags of groceries that need to be put away from our exciting trip to the grocery store this morning. (We left the house today, yea! To get groceries, boo!)

So when my son came up to me right before lunch, while I was in the mist of getting their food around and stepping around bags of groceries and dirty dishes, and said "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, listen to this" - then proceeded to plug is nose and make a very loud, very grating noise, I probably should have laughed. Other days I would have laughed. But not on the FOURTH SNOW DAY IN A ROW.

Instead it was more like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber: "You wanna hear the most annoying sound in the whole world?"

EAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

There better be school tomorrow ...

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Maybe they are hiding out with all the socks from the dryer ...

A slipper, an Iron Man action figure, a library card and a Nintendo DS game.

No, I am not playing some odd version of Carnac the Magnificent (for those of you who don't know what that is LOOK IT UP because you should. I don't care how old you are - you should know THAT!), but I will say all these things do have something in common.

They are all lost somewhere in my house. Even with a bit a searching they are still lost. Real looking, too - not just "kid looking."

For those of you without kids I will explain the difference. "Kid-looking" is when I kid walks into a room and if the object they are looking for is not smack dab in front of their face or physically touching them, they can not find it. Repeated attempts by adults to tell them to look harder only has them returning to the exact same spot they were before and looking even less. 

My son is an expert "kid-looker." He will claim to look high and low for his Batman car or Aqua Man or favorite MSU stuffed bear. He becomes distraught because he has looked "everywhere" and he can not find it. So when I finally decide to get off my keister and help him look, inevitably I find said item in about 30 seconds - sometimes less.

But there a few items - namely the few I have listed above that no matter how much "real" searching is done, the item can not be found. And it is starting to really tick me off!

I have mentioned before how I am a bit OCD when it comes to things being neat and orderly so when something comes up missing I just want to drop everything until the item is found and put back in its proper place. A missing item for me is like have a picture frame perpetually askew in the house. It drives me a bit batty!

Now I am sure some of these items will eventually turn up. There is no way that I kid slipper is really gone forever - in fact I just thought of another place to look. Gimmie a sec to go look for it ...

Yea! I found it! Huzzah! In the dirty laundry by mistake. Why didn't I think to look there before? Well that is one item found, only about 20 to go.

And while I know that more will turn up during clean-up time or randomly when I am looking for something completely different, there are a couple things I can not fathom where they might be.

Topping the list is my daughter's library card. She was so excited this fall when she was given her very own library card. The librarian suggested (and rightly so) that she keep her card on file at the library so it would not get lost (hmmmm), but she INSISTED that she would take good care of it and not lose it. Within 24 hours it was gone. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.

I know I should have put my foot down and made her leave it at the library, but I was trying to teach her a little responsibility. Lesson learned. By mom anyway. Six-year-olds should not be in the care of their own library cards. We have searched and searched for that card and I keep thinking is just going to turn up, but it has been almost six months now and nothing.

The most recent disappearance has been a Nintendo DS game my oldest bought with some Christmas money. Also lost within about 24 hours. My husband and I have searched high and low for that sucker and can't seem to find it. My fear is that it fell off her desk and into the trash and was accidentally tossed, but I really don't think that happened. I think I would have wondered what the heavy thing was in the trash - which is usually only filled with tissues and crumpled pieces of paper.

The most frustrating part (aside from wasting 20 dollars) is she doesn't seem all that upset it is missing. She just shrugs and makes some nonchalant comment about it. Her dad and I, on the other hand, are quite irked. We try to instill the importance of earning things and that they are not entitled to everything they want. So when they lose something it would be nice if they were a little upset by it. Their laissez-faire feelings gives me the impression that they think we are just going to run out and replace whatever it is they lost. Not sure where they got that, because that is certainly NOT going to happen.

Maybe she is trying to be strong and not show how truly upset she really is by the loss of her game and library card. Sure, I'm going to go with that one .... It'll help me sleep better at night.

Know what would make me sleep even BETTER at night? Finding that bleepity, bleepin' game and library card!

