Pitcher, Princess and Prankster all have C’s in various classes. This is not allowed at our house. Let’s not debate whether or not C’s being allowed is silly. The point is, they aren’t. So Bucket and I have instituted a new rule. We call it “Study Hour,” cause we’re not very creative. Every night, for the hour before bedtime, all three of them are to sit at the kitchen table and study the subject in which they have a C.

Tonight, the Study Hour was implemented. I have been groused at, talked about behind my back and blatantly ignored. But they are still sitting there. You would think I had pulled out every hair on their heads with tweezers.

I have watched Princess pretend to study while playing on her cell phone. I have seen Pitcher flip through the pages of his Spanish book with a blank stare. I have seen Prankster color new designs on his binder. I have seen very little actual studying.

One thing I have learned in this Crazykidfamily is that I must stay the course. Some days it’s more difficult than others, but it almost always pays off when I stick with the original plan.

Every day after work I drive downtown and pick my mom up from work and Monkeyboy up from day care. Then I take mom home and Monkeyboy and I head home. Occasionally, Monkeyboy asks to stay at mom’s house. And more often than not, I say no. But about twice a month I say yes. Tonight was going to be a “no.” But before I could answer him he looked at me with those big blue eyes and said, “Mommy, I’ll be a very good boy.” How am I supposed to say no to that?

Today is my thirtieth birthday (Even though my blog insists it is tomorrow, it is actually shortly before midnight on the 29th). The big 3-0. Middle age?? I’m actually feeling very zen about it at the moment. Tonight I went to an Indianapolis Indians game with Bucket, Pitcher, Prankster, and Princess. Monkeyboy stayed at my mom’s house. The game was over three hours long, but I saw at least three bats break, I saw bases stolen and all kinds of good baseball action. Also, we were the “Hoosier Lottery Lucky Row,” so we got twenty free scratch off tickets. (We haven’t scratched them yet, be assured that you will know if I win thousands.) After the game, I had to go on the field to accept an award for the company I work for, which is one of the sponsors of the Indians. All in all, a good night. I did miss my monkeyboy though. However, the kids in the seats in front of us, both of whom had to be around 2, assured me that monkeyboy would not have had the best time. Toddlers just don’t mix with long professional baseball games. Another child in the crowd, who marched around with a popcorn bucket on his head and using an empty beer bottle as a pretend microphone, was much more entertaining.

Wow, I have been gone for sooooo long. I started a new job in May, and I can’t get to my blog there. We never had a computer at home until, well, tonight. I am so glad to be back!

Here are some updates on the Crazykidfamily:

1. We are married! It was a fun reception, a lovely ceremony and I am still so excited to be married to the love of my life!

2. Prankster is now in band. He plays saxophone. Well, he will, once he gets his instrument. This will challenge my patience as they have to practice every night.

3. Bucket and I signed up for Weight Watchers. This is day 4. I’ll let you know how it goes. We paid for three months, so that will serve as our trial period.

4. Monkeyboy is at least mostly potty-trained. He is far from a master, but he’s at least a skilled apprentice.

5. Pitcher has announced that his goal is to get a girlfriend this school year. Insert your own joke here.

6. Princess arrived at the first day of school to discover none of her friends are on her “team.” Drama, drama, drama.

Okay, that’s the update. Tomorrow we will get back into the swing of things!

Monkeyboy was stricken last week with a pretty bad case of MRSA. This is a form of staph infection that is extremely difficult to get rid of. They actually talked about taking my baby into surgery to cut the infection out. Luckily, it didn’t come to that. He still isn’t completely healed, but he’s doing much better.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that this illness happened during my first week on the new job. I have a history. I started my last job straight from maternity leave. The deal I had with my then-husband was that I would get up with the baby all through my maternity leave if he would do it the first week of going back to work. Then we were to alternate. Naturally, he came down with some kind of plague the first week I went back to work, so not only did I get to get up with a baby at least twice a night, I also got to take care of a whiny sick man-child. First weeks aren’t so good for me. The second week has been better, thankfully.

Last night all children were asleep when I fell asleep reading a book. A couple of hours later, Prankster came in and told me he didn’t feel good. WIth my eyes still closed, I felt his head, determined he had no fever and he laid down. I was too tired to object. Prankster, you should know, is a cuddler when he’s asleep. He has a need to have two or three body parts physically on top of another person. And he sleeps like the dead, so he has no knowledge of it when he elbows or knees you. (And Prankster is very pointy because he’s so skinny…it’s a miracle I have both of my eyes this morning) I pity any future wife out there and recommend separate beds.

With Prankster in the bed, I got very little sleep. Bucket came home in the wee hours of morning and climbed into bed. He isn’t a bad sleeper, but he takes up a lot of room, and now all three of us were squeezed into the queen-sized bed. Despite my best efforts, Prankster refused to cuddle with Bucket, which meant the elbows and knees kept coming my way. At this point I had three hours until I had to get up. I tried to snuggle in and make the best of it.

An hour later, Monkeyboy came in and climbed into the bed. For a while, he was literally laying on top of Prankster, cause no matter what else is going on, next to me is HIS spot (just ask him). So, the way it worked out was that Bucket got his normal half the bed while Prankster, Monkeyboy and I squeezed onto my half. Monkeyboy pulls your hair while he sleeps, and has to have both his feet on my leg for some reason.

I laid there and tried to enjoy it. After all, in a couple of years none of them will be interested in snuggling with me and I’ll miss it. Eventually, Pitcher came in to say goodbye before he got on the bus. He took one look at the bed and burst out laughing.

Shortly after that I was literally kicked out of the bed. Instead of fighting it, I just got up and got dressed.

