Lazy, hazy, crazy days

Summer in recap;

Sesame Place
 

Swimming

Car Shows
   
The Beach
 
Boating
   

Trains






Fireworks


Fishing

My Own Marvel-ous Super Villians

“Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it.” ~Harold Hulbert

My kids have superpowers. They can make me crazy like noone else. And, Like Voltron, they can combine their talents to become a superforce of mayhem and chaos. I have always known that Monkey is the game changing force around the house. The effect and influence she has on her brothers is extremely apparent. Even when she was in Preschool, there was such a change in Scootch from when he was home in the morning with Little Bear and I, to when Monkey came home in the afternoon. This summer is proving no different. Having them home all together is proving challenging and an ultimate test in patience and negotiation on my part. But I also think I’ve also been able to pin down each of their superpowers.

Monkey - AKA Red Hawk. Red Hawk’s superpower is in the power of her voice. She can scream at such a high pitch and volume that you’ll fear for the solidity of all the glass in the immediate vicinity. Red Hawk can also sustain her verbal attack for what seems like hours on end. If the audio onslaught doesn’t bring you to your knees immediately, the persistence of it lasting is sure to make you cry or give in to her demands.

Scootch - AKA Scrambler. Scrambler’s method affects your hearing and your mind. He has the power of talking so fast and so unclearly you are immediately incapacitated by confusion because your brain is struggling to sort out whether what he just said is a threat or not. Scrambler’s advantage is that he is tireless and knows to keep up his streams of gibberish so that your mental capacity never has a chance to catch up. You are literally reduced to a pondering lump of confusion and find yourself agreeing to his stipulations whether you meant to or not.
Little Bear - AKA Bruiser. Because he is still developing his abilities for verbal attacks, Bruiser’s talent is purely physical. His method of disarming you is to lure you in with a charming smile or minor accident. When you get closer or come to his aid he will immediately change tactics and strike with his python like grip, usually incapacitating you by grabbing your legs together below your knees, or latching onto your hair or your mouth.You are rendered useless immediately and find yourself with no other option but to take his lead and bend to his will.  

As you can imagine, the talents of hubby and I are weak in comparison. Time outs and bribery have no positive effect on the super trio. Usually there are long negotiations for cease fire involved which are extremely tiring. Lately our best defense has amounted to the exhaustion and dazzle method. We work them outside to the point of grumpiness and then bring them inside for downtime on the couch with books or a movie. We’re hoping to stick it out for the next 6 weeks until school starts up again. Nothing negates their super powers like the power of teachers and peers!

Camo Cake

(Otherwise known as the obligatory after-party baking post) ;-)
I've become addicted fallen in love with Pinterest. (Its the same thing, right?) Anyways, I saw this great idea for camouflage cake that one mother made for her son's birthday. Scootch saw it and was over the moon excited. So I figured I'd give it a go for his bowling party.
It was actually easier than I expected. I have scratch recipes for cakes that are allergy friendly for him, and they only yield a dozen cupcakes, so I made a whole batch of vanilla, and a half batch of chocolate. The batch of vanilla I separated and made one portion green so I could get the three colors.

Then it was just a matter of dribbling the colored cake batter into the cupcake liners, and voila!

Bake

Ice

Eat!

Happy Birthday Boy enjoying a second cupcake! 

Sweet success!

Onwards and Upwards

“The prime purpose of being four is to enjoy being four - of secondary importance is to prepare for being five.”  ~Jim Trelease

Scootch turned four on Monday. Maybe its more bittersweet because I have Little Bear to compare him to, but he seems like such a grown up little man. I miss the snuggly baby boy I used to have. But he makes us so proud every day, which I wouldn’t change for the world.

He can sing the alphabet song, and identify almost all the letters. He can count to 12 by himself, and can read numbers up to 10. He loves to dance, and to sing and play music. He has such a curiosity of things going on in the world around him, and asks the most amazing questions. And his resilience sometimes makes me so emotional. Dealing with his food allergies isn’t easy, but for the most part he shrugs off the disappointment and sadness when he can’t have something he wanted to eat. 

This year, when i asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday, he told me he wanted to go bowling. And so the Friday after his birthday we invited some friends and cousins out to play a game with us. I think it was a success, judging from the smiling faces and number of victory dances the kids did in the lanes while they were bowling. I’m hoping the years ahead are just as happy!

The Memory Project

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.  ~The Wonder Years

Today marks sixteen years passed, and while I was thinking last week of what I wanted to do to try and celebrate my mother, I realized I'm facing a new challenge born from her death. My children don't really know their Nana.

