A Diabolical Plan

I think my kids are conspiring to drive me crazy. I’m not sure that it is a malicious plan or if they’d just like to eat chocolate yogurt for breakfast and black jelly beans for lunch and they figure this is the best way to get them.
It started last night.  Clara screamed, and I mean screamed, in her sleep. I do not understand why. I don’t even understand how. But she did.

This morning I’m all bleary eyed and sleep deprived and Clara is still yelling. I’ll give the girls credit, starting with sleep deprivation is pretty smart. Puts a person halfway to crazy in itself.  Then Ivy enters with phase two of the plan: Have conversations with so many contradictions that Mom will have no idea which way is up.

I offer scrambled eggs. She says no thanks.  I make scrambled eggs for Clara.  Ivy denies ever saying no and asks politely for eggs for herself. I look at the pan and realize that I have made enough for both girls. I am just tired enough that I can’t quite figure out what happened. She did say she didn’t want them. Didn’t she? But then why did I make so many eggs?

Yelling continues, talking continues.

“MOM MY SHOWER IS TOO HOT.”
So like any nice, helpful, sane mother I go and turn the knob to adjust the temperature.
“Why are you makin’ it colder mom? Don’t make it colder!”

Cue Clara peeing on the floor and yelling more. Wait, she did say it was too hot right? So then it needs to be colder, right? Pee, there is pee on the floor. Where are the diaper covers?

Then just when I think they are about to crack me Clara runs over and gives me a hug and Ivy asks if she can snuggle with me and I forgive them for their diabolical plot.

Until I start wondering if this is just part of the plan, are they softening me up before the next barrage?

So quickly I jumped into the offensive; Clara goes down for an early nap, Ivy is promised a movie and I’m getting a Diet Coke.

Wish me luck!

 

The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

 

Writing something new for a sequel of a book is always hard, when it comes down to it you’ve got to start at the beginning.

In this case the beginning is The Name of the Wind you can go back and look at my review, but basically it says you should read it and now I think you should read this one too.

Reasons to continue reading the Kingkiller Chronicles:

Secondarily:  Seriously, why wouldn’t you? There are so many unanswered questions, don’t you need to find out what happens next???

Sixth and lastly: There is no coddling of the reader. I hate books that spend the first 30 pages bringing you “up to date” with information from previous books. This effectively treats readers like idiots who can’t be bothered to remember what already happened. Not to worry,  you’ll be treated like the brilliant reader you are when you open this book up!

Thirdly:  He’s gets people. I don’t know how better to say it without being cheesy and corny. The characters make the books, the characters make the story, Rothfuss has got dang good characters.

And to conclude: Then you can go to a reading/signing it will be fun, and your book could also look something like this:Would I recommend it? Yes!

Wind Boats

With the weather oscillating between spring like and dead of winter we’ve been forced to make some tough decisions lately.

For instance if staying in the house on a cold snow-less wintry sort of day do we want to:

A: Make horses talk all day.

B: Come up with other kid friendly projects and crafts to do.

It’s a tough choice, my feelings on talking horses can be found here, but cute craftiness is not one of my strong suits.

Desperate to avoid talking animals, I headed for the internet. I may not be crafty but I can Google with the best of them! I found The Toymaker‘s website a few years ago, a few clicks we had piles of paper toys and crafts at our fingertips. With a computer and a printer even a crafting deficient Mom such as myself can pull off an afternoon of fun!

These wind boats were the biggest hit, even Clara could blow hers across the floor. The Toymaker has moving toys, paper dolls, cards, finger puppets, 3D animals, trucks and marble mice, it’s worth a visit on a nasty spring day.

Unless you like making animals talk, and if that’s the case can Ivy come visit next time it rains?

Ivy and the Zoo

Usually I like to put pictures with my posts. You know the whole picture is worth a thousand word thing.

Tonight I thought I’d be different.

So here we have pictures of our trip to the zoo, and random things Ivy said after we got home.

When Clara and Ivy were emptying the dishwasher together:

“Clara is so nice to her big sister and she helps with the housework.”

About an hour after Clara and Ivy gave Piper a shower, from which they emerged just as hairy as the dog:

“Do you know why my butt is kinda itchin’? ”Cause of the hair. Pipers hair is on my butt makin’ it itch.”

Ivy’s irrefutable logic in my attempt to eradicate the word potty from our language:

Ivy: “I’m going potty right now!”
Me: “Oh, OK.  You could say I’m going to the bathroom right now – it’s more grown up.”
Ivy: “But I’m not grown up.”

How’s the Push Ups?

Things I have learned while doing my push ups:

1) Six weeks of push ups is enough to have people comment on your arm muscles.

2) This is a program that works…if you don’t skip and don’t cheat. Taking off time for being sick still counts as skipping and cheating when it’s time to do another test.

3) Do not attempt to read the charts if you are confused with your < and > symbols, this will result in frustration, pain and feeling like an idiot.

4) OFG’s can do a heck of a lot of push ups!

5) John really hates Rod Stewart, but it will apparently push him to greater push up heights before he quits in favor of running.

6) This preference for running is nothing like the behavior of the man I married… I suspect aliens.

7) Fun music (not Rod Stewart) helps when I do push ups.

8 ) So does a dirty floor- can’t collapse in a heap if you are afraid of your floor.

9) I am brilliant at discovering excuses not to do housework.

10) If you tell enough people about a crazy work out idea, many will join you, others will join them, push up craziness will spread. It will be awesome and inspirational!

I know you are all out there, leave a comment, tell us how it’s going, tell us about your friends, inspire us all!!!

Then check out my cousin Jenny’s blog if you need even more reasons to do push ups: http://skiingmama.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/how-many-push-ups-can-you-do/

Don’t forget you can see how those of us brave enough to broadcast our results are doing here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkCenthS4rIwdFowaS1ja1JmNEtraFFYalhOY1JNSlE&hl=en&authkey=CNvHxIQB#gid=0

Feel free to join at anytime!!!

Who Says?

Who says you can’t have fun on a 36 degree drizzly day?

I can tell you that two kids, one mom and ten brave chickens can have at least five whole minutes of good puddle splashing fun in weather like that.

And then the chickens decide that puddle jumping is really more of a duck thing.

And the kids boots fill with water.

And before you know it the mom has two crying children and flock of disillusioned chickens all headed home.

Poor chickens, they didn’t even make it in the house for the hot chocolate drinking.

I Don’t Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson

This isn’t really my kind of book but I read it because the Maladjusted Book Club was reading it and I wanted to check them out.

Then I lurked in an interesting conversation about blancing motherhood with work.

Would I recommend it? No, I didn’t like it much and I didn’t think it was a very novel, novel – if you get my drift.

I did have multiple interesting discussions with John and friends on the topic but I bet you could find a better book with the same idea.

Here is where you can find the Maladjusted Book Club and their discussion: http://anattitudeadjustment.com/category/maladjusted-book-club