What little boys are made of

Huevos rancheros, I think. The other day I was in house with Gray, and Luke and Cole were on the back porch. I kept hearing an unidentifiable noise (first red flag), but put it off. When I finally went out there, I found Cole pushing his "work truck" (he calls it that because he likes to load mulch in the back of it) up the little hill, then careening down it until he hit the fence. Then back up again. Over and over and over. Like 20 times. Sometimes he hit the fence harder than others. This video doesn't really do it justice. Anyway, I'm pretty sure he'll inherit my cousin John's nickname. "Crash". That's a good story about a snowmobile and a ditch. Maybe I'll tell that one sometime if I run out of interesting stories about the Hardin boys. Ha.

Our Big Boy

Wow, it's been over a week since I've posted - the week went by so quickly. We laid low, as it was Reid's last week before school started, and we had a big weekend planned. Ron and Freda came in on Wednesday and took Reid and Luke to get haircuts and new tennis shoes. They picked out the same shoes (Geox with lime green and fancy soles that blow air up on your foot when you jump), and had a great time. Luke went back to Fredericksburg for a few days, and Reid enjoyed some days with Grand Pink and some quiet time.

On Friday night we all went up to Clayton to meet Reid's teacher. He has Mrs. Beisel, a kindergarten teacher who moved up to first grade with most of her class from last year. Reid is one of four "new" kids, with 16 having been together for Kinder. I think it's fabulous - Mrs. Beisel had a whole year to work out all the "kinks" and personality issues, so the class can hit the ground running. There is one little boy from Reid's kinder class in there, so he has one old friend, and has already made some new ones. And apparently, most of the boys from his kinder class have the same recess time as Reid, so he still gets to play with them as well. His first day was Monday, and he only shed a few tears, and by today (day two), actually said he had a GOOD day! (that's huge for him - usually he won't admit that he had fun at school....)

Reid's first day of 1st Grade

We had Reid's 7th Birthday party on Saturday. He chose a lego theme this year, which meant a fairly easy cake (thank you, Freda), simple decorations (I cut a bunch of construction paper in half and stuck them on the wall at 10:30 friday night), and most importantly, a future now dominated by the age old conundrom of how in the *#@* to store all these new legos. Seriously, there are SO MANY PEICES. And we already had a lego tote, but it is no match for the realm we've now entered. Do you keep the sets together, each in their own box? And when the box inevitably falls apart, do you buy said set it's own little tote? Do you just dump them all in a mammoth tote and let your kid sort through 12,743 legos looking for a specific piece? Do you sort by color? By size?

You'd think this would be my dream come true, an organizing project of this magnatude, but alas, it's not. I'm overwhelmed by trying to balance perfect organization and containment with something that the boys can manage themselves, while not hampering their ability to play with the darn things. I have read of one system of placing individual sets in labeled ziploc baggies, then putting all the sealed baggies in a tote, and cutting the pictures off the boxes and storing them in notebook. Sounds good in theory, but since Brad just came in the office and asked if there were any clean underwear and socks, highlighting my inability to even accomplish the most basic tasks around here, I'm seriously doubtful I'm going to find the time to cut up tiny pictures off of lego boxes. Perhaps they will all just stay on the kitchen table until I have to clean it off for Gray's birthday. That gives me 3 months to come up with a plan.

Anyway, the party was great - everyone had a good time, the cake was delicious, the kids played on the zip line and playscape and tire swing, and then everyone had a good nap that afternoon. Sarah and the girls stayed until Monday afternoon, so we got an extra long visit in. Sarah watched all the kids so I could take Reid to school on the first day. It was so nice having the opportunity to take him alone, and I was able to walk him to class and say a proper good bye. My sister rocks.

Here's some party pics.

Kate Schulle, birthday boy, cousin Olivia,
Jacob Schulle, uncle Stuart and a lego cake


Grand Pink, Reid & Luke
I love this picture

the usual party suspects

happy Gray and his daddy

our sweet boy grown up all the way to seven!
(we had pizza, can you tell?)

And a few more of our visit with Sarah, Hannah and Sophia (Alf couldn't come since she stayed and extra day and he had to work on Monday.)

Sophia and Cole

Sophia, Reid, Cole & Hannah

a very happy Grandmama with 4 out of 6 grand babies!

swimming at "aunt charlotte's"

and.......the silly faces

OK - if I quit rambling, maybe I could get a shower tonight before bed. And maybe start a load of whites. How astonishing.

