So, the kids are prepping for the best day of the year--if you're under 15 and a sugar addict. Yep, Halloween. They loved their costumes so much from last year that they're wearing them again. That's a double score for me. I won't feel the need to try to trick them into dressing up in a theme, bet your buttons I do it every year. I'll also have more time to spend enjoying the season and take less time searching for coordinating gloves and mustaches.
Right, back to the point (having kids constantly interjecting makes me feel like I've got ADHD).
Last year the kiddos were super heroes and I was a super villain (ha, yes it Was a costume !).
This year I've considered many options, the first of which being the most obvious choice : not dressing up.
I'm on the fence about it, but I've become mildly enamored of The Dangeraffe!!!!! Hero to many.

I feel I could embody what the Dangeraffe stands for. It also fits pretty well with the kids supers theme.
Though, I think that my husband may take issue with being The Henchster (the giant henchmen hamster).
All of this undoubtedly is a very obscure topic, unless you happen to have small people in your house too. Phineas and Ferb is a phenomenon of my children's generation that cannot be denied. In my opinion in this case also may need to be fabricated from paper mache.
So, I'll continue to consider making a giant giraffe head and asking my husband to be a hamster, it should go over well.
Right??
Let ya know.

We've had another eventful week around here.
Our youngest daughter is potty training. I went to wipe her bottom two days ago and discovered she'd POOPED A PENNY! Note:if you are easily grossed out you are reading the wrong blog, and you should look away...
Now!

I couldn't believe my eyes. Yes, what you are looking at is a poop encrusted penny. Sorry, U.S. Mint. If it's illegal to tamper with money my child may have broken the law.
I asked her every way I could think of how much money she'd eaten. First she told me , "I didn't eat any monies!!" Which I knew couldn't be true, cause I was gawking at her poop penny.
I asked again, this time with visual aids.
" How many coins did you eat?", I questioned.
Her reply was, "three, four, five, six monies, mommy".
Just then my son's teacher arrived and we filled her in on why we were hanging out in the bathroom.
I told her that our daughter had eat somewhere between none (though, I wasn't buying that ) and six coins.
Her reply was, "She's a PIGGY BANK!".
She had a point. I have been pondering since then exactly how much money she's got stashed.
I guess if she stops making poopy then I need to worry. I called her Dr. and the nurse I reached acted like I was telling her taboo information. So, I almost felt dumb for calling. Wouldn't you though?
Oh my sweet little girl, what will you think up next?

Don't you ever get tired of hearing that things are great, grand, fine or perfect???
Sometimes in life things are not any of those things.

Sometimes things just are lame.

I talked to my greatest friend today and she told me just a few of the woes she's facing. Things are flat out lame for her right now. She's got all the things most people deal with in the course of any year, but she's got them all at once.
I am very proud of my friend for doing her best to stay positive about her situation , I had trouble doing that just listening to all the obstacles she tackling. How much can one person take before they snap??
Stand by to find out, I'll let you know how she does.

Many other people in my life want to slap a happy face on everything (even when it doesn't deserve one). I feel like lately everyone else i talk to wants to show me the bright damn side of everything.

Typically, I'm an optimist, I'm just not also a liar. In this case I had to go with the dark side instead and agree with her that things are a bummer. That's not to say I didn't encourage her, but I can admit that the whole thing is huge mess.
I'll be very very glad when things work out, as they always seem to for her. However, it's going to be amazing to see. Life's not cutting her any breaks.

I try not to complain.

Ha, ok that's not totally true. I complain, but don't want to be a whiner about it.

Ok, so all holy hell broke loose here this morning. The baby is sick (as usual, thanks immune problem! :/ ) and he was awake most of the night coughing, being booger covered, and needing me. I babysat for a friend last night so we didn't even go to sleep until nearly midnight to begin with. Then I was up with the baby.
That wasn't this morning , you're right. Getting to the point....

This morning with a big 2 hours of sleep under my belt ,I got up to feed the ducks.

