Three Boatmen and Their Girl

Memorial Day may mark the official beginning of summer for most people, but for us summer officially began yesterday when we took the boat out on our first family fishing trip of the season.  We spent the day on the water, soaking up sun (a little too much in my case), enjoying the calm of the water, and catching dinner.  

At the dock, getting ready to motor.

"Come on, Jake, catch us some pan fish!"

Jacob takes fishing very seriously.

Andrew isn't so serious about fishing yet, but something tells me he'll catch the fishing bug soon enough.

"Here fishy, fishy, fishy!"

"Caught one!"

Jake caught one too!

A little help from Dad...

...and Andrew reeled in a few more unsuspecting victims!

The water was too cold to swim in, but the air was hot.  We cooled off by dangling our feet over the edge.  Little Andrew's legs were just a tad too short to reach the water without help.

I didn't mind holding him over the edge, though.  I know it won't be long until he doesn't need - or want - my assistance.

Jake drove the boat like a pro, with very little instruction from Dad.  He even controlled the speed!  I was impressed! 

The fruits of our (OK, their) labor.  Fried pan fish - gotta be one of the tastiest treats of summer living! 

Good Clean Fun

When the boys are in a bad mood for no good reason, Greg asks them if their butts are crooked.  I guess my butt was crooked yesterday.  I was an ass, or more accurately, a cockeyed ass, all day long.  Sorry about that.  I'm over it now.  It's a new day and I'm choosing to be positive, or at least give it my best girl scout try...never mind that I wasn't a girl scout.  I ate enough thin mints in my life time to be an honorary member.  

So, in an attempt to start the day off right, here are the photos from the weekend that I intended to share on Sunday.  Take a look at what we did:

On Friday, we visited the local elementary school playground.  They just built a new all-abilities play area last summer, and it's really a nice place.  It has new and different equipment, and instead of wood chips, the ground is that rubbery corky stuff (I'm sure it has an official name that I am unaware of) so the kids don't get a bunch of gunk in their shoes.  They had fun climbing and playing, and there were two other four year olds there for Andrew to play with.  Bonus!  

Jacob, my dare-devil, climbed 1/3 of the way up and decided that was quite far enough for him!  When it comes to physical risk taking, he's a mother's dream child!

Andrew practiced his Kate Winslet impersonation.  You know, the one from the scene on the front of the boat in Titanic?  "Oh, Jack!  This is exhilarating!" I think he could win an Oscar, don't you?

Inside the tree trio.

Isn't this tree thing neat?  It's three ceramic (or something like that) trees with mosaic designs, leaning against one another to form a little hide out.  It's so pretty on the outside and the inside.  What a cool place for the kids to explore!

Later on Friday, we made bubble snakes at home with both boys.  Jake wasn't there the first time,  so he enjoyed the activity this time around. 

On Saturday, we made soap for the grandmothers for Mother's Day.   My boys had a lot of fun with this experiment.  I think even older kids would have fun with this activity too.

You need:

Ivory soap (must be Ivory)

Wax paper or paper plate

Food coloring

Electric mixer or food processor

Warm water

Microwave

Cookie cutters

Place a bar of Ivory soap on a piece of wax paper (a paper plate would work too) in the microwave, and nuke it on high for about 3 minutes.  There's no set time, just watch your bar and see what happens.

As the soap "cooks" it expands into this giant cloud of cleanliness!  It's a really cool process to witness. I think this was the boys' favorite part. 

It takes about a minute for the soap cloud to cool after removing it from the microwave.  When it's cool, let the kids crumble it into a fine powder.  It's brittle and breaks easily, so don't give it to the kids until you are ready for them to break it.

The boys enjoyed smashing the cloud to smithereens.

When it looks like this, add just a little warm water.  I made the mistake of adding too much water to Andrew's batch and ended up nuking another bar of soap to compensate for the excess liquid.   I used less than 1/4 of a cup of warm water in Jake's and that worked well.  You really only need enough so that the soap flakes stick together.  You can also add a few drops of food coloring if you want.  If you only add a drop or two of food coloring, you don't have to worry about any future staining.  (I researched the food coloring before I let the boys put any into our molds, and I can give testimonial that it didn't stain anything with the little amount of color that we used.)  

Beat the soap, water and food coloring with an electric mixer for a few moments until it all comes together.  Gather the soap "clay" and press it into cookie cutters, kind of like play dough.  

