I WAS Going to Title This Post.. AssHats..

But, I'm not.. I've just reached that frustration point of not being able to "fix" things and want to blame other people. I want to blame all the AssHats in the world for everything being broken, since I can't fix it. When, in reality, it's just broken and *they* really didn't break it (ok, except for the one person at the bank who really DID break it, but still).


So instead we shall focus on all the positive features:

Wee boy is almost 7!

The wee little guy there, isn't my baby anymore. But that certainly IS what they still do! (Mental note, take picture tomorrow morning of exact same pose while they are watching their show.)


We're having a "party" for him, assuming anyone shows up for it. This is where it gets complicated and screwy. He's been having massive panic attacks about "people". Bad, bad, bad panic attacks. All kinds of reasons - they may touch something and move it, they may look at something of his, someone may break something..Then he panics that no one will show up.  Well, it turns out only 1 family may show up out (assuming they don't get sick - which knowing our luck, they will)  of 9 we invited. I had 4 today alone say things like "Oh, sorry, such and such came up.." Well.. Ok.. I'm torn at this point, mostly because he's an uncommunicative little boy, at what to do. How to explain to little kid that literally EVERYONE had something better to do?

My self-esteem isn't so shotty that I'm worried about people suddenly don't like us, we're talked to all these people in the last weeks and have no reason to think that. I honestly think they have had things come up. It's old parental ideal to make things great for their kids. But, I'm not sure he even cares as long as *someone* shows up, he said he'd rather just have playdates later with anyone who can't come - cause he just doesn't care. Whether or not that's the uncommunicative boy talking - I just don't know.

Think Outside the Box.. Or.. Eating Witches.

You know you spend too much time around little kids when there is no  : BOX:  when you think of ideas. I was babysitting for a close friend the other night and the girls were talking about Saint Patricks Day and Leprechauns (all mythical creatures get a capitol in my grammar book, BTW). They had made a catcher for their naughty Leprechaun and came THIIIIIIISSS close to catching it.  As the conversation progressed, I realized I was going to have to explain to their parents that I *might* have given the kids new ideas for Leprechaun catchers. I did not come up with the originals, just improvements.. A nice floss trip wire with a laundry basket drop never hurt anything..

The younger of the 2 girls, as I was leaving their room from tucking them in, asks what I'm going to do with the Witches - should they show up. Having been horrified for a little while of the witch in The Wizard of Oz I went with a suitable age appropriate answer.  " I'm feeling a little bit snacky, I'm gonna catch the, and eat 'em." I had to explain how I would catch flying Witches (by the ankle of course), cook (roasted by the fire), and serve them (with a smidgen of cinnamon and sugar), but the wee girl was no long worried the witches were going to get her. I also told her that the flashlight the older girl has was a Witch Deflector Shield. Surely, not a flashlight so the older girl could read that book I just handed her.  I must admit I do love those two little girls almost as much as my own two, they're such great kids. 


I guess it sounds like I'm spinning a ton of tall tales for someone else's kids. And I am, in a way. But they're little kids. They're hearing the horrible news in Boston, Texas, and everywhere else and still having to deal with bullies, and horrible bad things. If I can make the Witches and Leprechauns go away while their parents are away for a much needed night out by a Witch night light and a tale of me eating them? Heck yeah! I do it for mine kids daily. I'll chase monsters away like this for as long as I can, because before too long - they won't go. They'll creep in and hide in the shadows and then stay and be real. They have psychologist, specialists, psychiatrists and every other specialist out there telling us how to help our kids. This is how I help mine. I chase the monsters that are HERE away. I can't do anything about Boston. My 6 and 8 year old just needs to know that bad people have and will do bad things and we will keep them safe with every thing there is. But worrying about it won't fix it. So, put up your Witch light and your Leprechaun catchers because it'll be ok.

An Ayslum!

