Addition is the New Subtraction

Yesterday evening we had a bunch of kids going in and out of our house through the sliding door onto our patio.  At one point Ryan went outside, but left the sliding door wide open.

"Ryan," I called. "How many cats do we have?"

Ryan held up three fingers.

"And how many to do you want us to have?" I asked, nodding towards the open door.

Ryan promptly ignored my implication and happily held up four fingers.

"Not happening, kid. Shut the door."

He's a Rock Star

Why Do I Try?

Part of me always feels like I'm short changing my kids on summer vacation. Not only were my parents elementary school teacher/principal, but they worked in the same school district my brother and I attended, so our vacations were always the same. I remember summers spent together - with the single week of day camp thrown in.  It was a relaxing, idyllic time.

My kids have to get up at a certain time every day to get dropped off somewhere while Duane and I go to work. I try to plan some fun things for them, but lately I feel like all the fun stuff backfires, leaving me with at least one grumpy child and me beating myself up.

Take today for instance. Today was the first day of day camp. Yes, the same day camp Wesley complained about in June. We had already booked and paid for a week for him and Ryan together. To say Wesley was not looking forward to it would be like calling a hurricane a "little bit of rain." 

Need proof? Last night Wesley was in bed and asked me there were going to be any tornadoes.  I told him that I was pretty sure there wouldn't be since all the storms seemed to have passed.

"I just have a really bad feeling about something," Wesley told me.

"Is it about camp?" I asked.

"Yeah. I think it is."

Despite that less than auspicious start, drop off went fine and Duane told me they didn't want to leave when he picked them up. Of course, he also told me they said it was "the worst day ever."

And that brings me to the whole "why do I try" thing. I try to give them fun things to do over the summer, but they always seem to backfire. Camp where they know a few kids and get to do cool stuff like fishing and swimming? Hate it. Take them to the zoo and let them ride rides (which we never do)? One loves it and the other pouts the whole time. It's like I am incapable of doing anything that will make both of them happy at the same time.

Tonight we went to play mini-golf after dinner. Wesley had pretty much made up his mind to be miserable before we even got in the car. The mini-golf place also has go-karts that terrified him last year, so now Wesley wants nothing to do with the entire place.

From the moment we set foot on the mini-golf course Wesley pouted, sulked and generally did his best to make the rest of us miserable. He pretty much succeed too. Only Ryan was impervious to Wesley's power of evil.

This was actually the happiest he looked all evening and was prior to him losing his ball in a water trap. He refused to play with a replacement ball, which just upped the pain for the rest of us.

This pretty much sums up my entire summer thus far. One child smiling, the other looking like he's in pain.

I know my job is not to entertain the kids 24/7. I know that they each have unique personalities that I can't change, but is that a reason for a family outing to feel like a little slice of hell on earth every single time we try it? I'm just frustrated and tired and would really like a little bit of family fun that actually feels like fun.

Not Me Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama.

I was not a little bit happy to put on work clothes after a week of wearing the same shirt every day for VBS.

I did not get a little bummed out when I took an online quiz that was supposed to guess my age and it guessed me in my mid-fifties.

I did not call my brother to make sure he was okay after I heard about an accident on the road he drives home shortly after he left my house. That would mean I really truly am a mom (and possibly turning into my mom even more than I already have) :-)

I did not trip over a toddler at party while carrying Ryan, sending myself, the toddler and Ryan tumbling to the ground. And even if I did, I certainly wasn't the one who ended up with two skinned knees and a bruised arm. And if that were true, there no way I was actually relieved that I was the one hurt and not either child. And I wasn't super embarrassed. 

Is it Bedtime?

Wesley and Ryan have this odd habit of wanting to put their pajamas on as soon as possible when dinner is over. Duane thinks it's because that's the only time we let them "go commando." 

This afternoon the sky got very dark as some thunderstorms rolled in. We'd been having a pretty lazy day, with the boys only going outside to go to church this morning, so it felt a bit later than it actually was.

"Mom, can I put my pajamas on?" Wesley asked. 

"No, Wesley. It's only 4:00 in the afternoon."

"WHAT!? How it only be 4:00. It's got to be close to bedtime by now. It sure feels like it."

Alas, I'm making him suffer through a few more hours in his regular clothes.

All Attitude

If you have met my youngest son, even for a moment, you know that he is all attitude.  Don't believe me? Well, Monday Ryan hit his head when he was in the pool at Grandma and Grandpa P.'s.  No major damage (to him or the pool) but he had a nice scrape and bump on his forehead.  While we eating dinner that night I looked at Ryan and said, "So, I hear you got up close and personal with the pool today."

