Yesterday, I read this post and it reminded me of a specific trip I took to the grocery store when the Peanut was a little guy.  I don't remember exactly how old he was but my daughter wasn't born yet so he would have been younger than two.

About half way through my grocery shopping he started throwing a huge fit.  And let me tell you.  He was the master of the fits.  The blood curdling shriek kind of fits.


Once he got started, there was just no stopping him.  That put a quick end to my shopping trip.

And I think only a parent can really understand the frustration of having to leave a grocery store without all the groceries.

Anyone with kids knows what an ordeal grocery shopping can become when you have to take little kids along.  There is never a quick trip for essentials.  Just getting to the store is a colossal effort.  You have to get the timing just right.  Not nap time, not food time, not grouchy time, not poopy time.  You have to find the time when your baby is the most likely to let you get through the store without incident.  That time doesn't actually exist but you make your best effort.  Then you have to get yourself and the baby dressed, pack up all the necessary gear, diapers, wipes, entertainment, food items, pacis, anything that will keep that baby happy.

Load it all up in the car and get yourselves out the door.  Which is right when the baby will need a diaper change.  Back in, change, back out.  At this point, you are running much later than you thought you would be and it is encroaching dangerously in on nap, feeding, grouchy time or worst of all poopy time.  There is nothing worse than a poop explosion at the grocery store.  Don't ask me how I know that.

By the time you have done all the work of getting to the store, you better bet you aren't just going to grab that one thing and get out of there.  Because that would mean having to go through all the preparation AGAIN, another day, for the rest of the groceries.  Nope.  Not even gonna happen.  Once you manage to get there you better get everything.  As in anything and everything you will need for the next month, year, however long you can make it before items would start to actually spoil.

There is no greater tragedy than getting home and realizing you forgot that one essential item.  Because there is no going back.

How many times have you heard or even thought, "If my child ever threw a fit like that we would just leave the cart and walk right out of the store."

Most people say phrases like this all the time.  Until they actually have kids.  I'm guilty of it myself.  I promised myself I would "never be that parent."

--- 1 ---

Yesterday I did housework.

I know!

Not sure what is wrong with me. I would claim to be nesting but I don't think that happens until the third trimester. Can't really say for sure because even pregnancy has never prompted me to clean like a crazy woman. So, maybe it's a virus? Like some kind of clean freak parasite taking over my body?

I actually unloaded 
and
 reloaded the dishwasher. Washed the Crockpot. Got dinner in and cooking with plenty of time to spare. All before 10am! Dinner finished cooking at exactly 5pm on the dot.

Which is exactly when my husband declared it was time to take the kids swimming in the still too cold pool. So, we kept dinner on warm and I watched my crazy shivering family splash around for an hour. They had a blast!

This morning I realized that somehow, during the course of the day yesterday, half the dining room table was mysteriously cleaned off. I have no memory of these events. This leads me to conclude that the parasite theory is indeed valid.

--- 2 ---

You will be happy to know that today I am fully recovered and back to my usual housecleaning avoidance at all costs ways.  

Though I really do need to do a load of laundry. We have a busy weekend ahead of us full of going places that require suitable attire and not superhero feety pajamas.  

Where can I find that parasite?

--- 3 ---

See this rocking chair?

It was mine when I was a wee one. Then my 
naive
 generous parents thought they would give it to my children so they could enjoy it and someday pass it down to their own children.  

Unfortunately, I was a much better behaved child than my own children are. I chalk that up to the good parenting I received.  

My kids?  

Might as well have been raised in a barn.  

They have yet to grasp the concept of 
sitting
 in chairs. Rather, they seem to believe that all furniture was created to be their own personal jungle gym. Every day I hear the creak of my favorite little rocker, threatening to give out and crumble into sawdust. I turn to see my son standing in it while attempting to rock hard enough to launch into orbit. I begin to have convulsions.  

It also doesn't help that the chair has become the favorite item to use in a "friendly" game of tug of war. See, now both kids love the chair. Even though they have several other child sized chairs and adult sized couch, loveseat, recliner at their disposal, only the rocker will do.  

Finally a compromise is reached.  

I lost it today.

The Peanut was working on his school work.

The same school work he does every day.

But today.

Today.

He suddenly forgot how to write his letters.

All of them.

He just started making random shapes slightly resembling letters.

The x's are his.

Normally, this would be my cue to say, "let's take a break."  Because we both needed one.

Instead, I pushed on.

Because he was so close to finishing the book.

Just a few more pages and we could finish today!

So, we continued.

I continued to instruct.  "Stop at the dotted line and go down."  He went up.

And I snapped.

Getting to church on time is a challenge for our family.  It seems that no matter what we do we are always late.  Yesterday was no exception.  

This past weekend my husband, kids and I all traveled by car 4 hours to spend the weekend in Oklahoma attending a wedding of one of my college roomates.  I spent the weekend involved in various wedding preparations and other bridesmaid attendant duties.  I will tell you more about that as soon as I get all the pictures scanned into the computer.  (Requires me to go all the way upstairs to use the scanner.  I actually wrote the post on Monday but have been procrastinating on the picture part all week.)

Let me tell you how my husband spent his weekend.

Remember how I told you the gas company is replacing all the gas pipes in the area?  Well in related news the gas company has been hard at work tearing up our street and sidewalks.

I believe I mentioned before that I woke up one morning and heard the sounds of a jackhammer in my driveway.  A temporary patch was put in place and a few days later that was dug back up and some nice pretty smooth concrete was put in it's place.  Seriously it kinda stands out like a sore thumb with the rest of our broken cracked bumpy driveway.  Anyway they even fixed the part of the curb that was missing because our driveway is all curvy and so everyone always ends up driving over the curb.

