Potato. KABOOM!

We had baked potatoes for lunch.  I was teaching the kids the art of cooking a potato in the microwave.   I’m all about teaching independence.  At one point soon, I’m not going to do much.  One day, I’ll have children to cook and clean for me.  That’s why I had so many.   I’ll sit around doing whatever it is that I would do, if I had some spare time.

Mike:  Why do we have to poke holes in the potato?

Me:  If you don’t it will explode.

Mike:  Like Bombs?  COOL!  Why don’t they explode in the pantry?

Me:  No, they’ll explode in the microwave because of the heat.

Mike:  COOL.

Me:  (realizing where his train of thought is going)  And if they explode in the microwave, YOU will have to clean it up.

Mike:  When I have a child, I’m going to explode a potato in the microwave and blame it on my child.  That way, I won’t have to clean it up.

McKayla:  You’ll make a great dad one day.

I think he may be on to me.

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Magnet wall

One of my favorite things in our house is our magnetic wall.

No, our house doesn’t have super powers.  If it did, I’d wish for something cooler than a half magnetic wall.  Maybe a house that leaks money rather than sucking it from us.  Or a house that had a roof that never needed replacing, unlike our leaky shake roof.

Since I was given these cool alphabet magnets last year, I’ve been wanting a magnetic wall.  They are too large for the fridge.  Magnetic paint wouldn’t hold them up.  Plus, we weren’t to hip to the idea of having a black wall in the middle of our house.  Metal is expensive. I wanted a metal wall, but I didn’t want one that I’d have to give a kidney for.  Every time we went to Home Depot we’d wander around looking for inexpensive metal sheets.  Finally we found the source of cheap metal sheets.

Dave made our magnetic wall from two sheets of metal ducting and a half dozen screw.  All for less than $25.

It serves as a bulletin board:

Mike does his spelling on this wall.  The older kids would spell on here too, but we only have two of each letter.  It makes more complicated words a bit of a challenge.

McKayla encourages herself on this wall.

The kids torment each other on this wall.   I’ll find things like “Mike smells” or “Marshall is dumb” or “I hate you”.  Our home is just bursting with love.

Dave sends me cryptic adult themed messages.

We play alphabet fetch with the twins.

We’ve also discovered that you can write on it with dry erase markers.  It becomes a large shiny wipe board, a canvas for art, a large area to work mathematical problems.

It’s really the perfect educational center toy.  Plus it’s all shiny.  It just begs to be played with.  How can any one not love something so shiny?

I have big plans for this wall.  Poetry words, math manipulatives, magnetic art prints.  What ideas do you have?

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I’m a slave driver

Homeschooling at our house is serious business.   We start the learning early here at BDB Academy and everyone must participate.

Wow!  Who knew that National Geographic Kids would be such a hit with the toddler crowd?

Gee Mom, I’m trying to read here.  It would  probably be easier if you cut my bangs and stopped pestering me with a camera.

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One of us expanding our knowledge…

Dave’s been staying up late working and doing homework.  While he expands his knowledge and consumes massive amounts of caffeine, I’m getting every penny out of our netflix subscription.

I guess I could be watching documentaries and increasing my own knowledge.   Or I could be working my way through the long list of books I’d like to read.  Or I could finish the large pile of unfinished projects.  Or I could clean my baseboards.

Instead, I’m watching some stellar B-rate movies and reruns of tv shows.  Sometimes, I’ll change it up and play a computer game, surf the internet and watch tv.  How’s that for expanding my knowledge?  I figure by the time Dave finishes his homework, I’ll have molded the couch to my ass.

Go Trojans!

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Two worst fears

Friday night we watched Time Machine.   I’d like to say that every Friday night is movie night.   I’d like to say we pop popcorn and watch a wholesome family movie together, all the while bonding and loving each other.  More often than not, Friday roles around and I’m exhausted.  I’ll opt for sending the kids upstairs to read in bed while Dave and I watch an adult movie*.   Lately, I’ve been trying hard to be a better parent.  So when my first thought is to send them to bed, I try to do stuff instead.  (look I’m a poet, and I didn’t even know it)  Long story short, we watched Time Machine.   It was about a man in the 1800s whose girl friend dies.  In a round about way it’s his fault.  He invents a time machine to go back in time to save her.  He fails miserably.  She’s still dead.  He decides to go into the future to figure out how to save dead girl friend.  He winds up in 2030, a really cool computer photon hologram thing tells him time travel isn’t possible.  He decides to go farther into the future.  2037, humans destroy the moon.  Society as we know it ends.  He hits his head and winds up in 80,000.  It just gets weirder and cornier from there.  The kids enjoyed it though.

I’m not sure if I enjoyed the movie or not.  Watching a movie with my kids is like watching a movie with a constant barage of questions.  Here’s an example.  Opening scene:  A man dressed well and a little girl.  “Mom, what’s that man’s name?   Why does he have nice clothes?  Is he a doctor?  maybe the President?  Who’s that little girl?  Is that his daughter?  Are they related?  How old is she?  Do you think she’s nice?”  “WHAT DID THEY JUST SAY???”  Me:  “I don’t know, what they said, I can’t hear them over you guys.  I have no more information than you.  We’re watching the SAME movie!”  This is all before we even see the title.

As we sent the kids to bed…

Marshall:  Great, now I have two worst fears.

Dave:  What are those?

Marshall:  Spiders and the world ending.  Just great

*by adult, I mean something not produced by Disney, no animation and preferably anything rated PG-13 or R.  Get your head out of the gutter.

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Made with love

Marshall:  Wow! this is really good dinner! (fries smothered with cheese, chili, and hot dogs.  Culinary bliss.  Or maybe that’s coronary bliss)

Me:  Thanks.