Allow the new little soaps to air dry for a day or two, turning them over half way through the drying process.  Viola!  Super cute and fun soap shapes!  

Now, I will say that while this is a "clean" activity, it's also a real mess!  The soap flakes were everywhere.  I don't have a very big microwave, so the soap cloud smudged the inside of my microwave on all sides.  I scraped the soap off, collected it with a dry cloth and then wiped the rest of the microwave down with a wet washcloth when I was done.  The flakes were all over my kitchen from the boys playing too.  They swept up easily enough with a broom, though.  I think this would be a fun thing to give them to take into the bathtub, or to play outside with in the summer.  

My mom spent the weekend in New York City with my sister and my niece, so we watched her dogs for a while.  Sam also watched them - from the window - pretty much all day on Saturday.  

"Hi, Mom.  Remember me?  Sam?  You're purrfect feline?  How can you sit out there with those mangy canines while I am all alone inside this cold and dark house?  I'm hungry."  Yeah, even the cat makes me feel guilty at times.

So how's that for a better tone?  I think I removed the wild hair from my ass...for now, anyway.  

Take This Day And Shove It

I had a post ready with pictures of some fun stuff I did with the kids this weekend, including making soap for the grandmothers for Mother's Day.  We had some fun for sure, and the soap thing is really neat, but I'm just not in the mood to post another super happy, picture perfect blog entry about how wonderful our lives are.  Instead, I'm going to post a really whiny, brutally honest  and most likely unpopular opinion.  Judge me or don't, I'm not in the mood to care.  I hate Mother's Day.

My husband works long, crazy hours.  He works day light, night shift, weekends and holidays.  He works hard and he hates being away from us.  The job is great in a lot of ways.  It's fairly secure.  It pays pretty well and has good benefits, but it leaves me alone with the kids quite a bit, and keeps him away from family too.  That's the biggest draw back, and definitely the one that we both hate the most.

Every year since we have been married, he has worked on Easter, Mother's Day and Father's Day as well as other holidays.  Every year on Mother's Day I spend the day vacillating between feeling bitter and angry, and feeling utterly and completely depressed.  Let me explain:  Mother's Day is supposed to be the day when we celebrate mothers.  That would be me.  My day, with the inclusion of a shout out to my own mother too.  It's the day I am supposed to be pampered, showered with love and treated like a queen.  Instead, it's a day like every other day.  Here's how my day has gone so far:  I got up with the kids at 630.  By 730 I had done two loads of laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, and cleaned the bathroom.  I got the kids breakfast, spent the next two hours cutting veggies and preparing lunch stuff for the week, intermittently breaking up fights between the boys.  I cleaned and organized the dining room table, ironed all of our clothes for the week, cleaned up the kitchen mess from all that chopping, and spent at least another 45 cumulative minutes breaking up more fights between the boys.  At 1030 we walked to the local supermarket to get a veggie tray to take to my in-laws for dinner this afternoon.  Normally, I would cut up my own veggies, but today I just didn't feel like more work, especially for a party that is supposed to be partly celebrating me, so I opted to take the easy way out.  Guess what?  No freaking veggie trays at Hometown Market.  Super suck.  So we walked back home, got in the car and drove to Martin's.  This is what I get for not being prepared, or trying to take the easy way - they only had super large $30 veggie trays or puny $5 ones.  I was not about to go home and cut freaking vegetables, so I bought the $30 tray.  I don't give a damn.  If there are left overs, hopefully they will be returned to me so that we can eat them throughout the week.  Oh, and grocery shopping, even for only one or two items, with two boys who can't for the life of them get along for more than 5 minutes at a time is never on the top of my fun-times list, let alone going to two grocery stores in an hour period.

I'm home now, and I would like to just give Andrew lunch and lay down for a nap with him, but my floors are yet to be mopped.  I would consider skipping the mopping - really I would- but I actually skipped last week out of some rare spurt of laziness, so now I HAVE to mop them today.  There won't  be time later in the day and I won't have time during the week between work, school, and extra activities. So, I have no choice but to get out the freaking vacuum and mop.  YES!!!

Oh, did I mention that I have raging PMS too?  Can you tell?

Seriously, though, I would feel this way regardless of hormones.  Any other day, those are just the things I do. Yes, I get irritated with the kids and the chores and the errands, but it is what it is.  I have to do it.   Today, however, I would like for someone else to do it.  Or even for someone else to do just a portion of it...or even just to have the kids listen to me and not fight in the midst of me doing all of those things.  Too much to ask, I guess.  And I know it's too much.  It's just not possible.  Greg can't control his work schedule and the kids are too little to rationalize with.  It's not the day's events that have me down, it's my own unrealistic expectations for something different.

