My gripe for the Mouse...

Ok so we met the Mouse. Huge hit.

We get home and I have one teensy weensy complaint for Mickey and friends. Why the hell are my photos of you so damn expensive?!

Disney has this great service. Disney Photo Pass. And I'm 100% serious when I say the service is great. They give you this card, they take your picture, they scan the card, and the photos are automatically uploaded to a sharing site for you to email/order/etc. They have photographers all over the park ready and willing to take your photo. We got pictures of us and all the gang - it was great. The card was my friend. Then I got home and saw what they want to charge you to order your photos. No, sorry you may not have my first born. I kinda like him. Same with my right arm. I think I'll keep that too. You can keep your handy-totally convenient-captured the whole family in the shot-photos. We don't need you.

Seriously Disney...there is nothing frugal about you, can't you cut us a break on the memories?

SAHM - Why we can't do it all

Ok, so I'm still new to the stay-at-home-mom gig. And I'll admit, I had lofty goals when I embarked on this journey. Really lofty. Not only did I think my house would sparkle, but I thought I'd have time to organize, learn to cook, and take a photography class perhaps. Yeah, not gonna happen. Not even the sparkly house part.

I maintain that the only thing more difficult than being a SAHM is being a working mom. However, I do feel like as a working mom there is a little more fogiveness if your toilet hasn't seen a toilet brush in 6 months, or if 5 out of 7 dinners a week are from a take out menu. As a stay at home mom, maybe not so much. I have a wonderfully supportive husband who has accepted the dramatic decrease in the family income to allow me this time at home with my children. I'll never have this time again, and I'm so grateful I get to enjoy them while they are young. While they need me the most. But...I see the look when he gets home from work. The glance around the living room, most likely wondering when the grenade went off. I mean how else could one explain the mess of epic proportions? Well let me try...

Basically every night after I get the kids to bed, I think about all that I did NOT accomplish in the day. But then I think about what happens when I try to take care of the kids and the household chores at the same time...

I won't even recap the days that they are both at home. One word - Impossible. Those days I just take a deep breath and know that the house will look crappier than ususal. But on the days that Zach is in school, I do TRY to make an effort, but the lovely little "I'm into EVERYTHING right now" Miss Alexis likes to try her hand at helping too. Laundry, there is never a lack of that right? So I sort, and she sits next to me and tosses everything into opposite piles. Once sorting is complete (taking at least 3 times as long as usual), I take the first load to the washer. She follows. Oh wait, is that the hot water heater she is playing with while I load? Hmmm...move baby, race back to loading because she is a quick one and will crawl back to this water heater faster than I can toss the clothes in. Ugh. She's at it again. Move her again, this time set her farther down the hall, and run. Finally loaded only took 3 tries, but one load is in. Oh wait, I have to do this again in about 45 minutes with the dryer. Forget it. I'll do it when she's asleep.

Maybe I'll try to unload the dishwasher. First task, set out some toys to distract child. That should do the trick, right? Hmm...she doesn't seem to want to play with those. Oh she's crawling over to the dishwasher, pulling herself up. No you may not grab a fork. No, not that bowl either. Back to the toys. Not working. Here she comes. What is she picking up off the floor? NO! Don't eat that. Too late. Ugh. Guess I'll save this for later too. (Note to self: Those 2 dishes you unloaded before she threatened to poke her eyes out with the flatware should really save you some time later.)

I could fold the laundry. That should be easy, right? Oh wait, why is she pulling everything OUT of the basket? Put that down - I just folded that! Please don't suck on that button. Zippers are no good either. Oh forget it. Let's just go eat lunch.

Lunchtime - 60% of food goes in the mouth. 40% on the floor. (Another note to self: Pick up all crumbs before the human Hoover eats the said 40% off the floor.) No time to do the dishes...need to keep the baby from hurling herself out of the highchair.

At last naptime. At least an hour of "me" time. Time to check email, do a bit of work (if I'm lucky enough to have some...), feed myself, tackle any pre-dinner prep that I can in order to save time later, shower, and MAYBE sit down for 20 minutes before she wakes up. Maybe. Usually during this time I pick up the first round of toys so that when Zach gets home he has a fresh clean living room to throw all his crap.

Time to pick up Zach from school. There is no hope of chores from this point on....

