Sweet Nautiness

Normally, my kids go to bed around 7 pm. Truth be told, it's because I am a light weight. 6:30 rolls around and I am about to loose my ever living mind. So, since the Captain was a baby, our kids have gone to bed at 7. You know, on nights that we don't have t-ball or one of the other thousand things we have going on.

Anyways, they went to bed late last night, and then the little ones didn't take a nap today, so when Brandon announced that he'd be playing tennis for the afternoon, I decided that I would put every one to bed at 6:30.

My plan was simple. I would bribe them with Sponge Bob. Unfortunately, I was to worn out to realize that what I was planning was all backwards. I made three shiny little faces promise that they would go strait to bed, and stay in bed, if I let them watch Sponge Bob. It was the perfect plan. Lots of snuggling, early bedtime, a relaxing evening. Right?

Wrong.

Because apparently, mommy is a sucker. The night quickly spiraled into a string of, "mommy, I just wanted to let you know my tummy hurts really bad." And of course, "There was this thing that happened at school today..." Because what mother punishes little boys for sneaking downstairs to tell about tummy aches and school happenings? My boys are so good at seeking out and exploiting my weak spots.

At 8 pm, I told them that I would cancel movie night if I saw one of their sweet faces again. 10 minutes later, I heard a bumping and thumping overhead, so I made a stealthy but silent run up the stairs to spy on them.

What did I see?

Three little boys, naked as jay-birds prancing like unicorns around their bedroom. Their little sister, who is always the first to sleep, is watching and clapping! She barely has enough room to sit in her crib, it is so full of blankets and pillows and stuffed animals that her brothers have thrown in.

The boys are separated, Lilly is rescued, and 5 minutes later Brandon walks through the front door.

"So did you have a relaxing night?" He asks, while Lilly is clapping for her daddy and blowing kisses at him.

"The Naked Leprechauns doing their Prancing Pony interpretative dance was a little weird, but other than that, it was a nice night." I reply.

I'm smiling on the inside too, the sweet taste of chocolate is still on my tongue, it's medicinal effects soothing my nerves. It was a good move; chocolate melts in a much more soothing way than the ice cream.

The Price of Raising a Genius

So, post could be called "when you know your youth has expired," or "How I got a $300 ticket for going 6 mph UNDER the speed limit" (it was entrapment I tell you!) But instead, I've kept the original title that I just happened to be brainstorming WHEN I got pulled over.

You see, it all started at 7:20 am. The four kids and I hopped into the van and headed off for school. Since we moved, our commute is now 30 minutes instead of 10. We dropped the Captain off at about 8, ran a fast errand, then dropped the Adventurer off at 9. I got back into the van, only to find that it was dead, and spent the next 45 minutes begging someone to give me a jump. Why do these things happen when Brandon is out of town?!?!

We got home at 10:00, played for two hours, and then left to pick up the Adventurer, who gets out of school at 12:30, exactly 2 hours before the Captain.

We went to the Library. We went to the grocery store. We got to the Captain's school early and waited.

Now why do I bother to tell a long story about my new 5.5 hours of commuting?

For the very simple reason that the Entertainer, my two-year-old who looks like a 4 year-old, and has a gigantic vocabulary and equally large cranium, is still very much two. There had been 5 hours of questions: "Mommy, what are those buttons on the stearing wheal?" "They are for the cruise control." "No, but what do they say?" And I go through the list: Accelerate, Resume, Cancel, On, Off, Cruice, Reset, some 40 million times over the course of 5 hours in the car that day. Over and over.

So while I was at the store, before we got the Captain, I grabbed a soda, so that I could make it home.

We got the Captain, climbed back into the van, loathing the fact that we had to be ready for a baseball game in two hours, with 4 cranky, sick kids.

I took the slowest, most direct path home, setting my stinking cruise control at 29 mph, in a 35, let the bubbly taste of sugar and caffeine sooth away the headache, tuned out more steering wheel questions, back-seat-quibbling, and the sound of a SCREAMING baby who had past her limit of car time somewhere around hour 4- and let the bubbly taste of sugar and caffeine carry me away to my happy place. Where I began to make a mental note to blog about the fact that my two-year-old, who will surely turn out to be a genius, had just cost me a nearly calorie-perfect day.

