Ruby's Family Tree

This morning Ruby was talking to Cici on the phone. She picked up the phone and said, "I Ruby Caroline." Then she pointed to her sister and said, "there my sister Eliza Claire. My other sister is Charlotte. I have two brothers. Rehm is downstairs. My other brother, he in heaven. He a kitty cat!"

At that point I cracked up and of course she had no idea why. As I was listening to her I was so proud that she knew she had two brothers. And when she said her brother was in heaven, I thought she was really starting to understand, well as much as a two year old can understand having an older brother she's never met in heaven. And then she burst my bubble completely. One day the cat and the brother won't be so tied together in her mind. We talked about both of them later. Hopefully now she is clear on the fact that the cat isn't/wasn't her brother.

Silly girl

Fashion at Five

Yes, she picked this ensemble out all by herself. And yes, I told her she looked beautiful! And no, I did not buy the boots they are a hand-me-down from a friend.

Don't you just love those facial expressions and poses?

Does Mommy Go?

A few weeks ago Michael and I were invited to attend the fifth anniversary celebration for our church's AA group. We took the children and dropped them off at childcare and proceeded to have a lovely dinner and celebration. When we picked them up a conversation ensued between Rehm and his Dad - I was not in the car for this, I just heard about it after the fact.

Rehm: Dad, what kind of meeting did you and Mommy go to?

Michael: It was the anniversary of the AA group here at the church.

Rehm: What is AA?

Michael: It stands for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Rehm: What is an Alcoholic?

Michael: Someone that finds drinking alcohol more important than their job or family.

Rehm: What is alcohol?

Michael: An ingredient in adult beverages like wine and beer and such...

Rehm: Does Mommy need to go to those meetings? She drinks a lot of wine!

Michael: No Mommy doesn't need to go. These meetings are for people who drink instead of doing the things they should be doing, like going to work and taking care of their family....

OK, so what is up with my child? First of all, I haven't had wine since Thanksgiving. Well I had wine when I went to Fredericksburg last month, but Rehm wasn't with me. So how do I drink a lot of wine? And further, I haven't had much of anything to drink, maybe a drink once a week, but not a lot! And, and, and, Michael drinks adult beverages as often as I do. Why didn't his son think he needed to go to meetings? First he tells me how fat I am and now he tells me I need meetings? Lovely!

I think I'll go have a beer...
Jenn

PS. I am not making light of the true problem of Alcoholism. I know it is very real and very difficult. I think AA is a wonderful organization and works wonders for many, many people. I admire those who put the time and effort into working the program and recovery.

Indiana Mayhem

Can you tell what the theme was for the Blue and Gold Banquet for Cub Scouts this year?

Rehm and School

Rehm brought home a stack of graded papers last week and I was flipping through them. On one math assignment I stopped to read the problem he got wrong.

Here was the problem and Rehm's answer:

Hector weighs 42 pounds when he stands on both feet. How much does he weigh when he stand on one foot? Why?

Rehm's answer: 42/2=21lbs. Cinc haf of his body is of the scal just simtle dvid by 2. (That reads: Since half of his body is off the scale just simply divide by 2.)

How I wish it was that easy to lose weight :)

--------------------------------------------

In other Rehm school news, he has been working on timed math test all year. He gets side tracked and never gets them finished. He knows the answers, but just doesn't get them done in time.

He came home the other day and announced, "I got a fifty-fifty!" I had no clue what he was talking about. I thought it was some kind of reference to some fake game of Who Wants to be a Millionaire or something - which knowing Rehm is very plausible. But low and behold he had gotten all 50 addition and all 50 subtraction facts done in the alloted time (3 minutes for addition and 3.5 minutes for subtraction, I think).

He was bouncing off the walls he was so excited. Of course that meant that the math paper made the Artwork of the Day. He even wrote in his journal about it.

In the same week he also made his first 100 on a spelling test. At the beginning of the year he was making low Bs on spelling. Over the last couple of months that has increased to consistent low As, but again he was so proud of his 100, as he should be!

Way to go Rehm!
Jenn

PS. Yeah I know I'm slacking on the blog lately. Work has really picked up in the last few weeks and is taking all my non-kid time. I don't see it getting any better for the next couple of months at least.

Are You Tired of Hair Pictures Yet?

Here are today's dos. I thought they all came out well.

Ruby's style came from Jackie and Cassie's Sweet Hair Dos. This is probably the absolutely easiest heart style we did.



Eliza Clarie's is just like Charlotte's from earlier in the week. It came from She Does Hair. It is the second easiest, very pretty and simplistic.



