My Children Think They Are Rhinos!!!

Apparently, my children think they are rhinoceros...rhinoceroses......rhinoceri..?? What the hey is the plural form of that word??? Let's just go with Rhinos!!

The other day we were all sitting in the family room and I saw a mosquito flying around. ICk! I hate those little disease infested pests. Actually,they aren't so little here. They thrive on the warm temps and during rainy season they are EVERYWHERE!!! Including my family room and I swear they grow to the size of your head!!!! And I am one of those people that they seem to LOVE. I read once that they are more attracted to certain people's body odor (I promise I use deodorant and shower regularly!!!)and unfortunately I passed the "MMMMMMMMMM!! You smell scrum-diddly-umptious!" gene on to my oldest child. Sorry Mikaily. We always end up with 10 times more bites than anyone else. So anyways. I was like "UGH!! I see a freakin' (that's my version of swearing) mosquito!!!!" Before I knew it, Kyle was like "AHHH!! Don't let it bite my little cutie!!" (that is what he calls Alaina, the baby)

They ran over to her and started to "circle the wagons." It made me think of a crash (Did you know that is what a group of rhinos is called?? I know, impressive, right??) of rhinos circling their babies when they sense a threat. It was so sweet.

So, being a true blogger, I grabbed my camera and snapped a picture. That was, of course, after I smashed the smithereens out of the stupid mosquito.

B is for Boobie

I got up to take Mikaily to the bus stop this morning only to realize it was COLD outside!! Now when I say cold, I mean it was about 55 degrees out. But considering that only a few days ago we were still swimming here, 55 was a shock to the system! I scrambled to find her clothes that would be suitable for the cool morning, but not turn her into a roasted peanut by the afternoon. I grabbed a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and her little white cardigan. Luckily she is pretty skinny, so the jeans from last season buttoned but, ummm, they were kinda short.

So, after I sent her off on the bus in her high waters, I decided I should get my 3 others (my preschooler didn't go to school today)dressed and head off to Target to do some clothes shopping. It was amusing because the clothing section was PACKED from all of the other mothers that had procrastinated their "fall" clothes shopping.

For those of you who don't know me, I need to give you a little bit of background. I call Kyle, who is now 5, my "boobie baby." He nursed until he was 19 months and I think the only reason he weaned was because I was about ready to pop with my next child. I love nursing. I support breastfeeding. However, I never imagined I would breastfeed a baby THAT long. I have nursed none of my others past 6 months. So, why nurse Kyle so long?? Well, he was a boobie baby. He LOVES boobs. He loves touching them, he loves looking at them, he loves talking about them, I wouldn't be surprised if he dreams about them. When he gets hurt, I have to keep him from trying to lift my shirt up to snuggle with my boobs. At about 3 years old I had to start watching him like a hawk when he would sit on another females lap, because he would try to stick his hand down her shirt and "feel her up." He once spent 30 minutes staring at an article in a magazine about 50 different types of bras...pictures on real models included. When he was 4 his Sunday school teacher once told me he pulled his shirt up and showed her his boobs and then asked if he could see hers. I keep telling my husband, who thinks it's cute now, it won't be so cute when Kyle is 16 and the principal calls us because he is trying to get the girls to show him their boobs during gym.

So today in Target we were perusing the baby girl clothes and there was a very pregnant woman there. She was VERY curvy, if you get my drift. I bet you can guess where this story is headed. Unfortunately I was busy ogling over all the adorable clothes and didn't notice her before Kyle did. Rookie mistake.

"Hey mama!! Look at her. She is having a baby."
"Ohhh, yes, she is having a baby, isn't she?" I replied. I KNEW as soon as I looked at her and saw all her curviness and her, what I would consider inappropriately, low-cut shirt I was in trouble.
"Is her baby going to eat boobie??" (that's what he calls breastfeeding)
"Well, I'm not sure if she will. That is a private decision for her to make. Remember what I've told you about being rude??" At this point I was holding my breath and trying to usher my children quickly in the opposite direction and PRAYING the conversation would stop there. No luck.
"Her boobs are big like yours. Does she have milk in them?"
"She probably does. Mommies make milk in their boobs when they are getting ready to have a baby. But Kyle, what have I told you about staring at boobs?"
I looked over at the poor woman and she was not-so-convincingly pretending to not pay any attention to us. She kept her eyes fixed on the rack (Haha....I said rack) of clothes.
At this point I was now forcefully shoving my children in the opposite direction, as Kyle is saying loudly, "But, I LOVE boobies!"

