So in addition to my last post on humility and how humble your children can make you…without even trying, here’s a little tidbit of my beautiful morning so far. Bear with me while I gush. Unlike some parents, I welcome the PD days. The morning is more relaxed and everyone is generally peaceful. There’s no rushing, running and nagging involved.

I came down the stairs this morning to see that Jordy was on her way up with breakfast in bed for me. That got sidetracked on her as Cael wanted his breakfast (and not in bed) but the thought was there and she was praised highly for her thoughtfulness. Then, as I scurried around the kitchen doing the usual chores of dishwasher unloading and such I made the announcement that we would be going to the mall to purchase birthday gifts for the birthday parties that two of the three kids are attending this weekend. YAY! Everyone is excited about that. Jordy says, “C’mon Cael! Let’s get dressed!” She takes Cael upstairs and decides that she will change him and get him ready so we can go. What an angel! Then I hear, “Quinn, c’mon and help!” This could get interesting but I wait and let it go to see what they are conspiring upstairs. Ah, Mama is actually having a hot cup of coffee.

I listen carefully from downstairs as they giggle and whisper. Then Quinn proclaims from the top of the stairs with the same enthusiasm as though he just saw Santa himself, “MOMMY, MOMMY!!! Cael is dressed and he looks just like Daddy! He’s SOOOOOOOOO handsome!”

Oh now, this is just getting too cute. So then I hear more whispering and I hear Quinn say to Cael, “Ok, you get behind me so Mommy doesn’t see.” Then they come down to unveil Cael. Quinn stood in front of Jordy and said his line, “Voila Cael!” And Jordy presented Cael with her arms outstretched and stepped back.

Well, you should have seen this little guy. I’ll try to get a picture. Jordy slicked his hair down like Ward Cleaver with about as much hair gel as necessary for a small village, and they have a dress shirt on him with some khaki’s. The cake topper though was the spray of Daddy’s cologne on the wee man. It’s enough to make your eyes water. He’s beaming proudly though and they are all sitting in a row on the couch watching a show waiting for time to go to the mall. They are awesome, and BRING ON THE PD DAYS I SAY!

PS – It is probably worth mentioning that Cael has an eye and ear infection and has felt better. It’s nice to see how the kids work together to make the weakest feel best. After this morning, I don’t care what is said about me publicly on the radio, and I don’t care what teacher’s notes say, and I could care less if all of Hazeldean mall is ordered to evacuate in an orderly fashion due to an unsuspecting fire alarm. Bring it on.

What have I learned this week one might ask? Well no one is humbler than me at the moment and I have not one, but all three of my children to thank for this character building experience. This has the potential to be a long post, but if there are other mother’s out there willing to share, girlfriends… I’m ALL EARS!

Let’s start in the order in which the events occurred shall we?

Friday is a snow day, and the buses are canceled. I thanked the heavens for allowing me a morning in which I need not hit the ground running for one day of the week. Everyone is in a state of, “YA! Let’s relax and enjoy”. So I take my time getting out of bed and starting on the laundry (which I do every morning before coming down). The kids are playing nicely and BOB FM radio is on. Jordy hears the number to call for requests and says to Daddy, “I’m going to request a song for Mommy!” Court says great and then leaves for work. So I come down, she tells me she did this and we start to listen. Then I hear the following:

So we have 11 year old Jordynn from Kanata on the line, what can we do for you Jordynn?

I was wanting to request a song for my mom to get her butt out of bed.

You’re mom’s not out of bed?

Well she probably is but she’s not downstairs so I thought I’d request “I Love Rock & Roll” for her to get her moving.

What are you going to do when she gets downstairs?

Probably help her with chores.

the song plays…

Well Jordynn, I hope that got your mom downstairs. So don’t you all wish you had a kid like Jordynn to help out with the chores? That’s great!

Jordynn’s intentions were very sweet, and she just wanted to see mom rock out in the morning with the kids, but now the rest of Kanata, the upper Ottawa Valley AND surrounding area probably have the vision that I woke up, shot up some heroine and narrowly avoided knocking the empty vodka bottles off my nightstand before greeting my kids good morning.

Yesterday Court and I were all excited about parent/teacher interviews with Quinn’s teachers. Oh! What nice things they’ll tell us, and we’ll walk out of that school with our chests puffed out and so proud. Well we did manage to salvage a small part of our pride at the end of the interview. Quinn is described as innocent, and follows direction very well, and is a very capable and contributing student. They are really pleased with him, but you can imagine my horror when I found this note in his backpack just hours BEFORE going to the interview.