I also spend a great deal of time on Mother's Day thinking about how inadequate of a mother I truly am.  Sure, my kids are clean, their clothes are clean, they have healthy lunches and up to date physicals and dentals.  But I spend a lot, and I mean A LOT, of time yelling at them.  I yell at them constantly.  I am by no means a conveyor of patience.  I am anything but calm in the wake of their bickering.  I don't like getting up with them in the middle of the night.  I hate whining (even my own!).  Today, Jake gave me a very sweet little memory book that he made for me at school.  It had a beautiful poem about a child who wakes up from a nightmare and is comforted by his mother.  Would that be me?  I wish I could say yes, but most likely, I would say, "It was just a dream.  Shake it off and go back to sleep."  I don't know how people get everything they need to get done, find time to spend a lot of quality time with their kids, and sleep too.  I don't have the best balance.  It's better than it used to be, but still, I can't say with 100% confidence that I give my kids everything that they need.  As much as I falter as a mother, I falter as a daughter as well.  I'm 35 and my mom still does way more for me than I routinely do for her.  What kind of pampering is she getting on Mother's Day?  A bottle of wine, some chips and some homemade soap.  Big whoop, right?  I love them, my children and my mother, with all my heart, but love is not always enough.  I fail them on some level every single day.

I am fully aware of how completely ungrateful and ill-disposed I sound.   There are many women who would give anything to be a mother.  There are just as many women who are caring for sick children, or kids with special needs, or who are battling illnesses themselves, barely finding the strength to be a parent.  I should be grateful for what I have and quit yammering.  Let me say this, I AM grateful for what I have.  I am very aware of the blessings in my life, with my children and my husband being at the top of that list.  I am grateful for their health and well-being, and I am grateful for my own health as well.  I am well aware of how awful I sound when I'm yelling at them and when I'm complaining to others.

I try not to be a negative Nelly.  Everyone bitches from time to time, but people who do it constantly are truly annoying.  I can't stand people who can't find the good in their lives, especially when they are people who are clearly surrounded by good.  I am not that person.  Or I try not to be.  I love my kids.  I love my husband.  I love many, many aspects of my life.  But even those of us who have a lot to love need a pity party every now and then.  So I'm throwing myself one today.  Boo hoo.  Get out your violins, because right now I am whiny....and yes, I absolutely want some cheese with my wine.  But I want it brought to me on a silver tray by someone, anyone, other than myself.

Williams Inquisition

I don't remember Jacob ever going through the "why" stage.  If he did, it was certainly not to the extent that Andrew has been going through.  Just for kicks the other day, I wrote down every single question Andrew asked me between when he woke up at 615 a.m. and when I dropped him off at Pre School at 745 (OK, I didn't really write them, I put them in my cell phone).  Most of the questions were "why" questions, but there were some other inquisitions as well.  Take a look at my typical day:

• Why do you say hi to me in the morning?
• Why do we have mouths to talk?
• Am I going to school today?
• Why is my school so far from my house?
• Why do you to to work and I go to school?
• Why are there no more sticks in the yard?
• Why do we not take sticks to school?
• Why is it cold out?
• Why does it rain?
• Why am I not allowed to drive in the front seat yet?  Why?
• When are you starting the car?  Why is it not moving?
• When are we getting to my school?
• Why do birds fly?  Who made them that way?
• What letter goes to "trees?"  What letter goes to "bass water?"
• Why don't you want to run over birds?
• Why are we driving?
• Why do I have to wear a coat?
• Why do you have a fence around my bed?  So I don't fall out?
• Why do you have a ladder on my bed?  So I can get in?  (See, he even answers himself sometimes!)
• Why do Sharon and Ben and Kim get up early?
• Who got me that picture in my room?
• Why do you make cookies and milk for Santa?  Why?
• Why do we say thank you when someone gives us a gift?  Because it's berry nice?
• What time did I get up today?  6:15 is like 1-2-3-4-5-6! 
• Why do you love me so much?

And that was in just an hour and 45 minute time span!  What in the world?  How can this child possibly have so many questions inside his tiny little head?  Can you understand why my head is frequently spinning?  Oh dear, the questioning must be contagious!  Someone get me help, quick!   

