Boredom FIghters

We had a boring day at home today.

Sicknesses have taken on a whole new meaning since having kids. I don't just feel badly for a day or two, tough it out, and get back to life. Now, one boy gets sick. Just as he is feeling better, he passes it on to another brother. This repeats until every one of us have gotten sick seperately! No two of us ever seem to go through it together, drawing out total sick days until I stop counting them.

This kinda takes us out of commission for a large chunk of days! I can't even go to the gym as I can't really exercise while sick, nor can I bring even one sick boy in there for fear of infecting everyone else!

Yuk. I hate it when we all get sick...

So back to our boring day. We are just running out of things to do and driving each other crazy. I sent the big boys down to the basement alone for a while though and they were happy enough to escape Mom the Grouch. When I went down to check on them, they had dug out their light sabers (or, life savers as Mitchell calls them) and were busy attacking each other and the couches.

An idea hit me then: why not replace the batteries in these old things and return them to their functioning, though obnoxious, state? So we hunted up all the "dead" toys and had a little toy clinic where we fixed 'em up! The result was something amazing to watch!

And here are my two boredom fighting super heros:

We'll Just Ignore Him For A While

Sometimes, Jack just doesn't want to cooperate with the family. Last weekend, we were celebrating Matt's birthday, enjoying a nice BBQ out on the patio - well, I should say, attempting to enjoy the BBQ. Jack was not happy about something and once he was told "no" one too many times for his liking, he lost it.

Now what do you do when your baby won't stop crying, simply because he isn't getting his way? Well, I don't know what you do with yours, but after attempting appropriate distraction without giving in to his demands, I knew we were just in for a little fit.

Now, as he was sitting right next to Matt this evening and he was being quite loud, Matt had the great idea to just turn his chair around to face away from us and ignore him until he could calm himself down and stop his silliness.

Once again, my blogging obsession took over and rather than being heartbroken that my poor baby was upset or annoyed that my child is acting embarrassingly and never admitting to such things in my own children, I ran for my camera. Seeing Jack turned backwards at the table, facing away from the action while the rest of us went on with dinner as usual, pretending we could not hear him was just too funny to leave unrecorded. So.... I snapped a few shots.

(I will admit that I felt a little badly taking pictures of him in this state; not out of embarrassment, but out of fear of what my little guy must be thinking of his evil mother for making a joke out of his ordeal.)

As you can see from that last shot, his dislike over being excluded from the action dried his eyes and he just stopped the crying. After a minute or so of peaking over his shoulder at us, we turned him back around and he was ready to rejoin us! Of course, the arrival of birthday cake may have had something to do with his change of mood...

Which Would You Rather?

Mitchell has started a new game, one that has caught on with Ben and now a day does not go by where I don't find them playing it. It is a silly game they play while they are supposed to be eating dinner and one they play while running endless errands with me in the car. It is called, "Would you rather?" and it goes something like this:

Hey Ben! Would you rather have no skin or eat poop?

Hey Mitchell! Would you rather live on the roof or in the Cheez-it box?

Would you rather ride in a cool car or fly yourself?

Would you rather be an orange or a stinky sock?

Would you rather eat stinky cheese or cucumbers?

Would you rather be eaten by a sharp tooth or smell a stinky flower?

Would you rather get a rock thrown at your head or be dropped by a dragon?

Would you rather get thrown off a dragon or sit down and relax?

(I promise these are the boys' very words. I just sat down with them and typed as they talked.)

The options get wilder and wilder and often depend on what their surroundings are. If we are in the car, the options are usually car-related. In the kitchen, we begin with food and just get sillier and sillier.

The funny thing is, I actually remember playing this game when I was a kid too! I didn't introduce them to this game though; it came from the mind of Mitchell, as many of our silliest practices do.

Dragon Makes a Friend: A Play For Dad

My handsome hubby had a birthday this weekend! While I personally am not one to make a huge deal about birthdays, my boys are just crazy about them - their own, each other's, mine, Matt's, really anyone's as long as they get to be a part of it!

The boys woke up bright and early, eager to FINALLY give dad their present they were so excited about and that we had all wrapped up (and then rewrapped after Jack thought it was for him) the day before. As happy as Matt was to receive his thoughtful gifts from his sons, (Mitchell wanted to keep wrapping up more and more of his toys to give him, plus they both made him 3 or 4 cards each, plus the knife) I think the boys might have been even more excited. Mitchell's feet were just dancing around all morning. He just could not stand still and was hopping around and spinning and grinning and... just being so Mitchell.

After the presents, it was time to get down to the entertainment: the play they worked so hard on all week! Remember my fairy wings? Well, it was time to get them out of hiding, get them on, get costumes on, set up the stage, get the props, and paint Mitchell's face! It was like a party around here!

We had a blast. Ben remembered every one of his lines, Mitchell looked fabulous as Jack Skellington in his tuxedo, the sets turned out so nice, and our front porch was just the perfect stage as daddy and Jack and Uncle Carl sat down below in the audience, cheering us on.

I am so proud of my boys. They love their dad so much and were so excited to do this for him. They are already planning their next production and I have heard rumors of a space theme with an astronaut dog and a space alien. I wouldn't be surprised if a dragon or skeleton made it in there too somehow...

