A Day In The Life

So, my friend Jen says I don't have enough pictures of the baby on this blog! I must rectify this immediately!

Here is little Miss Baby learning to walk holding on to her big brother's hands. Monkey2 is so patient with her its crazy! And she just adores him. What a great pair!

Chillin' out with her Sisters in the boppy. She can sit now, but is still a little wobbly at times.

If only she could reach that dog!!! Sage likes to guard the baby. Collies really are the most amazing dogs! I have been glad a million times every day that we adopted her!

More time with Big Brother. She was starting to get fussy in this picture, but had been lying there happily with him for quite some time before this.


Mommy is SO funny! Monkey5 makes the cutest belly laughs!!!! She is really the *happiest* baby imaginable. She cried non-stop the first 3 months of her life [and yet, here I am mostly sane! I can't believe it!]. But once her colic stopped at 12 weeks, she just became the sweetest, happiest little baby in the world. She is such a joy!

Here is all we've seen of Monkey1 lately. She picked up Harry Potter book 1 three days ago and hasn't come up for air since. She's about to finish the second book now. I'm not sure why it took her so long to be interested [her dad and I have been HP fans for ages! We actually had to buy TWO copies of the new and final book because NEITHER of us could stand to wait till the other finished it!]. But when she finally picked it up, she fell in love!


Here is Mace Windu. Monkey2 got really upset yesterday because he doesn't have black skin. He wanted black skin so he can look like Mace Windu - the Jedi Master played in the movies by Samuel L. Jackson. He got into quite a tizzy about it for a while, trying to decide if there was some way he could turn his skin black. Alas, he could come up with no permanent solution. I think he looks like a pretty good Jedi Master even being a skinny white boy. LOL!


And here is Mace Windu's trusty side kick, Jedi Puppy. She and Mace spend hours every day building space ships out of common household furniture and saving the galaxy. Whew. Good thing we have them huh?!


This is what the Monster Toddler looks like when she's up till 4 am the night before. [Mommy looked even worse than she did - thus you will see no photo of me in this entry LOL!]


I just had to include this photo because it was so beautiful. What a sweet Monkey3!


Here is Monkey2 with our new foster dog, Maisy. Maisy is really small for a shepherd [43 lbs], but really huge on personality. She's a great little dog. She does have a problem with jumping and mouthing, which we are working on. But she's precious. We are enjoying fostering her for the German Shepherd Dog Rescue of GA.

I am NOT making this up!

I am NOT making this up.

This week, Monkey4 2yo has been busy – she is on her own planet making discoveries at an astronomical rate. This week she has:

Learned how to pull a chair up and get to the chocolate kisses hidden in the high cabinet left over from the party – and she ate half a bag or so of them.

Learned how to open and squeeze out toothpaste all over carpet, and how to smear it in really good.

She’s spent much time secretly pooping on the potty and then trying to wipe her own booty – making an EXTREME mess in the process [ARGH!]

She has learned to remove her clothing and diaper no matter what I do [including packing tape, no joke] and is naked 95% of the time.

She has learned to open the freezer and get out ice, ice packs, frozen meat, and ice cream [also left from the party] and take it all over the place…. Often leaving it out and forgetting about it.

She has learned how to open the refrigerator and has removed grits [which for some reason fascinated her so much she could NOT resist them – I finally threw the remains of the bag away], olives, yogurt [which she has learned to open and eat on her own – how much yogurt can you eat before you die of yogurt poisoning?!], cheese…. All manner of grocery products.

She has learned to climb up on the bathroom counter, open the medicine cabinet, remove the Neosporin, take the top off, squirt it on her boo-boo [or imagined boo-boo] and then get herself a bandaid and place it over the boo-boo [correctly]. This would be really cool if only her definition of what constitutes a boo-boo that needs treatment wasn’t quite so broad… J

In her most spectacular display of the week, she learned how to get the ½ gallon jug of pure maple syrup out of the fridge, learned how to open it, and for some reason known ONLY to her, spread it all over the kitchen floor, countertops, stove, and chairs. This necessitated MANY and varied cleaning measures and resulted in the “Quote of the day”.

She has learned to open the dog crates and let out the dogs [usually done at very inopportune moments].