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We may have all been raised in a barn ...

Mealtime at our house is quite the comedy routine. By the time I have called them to dinner and they have all whined and complained about having to leave the wondrous activity that has just captured their attention and then have all raced to the bathroom to wash their hands and fight about who was there first and more pouting about who has to go last - about 10 minutes have passed. Which is just about the time it takes for their vegetables on their plates to get ice cold (which is usually how they prefer them, if they eat them at all).

Then we say grace which can take another 10 minutes what with the constant interruption of other people's prayers and then having to go around two and three times to get in all the prayers everyone forgot to mention (usually just a duplicate of what their brother or sister just said).

Then FINALLY we eat. I say we, but I really mean just my husband and I. And that is not because my kids are incredibly picky eaters (which they sometimes are) or they are incredibly stubborn when it cames to eating (which they sometimes are). Mostly they are not eating because they are too busy talking. And when I say talking, I mean TALKING. 

But it's not just talking. It's talking while everyone else is talking so it is difficult to make out what anyone is actually saying. 

You know where I am going here ...

My kids are a chatty bunch.

(And can I just say I LOVE Brick from Anchorman. It's like he's a bit of all three of my kids rolled into one)

And while it is comical to me, it is a bit unnerving to my husband.

See I grew up in a "loud" house. Everyone talking all the time. Mealtime especially. Growing up, a friend of mine (who is an only child) used to be amazed at the amount of chatter that went on around our table at dinner. 

To me though, it was never a big deal. That was the norm. 

My family is not Italian or Greek or from New Jersey or one of those "loud family" stereotypes. We are a just a typical Midwestern family who just happens to be very loud. 

So when the decibel rises around the table, I just shrug like it's no big deal.

My poor husband has a harder time. Just the other day at lunch he declared that his ears were ringing from the sheer volume the kids were producing. It was all pretty mild talk too - no fighting or demanding. Just talking about my son's day at preschool. 

See my husband's family is not loud. They are normal. 

It seems, however, the kids have inherited the "loud" gene from my family. Quiet family meals have gone the way of the Dodo bird. Something that once existed, but never will again.

I don't really mind it. The volume that is. I could do without the constant interrupting, talking over, chewing with their mouths full, and potty talk. (OK, sometimes the potty talk is funny. But I will never tell them that.)

As for my poor husband, well I think he just may to come over to the "loud" side. It's an eat or be eaten world out there - and around our dining table. 

Or in our case - talk loud or be drowned out.

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Don't need the driver, just the limo

We were in the car driving to church, listening to the big band music our local radio station plays on Sunday mornings, amazed that we were actually going to be on time (a couple minutes EARLY even) and then it started up.

First a low rumbling, a couple comments here and there from one of the kiddos in the back. Then it started to build. Louder and louder until my husband and I could scarcely here Glen Miller bopping on the airways.

It wasn't fighting per say, just lots of "hey Mommy," "hey Daddy," "remember when we did/saw fill-in-the-blank-for-some random-thing-that-popped-into-their-head-because-we-passed-a-red-truck-or-something."

Times that by three and it sounds a little something like this:




It was at that moment that my husband said "wouldn't it be nice if we had a limo?"

No, it wasn't so we could be sitting in the back not worried about traffic or having to find a parking space at church. And no, it wasn't because if we had a limo we would be better off financially then we are now.

His desire for a limousine was simple: when the noises got too loud, we could simply roll up the partition window and drive along in peace.

What a novel idea! Why hasn't someone at Chrysler made that a standard feature on the Town and Country yet?

It's funny because when it gets to a fevered pitch like that it is usually about nothing all that important. It may be to ask a question we have already answered five time. THAT MORNING. Or to tattle or complain or just to try and be louder than their sibling.

Whenever they try to tell us something we genuinely want to here they talk just above a whisper. And anyone who has ever been in a minivan knows that those things are not the best at blocking out the noise so we must ask, over and over and over again for them to please speak up/stop taking into their coat/turn their head toward us - so we might have some chance of picking up a few words and figuring out what the heck they are talking about.

