Monday, September 30, 2013

Seven Quick Takes

1. Last night's exchange:
 Me: John, time for dinner!
John: Is it sausage, spaghetti, or ribs?

2. I woke up the other night and do you know how I felt? Cold. Blessedly, wonderfully, refreshingly cold! I want to stand in the middle of my backyard and shiver. Not at the moment because I think it's about 81, but in an hour or two? Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!

3. So we're at about step thirteen of the big room reshuffle. On Tuesday, as I winded my way through boxes, I said to my husband, "This better be worth it."

On Wednesday, I could do no more than stare vacantly at boxes that assuredly were not going to unload themselves on account of my staring contest. And had I averted my gaze for just a split second, I'm convinced the buggers would have multiplied with abandon.

On Thursday, I declared that God is a God of order, and this effort was in dire need of divine intervention. You know what? I made a dent. A fairly big dent. The dent would have been even bigger had I not looked at two giant boxes and thought that John and Ainsley would have a ball making airplanes out of them.
Spy Kids

4. Once school starts you forget summer ever was. Weird, but true. It's all going swell. My least favorite aspect is making lunches. Yesterday the boys came home with eight grade lunch slips, and I swear I would have paid $12.99 per person for hot dogs and chips as long as I wasn't the poor soul who had to pack them.

5. We have embarked on a new wake-up procedure for the unidentified boy who requires a crowbar and a foghorn to rouse him from his beauty sleep. I come in the room, say good morning, and turn on a fairly dim light. They have requested that I not sing --  seems Good Morning, Starshine from Hair just wasn't speaking their love language. I have complied. No singing. Fifteen minutes later I come in and say, "It's time to get up." That's it. We leave at 8:15, ready or not. On Wednesday I think unidentified child assumed a vertical posture at 7:59. Darned if that boy wasn't in the car by 8:15. (And I found that supremely annoying, for some reason.)

6. So we did have one bad morning. If I were to translate this into a percentage, I think we're heading for first honors. To make amends, I ran to Checkers and bought the boy some greasy concoction topped with bacon. This, as I've mentioned before, is unquestionably speaking his love language. He may develop cholesterol problems, but at least he'll know his Mama loves him.

7. My friend Rachel doesn't shop at Goodwill for fear that she will bring home something she has previously worked hard to get out of her house. I see her point. I had lugged away a ton of stuff we are donating to our Fall Fare. The very next day Dave and John headed to the Fall Fare storage unit to do a little work. Home again, home again John came with my previously (and deviously) donated junk.

Today I popped by our community clothing closet to find a few uniform items for the boys. I coaxed the guys into trying things on and immediately returned the ones that didn't fit because, I promise you, all button-down shirts look alike, and I would have ended up repeatedly washing, drying, and folding items that never fit to begin with and were never once worn.

Head over to Jen's to add your Quick Takes.

3 comments:

Kris said...

Oh. #5 and #6 - that child SO lives in my house!! He just started back to regular school after 7 blissful years of homeschooling, which allowed him to sleep until 8 or 8:30 every morning - although he would still maintain that is WAY too early to get up. Now, he's rousing himself at 6:15 in the morning, because his older brother drives them to school, and the older one is extremely punctual and has threatened to leave his brother if he's not ready at the appointed time. So far, they are managing to get out of the house "on time". But the early mornings are KILLING him. Killing him, I tell you!

Unknown said...

So Kris, I'm curious. Did your sleepyhead sleep well as a baby. Mine had sleep issues that began, oh, twenty-four hours after delivery.

Kris said...

I went back in his baby book to look...! He slept through the night for a two month stretch when he was 4 and 5 months old and then was a horrible sleeper again until he was almost 1. After that, he was fine. He was a fairly early riser (as all mine are) when he was younger, but once he got to be 4th or 5th grade, he became a very late sleeper. He just needs a LOT of sleep. He would stay in bed until 11:00 in the morning if I would let him. I do remember (because he slept with us for the first couple of months) that he was a very restless sleeper and I moved him into his own room fairly early as a baby because he just didn't sleep restfully next to me.