Today has been absolutely insane! The highlights:

•  The Girl was systematically peeling her finger and toenails off at bedtime.  After telling her she "didn't have permission to do that", she stopped and fell almost instantly asleep. Huh??
• The Boy threw a FIT. Epic fit because the bread loaf (that HE tore previously) was not straight. He cried, screamed, stomped, yelled, and carried on until I took a knife to the same piece of bread and made the end straight. Same piece, same bread only smaller and straight suddenly became edible and perfectly fine. Huh??
• We found out and have fully grasped JUST how young the newest addition to the farm is. The newest little guy was "supposed" to be 8 ish weeks old and fully weaned and eating solid food great. He's maybe 6, not eating hard food well, and LOVE goat milk. We named him Adams. He's so cute though! It makes me so mad the irresponsible things people do because they're lazy. The people who gave him to us said they were going out of town that night, it's obvious they were just done with puppies. I feel really badly for the people who have no idea what to do with the other 11 puppies that these dumbasses gave out. 
• The Boy has a fairly important to get his eyes dilated tomorrow. He is horrified, compliments of his sister. So I've been trying to convince him he's gonna be a good boy, that it doesn't hurt, and it's really no big deal. Plus, if he's super good, he may get a prize and what would he want? He wants "5 pounds of ice cream."  Ok. I can probably work with that. It's actually really important we get him to cooperate with this appointment because of the previous findings of his eye socket/congenital defect issue. So. A large vat of ice cream to get what we need done. Heck yeah. I think I can do that.
• I ordered 12 guinea eggs. 12. TWELVE. Somehow, we have 32 in the incubator. This is after 2 broke. So there were 34. I ordered 12. How did 34 get here?? I STILL haven't figured that out! I double checked everything and I only ordered 12.  I so do not want even a 50% hatch rate with that many. I was aiming for like.. 4 guineas total. EEK! 

 He's so Fluffy!

Unwrapping and settling of the Guinea eggs.

Hey Look!

This may come out a bit awkward, I'm on the iPad - stealing Internet while the kids do Homeschool PE, but it seemed ideal since I had about 20 minutes of unused time (which never happens).

The other day a friend posted about a car wreck that killed the mom on site and injured the kids. She knew this woman and her daughter is friends with the kids. To make it more complicated, the driver of the other car knew the people too and they were all headed to school (or so this is my current understanding). Today,  I find myself having issues of what would happen if we ( as adults) just.. Died.   Instantly. Most don't. Most get that moment to say goodbye or whatever. What would happen to your kids? We have Wills that dictate who will *get* them, have life insurance. But the bigger: What would happen? Right now, neither of mine (even at 8 and almost 7) they can't remember to go to the bathroom before we leave the house or change their underwear daily.

Realistically, statistically, and logically this is a non-issue. There was probably something that happened causing such a tragic accident, but still. How do you balance the mortality of it with the logic of it?

Words

I hate words. Mostly, I hate not being able to USE my words the way I want to. Because I have some great words for people lately and I can't use any of them. I can even choose words that are "polite" to fill in the bad ones. Biting my tongue is one of the hardest things I have yet to learn to do sometimes. I just.. Can't.. Sometimes yet. Email helps because then I can edit my *tongue* to be more appropriate, but the words they just want to come out.

For example to our Realtor who screwed the pooch the last week of our house sale. He sent a "Survey of How I Did". Really? You send a survey 2 days after your screw the pooch? Why?

Or the spouse who goes over the top on how retched I am because he reads a comment on Facebook wrong. Ohh How Horrible I Am.. yeah. I'm pretty sure we all know *I* may not be the problem here. Even after I apologize he STILL tears into me? Right, pretty sure we know it's not me at that point. A simple "Hey. That comment hurt her feelings" would have induced such a more sympathetic response. When, in reality, the girl is just depressed. Really, really depressed. The attempt (and clearly failed here - I admit THAT) was that things COULD be worse and she really had no real reason to be down and about this particular issue (I was in a hurry and the kid just broke the other kid's nose - so proof reading would have been good I know but blood was splattering..). But it does clear up several other frequently complained about issues. I do love that about Facebook though. I just edit the settings and.. Viola. Gone. All gone. Issue resolved. I'm pretty sure she doesn't want me to explain to her why she has "family communication issues" (though it's pretty damned clear now) nor why she's depressed (though she really should go see someone about that). But If.. You are going to post things about Zombie Jesus on Easter. Get thicker skin. Really. Seriously. Thicker skin. Even *I* know not to do THAT.

