“Mom and Dad…go on a date

Go on a date

Go on a date

They go on a date

And I stay home

With the baaaaaaa-bysitters! …(more dooby-dooing)…..”
He’s actually got pretty good pitch for an untrained 4 year-old.

Today a young lad went to school
It was his first day, really cool!
I paid the tuition
For this sweet youngest Dishman
And now I’m alone and I talk to myself in the car and I wonder what he’s doing all day.

Ok, so it needs some work. I thought it was cool that a real word rhymes with “Dishman”. That’s neat-o.

Anyway, The Red Flash is now enrolled twice a week in preschool. I’ve looked forward to this for a long time. After all, it’s been more than eight years since I’ve been alone during the day. And he is so ready to be a little more independent. This is the same kid who cried and cried last night as I put him to bed and told me that he didn’t want to go to school because “it’s so! so! very scary”. That seems to be all in the past now. When I left him this morning, he was elbow-deep in the water table surrounded by 4 girls. He even told me, “You can go now. It’s ok.”

But I’m missing him already. As I’m folding clothes or even sitting here blogging, I keep checking around to see what he’s doing or what sort of chaos has ensued since I last looked. There’s nothing new.

The reality is that it’s all new. This everybody-going-off-to-school thing. I am not one to embrace, or even tolerate, change well. I like things to stay the way they are. But that’s not the way growth occurs, is it? If I try to fight the circumstance variations/trials/sufferings, change happens, but I don’t grow–I just wallow. But if I can bear or accept or (heaven forbid) welcome the change, growth seems to come a lot easier. But growth is not a quick experience. I think that’s what is so difficult for me. I want things to be over and done with and me to be this Perfect Person Who Has Arrived. But it’s all a process. Life is a process. Growth is a process*.

Ugh.

*This last paragraph may have been a little too deep for me. I’m still processing my limited-but-newly-found freedom, can you tell? Stay tuned.

1. Washed 5 loads of laundry,

2. Dried 5 loads of laundry*,

3. Unloaded the dishwasher twice,

4. Loaded said dishwasher once (I tried!),

5. Went to the grocery store,

6. Picked up children from school,

7. Learned of the Book Fair at school,

8. Visited Book Fair at school,

9. Resisted more than 25 pleas each of “Buy me this!” at Book Fair,

10. And took children to Sonic for SURPRISE! Happy Hour Drinks (Mark had An Important Conference Call, Please Take The Children Somewhere Else For At Least An Hour).

Now this is where it heads downhill…

11. While whoopin’ it up at Sonic, I must have left my brain in my Dr. Pepper marinade for too long, because I forgot all about what happens every Tuesday. Every stinking week. The girls have gymnastics. Ugh. I completely forgot.

(Pretend this is a blank space between these two paragraphs, because I have typed HTML code into this space for a new paragraph at least 45 times continuously and every time, the silly Wordpress or Firefox or TinyMCE or whatever deletes it. Ugh. Have you noticed that “Ugh.” is my new mantra? What is up with that?!!)
12. We dashed home to find gymnastics clothes, because we still had a fighting chance to get there (a little late, but get there, at least). I shot into the laundry room because I knew the gymnastics clothes were in the dryer, but when I got to the dryer, I could not find them anywhere. Ugh. Mark was still on the phone, so the kids were waiting in the hot sweaty garage in the car. I dashed into their room to get their “old gymnastics clothes”. When I showed up in the garage, one of the children informed me that “Those are too small! My underwear sticks out of those!”. It was then that I admitted complete defeat. Ugh again. So I will have to call for a makeup class. (And when I say that in my head, it sounds as if my children will go to a class to learn to apply lipstick and rouge. No. “Makeup” as in “You forgetful mother, you forgot to take your kids to gymnastics class. You know, the one that costs money? Yah, that one.” I’m sure you know this, but…no need to make assumptions, right? We’re all friends here.)

13. On top on everything else, I had neglected to plan for dinner. Oh, I have the entire rest of the week planned, but for some wild and unknown reason, Tuesday night is blank. Hm. Luckily for us, I found Pizza Hut Reader BOOK IT! Coupons in the bottom of my purse smooshed between a check I haven’t cashed yet (ha ha) and a granola bar that has the thickness of a postage stamp (how old is that thing, anyway?). So after Mark concluded his Important Conference Call, we made a delectable trip to Pizza Hut/Taco Bell where I paid $7.55 for 5 of us to eat dinner. Not bad. Thank goodness my kids can read!