Monkey is usually the one who tries to guess her identity in pictures, but Scootch doesn't recognize her at all. He's convinced its always funny pictures of me. I tell them as many stories as I can, but since I only really knew her as a child myself, it isn't much. I have plenty of pictures of when she was a child, but once she became the photographer of the family there are very few occasions where her face filled the frame. So my idea is really a call for help.
I want to make my children a memory book of their Nana. My mother touched so many lives, and knew so many people. I'm hoping that I can petition for everyone to share a remembrance or a photo of her and I can print them into a book that will share her life and (mis)adventures of her adult years. Hopefully it will help my children learn why certain things they do make me laugh and tell them they're just like their Nana. Or why sometimes a certain smile or way they tilt their head makes my heart squeeze. They carry her within them everywhere. I hope this will help them know it.

The Story Girl

You have learned something.  That always feels at first as if you had lost something.  ~H.G. Wells

The Monkey is reading! She has been doing well with her sight words and flash cards at school, but a few nights ago, before Daddy left for his business trip, she asked him if she could read the bedtime story she had picked out. And she did. It was a little halting, and definitely took much longer, but she read the whole thing herself! Her new favorite thing about bedtime is now reading her story of choice on her own to the rest of us. I see so much of myself in her, especially when I come into the living room and see her curled up on the couch sounding her way through a book. There is so much I want to share with her. I know I should take it slow, but I can't wait to share all my favorites; Little House on the Prairie, The Secret Garden,  Mandy, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Ramona, Bunnicula, Tom's Midnight Garden.....I have a whole Tupperware tote full of books. I hope she's up for it. :-)

The Gift of Conscience

There is an ongoing battle between conscience and self-interest in which, at some point, we have to take sides.  ~Robert Brault

The Blistex lip balm, purchased with a five-finger discount

It has been a trial of months with the Monkey. There is a whole shopping list of unwanted and unwarranted behavior that she has been displaying since she started Kindergarten, but I was really hoping it was all in the name of adjustment and peer pressure. Hoping in vain, it seems. As much as I know every child has to push to define boundaries and limitations, my fingers were crossed that her past lessons and upbringing would steer her in the right direction. Apparently, she is in need of a refresher course.
Monkey has been sneaky from an early age. I remember how she used to slink off to the pantry when I was busy with a baby Scootch, and try to sneak food. She never quite realized that the wrappers have a distinct crinkling noise when trying to be opened by little 3 year old fingers. She has been hiding and lying for awhile now. The fact that she always tries to hide the evidence of her hair cutting experiments and other destructive pastimes clues me in that her conscience is already well developed and functioning. Its just a little disheartening that she ignores it - just like everyone else. For a few weeks now she has been coming home with assorted items she doesn't own - like a ZhuZhu Pet - and falsely claiming she got them as a reward from the prize box at school. But yesterday she upped the ante in her arsenal to shoplifting a chapstick from Walgreens. Cue the parental embarrassment.
The biggest hurdle with all of these trials is the eternal lying that precedes, surrounds, and follows the incidents. She lies when you ask her what she's doing. She lies and makes up fibs when you catch her doing something she's not supposed to. And afterwards there is no possible way to get the real story from her in her own words. Its always a conceded confession after we've interviewed three separate witnesses about the event and confronted her with our findings. To say I'm at a loss is a gross understatement.
The hardest part of the whole ordeal is the aftermath. Monkey's groveling takes form as this;

repurposing and wrapping my things to give me as "I'm sorry" offerings. These two happened to contain three pairs of my dangly earrings in one, and my body spray in another. I also get homemade cards covered in pictures and "I Love You"s. As a Mother, its nice to know that she still loves me enough that she wants to make me happy by giving me presents and making me cards. But I also wish I wasn't given a gift tainted with guilt and repentance. Stealing my things to wrap them and present to me as a peace offering is still fostering the whole element of theft and deception, and I feel like by doing it, she's ignoring and discrediting everything we just talked about in regards to what she was doing was wrong.
 

So many things I'm reading indicate that dishonest, kleptomaniac, five year olds are the norm. Besides growing a stronger conscience, its also supposedly helping them define their concept of self and others - mainly that parent's aren't the mind reading creatures their children think they are. Kids at this age are learning they can keep secrets from others by lying. While I have to swallow this as a parent, and acknowledge that its actually a good thing from one perspective - because it shows she's progressing well psychologically - I still can't help but not like it. Especially when I don't see her realizing the ill of her ways. And doubly so while she's using up all of our wrapping paper.