It Takes a Village

Yes people, it takes a village to get report cards written around here. Yesterday my wonderful babysitter offered to keep my kiddies all day so I could get a good jump on my task. I got all my comments written for Math and got started on the Language Arts comments. This afternoon, my brother-in-law (well and my sister) came and took my kiddies to a couple of hours of 'gymnastics', thus allowing me to further my cause (so to speak). It is now 9:00 pm and I am finished writing. I will still go back and review the comments over the next few days, but I am basically done (sigh of relief). I know that I write way too much in the comments section of the reports. I'm sure parents don't even read them, but I just can't help myself. Someday I'll learn to use the cut and paste comment bar to greater advantage, but for now.....who cares.....I'm done! Oh yes, I did a little report card math yesterday just to make myself feel better because it was taking so long. I figured out that if I spent 15 minutes on each child in each subject it would take me 11 hours to finish the reports. It took me about that. Oh and uh.....I'm not posting a picture of what I look like at this moment. I did shower today, but that's about it :-).

I really would like to add something more interesting (such as copious whining) to this post, but I simply cannot stand to spend another second on the computer tonight. Later.

Great News!

E. had her annual cardiologist appointment today. She was born with a small ventricular septal defect. Basically, that's a small hole in the dividing wall between the two lower chambers of her heart. It's never caused her any problems. She's always been in the 90th percentile for both height and weight (as you can see from one of the earliest pictures we have of her) and she's always been an active child.Anyway, her tests today showed and the doctor confirmed that the hole has closed over and E.'s heart is now perfectly normal! While we expected this to happen around her fourth birthday, I was still surprised. Wonderfully surprised.

On the way back from the city though, I suddenly woke-up doing 100 km/hr on the grass between the two highways. That was extremely scary and E and I are just lucky that we weren't approaching an overpass when I fell asleep at the wheel. My god it happened so fast and I was so completely asleep that I don't remember leaving the highway at all. I had enough sense not to panic and just manouvered us back up onto the highway and kept going. A good day almost ended very tragically, but all is well.

Poetry from E.

Here's E.'s version of Eenie-Meenie:

She has a new favourite video which contains a bunch of clips of various Disney songs. She LOVES it and would watch it 20 times a day if I'd let her. She loves to sing. She's been into Cinderella for a while, but now she knows most of the Disney princesses. Recently, on DH's facebook page, E. saw a picture of two little girls with Cinderella. Once I explained that those two little girls were at Disneyworld and had likely eaten with Cinderella, that was it. E. was on a mission to get to Disneyworld. Then, a couple of days later, she informed me that the other little girl at her dayhome was......wait for it......going to Disneyland! She was going to meet the princesses! 'Mom (that's what she calls me when she is very serious), I wanna go to Disneyland.' I can't believe I am willingly falling for all that marketing to kids. I want to go too just to see her face when she gets to eat lunch with Cinderella!

Losing My Mind

Ummm..... I haven't been stellar parent as of late. Ummm... I've been very frustrated, very often actually. You see, I can not leave my children (read mostly: child) unattended for more than 1 minute or 'things' happen.

You know what they say about things changing at the mark where the child has been with you as long as they've been in other care....it appears to be true. It was true for our daughter - she became much more relaxed and happy. It's true for J. as well - he's much more relaxed as well.....too relaxed for a single parent!

Anyway, when E. first came home, one of us had to be with her at all times or she would hurt herself. When J. came home one of us had to be with them every second or they would whale on each other (to put it mildly). I assumed however that there would be a point where I would be able to, oh I don't know, take a quick pee without having to clean up some disaster when I got back (spilled milk, juice, water, soup; broken glasses, plates, bowls; dumped water all over the floor because they filled the bathroom sink and splashed in it; toothpaste on the wall while I went to get a rinse cup; still in p.j.'s when the sibling got themselves dressed an hour ago; chips, raisins, cereal, (or whatever you can think of) all over the floor because they wanted more; etc; etc; etc). There was a brief, blissful period last month where I could actually run upstairs to grab my toothbrush as they ate breakfast and 'things' did not happen. Gone now....all gone.....gone.....gone.

And so, to return to my original point, I have not been a stellar mother these days. Ummm.... being alone, 5 O'clock mornings, parent/teacher conferences, the Febuary grumps at school (which means kids who are getting on each others' nerves = more conflicts), upcoming report cards and nothing for Valentine's are really not helping to calm my nerves. Anywho, I have been heard to utter the following phrase often enough that my son has now started to use it. Ummm......to be fair...... he's heard it aLOT more often than his sister over the past 2 weeks!

And yes, he knows what it means:

Yes, you see, when I have just spend my Sunday morning cleaning (during which time I've had to stop at least 15 times to 1. break up an argument; 2. check to see what they are up to; 3. talk to the peeps, Eli, Penguin, Cindrella, the prince or Super Why and/or 4. wipe various body parts (not my own) and then someone dumps half a container of APPLE JUICE on the freshly washed floor because they couldn't wait for one minute until mom could come and help them.....yes......then, I do truly feel like I'm going to LOSE MY MIND and I tell them!