I guess this afternoon proves that I’m the Slacker Mom. But look at the morning–Numbers 1 through 10! I wish I had taken pictures! Ask the washer! He’ll tell ya!

*In the spirit of being brutally honest, I need to inform you that there are approximately 5 loads of clean laundry on my living room couches waiting for me to fold them. ::clears throat::

Dramatic hysterics aside… Since her birthday was this week, we gave her a choice of how she wanted to celebrate her birthday. The choices were:

1. Celebrate birthday with friends by having a party, blah blah blah…

…OR…

2. Do “something special” with the family!! “Something special” is defined as something we wouldn’t normally do, either because of cost or time or whatever. Mark and I had planned this particular “something special” as a family campout for one night.
Mark sold her on the camping experience with the mere description of S’mores. I tell ya, it doesn’t take much with this crowd.

So! Camping was the celebration of choice. The last time Mark and I went camping together was September 1999. I was pregnant with my first child (the aforementioned birthday girl) and did not know it yet. This was to be the first family camping experience since having children.

We bought a new tent in honor of the occasion.** A 6-man tent. Apparently, a six-LARGE-BURLY-MAN tent. When set up, it looks like a convention center. 12 feet by 15 feet of space with more than enough headroom for a tall adult to stand. This is our new tent. We did not pay that much for it, thank you, Costco.

Anyway, we planned as best we could and we had a fabulous time. It had been raining a little earlier the day we left, but the sun came out and not a drop of rain could be found by departure time. However, the wind was picking up and by the time we set up our tent around 5pm, the wind was gusting to (what seemed like) at least 30mph! (As a small aside, I’m told by close friends that I have the gift of hyperbole. But they don’t know ANYTHING.) The kids were helpful by sitting on the windblown parts of the tent while we crammed poles and hooks and what-have-you into the various corresponding parts. Somehow we got the tent up, but in the end, Mark had checked the forecast and saw the lack of rain in it, so we neglected to put up the rainfly as a time-saving measure.

While I cut up vegetables for dinner, Mark made a fire. Then he and the kids flew a newly-purchased kite.

I managed to get pictures, even with meaty/carroty/potatoey hands. I made the aluminum foil packets of food (ground beef, carrots and potatoes) and tossed them onto the fire. After about 20 minutes (the fire must have been really really hot!), Mark checked the food and it was ready! So we got out the ketchup and salt and cheese and ate dinner around the campfire. Except that I forgot the salt. But the ketchup was there!

Don’t worry, folks. Remember, this is his bionic arm. It’s fireproof. Or not.

After dinner, we went hiking (a short hike) which was punctuated by Hell’s Angels trying to run us over on their electric scooters. Oh, I kid. It was probably only some other campers riding around. But we did throw rocks into the lake. Next was BibleTime around the fire, after which it got dark. The flashlights came out for a trip to the pottyhouse and then came (duh, duh, duh, duh…) S’mores!!! I found that I could put the S’mores together in the dark even with a flashlight completely blinding me in the face.

I neglected to take a “before” picture. But I did what I could!

Washing up after S’mores at a campsite without water would prove to be tricky for anyone. But not those pesky Dishmans! Overcoming obstacles is their middle name! Mark took the sweet, sticky children to the lake with a roll of paper towels while I finished off some/most/a lot of the S’more making materials. Don’t need that extra food laying around luring the bears and all, ya know. Lots of wild, scary bears in suburban Texas. Yep. You will be impressed (surprised?) to know that I did not need paper towels nor a lake to clean myself up.
We put the kids to bed in the tent (HA! As if) and we ate more S’mores before retiring ourselves to the tent.

After approximately 8 hours of laying awake in a dark tent, I noticed Luke sitting up on his “bed”. He was quiet, which was nice, but definitely not sleeping. Ugh. That’s when the rest of us began to stir. We made a morning potty trip, this time we didn’t need those flashlights, thank goodness! Mark reignited the fire and I rummaged in the car for the muffins I had made the day before in anticipation of a low-key breakfast (and, more importantly, low-key breakfast cleanup). Once he got the fire going, Mark heated a big pot of water for hot chocolate (for the 4 of us) and coffee (for him).

