I arrive at work only to find a line of people needing my attention when all I really want to do is go put my food in the refrigerator and get my SMARTboard up and running with my newest awesome lesson. I go through the day being extraordinarily patient and kind and loving when what I really want to do sometimes is scream, "I'm sick and tired of you never having your homework." I have begun to feel like by the time I get home, I'm just plain, flat out done.
I absolutely love my job as a teacher. I think it's the best thing in the world and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world except maybe teaching my own kids. Lately though I feel like I've been so tolerant of everything that I can't tolerate my husband or my children. I have caught myself snapping at them for little small things and what made me think even more about it is that my son is getting the tone I recognize as my own and I don't like it.
I need to be even more patient with my children. They can't be the benefits of my pent up frustration with a lack of timeliness in turning in assignments, or too many meetings in one week, or too many kids not understanding what I teach them the first time I teach a lesson. I have to get better at shutting that all down and starting new with the people that truly mean the most to me.
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Not for Weak Stomachs
Warning: This post contains body fluids, well kind of fluids I guess or maybe more solids. If that makes you sick, don't read this post.
So, Mr. Man is off saving the world by creating his army of service warriors...(he's leading a mission trip). This leaves me being a single mom for a week. Can I just say yuck and super huge made props to all the single moms out there especially during potty training?
I had decided that today would be a low key day because the house is still relatively clean from Mr. Man completing his honey-do list and it's too stinking hot to do anything outside. Everything was going great until about 4:30 this afternoon when my Little Miss decided that she was for sure not going to take a nap and she was tired of the potty training business so she was going to poop on her brother's floor. Yes that's right ewwww, gross. The worst part of this beginning of the end of my confidence as a temporary single mom...yesterday she ate about two bowls of peanuts. All of the moms out there reading my blog know exactly why that is significant. Little Miss didn't just decide she wanted to mark her brother's room as her territory, she also decided to step in her markings and trail it through the upstairs. Where was that child's mother you might be asking yourself here...well, I had ran downstairs as fast as possible to get my angels some juice. They were out of sight for maybe 2 minutes and poop was everywhere.
So, I stick Little Miss on her toilet and tell her to stay, clean all of the spots that I could find on the floor, along with some extra spots for good measure and began running a bath for the pooper. I first wiped her down with wipes, then added a tiny bit of antibacterial soap to her bath but not too much because she has very sensitive skin and I didn't want her whelping up everywhere. I scrubbed her top to bottom and was taking just a moment to catch my breath when I notice that her bath water is slightly darker than it should be because I did after all wipe off all of the residual poo from earlier. I pull her out and notice a distinct smell. I look down to see, you guessed it poop squished between her toes just like she'd been playing in the sand or mud. At this point I was thinking, I have a pretty tough stomach but that is just repulsive. I fought back a quick wave of nausea and stuck her on her toilet again and told her to stay. This time she wasn't so cooperative. She instead rubbed her stinky, poopy body parts all over my legs...gross (have I taken a shower yet?) :-) I decided I had to ignore that because they only way to get her clean was by putting her back in the tub. Luckily the poop tub was her little one so I pulled that one out and emptied it and gave her a new bath in the big tub with once again some antibacterial soap.
Finally I had her clean again and I slapped a diaper on that bottom faster than a cow to the barn at milking time. I grabbed the bleach to begin cleaning her tub and the toys and the big tub and her toilet and the floor. While the toys were soaking, I sat down with a book to unwind for ten minutes when the Little Man says, "mom I found a rolly poley."
"Awesome let me see," I said secretly trying not to gag at the thought of seeing a bug. My fake smile was wiped of my face as I realized my son had a tick crawling on his arm. I was so proud of myself because I was able to remain calm but in the process of getting the tick I tickled my son's arm and he knocked the tick off into the high pile carpet. Seriously...I can't make this stuff up. With my super quick attack mode brain still on from the poop adventure, I ushered the kids into a bedroom and pulled the vacuum up in record speed. My thinking was that I would suck up the tick, then empty it into the trash and take the trash to the dumpster outside. Super thinking right! If only it had worked.
I hadn't taken into account the number of toys laying around so as I moved each one, I checked it for the tick. Then I vacuumed, then came trouble. When I went downstairs to empty the vacuum canister it was jammed full of dog hair, human hair, and dirt. I shook it a couple of times inside the trash can to knock it loose and on the third time I missed the trash can and the whole bottom part of the canister went flying across the kitchen...well at least it wasn't clogged any more. Problem now was that I had dirt and dust and junk all over my kitchen floor, two kids upstairs doing who knows what and a tick somewhere in the house.