Marshall:  Why are these so good?

Me:  Ummm, I made it it with love.

Marshall:  What do you normally put in it?

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Yes Sir!

This summer we went to an airshow and there was a ton of teenagers dressed up in army clothes.  They were enforcing foot traffic and keeping people away from planes and runways.  They were marching around with their camelbaks, basically looking super cool.

these are not real airman, they’re 12-21 year old kids.

We stumbled up to their booth and found out that they were not the army but the civil air patrol.  Dave asked lots of questions, the kids got tons of shwag.  We found out that you only need to be 12 to join.  I jokingly asked McKayla if she wanted to do it.  She said, “I guess”.

That was enough for Dave, who loves everything that has any remote possibility that you may have a slight chance of being in the air.  He found the local CAP unit, contacted the head honcho and found out all of the information.

Our girl scout troop has disintegrated and with all of my other commitments I’m not ready to resurrect it from the ashes.  We decided that McKayla needed to be involved in some kind of leadership building activity.

She wasn’t terribly fond of the act of getting in the car and going to the meetings, but once there she had a great time.  After the 5 week introductory period, she begged us to let her join.  Last week she got her uniforms.  This week she dressed up in her blues.

There’s lots of things she’s learning.

Things like:

• in order to be a great leader, you have to be a great follower.
• you should really iron your shirt and polish your shoes before an inspection.
• how to put her hair in a bun.
• It’s not called an “about now”, it’s an “about face”.  And it’s rather frowned upon if after you turn around, you lift up your hands and get your ‘Michael Jackson groove on’ (her words, not mine).
• it feels good to work hard and make rank.  She’s already earned her wings.  Of course, she ‘s not working too hard because she can’t remember what the wings are for, or for that matter, how to achieve the next rank.
• BDU stands for Battle Dress Uniform because “if someone makes fun of how you look, you’re ready to do battle!”

Most importantly, she’s learning respect, loyalty and leadership.  Plus, there are lots of fun things like riding in a big helicopter, learning to shoot, learning search and rescue stuff, going to boot camp.

Not to mention, the possibility of going to a ball.  A ball, where the boy to girl ratio would be significantly in her favor.  Of course, it’s military style.  They have to train for the ball.  They have to take dancing lessons and etiquette lessons.

It should be a fun year.  I’m pretty sure, CAPs is kicking Girl Scouts ass.

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Shameless plug

I love wine.  Only wine without the “h” though.  Because I detest whine.  Those pesky homophones.  More often than not, both wine and whine go hand in hand.  The kids whine so much that I sometimes find myself thinking about wine in the morning.

When I was pregnant with the twins, I bought Dave a Wine of the Month subscription.  I figured, with screaming babies and a stressed wife, he really needed wine.  He didn’t just need copious amounts of alchohol lying around the house, he needed it delivered to the door.

It was amazing.  Every month we had two delicious wines delivered to our door.  One white and one red.  One domestic and one international.  Eventually though, we gathered quite a collection of wine.  Our wine fridge overflowed and we couldn’t quite keep up.*  I canceled.

Now that we’ve emptied the wine fridge, and we’ve had to buy our own wines, I miss the wine of the month club.  The delicious wine that Oscar from WOMC sends us can’t even be compared with the crappy wine I’ve found on sale at the grocery store.  Plus, Oscar sends us a little bio about the wine and the vineyard, tells us what kinds of foods it goes well with, and puts it in a box for Fedex to deliver it to my door.  Really, the grocery store can’t compare.  And, if Oscar sends us a wine that doesn’t tickle our taste buds, I can send it back.  And he’ll send me a new bottle, free of charge.  Not that Oscar has ever sent us something we didn’t love.  I’m pretty sure, that Savemart doesn’t feel the same way about pleasing my taste buds.

So, a few weeks ago, I called up Oscar and started our subscription again.  He was so happy that we came back that he offered us $10 off our first month and 2 free wine glasses.  He has also offered the same deal to all of my friends that sign up before October 30th and we get to split a case of wine for free.  That’s right, you heard me correctly, free wine.

You know you want some delicious wine from Oscar.  Email me and I’ll give you all of the details, because you need a special secret code for the free wine.   A secret code that only I have.  Yep, I’m pretty secretive like that.

*I’m not quite sure how we ever built up a stockpile of wine before because the wine didn’t even last two weeks this month.  So hurry, we’ve already finished our two bottles for this month and I might have to resort to more grocery store wine.

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Teaching my daughter about oral sex

McKayla:   Mom I have a sore in my mouth.  Do we have any medicine?

Me:  Upstairs, in my bathroom.

McKayla:  Can I use cold sore medicine inside my mouth?

Me:  Coldsore medicine’s for outside your mouth, if you have a cold sore.  Canker sore medicine is for inside, if you have a canker sore.

Her:  Do we have any cankersore medicine?

Me:  Yes, it’s in a little tube called orabase.

Her:  Ewwe “oral”, like “oral sex”?  Ewwww!

Me:  Oral, like mouth.  You know oral surgery, oral hygiene.  Orabase.  Medicine for your mouth.

Her: Oh, I thought you said “Oral” like “oral sex”.  ’cause that’s gross.  You talking about oral sex.

dave: She did say “oral”.   Oral means for your mouth.

McKayla:  oh.  [long pause] So… (you could see her putting things together) Oral…. EEEEEEEEEWWWWWWe that’s DISGUSTING!!  “Oral sex” Ewwws. [leaves room, saying “Ewwwe”]

dave:  Did we just tell our daughter what “oral sex” is?

Me:  I think so.

dave and me together:  Ewwwwwe [laughing]

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