I'm so tired today, but we made it one day closer to school! Cole is doing great lately - so sweet and funny and much happier now that he can express his wants/needs/feelings verbally. I think he adds five words a day, although I admit I can't understand them all. Today when I was changing his diaper, he was playing with the strap & buckle on the changing pad (which has never actually been used), and he said "need to buckle up please mama". I had to make him say it 4-5 times to get it, but sure enough, that's what he said!

Luke had a hard day today. Really destructive and fell apart about little things. He is happy that Reid is home, and they played really well together in their room at "quiet time", but then he got tired this evening and had a hard time at the park when Brad took them to Circle C. I think one of his triggers may be blue food coloring; I really see a change in him after he eats colored icing, and he had some Saturday AND some last night at Sunday school. I guess I'll have to keep a journal of what he eats and how he feels, because I hate seeing him so unhappy.

Gray is still struggling with his "digestive issues", but hopefully I can find the right balance between prunes, benefiber, water and oatmeal and he'll get better soon. He did put away a serious amount of rice and beans at dinner tonight, so we'll see how that works out.

Here's some pics I took of the boys when they were playing in the front yard this morning. Luke loves to sit on the railing, and Cole wanted to get up there, too, so I made them all sit there while I got my camera. (Gray was playing next door with Grand Pink and Barbara.)



Maybe I'll paint that trim around the window before Reid's birthday party this weekend. You know, the window that was replaced in April? Nice.

Brad and Cole went to Fredericksburg this morning to pick up Reid, while Luke, Gray and I went to Jacob Schulle's batting cage birthday party. Luke is quite the slugger, if you didn't already know. Cole took his nap at Grandmother's house so that Brad could visit with Jana and Stuart, who were out there celebrating their anniversary (seven years!!) We all converged at home around 4:00, so we're a full house again.
Not much else to report, but I did get a video of Gray this evening - since I can't seem to get a good picture of him, let's try this route! I had a horrible case of the hiccups, and every time I'd hiccup, he'd laugh and laugh. Of course, when I got the camera out, he was distracted by the dangling lens cover, and then I had to fake my hiccups, but you'll get the idea.

My To-Do List

No pictures today - although if I had my camera handy, I could have taken some classic shots of Cole playing in a bucket of water in the front yard. Oh well - next time. I have taken quite a few in the house lately (mainly of Gray's two new top teeth), but none of them have come out. I'm fantasizing about a new lens, but it's silly to buy a lens for six year old camera when I could just get a SLR for the same price. Anyway - hopefully I'll get some good ones tomorrow.

Back to my list.....
You would think after posting photos of the condition of my house this week, I would have done something domestic around here. But yesterday came and went with no real change in my behavior. So last night before bed, I decided to motivate myself in a way close to my heart. With snarkiness and sarcasm. I wrote out a to-do list for myself that went something like this:

AMY - FRIDAY (no TV/no computer!/turn on the radio)

*empty the dishwasher by 9am. Then load it again. And start it. (Seriously, how hard it that?)

*all that laundry on the table? Fold it. Then put it away.

*wash those disgusting bathmats

*wash some clothes. Luke has no underwear and you have nothing to wear to the birthday party on saturday.

*clean your bathroom. it's gross.

*change the boys' sheets. reid at least deserves to come home to a clean bed.

And a few more items. It was a long list. And wouldn't you know it? I actually was productive today. It helped that Cole and Luke played at Grand Pinks for over an hour, but by then I had started out on the right foot. Brad says I should write a nasty note to myself every night. I think I'll save this little trick for special circumstances, though. Seriously, it worked really well.

OK - I found some photos of the boys from last month that I should share.

This was actually in June. Luke would spin the arrow on the game (the old school one where you pull the lever and the arrow spins and then makes the animal sound), and Reid would draw that animal as fast as he could. They played nicely like this (all three of them) for a record-breaking seven minutes!

Gray, obviously in his bed, standing under the mobile that has a big warning on it that probably says you should take the mobile down when your baby starts standing up.

Reid actually posing for a photo, and Cole sitting in a blueberry box from Costco. I did not buy that many blueberries.

Press Spoon on Seam

The other day, Tuesday, I think, I didn't feel like doing ANYTHING. I mean nothing. All day. Of course, I did change 20 diapers, and made 3 meals and 2 snacks for all parties involved, and reluctantly changed from PJs to sweat pants, but that's it. Luke even wore his winter pajamas ALL DAY. His idea. Anyway, we were lazy with a capital L. And then Brad got home from work, and I saw the house through his eyes, and I seriously wondered if it's ever worth it to be that lazy. The house had literally EXPLODED in a matter of 9 hours. How is that possible? How can things get so out of whack in just one day? So I started really thinking about it, mulling over what was the root of the problem. And came to this conclusion.