This poor, poor girl. She innocently came to the store to do some (obviously last minute)shopping for her soon to be little bundle of joy and got a very realistic glimpse into what motherhood will be like 5 years down the road. I don't think I remember reading in any of the parenting books about how to handle your boob obsessed toddler.

I have said for a few years now I think they should send small groups of teenagers to spend a week with me. It will be the best form of birth control anyone could expose them to!!

WooHoo!!!!!!!

Ok, so I know I said I was going to post something as often as I could this month, but, umm, well, the Amazing Race is on, so I gotta go!! :) More tomorrow!!

Sit, Fido. SIT!

I went to the grocery store tonight. I don't like having to go to the grocery store in general, but I HATE when I end up having to go on a Saturday. I don't like that I have to stand in line to walk down the isles. Plus, it seems like I always end up being behind the group of 6 adults shopping together that think they need to walk shoulder to shoulder and stop and look at EVERYTHING they pass. Come on! Some of us don't have 2 hours to stare at the jar of SMUCKERS Goobers peanut butter AND jelly and try to figure out how they get both of them into the same jar so neatly. Move over to the side or I may just have to amputate your feet with the front of my cart!!

Plus they never seem to have everything I need. That means that 3 days from now I am going to have to venture back out to the store for 1 or 2 things and end up buying 15 because they are on clearance and I walked past them. I am a sucker like that. Hey! You never know when you are going to need a 4 ft long gray wig or an extra bag of kitkats (even though you already have 11 pounds of candy sitting in your pantry!!) It's on clearance!!

I also always manage to end up in the checkout line that has the cashier that is a Chatty Cathy. I don't really care that you are named after your mothers best friends cousin. I don't care that you called the psychic hot line to get advice about your non-existent love life. Please don't share with me that you have a tickle in your throat and have been hacking up a lung while you are handling the food I will be feeding my family this week. I don't care that you haven't had a cigarette yet because your boss hasn't let you have a break. And PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not talk to me about how bad your cramps are because Aunt Flo is visiting!!! Less talk, more scan please. Ever heard of a blog?? You can vent on it! Try it sometime.

So the icing on my cake this evening actually happened when I first got to the store. I was soooo excited when I got to the parking lot and found a super duper close spot. SCORE!! I pulled in and noticed that the car parked on my driver's side had a teenage girl sitting in the front seat and a large dog in the backseat. The window was rolled down a couple inches in the back, but the dog didn't seem to be paying any attention to me. The girl looked over at me and smiled friendly. I didn't think twice about hopping right out. I love dogs. I have a big dog.

So, I got out of my car and took a step when "WOOF!!!" The dog lunged towards me, barking loudly. Now, there was no way this dog (that was roughly the size of a small horse)was fitting out that barely cracked window. Nevertheless, my reaction was to jump back, slamming myself into the side of my van, and screaming like, well, screaming like a dog the size of a small horse was lunging at me! I scooted out and to the back of my van and took a minute to regroup. I looked over and saw a young couple walking past and giggling at me. I waved and giggled a little back (although I was picturing the dog jumping out the window and heading straight for this bad-mannered couple and imagining them letting out the same horrified scream I had).

So I continued on into the store, still a little shaken but chuckling a little more at myself at this point. I started wandering through some random aisles (as I always do, searching for the aforementioned clearance items) and happened to wander into the aisle with the mirrors in it. As I was walking past the floor length mirrors I happened to catch a glimpse of the back, left side of my body and noticed I was covered in dirty black gunk from when I slammed into my van. PERFECT!!!


