Just in case I mislead you with the previous post, I took the day off entirely and me and the kids had a nice day. It’s nice when you don’t have to try to work at the same time. I got some housework done, we played on the Wii, we baked cookies, movies were watched.. fun was had by all. I wasn’t REALLY misleading you – it was a classic mistake! But I didn’t mind, and staying home wasn’t the “chore” I made it out to be. I wouldn’t have let Ethan stay home, otherwise. I was playing it up bloggy style because hey, that makes for a more interesting post! Anyway, we had fun!

Which really came home to me tonight at dinner, when out of the blue, Jocelyn said, “Mommy, I had fun with you yesterday.”

Doesn’t sound like much, but when you’ve been interupted for the 27th time while trying to communicate with your spouse and can’t get it out because of all the

“Mommy! MOMMY!!”
“what??”
“I want some more!”
“I’m done with my dinner now!”
“My bowl is in the sink now!”
“I’m leaving the room now!”

and that’s just the dinner related interuptions, we haven’t even touched the surface on school related, toy related, tv related, clothes related, fart related, butt related, doughnut related, wiener related and of course fart and butt related some more, because there’s a lot of fart and butt talk in our house lately.

So when she interupted me AGAIN:

“So I was trying to call him back when–”
“Mommy. MOMMY!”
“YES?!!”
“I had fun with you yesterday.”

It makes me realize that all the interuptions are a plea for attention, it makes me remember how these precious little souls just want to connect with me, and have me look at them, right into their eyes, have me smile at them and talk to them, and it makes me overjoyed that I blew off work and didn’t bother trying to work from home to spend a special hooky day with my kids, just cutting out paper dolls, baking cookies, watching movies, playing video games, reading books and being there.

So I stopped trying to finish my conversation with james (let’s face it, finishing that was like hoping an icecube won’t melt in hell what with all the poop-fart-butt interuptions) and asked her what her favorite part of yesterday was. It was baking cookies. Ethan’s was playing on the Wii and cleaning up.

Now to not make another classic mommy mistake — forgetting all this and getting all irritated all the time from all the interuptions and not recognizing the not so subtle pleas for attention.

-amy

I went into the kids room yesterday to get them up and ready for school. Ethan was awake and fiddling around in his bed and Jocelyn was still fast asleep. Her nose was stuffed up with dried boogers and her face was flushed and hot. In short, she didn’t look good.

I sat down next to her and she barely fluttered her eyes. I felt her head = hot.

“Good morning sweetie, how’re you doing?”

“Not good.”

“Tired?”

“Yes.”

— Notice right here, I start off with leading queries. Never, under ANY circumstance, ask if a child under 18 is tired, when it’s time to get them up and ready for school.

“You don’t look so good, are you feeling sick?”

— GAH! HAVE I LEARNED NOTHING IN ALL MY YEARS OF MOTHERING?

“Yes. I feel SICK.”

I make her sit up and try in vain to peer into her throat. I probe her neck and feel palpable engorged pea-sized glands.

I go and talk to James. I tell her that she is flushed with fever and looks like death. She’d better stay home.

I go back to the room and inform her that in my professional mother opinion, she should stay home from school today. And since Ethan is on spring break (no school, daycare only) and informed us yesterday upon arriving home that he was “totally bored,” I thought I’d let him stay home too.

30 minutes later, they are both running around like maniacs, Jocelyn looks totally normal (nothing that 10 minutes AWAKE and a good face washing didn’t cure) and I am banging my head against the wall.

I took her to the doctor anyway, but she confirmed that it was viral and nothing to worry about.

You would think I was a ROOKIE! NEVER diagnose a child when they just wake up and are known grumpy wakers! NEVER lead the child down the “you look sick, are you sick?” line of questioning! AT LEAST wait 20 minutes to see if they’re still pissing and moaning and to see if the fever sticks, and most importantly.. never… NEVER mention the “stay at home” phrase until you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that they need to stay at home, because once that one is out, THERE’S NO TAKING IT BACK.

Rookie mistake. I am ashamed.