“Dear Mom and Dad, Today Quinn was singing that he was going to hit himself in the bum and his “balls” outloud during snack. I spoke to the two boys about appropriate words at school. They both missed playtime. Can you please speak to him tonight about appropriate language at school. Mme Lisa “

We’ve discussed the term “balls” and he has no clue what other meaning it could possibly have. The teachers at the interview said that they know he doesn’t know what it means but the other boy sure does. Great. So, instead of educating him on the dual meaning, I just said, don’t use that word without the word “bouncy” in front of it. He seems cool with that and has no idea that he was ever in trouble in the first place. The whole experience was completely lost on him unfortunately.

Today… I decided that a little face time for just mom and the boys was in order. Off to Rockin’ Johnny’s for lunch and to the Dollarama afterwards. Oh, great fun! Each boy gets to pick something out if they are good and get a wee treat. Perfect. Well all went well, the boys were great, people smiled down at them as they shopped. People talked to them and just thought we were freakin’ fantastic until…..Cael pulled the fire alarm on the way out. Sigh. Now we are mud. What does one do? Make a friggin run for it that’s what! OR, you can take what I thought was the high road and publicly take responsibility for it saying very loudly and waving my one free arm, “I’M SO VERY SORRY, IT WAS MY SON! THERE IS NO FIRE! I’M SO VERY SORRY! NO FIRE, NOPE! SO SORRY!” As I looked around me and the deafening “TWEET TWEET!” was blaring, I could see all the cashiers rolling their eyes, and as people walked in they said, “What is that noise?” to which I replied, “I’m sorry, it was my son, it’s the alarm and there is NO fire.” As I did the walk of shame to the van, every single human I passed was talking about it. I can’t be certain that it doesn’t actually affect the whole building because I could hear it the whole way to the van. The manager of Rockin’ Johnny’s was standing outside, hands on hips and wincing. The people inside the restaurant appeared to have their hands on their ears.
SERENITY NOW! I’m surprisingly not as mortified as I thought I would be and I give the credit to my kids for my new found humility…

Court and I decided that last night would be the night to carry out the family tradition of popcorn, chocolates and decorating the tree. What fun! The kids all had a great time and for some odd reason our tree appears a little leaner this year.

The whole thing didn’t go down without incident I’m afraid. I said to Court, “We have too many ornaments for our tree”. Little did I know that it soon wouldn’t be an issue. You see, if you let Cael help decorate the tree, you are usually down a few ornaments by the end of it all. It’s one effective way to purge the Christmas Tree clutter. As the ornaments were raining down like huge hail stones on a windshield one of us was vacuuming it up while the other forged ahead with the mission of completing said tradition by 8:00PM.

I’m happy to report that none of the Christmas balls painted by Nanny (that contain a lot of love, blood, sweat, and tears) were harmed. Jordy was slightly miffed though that one of her (literally 40) ceramic ornaments fell to the demise and mercy of hurriCael.

Once the kids went to bed though, Court and I continued to decorate the house and I can say with great confidence that by the end of the week, we should be all set and ready for the Christmas party.

Hope to see you all there!

Y’know, sometimes you just have to stand back and take a look at some of the things you’ve done in your life, and most importantly, some of the things you’ve done to others. I just had one of these reflective moments this morning and thought I might share with everyone to allow you fine people to learn from my mistakes.

Just this morning I was on the blog here, and saw the random pictures that creep up on the side there. Ah, so nice. As I was enjoying these pictures, I noticed one that hit me like an unsuspecting spring-loaded mallet to the face (a la Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros. style). Here’s the picture of which I speak below. See if you can spot the grave overly-protective motherly error made here. Take a second. In fact take all the time you need. I’m sure the average person would spot it in about .000001 of a millisecond.

Honestly. This just goes to show what type of patient and tolerant person Jordy is. Despite the ridiculous hat that her mother has forced her to wear IN A HOT TUB, she still appears to be having a great time. A big thanks to Ali and Jim for humouring me on such an erroneous parental move.

I’d like to chalk it up to being (at the time) a hot tub virgin, but really… I think that’s a bit weak.

Well it seems that I have actually decided to slow down for a second and contribute to the family blog (AKA:the baby book of all our kids). I’m really feeling the pinch in my lack of documenting all milestones of the children now that Cael is almost 3. All of you diligent-detail-documenting-doting mothers can commence your scoffing in my general direction now, a wag-of-the-finger so to speak, that I so richly deserve.

I guess I have been spoiled by my “pick-up-Nikki’s-slack” husband who has been leaving updates here on their progress temporarily relieving me of the black looming cloud of documentless guilt. (I know Wilson, that’s not a real word, but you have to admit it sounds good).
So without further ado, here’s my kid post (as Cael and Quinn are having a disagreement upstairs that I can clearly hear from the office).

Cael: This kid is growing like a bad weed. The sheer amount of food he can consume in a day is staggering. He eats more than I did when I was pregnant (for him!) I might add. Without exaggeration I get strangers commenting once a week, “Are they twins?” When I reply with, “No, he’s four and he’s two,” you can see the expression of “Sweet Lord in heaven!” It’s almost like a ballet watching them struggle with words to gracefully get out of their reaction. I usually rescue them and say he’s just a big boy, and they are usually grateful for that. One time though, just for kicks I’m gonna let them hang.

