Lazy Mommy and The Car That's Always There

I am not a messy person. I like things clean and neat. I like the house to smell clean and I hate the toilet seat left up. I clean at least one of my toilets every day (I have a lot of toilets and a lot of boys to.. well... do what boys do.) My bed is only unmade if I am in it and I make my boys make theirs as well. I sweep my kitchen after lunch and dinner every day and even spent all last Saturday washing the entire ground floor windows of my house using a squeegee and a huge, shaky ladder and a very *helpful* 4 year old climbing up behind me.

That said, I am not a neat freak. I don't mop every day and sometimes I just can't (or, more correctly choose not to) keep up with the tornado of a mess that my kids produce constantly. I try. I don't always succeed.

I also take short cuts. I sometimes kick something under the couch that I know no one will ever miss and doesn't really have a home, but if one of my boys sees it in the trash, will be reduced to tears. I never leave the dishes undone, but my coffee pot could use a good scrubbing. My basement playroom sometimes doesn't experience a cleaning presence for days at a time. I may have a dust bunny the size of Texas under my guest room bed.

I also have a pesky car in my kitchen. I swear, I have picked this same car up a dozen times and put it away, but still it seems to live in my kitchen! So lately, I am tired of said car and am actually sweeping around him! I kick him to the side, sweep where he was, then kick him back again and move along. Am I just to lazy to pick this guy up again? Why yes, yes I am!

Farewell To Football, Late Nights, and Port-a-potties!

Ben's last football game was last weekend. It's funny; it sorta snuck up on him. When I told him about a month ago that we were almost done with football for this year, he said, "What? Why is it over? We don't just keep playing all year long?"

Oh man... as much as I loved having him play, I can't imagine doing this all year long! Ben and I jumped into this with both feet, not quite expecting so many hours spent at practice every week. Ben was great though, and I dealt with it. He loved it. What a great outlet for him to play rough and play like a big boy should!

As proud as I am of Ben and all the progress he made, I have to give Mitchell and Jack some props too. Every hour Ben spent at practice, the other two boys spent there with him. They ate many dinners on the ground and got more bug bites than I could count. They dug giant holes in the dirt and filled their socks with sand to use as sand bombs. I wish I had a way to measure how much dirt we took home from that park. Mitchell learned the hard way that when you refuse to use the clean, flushable toilet at home, you are forced to use the "stinky toilet with no flusher" while trying to hold your breath, not look into the deep hole, and not touch anything all at the same time. They both made friends and ate a lot of ice cream from the ever-present ice cream truck. Way to be so adaptable and be there for your big brother, little guys!

Mitchell and Mini Mitchell... Heaven Help Me!

It has been interesting to watch Jack transform from chubby baby into a bruiser of a toddler. Whereas he was once a peaceful and content little blob, he is now an unstoppable force! We have been watching him, always comparing him to our older boys, trying to figure out who he resembles more and who he takes after in personality more.

Well, it is no longer a guessing game as to which brother he is most like. He is a mini Mitchell. Apart, each boy is a handful. Together? Watch out. Nothing suprises me anymore. Today I found them outside, laughing hysterically and tossing a soggy old snake skin back and forth at each other, trying to get it to stick to the other boy. It was nasty. Neither boy has any fear of bugs, bees, or spiders and will chase Ben around with whatever they have managed to catch. Sometimes they just scream at each other and think it is perfectly normal and hilarious. Mitchell will dress him sometimes, putting his jammies over his clothes and Jack will love it so much he will cry if I try to dress him a little more conventionally. They often just have such an overabundance of energy that they just have to run laps around the yard (or house if I allow it.)

Both of them love mischief. Neither of them is too terribly bothered by consequences. Both boys are very loud. Both can turn a room upside down in a matter of seconds. Both of them laugh easily and often.

I could do a whole separate blog about how Jack is like Ben too, and when Ben is home, the three of them are always together, usually kept in line by big brother. For now though, Jack is more taking after his bundle of unstoppable energy brother, Mitchell. I no longer roll my eyes when strangers daily tell me I look like I have my hands full. I now agree with them.