Oh INTERNET! How I’ve MISSED YOU!

But enough about that. Let’s get right to the birthday business, shall we? This post has been waiting for a long time, but I’ve finally got photos up on flickr, so let’s getter posted!!

Jocelyn wearing her fairy dress up clothes given to her by the Danforths

The birthday party was a smashing success. And I was not stressed! That has NEVER happened, people! However, I need to stop having birthday parties at 10am, because that’s just a smidge too early. The balloon place didn’t even open until 10 (but the order was ready RIGHT THEN, so it was ok) and we were getting a bit close with the pizza and cake as well.

Jocelyn with pizza sauce on her face.

Despite the fact that we put “No presents required,” everyone brought presents, but I am happy to say it didn’t seem to be an overwhelming amount, and there were some really cute crafty things (stamp set, and necklace making kit) and games (dora dominoes) that evened out all the brightly colored plastic (lots of which I was responsible for getting her, so I’m not blaming anyone!). She was over the moon to have her friends there. We did a paper doll craft which held the kids attention for a while, and then it pretty much turned into kids running everywhere and screaming with delight.

Jocelyn opening presents.

HITS: the paper doll craft – everyone did one, I used up some old fabric I didn’t really like, and googly eyes bought at JoAnns were a huge hit. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of these 🙁 But here is the paper doll I printed and the kids used.

MISS: carrot cake from costco – had nuts on the side, nuts & raisins in the cake, and honestly, just really wasn’t all that good. It almost tasted like a spice cake rather than carrot cake, and several of the kids just did ice cream with no cake, and james and I weren’t even tempted to have some more of it later. When I made carrot cake for my birthday, my kids couldn’t get enough. This cake – they ate off the frosting and didn’t touch the cake. Next time we’ll be sticking with the generic chocolate or white cake.

The kids were all super cute and sweet, and we only had one girl get weepy becuase she wanted to open a present too. She became my “helper” and handed the presents to Jocelyn and cheered up a bit.

I must say, the funniest part of the entire party was near the end. Andrew, Tamara, Adora and Leia all came as the party was winding down, and Leia, who just turned 1 in January, got an adoring fanclub kneeling at her feet, before she got out of our entryway.

Leia with her entourage in our entryway.

Even my son Ethan continued to follow her around trying to make her smile for a while. It was nice to send everyone on their way and then be able to relax with our friends, chat, play with Jocelyn’s toys, and watch Leia being cute as a button.

More gratuitous cute Leia pictures.

So the birthday party was great, and Jocelyn thoroughly enjoyed herself.

It’s hard to believe my little baby is so grown up.

Jocelyn at 2 days old.

I realize that I haven’t written in forever. And I even have a jocelyn birthday post all half-written waiting for photos to accompany it. But I’ll just do a quickie here before I forget the whole thing (as James relayed it to me).

About a week ago, the toilet in the master bathroom broke. Easy fix, it was just this piece of plastic that hooked the flusher up to the suction cup thing that lets the water out and flushes the toilet. So after a few days, James got the part, and I sent the kids in to “help daddy fix it” while I worked on dinner.

I don’t know about your bathroom, but in my bathroom, the *ahem* feminine hardware goes on the back of the toilet for those certain times of the month when they are needed. So all that stuff is on the floor, along with the toilet cover, and the kids and James are peering into the tank to hook up the new chain, when Jocelyn gets bored and wanders over to pull a tampon out of it’s box.

She examines it for a minute, and then asks, “Daddy is this a popsicle?”

I am officially throwing in the towel on Photo 366. (Sorry Anna! Sorry Tamara!) I am just not cut out for getting those suckers up every day. Oh well.

We are busy. Making PLANS! For someone’s BIRTHDAY!

Imagine this folded into thirds.

You didn’t think I left the boys out, did you?

I found these (AND OTHERS!) darling paper dolls on the invitation at Teri’s Paper Doll Scans page.

So cute. SO CUTE!!

We’re going to be busy the rest of this weekend, and the week, for that matter.

But we got the important things out of the way. Jocelyn has a new “party dress”!

