I Want to Be a Dad!

The other day Zippercow says to me “ It is too bad you can’t  be a Dad with a baby”. I of course look at him funny because I’m not sure where this story is leading but he continues on to explain that whenever he is alone at a store with the boys (or just Littlest Moo) people are SO nice to him. They open doors for him, talk nice to him and the children, offer to help him and sometimes people offer to let him go first in line. I have noticed this phenomenon as well and all I have to say is…

WTF!?!

If I am a couple feet away looking at something and Zippercow is with the kids at the cart or people can’t  see me they get all kinds of smiles and friendly head nods. Even Zippercow admits that people are not ever that nice to him in public if he does not have the children but you ad kids into the equation then you get lots of people being nice. The equation goes something like this

 Dad+child+toddler= He must be the nicest man ever and how sweet that he has the children so we MUST be extra nice and helpful!

Don’t get me wrong, I love that people treat my husband and children kindly when they go out, I mean look at them they are pretty darn adorable. My question is why do moms out with children not get the same in return????  I can recall multiple occasions when I had Little Moo, barely walking Niecey-Poo and infant Littlest Moo out and we struggled to get through doors with the big double stroller or worse they were not in the stroller which meant I had the carrier, toddler on one hip and Little Moo who still couldn’t get the door open trying to get through a door  and people would watch (it wasn’t that they didn’t notice, they watched like it was a sport! “That’s right Bill she had her opening and was about to score but she fumbled the baby  and dropped the toddler and it was all downhill from there, WHAT. A. SHAME” ) or instead of offering to help hold the door they would use the other set of doors or even worse, stand behind me and give a loud exasperated sigh because I was holding them up. Then while in the store if a child starts crying you get dirty looks as if you are the worst parent in the world. Guess what, sometimes you still have to buy groceries, even if the kids don’t want to. But when Zippercow does it he gets sympathetic looks and offers of assistance or stickers for the kids.  It isn’t I don’t encounter nice people, because there certainly are, but I have heard stories from Zippercow about how people fall all over themselves to be nice and helpful when he has the kids. Even he seems perplexed by it. I know there are plenty of Moms who experience the same things I do and some who do it with far more children but I’m curious what makes Dads so much different?

So now when Little Moo says he wants to be a daddy when he gets older I tell him, “Me too!”.

Better Late Than Never?

I wanted to post something sappy about Thanksgiving and about all the things I am thankful for ON Thanksgiving  but I was too busy getting ready to host Thanksgiving Dinner for thirteen that I was unable to tear myself from Pinterest the kitchen to write a post. The truth is I have a lot to be thankful for. Wonderful husband, kids, extended family, friends and….well I can go on and on but I mentioned the most important things.  Sadly I did not get any pictures of our wonderful Thanksgiving feast and the wonderful family that joined us. It does get difficult to cook and take pictures at the same time. I did get some pictures of my helpers the day before.

Handy little helper.

Handsy helper.

This year we tried a couple things to make this year’s dinner a little less stressful and share more with family.

First, we made a separate turkey the evening before so that I could package it up and have leftovers ready to go for all of our guests. I even labeled everyone’s bag with their name. Really wishing I took pictures.

Second I made mashed potatoes ahead of time. They were fabulous! You make them the night before and put them in a crock-pot (thank you Pinterest!) the day of. It allows them to stay warm during serving AND our entire house kitchen didn’t get all steamed up while company was over, SCORE!

Overall our dinner was wonderful and it was great to have everyone over. After all the hard work I had this to look forward to

Decadent Peanut Butter Pie, it is deliriously good (supposing you like peanut butter) and worth not busting into it the night before. It is making me drool just thinking about it.

We have so much to be thankful for but the best things are the little things, like leftover olives on your fingers! Oh, and the kids attached to them!

 

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving with loved ones! Christmas here we come!!!!

If You Could Turn Back the Hands of Time…

You’d get no sleep. One week into daylight savings and we are all a little cranky.  Such a difference an hour can make. I remember that once upon a time (pre children) Zippercow and I would relish the extra hour of sleep (and then some) on Sunday when we’d “fall back”. It was fabulous! Even now we are foolish and think with a little excitement “yay, and extra hour of sleep!” and we (again foolishly) assume the children will be peaceful in slumber because they too would want to enjoy some glorious extra sleep (see, I said foolish).