That Other Place

Last night, as the boys were getting ready for bed, the boys were talking about our lazy tooth fairy. I hate to tell you, but she skipped over our house two nights ago. Ben was certain it was because he slept in Mitchell's bed that night and it confused her. I'm glad he came to that conclusion. Let's hope she actually found him last night and did her job!

Talking about the tooth fairy got them on the topic of things they believe in which they have never actually seen, which led from the tooth fairy right to Santa. Ben said, "You know, not everyone thinks the Tooth Fairy is real. Some people think Santa isn't real too." We asked him who thinks this, and while he didn't have an answer, he was pretty sure the validity of these characters is often in question. We asked if he thought they were real and he said "Yeah, I think they are real, I'm just saying some people don't."

From Santa, we moved to Jesus, another person Ben believes in but is quite frustrated that he can't see him. Although there are not a lot of similarities between Santa and Jesus, we seem to always talk about them in the same conversation! Must be more similar to a kid than I tend to think...

Mitchell was listening to all this and jumped in here with some of his hard-thought-out opinions. "Yeah, mom, some people don't believe in Jesus and those people have to go the bad heaven!"

I just wonder what his imagination pictures for him when he sees the two options after death: good heaven and bad heaven. Is the good one the one where you don't have to eat your vegetables and you get to stay up late, while the bad one is the one were every dinner is the dreaded mashed potatoes and you have to go to bed while it is still light out?

"Bad heaven" made Matt and me smile. We haven't talked a lot about the alternative to heaven with the boys, but he pieced that one together on his own.

Never Thought I'd Be Doing This!

Ben and Mitchell are planning a play for Matt's birthday. They came up with the story, the characters (a dragon and a skeleton, of course), painted the sets on big cut up moving boxes (with a little help from mom, but I'm just about as artistically gifted as they are), found costumes, and even found a part for me, the lone girl!

Now what part could a mere "girl" play in their fantastic performance (besides organizing and overseeing this whole production, plus being the narrator)? Well, I get to be the fairy. What did I expect? I'm a girl!

Once I was assigned a role in the play, the question of what my costume should be came up. Now since I have no little girls, I have no princess accessories; no wings, no magic wands, no glittery skirts or tutus. Ben suggested I find a costume store and stock up on some costume staples, as he just might need me to play a fairy more than once. "You will need this stuff again, mom!"

Well, I don't know of any fairy princess stores around here, so we decided to draw, cut out, and paint some giant cardboard wings for me. So that is what I have been doing for Jack's entire nap today: painting my fairy wings.

I have three boys. I have come up with plenty of dragon and monster and dinosaur costumes, but I never thought I'd find myself making fairy wings!

When I asked what part Jack could play, Ben thought about it for a bit and said, "The only thing he could be would be a tornado that messes it all up!"

Too Good To Keep It Quiet

As I was racing through the aisles at Costco a few weeks ago with all my kids riding on/hanging onto the cart in some life-threatening (or, at least, toe/foot-threatening) way, we stumbled upon the coveted "snack lady." This time, she was handing out tiny helpings of frozen deliciousness: Icees - the boys new favorite frozen treat.

All three of my boys gobbled theirs down in no time and I had to keep "circling the block" to "happen" upon this poor little old lady who was so slowly and methodically cutting them up into tiny, bite-sized pieces and even more slowly arranging the individual bites into a nice little arrangement on her tray before she'd let anyone touch them.

I tried to avoid her evil eye and ease her annoyance at us for taking so many of her little creations of art, by picking up two boxes of what she was promoting, making sure she saw me put them in the cart, amidst cheers from my kids. It's not every day mom actually buys the yummy treat they ask for!

These are loaded with sugar I'm sure, and the bright colors dye my boys tongues and lips green, red, and, worst of all, blue, but they are a fun and refreshing treat on these hot summer days. They can get them themselves and open them themselves. Other than the permission part, it is a mom's-help-free snack!

The bad news is Jack. He also loves these things but isn't quite so good at eating them. They are too cold on his teeth, so he never bites them, just licks and licks until they are melting all over him. He hasn't quite gotten the squeezing technique down either, so he just spills it all over himself, drops it out of the wrapper, and picks it up with his hands, melting the terribly bright juice all over his hands, arms, face, clothes, and anything in a 3 foot radius.

So we now try to sneak a snack without Jack knowing. It is a difficult thing to attempt. Poor little guy... I'm not trying to deprive him, but I do hate that mess!

Yesterday, the big boys successfully snagged one for themselves out of the freezer, and used their super secret spy moves to smuggle it outside to eat it before Jack was any wiser. I did my part by keeping him occupied with something else, and the mission was going down smoothly. Ben finished his, snuck back in, threw his garbage away. So far so good. But then Mitchell came in a few minutes later, waving his empty wrapper at me, saying, "Look mom! I finished mine without letting Jack see me even once!" Jack took one look at that wrapper, dropped what he was doing, and ran to the freezer, shouting, "Icee! Icee! Pees! Pees!"

Ah shucks... Mitchell just has such a hard time keeping good things secret! Even this time, when he was trying, he still couldn't keep from letting Jack in on it. He will do the same thing any time he gets something Ben doesn't get. He will go out of his way to find Ben wherever he is and either show him what he got or tell him all about it. It really is impossible to just give something to Mitchell. It's just too good for him to keep it quiet.