The Evil Eye Explained

I didn't have time this morning to do a longer post, but the pictures of Thumbelina and her Evil Eye were directed at her Uncle, AB. The Look, as we refer to it at home, is not just reserved for her Uncle, AB, it is reserved for anybody who talks to her with whom she does not wish to converse, be it male or female. She cracks me up. And yes, Mr. Happy and I have both been the receipients of The Look, but it always follows with giggles. The giggles are only for Mr. Happy and me.

Question for all you wise-of-the-world people out there. Mr. Happy and I were invited to his cousin's wedding, but we are unable to attend. We have not seen, nor spoken to said cousin in over 10 years, since the funeral of Mr. Happy's Grandmother. And the only reason we were invited is because another cousin wanted to go to the wedding, and Mr. Happy's Aunt told her son (the groom) that if he invited one cousin, he had to invite all the cousins. Which is why we were invited. And Mr. Happy's Aunt told me all this when she called to get addresses of Mr. Happy's siblings (Hi Siblings-in-law!) SO, my question is, are we still obligated to send a wedding gift? In today's mail there is an invitation for a bridal shower for the bride. Seems to me that they're pretty desperate for people if I got an invite, being a little-old-nothing-in-law and all, and the shower is in a town about 3 hours away. I'm not going. It's on a Thursday night at 7...I wouldn't get home until midnight...I turn into a pumpkin after 10 pm...so am I obligated to send a bridal shower gift? And what the heck is an Envelope Party??? I'm just not up on all the proper cousin-in-law-see-you-in-10-years-etiquette.

The Aunt & Uncle of my offspring were in town on the weekend to give them their collective birthday present. And this is what happened when a certain little boy thought he really got a teapot, because his portion of the gift was wrapped in a teapot box. Someone has quite the sense of humor. If you look close enough, you can even seen his bottom lip quivering:

And then when the realization sinks in that no, it really wasn't a set of dishes that was given:

Or a make-up mirror:

It was a Wii:

No, not a wha?? a Wii:

So now everybody is arguing over who gets to do what first. Thanks relatives!

Beware the Evil Eye

It's Monday. I'm not a fan of Mondays. Mondays make me feel like this:

My Girly-Girl

Guess who likes to play with her brothers' toys when they're at school!

The Week in Pictures

All ready for church:
We have discovered colouring! With markers! But only the colour wonder markers. And if you don't clue in fast enough that you're sweet little baby wants to colour, she gets sad:

But then she gets happy:


Tigger's birthday was on the 12th. I bought him a cake from the grocery store and it came with Lightning McQueen (since it was a Lightning McQueen cake). And of course being a boy, he was playing with the car on the floor before he put it on the cake...I made one of the boys eat that piece:

The 12th was also the 6th month anniversary of when Thumbelina joined our family. She got to play with wrapping paper!
And eat cake!

The 14th was Shaggy's birthday and we had a birthday party for him the school gymnasium. Thumbelina loved the balloons:

No, she doesn't need her bangs trimmed. Mr. Happy just forgot to put a barrette in her hair:

Mr. Happy was kept busy playing floor hockey and all sorts of other fun stuff with the boys:
Thumbelina and her cousin:
What do you get when you have 14 boys?
Chaos!
Thumbelina loves parties!

And Shaggy loves presents:
Sadly, this is the only picture I have of the cake. A homemade, triple layer, chocolate cake. Shaggy said it didn't taste as good as he thought it would. He's not getting chocolate cake anymore. Brat. And no, it isn't leaning to the side. If you turn your head to the right a smidge, you'll see it's actually straight:
And this is what happens when the bouquet of balloons are whacked with a hockey stick. They are still on the gymnasium ceiling.
It had been raining and sky was a really pretty colour. So I took a picture. See?

There. Wasn't that fun?!?

I think My Head is Going to Explode

Because my ears are bleeding and I've already pulled all my hair out. And my eyeballs.

It is Grade 3 Recorder time. And my kid. I have never seen anybody in my whole life as uncoordinated as he is when it comes to playing the recorder. Ever. The poor child can't even hold it in one hand without disaster. And I'm trying so hard not to let him see my frustration.

His little fingers can't cover the holes, so imagine a monotone squeaky sound. And when I say G, A, B, he plays (or attempts to play) B, A, G. So I say It's like you're on a ladder and you need to go up, he goes down. And then I say, Now you need to go down, then he goes up. And then as I'm trying not to pull out my hair, he says to me, Are you crying? No, son, I'm not, it's just my tear ducts emptying because I've pulled my eyeballs out.

Meanwhile, the baby is screaming because she's overtired, but she can't get to sleep because the 10-year-old has the 13-year-old in a headlock and the 13-year-old is calling me like a little girl.

It's going to be a long year.

She Called Me Mama!

My heart is full.

Tonight at church, I had some last minute instructions for the nursery workers because there was a big switcheroo happening - I won't bore you with the details - and I tried to stay out of sight of Miss Thumbelina, but since the worker was holding her, she saw me. And she stretched out her arms and said, "Mama!" (Thumbelina, not my nursery worker). Oh, I wanted to hug and kiss her, but I couldn't because of course I was late for choir.

She called me Mama! I'm not a spoon anymore!

