Eat your heart out Jane Fonda

Hailey likes to do my workout videos with me in the afternoon. The other day we topped off our workout outfits with a coat of hot pink lipstick and took some pictures (sound familar Nik?). Hailey's so funny. She gets out a little stool and a toy that looks a little like a weight and flails her arms and legs along with me. I'd love to say that she really looked so ridiculous next to a super coordinated sports star like myself, but I imagine we look about the same. Our limbs flailing wildly, quite obvious we can't keep up with the chirpy blond marching through the steps without difficulty. This embarrasses McKenzie to no end. See we have this big picture window in our living room that faces the parking lot and street. Which means that every person coming and going, and stopping to get their mail, can see the two of us jumping around like idiots. The other day she says to me "mom you know all the neighbors can see you, right." I replied that I don't really care. She was quite appalled by this and went and hid somewhere else. Once some kids from school came by and looked up into the window, I was expected her to post a sign proclaiming she was adopted.
Hailey showing off her moves.

Me and my girl

Speaking of cheesy smiles, these two are Hailey's runners up

I'm not sure what this face is about

Hailey and her friend Lily on a school fieldtrip to the Jump and Bounce

The kids and their cool new shades

My boys having a tickle fest at the park


Here are some pictures from Hailey's preschool graduation in Spokane. They had caps and gowns and played the graduation song. I thought it was pretty cute, but judging from Dave's snickering I think he thought it was a bit over the top. Hailey seemed so pleased that her new school teacher had something special to say about her. They just loved Hailey. They say she is, and I quote "such a good listener and so well behaved, she's so good with the other kids she shares really well" Um are we talking about the same kid? I'd swear she needs a hearing aid.

They might be brats

I've long suspected that there is a distinct possiblity that might children might be turning out to be spoiled brats, despite the fact that we are far from rich. They have often given good reason to suspect but tonight they clinched the deal. Dave and I decided that we would take the kids out to Baskin Robbins for a treat tonight. We had buy one get one free coupons for sundaes and a slew of gift certificates so we thought it would be a fun surprise. Well it was a surprise all right, how badly our kids acted. It started when we informed the girls that we weren't going to be letting them pick out a flavor each but that we were going to get two "cups of shame" to share and a kid cone for Greg since no one likes to share with him. For those of you who don't know, in my family the "cup of shame" is that giant Reeses peanut butter cup sundae at Baskin Robbins, its plenty big enough to share. McKenzie and Hailey carried on, sometimes together, sometimes on individually, the entire time we were there about how unfair, mean, and horrible it all was that we were sharing. And also we are liars because we said they could each get their own sundae. Which we did not, I think our pulling in there implied that to them. As if my children carrying that their treat wasn't big enough was enough, we sat next to a table of little old ladies who I swear were snickering in their ice cream at my poor parenting skills and what brats my kids were being. I'm quite sure they were secretly chanting underneath their permed little heads for me to drag those girls out and spank them.
Lately my girls have been acting like entitled little princesses. They whine about every little chore, Kenzie's new favorite thing is to yell at me for making her do all the housework and telling me I'm lazy. I've had the you don't talk to your parents that way talk several times by the way. A month or two ago Hailey informed me that she was going to call the police because I was a mean mom and mean people go to jail. And the kids were all going to live with Grandma. She pulls that one back out regularly whenever things aren't working out for her, and I think she means it. I think in her mind I sometimes rank up there with the criminals.
I realize that things are a lot different than when we were all kids and I'd bet my life savings (ha, ha, ha) that we would have been very sorry if we acted this way. I'm doing the best I can, but I'm running out of answers. So if anybody has some advice, tips, or amazing new punishment or motivator please let me know. Because I think I've got the future Paris Hilton of the low rent apartments on my hands here.