So, after having a dog give me a mini heart attack, being laughed at by strangers,walking around for an hour covered in car gunk, being trapped behind the shoppers from you know where, and listening to an annoying cashier tell me her life story, I now have to remember to go get my van washed!!

But, I guess it could have been worse. I could have had a full bladder when the dog jumped out at me. :)

PhotoHunt: Classic

Ok, so here is my first ever Photohunt pic. (You can go here for more info.) As you can see my child has learned very young that she can use her big blue eyes and bottom lip to make the classic pouty face and get exactly what she wants. Pretty smart, huh?

RAS Syndrome

Alrighty, so I guess the month of November is NaBloPoMo. Which I am pretty sure stands for National Blog Posting Month. I guess we, as bloggers, are encouraged to try and post on our blogs everyday in the month of November. Although this sounds great in theory, I fear that I will be reading a fair amount of boring posts this month. hehe

I would love to say that I want to try and do this, but I am not going to set myself up for failure. I will, however, try to blog a little extra. We'll just take it one day at a time.

If you go to the very bottom of my page you will see a a button with a globe that says "Click here" or "Place Pin" or "View my guest map." If you click on that you can put a pin on my map so I can see where everyone is blogging from. Just a fun little something.

OK, so now onto my post. Have you ever heard of RAS Syndrome? RAS stands for Redundant Acronym Syndrome. It refers to the use of one of the words that make up an acronym as well as the abbreviation that stands for that word, thus in effect, repeating that word. Confused?? Just keep reading. This has always been amusing to me. The name "RAS Syndrome" is actually ironic because it is redundant itself. RAS syndrome means "Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome." A few other more frequently used examples are:
ATM Machine= Automated Tell Machine machine
HIV Virus= Human Immunodeficiency Virus virus
PIN Number= Personal Identification Number number
SAT Test= Scholastic Assessment (or Aptitude)Test test
UPC Code= Universal Product Code code
VIN Number= Vehicle Identification Number number
HTML Language= Hypertext Markup Language language

It's just something that I have always gotten a little chuckle out of. Hope you do too.

Trick-or-Treat, Smell My Feet!!

Ahhhhh, Halloween. A mother is never more proud than when she sends her child from stranger to stranger prompting them to beg for candy. Trick-or-treat night is such a hectic night. I tried to make myself a little schedule for the day yesterday so that I would know exactly when to do what (like figuring out what time I needed to start making dinner so that I could finish by a certain time so they would have a certain amount of time to eat so I could be starting to get their costumes on by a certain time so I would have them ready for pictures before....etc....etc.... etc....) I realized at about 9:30 in the morning I was already running behind schedule.

We weren't really sure what time the actual trick-or-treating was supposed to start. I looked online and found nothing. I watched news and heard nothing. I asked neighbors who knew nothing. Everyone seemed to be really confused because of the whole time change/no time change thing. Someone told me they were waiting until it was dark out and then taking their children. Yeah, um, that won't work for me. It doesn't get dark until like 8!! If someone would have told me that I wouldn't have had to buy any costumes because my children turn into little monsters on their own if they are up past 8.

So we decided at 6:30 we would go out. We looked up the street. No one else was out. We started knocking on doors and no one was answering. Ugh! So we found a game of hopscotch that someone had drawn on the sidewalk and hung out and played for awhile. Finally at 7 we started seeing other people out and about and started our quest for massive amounts of sugar...yet again.






We had an unusually large number of people that wanted to take pictures of our children. We moved here from Ohio not too long ago and I don't ever remember people taking pictures of my children in the past. Is this something that is normal?? I didn't want to be like "Well, I don't mind if my children take candy from you, creepy old man, but please don't take their pictures."





It was pretty hot (and when I say hot I mean there was a good amount of sweating involved) and the mosquitoes were EVERYWHERE!!!!! I had no idea how big those suckers (no pun intended) could be until I lived in a hot, humid climate during rainy season. But all in all we had a pretty good time. We ended up with a plethora of candy. Actually it was 11 pounds of candy to be exact....we weighed it. hehe