At only twenty degrees, yesterday was a frightfully cold day in our local neck of the woods in Texas — so cold that the majority of schools either closed down or started late.  Nevertheless, my three older, half-crazed, half-dazed, superhero monkeys and I woke up early planning for a regular school day.  Little did I know what I was in for that morning.

Wayne, my seven-year-old, second grader, whined like a newborn baby without his bottle, the minute his eyes blinked open from me waking him up.  I had to sit with him on his bed threatening coaxing him to quiet down and get off his bed to get ready for school.  Of course, it didn’t help that Mother Nature decided to have a cold festival on the same day Wayne had his whine festival, making it more difficult for him to crawl out of his delectably warm bed.  After two hugs, three kisses, two threats to take away his Christmas toys and ground him until eternity, and two promises to buy him a new toy and a Burger King Junior Whopper, he finally calmed down and crept off the bed.

By now, we were running late, so I quickly dressed, skipped combing my hair and rushed to get the monkeys out the door with my hair looking like an old, overly-used mop.  As I held the front door open and hurried the kids along, I noticed Kal trying to sneak out the door with the same dirty clothes he had on from the day before.  Calling him by his first, middle, and last name, I demanded that he tell me why he was wearing the same grimy, muddy clothes that he had worn to the car shop the day before.  Stare and shrug was my answer, so I ordered him to change his clothes.

Five minutes later, he walked back out from his room, claiming that he had no other clothes to wear.  His pants no longer fit him or were too noticeably ripped to wear.  When did this short, bony boy become too big for his britches?  There was no way he could have grown that much, so I spent five more minutes rummaging through his muddled up pile of clothes on the floor, but to no avail as every pair of pants he owned were either high waters on him or looked like they had been thrown mistakenly into the paper shredder.  Whatever creative feats little boys do with their pants to make them look like that, I guess I will never know.  I tried asking my husband once and got this long, long explanation that went nowhere, so since then, I have tried to avoid asking.

However, Kal still had no pants. Lucky for him, his mom was a genius!  I rushed to my closet where I had bags of pre-pregnancy clothes from even before I had my oldest daughter, Autumn.  Despite my husband’s begging, I couldn’t bare throwing out perfectly good clothes that I knew I could fit into again one day with just a little more exercising (which will happen someday).  I practically tore the bags open as I dug through them until I spotted the smallest pair of boyish-looking, baggy jeans that I could find.  Although Kal fussed and sqealed, he finally put the pants on and somehow or another, they fit with just a little slack at the waist, which was nothing that a belt couldn’t fix (Yes, I used to be that tiny *sighs*). I guess my husband will now have to thank me for being such a genius and a pack rat.

Anyway, we were finally ready to head out the door with just fifteen minutes left before 8:00 (which was when school started)!  That’s when my daughter called from the living room, “Mom, school starts at ten today!  It was just on the news.”

I know that my little Arthur loves me and that I am the center of his little two-year-old world.  For no other will he give wet, soggy puppy dog  kisses that seem to linger even after I have wiped the saliva off my face.  Only to me will he cling, wrapping his little body around mine like a piece of tight-gripping velcro and screaming at the top of his lungs if anyone should be so kind as to relieve me of my duties by taking him.  It is for my privilege and mine alone that he saves his poopy, unchanged diapers. “Nooo!  Mo-mee!” he would declare while crying and throwing a fit if anyone else dared to wipe his poop-stained, smelly bottom.  Luckily for him, no one ever objects to his wishes, especially when they involve changing stinky, poop-smeared, two-year-old diapers.

It was probably with this same affection then that he woke me up this morning at four in the morning.  “Go-o-o, Mo-mee!  Go-o-o!” he screamed at me, stirring me from the lovely dream I was having.

“Arthur, sleep,” I begged him drowsily but to no avail as he continued pulling on my arm with both of his little, pudgy hands.  “What, Arthur?  Do you want water?” I asked him groggily.