Which I’m sure you will see soon enough 🙂

-amy

We’ve decided to have Jocelyn’s birthday at home, and we’re going with a paper doll theme. Which led me to go looking everywhere for paper dolls online.

What a lovely time I had!

How cute is this?

So yeah, kind of cheating, as these aren’t really photos.

but I don’t care! CUTE!!

OK people.

I totally fell off the wagon (oh, and in more ways than one, lemme tell you) on this photo a day thing.

I KNEW this was going to be tough, because well, yeah, I’m me.

So every day that passed w/out a photo, I thought, should I put up an ass load of photos and hop back on the wagon? Set up a lawn chair, with a little table next to it with a nice cold diet coke and wave as the wagon trucked off down the dusty road with all it’s photo goodness?

So yeah, I was on the lawn chair sipping away. But I guess I don’t want to throw in the towel yet, so here goes.. all my missing 366 photos.

As Thursday ended, doom and gloom threatened our nation’s capital in the form of.. ICE STORM A-COMIN! HIDE THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN! and so, since the next day was my birthday, I greased the wheels of corporate america by saying to my boss, “boy, if it’s bad tomorrow, I may just work from home.”

Ahhh, a relaxing day of working at home on the couch in my underwear jeans covered with a blankey with Pride & Prejudice playin’ on the TV.

BUT my plans were foiled, FOILED I tell you by the nation.. well, specifically, my kids’ school also catching the doom and gloom and deciding not to open on Friday. Doh.

So I took the day off and spent it with my kids. Here is my birthday… in photos (and more words, because hey. I’m a wordy bitch.)

First, I woke up, grabbed the laptop, hit refresh on the school’s website, and saw those fateful words: CLOSED.

Unfortunately, I was up anyway. So was James. So I made him go get mE my PRESENTS!!

The kids came in and snuggled into bed, and I opened up my 2 presents.

This one was from me, that I’ve been coveting since before Christmas:

I heart Amy Ruppel. Next year, I’m buying myself a painting instead of just a print. Hopefully before next year!

Next was James’ present for me:

Isn’t this the best? Circa 1951, I am tickled tickled tickled.

I also gave james really good word of mouth with my mom later, because when I told her he got me a vintage doll making sewing book, I didn’t bother mentioning that it was rated high priority on my amazon wish list. Aren’t I a fab wife?

So after we got all that bothersome gift giving out of the way (I do have one more gift coming, it’ll be a late present) we got up and had breakfast of biscuits (from a refridgerated tube) and scrambled eggs. James kissed us goodbye and headed off into the (as far as we both could tell, ice-less) world to work.

So the kids and I got busy and made carrot cake:

Ethan insisted on NOT licking the batter, because it had CARROTS IN IT. He also insisted that he would NEVER taste this CARROT CAKE. “MY GOD woman, you know how to ruin EVERYTHING, INCLUDING CAKE, WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME?!” was pretty much, the epitome of his thoughts on the subject of carrot cake. Jocelyn took his beater and licked it clean along with her own.

I took the opportunity to take some much needed pictures of Ethan lego creations:

Here is his latest. A forklift:

Which can go up and down:

and the platform thingee comes off:

Just for the record, an attempt was made to lift the chocolate soy milk container, but we are still working out the engineering technicalities.

Then, Jocelyn let me play “hair” with her, except that it was really more like, she ordered me to do her hair in EXACTLY the way she prescribed, and WOE UNTO ME if I misinterpret her directions.

She wanted “crazy braid” hair, and pointed very specifically where she wanted each braid:

We had lunch. Notice that most of us (yes, both of them) are still in their jammies. Most of us also have soy chocolate milk moustaches.

Peanut butter and honey for Ethan:

Peanut butter and banana for Jocelyn:

Me? Peanut butter, banana and honey, of course.

Next, I sent them upstairs where they managed to not kill each other and were even reasonably quiet, for 2 hours of “quiet time” while I didn’t get any work done, but instead talked to my mom and my sister while not posting photos on this blog (which was the intended purpose of blessed “quiet time” time).