Ryan gave me a rather ferocious look before replying, "I know what you mean and I don't want to talk about it! I'm fine!"

Like I said, all attitude.

Happy Birthday Ryan

Ryan has had a pretty big day for his sixth birthday today. He woke up to Wesley waiting to give him a sheet of Skylanders stickers. Some people might of found waking up to your brother standing by your bed just waiting for you to awaken a little creepy, but Ryan accepted the stickers and gave Wesley a big hug in return.  In fact, it was such a big hug that it nearly turned into an awkward man hug, causing Wesley to start patting his little brother on the back and saying, "OK now. OK."

Wesley further sweetened the birthday morning by telling Ryan "You can have control of the remote today - even at Grandma's. Would you like that?"  I mean, if that isn't a perfect "guy" gift, what is?

Ryan responded by turning to me and stating, "Nothing says 'good birthday' like Wesley!"

Before we left the house for the day Grandpa P. called to sing 'Happy Birthday' to the Ryguy. Ryan listened to Grandpa's musical greeting, then looked at me and said, "Okay....that was...weird."

The rest of the day was pretty much a normal day until this evening. This evening we went out to dinner at one of Ryan's favorite pizza places and ordered a large white pizza just for him and Wesley. 

Have not fear, they made a BIG dent in this pizza!

After dinner all the grandparents, Aunt Paula, Uncle Kirk, Aunt Cathy and Sho and Kei came over for presents, cake and ice cream.

The Ryan King waiting for Wesley and Kei to bring him his gifts

 I'm happy to report that Ryan remembered his birthday manners, said "thank you" to everyone and even gave everyone a hug.

Dad's birthday cake creation. It's Ninjini (from Skylanders)

Fire it up!

My big birthday boy

Spitting on the cake - I mean, blowing out the candles.

Truth be told, I am having a little bit of a hard time believing my baby is six years old now.  It just doesn't seem possible. I want to freeze him just the ornery way he is for a while. I want to hang on to the cute way he talks right now. I want to be able to keep carrying him around while he's still light as a feather. I am afraid the end of his random, drive by kisses will come too soon and that he won't want to hold my hand as we shop.

And yet, I can't wait to see the amazing boy and young man he will grow into. I can't wait to celebrate his successes and be with him through his disappointments. I want to see what new interests he develops and support him through them.  One thing for sure, with Ryan, it's bound to be a wild ride.

Like Mother Like Son

You may not know this about me, but I am a very indecisive person. One of my friends still teases me about a time about eleven years ago that I changed my mind about what flavor ice cream I wanted at least a dozen times while I was standing in line. I can never decide what to order in a restaurant, or where to go out to eat or which shoes/earrings/necklace to wear with which dress.  Duane has gotten very used to this (most likely annoying) aspect of my personality and is always willing to go wherever I want, order the other thing that sounds good to me or make the decision when my own indecision cripples me.

Apparently Wesley has inherited my inability to make a decision - at least about some things. Wesley likes a lot of routine. He will happily eat the same lunch every day or watch the same show over and over. But give him full choice over something and it can easily become too much for him.

The other night Wesley and I headed to the store to pick out something for Wesley to give Ryan on his birthday.  Wesley knew he wanted to get Ryan something Skylanders but that's really all he had in mind. We spent 5-10 minutes in the book aisle while Wesley decided between a sticker book, a seek and find book, and a chapter book. He finally decided on a chapter book, but by the time we made it to the computer game area, he had decided not to get a book at all, but to get two Skylanders.

We spent another 10-15 minutes deciding which Skylanders would be best for Ryan. It was like one of those awful math problems where you have to figure out how many sets of two different characters you can created from the ten characters on sale.  He finally found two, and then noticed an over the door organizer for all the figures. Then he had to decide if he wanted to get the organizer or the figures because I wouldn't let him get both. Or did he want to go back to a book and one figure.  We must have left and returned to the game area no less than four times.

It took us nearly an hour to pick out a gift and a card.  An hour.  I just hope Ryan appreciates how much thought went into Wesley's gift.

Not Me Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama.

I did not permit (or even encourage) Wesley to squirt Ryan with a water bottle after Ryan repeatedly refused to get out of bed.

I did not become an accomplice and help sneak my boys onto the stage in the sanctuary (where they weren't supposed to be) just to get pictures of them with the VBS Bible Buddies.