“No-o-o!  Want go-o-o!” he whined.

“Fine,” I said to him reluctantly as I kicked off my warm, cozy blanket.  I was still half-asleep as I allowed him to half-drag me into the living room.

I plopped down on the sofa, ready to continue that wonderful dream I was having before; however, Arthur had plans of his own as he handed me the television remote. ” ‘Mote!  ‘Mote!  V.V. on!” he demanded.  I turned the television on for him and snuggled up against the sofa.  I tried to close my heavy eyelids over the tired pupils of my eyes.  Arthur shook me again and started whining. “No-o-o-o!” he cried.

“What do you want?” I implored him, desperately wanting to go back to sleep.

” ‘Mote!  ‘Mote!” he screamed.  I started to turn the channels, which quieted him until I turned past the Wiggles.  “Wait!  Wait!” he screamed.  Whatever infatuation toddlers have with dancing men in multi-colored shirts and too tight of pants I will never understand; however, I did know that my sleep was calling me.  I was ready to do anything at this point to get back into my warm, inviting bed, so I turned back to “Prancing Men in Tight Pants,” which immediately made him quiet.  Again, I tried to drift back to sleep, but Arthur wouldn’t have it.  He climbed clumsily over my curled up legs and onto my weary lap where he plopped himself.  “Up!  Up!” he cried as he shook me furiously to get me to sit up.  “See, see,” he laughed as one of the Wiggles jiggled around like jello in an earthquake.  I held him and bared through his “Prancing Men” show with him.

By the time the Wiggles sang their good-bye song, he was fast asleep in my lap.  However, all sleep had left me by now.  Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t squint my eyes shut anymore.  It was pointless anyway, since I couldn’t even remember what my wonderful dream was about anymore.  Instead, I looked at his angelic, sleeping face.  He looked so adorable and innocent laying there in my lap.  As annoyed as I was over losing sleep, I couldn’t help but also feel a rush of affection for this little mischief-maker.  Who else but my little two-year-old would want for me (and me alone) to spend quality time watching “men in tight pants,” with him at four in the morning?  I was the apple of his eye at this age, and he was my baby.  Someday, he’ll grow up and want nothing to do with me.  He’ll pound away at his video games and be too busy with his soccer, football, and many other activities.  He’ll fancy fast-moving cars and hot teenage chicks with long flowing hair and big, breasted boobs, but for now, he was just my little boy.  I kissed him on his sweet, tender cheek as I hugged him tightly and blinked away the tears.

At just a little under five feet tall, I admit that I am vertically challenged.  As a child, I was never the first, second, third, fourth, or even the fifth one picked for games such as basketball that require long, lanky legs and lengthy, elongated arms.  In fact, I always watched as the crowds of kids slowly dwindled away onto opposing teams, until I was the last one left to face the grumblings from the team that finally acquired me.  However, my littleness always allowed me to play a lethal game of limbo, and I was always fast and furious at flag football which allowed me to get back at the cranky kids who griped about me being on their team.  Yet when I married and finally became a parent, I longed for kids with long-limbed legs and lengthy arms who wouldn’t have to endure the mockeries that I received as a child.

Unfortunately, with a five feet four inch tall husband, height just wasn’t in our gene pool.  No matter how carefully I planned and measured each meal or how many bad tasting, vitamin-fortified concoctions I drank during each pregnancy, we still ended up with lethal limbo players instead of tall, lanky basketball players.  Of course, my babies were always the cutest in the nurseries with their petite little bodies and tiny, whimpering cries, and, I must confess, I was a little relieved that they weren’t too big for me to hold, cuddle, and carry around without assistance.  However, I knew that someday someone would make them the butt of laughters because of their size.

