Soft...Ball...Yes? or No?...

Ella really wants to play softball this Spring/Summer. She's been practicing at the farm lately and keeps begging to play.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. It's a lot to take on. It would mean practice two days a week and one game a week. That seems like an awfully big commitment for me. How are we supposed to juggle everything else the children want to do? Kung fu. Piano. Baton. Riding lessons. T-Ball. Not to mention the fact that J and I both work. I promise it was easier to work when the children were babies and had no after school activities. It would be so much more manageable to be a stay at home mom these days.

And then I look at the pictures of her practicing. She looks so sweet waiting for the ball. She was able to whack it a good bit of the time. How do you say no to that? Do any other local moms have a child about Ella's age who is going to play softball? If so, would you be interested in a car pool arrangement?

Buying Porn Almost Seemed Like a Good Idea..

Some time ago...

We were on our way home from school. Hadley was sitting shot gun. The littles were in the backseat. We were rocking out to whatever song was on the radio. It was a lovely day.

And then Hadley asked, "What's a blow job, and why do you get in trouble for doing it?"

I violated 17 traffic laws as the Volv-Ro swerved across all kinds of solid lines, other lanes, and rapidly accelerated followed by rapid deceleration...all before getting back in the correct lane and resuming regular speed. It wasn't pretty. I started to sweat. Profusely. I brushed her off and said we'd talk about it later; that we couldn't talk about it with the littles in the car. She had asked because of an unfortunate situation with some classmates getting caught and subsequently punished.

I realized that I had a few choices.

1. Ignore it. Act like the question had never been asked.
2. Splain it to her.
3. Don't explain it to her and chance another kid at school telling her what it is.
4. Drink. Heavily. Wait until the stupor lifts to decide a course of action.
5. Have the hubs download some videos. Bow chicka wow wow.
6. Tell her that she's not old enough to know.

I went with option 2. I decided it would be best to explain it to her myself. Who knows what a classmate would have told her? She immediately asked why the playground was next to the sewer. Well, not in those words. But she was thoroughly grossed out by it. I haven't been the same since. In fact, I have begun to sweat just thinking about it. I sweat when I'm nervous or busy or hot or mad.

Parents of young children - This is a PSA - You are going to have to explain fellacio at some point. Learn from my mistakes and narrow avoidance of traffic accidents. Come up with a game plan for how to explain this now. You will thank me sooner than later.

What do you think? Should I put the duct tape back on my mouth?

ADDED: I don't know the full details of what happened with the classmates or even if it really happened. It was something H-Dizzy heard about and repeated. Just for clarification....it could be a middle school rumor....from months ago...because I was still in a state of shock and unable to post about it until now.

Carpe Luna...

The days have seemed void of magic lately. I'm not entirely sure why.

 In the past there were days that literally seemed magical. I looked forward to every occasion. Christmas was the best day of the year. Valentine's Day was full of love and wonder. I eagerly awaited the first day of school and the smell of scotch tape. Is there a better smell than a new roll of tape combined with freshly sharpened pencils? It was almost as if time slowed down before every holiday or season's first. I would lie in bed at night positively unable to sleep because I was so excited about what the next day would bring.

These days? Not so much. I feel like everyday is already mapped out before it even begins. Two of my coworkers and I were discussing this feeling a week or two ago. One is a single dad, and he said that he feels like he's living the movie Groundhog Day. I can totally understand that feeling. Wake up. Get dressed for the day. Wake up the children. Pack lunches. Brush and style hair. Serve breakfast. Drive to schools. Work. Lunch. Work. Pick up from schools. After school activities. Dinner. Clean up dinner. Work more. Prep items for the next day's dinner and lunches. Laundry. Bed. Wake up. Get dressed for the day. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

I worry that my lack of enthusiasm is taking a toll on the codependents. I wonder if they can sense how quickly time is slipping through my fingers. The days keep churning and churning, and I keep waiting for those few moments when time slows down. Ever so often there is a moment....maybe even an hour...when the whole world seems to stop, and I soak in the beauty and magic of my children. It usually happens late at night when I am forced to tuck them away for the day so as to avoid struggling to wake them the next morn. We are nocturnal at my house. We would all rather stay up until the wee hours of the morning and sleep late the next day. 6:00 AM comes mighty early for people like us. Yes, we seize the moonlight and seek for respite together. It just seems more arduous to find those moments nowadays.

P.S. We hate diurnal people. 

Smell This...

Confession. I am a perfume whore. I own more scents than should ever be allowed. I go through phases with which scents I wear most often. Here lately I have found myself spritzing...

