And they're back!

Apparently I wrote this... and promptly forgot to post it. Huh. Weird. Here it is, a month later :)

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After what was officially the longest summer break ever  my kids are back in school. School in Louisiana ended on May 22nd. School in Oregon began September 4th. Yup. Three full months (plus one week and 6 days, but who's counting?) of summer break. Of course I didn't have to fill that time with educational outings or creative play or even really have to deal with "I'm boooored" (On auto repeat. Spoken in Whinese) ... much. Our summer break was jam packed with chaos which I'm still attempting to blog about. It involved getting a job offer, packing a house, taking a quick trip to Florida, then driving across the country, spending a month in Utah, moving to Oregon and unpacking. Whew. It was action packed and exhausting. And it felt like it lasted f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

But I've earned my rest!

Last week I saw ALL FOUR of my kids out the door to school! Molly has started her educational career as a brand new kindergartner! She only goes for PM kindergarten, but for the first time in almost 16 years, I have an honest to goodness 2 1/2 hrs every weekday to schedule however I see fit... sans children. If I'm being honest I feel a little lost right now, and we're still getting into the swing of the overall schedule, but I'm giddy thinking about the possibilities. A girl can play a whole lot of Candy Crush get a whole lot done in 2 1/2 hours every day!

Here are the kiddos and their signs on the first day of school. It may seem out of order but this is the order in which the kids leave for the day. Let me just tell you, I feel like my entire morning revolves around getting people out the door and into the world...one at a time. We start with Ben who leaves the house at 6:55 a.m. to catch the bus and head off to high school.

His actual feelings about heading off to school...

His fine-mom-I'll-pose-with-your-stupid-sign pose...

Next out the door is Toby at 7:40. He also catches a bus and he heads off to the elementary school as a big bad third grader this year.

Genuinely excited about school! This kid makes me grin.

Had to pose a second time because I wanted to show the cute, cute
shirt he chose to wear for his first day of school. It's a Sew Sara creation,
and he's gotten what he calls a "number shirt" every year for his birthday
since he turned 3 and knew what numbers were. My dear friend Sara makes such
fun creations and has helped me outfit my birthday boy every year. You can find her
goodies for sale in her Etsy store HERE or see her other amazing creations on her blog HERE.

 Next up and out... Brady! Heading to MIDDLE SCHOOL this year!! 6th grade in middle school caught us all a little off guard since the last 2 places we've lived had 6th grade in elementary. I felt a bit like I was throwing my poor boy to the wolves, but he was excited. The most intimidating experience of middle school so far was learning how to operate his locker. He mastered that (after about 30 tries on back-to-school night) so we're hopeful that's the biggest obstacle he has to conquer. Brady heads out the door at 8:30 and rides his bike to school.

We're blessed to live adjacent to this amazing trail and the trail happens to lead
right to his school about a mile away. He "practiced" the ride about a dozen times
the week leading up to school starting hehehe.

So yeah, if you were doing the clock math... it takes 2 full hours to get the three boys out the door in the morning. Wake Ben at 6:30 and finally send Brady off at 8:30. It's the looooooooongest morning of school prep EVER. It's not chaotic or rushed, for which I'm very grateful. But I definitely feel like I'm having the hours sucked out of my life by how long our morning departure process is. And on Wednesdays Brady doesn't even leave until 9:30 - so Wednesdays take three hours to get the boys out the door. At least on that day the chunk of time between kid departures is big enough that I can actually go back to bed and catch a few Zzzz for a while.

And then finally at about 11:20 we get this little lady out the door and onto the school bus to head to Kindergarten. She is in absolute heaven. She couldn't possibly have been more excited to finally go to school! In fact the morning of her first day she basically spent her time singing an ode to the first day of school on constant replay. I managed to catch a snippet of her singing without her realizing it. When she busts out the "holla!"s I thought I was going to die laughing. She's nothing if not enthusiastic, this one!

Her very first sign. (And my last Kindy sign to make?! I'm not sure
whether to cry or to cheer...)