I resigned myself to the fact that one of us will get a tick sometime this week and I can only hope it's the dog. I put Little Miss to bed, played Monopoly Jr. with Little Man and lost for the second night in a row, gave him a bath, and put him to bed. I am tired and utterly defeated. Is it Sunday yet? And who is volunteering to pay for me to go to a day at the spa next week because oh by the way, our tags on both vehicles were not renewed on time and we exceeded the maximum fine so we're down a relatively large chunk of change. Wake me up when it's August, I'm ready to go back to work.
So, Mr. Man is off saving the world by creating his army of service warriors...(he's leading a mission trip). This leaves me being a single mom for a week. Can I just say yuck and super huge made props to all the single moms out there especially during potty training?
I had decided that today would be a low key day because the house is still relatively clean from Mr. Man completing his honey-do list and it's too stinking hot to do anything outside. Everything was going great until about 4:30 this afternoon when my Little Miss decided that she was for sure not going to take a nap and she was tired of the potty training business so she was going to poop on her brother's floor. Yes that's right ewwww, gross. The worst part of this beginning of the end of my confidence as a temporary single mom...yesterday she ate about two bowls of peanuts. All of the moms out there reading my blog know exactly why that is significant. Little Miss didn't just decide she wanted to mark her brother's room as her territory, she also decided to step in her markings and trail it through the upstairs. Where was that child's mother you might be asking yourself here...well, I had ran downstairs as fast as possible to get my angels some juice. They were out of sight for maybe 2 minutes and poop was everywhere.
So, I stick Little Miss on her toilet and tell her to stay, clean all of the spots that I could find on the floor, along with some extra spots for good measure and began running a bath for the pooper. I first wiped her down with wipes, then added a tiny bit of antibacterial soap to her bath but not too much because she has very sensitive skin and I didn't want her whelping up everywhere. I scrubbed her top to bottom and was taking just a moment to catch my breath when I notice that her bath water is slightly darker than it should be because I did after all wipe off all of the residual poo from earlier. I pull her out and notice a distinct smell. I look down to see, you guessed it poop squished between her toes just like she'd been playing in the sand or mud. At this point I was thinking, I have a pretty tough stomach but that is just repulsive. I fought back a quick wave of nausea and stuck her on her toilet again and told her to stay. This time she wasn't so cooperative. She instead rubbed her stinky, poopy body parts all over my legs...gross (have I taken a shower yet?) :-) I decided I had to ignore that because they only way to get her clean was by putting her back in the tub. Luckily the poop tub was her little one so I pulled that one out and emptied it and gave her a new bath in the big tub with once again some antibacterial soap.
Finally I had her clean again and I slapped a diaper on that bottom faster than a cow to the barn at milking time. I grabbed the bleach to begin cleaning her tub and the toys and the big tub and her toilet and the floor. While the toys were soaking, I sat down with a book to unwind for ten minutes when the Little Man says, "mom I found a rolly poley."
"Awesome let me see," I said secretly trying not to gag at the thought of seeing a bug. My fake smile was wiped of my face as I realized my son had a tick crawling on his arm. I was so proud of myself because I was able to remain calm but in the process of getting the tick I tickled my son's arm and he knocked the tick off into the high pile carpet. Seriously...I can't make this stuff up. With my super quick attack mode brain still on from the poop adventure, I ushered the kids into a bedroom and pulled the vacuum up in record speed. My thinking was that I would suck up the tick, then empty it into the trash and take the trash to the dumpster outside. Super thinking right! If only it had worked.
I hadn't taken into account the number of toys laying around so as I moved each one, I checked it for the tick. Then I vacuumed, then came trouble. When I went downstairs to empty the vacuum canister it was jammed full of dog hair, human hair, and dirt. I shook it a couple of times inside the trash can to knock it loose and on the third time I missed the trash can and the whole bottom part of the canister went flying across the kitchen...well at least it wasn't clogged any more. Problem now was that I had dirt and dust and junk all over my kitchen floor, two kids upstairs doing who knows what and a tick somewhere in the house.