Nice right?

Pretty spiffy!

About a week ago, I had the car for the day and so I took my kids over to a friends house to visit with her kids.  We had to drive up over the other curb because of the cones and orange netting stuff at the end of our driveway.

After a lovely visit we arrived home around 1:00pm driving back up over the same opposite curb to avoid the same cones and netting surrounding almost dry brand new smooth concrete.

So very close to being dry.

So close . . .

Well, if you read my blog, you know by now that I am a bit of a procrastinator.  I am also colossally bad at plan making or really anything that requires any kind of an actual . . . you know . . . decision .  That very word makes me cringe.

This is the part where most of you are expecting me to start running around in a panic when I realize I am entirely unprepared for Easter.

Guess what?

I did prepare.

I KNOW!!!!

What is this world coming to?  You just can't rely on anyone anymore.  People just keep letting you down right?

Seriously.  I came up with a plan.  A PLAN!

See, this year I started doing that thing parents eventually do when they decide that society is going to ruin their kids and they have to fight the influences blah blah blah etc.

Kids these days have no imagination.

I blame TV.

No, wait.  I blame video games.

Yep.  Definitely video games.

They spend all their time playing video games and no time exercising their imagination muscles.

Take my son for example.

He's 4 and he loves his video games.  His first words when he wakes up in the morning, "Can I play games now?" His last words before bed at night, "But I want to play games!"  After breakfast, "Can I play games now?"  Lunch, "Can I play games now?"  Dinner, "Can I play games now?"

Dreaming of Video Games

If he had his way he would be playing games from the time he woke up, while he eats, until he passed out at night with the controller in hand.  Heck he would play games on the potty if he could.

All this excessive video game playing has taken its toll.

He can turn the TV on, change the input to XBOX or Playstation, sign into his profile, edit his avatar, select his games, navigate Netflix, play Lego games like a pro, but the boy has no imagination.

Let me tell you about his friend.

Better yet let me show you the picture he asked me to take of the two of them.

Ever wish you could just set up an out of office auto reply?

Last night I was sitting in the living room with my husband. He was watching TV and I was on the computer.

Moooooooooom!

First of all I am going to say that I am very much pro co-sleeping.  It saved my sanity when my son was an infant.  The boy would not sleep at all unless he was in my arms.  He's a snuggler.  Plus it made feeding so much easier when I didn't have to wake up fully by getting out of bed, picking up the baby, feeding him, getting back up, and putting him back in bed.  I used a Mini Arms Reach co-sleeper for those times when I needed a little space and could get him to sleep without being latched to me.  I tended to be his pacifier.  It was also a lifesaver after a c-section.

On Monday my husband and I packed our two kids (Peanut 4 and Princess 2) into our car and spent 5 hours driving to my parents house for a visit.  Then on Thursday we packed them back up for the trip home.

Back when my husband commuted 5 days a week for work we usually made the same trip with him once a month.  During that time we discovered several tricks to make the trip go more smoothly with no or at least limited meltdowns.  Here are a few things that have worked for us.

Recently the results of a poll were announced showing that a group of Americans are not happy with certain trends they consider to devalue the family structure.  What trend did the "Skeptics" view as the most unacceptable?  Single mothers of course.

"The third and somewhat larger group (37%) are the   Skeptics . ¹   While they generally share most of the tolerant views of the Accepters, they also express concern about the impact of these trends on society. On one of the trends -- single motherhood -- they and the Accepters have stark differences. Virtually all Skeptics say mothers having children without male partners to help raise them is bad for society. Among Accepters, just 2% say this. When asked about the six other trends examined in the survey, a majority of Skeptics say each makes no difference or is good for society."

And here you were blaming dead beat dads.

Today is truly a Monday.  I am dragging.  I stayed up way too late last night and now I am exhausted and have a headache.  I did manage to clean my living room though.  Mostly with the help of my 4 year old son.  While carrying his toys to his room he tripped on the living room step.  "This is why I should not clean up my toys.  Because I would hurt myself."  Well he definitely takes after his mom!  I certainly can not argue with such logic.  We did manage to finish cleaning the room and I even vacuumed without any further injuries but it was touch and go there for a bit.

A couple of days ago I read a post that really got me thinking.  Fenny over at The Crazy Rambler wrote a post entitled Are you 'normal'?  I highly recommend taking the time to read it.  She made some great points.  Who wants to be normal anyway?  How boring!  Now I would like to expand on that a little and ask.  Who actually is normal?


This is actually a topic I have given quite a bit of thought to throughout my life.

Just to make things clear.  In case there is any doubt in your mind.  I am NOT normal.  Ok, now that we have that cleared up we can continue.

Today I got a lot accomplished.  I did some more organizing in the kitchen.  Washed the dishes.  Worked on my blog.  Signed up for a Twitter account for my blog.  Wrote a new post for my blog . . . ok so I spent most of the day on the computer but the point is . . . I was feeling pretty good about my accomplishments.  I even washed two loads of laundry.  One regular load and one load of my daughters training pants.  Because along with everything else, I am trying to potty train my daughter.

"You know, the world may never see me as some big hero but maybe someday my son will." - Cat Grant, Smallville

I will also never be rich or famous.

I won't climb the corporate ladder or have a corner office.

I will not be considered successful as the world defines it.

I will not change the world.  At least not directly.

I am not a superhero.

Except maybe to my kids.