Cheap and Easy Fun

This evening we put some of the activities I found on Pinterest to the test.  They were a hit,  super easy, and easy to clean up too - a bonus in my book! 

First up was the bubble snake maker.  Cut the bottom off of a water bottle.  Use a rubber band to fasten an old washcloth to the bottom.  Dip the bottom in a bit of dish detergent and water and blow into the top.  Viola!  Instant bubble snake!

It was fun for all of us to see how long we could make the snakes before they detached from the bottle.

Fly away, snakey!  Be free!

Ghost snake on Hickory Street.

Bubble clouds also make good targets for ninja practice.

"Whoa, Mom!  Yours is super (thuper) big!"

"Blow it higher!"

The next activity was a little fizzing science experiment.  I put a baking soda in each compartment of a muffin pan and then filled Dixie cups with vinegar and food coloring.  Andrew used an eye dropper to make designs in the baking soda and watch it fizz.

He had a lot of fun with this activity.  It really held his attention for a long time.  Eventually, he ditched the eye dropper and poured the water into the muffin cups.  He also had a lot of fun mixing colors to make new ones.

"Wow!  That one looks like a purple cupcake!"

Awesome!

"Thuper cool, Mom!  Great idea!"

Who Knew Home Depot Could Be So Fun?

Actually, the trip to Home Depot wasn't all that fun.  The boys had a good time for the first 15 minutes and then spent the remainder of the shopping excursion either tag-teaming me, or battling with each other.  My boys can argue.  They do it all the time.  It irritates the hell out of me, but in many ways I am used to it.  Yesterday pales in comparison to the typical sibling rivalry that we experience.  Let's just say that by the end of the day, they had lost TV for the night and I did not exhibit behaviors that would lead to winning a "Mother of the year" award.  

But...what good is it to dwell on the bad?  Today was a little better, and despite the yelling (from all three of us), we had some good moments over the weekend.  Here they are:

Andrew tried out his new magic slushie maker.  Worked pretty well.  He was happy!

He also discovered the joys of air hockey at a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese's.

"Woo hoo!  Score!"  

Actually, I had just scored.  He doesn't realize yet that he should be upset if the puck gets past him!

Trying out a little Guitar Hero

Nice shoes, huh?  He picked them, not me!

Twin tractors.  We should get these!

"I will never take a shower!  Never, I say!"

"Hey, me either!"

(In case you are wondering, they put themselves in the shower and made these distraught faces for fun. They were absolutely amazed with the bathroom and appliance sections at Home Depot.  Hmm...)

"Hey, Andrew, let's pretend to poop on his and her toilets.  You take the girl's potty."

"What's this contraption?"

"Wow, Mom!  I bet you could use one of these!"

When we came home we made homemade frozen fruit pops.  

Just puree watermelon in a blender, then add bits of whatever fruit you want. 

We didn't have any Popsicle molds or craft sticks, so we made due with plastic cups and spoons.  We haven't eaten them yet, but if they like them, I think I'll invest in some honest to goodness Popsicle trays!  I'm a big spender like that!  

This morning, Andrew and I made paint out of cornstarch (thanks to my neighbor Sharon for bringing us some over in a pinch), baking soda, water and food coloring.  I got the idea off of Pinterest.  He was supposed to paint the sidewalk then spray it with vinegar and watch it fizz.  It fizzed a little on the sidewalk, but I think our spray bottle was too weak.  What Andrew enjoyed the most was picking up clumps of it (or "pumps" as he kept saying), spraying his hand and watching it fizz through his fingers.  It was a cheap and easy idea if you are looking for something to do to kill some time with the kiddos.  I think Jake would have enjoyed it too.  (1 container of baking soda, 1/2 cup of cornstarch, a little less than one cup of warm water and food coloring)

Actually, I got a slew of ideas for easy kids activities off of Pinterest today.  I'm going to head out to the craft store this week and stock up on some cheap supplies so that I have an arsenal for the upcoming summer.  While I love, love, love having 6 weeks off in the summer, sometimes the days can be long with two boys.  I have at least 6 ideas already written down on a post it note that I'm going to stick on my fridge.  As I try them, I'll be sure to share.  I know a lot of you have kids the same age as my boys.

Andrew is napping now, and Jake is with his dad.  I'm enjoying the calm, watching the cat cart a helium balloon up and down the stairs is pretty amusing too!  This is the way a weekend should be!