I resigned myself to the fact that one of us will get a tick sometime this week and I can only hope it's the dog. I put Little Miss to bed, played Monopoly Jr. with Little Man and lost for the second night in a row, gave him a bath, and put him to bed. I am tired and utterly defeated. Is it Sunday yet? And who is volunteering to pay for me to go to a day at the spa next week because oh by the way, our tags on both vehicles were not renewed on time and we exceeded the maximum fine so we're down a relatively large chunk of change. Wake me up when it's August, I'm ready to go back to work.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
With a Baby on her Hip
No, I wouldn't call myself a Redneck Woman...far from it. But my daughter has suddenly decided that she cannot exist without me holding her. Now granted she did just get her MMR shot last week so she could be feeling a little under the weather. I however had a gorgeous Saturday yesterday and a deadline to complete cutting down the tree out front so I couldn't just walk around holding my daughter all day. Especially since upon reading my previous blog my husband responded, "you can't be a country girl, you don't like dirt."
We started the morning by grabbing some breakfast at Old School Bagel and then went grocery shopping. After putting the groceries away my husband and I went out in the backyard where we we have been diligently trying to remove a secondary fence and develop a plan of improvement for our plain, weed infested yard. My job was to unscrew all of the screws in the fence and remove the pickets. I was cruising along for awhile until my leech...aka my daughter...came toddling up grabbed my leg and wouldn't let go. I picked her up and proceeded to continue operating my cordless drill and removing fence pickets with a baby on my hip.
Project number two for the day...remove the remaining limbs on the tree that poops on my car. It was a glorious victory. Maggie was fine playing on her own until I started helping pile limbs up. Then magically she couldn't stand the thought of me walking from one place to the next. So, of course I wasn't about to just sit and watch the manual labor carry on without me...I needed to work off a few Spring Break pounds. So, I loaded up my extra 16 pounds and off I went dragging limbs with a baby on my hip.
By the time we finished with this I was starving. As my father likes to say, I was so hungry my stomach thought my throat was slit. We packed up and headed to BWW, our favorite wind down spot. The wait... up to an hour and a half. So we moved to our back up plan, which last night was eat at the bowling alley, and I guess while we are there do some bowling. Wow what an experience we had here.
This was Noah's first time bowling and he was happier than a tornader in a trailer park. Maggie however, not nearly as excited as brother. Actually, that isn't completely true. She was excited about all of the bowling balls as long as Momma was holding her. The minute I tried to give her to someone else, SCREEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM. The cry was ear piercing and for the weak hearted momma, heart crushing. After two frames, I couldn't handle the stares from other people and I decided I would just bowl with her. The first two frames I bowled with her I got spares. Was my little M&M my good luck charm? By the end of our two game extravaganza I had bowled 5 strikes (I'm usually lucky to get 1), two of which came back to back, quite a few spares and broke 100 in both games. It was amazing. I did better bowling with a baby on my hip.
Maybe I need a couple more!
We started the morning by grabbing some breakfast at Old School Bagel and then went grocery shopping. After putting the groceries away my husband and I went out in the backyard where we we have been diligently trying to remove a secondary fence and develop a plan of improvement for our plain, weed infested yard. My job was to unscrew all of the screws in the fence and remove the pickets. I was cruising along for awhile until my leech...aka my daughter...came toddling up grabbed my leg and wouldn't let go. I picked her up and proceeded to continue operating my cordless drill and removing fence pickets with a baby on my hip.
Project number two for the day...remove the remaining limbs on the tree that poops on my car. It was a glorious victory. Maggie was fine playing on her own until I started helping pile limbs up. Then magically she couldn't stand the thought of me walking from one place to the next. So, of course I wasn't about to just sit and watch the manual labor carry on without me...I needed to work off a few Spring Break pounds. So, I loaded up my extra 16 pounds and off I went dragging limbs with a baby on my hip.
By the time we finished with this I was starving. As my father likes to say, I was so hungry my stomach thought my throat was slit. We packed up and headed to BWW, our favorite wind down spot. The wait... up to an hour and a half. So we moved to our back up plan, which last night was eat at the bowling alley, and I guess while we are there do some bowling. Wow what an experience we had here.
This was Noah's first time bowling and he was happier than a tornader in a trailer park. Maggie however, not nearly as excited as brother. Actually, that isn't completely true. She was excited about all of the bowling balls as long as Momma was holding her. The minute I tried to give her to someone else, SCREEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM. The cry was ear piercing and for the weak hearted momma, heart crushing. After two frames, I couldn't handle the stares from other people and I decided I would just bowl with her. The first two frames I bowled with her I got spares. Was my little M&M my good luck charm? By the end of our two game extravaganza I had bowled 5 strikes (I'm usually lucky to get 1), two of which came back to back, quite a few spares and broke 100 in both games. It was amazing. I did better bowling with a baby on my hip.