And then, that's when OUT OF NO WHERE, a cop stepped into the road, his stinking radar gun pointed RIGHT AT ME!

Apparently I driving responsibly in a school zone, for some IMAGINARY school that I don't even know if it really exists. Sure enough, there was a crossing guard hiding in the bushes, waiting to help the IMAGINARY school children across the road.

Stupid revenue-generating government programs. I can just imagine that conversation. "The state is in a budget short-fall, because we can't figure out how to count. What should we do to raise money?" "Ooo! Ooo! ME! I Know! We should set up imaginary school zones, have a bunch of cops hiding in a parking lot, and bust people who AREN'T REALLY SPEEDING! It'll be awesome!"

Sure, paying absorbant speeding fines will re-boot the economy. Ug.

Though I do have to say that I was really proud of Lilly. She continued screaming bloody murder when I was pulled over, and the entire time the guy was writing me the ticket. In the end, he decided that I was only going 9 mph over the IMAGINARY school speed limit, wich cut my ticket in half.

I hope he told his wife when he got home, and she made him sleep on the couch. Eeesh. I hope he hasn't been able to sleep all week, just thinking about the poor, haggared mother he wrote a giant ticket for, while he was trying to catch IMAGINARY speeders.

Though there is a part two to this... but that will have to wait, because I've only compleated 4.45 of my mandatory driving hours today, and the Captian might be a little offened if I don't show.

Hot Stuff

The Adventurer tells me on the way home from school today, "Mom, the mean girls were REALLY nice to me today."

"Oh buddy, I'm so glad!"

"Ya, they must think I'm handsome." He smiles and shrugs.

He's right- he is pretty handsome, and it is amazing how mean girls are suddenly nice, when they notice a handsome boy.

Maybe women are more shallow than we like to think we are...

Homework

The Captains Homework: Use your spelling words in a sentence. All was going well until we got to the word, "bottom."

His sentence was, "My bottom stinks."

"Hmm," I say between giggles, "Maybe you shouldn't write that."

"How about, 'I can touch my bottom?'"

"No, don't write about your bottom."

"How about, 'I can touch your bottom."

"Never mind." I say. "You can write about your stinky bottom. That's not to bad."

The View From My Mirror

The Captain has been having a hard time speaking kindly lately. (I promise this has a point, I'm not just tattling!) Anyways, it became enough of an issue that we sat down together to talk about it.

I read a wonderful book a couple years ago called "Don't Make Me Count to Three" by Ginger Plowman. (Thanks Aunt Tambra!) In her book, Plowman explains how Christian parents can speak scripture into the lives of their children. It is light and funny and an easy read; it is also very encouraging.

While I havn't even come close to remotly perfecting her technique, I have found it useful at times. So the Captain and I sat down and read Collosians 4:6, "Let your speach always be seasoned with grace." I thought the whole thing was going pretty well, especially since the only alternative I could think of was to yell at him for yelling at his brothers.

And then he looks at me and says, "But mommy, sometimes you speak mean to us."

I felt sick. Ginger defenantly did not discuse that in her book. After silently resolving to not start crying until after he was alseep, I apologized, and we agreed to encourage eachother.

Fastforward to this morning, when he had managed to loose his shoes again (it seems like they only get lost on school days), you would have seen me grouchily telling him to get his act together.

He turns around and says, "mommy, you arn't speaking with grace."

What I wanted to say was, "Darn it, I know I'm not! And you're not finding your shoes with grace either. How hard is it to put two shoes by the front door?!?!" Instead I swollowed hard and said, "You're right. I'm sorry." And then walked away as quickly as I could, because it stinks to get corrected. Especially when you know you are wrong.

As parents it is our job to corect and encourage our children. But being corrected myself reminded me how difficult it can be to hear corection, even when it is presented in a kind way. It gave me special insite into the minds of my little boys, who's worlds still revolve so much around mommy and daddy. How difficult for them to have a grouchy mommy, barking orders, and forgetting to demonstrate grace. No wonder the Captain was grouchy with his brothers.