Get home in time to make dinner. Dinner, which takes twice as long (need to stop and break up toy struggles, and "No, you may not sit on your sister) and is ususally twice as over cooked as a normal meal should be.

Husband comes home and sees the half done laundry, half folded laundry, half emptied dishwasher, toys all over the place, me burning the dinner, and I'm sure he's wondering what he signed up for.

Dinner, clean up, bathtime, bedtime...and we wake up an do it all again the next day. Did I mention that I love this and wouldn't trade it for the world??

Out Mothered

Ok, so I'm not so good at blogging. But something happened to me the other day and I just have to write about it.

First of all, let me start of by saying that I'm typically oblivious to everything going on around me. Seriously. If I'm out in public, which these days is hardly ever, I'm usually with my 3.5 year old. And he's a runner, so I'm laser focused on not letting him get out of my sight. I have no clue what is going on around me. But, on the off-chance I am out with girlfriends, it's the same story. One of my more fashionable friends will say "did you see those shoes" or "that hair is awful" and I most likely haven't noticed either.

But on Monday of this week, there was a woman at the kids hair salon who was clearly trying to Out Parent me. And I noticed. And I was annoyed.

Started out simple enough, took Zach to get his hair cut and we went a little early so that he could play with the train set they have in the lobby. All of a sudden a not-so-cute little girl and her frumpy mom (yep - I noticed. She was frumpy. I'm not sure if' I'm the pot or the kettle...but that's neither here nor there) come out of nowhere to play with the train too. There weren't enough trains. (And really, with 3 year olds, are there ever enough trains?) Zach had planned ahead and brought his own train. To no fault of their own, the less than cute girl did not know this, so she proceeds to try and take his train from him saying it was her turn to play with Thomas. Zach looked at me horrifed, so I intevened and said "actually, that's his train from home, he brought it himself, so he's going to play with it today. But there are plently of other trains to share." A few minutes go by and I think we are in the clear. But this little girl WANTS Thomas. I hear her complain to her frumpy mom. I hear frumpy mom talking to her about sharing, and how sharing is important, and maybe he'll share when he's done. It was clearly a "sharing" lesson meant just as much for me as it was for her daughter. WHOA lady. It's his train. He's not sharing. There are plenty of other snot-crusted germ-infested trains your daughter can use. Back off my kids Thomas.

Next up... math lesson. Little girl says "How old are you?" to Zach. "Three" he replies. "I'm 3 and 3/4" is her rubbutal. Zach has no idea what this means. He looks at me confused. Frumpy mom butts in and and tries to explain to him what 3/4 means. She then turns to me and says "She's really into her age, and exactly how old she is." I want to wipe that "my-kid-is-smarter-than-yours" look off her face.

I took part of the 10 minutes that Zach was playing to respond to an email on my phone, not a huge offense right? I'm still a competent mother. Well, she took a call and IMMEDIATELY apologized to her daugher for taking a call, and not paying attention to her. Saying that she was sorry and it was rude to take the call while they were playing.

I may or may not have updated my Facebook status as well. So take that.

The last straw - Zach is getting annoyed with this little math whiz and her desire for his train and he pushes something off of the train table. I simply say "Zachary, please pick that up and put it back on the table." He does. Next, the little girl tosses something off. Only HER mother decides this is a "teaching moment" and pulls her aside and talks about how we don't throw things, and bad behavior, and blah blah blah. Again, I feel as though she is talking to me.

Oh God please call our name before I punch her. I'm sure she was judging the fact that my 7 month old had no socks on and it was raining out too. Little does she know that she had them on in the car but took them both off, chewed on them until they were soaking wet and unwearable.

Like I said, I'm typically clueless to my surroundings. But in this case, I know I was being Out Mothered. I know she was trying to look like the better, more attentive, super mom. I also know that she had bad shoes, frumpy hair, was carrying a horrible BACKPACK, and jeans from circa 1995. Take THAT. :)

Our Family....sort of.

My first blog

Ok, so technically not my first. But the first that I have published. I started a blog a couple of years ago, but I never published it. Let’s try this again…blogging here I come.

First a couple of recent pictures of the kids. (And let’s face it…this blog is really going to be all about the kids. Seriously, what else do I have to write about?)