House Rules

I have sometimes contemplated developing a list of House Rules to post by the front door. The problem is that for the most part, they really only developed out of something Noah did, Noah started to do, Noah was planning to do, etc. Here are a few:

1. Don't start daddy's car.
2. Don't touch the tailpipe of cars.
3. Don't stand in the washing machine.
4. Don't touch poo poo.
5. Don't put pens in the water dispenser.
6. Don't put anything in the water dispenser.
7. Don't ride your bike with you Batman cape on. (we have a picture that shows what happens when you don't listen to this one).
8. Don't press the red button on mommy's key thing.
9. Don't stick any of brother's toys in your mouth.
10. Don't lick soap bubbles.

There's more. There's so many more.

This is the one that cropped up tonight however:

11. If you poo poo in the shower, you have to tell mommy but then you have to clean it up your self.

-Sheryl

I Remembered

I remembered what I had meant to post. It was one of those mom moments where you are absolutely so stunned that you don't know whether to holler or curse or to make a life moment of explaining the right thing to do for your children.

But after a long weekend on my own with Alan out of town, and worn out with the variety of screwiness that followed the weekend including a baseball game, team pictures, making a garden, covering for my boss, a cleaning project inside, a toaster oven failure, etc., I was VERY glad to end my Monday with picking my boys up. But it was stinking raining so here we were dashing to the car from school with still thinking about whether we had to negotiate baseball practice AND cub scouts or just scouts or neither depending on how tired we freaking were.

Before I could even put the car in drive Noah hollered he was thirsty. In my ultra-Seattle re-usable bag, I had a stash of juice boxes and fruit snacks and cracked open a fresh Minute Maid apple juice for him. As I was handing it back to him he started screaming like a mad man because HE WAS SPRAYING IT ALL OVER HIMSELF AND HIS BOOSTER SEAT WHILE I WAS STILL HOLDING IT. Some how it wasn't registering to him to just let go of the damn juice box. This wasn't the first time we've done the hand-the-juice-box-back-to-the-pre-schooler-in-the-car-seat-maneuver so I don't understand what the failure was here.

I used Joshua's sweatshirt jacket to clean it up and vowed to wash it when I got home tonight. Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that I left it in the car. Gimme a break... I carried in a backpack, computer bag, cute blue purse, Target shopping bag, stuffed leopard and a pizza in one shot. I'm not a super hero.

But that little incident isn't what really blistered me. It was about half a mile later at a red light where Joshua handed me his capped water bottle and asked me to "open it carefully". Now Joshua has OCD, is meticulous, is relentlessly careful and as Jill has often said, a 46-year-old man in a 7-year-old body. So telling me to be careful opening a container for fear of a tiny spray of random water that he doesn't want to get on his own flesh or clothes is not unusual.

BUT NO.

This sucker dumped at least half a cup of water or more all over me and my lap and my drivers seat. And all Joshua can say is "See. It does that every time! I don't get it."

I could only turn around and stare.

Really.

Couldn't he have just told me it spilled water every time he opened it?

We stopped at Target and bought Icees and popcorn and a new water bottle.

Remember when we didn't take water bottles to school and instead lined up behind the entire class to wait for the drinking fountain after gym just hoping we weren't behind somebody gross as if that made a difference in the amount of germs we were inhaling off the faucet?
-Sheryl

Why We Have 'Wrinkles'

****This was the post that I thought I lost.... dang blogspot for hiding things in edit mode...

Noah has a level of charm that I have never witnessed from another child on the planet. Random strangers- and best pals such as Jill- fall in love with him nearly instantly and there's no explaining it. Jill LEFT her glitter flip flops for him because that's what he wanted. She LEFT HER FLIP FLOPS FOR HIM. That's what he does. He causes people to be so charmed that they give him the shoes off their feet.

It was that charm that saves him when I'm in the middle of trying to watch his older brother's baseball game while I let him sit in the car and dink around hosing up every control, open every cd, dump out the glove compartment and deposit the contents of my purse throughout the entire square footage of my mom van. He is allowed to stay in the car with me no more than 10 yards away and he was told to not holler at me unless it was super duper important. Which of course as soon as Joshua goes up to bat Noah starts hollering. I bolt over to see what the issue is:
"MAMA! MAMA!! MAMMMMMA!"

"What Noahy?"

"Um. Um. Um... what happens when somebody only has one eye?"

I couldn't be mad. Because his little head was stuck through the window and it was an honest question and to him it was an emergency. And everyone within 49 feet was giggling.

But perhaps his best statement of the week was:

"Mama, I know why God gave me a wrinkle." I was definitely perplexed at where in the HELL my 32lbs 4-year-old had a wrinkle...

"Why Noahy?"

"He gave me a wrinkle so that I don't stick to the potty."

Wrinkle. Crack. We all have a word for it I suppose.