And, the most fascinating action by far played out this very afternoon. I turned around from dealing with our sweet new foster dog [a German Shepherd] and almost tripped over the kitchen garbage can. Monkey4 had removed the attached lid and drug the whole thing into the living room. I said “No! You don’t play with the garbage!” and then I realize – she’s trying to *take out* the garbage. She has gone under the sink and gotten a replacement trash bag and is asking me to take the bag out of the garbage can so she can replace it. Wow. I told her not to do that right now [baby was screaming, dog was barking, people were hungry – not the best time to change out the garbage]. So, she proceeds to replace the kitchen garbage can right where it goes, and went to the bathroom. The bathroom has a much smaller wastebasket that she could change herself. She went right in, took the old bag of trash out, set it aside nicely, and then put the new bag in the wastebasket. I just stood there kinda stunned and then took pictures. Wow.

I mean, you can’t be too mad at a kid who takes the trash out before she’s even 2.5 years old! LOL!

Quote of the Day

“The floor feels weird …. Its all clean!” Monkey1, 8yo.

I DID! I DID Get to Sleep!!!

WOOHOO!!! Now that her tooth broke through, Toothy the Nursing Shark slept most of the night last night! I got to sleep from 11pm [had to work last night...thus a late bedtime] till 6:30 this morning with just a handful of nursing sessions in there and one incident of a 4yo tapping me on the forehead at 3am saying "I can't sleep", but considering the week that preceded it -last night was a great night! I got so much sleep I felt groggy when I woke up LOL!

Toothy the Nursing Shark

Monkey5 got her first tooth today! Her father immediately dubbed her "Toothy the Nursing Shark". I was very relieved to see that tooth, because it explains the last 5 sleepless nights. I even took her in to the doctor 3 days ago because I was SURE she still had an ear infection because she was refusing to sleep and was extremely fussy all the time.

Maybe I'll get to sleep tonight since it finally broke through!

And here is "The Boy". I came down stairs to find a bounty hunter lying in the floor of my entry way. I wasn't sure if he was supposed to be dead or alive....apparently he was alive, he moved when I got real close.

It was a funny week in the costume department. This is part of the evolution of my bounty hunter son. Every time I turned around he had added to or changed his uniform.... and considering I got no sleep for many days and was just about seeing trails at this point... it was pretty entertaining.

And here we have the final phase - The Boy is in what appears to be full military MOPP gear. I guess he was preparing for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical warfare. I thought the blue and red was a nice touch. Much cooler than those MOPP suits they gave me back in the Marine Corps.

Being the Mother of a boy is very different. Cool, fun, interesting, exciting....but definitely different.


And, just to round out my weird week - Here we have Monkey4 modeling what ALL the "cool" Toddlers are wearing these days.

Anyone know how to keep a diaper on a 2 year old? I tried packing tape but she figured out how to get it off anyway.

Hope you had a week just as quirky and fun as ours was! I'd write more but I'm so tired I just can't. LOL!

May The Force Be With You!!!

Glory to God in the highest!

What a fantastic day we had yesterday at the Monkeys' Birthday Bash! We celebrated all of their birthdays with one giant party [they get small family parties on their actual birthday]. They wanted a Star Wars Theme and it was definitely a day of Jedi Jubilation!

I was a little worried - we had 17 adults and 43 kids in attendance.... and our house isn't really that big. And the forecast called for rain. :) God smiled on us in such a nice way - giving us the small Grace of holding off the downpour until the party was over. Instead, we had an overcast day [which was great - not as hot as July in Atlanta usually is!], and only a few sprinkles here and there. The kids were able to take full advantage of the back yard and they had a blast!!!

The children were all invited to come in costume if they wanted to. Here are the monkeys in their costumes:

Monkey1 came as Padme Amidala in Episode 2. [That would be Luke and Leia's mama, wife of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader..... for those who are NOT Star Wars Geeks. :) ]


Monkey2 came as Luke Skywalker. He had a very difficult time deciding between Luke and Anakin. Eventually he decided to be Luke since Anakin did do that whole "going over to the Dark Side" thing. My friend Cyndi made the Jedi costume - isn't it great?!