Of course when we want inside voices (like say when we are two feet away from them at the dinner table) we get shouting. That's kid karma for ya ...

But the privacy window partition doesn't have to be contained solely to the car. I found another use for it last night at dinner. All the kids dinners were plated, served and ready to be consumed. It was a meal they all actually liked too: tacos (which is why we have them every Tuesday). So they should have been eating. My husband and I were up plating our own dinners and attempting to have an adult conversation about our respective days. Insane thought I know while the three kids were still awake, but it seemed like it should have been feasible.

Except for our son Mr. Nosey Parker interrupting every third word asking "who called?" "who was late?" "what did you say?"

Eyes on your own paper dude! Eat your taco!

I looked at my husband and said "wouldn't it be nice to have one of the limo windows right now?" Maybe then we could actually finish a thought without being interrupted.

He suggested a mental partition. Good in theory, but let's face it, they are pretty hard to ignore




Nice idea though ...

OK GM, get crackin ...

I know I am screwing up, it's just to what degree

OK people, have a seat (although you were probably already sitting down) I have something pretty shocking to tell you.

Are you ready? OK, here goes ... deep breath ...

I am not perfect.

Mind blown right? How can this be? I mean you already know my grammar, punctuation and sentence structure skills are a beautiful sight to behold. And just last night I took a quiz and discovered that I AM smarter than a fifth grader in spelling. (We won't mention history, social studies or math ...)

But alas, I am not perfect. I know it is hard to believe but it is true. Just ask my kids.

See, I have already resigned myself to the fact that I have, and will probably continue to screw up my kids. That may sound horrible to say but it is true. That doesn't mean that I am a bad parent or anything, we are just imperfect beings and so the probability of us raising a perfect being is very slim. (At least I think it is. I could be wrong. I am in fact NOT smarter than a fifth grader in math as you remember.)

And if you think you are the one parent out there who is NOT screwing up your kid and you have this whole parenting thing down cold, let me be the first to burst your bubble - you're not. I am sure you are doing a wonderful job and your kids are smart, funny, caring, wonderful little humans just like mine are - they are just a little screwed up too.

This winter I know I have done a little mental damage to my son.

See, I could have sworn I had a pair of snow pants that fit him. I just knew I did. But after the first flakes finally fell in our little hometown and it was time to send him to preschool ready to romp on the snow, I quickly learned that in fact we did NOT have any snow pants for him. And by then all the good parents out there had bought up all the snow pants in his size. Parenting fail.

After further digging however, I did discover that we did in fact own a pair of snow pants that would fit him. Huzzah!! Crisis averted! The snow romping can begin! Well, yes, except that the pair of pants we had belonged to his older sister and were purple. Opps! They fit though and have a lot of wear left so it seems only right that he should use them. Especially since he didn't have another option.

Now let me just say this. I am not a gender stereotype pushing person. I like that my son plays with dolls and my girls ram cars together. Pink does not equal girl and blue does not equal boy. Girls can do/wear anything boys can do/wear and vice versa. So I know there is nothing wrong with him wearing purple snow pants. But it is a tad funny. He has this red and black coat, Batman boots, Spiderman hat and purple snow pants. (It's a good thing he is four and can still pull it off.)

Luckily he has been a pretty good sport about it. He doesn't really like to wear them, but he knows he doesn't have another option. On the way to school one day I looked back at him in his purple snow pants and a pathetic little look on his face and I told him "one day you'll be able to lay a guilt trip on me about the time I made you wear purple snow pants." He has no idea what I am talking about now, but by 15 he'll get it. And it will probably work too.

I just hope I remember to get him a pair of new snow pants next fall when they are still available. Or maybe I should just buy black snow pants from now on and cover all my bases. They are gender neutral, hide the dirt and are a slimming color. And what preschooler wants to worry about looking bulky when they are playing in the snow!