Quinn: Quinn never ceases to amaze us. He is maintaining his level of maturity that exceeds our expectations. He is turning into a real deep thinker. I don’t think for one second that he isn’t tuning into absolutely everything that is said around him. The best funny to date though that I can think of is when he asked (for days) for us to play “I’m 2-64” on the CD in the van. Court and I couldn’t figure out for the life of us what he was talking about. Jordy was the one who piped up and said, “OH! He wants to hear ‘I’m too Sexy’..for…y’know, that song!” She was right!

Jordy: Good Lord where did my baby go?!?!?!? It seems she went from girl to teen in just this last month. Ask anyone who has seen her lately. This kid is so mature, so responsible and now she looks like she’s a fresh 11 year old going on 14. This little muffin came into the house last week and declared, “Mom! I’m ready. I’m cutting my hair off and donating it to cancer.” So needless to say we did, and she looks great! And much older, much to the dismay of Court and I. Poppy will have to get the shot guns out again, dust them off and be here A LOT when the guys come a callin’. This little muffin also got a second ear piercing on her ears to look like mom. Insert gushing on my part. (For those of you who are thinking it and won’t say it…she is WAAAAAAAY too chicken to venture into the nose ring…so far! She also knows that she must be 34 years of age for such a thing.)
KAY! Too much writing for now, I’m just making up for lost time here. Later!

It is probably lucky for most that I rarely chime in on the blog as sleep deprivation has burned me out of any functioning brain cells it would seem. More below on that.

Perhaps with 4 hours a week of 3 children in school at the same time I’ll find myself with an abundance of spare time to regale you all with the daily happenings of the family. Oh! HA! Wait now, … my stomach…ha ha…ha! Sorry I digress.

I highly doubt that you will hear much more from me now than in the past but I’m happy to be making my somewhat annual contribution now. This week in a nutshell has been nothing short of insane. We’ve had something every night of the week, and one wedding to attend on Friday and one that I stood in on Saturday. 2 birthday celebrations, one at each of the mother-in-laws houses for Court (Happy 34th my baby!) and one pitiful attempt at birthday celebrations here at home…just after work…and pathetically squeezed in before swimming lessons commenced at 6:30PM on Wednesday evening. I am very grateful to Mom and Mummsie for being so thoughtful for Court this week as I have been spread so incredibly thin.

Things I’ve learned this week.

• It is important to sign on for your duties right at the beginning of school so you at least appear keen to the teachers at the onset. That way you have a leg to stand on later when your obvious foul-ups follow in the days to come. (just wait…it’s coming)
• Play dough when made in a quadruple batch is surprisingly easy. Sign up for that before taking on something else. Cream of tartar however is $5/tin. You’ll need two for four batches. Playdough could be potentially cheaper to buy at the dollar store, but that isn’t what the school wants… Noooooooooo.
• Do not run for a calculator in the office and get side tracked with an email while leaving two children with preschool scissors and paper at the kitchen table. The end result will be a “New” version of the “back to school haircuts” you paid for not 2 days before.
• Preschool scissors cut hair with great ease.
• Do not attend two weddings in one weekend and expect your Monday to run smoothly.
• Read your school paperwork (over again) every night before waking up in the morning and assuming you have your act together. One may be apt to assume silly things, like regular school attendance for Quinn might actually start ON A MONDAY! Poor kid was dressed, gelled and at the bus stop five minutes early this morning before mom had her third sip of coffee and realized that he shouldn’t be the only kindergartener at that stop. Back home we go, by “walk of shame” in front of all the neighbours, mom reads the paperwork that came to her dated June 2006 (thank God I kept it) stating that their first day of regular attendance commences on TUESDAY!
• When looking at houses for a lark, be sure to FORWARD all comments to your husband about your lack of enthusiasm about a certain home, and dinner plans. DO NOT hit REPLY to your real estate agent.

Well folks, this was a really long one, sorry! It is my somewhat annual post though, so it was bound to be long.Before I sign off though,

HAPPY BELATED PUBLIC BIRTHDAY WISHES to my soul mate on Friday September 15th. I love you honey, heart body and soul.

CONGRATULATIONS to Perry & Michelle McGregor on their nuptials this past Friday September 15th!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to Tanya & Dennis Pilon on their 6th wedding anniversary also on Friday September 15th.

CONGRATULATIONS to Stacey & Mich Bottema for their nuptials this past Saturday September 16th! Thanks for letting me be a part if it. I was so proud to stand with you. All my love and support always.

AND last, but certainly not least… HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to Rob & Julie Ross. This would be their 6th anniversary as well.