Dirt, Dude Style

Summer is all about getting sweaty and dirty when you're a "dude." At least, that is what my boys tell me when I ask how they get so dirty.

They tell me I shouldn't worry about it too much, it's "dude style" to get dirty and make messes.

Mitchell can't quite decide if dirty feet is a good thing or a bad thing though. He has a certain pair of shoes that he LOVES because they are exactly like daddy's and he gets to slip them on with no socks, but they also make his feet quite stinky and sweaty. Every time he kicks them off, he has to sit down and clean out between each of his toes with his finger. It is so funny to see him sitting on the floor, foot pulled up into his lap, methodically wiping the dirt out from between each of his toes.

The other day, he kicked his shoes off in the car though and began his cleaning ritual right there in his seat next to Ben. Ben was severely grossed out and said, "Ew, Mitchell! Stop taking your stinky shoes off and stop touching your stinky toes! Don't even think about touching me now!"

Mitchell didn't even look up from his grooming, just said, "Ben, my feet are dirty and I'm cleaning them 'dude style'."

I am constantly getting schooled as to what exactly "dude style" means. Apparently, it includes both having dirty feet and also cleaning dirty feet with your fingers in the car.

My, That's A Lovely Scent You Are Wearing!

I am always a tad jealous of the way other people's babies smell.  Babies can smell like any number of things, but unless they have just spit up or filled their diaper, they usually have a pleasant smell about them.

My baby does not smell so pleasant most of the time.  He was obsessed with my garbage cans, so I finally broke down and put locks on that kitchen cupboard.  In rebellion against such an offensive act as denying him his love of garbage, he has retaliated by waging war on my recycle bins!  I did not lock these because they are taller, making it more difficult to get into them, plus the items in them are less dirty and smelly.  Well, he has found a way to get both dirty and smelly in only a few minute window before I can discover him.  

Today, I found him with an empty (or almost empty) beer can in one hand and an empty can of smoked oysters in the other, waving them around with a look of pure glee on his face.  There were drips of beer not only flying around the kitchen, but all over his hair, skin, and clothes as well.  The smoky smell of the smoked oyster package only added to his... interesting scent.  

Let me tell you, those two smells are not just something eradicated with a simple wipe down.  I wonder what people think when they get near my youngest child; something along the lines of "Phew!  What are they feeding this kid?!"

A Boy's Playground

Our street has turned into a construction zone.  While this is generally a nuisance for me - shutting off water, closing off the road so we can't drive on it, plenty of dust and dirt, and even more noise - the boys are just loving it!  Every morning, we sit at the living room windows, watching all the equipment and dump trucks and workers show up.  They park outside our windows, rumbling their engines while the men read their papers and drink their coffee (can't they do that with the engines off so early in the morning??) while the boys point out their favorite machines as well as scope out the scene for any new tractors that might have shown up.

It is fun to see them excited to watch this, but the best part of the day comes after the work day is over and the workers have gone home, but left all their equipment unattended on the street!  Not only can we play in the middle of the street, which for obvious reasons, is usually forbidden, but it has turned into a little boy's playground!  Are we supposed to be touching and climbing on this stuff?  I doubt it, but how can they possibly hurt any of it?   Every afternoon, Mitchell asks, "Mom, can we go check out the struction yet?"

They sit in the bulldozer scoop, crawl through giant cement pipes, dig in the dirt, climb gravel piles, and throw rocks into the puddles.  I basically have to hose them off and then immediately toss them into the bathtub when I finally drag them away, but they need a bath anyways and a good hosing is always a good time!  

So as much as I am looking forward to this construction project being finished, we are thoroughly enjoying it while it lasts.

Why Boys Don't Wear White

To me, there is nothing cuter on a little baby boy than a white onesie.  It is simple, but babyish, matches any bottoms one should choose, and never distracts from their boyish cuteness.

There is one drawback to a white onesie though - it looks like this at the end of the day (truthfully, it looks like this by mid-day, but I don't always do anything about it, knowing it will just happen all over again.)  A mess like this doesn't just happen all at once - a few hours of being a baby is needed to truly make a masterpiece out of a pure, white shirt.  We need at least one meal, plenty of drool, some mashed up and spit out Cheerios, crawling all over the place, and plenty of brotherly help.  