Monkey3 came as Princess Leia. She was so cute! She's very happy here because Darth Vader has just been defeated and the Republic has been saved. :)


Monkey4 was supposed to be an Ewok. You can see her cuteness in this pre-party photo. Unfortunately, she shed her Ewok skin before any party goers arrived and decided to be a Sith Lord instead [again, a Sith is a powerful "bad guy" Jedi for the uninitiated]. More in keeping with her personality I guess. LOL!


Here is the whole crew, along with Chewbacca [Sage - who really does look like a Wookie!]. We couldn't get our Wookie to stand up for the photo though!

Here are some of the early arrivals. Aren't they all so cute? I never did get a photo of ALL the kids together - just too many to organize into a photo shoot. We had some AWESOME costumes though - we had several Princess Leias, a couple of Amidala's, numerous Jedi, and even a very authentic Darth Vader and a Clone Trooper!!! It was so fun to see the kids all dressed up!


This is the cake. My friend Cyndi made this. I think she deserves a crown as "Queen of Amazing Cake Making" or something for this feat - is this not the coolest cake you have ever seen? She hand sculpted all the Monkeys' characters out of fondant and placed them on top of the cake, with a giant modeling chocolate death star looming over their heads - it was fantastic! It is hard to tell in the photo just how incredible this cake was - but it really was. The kids were THRILLED [and so was I!].


This was the "spare" cake Cyndi made since there were 60 people coming. I thought this cake was cool too - perfect for the party!

And both cakes were *delicious* - they not only looked awesome, they tasted great. And there was plenty to go around.


The highlight of the party for many of the kids was the beating of Darth Vader's head with light sabers. We started with the youngest and worked our way up. Unfortunately we needed more than one pinata I think because the older kids never got a shot at smacking old Vader - the younger kids were so exuberant in their fight against the Dark Side that he was smashed to pieces before we got through the 8 year olds!

Here is Luke beating Darth Vader.


Monkey1 was actually the one who got to fell the "death blow". Darth Vader had already been seriously wounded and she gave him one ferocious smack with her light saber and he burst into pieces. And candy went everywhere. And the kids went crazy.


Here is Monkey5, who was very overwhelmed by the whole thing but was still an incredibly good baby all day [in spite of having an ear infection - give that kid a medal!]. She is being held by her very sweaty daddy who had just been fighting off hordes of Jedi in the back yard. LOL!


Our Wookie had a great day too. Sage was so excited she almost burst when so many people came over. She had to spend about half an hour in her crate just to calm down. She was going from person to person pawing them frantically for pets - SO many people who had not yet petted her, it was really stressing her out trying to get to them all! Unfortunately when she paws, she scratches pretty hard with her toenails. So, she went into the crate for a half hour and calmed down, and then she roamed freely going [nicely] from person to person getting pets. She behaved very well after her initial cool off period, and the kids all just LOVED her. Something about collies and kids... there is definitely an attraction there. Here you can see one of our beautiful Amidalas petting our happy wookie.

Ooh - and there was a surprise too! Only the kids who hung around to the very end got to see it, but concealed inside the modeling chocolate death star was none other than *Darth Vader* himself!!! It was so cool! Then we got to see Obi Wan Kenobi bite Darth's head off and eat him up. Macabre and amusing all at the same time LOL!

These are the God Twins. :) On the left is Obi Wan Kenobi and on the right is Luke Skywalker. Obi Wan is the son of my friend Cyndi [the amazing woman who made both the cakes and the Jedi costumes], and he and Monkey2 were born on the exact same day. He is quite the charming young man, and he and Monkey2 are inseparable.

And here is the most gifted Cyndi herself! [::Applause::] She was handing out slices of the 20 pizzas we got from Dominos to all the ravenous children! LOL!

Here are Monkeys 4, 3, 2, and 1 getting ready to blow out the candles on their special cake.

That cake was so good it was a shame to use silverware. ;)

Here are the kids jumping on the trampoline. Amazingly nobody got hurt. The only casualty we had all day was Monkey2 who got accidentally hit in the head with a light saber. He was fine after a bit of boo-boo ice.