Our middle one was five minutes into a ten minute tantrum, when the baby started to get in on the act.
I had one nearby losing his mind. I also had one wallowing into my lap while he cried and rubbed his boogery face all over me. Did I mention I was attempting to get everyone fed and ready to go to our day of basketball games?
Aye!
This went on the entire morning. It was a symphony of crankiness.
I tried to keep my cool.
They can smell fear you know.
It wasn't a compete success on their part until someone spilled water. How? Oh you'll see...
While I cleaned that up the bathroom door was simultaneously left open, by a big kid ,and the baby threw a video game into the toilet.
They broke me (mentally at least) temporarily. Ha, hate to admit. I usually I make them believe that 5 to one still is completely manageable, but today i knew they could have mounted a revolution.
I didn't let them know it though, it'd ruin my street cred.
Keep you posted on developments with their uprising.

Ok, ewwww. I got blood sneezed into my face today.
I think I look like I've been in a fight. I had blood spattered up my arm and onto the front of my "where the wilds things are" shirt too.
I wish I could even say it's the first time I have had someone else's blood in my mouth Ever, but sadly this is the second time This month that something like this has happened.
Though, I do find myself resisting the urge to hiss at the sun, I'm not a vampire. I just have very bad luck and a baby who gets constant bloody noses.
It's a relatively new phenomenon for him. So,though he has bloody noses all the time I don't have any street smarts about it yet.
I enter into evidence two weeks ago.
I picked the baby up. He rubbed his nose (which had started to bleed exactly when I lifted him). He moved the bloody hand from his nose right into my mouth in one lightening fast motion.
Did I make any defensive moves, you might ask. No! I got a slimy,half cold lipful of blood.
That brings me back to present where I obviously didn't learn from the last time.
This time i got sprayed with it rather than a full smear , but it is pretty much as gross either way.
At least I can hope to be quicker the next time.

There are plenty of times that being a mom is taxing and hard. There are also moments like last night, when you get to see something great because you are a parent!!The school work of a child brings joy to many parents' hearts....... This was one of the papers that came back in my son's Friday folder from school. Note the circled top right corner word. Hahaha! Love it. Thanks universe for giving me that boost, I needed it. ;)

I, like most people, believed that a binky is meant to be soothing. I felt this way right up until the moment one was hurled at my eye in the middle of the night. It was accompanied by the chattering and anger of our youngest son. He was waving a fist at me as well. Really, he looked for all the world like a tiny enraged squirrel.

In my head I translated his gibberish to mean, "hey ,you over there , quit sleeping and don't try to sooth me!!!! I'm mad about something here. Figure it out."
He made sure I was aware he not going to be placated, after I attempted to give him back the binky again.He tossed it at me with even more gusto and yelled.
It took me the trial and error for several nights to figure out why he refused to sleep. Teeth seem to be at the center of this mystery.
Even with all these kiddos, they always come up with new ways to surprise me, keep me losing sleep or generally confound me.
My job humbles me everyday.
Dumb non-soothing binky.

My husband is somewhat of a ninja. He hides his emotions behind deep brooding eyes, and by nature of what he does is often reserved about talking about work. He is stealthy and reserved about what he devulges.
However, occasionally he just cannot help himself. He brakes his quiet front and shouts, "Bees!!!"
Well in this case he had actually emailed the shout ,because he was away at the time.
"Bees!!?,"he yelled. He dropped what he was doing, the crew demanded that he be called for. He moved through the small passage ways and out onto the deck of the ship. The scene he found was like something from a horror film.
6 people standing around a bucket with worried looks. With great relief they brought my husband to the bucket. They thanked him for coming, "thank goodness, we didn't know what to do!" Now , at this point I feel it's important you know that my husband is not an exterminator, he's not a biologist, he is a medical provider. That being said, he did exactly what any medical professional would do. He lifted the bucket and with help from the second medical man the crew had called, he used a technique he'd only heard about called ' kicking the jacket full of bees down the deck'.
After some time he picked the jacket up, met with gasps from the onlookers, he then shook the jacket over the rail.
Thank heavens he was on the scene.
Needless to say he was heated as he yelled about it in his email too me. He'd thought there was someone bleeding or at very least being stung by the bees! When they came and said there was an emergency with bees they needed him right away to handle.
THIS may be why he's general pretty quiet about what he does at work. Go figure.