I did not manage to shoot whipped cream out of the canister and all over guests that were seated at the table on our patio. Nope, that never happened!

I know I didn't tell Wesley and Ryan that if they didn't sing with the VBS kids on VBS Sunday, they would not be allowed to have cake because it was only for the kids who participated in the service.

I wasn't disappointed when the kids chose to go to Zoombezi Bay later this summer instead of going to the fair. And even if I am, it certainly isn't because I'd much rather eat deep fried fair food than spend the day in a bathing suit.

Happy Birthday (Party Day) to Ryan

Ryan's birthday isn't until later this week, but we celebrated today with a party that his friends could attend. Ryan had a horrible time deciding what kind of party to have. He wanted Magic Mountain. He wanted Glow Putt. He wanted the pool. He wanted the Indian Caverns. He wanted a sleepover.  He finally landed on a party at the Indian Caverns and it turned out to be a great choice for him.

Ryan's birthday banner

Inside of our party cabin

The kids had a great time petting the kids

Aren't they cute

We played a game of  "Pin the Mouth on the Bat"

Gem mining

Ryan's cake - made by Daddy, of course!

A whole row of classmates

C. gave Ryan a push since Ryan couldn't reach the pedals

Wesley and J.

The girls needed a bit of a push too and C. was happy to oblige

The one rock in the entire caverns the kids are permitted to touch

Getting a drink of water from the drips in the cavern

It was a fun afternoon, but I'm beat. Thank goodness there is leftover pizza and cake so I can just veg out tonight.

Good Excuse for Not Cleaning

Duane puts the kids to bed most nights. It's just part of our weird childcare division that works really well for us.  Last night Duane went to turn Ryan's larval lamp/nightlight off and knocked something off the dresser.

Knocking stuff over in Ryan's room is not unusual. Ryan has a pretty small room and it doesn't take much for it to turn into a disaster area. When we tell him to clean it up he usually just shoves stuff under the bed and on top of the dresser.

Duane picked up the thing that fell and returned it to the dresser, only to knock something else off. As Duane reached to pick it up Ryan said, " It's likes my room wants to be dirty."

Sounds like an excuse not to clean to me!

Cake Crafting

Duane has spent most of today working on the cake for Ryan's "friend party" tomorrow.  Ryan decided he wanted a Skylander on it and the picture that was decided on has quite of bit of detail work on it. 

Ryan took a break from playing to check in on Duane's progress. I'm not exactly sure what was said, because I was sitting in another room, but I did hear Ryan say "Thanks for doing the best you can, Dad."

"I will always do that for you guys," was Duane's reply.

I think I actually felt my heart swell at that moment.  What a wonderful daddy he is!

Caterpillar Rescue

Last night we had a group of friends over to shoot the breeze and enjoy some s'mores on the patio. Duane and Ryan prepped the fire and got it lit about 15 minutes before the guests were supposed to arrive.

The fire had only been lit for a minute or two before Duane noticed a woolly caterpillar hightailing it out of the fire pit, seeking cooler pastures.  Ryan seems to have a thing for caterpillars so he scooped the little guy up and proceeded to make a pet out of it for the next half hour.

You'll be happy to know that we did not end up with a woolly caterpillar in our house though. After Ryan showed it off to everyone, he safely deposited the caterpillar on a nice juicy leaf, thus completing his first official caterpillar rescue.

VBS Update

I can't believe tomorrow is already the last day of VBS. The week has absolutely flown by! For those of you who might be wondering, Wednesday (aka, the day after the misplaced child) went just fine. The parent was not the least bit confrontational. In fact, the only mention of the incident was when the patent said to the boy, "Now, don't forget. You do not go to daycare."  That was it.

Wednesday was pretty special for other reasons too. Our VBS theme this year is "Weird Animals," so our director arranged for the zoo to come out and show the kids some real live weird animals!

This is Halibut, the baby penguin who toppled down a couple of steps at the church

I really kind of loved this sloth

A sweet baby wallaby

Elsa, the beautiful baby snow leopard

Then we had the weird animals (and kids) that the zoo didn't bring.

Today was another good day. We always kind of joke about Thursday being "Resurrection Thursday" because the Bible story always seems to be about the Resurrection. Today was no different, but it always seems to be one of the most touching VBS days.  In the elementary age Bible story today the kids all got to write their name on a cross to show that Jesus died for their sins. 