And I have to make a comment on that. We had 43 children here, all of them armed. And they were SO good. That is quite a statement.

And you know why I think that is? I think it is because EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM was HOMESCHOOLED. There you have it. Call me bias if you like, but those kids were all outstanding - they were all KIND to one another, they all had impeccable manners, they were intelligent, interesting, and just a really fun crowd. Many times I saw kids choose to put others first, allow smaller kids to win, or give up things for the sake of another child.

Not one kid behaved badly all day. [Did I mention they were here for 5 hours with copious amounts of chocolate and cake and surrounded by an overwhelming amount of high energy?!]. And when the party was over, they were all sad, but all very kindly came up to me one by one and thanked me for inviting them to the party and told me they had a great time. I mean seriously - how awesome is that?

All their mamas [and daddies] should be proud because they are doing an incredible job.

I am feeling a bit of irony in my reflection on yesterday. The name of the first Star Wars movie ever made was "Star Wars: A New Hope". And I am feeling so deeply that these good homeschooled children ARE "The New Hope" in a most serious and profound way. Our world needs these children - and Praise and Glory to God that these children are being reared up to be outstanding individuals - to be the Light of Christ to a world that so desperately needs them. They are gentlemen and ladies most sincerely and I thank the Lord for each and every one of them.

Their parents aren't bad either! ;) I was awed and amazed by the kindness and generosity of the adults yesterday too. In the first place, I've already mentioned Cyndi - she's the monkeys' Godmother and she worked so hard to make their day special. She and her husband Bob are such a blessing to our family in so many ways. But the other families who came yesterday were also so incredible. Other dear friends of ours brought these amazing fruit trays - massive amounts of fruit that the children [and adults] just devoured. Likewise, other friends brought a huge veggie platter and dip. Every single family that came offered to bring something - many calling as they left their homes to see if we needed them to pick up anything on the way. We had friends here who brought drinks, spare tables, ice.... the list goes on. And we didn't ask any of them to do this, they just thought of what might be needed and provided it!

The monkeys had asked all their guests to bring a donation to "Everything for a Family with Nothing" to the party instead of bringing gifts. The kids were so happy to be able to do that, and I was proud of them - not once did any of them complain that they weren't getting presents, they asked for the donations with hearts truly full of joy and excitement at being able to give these donations to another family in need.

When the kids started opening the gifts brought by their guests at the end of the party, I was just awed. In fact, when I sat down after the party and totalled it all up, I just burst into tears. These kind and generous families gave so abundantly and unexpectedly - it was incredible. We were hoping to raise maybe $100, expecting each family to bring $5 or 10 for a donation. At the end of the night, the total donations for the day totaled $502.00. Can you believe that? I was stunned!

I am awed and humbled and so grateful to be in the presence of such kind and giving people - I thank God that He has blessed me with such friends. In no way do I deserve such a gift, and I am grateful to the bottom of my toes.

I am also grateful for the precious and loving children Jesus has blessed me with and my sweet and generous husband - I am gifted beyond all measure and it brings tears to my eyes to contemplate just how blessed I truly am.

It was a great day! Happy Birthday little Monkeys!!! I love you SO MUCH!

I Am So Grateful to Be the Monkey Mama!

Boy. Did you ever have "one of those days..."? Today was certainly one of those days....

My "day" today started last night I guess you could say - around 11pm my 2yo woke up screaming and totally freaking out. While my husband and I were trying to calm her down, she woke the baby up. So, I went to try to nurse the baby back to sleep and she wouldn't go back to sleep. At all. Finally, around 3am I got her back to sleep and tried to take her up to bed, and she woke up as soon as I laid her down. I ended up dozing on the couch with her for about 45 minutes around 4am and that's all the sleep I got... finally around 6am I got my husband up and he took over [he had been up and down all night with the 2yo] and I napped for 2.5 hours and then got up because we had SO MUCH to do to get ready for the party.

My husband took the baby to the pediatrician while I stayed home and cleaned. It turns out she has a nasty ear infection - a really bad one on the left side. We all had a cold last week, and it looks like it turned into an ear infection for my poor little Monkey5. So, she is on antibiotics, for the second time in her short life [the last one was a very terrible double ear infection]. I fear she has inherited my horrible eustacian tubes and "bad ears", just like Monkey4 did. :( [The first 3 never had ear infections... I was sure it was because I was nursing them, but I guess not].

