Not So SAHM

A Tale of Two Sisters

God has a great sense of humor and never lets me get too prideful. Case in point: my two daughters are pretty much as different as they could be. The only thing they share is the roof over their heads and their looks. Our love too, of course, but that’s a given. I may have had a haughty attitude about raising kids after having the first one, but God has thoroughly put me in my place with the second.

They both have positives and negatives about their personalities and attitudes but I’m not going into that here. They both do things that make us laugh and I’m going to share the latest with you.

Earlier this week Reagan had all of the kid DVDs out on the floor arranging them in some specific order, probably known only to her. Ashlyn wanted to help and so naturally she started rearranging them. This didn’t go very well with Reagan and so she began to get on to Ash. Ashlyn picked up a DVD case and just started beating Reagan on top of the head with it. Remember she’s five years younger, so there wasn’t a whole lot of hurting going on, but it’s the thought that counts. One of those guttural mother noises came from me, yelling for her to stop. Du was closer so he quickly removed her from the situation to impart “wisdom” to the child. Reagan and I actually began laughing, partly in disbelief and partly because, well, it was funny.

Now it Reagan’s turn. These two stories aren’t opposites of each other like they probably should be to go along with the post title and the intro description. They’re just recent happenings of what we have to deal with around here.

A couple days later it was so beautiful and warm that we decided to have dinner outside. We quickly hauled everything out to the patio that we would need: plates, forks, knives, cups, napkins, food, salt, pepper, pickles, apple sauce, whatever. There was one thing we forgot.

We were almost done with our meal, and it was starting to darken outside. Reagan asked to go inside to get some dessert. She went in, came back out and then had to go back in again for something. Only this time…she couldn’t open the door. She had locked it on her way out for reasons that even she could not explain. There are two other doors to the house but if you know my husband then you can already guess what I’m about to write. They were both locked down like Fort Knox. If we were going to be in the backyard then there’s no way he was going to let the front be vulnerable to attack. And the one thing we had forgotten to bring was the key. Really, why would we need it when we’re just going to be on the back patio?

Our MacGyver skills surfaced somewhere from the deep. Thank God (I really am thanking Him) we had windows open because of the beautiful weather. This meant that we wouldn’t have to break any glass. Let’s just say a fork or a knife isn’t the best way to pry off a screen, but they’ll work when that’s all you’ve got…and when you don’t want to use them to just shred the stupid screen to pieces.

We weren’t upset with Reagan. We laughed at the situation, kind of, because she didn’t mean to lock us out. However, I don’t think we would have been laughing had we needed to break a window to regain entry into our own house. She kept saying, “I don’t know why I locked the door!” “I don’t know why I locked it when I came out.” I do sweetie. It’s because you have your father as your father.

Such are the days around here with two sisters doing their best to keep us young and quick minded.

P.S. Do you play along with Best Posts of the Week? It’s my other blog that highlights bloggers’ best posts of the current week. If you don’t know what I’m talking about head on over there. Submit to me the link to your best post of this week and I’ll add it to the list that will be published tomorrow (Saturday). It’s lots of fun and the post topics vary from one end of the spectrum to the other. Thanks!

Hmm….

Is it funny to anyone else that Obama signed the reversal of the stem cell bill with plenty of media and pomp and circumstance, but the spending bill–with over 8,000 earmarks, which he opposed earmarks while campaigning–he signed behind closed doors?

Hmm…just making a comparison.

Daddy’s way…

This is what happens when Daddy takes the girls out for a day of running errands:

The Girl Scout troop leader talks to him about the book “Your Changing Body” that she got for her little girl. Including the terms “tampons” and “big changes”.
The girls drop acorns down their dresses and giggle all while in a school hallway where men are still trying to write their papers.
Lots of gravel and rock play.
While waiting for an oil change Daddy tells the girls they can climb all over the inside of the truck. And they both end up climbing on him.
At GNC on of our daughters went around the whole store trying to open all the bottles while Daddy was trying to make informed decisions about which vitamins to buy.
At GNC the same daughter got some more practice improving her kleptomania by shoving all of the counter crap into the shopping bag.
Daddy pushed one of them in the swing so hard she flew out of it.
Daddy almost drove away from the playground without one of our daughters. She wouldn’t totally believe that he never meant to leave her she just wouldn’t get into the car already.
One of our daughters didn’t have toilet paper at the gas station so…Daddy won’t let me finish that story.

Daddy, welcome to a day in the life.