We took another walk down to the lake to see what Mark thought was an otter. (An otter? In a North Texas lake? Hm…) It turned out to be fish. Very frisky fish. You know, come to think of it, most of the wildlife we saw on this camping trip were all very very frisky, if you follow me. A sign of spring, I suppose! And guess who was right there, taking their pictures. Ick.

Like a fish out of water… No, really!
We took down our tent and packed up our stuff and left. It was a great experience to camp with the kids. Especially now that they’re older. Even the large windstorm gusty breeze that blew through the campsite for 95% of our stay wasn’t so bad. And we were able to celebrate our firstborn’s birthday in a new and exciting way. She was thrilled with it and she and the other kids can’t wait to go camping again. Luke’s birthday is in a few weeks and he is already planning for his “something special”.

Maybe I should figure out that rainfly now.
**I’ve heard of other bloggers doing product reviews on their blogs for free merchandise…just to let anyone out there know, I would love to do tent reviews. Here is my latest on this very tent:

The Northpole Family Camping Tent 6 Person Large Canopy is made by the largest tent manufacturer in the world. And it is easy to see that they specialize in making LARGE tents. This tent is a whopping 12 feet by 15 feet of luxury living at the ole campsite. Our family of five bodies, made up of various shapes and sizes (Ahem), took up little more than half of the ample room inside this tent. And even with an outside morning temperature of 55 degrees (Farenheit), the inside of the tent was a balmy 60 degrees (at least). Setting up the tent is a breeze, but not if there is one. A rather rambunctious wind blew through the entirety of our tent-setting-up-experience, which made for a difficult time of it. As a result, we decided to cut our losses and did not put up the rainfly. One thing that does not seem to help is the “EZ PAK Storage Bag with larger zippers and an expandable gusset on the bottom of the bag to make repacking your tent a breeze”. Don’t make me laugh. The only thing that would make repacking this tent a breeze would be to make a bigger bag. But I digress. All in all, we loved our camping experience with this tent. Now go buy it.

I have noticed many differences between raising girls and raising boys (or, more accurately, “boy”, singular). Raising girls so far has been sweet and quiet. Not too much noise, except for the occasional scream-fest or scary movie (”Scary” is a very loose term around here….”Clifford’s Really Big Movie” is scary for them). And the girls do not find humor in the vulgar. Case-in-point….this conversation this morning:

Luke is hungry for a morning snack.

Luke: I would like to have a nah-nuh.

Mommy: I believe that is pronounced “BUH-nah-nuh”.

Luke: I would like to have a BUTT-nah-nuh. (giggles wildly)

Ah, body part jokes. And the word “underwear”. ::sighs:: It all begins way too early.

I took Luke to the library yesterday for the sole purpose of picking up something I had put on hold a week or more ago (which always makes me giddy, because I usually can’t remember what it was I put on hold, silly me. It’s always a nice surprise to find out.). As usual, while we were there, he talked me into checking out a ga-zillion books for his sisters and himself (that doesn’t look or sound correct, but it’s all I have for the time being). AND THEN!! As the library was quite deserted, he proceeded to put on a puppet show all by himself just for me. Here is what transpired….

Luke chose two puppets; one, a parrot–reported to be friendly, and the other, a monkey–also of the friendly variety. Carefully balancing the said puppets (it’s difficult when you have very small, 3 year-old hands) and placing himself behind the “puppet theater”, he began the story thusly:

Luke with parrot voice: Hi! What’s your name?

Luke with monkey voice, which sounds strangely like the parrot voice: I’m banana-head. What’s your name?

SILENCE.

Luke: I’m talking to you, Mommy. What’s your name?

Mommy (deer-in-headlights look on face): Uh…sorry. Mommy is my name.

Parrot voice: I’m parrot head.