I must say, I quite enjoy seasons. Having grown up on the east coast, I love a nice rainy day.
A few days ago I walked into my downstairs powder room and it noticed it was raining ........inside my house!
This was not what I'd envisioned when I was lamenting the heat and wishing for rain.
Ergg.

I ran upstairs to the bathroom above me, where my oldest son was taking a bath. I was sure I'd walk into a giant puddle or huge hole in the tub. I burst into the room Spanish inquisition style, "Did you just dump a bunch of water over the edge of the tub!?"
"No?," he said shocked.
"Did someone else ?" I demanded.
"No?, why?".
"I'll ask the questions."
???Hmmm....??????

Feeling foolish that the floor was clearly dry and seeing no hole anywhere in the bathroom, I returned to the raining light fixture, leaving my son perplexed.
Standing looking at the ceiling, though the source of my rain remained a mystery, one thing was clear. I needed a professional.
Tempting as it might have been to ask my husband for help, he was away again.
Besides, I'm fairly sure that indoor rain is also not something he's trained in.
The rest of the story is mundane. The plumber came, he found the leak, checked the fixture to be sure it was secure. Yada yada.

What I can certainly say is that I can't exclude sabotage as a cause for the issue in the first place.....
Especially in light of the magnetic poop incident.
Hmm, as usual my little ducks are the usual suspects.
I'll keep you posted.

Getting feet wet

Typically, we have little introduction needed when we enter a room. The kids make it nearly impossible to go unnoticed.
However, you can't hear them at the moment! Though I have my reservations that they won't find a way, even still, to be noisy while we get acquainted.

I have a strong desire to own a phone booth and that, in part, made me want to write about our life. No one can ever hear me when we talk on the phone. There is frequently someone running through the room yelling, often me ;),
Perhaps the best way to understand us, is to just jump into our household. It's how the kids would expect it to be.
Cut to earlier today.

I walked into our downstairs bathroom where our second youngest was sitting on the potty. She complained that the baby had "put three four five stickers into the potty". Meeh, stickers no big deal, I thought foolishly. I leaned over to wipe her bottom and noticed three magnetic triangles in the bowl.
Damn it, how was I going to navigate the poop to get the magnets out? I washed our hands and lead her out of the bathroom. I locked the door.
I needed a minute to find a tool to help.
As walked to the kitchen I heard the sound of the same toilet, that I had just temporarily decommissioned, being flushed!
Crap! Magnetic crap. My older daughter had picked the lock to gain entry and was unfazed by the potty full of green magnets and poop.
Well, not the way I had planned to fix that problem,but it certainly was quick.
I'm mildly concerned that the magnetic triangles are going to grab hold of something on their way out to the main line and come back to haunt us. If I tell you my toilet stopped working next week, remind me of this please.

So, we're like many families. I just tell myself that occasionally and then I laugh because I can't convince myself, let alone you of it. We are larger than everyone's family that I personally know. Sometimes we are out and some much older than me person will say they're one of 5 or 6, and that momentarily makes me feel less odd. However, then one of my small people will tell me at the top of their lungs, while we check out of the grocery store, "Mommy, I have a hole in my butt!!!!".  At the same time the baby will throw his binky under the clerk's feet, while pulling his sister's hair. My older kids will be bickering about who's silly bands are better, ignoring me ask them to move up and stand aside and instantly I feel less normal and more odd. ;)

My five little ducks are amazing, wild, and an endless source of entertainment. They drive me totally bananas, but that's their job, right?

Nap time

One day, if you are very lucky