Bliss

Listening to Silence

The sun is shining,
The windows are open,
It’s warm outside.

The birds are chirping,
Other than that…no noise.
The kids are gone.

I’m relaxing.
Internet time.
Shopping time?
Me time.
The kids are gone.

I may sew,
I may watch tv,
I may read blogs.

Hubby has the kids until dinner.
He’s the man of the hour.
Because he’s awesome,
The kids are gone.

Over bitter

Or Craptastic* Is Not Cool So Get Your Panties Out Of A Wad

Have you noticed that criticalness is really popular these days? It’s actually more than just being critical; it’s the whole glass half empty option that has a hold on too many people. Whether it’s sarcasm (which I admit I use to its fullest…just not all the time and not over the top), bitterness, grumpiness or just plain unhappiness, we’re much more comfortable with people with bad attitudes than people who portray some sense of happiness. I’ve seen it in person and in every conceivable media outlet. People laugh at the snarky one and want to throw darts at the perky one.

I’m over it. And here’s where I get a little snarky myself. (And I really don’t mean to be talking to anyone in particular …if you read yourself in this then there might be some work that needs to be done, but I’m pointing no fingers. Besides, the people I’d need to point my fingers at don’t read this blog.) I don’t care about your bad attitude or how funny you are while expressing it. Get over yourself and your downer ways. Ahem, really positive there Vicki, I know! Here comes the bright side…

I believe that thoughts can affect attitude, which can affect a person’s whole outlook on life. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone involved in your life if you’d look on the bright side of things, even just once in a while? I’ve found that this takes a while to get used to doing. I’ll probably never be perfect at it, but I am getting good. And my life will still be tough and have its hard moments (and to be sure I’ll blog about them with sarcasm abound), but I’m not going to constantly focus on the negative and I’m not going to become that bitter old crotchety woman that does nothing but bitch and moan. And if you’re nothing but critical now you’ve got nowhere to head except crotchety.

Here’s a good exercise. When you catch yourself being overly critical or sarcastic or moany then stop and think of something good to say about the situation you’re griping about. The people around you will be glad you’re doing this. Your friends, if you have any, will like you so much more. Unless they’re downers themselves and you all sit around having pity parties.

Just my two cents on one way to make it through life as we know it without making your own life as craptastic as you can. And we’re going to need as much positive thinking as we can muster with what’s being thrown at us… ahhh, getting down a little there. And now for something positive. I love stimuli…and foci and cacti and lots of words that end in “i”. See? That wasn’t so hard to do.

*Craptastic: crappy +fantastic = the idea that something is crappy but people should be proud of you or pity you or just focus on you darn it(!) because of it.

P.S. I’m sure I’ll regret posting this as my superlatives usually end up coming back to bite me in the butt. I’ll be a bitter hag next week for sure.

Matchy-matchy

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on the sewing machine. I made the girls’ Christmas dresses and haven’t looked at the sewing machine since. Recently I started getting the itch to sew again, and I’ve got some cute fabric just sitting around. I had wanted to use it for a different purpose, but don’t think that will ever happen, so I re-purposed the fabric into these:

My embroidery machine was fixed recently as well. I had to go to Birmingham to get that done, but it was only $40 to actually fix it when the guy down here charged me close to $60 to fix one part but not the whole problem. Hmm.

These are pillowcase dresses, or something loosely associated with such. They were not originally pillowcases and are so much cuter. I lined them with a light material because I don’t like seeing the back of fabric on the inside of their clothes. Actually, I was afraid the dresses would be too light (as in not heavy) if I didn’t line them.

All in all both dresses took about 3 to 3.5 hours to make total (not each!). The cutting of the lining and fabric probably took the longest. I didn’t even follow a pattern, these dresses started out as rectangles of fabric. If you’re wanting to try sewing for your daughter then I recommend a pillowcase dress. I should have taken step-by-step pictures of the process.

I haven’t gotten a picture of Reagan in her dress because I just finished it. And you can thank one of the kids for smudging up the camera while she runs all over the house taking umpteen pictures of the floor and the tv.

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If you feel so inclined will you lift up a prayer for this little fellow:

Eli’s parents are missionaries in Hungary. Eli has a bad infection in his ear and they’re going to do surgery on his thrombosis to take out the infected part at 9am Hungarian time on the 5th. That’s six hours ahead of U.S. Eastern. Whether you’re reading this before or after the surgery has taken place that whole family could use your prayers. Thanks!