My house, each area alone, and collectively, is like a can of biscuits. Things are crammed in here so tight, the pressure is so built up, it only takes one little press of a spoon on the seam and.....BOOM.

Yes, I can make it look spic and span. Things CAN fit if we work on it hard enough. But everything has to be just so. The large little people toys only fit a certain way in the large tote, with absolutely NO small little people toys below them, otherwise the tote doesn't fit under the bed. And said tote has to be on the left side under the bed because of the rail latch in the middle, which means the laundry basket of miscellaneous baby toys had to go in the middle, so there's room for the race track next to it, and the tote of small little people toys has to go in the center of the race track so it doesn't stick out from under the bed and get in the way of the rocking horse. And on and on and on. Every nook and cranny through the whole house.

So when one thing goes BOOM, it creates a chain reaction that takes days to recover from. It's completely ridiculous.

Don't open the mail for a few days?
KA-BLAM

Don't do the dishes before bed one night?
KA-POW

Can't do laundry because of a bad back?
KA-BLOOEY

So I realized, what makes it difficult is that we're not just trying to "tidy up" each evening. We're trying to put the biscuits BACK IN THE CAN. Every day. In every room. Not an easy task.

By the way, I heard a speaker the other week liken removing one's Spanx to an exploding can of biscuits as well. Clearly, I wouldn't know anything about that.

Anyway, I'm DONE trying to cram biscuits back in the can. I (we) say it every few months or so - the "OK, this time we're really going to get rid of stuff" speech - but we're serious this time. We talk about living within our "square footage means", and how we will do whatever it takes to stay in this house, and raise 4 boys in 3 bedrooms and 2 baths, and all the good lessons that come with that, but when it takes a full paragraph to explain how it's possible to store 187 separate toys under a baby bed, it's out of control. And I have set up these organizational systems that the boys can't really adhere to on their own. Yes, everything is labeled, and yes, everything has "it's place", but if it's overwhelming for US to sort and put away, we can't expect them to do it either. There's just too much stuff. And I desperately don't want them to hate doing chores. I want it to just be a natural part of their day. For them to look at it as good stewardship of the things Brad works hard to provide.

So, that's my resolution. To get REALLY realistic about what can comfortably fit into 1490 square feet. Without things going kablooey.

As a great philosopher once said,

Twice as much
Ain’t twice as good
And can't sustain
Like one half could

Ok, it wasn't a great philosopher. It's John Mayer. But he makes a good point, in spite of his bizarre facial expressions.

Too Lazy to Write - Here's some Photos

So, here are the pictures from my cousin Mary's wedding, from our trip to the Lake with (most of) the Sittons, and some from home.
And some very abbreviated captions.

The boys, looking quite adorable in plaid, sitting on the front porch of Moon River Ranch.

Alf and Sohpia at our table. ALL of us sat together; mom, me, brad, sarah, alf, reid, luke, hannah, cole, sophia and gray. We were the quietest table at the reception. ahem.


Luke and Hannah, being cute, playing a game that I'm sure involved bodily harm.


Most of the cousins: Mary, Sarah, Charlie, Elizabeth, Charlie & me.
Missing JT (on duty in the UK)


The drive home. Even Gray slept most of the way.

Reid, Luke & Olivia in the tube.

Look closely. That's Olivia giving the "go faster" hand sign,
and Luke giving a panic-y "go slower" sign. Poor Luke.

That's a lot of boys at one counter.

Crabby, Patty, and bowl of stinky water.

I haven't posted in a week - so much for the prolific start. My back has been out, and I'm trying not to spend too much time on the computer. That's my story. Anyway, I still need to post photos from Mary's wedding and our last lake trip, but tonight, I'll just relay a DARLING little "out of the mouth of babes" moment.

After coming home from swimming at Monte's this evening (2nd night in a row Brad has taken them after dinner), I was letting Reid & Luke watch a little of SYTYCD. They were performing some of the season's best dances, and it happened to be a lovey waltz we were watching. After witnessing all the crazy, spinning lifts, Reid says "That man is very strong." "Yes", I say, and Luke pipes up "My dad is very strong!" "But not that strong" Reid replies. "He can't lift mama like that."
Sigh.
"No", I say, "but that girl on TV is very tiny." And then my sweet child turns and looks at me, and with total innocence says, "but you are not, because you have had so many babies, and you are so full of milk, that daddy could never lift you that way."
Sigh.
"Yes", I agree, "you're right."