What's Goin' On...

I haven't been feeling particularly witty lately, and frankly, I've been busy as heck.  So, my apologies for the lack of postings. 

So today, I give you a dose of adorable. I'm too tired to do anything else. Hopefully I have something more for you soon. We're taking an adventure here in the next week, and by the end of it I am sure you'll all be tired of me.

Super Bowl, stupid bowl...where's the food table?

This weekend is the Super Bowl. It's on Sunday. And that is about the extent of my knowledge of this event. Who is playing? Which one is it? I have no idea, and I do not care one bit.

What I do care about is that it is a good excuse for a party. Mama loves a good party.

Sunday, my husband will gather with friends somewhere other than our house. I told him this year that I will not be joining in his macho football watching debauchery, so he is free to grunt and pound his chest and make other rude noises. He will gather with friends who are all married to my friends, so there is a good chance that there will be some female hating going on as well. Whatever floats your boat boys, so long as you're home by midnight. It's a school night. And take your shoes off on the tile, I just swept!

Anyways, I am having girlfriends over for the Super bowl.  But instead of watching foot ball, we are going to eat awesome tail gate foods while flipping between the Puppy Bowl and Netflix seasons of Sex and the City. I am so excited. About the food especially, because it will be a veritable buffet of white trash awesomeness.  Chicken wings. Little smokies. Rotel cheese dip.  Be still my heart.

I love these foods. I do not eat them too often, mainly because I need to fit through a door frame, and the ingredients in most of these dishes could survive a nuclear fallout.  Cheese that you can leave out for 5 years and still eat is probably not too good for you.  But Sunday, I erase these sorts of things from my mind and get down on some nuclear fallout, while watching Mr. Big be an ass to Carrie for the 1,394th time.

And the puppies will be cute, too.

Who Has Two Thumbs And Is Sick Of Winter?

This girl.

Here's a picture of my house yesterday afternoon, not even half way through the snow storm of the flippin' century.  I am tired of this stuff!

Five weeks to Maui. It cannot come soon enough.

Mama Don't Get Out Much.

Generally speaking, I do not miss my carefree, child free days. I like raising kids, and knowing what is for dinner every night (because it is made with my loving hand), and being able to pay all of my bills and still have money left. And get to bed at a decent hour. And not wake up wondering how I could have possibly drank the bar's entire stock of Bud Light bottles. And then looking at my credit card statement and saying "oh. maybe I did."

Sometimes though, it is fun to dabble in your former life.  This weekend, the perfect storm of distant friends, awesome bands, and wonderful husbands who don't like awesome bands came together. Our friends were visiting from Wichita and Phoenix, and my friend Miss Nickel scored me a ticket to see one of my favorite bands, the Old 97's, play.  Husband stayed home and played Mr. Mom with our Phoenix visitor Chris, while I danced around and sang my heart out in a super loud venue full of too many people.  We stuck around after the show, and lo and behold, stumbled upon Rhett, the lead singer. 

I felt like a teenager with Bieber fever, and Rhett is a super cool guy. He even showed me pictures of his kids when I said "I'm a stay at home mom, and I don't get out much. You rock."  Awesome. Even rock stars have their kids pictures in their wallets.

Saturday was spent eating biscuits and gravy and drinking mimosas at 9am. Followed by Wii beer olympics.  Followed by sushi with the girlfriends. Followed by a KU victory.

Sunday? I went shopping, and found cute things. Lots of them.

Yep, this was my blast from the past weekend. It was a lot of fun, but I sure am tired and broke today. :)

A Picture Worth A Thousand Dollars. Of Savings, That Is.

Well as you all know, we've had a bit of an issue with potty training. To say the least.

Boys are difficult to potty train. Boys with autism spectrum disorders? They are even harder. Super hard. Like, take-a-xanax-and-say-to-hell-with-it hard.  I've been preferring the xanax cocktail over being a super mean mom, but here lately I've been given some interesting tools to try to get Sam at least in the ballpark of bathroom business. And, since I really am none to keen of changing a Pull Up on a boy who can bring me all of the supplies and say "Mom, I need a Pull-Up", I figured I would trudge through the advice I was given and see if any of it might possibly work for us.

