Beating The Heat...Or...Hiding From It

It is SO hot these last few days! OUCH!

With small children I've found that water is often the solution for heat.

I've literally hosed my children down (the older ones) and let them run around outside all wet and surprisingly, they've cooled down! The water parks are too hot, but the backyard seems to be sheltered from trees just enough to provide a chill while wet.

I also broke down and did a bad-mommy move...microwavable meals...so that I don't have to turn the oven on in the heat! I did buy healthier kinds of these meals to try to make up for the fact that they're not getting home cooked meals, they love them!

Who would have thought the key to getting your children to eat veggies was to throw them into spaghetti!

I'm taking a few notes from these quick meal companies!

Being An Evil Stepmother

Everyone is so mad about the evil stepmom in the Disney movies.

No one talks about it, because we're always tuselesshe big meannies.

It's HARD!!

I have an 11 year old stepdaughter, and to make her life miserable is really difficult for me, I mean, I sit up HOURS every night thinking of ways I can ruin her life. 

I have to go out of my way to make her feel isolated, to turn her daddy against her, to steal all of her attention. 

This is obviously not the case at all, but I'm positive this is what she thinks, regardless of what I do to make her like me. I feel like I'm the nerd and she's the cheerleader, we're back in high school where I try to make her like me but it's a forever ending battle with her seeing me as worse of a human than I started. 

Now...moms who AREN'T stepmoms have given me tons and tons of advice. 

It hasn't worked. 

So, I've decided, that, regardless of my efforts, I shall always and forever be the evil stepmother, no matter how many times I sway her father's decision in her favor, no matter how many gifts I buy her, no matter how much favouritism is shown above the other four children.

Hours spent trying to figure out how to be a GOOD stepmom are completely useless. 

I can only hope that one day, she will be a stepmom and she will see that we're not all evil. 

The Zombie Mom

I have a wonderful group that I run/admin on facebook of moms who also had babies in May 2015. Actually, we've been together since we were DUE in May 2015, all through out pregnancies, we have been together. It's a large-ish group of over 800 moms, who typically  keep each other motivated to get through the day.

We talk about everything from diaper rashes, to post partum depression, abusive spouses and the list goes on. Nothing is off limits (except some touchy issues that we've had to ban for the pure reason that it starts drama) and everyone is supposed to support each other, even if it is a bit of tough love sometimes. It's a mommy group where we can depend on each other.

Late last night a mommy was trying to find humor in the fact that she is a "zombie mom"...aka...she needs sleep...baby doesn't. I asked permission to use her post in my blog as it really does explain how a mom can feel in the middle of the night when we're trying desperately to get some z's, and I thought it would be amusing.

"Momma's log stardate 7301.5. it's currently 12:24 am. Our destination is bed. We have encountered a distress call which can only be described as sounding like a possessed howler monkey. Upon further investigation we have discovered a very wilful lifeform, who we suspect is fighting its sleep. The behavior of the lifeform is odd, to say the least. It shakes its head furiously side to side knocking its only hope for sleep, the binky, out of its mouth. Our grave mission is to subdue the sleep deprived lifeform and return piece to its mother planet. ‪#‎sleepdeprivationmakesmeloopy‬" - Amanda Moseley

Strawberries

Our super nice neighbours gave us a huge box of strawberries...which was great...I LOVE strawberries.

The kids tend to help themselves to a lot of our stuff...and usually hide it well.

My 5 year old, who is also a beautiful child, once ate a full bag of Halls...in like 3 minutes. Never got sick...but he did forget to pick up all the wrappers in his room. We're still gradually finding them all seriously. I always expected him to be an angel...I did afterall name him Gabriel. 

This is very rarely the case.

This morning, I went to go grab a couple strawberries. I'm hungry, I have a baby to be up with, who lives off of my body, and then three little monkeys. I deserve a fricken strawberry.

That didn't happen.

There were two left, from an ENTIRE huge box of strawberries. I'm talking like 2 POUNDS of strawberries. 

Gabriel had taken it out and made a picnic with them among the three older kids, and ate them...all.

When I questioned them, they ALL stated that they didn't have any,, it was the other two. All of them were interviewed with a serious face, and I may have believed some of them...but...their entire face was covered in strawberry juices. 

After I made them look in the mirror...they all admitted to having eaten all of my strawberries. 

Caught red face'd. 

ZAP!

Today I am introducing my ADORABLE toddler, Evan. He will be 3 years old next year and no longer a cute little toddler, so possibly, through some valuable consequences, he will learn to NOT do some really stupid things.

Recently we have had a difficult (okay...it's been way more than difficult) keeping this small, adventurous, curious human...alive. He's had a curiosity that seems to have not dimmed...at all. He can unscrew parts to my treadmill that my other half has screwed in using well known tools, these tools are pretty hardcore and guaranteed for LIFE. Pretty heavy duty stuff.

We all know what a plug in North America looks like right?

They look like this :



Now beyond this, is the electric outlet, you can take the frame off, it gets broken, painted on etc. That's no biggie. You are then left with this.



This sort of looks dangerous right? You can see the wires etc. This is the dangerous part.

My adorable toddler....BROKE THIS WHILE STILL IN THE WALL!!!

When this happened, we are unsure as I DO watch my children through the day. How he did not get electricuted? Bigger mystery.

We explained all of this to him, that there is power that runs through these and that he could get BIG bobos and would have to go to the hospital and that the power could go into his heart and make him very sick, or that, it could kill him and he would  no longer be here with us.

What did he do?

He did it again!!

Oh...the life of a mom with a 2 year old...who is just too lucky for his own good. 

Figuring Ourselves Out

I have beautiful children.

Everyone says that right?

We hear every single mother say this (well...the good ones anyway). "I have 2 BEAUTIFUL children". You can change the number amount, but it's true, we all do it.

Our children are ALL beautiful. However (and this is a huge however), as beautiful as they are, they can really throw us for a loop...or 562478524 loops...per day.

 Today I will introduce my newest family addition. Willow is just over 2 months old (she is 2 months and 3 days, does that quality as "just over"?), and we are learning things, every single day.

Scratch that, some days we learn the same lessons as the day before.

Screw it, let's face it, my child is still pretty much like a gold fish and we relearn things about every 20 seconds...every 20 seconds.

 But she is a BEAUTIFUL child.

 Here is my entry for the day, today we will talk about 25 minutes out of 24 HOURS with my beautiful 2 month old daughter.

 It only took 25 minutes of SCREAMING for Willow to figure out the following :
 a) she was not hungry, although mommy did feed her continuously in hopes that mommy would end up being a good pacifier.
 b) she was not wet, even though mommy did take it upon herself to change her diaper 2 times, the first time, granted she was a bit wet, the second time was just in case that 10mL of fluid was in fact bugging her.
 c) she was not too cold or too hot...vigorous foot temp checking occurred many times throughout the episode
 d) noise was not a factor...we crawled into a small hole called "the bathroom" away from older siblings who are noisy as all heck and mommy let them tear the living room apart to do this
 and finally
 e) that in fact, we were just tired.