Look at that excitement!

She was almost as excited about riding the bus as she was
about going to school in general.

And then of course, since I had turned into a blubbering idiot after she boarded the bus and headed off to school, I felt a little mama bear protective instinct kick in and I hopped into my van and drove up to the school to see her get off the bus too. The look on her face was a mixture of surprise and annoyance hehehe. She was so excited to be independent so I was definitely crossing a line by being there waiting for her! But it was actually a good thing I'd headed to the school because the office staff member who was supposed to meet the PM Kindergartners was nowhere to be found and that little group of kids were clueless and nervous and didn't have any idea what they were supposed to do or where they were supposed to go. I was able to get them to the office, voiced my concern over the lack of supervision for these brand new students, and then escorted Molly to class myself. She had been a little shaken up by the moment of confusion when she didn't know where to go, so I was glad to be there with her and calm her back down and help her excitement return. Needless to say, an email expressing my concern was sent to  the principal about the lack of supervision and direction for the brand new students on their first day of school, and thankfully in less than an hour I received a very sincere apology and detailed plan of action for the following day. All's well that ends well. I don't think I even came across as that mom in my original email so I think it's all good.

So I officially have four kids out the door every day for school!!! I get 2 1/2 hrs of solitude before the home-from-school-and-time-for-homework routine kicks in. Whew! Happy days.

Knock Knock Knock... "Mommy, the police are at the door!"

*DISCLAIMERS*
1- My neighborhood rocks and I appreciate the fact that concerned citizens took action to protect our community.
2- In light of recent events, I recognize that this may not seem like a laughing matter to some. I am in no way making light of the horrible shooting tragedies that have struck our nation.
3- I'm not interested in gun (neither real nor "toy") debates as a result of this blog entry...

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THIS MORNING

Ben: Mom, I'm heading to the woods to go shooting with Collin (name changed).
Me (still in bed sleeping): Mumble... hmm...okay... have fun...be safe...mumble.. (Roll over and resume snoozing.)

TWENTY MINUTES LATER

Phone rings.

Me: (yawn) Hello?
Ben: Mom! I think Collin just got stopped by the cops!!!
Me: (more alert) What? Where are you?
Ben: I'm down at the end of the street waiting for Collin. But there are like 5 cop cars pulled over by one guy on the side of the road. I think it's Collin!
Me: Don't panic Ben. As long as he's not acting belligerent there's nothing to worry about. He's not doing anything wrong by carrying his air soft gun down the road to meet you.
Ben: Mom! They're making him get in the car!!! I'm coming home!

Click.

TEN MINUTES LATER

Knock knock knock.

Willy (assuming it's Ben, he hollers to the kids jokingly): It's the police! Don't open it! (chuckle chuckle)

THIRTY SECONDS LATER

Brady (having opened the front door and then hustled to our bedroom in a complete panic): Mommy! Daddy! There's a cop at the door!!!!!! Ben is outside with a whole bunch of cops!

Willy and I scramble out of bed and get dressed, shaking our heads and rolling our eyes a bit, while of course feeling a twinge of panic and unease.

FIVE MINUTES LATER

Laughing quite hysterically after these pictures were taken and the front door closed, we got the whole story from the boys.

Turns out that Ben's friend had his air soft rifle covered and was walking over to meet Ben and had to cross a busy street to get here. As he crossed the street his radio fell to the ground and he tried to set his gun down and it was no longer covered up as he scrambled to grab what he'd dropped. Someone who witnessed it panicked and called 911 about the boy wandering down a busy road with a gun and acting suspiciously. Several officers responded. Ben's friend was not in any trouble, just given a reminder that it's not prudent to wander down the road with a gun that way, "toy" or not. The officers admired his rifle and chatted with him for a few minutes. He explained that he was meeting his friend who had been waiting for him at the corner. The officers wanted to talk to Ben about being prudent too, and they didn't want the boy continuing down the road with his gun causing more alarm or concern to other neighbors so they had him hop in the car with them to direct them toward our house. Ben's friend and the officers joked about giving Ben a hard time and making him sweat a bit.