...and...Burberry Brit...

My all time favorite smell is Chanel No. 5. I'm currently out of it, but I have no doubt that I will add another bottle of it to my collection soon.

What are your favorite perfumes?

Happy Valentine's Day...

We don't really celebrate Valentine's Day at our house. I know that it is a day that is a big deal to a lot of people, but it's never been all that important to me. BUT...I do love roses. :)

Biting My Tongue...Or Keyboard...

There are things I want to say, but I don't. I keep quiet because I don't want to blatantly offend readers. Not that I have a ton of readers to offend, but the readers I do have might not like what I have to say on some topics.

There are drafts that have been in my lists of posts for ages...posts that I started but don't have the cojones to publish.

In the blogger world, I mostly only know "stay at home, Christian" moms. Most seem pretty conservative and never do posts about anything like politics, controversial social issues, beliefs other than Christianity, or booze.

I feel like there is digital pressure to keep the blog full of rainbows and butterflies. I love my husband. My children are adorable. Look at the cute cookies I made. We had a birthday party. Check out my cute purse. We are the perfect family.

Reality check.

Life hurts. It can be painful and leaves all of us scarred. Everyday isn't full of playgroups, perfect shoes, sunny weather, and best friends. There are moments when I want to smack my husband with whatever dirty dish he left on the coffee table. There are moments when I look at the destruction my children have done to my house and think, "I procreated for this?" Life is real and scary and dirty and hungry and beautiful without photoshop.

And I want to put it out there. I'm tired of duct taping my mouth keyboard. This is quite possibly the worst decision I have ever made, but I also know that this is the right decision for me. It's all going out into cyberspace...the good, the bad, the ugly...me.

Valentines...By E-Ro....

Since I am always 20 minutes late for everything, I decided to try to get on the ball for Valentine's Day. Part way through January I ordered a kit for Ella and Layton to make their own cards. We even sat down and started on them a few weeks early. Layton lasted all of 10 minutes on the project. Ella and I finished them without him.

They turned out so cute! Ella was very pleased with her work. :)

The nuggets will glue a piece of candy on each envelope, so it will be so adorable and yummy. The cards go in sweet envelopes sealed with heart stickers.

I cannot believe I actually took care of Valentine's Day cards before the 13th at 10:00PM. :) This is the first year in a long time that I have finished a class party item early.

Don't You Love to Look at Your Children?....

Sometimes, I look at a picture of the littles...even ones without their faces...and think how lucky I am. I have one big who doesn't like to have her picture made anymore and two littles who live in front of the camera.

I was flipping through some pictures from last year, and this one that Carla took just about made be giggle out loud from the cuteness. 

Random Observations from This Week...

1. The apple under the seat of my car has now mummified itself and no longer stinks. I am, in fact, too busy with other things to bother cleaning it up.

2. Dance twirl tryouts are Friday (whoops, today, scheduling posts again). Hadley is nervous about it; I am positively coming unglued over it, but I am making a huge effort to not let her see how I really feel about it.

3. I can sing Cee Lo Green's Forget You in my sleep. I have been singing it in my sleep thanks to Hadley's routine being set to that tune. We've only played it 864 times this week while she practices.

4. I've been trying to reduce the size of my a$$. The Postmaster General called to let me know what zip code has been assigned to the left side of my derriere. Oy vey. Yes, the acreage has increased to the point of requiring a zip code.

5. My friend Amanda noticed that I have lost a tiny smidgen of weight. I almost French kissed her and bought her a new house for noticing.

6. I finally finished the never ending tax return. It was one of those where information was missing, and I seriously could have found Jimmy Hoffa's body with more ease than which I found the necessary parts to this return.

7. Unfortunately, the client in question has more than one return to be done, and I have now started on the Never Ending Story Tax Return part II. Just so you know, the soundtrack is way better for this sequel...mostly because I am kicking Cee Lo the curb and am spending the morning with Fugazi and Jimmy Eat World.

8. I am obsessed with Green Bean Chips. They are yummy to me. I buy them at Earthfare.

9. I am wearing my Ugg boots to work. I don't care if they are not work appropriate. It's cold. My toes are cold. Maybe no one will notice. Right? Speaking of cold...it's supposed to only be in the 30s here this weekend. That is wicked cold for Bama. Thank goodness I bought warm boots last winter on clearance....after we had "once in a generation" snow.

