Sibling rivalry

Someone asked me a couple weeks ago if my kids play well together. For the most part they kind of ignore each other until one has something the other one wants, or one takes something from the other. A few examples of some early sibling rivalry:

Ethan likes to pick at Emma but she doesn’t really care unless it entails him stealing something from her. We call him Swiper (for the non-Dora watching set that is the fox who steals Dora’s stuff, we have to say “Swiper, NO swiping” with our hand out in a stop sign when he comes on the screen). But the other day his efforts were futile. They were wrestling around on the floor and he sat on her chest. She was laughing her little butt off, and was not bothered by it at all. Fast forward about 10 minutes. He’s laying on the floor and she comes up and sits on HIS chest. He gets ticked and starts yelling, Mommy- help, mommy- Emma Mahkins!. He always uses her full name when he wants to get her in trouble. I told him that turnabout was fair play, and besides, he outweighs her.

This morning, both were on our bed watching Jojo, and I’m doing the dishes in the living room when I hear Emma yelling, then Ethan yelling, “Mommy, Emma Mahkins! Mommy, Mommy!” I walk in and he’s pointing at her diaper, which is unhooked on one side. I assume he did this in retaliation, as I see that she has swiped Lovey Bear. So I return Lovey Bear, close the diaper up and I’m done. Lovey bear and Bun Bun are off limits to the other sibling, as those are the most valued possessions in the house, and when they go missing, it’s an all out search effort to find them. Although it is cute for Ethan to come into the living room and say, with his hands out to the sides, palms up, “Mommy, where beah?” with the cutest confused look on his face.

Oh, and one more story for those of you who doubt the level of my WVU fan-ness, every time Ethan and Emma see the Flying WV on ANYTHING, they start yelling, GO GO GO! Hehe. I guess I rubbed off on them.

The saga of the night and AI

No pics today, sorry, but I do have a story to share.

So, last night about 7 pm I’m hanging with Michael, Jane (MIL), and the kids, attempting to convince the kids to get in the bath tub. All the sudden our doorbell rings, which is odd since most people just walk into our house who know us. Jane looks out the window and says, “It’s a cop!” So we’re like, oh, they must be looking for someone or something. Yeah, they were looking for MY HUSBAND.

You see, over a year ago he got a speeding ticket in Mercer County. He failed to pay it, claiming he “forgot,” which in his defense he was working at least 80 hours a week at the time. Anywho, come about April 2006, we get certified letters two days in a row threatening license suspension. He still keeps forgetting to fix it, and then the license gets suspended. Finally, after endless nagging by me, his mom, and my parents, he gets it taken care of, pays the reinstatement, etc. Fast forward to February 2007- I get a call at work from my mom telling me Michael and I each got a certified letter from the DMV saying that our licenses and his license plate were going to be suspended for no insurance. I call him immediately and start bitching him out. He says he already took care of all that, but then contacts the DMV who says that the insurance stuff and the license suspension stuff are two different departments and he had to contact each one to be sure it was all processed. He does this before the Feb. 28 deadline, so allegedly no licenses or license plates are suspended.

We hear no more about this til Mr. State Trooper comes to remove his plate last night. Now Trooper D was a super nice guy, and I totally think that he was going to “forget” he’d been there and come back today after Michael had straightened it out, til he calls the barracks and finds out that MICHAEL’S DRIVER’S LICENSE IS SUSPENDED. By this point Jane and I are ready to beat him. I TOLD him that DMV is slow and stupid and once his license got suspended it’s like pulling teeth to fix it. Hello, I worked there in college. You have to stay on them to be sure they pull the suspension off. So he takes the plate and Michael and I have to ride to work together. Thankfully nice Trooper D called to be sure MY license was valid. And it is. So there’s my saga for the night. Of course my kids are peeking over the baby gate and over the side of the couch at Mr. Trooper in the foyer. Nice. Oh, and did I mention the neighbors were outside having a party? We are officially rednecks.