-Sheryl

Snoopy Band-Aids

First off... a writer is what I WANT to be... a mama? Yes I am. A senior supply chain analyst (it's a long winded code for being good at something that might be considered kind of boring- God has a funny way of messing with people!)? But yes I am. A writer? Yeah no. Not yet. I still dream for the dream that made nerdy wizards and vampires really awesome.

Jill might have sliced my finger a tad with child-proof-safety-scissors, but she did promise me a coveted Snoopy Band-Aid. And I made it home without her mother knowing. But either the all too guilty Jill fessed up or else her mother noticed our slack clean up job in the bathroom. Either way, Jill and her mother were at the door of my house pronto.

I don't know what you are feeling so guilty about though... I was the champ who got the brush snagged into your hair while playing beauty shop in the garage, I participated in the incident that blazed a hole through the finish on your desk with nail polish remover and I was standing at the top of the concrete front porch stairs while you were definitely at the bottom hollering. Tangled in your child-size lawn chair.

I suppose there was a good amount of mutual pain inflicted. We made it though.

I was your sucky maid of honor too don't forget- and you didn't suck- you warned me you were pregnant and phobic of people. I showed up at your wedding which was only the second wedding I had ever attended- and the last one had been when I was 11.

I'm sitting here typing this with Noah laying next to me in my bed. Wearing his Roo Halloween costume from 2006. And watching Pooh and the Heffalump. It's a happy place to be.

-Sheryl

Dodge Rock

Ok, so just like Sheryl, I'm trying to get this out with a small window of time. My 9 month old is entertaining herself in her "office", which is really just a corner of our living room crammed with her toys. I expect at any second for her to slam her hand in her play laptop and start screaming because she does this about 19 time a day. Also, I'm not even sure if I'm going to be any good at this blogging thing. At least, not as good as Sheryl. For Christ sake, shes a writer. I'm just a glorified ass wiper. But, I'll give it a whirl.

I guess this blog is going to be about us, our friendship and such. So, I guess i will start off by giving you a small history of our friendship. Sheryl and I have been friends for approximately 32 years. This is something that is not easy for me to admit, since I mostly tell people that I'm 26 when they ask my age. Frankly, 32 years later, I'm a tad shocked that Sheryl is still my friend. I mean, looking back now, I don't think I was always the best choice for a friend.

For example, there was the time one summer that I made up a game called "Dodge Rock". This entailed one person to sit is our wading pool and the other to stand outside of it and throw rocks at the person in the pool. The idea was for the person in the pool to swim back and forth and try to avoid getting pummeled by jagged, pointy rocks. I, of course got to be the rock thrower and Sheryl held the position of the dodger. Come on, who wouldn't want to play that game???

There was also the time I nearly amputated her finger with a pair of kiddie scissors. While she was bleeding profusely and crying, I was covering her mouth with my hand to muffle her cries so as not to alert any parental figures. It was of course purely accidental, not planned out like Dodge Rock. I'm not a complete psychopath.

After being such a great childhood friend to Sheryl, she asked me to be her maid of honor. I totally sucked at it (sorry again, Sheryl). In my defense, I was like 50 months preggers with my second kid and totally broke. Also, I was only 23 and didn't really get how the world of weddings worked. Like, planning a shower, bachelorette party....or at least helping the bride get ready on the big day. Nope, didn't do any of these. I rock!!!

Over the years we have grown apart and found our way back to each other a zillion times. I am lucky that there were enough good times in our friendship to overshadow Dodge Rock and the like, so she would still want to be my friend. You all know you want to be BFF's with me too. Come on, it'll only cost you a game of Dodge Rock. And maybe a pinkie toe.

~Jill

I Have 5 Minutes Before Dinner

I have 5 minutes before dinner to get this out. My pal Jill and I have had a friendship that has lasted over 30 years. This friendship endurance can happen for many people- except most people don't start their friendships when they are hardly 2.

One of the main things we have in common is that we've known each other forever- sort of like how you have family members that you love and care about and want to spend time with but if it wasn't for sharing some DNA it would have been hard for your paths to cross. Jill and I are that way.

Something that is similar for us is that we didn't grow up having a sister- Jill was an only child and I had two brothers and now I even have a step-sister and there are sister-in-laws and moms that stopped being moms and are friends. But Jill and I have hung on to us.

There is 2300 miles separating us, 5 kids between us and only 24 hours in a day. But we talk, email and now will blog about the laughable, happy and of course heinous parts of being mamas, daughters, wives, former wives, employees, grunts that do the laundry and heroes that find whatever got lost. We are human and love the funny parts about it!

My five minutes has been shot to hell and has also been compromised by breaking up a fight over blocks and fixing the DVD remote.

Cheers to the first of many posts from Jill or Sheryl.
-Sheryl