One example of this "brotherly help" I mentioned:  I put Ben in charge of keeping Jack away from the stairs leading down to my front door.  I just had to close my eyes for a few minutes, and in that exhausted state, I truly thought Ben would make a great babysitter.   Now before you think me a terrible mother and cut me out of your life altogether, know that I was merely dozing, not truly sleeping, and was on the chair, sitting up, not laying down for a nap in my bed.  While I was in this semi-conscious state, I could hear plenty of giggling by both Ben and Jack.  There would be a few seconds of slapping sounds on the floor (Jack crawling) followed by giggles by both boys, repeated over and over again.  It was quite a nice soundtrack to my "meditation."  My curiosity finally overcame my sleepiness and I just had to see what was going on.  Ben would let Jack crawl as far as the top of the steep stairs, then grab him by both ankles and drag him back 5 or 6 feet back to my chair where he would begin it all over again.  They both thought it was the best game ever!  I had a nice little break from chasing Jack around, keeping him out of the dangers a new crawler continually searches for, but I hate to say, this white onesie may not ever be white again.  Being drug on his belly across the floor may have been just too much for bleach to take care of this time!

Dumpster Diving

I come by dumpster diving honestly: my grandpa did it, my dad did it (I specifically remember him finding a sandwich in the garbage at the lake one time and, after not being able to convince anyone else to eat it, ate it himself!  To his credit though, that is the only instance of dumpster diving I remember him doing, albeit pretty gross.)

I have taken dumpster diving to a whole new level though.  Not only did I find quite the treasure, but I made my oldest son do it for me!  After all, the "treasure" was for him and his suboordinate (Mitchell) so why not make him do the actual gathering of the item?

Let me back up a bit to give a little perspective on why a mother would possibly make her 5-year-old son get somthing out of the garbage.  One of our neighboring houses is being demolished.  It is being completely leveled to the ground, and it is an awesome thing to watch, even for me!  In order to get the best seats to watch this fantastic show, we parked our butts down in the ally, not 10 feet away from the tractor performing the amazing feat of knocking down walls and tearing down chimneys and causing total and utter destruction.  It was awesome.  Try to ignore the fact that we were actually sitting on the ground in a dirty ally, leaning our backs against someone else's garage door, hoping it didn't open on us and send us falling backwards into someone's garage.  It is at these times, when we are having so much fun doing something or watching something we don't normally get to do or see, that I wonder if providing a new and exciting experience for my boys is worth the fact that it is filthy and we are actually sitting on the ground getting covered by the dust of a newly demolished building.  Obviously, I chose fun over cleanliness this time.

So there we were, sitting on the ground, watching one man working a tractor, one man spraying the mess with a fire hose, and one man just sitting on the fence watching ("supervising" I presume.  Wish I had his job), when something caught my eye on top of the garbage bins next to us.  Now this was actually on top of the garbage bins, not actually in the bins, so it's OK, right?  It looked to me like a child's workbench, taken apart and placed on top of the bins.  The bins were squished in between the work site and the next building, so I couldn't actually reach the workbench to check it out, so I lifted Ben up and onto the bins, and he crawled across them to give me a report on what he found there.  His glowing report was that it was, indeed, a fully intact and clean workbench that had been taken apart a bit in order to fit in the small space, but otherwise in great shape!  He dragged it back to me, and we quickly carried it a block back to our house (quickly in case someone somehow knew that I had just taken a toy out of the garbage and scolded/criticized me for my disgusting act.) 

       We cleaned the thing up, brought it upstairs, put all our tools in/on it, and it is our new favorite toy!  The funny thing is, we almost bought this very same toy for Mitchell at Christmas last year, but it was more money than we wanted to spend on just one toy, so we passed.  Should I be finding and bringing home someone else's garbage (or, more correctly, encouraging my child to do so?)  My final thought on the matter is that when the "treasure" is good enough, the answer is a big "yes!"