Welcome to WWF wrestling

This afternoon while Greg and I were wrestling on the floor he pulled a move straight out of the WWF. I hear him say "You goin down!", raise his arms in the air and jump on me. Where does this kid come up with this stuff? I know he sees a lot of sports on tv but I'm pretty sure its not wrestling. Sometimes I wonder if boys have some sort of innate soundtrack running in their heads so they always know what kind of noise should with an action. I keep saying boys come with sound effects. Dinosaur noises when he eats or chases someone, boing noises when he's jumping, vrooming and sirens for the cars and of course lots of indecipherable growling. Quite different from little girls who make every toy into a mommy and kids.
Shortly after Greg's wrestling debut Hailey comes out of the bedroom in this funny crouch giving motivational species to an imaginary crowd. When I asked what was going on she turned her back to me and continued her little pep talk complete with yelling "you can do it!" Then she proceeded to make a series of strange maneuvers still in a her crouched position. Now Hailey is unusually strange but there's usually a reason somewhere. Turns out she'd been watching a football movie in the bedroom with Dave and had been so inspired that she felt the need to reenact it for me. Now I thought they broke the mold when they made Hailey, but apparently not as I met her predecessor a few days ago. I babysat my friends 6 year old daughter and watched as the two of them bounced through an amazing amount of activities in 2 hours without completing one (imagine how my apartment looked at the end of this). They had the same build, way of speaking, and liked the same toys and games. In very Hailey like fashion, they spent a fair amount of time following me around bugging me for sweets. When this kid found out there was chocolate in the house her eyes got big and she was practically salivating at the very thought. When I mentioned Hailey's knack for stealing candy in the morning, she started pressing me for details on how she accomplished this. I stopped giving them to her when I noticed she looked a little too eager and had a scary glint in her eyes. I really thought there couldn't possibly be another child like Ha, but I guess I was wrong. Oh the horror.

Getting Bald

Sitting in church Hailey noticed one of my hairs on her dress. She asked why my hair was on her and I told her that sometimes pieces of my hair fall out. She said "why are you getting bald like Baba?" After a good laugh I tried to explain how we just lose hair and it doesn't mean we're going bald. This led to a discussion of people we know who are obviously bald like uncle Scott and Baba. Then I mentioned that Da was losing his hair because he is going bald, she thought this was pretty funny then said very matter of factly "Oh because he's getting old like Baba."


Thanks "mama Nikki" ! Here's Gregger's new and improved big boy bed. Nikki made him a Cars blanket and pillow case after noticing that the poor child had a princess pillow case. Well he does have two big sisters and truthfully I don't always think about things like that. I just give him whatever with no thought of its a boy or girl thing. He loves race cars. When I'm writing something quickly he thinks I'm driving a race car and will try to take the pencil yelling "my wanna drive!"

All the kids in the fire truck at preschool graduation. I thought Greg had died and gone to heaven. He's still talking about the fire truck nonstop. Apparantly this is an important milestone in his life.

Kenzie in the fireman suit.

A probable glimpse into Hailey's teenage years right here. Its just a matter of time.

Miss Ana, Hailey, Miss Miriam and Miss Sara
We went down to Pullman so Hailey could attend graduation at her old preschool. She misses it so much down there. She still cries that she wants to go home to her old house. Poor Ha misses her friends so much.

Georgey, Malcolm, Hailey and Maddie after graduation.

One afternoon while I was busy Hailey thought it would be a good idea to glue these pom poms to her face. You never know with this kid.


So Greggers was quite convinced that Dave's birthday was his birthday. Very insistent on that actually. He just kept going on about it for days, every time he heard us talk about Dave's party he thought for sure we were talking about him. Naturally he insisted on a "ka-chow" party. So we took him to the party store and bought Cars party stuff and he hopped right up there to blow out those candles. Dave was a good sport and let Greg think the parties were all about him.



Hailey finally learned to pump on the swings. She's so proud of herself.


Greg likes to "swim" in the gravel at the playground structure by our apartment. I guess there's not much else for him to do since most of its broken and the manager doesn't seem to overly concerned about that. A few weeks ago the chain on a swing actually rusted through and broke while a kid was swinging the thing sat there for two weeks. Finally Hailey cut her finger on it and I took it down and trashed it. (Good thing for tetanus shots I guess) Krista may have been rude sometimes but at least she took care of things.

My little soccer stars

The girls are so true to their personalities in their sports. Hailey's a real go-getter, she gets right in there and isn't afraid to go for the ball. McKenzie hangs back by the goal doing this funny skipping back and forth thing. When the ball comes near her she moves away or freezes. Once I actually saw her hop on one foot, lifting the other leg away so her foot wouldn't accidentally kick the ball, cringing and closing her eyes. I with I had a picture, it was so funny I couldn't stop laughing. All the kids are thundering down the field to get the ball and there's Kenzie jumping and cringing away in fear of actually kicking the ball. My sister has a picture of her sitting in the field picking grass, while the ball is in play. Carrie and Scott had taken her to the game for me. They hear everyone yelling "tell that little girl to get up, the ball's still in play she's going to get run over." So they look around to see who people are talking about, only to realize that little girl is McKenzie and she's having a lovely time picking grass. She said she got bored. Ah my little athlet. Re-tying her shoe for maximum tightness, yes the game is of course going.