I finally unlocked the toy room door and let them out. Then I chained them to the couch and made them watch Totoro while I alternated between playing internet backgammon and mah jong.

Then I marched them upstairs and forced them to beat cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar together. I topped it off with making them lick the beaters clean.

Then we frosted the cake, daddy came home, we anxiously awaited the sitter, and we took off, hollering, “SO LONG SUCKER!” for a long night of carousing (japanese way-too-salty tepenyako, with no alcohol) and partying (hanging out in the bookstore until the movie started, watching Juno, and then heading home.)

Yeah! that’s how we party it up for 34. When 35 rolls around, I will probably just head to bed at 8.30 and call it good.

… is on Masterpiece. I tivoed the first part, and have it playing on the tv during one of the many dances in the film, when Jocelyn comes downstairs.

She stops DEAD in her tracks and watches, riveted.

“MOMMY! There are PRINCESSES!”

She’s watching attentively now, and has already pointed out that they are wearing long gloves and SHE needs long gloves for HER princesses.

Sometime ago, I related the first tale of Ethan kissing on the playground. With a girl named Jeni in his class. We haven’t heard any other tales of this sort of behavior.

Until now.

It’s valentine’s day, right, so when the kids came home and unloaded all their valentine’s day party look, the kitchen table was pretty much covered with cards, candy, pictures, candy, cards, candy, empty wrappers, and some candy.

I was trying to get some more details about the parties and I picked through the cards and inspected what other mom’s had gotten their kids to give for valentines. (I was definitely the worst/cheapest/busiest mom, btw. My kids gave very generic valentines, with no extra goodies attached, in the midst of handmade, boxes of nerds, a barrel of monkeys (big hit, btw), temporary tatoos, lollipops, etc.) I noticed a couple of things from Jeni. Not valentines, or rather, not the valentines that were probably given with everyone else’s — a drawing that was probably done in the afternoon. It was a picture of dolphins with little hearts sprinkled everywhere. Very cute. I noticed it (and btw, he’s always drawing pictures for his friends, and bringing home drawings made for him by friends, so nothing unusual here) and commented on it to Ethan, and somehow got into this convoluted conversation:

Ethan: Me and Jeni love each other.

Ethan: But we had to go behind the tire.

me: Behind the tire?

Ethan: Yes. Because Mrs. T. doesn’t like it when we give loves.

James: Give loves?

Ethan: Yeah. So then Mrs. T couldn’t SEE US!

First of all, I’m pretty much dying at this point, having to cover my mouth to keep from giggling and smiling from the cuteness of it all. But I also wanted to know *what* exactly was going on behind the tire. I am very cognizant of the fact that he has not actually said “kiss” anywhere.

I tried to get more information and had to muddle through him pointing at his mouth (it was dinnertime) to indicate he was chewing and couldn’t talk, muttering, “I don’t want to TALK about it..” with stoic 5 year old rolling of the eyes, when finally:

me: What exactly went on behind the tire?

Ethan: We rubbed cheeks.

This is very characteristic of Ethan. He is a very snuggly boy, always up for a hug and a cuddle, always hugging his Pookie bear, and sometimes just grabbing my hand and rubbing it gently on his cheek. Lately, his compliment of choice is, “You’re the best, mommy/daddy.” We hear that at least half a dozen times a day. We’re not complaining 🙂

He’s a marshmellowy sweetie.

Just like his daddy.

Oops. I missed several days of my “photo a day.” I would like to blame the shoddy behaviour of my wireless card in my laptop. Doh.

Oh well. Here are the missing photos, all taken Saturday night, when we took two VERY EXCITED kids to the bowling alley. It was such a hit – we’ll definitely be doing it again.

Jocelyn – Granny style, Ball in Midair

Ethan with the Metal Contraption

Ethan’s “I made a strike!” Victory Sign

Jocelyn: “I’m so confident, I don’t even have to look”

Bonus shot: Ethan’s 2 strikes in a row:

Just one note – I can’t wait until I get my flash (planned birthday present).