Monkey voice: One upon a time…

(ASIDE: I love it when he starts stories like this. It’s not “Once upon a time”, it’s “One upon a time”. He is somewhat like his father who says “Clif’s Bars” instead of the regular “Clif Bars”. Similarly, my old boss from the file room many moons ago used to say “I’m going to Walmart’s” instead of “I’m going to Walmart.” Or the gal I used to work with in the file room who referred to the big orange handy-man place as “Home Depot“–PRONOUNCING BOTH of the last two letters of the store in their entirety. All of these things add up over the years to drive me nuts, but now I am dealing with it. Especially when my baby says, “One upon a time”. Funny how that is. Anyway, back to the story…)

Monkey voices continues: One upon a time, there was a bear who…

Mommy: Uh, I think that’s the monkey, sweetie.

Monkey voice: Oh! Yes. One upon a time, there was a bear…I mean a monkey…are you sure it’s not a bear? It looks like a bear to me.

Mommy: No, see the nose? It’s definitely a monkey.

Luke: Well, one upon a time there was a monkey and a parrot and they liked each other. They were friends. And then they started doing this…

(Bear Monkey and Parrot begin to smack each other in the face. Repeatedly.)

Mommy: Uh…what’s going on? I thought they were friends…??

(Monkey and Parrot remove themselves from small, 3 year-old hands and throw each other across the room)

Luke: Nope. Not friends anymore.

Luke then picks up a lion puppet and (what looks to be) a fairy (looking type) puppet. The entire scenario repeats. Chaos ensues.

In the space of about 5 minutes, 8 dead puppets lay all about the puppet theater. All despising each other, having smacked each other in the head repeatedly. Apparently, there is no love in puppetry.

That was when I decided it was time to check out our books, find out what I had put on hold and go home.

SO!! Next time, pictures and trip details! In their full, happy, pleasant state! And no one had to visit the ER this time, which is what Dishmans do when they get together. Ahem.

For some bizarre and unknown reason, I decided to press her on this. Why? I don’t know. I confess to my idiot tendencies. I should have known better….

Me: How do you know I’m the bestest? How many mommas have you had?

D (Caught off guard): Well…. Hmmm…

Me (testing her with different mommy-friends who are secretly named with non-traceable letters): How about Mrs. X? Am I a better momma than her?

D: Oh yes. Definitely.

Me: What about Mrs. Y? Am I better?

D: Yep. You are better!

Me: What would you say to Mrs. Z? Am I a better mommy?

D: Yes.

Me (now going for the jugular): What about Grandma? Am I a better mommy than Grandma?

D: Oh, no! The bestest momma would be Grandma, then you, then Mrs. blah blah blah..

Honestly, I don’t know who was next, because I lost interest after I got de-throned by my mother.

If you’re reading this, Grandma, all that chocolate and other forms of spoilage have paid off*. Congratulations!

*Kidding, Grandma! I know it’s yer luv that melts her little heart. But the chocolate doesn’t hurt!

Place: Kitchen table

The Compassionate: Hey, mom….I met a new friend at school her name is K______.

The Mom: That’s great! What did you two talk about?

C: Well, I invited her to my birthday party.

M: Even though your birthday isn’t until April?

C: Yes, I didn’t want to forget to ask her.

The child who hates school and has for 99.999% of her educational career has decided that if and when you find some friends, you should not, under any circumstance, lose them.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere….

The Determined started kindergarten and is the tallest in her class and has the most teeth missing. The Compassionate is now in 2nd grade and is excited about the Real! Live! Fish! in her classroom, as well as the fact that she now has a Really! Cool! Desk! instead of a measley ole table at which to sit.

The Red Flash is only 3, but will begin public education speech therapy this week through the school system (and this next part is key) AT THE SAME SCHOOL AS THE SISTERS. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing. No more of this “all over town” kind of action. I’m all for it. And he is too. He is excited for his own kind of “school”–he helped me unload the dishwasher this morning by sorting silverware. When he was about 75% finished, I realized he had not washed his hands. Ugh. Who wants to come over for dinner?

And now for the portion of this blog wherein I attempt to entertain…..

Here are the first things said when/after we dropped everyone off:
The Determined (seconds before she entered her classroom): OH! HERE is my class! Well, BYE!!!! (And the only thing I saw after that was the ::SWISH:: of the back of her hair)
The Compassionate (seconds before she entered her classroom): I love you! Please don’t forget to pick me up!
And then, once out of the building and walking to the car:
The Red Flash: Yay! Now we can go home and play games ALL DAY LONG!!! We can play the matching game! We can play Uno! We can play trains and cars! We can play dominoes! We can play….(and the list was extremely LONG AND he doesn’t even know how to play dominoes)….
Mark: Great! NOW the house-cleaning can FINALLY begin!