Charlotte's came from Girly Dos by Jenn. It was definitely the most time consuming. I probably spent 30 minutes on it this morning, but it wasn't particularly hard. It is definitely the fanciest style we did and with some added curls would make a great style for a formal occassion or wedding.



Of course this morning I have gone above and beyond on all the girl's hair but for my self have barely gotten dressed much less made myself presentable. And the twins have yet to have breakfast this morning as I've been doing hair and blogging about it.

Michael wanted to know if after Valentine's Day was over I was going to start crafting four leave clovers in their hair. I don't have an answer to the question, yet.

Why?

A couple of nights ago, I heard a strange noise in the back yard. When I looked to see what was causing it, this is what I found.


Now can someone tell my why the 11 year old dog decided to climb on the table? Of course in trying to get down she just jumped off and caught her back legs on a chair. Luckily no damage. Apparently she still thinks she's a puppy.

Actually, about three minutes after this picture the wind picked up and within 10 minutes there was heavy rain, lightening and hail. So this was her response to the brewing storm I was unaware of. When I realized this, I kept expecting a big tornado to come through as this behavior was pretty out of character for her. I've seen her climb on the chairs before, but never get on the table.

Oh, in case you are wondering, her name is Tobie and she is a smooth coat collie

Today's Hair

Back

Side

Other side - with heart

Front

Last night the girls picked out their hairstyles they wanted for today. I printed a picture of each to have something to go by. They were so excited and the first thing they all mentioned this morning was getting fancy hair.

Charlotte's is just a variation on the heart we did Sunday. With messy buns added. It is an adaptation of a design on She Does Hair as I don't have any ribbon in the house. It was easy. The final result though ended up reminding me a bit too much of Joy Turner on My Name is Earl. Especially since the messy buns got a bit fuzzy and from the front the buns don't look centered, though from the back they do.

Ruby

Eliza Claire

I thought Ruby and Eliza Claire's would be much easier. I was wrong! I thought we were going to have to abort the hair mission before ever getting the hearts done. I think I needed at least on more hand to have any chance a these looking right. This idea came from Jackie and Cassie's Sweet Hair Dos. The thing that finally helped was twisting both the separated sections and then doing really small loops and pulling them out a bit after I got the elastic around them. These turned out a very Cindy-loo-who-ish. But cute. Ruby was beside herself with glee over her fancy hair. She told everyone she saw, "I got HEARTS!" By the time I picked her up from school they no longer looked like hearts. Apparently every time she told someone about them she reached up and grabbed them , which didn't help them stay.

So the down side to fancy hair is there was not enough time to eat breakfast before leaving for school. So they had cheerios and raisins in the car. Maybe not the best solution, but for today it worked.

No fancy hair the next two days as I have to be at work at 8am. Maybe Friday we will try another heart style...I'm thinking this one.

Look at this Great Bag!

Front

Getting the three girls and all of their stuff into preschool is always a challenge. Right now our campus is in the middle of construction. Parking is challenging, traffic in the lot can be bad, and depending on the weather it can be a big muddy mess. So trying to get three small children, all their coats, lunch boxes and water bottles/sippy cups in and out of school is difficult. I asked my mom to make me a new tote bag just to simplify this endeavor. It came last week and I love it!

Other side

Inside

Mostly packed for school - before I added coats, backpack and baggies containing breakfast

It will hold

• three lunch boxes, three water bottles, three light weight coats and a small diaper bag or
• three gallons of milk, five pounds of cheese, 4lbs of butter and toiletries or
  
• three plasic bags worth of groceries or
• A soft sided cooler full of juice boxes, a box of granola bars and my purse

These are just the things I've done with it this week. The possibilities are endless! I absolutely love this bag. Thanks Mom!

Oh, and the gorgeous table cloth was crocheted by my grandmother out of very fine cotton thread on a tiny crochet needle.

We Heart Hair

This week we have tried out a couple of new hairstyles on Charlotte. I am not creative when it comes to doing hair. I can only do very basic stuff, like simple ponytails and basic braids. I have never been able to master french braiding or other more elaborate hairstyles. My repertoire for fixing the girls' hair consist mostly of pulling it back from the face with either a single elastic or clip. Occasionally, I'll curl Charlotte's hair with either curlers or a curling iron. Again, I really don't know what I'm doing and the results are somewhat mixed.