 

Instead the scene looks a little more like this

 

 

5:30 am and our whole house is awake. And lets be honest, not horribly happy about it. We even kept them up a later the night before assuming they might have issue with the time adjustment. Keeping them up later is a little trick we do because we hate ourselves. You see we think “smart parents, we don’t want to wake up at 7:00am on a Saturday morning so we’ll just keep them up 45 minutes to an hour later and they will sleep later!!!”

Never in the history of our children has this worked.

In fact in those cases they often go to bed later, wake up a half hour earlier than usual then are uber cranky the next day. Nailed it!

Sadly though this continued on through the week. We tried to adjust their bedtimes to get them back on schedule, but man they are persistent.  No sleep makes us cranky, them cranky and we count the minutes until bedtime so we can do it again tomorrow. We have hope that this week will be better. You see, despite our sarcastic, jaded, pessimistic attitudes, when it comes to our children we are hopeful and optimistic…

that they’ll sleep.

*even as I write this I am making some terrible spelling and grammatical errors (more than usual)  due to sleep deprivation. I’m sure there are still some there, but if you could only see what I fixed! I’m just as eloquent in person these days!

Fabulous Fall!

 

Green Bluff

Pumpkins of the orange variety and small child variety

We love fall and hope you are enjoying yours!

*So I was totally feeling guilty about not posting recently. I have multiple unfinished posts but I mostly wanted to share that we are keeping busy with wonderful fall traditions!*

Happy Fall!

Must Clean All the Things!!!

Alright, so maybe not ALL the things. Some of the things? Instead of going to Green Bluff and frolicking through pumpkins I convinced myself (and Zippercow)  that there were more important things we needed to do here.  I may have been right, but kind of wish I wasn’t. So after cleaning the house, garage and doing some fall planting I decided to tackle the puzzle cupboard.

Ugh.

The puzzle cupboard is a a small cupboard in our entertainment stand that has all of Little Moo’s puzzles. In all I think he has more than ten puzzles and I believe almost all the pieces (of the 25 piece puzzles) were in a giant pile mixed on the bottom shelf.  Just thinking about it makes me itch and he wasn’t ever putting any of them together because I think he too was overwhelmed by the chaos of it all. To top it off any time the cupboard was opened most of its contents would  spill onto the floor, much to Littlest Moos delight. So I decided to remedy that.

Thanks to one of my favorite blogs Thrifty Decor Chick  I think I have a great way to keep all the pieces off the floor and organized enough that Little Moo will actually find them useful.

I started with cutting out the picture from the front of the box.

Then I wrote the name of the puzzle, how many pieces it had (because on some of them the piece count got cut off) and then numbered it.

Then I put that number on all the pieces that belonged to that puzzle.

Lastly I put each puzzle with the front of its box  in its own quart size Ziploc and put them all in a plastic shoe box bin.

Tada!!!! No more hives for Mommy! The best part? Little Moo has already used the puzzles more in the last three days than he has in the last 6 months! Success!

I love the occasional productive day!

La LA la!

Little Moo asked me to put on some music, so I tore myself away from America’s Next Top Model (a very embarrassing addiction) and turned on some awesome 90’s music tunes. While the kids were eating lunch I was putting away the dishes and busting out in song. About a minute later Little Moo interrupted my dream of being a moody pop star with

“Mom, I don’t want you to sing”

everyone’s a critic.

I personally think I have a unique voice like Melanie Safka. You know, delightfully terrible! Sorry kiddos, that is a direct consequence of listening to music in our home, and I can promise it will only get worse as you get older. I learned from the best (your grandpa) and plan on carrying on the tradition of getting into the music and embarrassing  you to your very core. Good luck! We’ll laugh about it on the other side. Promise.

Winning!!!!

How do you measure success day-to-day? It is different each day. Some days getting everyone dressed and out the door is all I need, others having the house clean, pleasant children, folded laundry and dinner ready when my husband gets home is a successful day. Those days are pretty rare…okay so mostly nonexistent. My bar is pretty low actually, I will settle for children still alive.

 

Today I measured success in brushing the teeth of 15 rambunctious children 4 and under in less than 20 minutes at work then later in the evening (despite being hella tired) playing Candy Land with Little Moo.

Oh, then I brushed the teeth of Littlest Moo!