The skipping, hopping technique she uses to look like she's playing. Not to worry she'll make a run for it if the ball gets near.

Look out here comes the Ha!

She runs the whole time she's out on field

My handsome little boy

Hailey's took this herself

Greggers in his big boy bed. He's so good he never gets out unless he's following his idol Hailey. I was braced for months of fighting to get him to sleep. It might be worse when I move him out of the girls room, but for now he's being so good. I'm so lucky he's such a sweet little boy.

Mandy purse tagged me a while back and I just now got around to unloading the camera. So here it is the mega purse. I believe I got this free at Bath and Body Works, I carry it right now because its pretty much the largest bag I own. Usually its more bulging than this, sadly this is a slimmed down day for this sucker.
This is the bag I carry when I don't have to bring a small army with me. Obviously it doens't get much use.

So here's my ridiculous pile of stuff I feel the need to carry all over town. I think the added bulk is that I usually carry more than one diaper (that's not going to get me too far) and a burp cloth, since Connor saturates two a day at least.

Here's all the crazy crap I carry:

changing pad wipes diapers for both boys

gum mints Purell - 2!

bandaids lip gloss medical tape

wallet Tide stain pen book

kid leash spare binky bag mai tai

nursing cover baby hat receipts

old grocery list Kleenex pen

crayons decongestent Connors immunization record

notebook (with a mega long list of books I'll never have time to read)

Well I hope that was super exciting for all of you. Amazing that one person can lug so much stuff around everywhere they go. Those of you with children probably sympathize, while my siblings are probably all renewing their vows to not reproduce.

Kids are from Vulcan

In my quest to find out what really goes on in the early hours in my apartment, I've resorted to spying on my children. Every morning I usually awake to an impressive mess and a stash of candy wrappers in the trash can. Of course no one knows how any of it happened. I move anything resembling sweets to a new location most every night, always up high. So the other morning I happened to be awake early and hear Greg saying something about candy. I snuck around the corner and watched as Hailey and Gregory conducted what I can only assume is a regular morning ritual. Greg stood on the floor watching Hailey in excited anticipation as she used a stool to get up and stand on the counters, searching from cupboard to cupboard. She'd open each one and say "none here Greggers", then move on. When she found the stash she yelled "I found some Greggers" then sat right down on the counter and proceeded to hand out candy to both of them. I snuck after them as they took off down the hall to unwrap the candy in their bathroom, where the wrappers would be less obvious. At least they're putting some thought into it. When I turned the light on, I expected to see two shocked guilty looking faces look up at me with a look of sheer terror that they'd been caught. In fact I was looking forward to that moment, planning to relish it while they waited in fear for me to yell and dole out a punishment. Imagine my surprise when all I got was two calm looking children, looking for all the world like it didn't matter one bit that they were busted because really what was mom going to do? Augh why can't I be a scary mom. 20 years ago my brother and I would have gone white with fear in that situation. I wish I could yell at the kids like some big scary black lady on tv and whip the whole family into shape.
Contrast this to McKenzie who, that same night at dinner announces that she doesn't think we should have any dessert tonight because we've had dessert the past few nights and its really not healthy for us. Huh? Dave and I were speechless, then we laughed. Where did this kid come from anyway? We're actually not sure where any of them came from. Surely we didn't produce these weird offspring.

Yep I'm officially a soccer mom now. I drive a stinky, dirty minivan that needs more repairs than we can afford but I don't fix it because it technically still works, woo hoo. I have bad hair, mommy clothes, giant bags under my eyes and I spend 3 days a week parked out at a soccer field. That oh so special hidden food in the back, lost diapers, and wet soccer clothes aroma. I am constantly stuck listening to the Disney Princess cd (even Greggers demands the "rella" cd). So much for being the cool mom. I was going to drive a fresh smelling, freshly painted, souped up Yukon with a stereo to rival any gangster wanna be. I would only wear cool clothes and would never look like, well I do a lot these days. I would NEVER have bad hair. Actually I'm glad I don't have that stereo, I'm pretty sure the current cd choice wouldn't sound so great cranked up with the bass thumping. I switched my part to the other side to hide my few gray hairs. And today in the rearview mirror, I noticed I have rather noticable wrinkles in a few areas. How did this happen to us?