Oh Bother

I give up. I felt all domestic-like today, so I thought, Hey! I'll make supper tonight instead of ordering take-out! So I managed to find an old Pillsbury-dough pizza thing, it broke apart when I unrolled it so it's a little past it's freshness. Good enough. And it's in the oven per instructions on the container, I actually grated the cheese since someone left the bag of grated cheese open and it's all moldy, except I'm out of pizza sauce. And spaghetti sauce. And Mr. Happy has vetoed my ketchup idea. And salsa idea. So I guess that means take-out anyway. Sometimes, I don't know why I bother.

Quiet

It is quiet here. The boys are at school. It's just me and Thumbelina.


We've survived our week; the root canal went exceptionally well, the funeral was nice, despite it being a funeral and despite Tigger puking just before the service started (on the carpet of the funeral home even), we finally got around to celebrating Husband's birthday - I mean Mr. Happy's birthday - and we have survived our first full night of homework.


Good grief the homework. Tigger had a lot of it last night. A lot. And it was tough stuff for an almost 8-year-old. I think it took him an hour and a half to do a paragraph in his penmanship - it was in cursive. Cursive, people. He kept losing his place and asking us where he was. Plus he had 6 definitions to look up and write out for Science, and of course they were the longest definitions in the whole book. And I know that these things need to be done, but during the first week of school? It's discouraging. Especially when your kid can't go 2 minutes without talking. Oh the talking. It just does not stop. It took him 3 hours to do his homework last night. But a good hour of it was just talking.


Thumbelina slept for 3 hours yesterday morning. 3 hours. 3. I think she just needed a break from listening to all that talking this summer. 3. I think 3 is my new favourite number.


Shaggy has been having an awesome week. So relieved about that.


Zoomer. Can I just say that I'm not really liking this teen-age stuff at the moment? Can I trade him in for a couple more toddlers or something easier to manage? Holy Crap the emotions are up and down like you wouldn't believe. It's as if he has a switch inside of him. One minute he's laughing and joking, and the next he's all I don't need to wash my face; so maybe I like pimples; it's my face! Please tell me I was not like this as a teenager. I know I was difficult, but it was over important issues such as not being allowed to wear make-up or get my ears pierced

or wear high heels.

So that's been the extent of our first week.


My office assistant has offered to clean the office since Yram is no longer in the picture, so I took her up on it. I don't think my office has actually been this clean since we moved in. I'm not sure if this is a good move on my part, but we'll deal with the consequences if/when they appear later.


And I haven't forgotten about pictures. This was yesterday. Miss Thumbelina found a box of golfballs and occupied herself for a good 30 minutes, taking them out of the box and putting them back in.

Wake Me When It's Over

First of all, Thank You ALL so much for your kind codolences. I appreciate it a great deal.

Wake me when it's over...As in when the next two weeks are over. I should just hang a big Do Not Disturb sign around my neck.

So Miss Thumbelina decided that this weekend would be the perfect time to get sick. Poor little thing is sooooo sick with a very bad case of tonsilitis. Saturday she was super-crabby all day and had a fever, but she is also cutting teeth. She wouldn't eat anything Saturday night - we had all congregated to my cousin's house and so I didn't know if she was just overwhelmed with all the people there or if there was something bigger going on with her. But then she didn't sleep Saturday night and just rolled and moaned and cried all night. I took her to the walk-in clinic yesterday, got reprimanded for not actually taking her temperature (I just know how sick my kids are by how hot they are) and was given a prescription for some amoxicillan. Except this child will not take medicine. Of any kind. At all. Last night was a bit better, but I was up with her until 1:30 am because she just would not settle down. She was up at 5 something-unearthly-hour when Husband went to work, so he brought her to bed with me. She woke up at 7:45. I was not ready to but was out-voted. And the drool! I feel so bad for her because her throat is too soar for her to even swallow. Her fever is gone as of this morning, so wish me luck that I can get some more medicine in her.

Tomorrow is Husband's birthday. Yay for him! Guess how he gets to spend it. Go on, guess. You're wrong. He gets to have a root canal. ON HIS BIRTHDAY! Does that just not scream FUN at you?! So I will be missing the afternoon visitation for my Grandmother, because his appointment is with a specialist in the city, and we have no idea if he'll be in any shape to drive home, so I'll be driving him. And it's the first day of school. So I need to find someone to pick my kids up after school. And Fil and Millie are holidays in Hurricane Central until Sunday. Any volunteers? Raise your hand a little higher, I can't quite see it.

Wednesday is the funeral. My Mom asked me to sing and I said no. I've never said no before, but I haven't really cried yet, and I don't really want to break down when I'm singing and cry.

Next week finishes up birthday season with Tigger and Shaggy's birthdays on Wednesday and Friday. And we somehow have to fit in family pictures for the new church directory, a birthday party and a sleepover. I knew it would be too busy to fit in the Autumn Moon Event that the rest of our travel group is going to. Bummer. Maybe next year we can make it.

So today's agenda involves packing up the boys' backpacks for school, making sure they have clean clothes and everything they need, taking Tigger to a birthday party that he was just invited to yesterday, general cleaning, and entertaining a sick baby, force feeding her medcine... But first, I need coffee.

But it's not all bad. We do have some good photo ops:

Trying out my new boots...pre-bath...



I'm so pretty:


I play peek-a-book with Dad through this office window:






My Mom bought these for me because they're purple. That's the only reason. Oh, and something about jumping in puddles...I like them a lot.