My groups was the last group to go to Bible story, so I got to see the cross covered in all the names. I have to admit, I got a little teary when I saw my own boys' names there.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

VBS Bust

Today was not a great day at VBS. Correction: VBS itself was good. My morning Bible story went well. My afternoon group of boys were good. We played duck duck goose and I got to wear big ol' flippers to be "it" while playing weird animal tag.   The not great part happened after dismissal.

Before continuing with my story I need to let you know that we have about 200 kids in our afternoon VBS. My group is all boys - all 6 years old and evenly split between blond and brunette, all about the same size. Two of my boys have names that rhyme. Three of the others have two syllable names that all start with the same letter and sound similar (think something like Taylor, Tanner and Turner even though those are not their names.). We also have a day care center in our church that participates in VBS. At the end of the session the daycare kids are dismissed first ( there are at least 40 of them) and they all leave at once just before the parents of the other kids come in the room.

Today I sent my daycare kids to their class. One of the boys asked me "Do I go to the daycare?"  I said "if you are a daycare camper, then that's where you go."  I spent the rest of dismissal getting the other boys to their parents and when I had Wesley and Ryan collected, we gathered my morning Bible story supplies and headed out. We ran into a store next door to the church, and when I came out I noticed I had a voicemail message on my phone from the VBS director.  Apparently one of the boys in my group, who was supposed to be picked up by a parent, had left the main room with the daycare kids and ended up there. I missed it when I was checking kids off on my attendance sheet, the parent had not arrived by the time I had left (thinking my whole group had been picked up) and when the parent did arrive, the kid was not in the main room and no one knew where he was and the parent was livid.

I was mortified! I have worked with children for quite literally half my life - at least 20 years if you don't count babysitting - and I have never had something like this happen. I do head counts over and over during the course of the VBS day just to make sure none of my kids wander off or are left on their own.  I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. 

Being the person I am, I spent the next hour and a half beating myself up about what happened and sobbing. I have lost Ryan before and I know that horrible, abject terror you feel when your child is missing. I hate that I caused that kind of worry to another parent. I hate that I let the parents down like that. And I feel like I let the VBS director down. Even though she is not angry and even though the child was in the building, in a classroom I am ashamed of myself. I dread seeing the child's parent tomorrow, because no matter what the extenuating circumstances were, the fact remains that I was responsible for their child and I didn't do my job as well as I should have.

So tomorrow I will be eating a large amount of crow. I am prepared for the parent to be really angry at me, but I can't guarantee it won't upset me again. I am so grateful that nothing really bad happened, but, truth be told, I am doubting myself. Maybe this isn't what I should be doing. In fact, my immediate thought was to drop out of the afternoon session and go back to work. However I made a commitment and want to see it through. I know God loves me despite my mistakes and imperfections. I just hope that the parents can forgive me for losing track of their child.

First Day of VBS

Today was our first day of VBS. Unfortunately, Duane was not able to take the time off to help this year, so it's just me and boys getting up even earlier than we do on a normal day.  Wesley was so excited about VBS that he jumped out of bed as soon as I woke him up. He thew on his clothes and even got in the car ten minutes before it was time to leave! 

Ryan was a whole different story. He insisted that he had only gotten three hours of sleep, despite having been in bed for ten hours. He did not want to get dressed and flat out refused to eat any kind of breakfast. So this is pretty much how our day of VBS started:

Yes, that's Ryan curled up under a chair in the church library saying "I'm glad I'm small."

 Luckily the child care person was very understanding and she got Ryan a granola bar part way through the morning when his hunger pangs got the best of him.

The Weird Animal VBS background

I spent the morning doing the preschool Bible story. I really think it's my favorite job at VBS and the classes this year are much smaller, which means more managable. We had 50 kids from the preschool program "graduate" into the elementary program for this year, and that makes a big difference on numbers. But the morning went really smoothly.

We ate lunch at church, then Ryan asked if he could get his picture taken with the cutout of Axl the Axolotl  - his favorite Bible Buddy for the week. There is a rule that the kids aren't allowed on the stage near the decorations because we share them with other churches and don't want anything to break. But.....after lunch there was no one in the worship center, so we went in and got pictures with Axl. Now the boys want to "sneak" a picture every day this week!

The afternoon went by super quickly. I'm in charge of a group of 6 year old boys and they were so well behaved. I think I'm going to love my week with them. Wesley and Ryan did a great job in their groups too.  In fact, they did so well that we hung around after VBS was over and played on the playground for a little while.

You'd think that after almost nine years, the kid would know how to go down a slide properly.

So that was our day in a nutshell. Hope tomorrow is just as good.