On another note, I watched most of Idol last night and it was super good! I cried through like the whole thing and kept thinking, what is wrong with this world that some people have so much, yet others have nothing? I can’t even write about it, it makes me too sad. Think of the money we’re spending on this war, and how it could virtually eliminate things like hunger, AIDS spread in Africa, kids dying of diseases like malaria that are curable. I cannot imagine my kid dying of a completely preventable and curable disease because I don’t have access to a doctor. Crushing.

I wear my sunglasses...

So what is it with sunglasses that makes them a toddler obsession? Heaven forbid my kids wear their OWN sunglasses; no, they’d rather steal an adult’s. The ones in these pictures are from Alaina’s friend Chris. Unfortunately they are a nice pair of Oakleys as opposed to my cheapo Target ones that they generally put tiny little sticky fingerprints on. They did survive the visit, through some miracle. So now the kids, especially Emma, are back to stealing my sunglasses, which they then wear wherever we are, including in the car, outside, or at the local Shoney’s. The most embarrassing place Emma has donned my sunglasses? Oh, how about while the pastor was praying over the children at CHURCH. Nice. I’m sure people there are questioning my parenting skills. Sigh. She looks a bit like Nicole Ritchie in my sunglasses; should I send her to reform school when she turns 2?

New Look

Ok, I’m trying out a new look for the blog. I don’t 100% like this one but my other one wouldn’t let me put a title at the top. So I’m still in search. Leave comments as to suggested changes! If only I knew HTML…

The final Easter installment

Ok, here is the final installment of Easter pictures. Sadly these are the best I could get of them in their actual Easter attire. They were NOT in the “let’s take pictures” mood. You can definitely see that in the first one.


Here is Emma in her new game, let's jump off the couch!
Emma in her Easter Bonnet, that stayed on .45 seconds.
Ethan trying to open up his bath bubbles and pretend that's not what he's doing. (you might remember his proclivity for soap and shampoo).

More Easter...

So here are some more pictures from Easter. Someday I’ll have the pictures actually caught up to the present day, but bear with me. The first two are Ethan and Emma with Auntie Lala. We tried and tried to get pics of them together with her but they aren’t cooperative with together pictures anymore. I can never get them both looking at me, if I happen to manage to get them to sit long enough to actually take a picture.

The other two are pictures of the “indoor” Easter Egg hunt since Easter was freezing this year. They sort of “got it” but I’m not sure they knew they were supposed to be looking for eggs for the first 5 minutes, and by then a lot of the eggs were swiped by the older kids. We’re going to have to go into training next year starting on St. Patrick’s Day.

FINALLY....

I have moments when I curse the rain

Then complain when the sun's too hot

I look around at what everyone has

And I forget about all I've got

But I know I'm a lucky man

God's given me a pretty fair hand

Got a house and a piece of land

A few dollars in a coffee can

My old trucks still running good

My ticker's ticking like they say it should

I got supper in the oven, a good woman's loving

And one more day to be my little kid's dad

Lord, knows I'm a lucky man-

Montgomery Gentry

You know, I've realized that I spend way too much time focused on what I don't have or what I want, when I should be spending the time thanking God for what I actually do have. So I'm going to try to focus more on the good. I have a life a lot of people would want: good job making above average pay; a gainfully employed and sometimes overly ambitious husband; smart, healthy kids; a sometimes crazy but still supportive family; a mother in law I actually like; great friends who are as crazy as I am; a house; a car that runs good; a little extra money here and there for wants, not needs; a beach vacation this summer; a college fund for the kids. Yep, Lord knows I'm a lucky woman. (P.S. the full lyrics to this song can be found at http://www.elyrics.net/read/m/montgomery-gentry-lyrics/lucky-man-lyrics.html)

My brain was working on 7 out of 8 cylinders this morning, so I remembered the pictures from Easter! (And my sunglasses, although it was foggy, but I forgot my coat).

Anywho, here are some pics of us coloring eggs.

Emma decorating her egg with stickers
Ethan decorating his egg.
Emma deciding to taste her egg, then gagging because of the vinegar in the egg dye solution
Ethan attempting to hide that about 3 seconds after the egg was colored and decorated, he managed to crush it. I have a pic of the crushed egg but Blogger would only allow me 5 pics on here. I'll get to that one later.