10. I want laser hair removal on my armpits. No, really. I think I will ask for this for my birthday this year. Seriously. After hearing a first hand story about it, I am convinced that this is for me. I am see through. I am so white that if you look close, you can actually see all the veins in my body under the surface of my skin. My hair is dark. Dark, dark. No matter how much I shave, you can still see the roots of my pit-hair through my skin. When I was still twirling, I got called out a lot by other gals who would let me know that I needed to shave; it didn't matter that I had just shaved 30 minutes prior to that. I don't wear sleeveless shirts anymore because it is just too freaking embarrassing to leave the house looking like I haven't shaved since Clinton was in office. Well that, and the fact that my arms are jiggly.

11. I would love to be able to wear this dress. I know I could never pull off something like this and look decent, but that doesn't stop me from looking at it. :)

12. I may or may not have looked at the dirty dishes in the sink this morning and decided to throw away a few of them rather than wash them. Hey, sometimes, you need to clean out the old stuff. Shhh. Don't tell J.

13. I am looking forward to the weekend in a ridiculous way. I seriously cannot wait to sleep later than 6:00AM. We don't have plans. I will be working, but I'm going to work from home. I don't want to get out in the cold. Plus, I get more done when I can juggle the house and the kids in the same location. When I work on the weekends, Ella texts me so much that I can barely get anything done. :) Thank goodness I have a laptop.

14. I need a cocktail.

Love...

I love the way that Papa is completely entranced by his grandchildren. Ella was being silly and bouncing around, but Papa couldn't take his eyes off of her.

I am so unbelievably grateful to have wonderful grandparents for my children. Not everyone lucks out in the in-law department, but I sure did!

A Great...

My codependents are pretty lucky. They all got to have their picture made with their great-great-grandmother (on J's side). I used to joke that she would outlive everything but nuclear waste and Cher. Three of my four grandparents were still alive until after all of my littles were born. Both of J's grandmothers also lived long enough to see the majority of my littles. They have been fortunate enough to meet the generations that preceded them.

At the farm a while back, Great-Great Aunt Frances came to visit for an afternoon.

Ella had been cooking, and Layton had been playing outside. I made them stop for a moment for a picture of them with her. It's not everyday you get to see your Great-Great Aunt.

Ella prepared some appetizers and served us all. It was quite a treat.

Smiley Faces...

He smiles so much. He is just absolutely adorable. He falls asleep cuddling with me often. I love the way his breathing slows and becomes heavy when he sleeps. His hair is often a mess. He smells of detergent, milk, and sweat. Sweet little boy sweat. Not stinking big boy sweat. His skin is soft. His eyes are brown. His fingernails are always dirty.

He is mine. I am his.

Boots and Skinny Jeans...

Boots and skinny jeans are all Ella wants to wear these days. I bought her the superest, skinniest, jeans I could find. They were TINY! Ella is tinier though! The jeans were a colossal fail; there was enough excess fabric in the boot-ay to make a pair of shorts. She is the lankiest little thing I have ever seen. If I were to buy skinny jeans skinny enough to be skinny jeans, they would be 6 inches too short because they would be a size 2T. She is just lean. It is a blessed genetic quality that she got from the ole hubs. He's lanky too. :) I licked a french fry last Tuesday and couldn't zip my pants this morning as a result. I have a serious "junk in the trunk" situation going on, and I am so glad that Ella didn't get those genes. Anywhoodle, I am fairly certain that her current obsession with skinny jeans and boots is fueled by her best friends at school. They seem to be rocking that look a lot too.

We found a pair of jeggings that are almost as tight as she wants her skinny jeans to be, and we found the jeans she is wearing in the picture above. They have that clever adjustable waist thing going on. I had to wash the jeans in hot water and dry them on high and pull the elastic in the waistband all the way to the 5th button on each side....BUT....she has skinny jeans. Whew! If only putting that much effort into her skinny jeans would make me skinny! HAHAHAHAA!!

Or This One....

Ella worked the orange wig. She works this one even better. :)

Paging Lady GaGa...

Do you ever want to put on a wig and some dark glasses and hide out?

Yeah, me too. Ella just happens to pull it off with so much class. She is my incognito inspiration. :)

A Few Answers...

When you put your entire life on the interwebs, you get questions from time to time. Some questions are asked repeatedly. So, here are the questions that you ask...and my less than stellar replies.


How do you find time to blog everyday? 

The truth? I don't. I rarely blog more than once a week. I sit down every few weeks and schedule posts for future dates. In fact, this post was written more than two weeks before you will see it on the blog. I use Picasa to keep track of my pictures, and the ones I want to blog about are saved as drafts directly from Picasa. I just click a button to make it happen. The drafts sit in my posts list until I get around to fleshing them out. Sometimes I will use the blogger app on my cell phone to "impromtu publish" a post if something strikes me as blog worthy during the day...like the hungover, single mom at the dentist's office. She deserved a post.