Last night Pitcher and Princess were both sick. I mean scratchy voice, achy body, runny nose, headache, think they’re dying kind of sick. And I felt bad for them. It was a long night. Pitcher stayed home from school today, but Princess decided to try to tough it out. This surprises no one that knows these children.

While trying to tend to the sickies, Monkeyboy was having what we’ll call a “challenging” night. He was rebellious and whiney and at times even mean. And yes, a 3-year-old absolutely can be mean sometimes. But what really broke my heart was when he looked at Pitcher and Princess and “Come on guys, let’s go play pillow fight” and headed up the stairs, expecting them to follow him. Pitcher and Princess, who normally would delight in playing with Monkeyboy, sat on the couch, defeated by the fact that they had zero energy. Monkeyboy did not understand what the problem was.

Prankster got home from practice pretty late and once I put on a Disney movie, Prankster and Monkeyboy were finally content to watch that instead of bouncing off walls.

Today will be the longest day of the week for me, literally. Somehow I didn’t manage to escape the last board meeting I’ll have to attend at this job, AND I have to go do a school presentation tonight. Darn me and my sense of responsibility!! From here on out though, it will be smooth sailing.

Last night was pretty mellow for us. None of the kids had any activities, so we were all just hanging out at home. Prankster and Monkeyboy were playing in the living room, running circles around each other and making me nervous. I was so sure someone was going to get hurt. But I didn’t stop the madness because Prankster and Monkeyboy have a somewhat strained relationship. They’ve had a hard time getting close to one another for some reason. They were having so much fun, I decided I needed to just leave them alone and see what happened. Here’s the miracle: nothing bad happened. They played, they laughed, they had popsicles together and they collapsed on the living room floor to watch a Disney movie together. It was a bond like I have never witnessed between them.

Of course, nothing ever stays that mellow in the crazykidhouse. Because of that, after the Disney movie Prankster decided to look for a snack. He opened the pantry door on his foot and now one toe is pretty swollen and purple. The very sad thing is, with that being the only mishap last night, I consider it one of our most peaceful and uneventful nights ever.

Sometimes my tongue gets away before my mouth has thought it out. I am really not an overly mean person in general (at least I don’t think I am), but we all have our limits.

Yesterday, I had one of the worst headaches I have ever had in my life, accompanied by a fever of 103. My dad was coming to get Monkeyboy, and I was praying he would get there before Monkeyboy woke up, because I just wasn’t sure I could manage him.

Pitcher had missed the bus AGAIN. This is an extremely annoying habit he has that makes me want to make him walk to school so he’ll appreciate how lucky he is to have a bus to ride. But I digress. Anyway, Pitcher and Prankster were downstairs waiting until Prankster’s bus came and Pitcher’s ride came to pick him up. I was upstairs in the fetal position, occupied by the aforementioned prayers. For about twenty minutes I heard Pitcher yelling, very loudly, “Get, dog!” repeatedly.

Now, let me take a moment to tell you about my dog. She’s very, um, food motivated. She stands very, very close to you when y ou eat, and it is annoying. I’m not defending her. But she is about 9 years old with a heart murmur. I’m not going to spend too much time and energy attempting to reform this behavior. Also, she has no concept of the command “Get.”

After listening to the yelling pierce my skull like shards of glass for a few, I picked up my cell phone and called Pitcher (this is an annoying habit we have in my house, we call each other when we’re too lazy to get up). I asked him what the problem was. He told me he doesn’t like it when the dog “crowds him” while he eats.

Please keep my temperature and physical health of the moment in mind while I tell you my response was, “Then go in another room and shut the door, but shut the **** up.”

Whoops.

Yesterday Prankster had a double-header. I worked yesterday, so I showed up towards the end of the first game. Bucket, Princess and Monkeyboy were all there. Pitcher was off trying to find some helpless flightless birds to shoot. Turkeys, in this instance.

Anyway, as Monkeyboy is only 3, his reaction to being at the Little League field all day is unpredictable. Sometimes it is all I can do to keep him from running out onto the field and jumping for the fly balls. Other times he wants absolutely nothing to do with it. Yesterday he only got a half an hour nap, which is about a quarter of the norm, so he was particularly charming. At the Little League, there is a pile of brick dust in the middle of all the diamonds. For those of you with no baseball/softball experience, brick dust is just what it sounds like. It is basically red dirt. The thing that causes it to be a magnet for children is that it is extremely difficult to get out of clothes. So you can imagine what taking this stain-maker and making a small mountain out of it means. That’s right, my darling children feel a magnetic pull to this pile-o-dirt so strong it is physically impossible to resist.

Because Monkeyboy was already having a rough day yesterday, I let him go play on the pile with several other random children. I saw him do the following in roughly a thirty-minute timespan:

1. Walk up to a little girl that had a shovel and take the shovel away from her.

2. Use said shovel to get some dirt and throw it in another little boy’s hair.

3. Walk up to the SAME LITTLE BOY and take the candy right out of his hand!!

I really believe it is our fault. You see, he’s three and the next youngest in our house is 11. So typically if he wants to have something that belongs to someone else, it’s okay. Cause he just doesn’t want the same things the bigger kids want so it’s no big deal. In fact, the big kids LIKE letting him have stuff and playing with him. But I guess I just never realized that he truly believes EVERYTHING is HIS.

Oh, and one more note on Monkeyboy. Last night we were outside and he was riding his bike and I told him we had to go in because it was getting dark. He said, “No Mommy, don’t make it get dark.” I told him that God is who makes it get dark (Guess I’m always looking for someone to share the blame with). He started crying and saying, “No, God doesn’t want to make it dark.” I had no response for that.