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Some Pictures

Something that should have been on my "to do" list from the other day: Charge my camera batteries. It's one of those things that takes so little time that I just think, "I can do it whenever. Some other time." So it doesn't get done and my camera batteries die completely and I put the camera on top of my fridge (isn't that where cameras belong?) to collect dust. I finally remembered to charge them, though, so now I can record visual proof of the craziness that goes on at our house.

I took some pictures of Samantha's most recent skills:

Left: Samantha loves to "talk" on the phone. Here she is holding it up to her face and saying, "Aya!"

Right: Samantha also loves to ride her brothers' Wiggle Riders. She recently mastered climbing up on them by herself, though only one of her feet can reach the floor at a time.

Since I got my camera functioning again I thought I'd try to get a photo of all the kids together. Here's what I ended up with instead:

Here is Samantha wearing her birthday present from her Aunt Amy:

Monkey Hear, Monkey Say

Background: Drew gets sent to his room a lot. We generally put him in there to cool down, because he has quite a temper. Sometimes we put him in there if he's disobedient. For instance he's doing something I don't want him to be doing, I tell him to stop, he doesn't stop, I tell him to go to his room. When he has completed the sentence (as in punishment, not string of words) I sit down with him and we talk about what he was doing, why I sent him to his room, how I expect him to behave. Given the frequency of trips to his room every day, I wonder at the actual effectiveness of this method. But at least it keeps him out of trouble for a few minutes while he's in there.

Yesterday morning I had sent Drew to his room for some reason. I went into the laundry room to switch the load from washer to dryer. Owen followed me to help.* About thirty seconds later, Drew came walking into the laundry room asking if he could help. Before I could even say anything, Owen started speaking for me: "Drew. Did I say you could come out of your room? Why did I send you to your room? What did you do? You go back in there. One. Two. Three." He said all this with no pauses for Drew to respond. I was trying so hard not to bust out laughing, feeling grateful that I could hid my face behind the washing machine lid so they couldn't see it.

*I love it when Owen helps me put laundry in the washer and dryer. I hand him the clothes to put in, and with every item I hand him he says, "Oh, thank you!" Like I'm doing him the favor.

Imagine My Surprise

I've been thinking a lot about the upcoming election, the candidates, their views, my views, how those views mesh (some, not so well). I had come to the conclusion a while back that I am neither a Republican or a Democrat; I'm not extremely conservative or extremely liberal. I'm certainly not a fence sitter; I actually don't think there should even be a fence--most of the issues that extremists get in a tizzy about are not so cut and dry. There are a lot of exceptions and special cases to be considered.

My aforementioned conclusion came while I was loading the dishwasher one evening after the kids had gone to bed. I was contemplating the complexities of politics (my understanding of politics, that is. It's very very basic, so to someone else my thoughts might not be considered complex at all) and thinking about my stances on some of the issues that are often brought up during election time. I decided I fit some combination of both political parties; I'm a Demican. That sounded weird, so I shuffled the words up a little and came up with Republicrat.

A few days later I was looking through the MSN headlines and I saw an advertisement for a new political party called the Republicrats! They totally stole my word! I was so bugged that every time I saw the ad I vowed I'd never visit that site.

I broke my vow tonight; intrigue bested my resolve. Now I feel silly for my tiny little boycott of the website. I should have gone to it before! It's pretty humorous and I like the guy's suggestions for how to resolve some of our country's current issues. Check 'em out if you like.

But don't you hate it when you think you're being all clever and you realize someone else had the same idea and marketed it before you? Grr.

One of These Days

...I'll finish a blog post the same day I start it.

...I'll finish Drew's Halloween costume (I've gotten fed up with it, especially after I finished sewing all the little "bandages" to his pants and realized I hadn't left enough slack for them to fit around his little--okay, big--belly).

...I'll be able to keep up on housework for more than 5 days in a row (it's my new record, just reached it Friday and let everything go to pot on Saturday so that you'd never know our house was ever clean).