Oh look. I want to rant without people making comments I don't like? Ohh look. I have a blog for that! If I don't like the comment I have a delete button.  *sigh* Oh wait. Facebook has that too.

Or how about what words do you use with your child when she literally bounces onto the other child's face and rebreaks his nose?? I used loud words. Really, really loud words. Mostly, I just put her in timeout until we got to Urgent Care and then made her clean up the blood that was all over the house. But still.


*sigh* This could also be called "The Angry Rant Post" I suppose. I'm mad at my kid (for the obvious indiscretion) , I'm mad at the other kid for not following directions and then being a little whiny bitch about it, I'm mad because I strongly suspect that the boy has more anxiety that we originally thought and am going to have to address that, I'm mad at the dipshit spouse for just being a dipshit instead of just normal - really who does that crap? (Oh wait my ex spouse did that shit.. Oh wait.. That's why he's an ex.. D'uh!), I'm mad I still have goats in my entryway, I'm mad I had to pay the taxes today, I'm mad we have this stupid cat in the shed that stinks to Holy Hell and back but C thinks he can "Save Him", heck. Right now I'm pissed I need to lose 10 pounds.

My Wee Boy!

So The boy and his infamous headaches has led us to a visit to the pediatric ophthalmologist. Turns out he is farsighted and "Only a little" colorblind. I'm not sure "only a little" is a technical term, but he CAN see most colors, just not.. all the colors, all the time together. Yeah, I have to claim that one. *Shrug* 


But, he did a fantastic job answering the questions! He almost never talks to anyone.

He's still getting used to them, but even admits he sees a LOT better with them on. Now if only he would stop trying to come up with reasons to take them off. They make his eye itchy, he needs to pee (what that has to do with eye wear????), he needs to take them off while he eats, he surely doesn't need to wear them while we snuggle... The list is fairly limitless so far.

Hopefully it'll just take him a few days to get used to and then we'll notice some difference in his headaches. We've got to get those managed somehow.. :(

Change!

So, ever since we moved in the middle of January (yes, I'm slow) our homeschooling has been progressing - albeit slowly - but needing a new routine and *some* kind of change. The Girl is no longer needing to go to therapy for 2 hours a week but we've added things like weekly swimming so our whole schedule has rearranged but we've never really evolved formally WITH it especially with the addition of the Farm. This week is going to be ugly, I admit it, but I'm going to attempt to introduce a more firm schedule. I *think* it will ease 2 wee people's antsy-ness as well as make us all more productive than "gee, what should be we doing".  I've left ample playtime in, as well as scheduled time in there for errands and doctor appointments and the extra travel time to and from these things. I hope anyhow. We'll see. I've got a few slightly larger projects that the kids want to do - but we keep not getting to - that hopefully we will get to this way.

The tentative basic daily schedule looks like this:

6:00-7:45  wake, breakfast, dress, meds (you know all that morning stuff)
7:45 - 8:30 Animal feeding and cage clean outs. I'm going to attempt to come up with a rotating mucking schedule for this too so we aren't cleaning all the rabbits, goats, ducks etc on the same day.
8:45 - 11:00 School. (With play breaks built in.)
11:00 - 12:00 Lunch
12:00 - 2:00 Errands or School Project. A baking project, building the educational K'nex, a geography project, a trip to Target or Sams.. Whatever.
2:00 - 4:00 Errands, School, Projects, Cleaning (like if company is coming the next day), free play is everything is already done, cooking projects, ect.
4:00 - 5:00 Bath, room clean time, play.
5:00 - 5:15 Animal feeding
5:30  (ish) Dinner
6:45 Meds, get ready for bed
7:00 Snuggles and bedtime (which usually doesn't actually start until 7:15 after they negotiate for being "good", but still).

I'm also starting printing off a school list for them so they can try to organize their own school better and not say "But I don't know what to dooooo". Cause they do. They just have to think about it and they get lazy.

So, we'll see this week how that works out. It could fail epically. Or it could work splendidly. Or it could fall somewhere in between. I never know.