I worked like crazy both on cleaning and party preparations all day. I missed lunch completely and forgot to eat or drink all day. I had hired a cleaning company to come do a "deep clean" as a special splurge [the benefit of working so many hours lately... LOL!] and they were supposed to be here at 1pm. They weren't.

Finally at 2:30pm I called and the cleaning crew that was supposed to come to my house had just blown off all their jobs that day and there was nothing the owner could really do about it. She offered to come do it tomorrow, but we will have a party going on then.

At that point I just almost had a breakdown. I was *exhausted*. I was hungry. I was thirsty. AND, I'd had no caffeine all day long because I hadn't sat down at all to drink anything. [You know its a bad day when you don't have a second to stop and take a drink LOL!].

So, I start sobbing and feeling totally overwhelmed - I was supposed to spend the rest of the day making cool party food and creating Star Wars games while other people cleaned my house.

Instead, I just melted into a pool of pathetic-ness.

I decided to just take a break and eat. I sat down and had a coke and some chicken while my husband took some of the kids to Costco to pick up party supplies. Later he cut the grass [our lawn guy never showed up this week either - I can't even PAY people to help me LOL!].

Funny how coke and chicken will make things all better. :) Within a half hour I was completely re-energized.

I had a talk with myself about how this was just my PRIDE [again] causing me to feel so upset. And I reminded myself that the people who are coming tomorrow won't care if my house isn't perfect, if I don't have a ton of clever games completed, and if I don't have fancy schmancy food [which I won't now] - *I* am the only one who cares.

I felt so much better when I let it go! :)

And it ended up being a really great evening. Monkey1 and I danced around the living room, read Greek myths and then started cleaning bathrooms. She's getting really good at cleaning sinks, counters, and mirrors [her usual job] and today she decided she really *wanted* to clean the toilet [mom's usual job LOL!]. And she did a great job!

I got the other kids in on it too - I sprayed some organic cleaner in the shower and set Monkeys 2, 3, and 4 loose in there with scrub brushes. They had a blast. We cleaned all the bathrooms [always the hardest part of cleaning the house IMO] and then I vacuumed the upstairs - upstairs is ready to go now! [We figured that with something like 45 kids coming tomorrow, we better let them play upstairs too, so we had to get it cleaned up. I'm good about keeping downstairs pretty clean, but upstairs I tend to let slide.... lots of work to do up there!]

It is not perfectly clean. [In fact, I'm pretty sure the shower stall is worse off now because Monkey4 decided to smear and entire bar of soap on the shower walls and door instead of just scrubbing like she was told ... LOL!]. But you know what? It is *sanitary*. And I think we are going to have so much fun tomorrow, we are all excited!

And we got to stuff Darth Vader's head with candy tonight. How can it not be good night?!

Boy am I tired. I am off to bed now!

Will Work For Light Sabers!!

It was an avalanche of lightsabers!

These Jedi are well armed!

We start our Paduwans early around here.

Of course, her first reaction? "Can I eat that?" LOL!

We are gearing up for our big birthday bash celebrating all the kids' birthdays this year. It is going to be a Star Wars party - all the kids can come in costume and we will do Star Wars things. We have a very cool Darth Vader Pinata, and one activity will involve trying to bash in Darth Vader's head to get candy... LOL!

So, we went to Target today to pick up a bunch of light sabers [because you really can't have too many you know and we want there to be plenty for our guests to play with]. We ended up spending $80.00 on light sabers - we bought every one Target had! [These will also be party favors]. Wow. We NEVER spend money frivolously like this, and as we were leaving, my husband and I realized that we just spent almost exactly what I make for one day of teaching. Wow.

So, the new joke is that Mama will work for light sabers. :) There are worse things to work for I suppose.

I'll ask for everyone's prayers - we have 60 [yes, *60*] guests coming to our home on Saturday. If it rains we are sunk [our house will in no way hold 60 people! LOL!]. Right now the forecast is calling for scattered thunder showers.... ARGH!!! ;)

Wish us luck!