Miss Janice, Sam's teacher who basically walks on water, suggested that I make a story strip with pictures and tape it on the wall of the bathroom. Step by step instructions, with pictures, on what exactly you do in the bathroom.  Sam is a visual learner, says Janice, and perhaps seeing it will make it click in his head.

Oh Miss Janice. You get a gold star. No, you get a platinum star.  He has actually used the potty today. He reads the steps, follows them, and gets his job done.  Sure, he's had accidents today, but seeing as how yesterday the boy didn't even try to go potty in the vicinity of the bathroom, I am calling this progress.

Sorry about the potty training obsessed posts here, but Sam being on the road to potty trained? I'm as excited about it as I was about the lovely diamond ring I sport on my left hand. No lie.

And just an FYI- If any of you who frequent my house walk in my bathroom, there are cartoon pictures of poop and pee adorning my bathroom wall. :)

Parenting really is comedy gold.

If You're Wondering Why My Children Are Filthy And The House Is A Mess...

There are few things better in the world than getting wrapped up in a good book. Seeing as I have been cranking out kids and doing tiny baby duty for the past 4 years, it hasn't been until recently that I picked up the reading habit again.  And I didn't realize how much I missed it.

I was on bedrest with my son for almost 12 weeks. True bed rest. Do-Not-Leave-Your-Bed bedrest.  It was some dark days, and since even I can only stomach so much bad daytime television, I turned to books to keep from putting a plastic bag over my head.  Books saved my life. I read so many books in that 12 weeks, that I was actually sort of relieved to have a tiny screaming baby to tend to instead of reading. Too much of a good thing.  Good thing I was looking for change, because for the next 4 years I really wouldn't be doing much adult reading.  I can recite Goodnight Moon and Bear Wants More for you, sure, but the adult reading became a thing of the past.

And then, the most beautiful thing happened....my kids got a little bit older. They wanted to play in the dirt, and I didn't have to sit with them and show them how.  They wanted to climb the swingset "like a big kid" and have mom sit and watch from a bench.  So I went to the library for myself, for the first time in forever, and got a few Mama books, and have never turned back.

The problem with this sometimes is that I get super wrapped up in them. I read the whole Patricia Cornwell Scarpetta series and started dreaming of dead people. I called my husband Benton, and in the middle of folding laundry would wonder if Benton was really dead, or if he and Kay would ever see eachother again.  My husband thought it was a sick infatuation. And it was. And I loved every minute of it. My children were living off of frozen pizzas and Goldfish crackers, and my house was a mess, but it was a glorious time for me.

Fast forward to now, and I am reading another murder mystery series which I have become completely wrapped up in.  John teases me that my new boyfriend is Mitch, and in my mind darling Mitch looks like Harrison Ford. So naturally, I have been having dreams of Indiana Jones, and the kids ask for Totinos without me even asking.

Ahh imagination. I sure have missed you.

Cabin Fever.

We've got it. Or had it, I should say.  Today mama reached her breaking point. I pulled up my big girl panties, threw a container of Purell in the diaper bag, and took the kids to open gym, germs be damned.

Three hours of screaming, running, throwing stuff, and riding tricycles in a gymnasium, while I sat at a table with a bunch of mom friends drinking coffee.  It. Was. Awesome.  Restored sanity. Exhausted kids. Worth any communicable disease we happen to catch there.

After our morning of energy burn off, my children took a glorious nap.  The stars aligned, and my husband got home at like 5:15, so we could actually all have a family dinner at the same time. We decided to take everyone out to Free State, where we enjoyed a lovely dinner where my kids ate THEIR WHOLE DINNER quietly.  There were zero leftovers. John and I got to linger and talk over a beer.  We took the kids for ice cream, and they were ecstatic.  Then, we hopped down Mass St. to our cars, came home, got a bath, and are now all watching a quick cartoon before bedtime.

If only I could guarantee Sam would sleep all night, this would be a perfect day. Perfect.

Apparently I need to get out more with my kids. Cooping them up at home makes them as crazy as it makes me.