So there you have it. And because of Mark’s sassy mouth, I took a super unflattering picture of him and threatened to post it on my blog. He did not feel threatened. Ugh.
Yes! I forgot to tell you! I purchased a camera! I ended up with a Canon Rebel XTi. I test drove a few cameras at Best Buy last week before purchasing from amazon.com. Those folks at Best Buy were really nice and highly informative, but I saved $150 buying from amazon. I wish I could’ve bought from the informative help, but 150 bucks is 150 bucks, ya know? (I haven’t figured out yet how to download the pictures, but when I do, you will be the first to know.)
I’m sure I’ll spew more of my infinite wisdom from the annuls of elementary school when The Sisters come home.

Since I haven’t posted anything for a while, I’m going to share with you a few games that my imaginative children have created.

First, there’s the game called “Puppy”. Well, I don’t really know exactly what it’s called, but this is what they all call each other when they’re playing it. And all three children usually participate. From what I can gather, as a casual observer, there is no object to this game, except to be the “Puppy” Every. Time. You. Play. This. Game. See, someone is the puppy and someone else has to be the “master” and I’m not sure what the third child’s role is. Veterinarian? Mailman? Pooper Scooper? I dunno. In any case, you, as the puppy, are apparently the boss and you get to tell everyone else what to do. “Tie me up here” or “Now you walk me by tying this scarf around my neck…” (the tying part was discontinued) or “Pretend you found me in a rain gutter, but you loved me with an everlasting love…”. The ultimate experience of the game is to be the Puppy who eats real food off of the floor under the kitchen table because “that’s what puppies do, Mom”. Only one has succeeded in that endeavor so far and has been caught and spanked with a rolled up newspaper. Well, not really that last part. And he hasn’t tried it again. Yet.
The other game that has been played with much vigor around here is “Baby Cait” (Cait, you’ll remember, is my 9 month old niece, who is thoroughly adored by my children). In a typical game of “Baby Cait”, there are only two players and they are the same players throughout the history of the game of “Baby Cait”. And those two players would be…Luke and ….. Me. Yes, me. I play this game. It has been one of the greatest diversionary tactics ever invented, surprisingly, by the very one who needs to be diverted. It’s more of a role-playing, conversational-type game than anything. Here is a sample of the dialogue, which usually only incurs minor (exceedingly so) changes every time it is played:

Luke (curled up in my lap, begins to stretch his arms and legs): Goo-goo, ga-gah! I be Baby Cait and you be Aunt Carrie (my sister)…
Me (coddling him): Ok. Ahem! (getting into character) Oh! Baby Cait! What’s wrong, Baby?

Luke (sticking thumb in mouth): I’m sad…wah wah…

Me: Oh? About what, sweet baby?

Luke (sweet smile oozing from sweet baby mouth): Baby Cait need to watch TV!

Me (smiling and smug): Oh! Honey, babies don’t watch TV. They take lots and lots of naps.
Luke: Then, Baby Cait need to eat cookies. For breakfast. Me hungry.

Me (still smiling): Oh! Love, babies don’t eat cookies. They only drink milk.

Luke: Oh. Well, Baby Cait needs to play with cars.

Me: Nope. I’m sorry! (fake sadness) Baby Cait could choke on small pieces.

And so, the conversation continues. He, insisting that “Baby Cait” wants to do something that the big kids do and then I burst his bubble and kill his dreams. He started the game when I wouldn’t give him what he wanted. I assume that he thought that he was being cute by being a baby (he was!) and that I would immediately fall under his charms and do everything he wanted me to do. I admit that I was extremely susceptible in the beginning, but I am a little wiser now, having played the game for a few months as of this writing. I am experienced.
So that’s what’s been going on around here. Cuteness and bossiness and everything in between.

NOW WITH UPDATE: This crazy formatting of my post is driving me nuts. Spaces where I don’t want them and the paragraphs all run together all willy-nilly like! I’ve tried fixing it and the editor does not respond to reasonable HTML code!! UGH!! Who can I blame for this lack of consistent code?!! UGH! Again!