A friend sent me the link to She Does Hair several months ago. I now feel the need to at least occasionally try a new hairstyle. Thanks so much Alicia for adding this extra bit of pressure to my already crazy life. I really appreciate it :)

I have learned that having the right tools is key to doing most styles. I've also learned that most up dos need to be done with wet hair and that hair gel, I prefer Garnier Fructis products, is my friend if I want the styles to hold and not have a bunch of fly-aways. Another lesson learned is that parts do not always have to be in the center or on the side. Diagonal parts and parts from one ear to the other make even the most simple ponytail look much fancier.

This is supposed to look like a heart and came from She Does Hair . I had a hard time getting the point down far enough and the next two ponys up far enough. It looked a little more oval shaped than heart shaped. It probably would have helped if I had used silicon elastics instead of the typical cloth covered ones. The one nice thing about this style is it stayed put. She even slept on it and was able to get a second day out of it.

This style came from The Story of a Princess and her Hair. It is actually very simple and turned out super cute. It stayed in all day but did not make it to a second day. It also required a bobby pin to hold the braids in place. This took about 10 minutes to do, including getting all the tangles out, and I'm sure would go quicker next time.

The top picture shows the heart off well. The bottom one shows the whole head better but gets a bit washed out.

I have a couple more heart styles to try later in the week if I can get Charlotte to agree to to them. Pictures will of course be forthcoming.

Ah, the Good Ole Post Office

We received an envelope in the mail yesterday. It was a USPS envelope with a big clear front window. It contained a piece of mail for Charlotte. The mail had been damaged in sending. According to the note on the back of the envelope from the post office they"sincerely apologized" and assured us they had forwarded this piece of mail in "an expeditious fashion." The contents: a birthday party invitation for a January 10th postmarked December 29th! Yesterday's date: February 6th! Expeditious - I'd hate to see slow!

Charlotte was very, very, very sad (read that, big tears and wailing sad) that she had missed her friend's birthday party. Try explaining to a five year old that the post office screwed up. It did nothing to console her. It did however make me want to drive to the post office, march my screaming child to the counter and say "You make it alright that she missed the birthday party!" and hand them the envelope. Of course I can see how that one would play out...

Postal Worker: Next!

Me: Can you please explain to my daughter why she can not attend A's birthday party?

Charlotte: Screaming with crocodile tears running down her face.

PW: Excuse me? Do you have something to mail?

Me: No I don't have anything to mail today. We received this in the mail and I need you to explain to my daughter why she can not attend the party.

At this point Charlotte would be blowing snot on everyone and the twins would be climbing something I'm sure.

PW: Um, ma'am we just deliver packages, if you don't have something to mail you'll have to leave now.

Me: But someone has to explain to my daughter why she missed this party and since it is your fault I think you should be the one to explain.

PW: Crazy lady, I mean ma'am. You are going to have to leave now or I'll have to call security.

At this point I would say something rude about customer no service and collect my children and leave and all 20 people standing in line behind me would shake their heads and wonder what mental institution gave me a day pass.

Ah the joys of parenting,
Jenn

The Moments that Make it all Worthwhile!

Last night I was making my rounds checking on all the kids right after they went to bed. Yes this is their John Boy way of prolonging bedtime, they tell whichever parent puts them to bed to have the other parent check on them. I was coming out of Charlotte's room and could hear Rehm calling me through his closed door:

Rehm: Mom!

Me: What?

Rehm: Check on me!

Me: Who do you want to check on you?

Rehm: You!

Me: But I just checked on you!

Rehm: Yeah, but I like you, so check on me again.

Of course, it worked and I went right back in and gave him another smooch. It is nice to occasionally be liked by your kids. It is never my goal in parenting but when it happens, even for a few minutes and even as a tactic to stall bedtime it is still nice.

Jenn

Boo Island In the Boo Sea

Rehm did this at school over the course of about a week. I think it is awesome. They were talking about different types of land formations and each child made an island demonstrating multiple formations. They used salt dough to make the island and then painted it and added the markers for the different formations. They had to name their island and body of water and then write a story about it. I didn't save the story as it was a knock off of something on Neopets and not a true Rehm original. I really admire his teacher. I can't imagine tackling the project with one child much less 20.

We are trying to decide the best way to glue the island to the plate so we can hang the finished project in his room. Any suggestions? Do you think hot glue will melt the plate?

Jenn

Sisterly Love

I snapped this last week while waiting at the drive through at Walgreens to pick up a prescription. Isn't it just the sweetest? This is why I have a very small point and shoot camera. That way I'm very rarely without it and can take advantage of moments like this anywhere, anytime.

Yeah, I know that Henry is in desperate need of a good vacuuming and now all of you know it too. Oh well, just keeping it real.

Jenn