My Alligator Purse

I know next week is Thanksgiving dinner, but one of the main reasons we remodeled the kitchen was for the big baking holidays. I have already baked dozens of cupcakes at once to see if the oven was up for the big job. It was. We have hosted a few parties and the kitchen has performed marvelously. So a turkey was the next logical challenge. I am making an amended Thanksgiving dinner for tonight; Turkey (with brine), sweet potatoes, stuffing, peas, and pumpkin pies. I have been talking with the kids about this meal for a week now. They have been helping as I gathered the ingredients, prepared the turkey, cooked the brine and baked the pies. William has been trained that each time we talk about the turkey he walks to the kitchen, opens the fridge and points to the turkey.

So I remind the kids this morning that I will be cooking the turkey today. Lainy Ann innocently asks, “So are you going through drive-thru or making something else for me?” Um, What?! I’m making turkey for dinner. “Yeah”, she says, “But I told you I don’t like it and I’m not eating it”. “Then I guess you are going to be hungry”, I replied.

7 days until I get to wear this t-shirt.

I have discovered the real problem with a large family. It isn’t money, space or patience. Even time isn’t really that much of an issue. I have gotten creative with spending one-on-one time with the kids as I grocery shop or get an oil change. And having enough energy to get all the kids dinner, bathed and in bed just means creative time-management. I cook full meals in the early afternoon while the kids are in school so we can spend all the time from 3 pm until bedtime together on homework, reading, etc.

But on Halloween I discovered the real reason you can’t have really large families in today’s society. Scheduling. Throughout the week I have cleverly scheduled the children’s activities that compliments our family life. But on Halloween I had to be at 6 different events through out the day. Caskey had to work if we wanted him to come home early for trick-or-treating. That left Alexander and I running back and forth to the different schools and providing support.
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My last baby boy was baptized recently. He was baptized at the church his siblings were baptized at and where Caskey and I were married. Its one of my favorite traditions with our newborns. I love welcoming them into our church, the church we have called home for years. I love dressing them in the same gown their siblings have worn and introducing our precious child to the community.

Welcome, my son, into the Catholic faith.

Last night the clocks changed. We turned the clocks back an hour and thereby gaining an hour of sleep. No wait. Only those without children gained an hour of sleep. The rest of us got up an hour early and spent the day normally. This morning the clock ready 4:55 am when Lainy Ann asked if she could color. Because I didn’t feel like arguing I said yes.

So I drug myself out of bed at 5:30 am and found them not coloring. But this isn’t one of those oh-no-they-ruined-my-house-stories. No, its ends much better. They were both playing in the bedroom with pencils and blank paper. They were making up addition problems and solving them. My 5 1/2 year old and my 4 year old are doing addition this morning for fun.

Yup, I’m bragging. But wouldn’t you be bragging too if your 4-year-old was doing math for breakfast?

McDonald’s new Happy Meal toy is a Barbie. We have strict rules in this house about EVERYONE, including dolls, must be appropriately dressed. Lainy Ann is sitting on the couch playing with two of her new dolls. One of the dolls is wearing a pink strapless dress, strictly inappropriate. So Caskey asks me to hand him a sharpie. He is presumably going to draw straps on this Barbie. I remembered that I had 24 different colored sharpie markers. I have saved Barbie from a huge fashion faux pas; black straps and a pink dress.

Once Lainy Ann sees what Daddy is doing she agrees, “She wasn’t dressed appropriately.” Caskey even managed to make her plunging neckline less plunging. But then the requests started. “Can you put a purple bracelet on her?” “A necklace too?” “The other doll also needs a necklace.”

So Lainy Ann and Caskey sat on the couch decorating Barbie dolls.

Just for all you South Park fans. *wink*

We are potty training William. Its been going on for about 5 weeks now. We are using the extra thick undies and I’m doing laundry DAILY. ugh Unlike the other two he will not poop in the potty. So like clockwork about 3 pm while I am stuck in the chair nursing Alexander William will poop in his underwear. So I have to put Alexander down and listen to him scream while I change William’s underwear, talk about how poop goes in the potty, clean him up, find new underwear, yada, yada, yada. Same thing everyday. Oh, except for the day that he took his diaper off and pooped on the rug. (The rug is now outside waiting to be thoroughly cleaned)

Well, tonight he said “Tummy hurts” and he still hadn’t pooped. So I whisked him onto the potty and I sat on the floor and I waited. I told him to try and then I grunted. So he laughed and grunted too. So then I said, no, try with your bottom. And low and behold we had poopy in the potty.

We celebrated. There was clapping and cheering. Both of the older kids came to see and then congratulated him. Then we had M&Ms. The whole time reinforcing that pooping in the potty equals candy.

Well, now he is tooling around his room an hour past bedtime. He won’t sleep. Perhaps we need to do candy earlier in the day.

William has been attending preschool for about 6 weeks now. He is loving it. And I am shocked about how much he has grown and learned in those few weeks. After all, he is only at school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. At 18-months old he had absolutely no words, only noises; a car noise, uh-oh, and a few others. I hadn’t even heard him say ‘mama’ yet. But here it is 6 months later and we have reached the will-he-ever-be-quiet phase.

He has accomplished his first real joke. And not the put-a-toy-on-my-head-and-call-it-a-hat joke. Nope, this is a mutli–step joke with variations.
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Last night we had a girl’s night out at the New Kids on the Block concert. It was fabulous. I am in no way saying the lyrics are well written or they are fabulous artists. Nope. It was fabulous being surrounded by 20,000 thirty-something women dressed in jeans and sensible shoes hiding their mommy-bellies. It was fabulous pretending to be 12 years old again and trying to figure out what love was about, with our only guide NKOTB. I remember listening to the hokey songs and swooning and thinking that was what love was really like. Joey McIntire was my first celebrity crush. It was just so much fun to travel down memory lane, bad P.E. clothes, awkward middle school dances in the dark smelly gym at 4 in the afternoon.
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Today is National Walk to School Day and October is Walk to School Month. I was talking with friends about whether or not they would be walking to school today. With guilt I told them that although we live 4 blocks from the school I would be driving Lainy Ann because afterwards I drop the boys at preschool, which is about 1 mile away. Its still walkable, but its down a hill and quite frankly, I’m lazy.

It would just figure that today our local freeway was closed down for police activity. We live in a small town within 20 minutes of downtown LA. We don’t have traffic. Well, we do, but it is associated with the drop-off and pick-up lane at the school, not rush hour. But we have tens of thousands of people living in our town and even more in the surrounding areas. There are two ways into and out of our town; and one was closed. So that meant that EVERY side street was gridlock. Read the rest of this entry »