Is what I see on the blog really what your family is like?

Yes. Let me repeat that. YES. My children really are as comical, messy, and unique as they seem in blog posts. The hubs said it best at a wedding last year. "Her blog is genuine. It's genuinely what the kids are like." Of course, I don't publish every story about the kids and me. I specifically choose to leave out the stories involving me melting down on the pasta aisle at Publix. Or the time I threw a tricycle out the back door. BUT, the stories about the hilarious-ness of my codependents? It's what we're like.

Do you live in Athens?

Dude, seriously. You would not believe how often someone emails or leaves a comment asking if I live in Athens because the background of some of my pictures resemble downtown Athens. "I drove through Athens once. Your downtown looks a lot like Athens. Do you live there by chance?" For the record, yes, we live in Athens, Alabama. Not Georgia. Not Greece. Alabama. Hence the grammatical errors and obvious lack of IQ points on my part. If you heard me talk, the drawl would literally make you think I am barely above functional retardation.


What kind of camera do you have?

A Canon 60D.

Why do you blog?

Honestly, it kind of started as a joke between Jay and me. I just kept doing it. Somewhere along the way I realized that I could use the blog to document my family's events and activities. It has become a scrapbook of our lives and an autobiography of sorts. It's fun to go back and read posts from years ago to see how I have changed over the years.

Do you want to be a professional blogger?

Who the hell wouldn't?!?! Sure, it would be great to sit around the house in my pajamas while the kids are at school and type blog posts all day. Realistically, probably not. The pressure of having to come up with new material all the time would freak me out! I can barely scrape together enough words to post once a day or every other day. And the words only form once or twice a month. That being said, I do like it when I am asked to do a giveaway or get paid for an ad. It's kind of fun to make a little money off my hobby.

Did you always want to have three children?

Loaded question. I get asked a lot. No, I didn't want to have any children. That didn't change for me until I actually had a child. It's true. Every time I was pregnant, I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I could have happy children. If I could go back and blog my high school years, you would be shocked. I was so dang uptight and driven, and I wasn't that way because I wanted to be; it's how I thought I had to be. I spent so much time trying to be perfect and make my parents happy that I had no idea who I really was. I spent all day every day trying to fit myself into a ticky tacky box - a box I now know just can't hold someone like me. I have always been outside the box. I just didn't know it until I was grown and married and already had children. Honestly, there is a part of me that thinks it would be nice to have another child at some point, and then there is my brain screaming, "YOU FOOL! RUN!"

Is your movie knowledge really that pathetic? 


Ok, no one actually asked that question, but I threw it in for C-O-D and J. :)


Happy day, friends!!

Things to See...

It's not a super fancy telescope, but we don't use it to look at stars. 

One, Two, Let It Rip...

Layton is obsessed with Beyblades. I really don't understand what they are. Some kind of top thingy that hooks up to this other thingy that helps them spin like crazy. Obviously, I need to read up on it more. There are cartoons about it. It's what I hear is called Anime. All I know is that there isn't any profanity, and I can get a ton of episodes on Netflix for little man to watch.

Layton plays Beyblade every chance he gets, and he forces everyone around him to participate. Before you pull the rip cord, you have to say...One..Two...Let it..Rip. That's how Layton insist we play Beyblade. Day in. Day out. We battle in the metal fusion arena. 

Whoopsy Daisy...

I like to learn. If I could get paid to be a full time student, well, that would be the job for me. There are a number of things that I have made an effort to learn on my own over the years. Making bows for presents. That turned out okay. Juggling apples and oranges. Far too easy after learning to juggle batons.

But my camera. My stupid camera. It is literally taking me ages to learn to shoot in manual. I forget to change the ISO when I go from inside to outside and wind up with shots like this.

Or I forget to change it when I go back inside after I finally noticed that I had it set wonky outside. I refuse to believe that I will have to turn the stinking dial back to the green rectangle. I'm not going to do it. I am going to learn to do this. Until then, I will continue to take 300 pictures at a time with only 12 of them being usable. Practice makes perfect, and by golly, one of these days, I will get it right.

Ella Turned the Tables...

As is often the case the with Ella, she managed to make me see how she feels after the program at school.

She grabbed Mama Kaye's camera and turned it toward us. Hmmm. I'm not sure I like having the camera in my face. Imagine how my poor children feel with my camera in their faces all the time. No really. ALL THE TIME. I might need to step away from the SD card.