Maybe I need a couple more!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
To Fort or Not to Fort
That is the question my husband and I have been asking ourselves for the past two days. We moved into our gorgeous house in July and we were really excited about it because it had a "fort" in the back yard. Well, upon further investigation we realized that this "fort" is really just a makeshift, unsturdy p.o.s. that is unsafe for our children. Read the supporting evidence and see if you come to the same conclusion and can provide us with any ideas for a solution.
Exhibit A: My Little Man is climbing up the ladder...one of the slats comes straight out of the side pieces of the ladder as he clings on for dear life (well he was only two feet off the ground so maybe not dear life). The ladder slat had been nailed in with 1 1/2 inch ROOFING nails. Not the best idea for a ladder that is to support all the overweight children we have in America.
Exhibit B: The slide "on the fort" was actually just resting on the lower platform, not screwed in and when my husband went to screw it in we realized that the platform wasn't at the correct height to be able to secure the slide.
Exhibit C: The top deck is unreachable from the bottom deck (there is no ladder) unless you are an adult. However when my husband jumped up on the top deck to take pictures of the garden, I thought the entire thing "fort" and husband were crashing to the ground. The entire fort swayed back and forth with his every move.
After sorting through the facts, my husband and I decided to look into purchasing a new playground for our children. We looked at Toys R Us, Academy, and OK Play. The prices varied from $300 to $5,000 (and of course the one that I fell in love with was $5,000...well $3,000 without the cedar mulch). The playgrounds vary in size and weight requirements and whether or not adults can use them. I'm only thinking for the well being of my children. If it will hold me while I'm hiding out in the upper deck or swinging, then it will surely hold my kids. It's not like I love swinging and am just using this as an excuse to buy myself a swing set. It's for the kids...all about the kids. Back to the task at hand. It seems that the differences all come down to the quality of the wood. My question, is it worth spending less money on something that according to reviews still takes 3 days to put together and doesn't hold adults or should I spend more money buying all the parts that I want to have and customize the entire thing to fit my ne...I mean my children's needs and then sweet talk my father-in-law and my husband into building the fort of my dreams for my babies? Any thoughts?
Exhibit A: My Little Man is climbing up the ladder...one of the slats comes straight out of the side pieces of the ladder as he clings on for dear life (well he was only two feet off the ground so maybe not dear life). The ladder slat had been nailed in with 1 1/2 inch ROOFING nails. Not the best idea for a ladder that is to support all the overweight children we have in America.
Exhibit B: The slide "on the fort" was actually just resting on the lower platform, not screwed in and when my husband went to screw it in we realized that the platform wasn't at the correct height to be able to secure the slide.
Exhibit C: The top deck is unreachable from the bottom deck (there is no ladder) unless you are an adult. However when my husband jumped up on the top deck to take pictures of the garden, I thought the entire thing "fort" and husband were crashing to the ground. The entire fort swayed back and forth with his every move.
After sorting through the facts, my husband and I decided to look into purchasing a new playground for our children. We looked at Toys R Us, Academy, and OK Play. The prices varied from $300 to $5,000 (and of course the one that I fell in love with was $5,000...well $3,000 without the cedar mulch). The playgrounds vary in size and weight requirements and whether or not adults can use them. I'm only thinking for the well being of my children. If it will hold me while I'm hiding out in the upper deck or swinging, then it will surely hold my kids. It's not like I love swinging and am just using this as an excuse to buy myself a swing set. It's for the kids...all about the kids. Back to the task at hand. It seems that the differences all come down to the quality of the wood. My question, is it worth spending less money on something that according to reviews still takes 3 days to put together and doesn't hold adults or should I spend more money buying all the parts that I want to have and customize the entire thing to fit my ne...I mean my children's needs and then sweet talk my father-in-law and my husband into building the fort of my dreams for my babies? Any thoughts?
Saturday, March 5, 2011
WARNING!
Never take two tired children out to dinner because you are too tired to cook at home...it will only make you more exhausted.
So the day was full of normal Saturday, family activities such as going to the library, buying stuff for the garden, watching KU beat Missouri, all the normal stuff. It gets to be late and Mr. Chuck was still shoveling horse manure...I mean compost into the garden. I had been dealing with a semi-screaming M&M because I wouldn't let her go outside in the blustery wind for fear of her getting an ear infection. So, my brilliant plan was to take everyone out to eat and just be able to relax for a little bit before going to the grocery store and going home for bed. Not so brilliant.