Meanwhile, Ben had seen some of this transpiring and panicked and called me. Naive, never-in-trouble, not-thinking-logically child ran towards home. With his air soft gun in his hands. SIXTEEN 911 calls from nervous neighbors later... the officers had caught up with Ben and chirped the siren at him (he was no longer running when they met up with him) and used their speakers to tell him to stop walking. He threw his gun down on the ground and raised his hands in the air (bwahahahahahah! My poor panicked child.) After a good chuckle I'm sure, the officers told Ben to keep walking toward home and escorted him to his destination where they knocked on the door and let us know that Ben wasn't in any trouble and wasn't doing anything wrong per se but they wanted us to know that they had talked with him about not wandering around with the air soft guns and that they ought to be driven to the woods where they were going to use the guns rather than walking there looking suspicious. The officers were very friendly, not at all condemning or threatening, and they even grinned as they mentioned all the 911 calls that had come in so quickly.

What a way to get everyone's adrenalin pumping first thing on a Saturday morning! I can't wait to mercilessly tease Ben about this for years to come...

Real Parenting: Inappropriate Music and the Fun that Follows

Ben had the "coolest teacher ever!!!!" this past year at school. He taught the kids how to listen to the local radio stations on their computers while they were online. Since then, Ben can't have his laptop on without it playing his radio stations of choice: 102.7 Da Bomb and Power 104.3. Maybe you can guess what type music they play? Constant bombardment of Chris Brown, Flo Rida, Pitbull, Rihanna, LMFAO, etc. He's found a favorite in Nicki Minaj. He pretty much thinks she's the best female rapper ever. (Pshaw! Apparently I haven't sufficiently exposed him to Salt. And Pepa. And Left Eye. Ahhh, the good ol' girl rapper days.) Consequently, all my kids are a smidge obsessed with Nicki Minaj right now. Specifically the song Super Bass, which actually is just catchy enough that I like to sing along, too.

But there's a line in the song where she says "somebody please tell him who the F I is." Aside from the wowza horrific grammar, I'm not really interested in the kids adding "eff" or "F" to their vocabulary, so I've cringed when I heard that line of the song in the past. I know darn well that Ben hears the real deal word a LOT at school (the mother-of-all-words is used as all parts of speech here! Have I ever mentioned that? Oh yes! Noun, verb, adjective, conjunction, maybe even punctuation, you name it, they use the word that way!!) and since he prides himself on being able to "rap" along to certain chunks of the song, I'm certain he's paying close enough attention to have caught the line and fully gets the meaning of the "F" in the song. But I've been crossing my fingers the younger kids haven't been picking up on it or understanding it.

I found out last night that Brady has been, in fact, hearing the lyric, but not quite understanding it. I found this out when he muttered after hearing that line in the song "I wonder who Eff-eye is, anyway?" I couldn't help but bust up laughing. In my super parenting style, I laughed and avoided the topic. He didn't direct the question at me so I didn't feel it necessary to explain :)

And we kept singing along to the song.  Aw yeah.

Real Parenting: I have big yellow boobs...

Today I was sitting at my desk stumbling my way through learning Blogger working hard when Molly, who has a severe aversion to modesty and wearing the same outfit for an entire day, interrupted my attempts at designing my blog hard work with a big proud grin and an even prouder voice by saying "Look Mama! I have big yellow boobs!!"

This of course immediately pulled my attention away from my blog experimenting hard work. I turned to look at my 3 year old who most certainly does not have big yellow boobs, only to find that, in fact, she did have big (relatively speaking) yellow "boobs"! She'd taken two pieces of Corn Pops cereal, licked them and then adhered them strategically to her chest.

A good mom probably would have used the moment to teach appropriate behavior. But I ...ahem... might not have responded that way. I laughed long and loud, told her to eat her big yellow boobs and put a shirt on, then I texted Daddy and told the world the story on Facebook. Real parenting at its finest!