I somehow didn't connect that M&M's tantrums were only partly due to not being able to go outside and shove her hands in the "compost", yuck. The other part of her tantrums wasn't realized until it was too late. We arrived at Outback at 5:40 and it was already slam packed with people. Usually, we go, it's busy, we find a table in the bar area and we're done good to go. Tonight, no such luck.
We stood in the bar area waiting for a table with our two children that must have drank that silly, wiggle juice because they could not stand still. There was an older couple quietly enjoying their drinks with their to go boxes packed up. I thought to myself, "this is fabulous, they are almost done and we'll be able to sit down super quickly." So, they pay their bill and continue to sit there drinking their drinks and staring at opposite televisions. We wait a little longer thinking that any minute they will get up and we'll be able to sit down. The gray, bouffant haired woman starts putting on her jacket, then the cowboy starts putting his on. Keep in mind, they are both still sitting in the seat. They fumble around looking like a bug fighting to roll off its back. Finally they stand up, only they don't move away from the table. They just stand there waiting, straightening out their jackets...come on you're like a hundred years old who are you trying to impress. They finally move as the bus boy starts cleaning off the table. My heart starts pounding because we are finally going to be able to contain the excess squirmy, hanging on momma's leg, spinning in circles energy to half of a booth. I start to make my move to the table only to have it seat jacked by two more old people who have a had a bit too much to drink...ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
I take the kids to the bathroom and just happen to walk by the seat thieves and give them the evil, teacher eye. My little man plays in the bathroom for awhile and M&M splashes water everywhere. Okay, time to face the waiting game again. I get back out and my husband informs me that he had a table for us and these four people scurried past him like little rodents running from a broom and stole another table. Give me a break.
Everything went downhill from there. Our waiter was unhappy and slow, our food took FOREVER but, they did give us our appetizer for free! My little man almost passed out in the booth and M&M was a non-stop wallower (I have no idea how to spell wallow.) AHHHH, she was cranky and squirmy because she was tired...how could I have missed those classic signs.
Lesson of the Day: If your kids are tired, you can't be too tired to cook because you will never make it through a dinner out.
So the day was full of normal Saturday, family activities such as going to the library, buying stuff for the garden, watching KU beat Missouri, all the normal stuff. It gets to be late and Mr. Chuck was still shoveling horse manure...I mean compost into the garden. I had been dealing with a semi-screaming M&M because I wouldn't let her go outside in the blustery wind for fear of her getting an ear infection. So, my brilliant plan was to take everyone out to eat and just be able to relax for a little bit before going to the grocery store and going home for bed. Not so brilliant.
I somehow didn't connect that M&M's tantrums were only partly due to not being able to go outside and shove her hands in the "compost", yuck. The other part of her tantrums wasn't realized until it was too late. We arrived at Outback at 5:40 and it was already slam packed with people. Usually, we go, it's busy, we find a table in the bar area and we're done good to go. Tonight, no such luck.
We stood in the bar area waiting for a table with our two children that must have drank that silly, wiggle juice because they could not stand still. There was an older couple quietly enjoying their drinks with their to go boxes packed up. I thought to myself, "this is fabulous, they are almost done and we'll be able to sit down super quickly." So, they pay their bill and continue to sit there drinking their drinks and staring at opposite televisions. We wait a little longer thinking that any minute they will get up and we'll be able to sit down. The gray, bouffant haired woman starts putting on her jacket, then the cowboy starts putting his on. Keep in mind, they are both still sitting in the seat. They fumble around looking like a bug fighting to roll off its back. Finally they stand up, only they don't move away from the table. They just stand there waiting, straightening out their jackets...come on you're like a hundred years old who are you trying to impress. They finally move as the bus boy starts cleaning off the table. My heart starts pounding because we are finally going to be able to contain the excess squirmy, hanging on momma's leg, spinning in circles energy to half of a booth. I start to make my move to the table only to have it seat jacked by two more old people who have a had a bit too much to drink...ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
I take the kids to the bathroom and just happen to walk by the seat thieves and give them the evil, teacher eye. My little man plays in the bathroom for awhile and M&M splashes water everywhere. Okay, time to face the waiting game again. I get back out and my husband informs me that he had a table for us and these four people scurried past him like little rodents running from a broom and stole another table. Give me a break.
Everything went downhill from there. Our waiter was unhappy and slow, our food took FOREVER but, they did give us our appetizer for free! My little man almost passed out in the booth and M&M was a non-stop wallower (I have no idea how to spell wallow.) AHHHH, she was cranky and squirmy because she was tired...how could I have missed those classic signs.
Lesson of the Day: If your kids are tired, you can't be too tired to cook because you will never make it through a dinner out.
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