That day came when Autumn was in third grade.  She had many friends and was well-liked.  She had grown up with many of the children, and not once had any of them ever chastised her about her height or looks.  However, it is amazing how one child can change the make-up of a group of seemingly normal friends.  “Short stuff!” she would call Autumn as she tried to convince the rest of the group not to play with my daughter.  I listened almost daily as my daughter poured her heart out each time I came home from work.  At first I tried to just comfort her and give her advice as somehow some probably never-bullied before researcher claimed that the more adults became involved, the worse the bully made it for the victimized child.  Back then, being a young mom (and having parents who were first time immigrants that didn’t know how to deal with these types of situations), I swallowed every bull-crap researched advice available instead of listening to my gut feelings.

Finally, I received the call from the principal one day.  Autumn had bitten her bully and was sitting in the principal’s office.  Katie, the principal, who was also a colleague of mine, was trying to decide whether she should suspend Autumn.  I rushed through traffic from the school that I principaled at to Autumn’s school.  The ride seemed like hours even though her school was only ten minutes away.  As I walked into the principal’s office, Autumn looked up at me with her big, brown, frightened eyes which were also puffy and red from crying.  Deep down, I was livid that my poor little girl, the true victim in all of this, was in the principal’s office facing suspension while the little bitch who had picked on her from the start of the school year was out there, walking away free with no noose around her neck.  The calm, reasonable educator in me disappeared as the superhero mom in me raged and began to gain the strength needed to protect my child.  I tried to keep my cool though as I finally confessed everything to Katie, telling her how Autumn had tried every trick in the book to work things out with Nelly, her bully.  When that didn’t work, she tried to avoid Nelly.  She even tried to make new friends just to be away from Nelly’s group of taunting little girls.  By this time, I was so furious that I thought I would have a nervous break-down.  Luckily, Katie was also a mom herself, and understood exactly what I meant.  She encouraged Autumn and I to speak with the school guidance counselor who later worked with Autumn, Nelly, and a group of other girls to help prevent the bullying from continuing.

By the end of the school year, Autumn and Nelly had not become best friends; however, they had learned to respect one another, and the bullying had stopped.  When my son, Kalel, went to fourth grade and encountered his bullies, I no longer sat quietly in the shadows, whispering words of encouragement and giving him strategies to avoid his bullies.  Instead, I went straight to the principal and guidance counselor and demanded that something be done.  Within two weeks, the bullying had stopped.  We cannot sit still and wait for our children to find their own ways of dealing with bullies — ways that may most likely end in someone getting hurt.  Schools claiming that children need to find their own solutions to bullying are in for disasters like Columbine and the Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover case in May of 2009 where the 11 year old victim hung himself.  Instead, we must work collaboratively with other adults and together, as a community, we must help our children build bonds of respect for one another.  We must give a clear message that bullying is unacceptable no matter what age and what type.

Our once decorated and sweet looking Christmas tree is officially bare of all candy canes (we have a tradition of hanging candy canes on our Christmas tree). The presents are now long gone and in the hands of their (hopefully) happy owners. The many bags of wasted wrapping paper sit dormantly, waiting to be be shredded and made useful again as alternative packaging peanuts. Meanwhile, my floors are littered with a million pieces of tiny new lego pieces and my kids busily make noises with all their new-found Christmas toys while I cover my ears and check incessantly for lost legos in my poor, over-used vacuum cleaner. These are the signs that Christmas has been a joy for everyone!  Since it’s all over, I can sigh a breath of relief and officially come back to pounding away at my computer and reading the millions of wonderful blogs out there.  As I finally dusted my keyboard and logged into my blog this evening, I was pleasantly surprised to see a blog award from Ruby at Growing Up Blackxican (a really wonderful blog by the way).  I admit that I am truly honored *blushing* to have received this award and am grateful to Ruby for thinking of me.

After receiving the award, I must continue the rules of the award which are:

- Put the Lemonade logo on your blog or within your post.
- Nominate at least 10 blogs with great attitude or gratitude.
- Link to the nominees within your post.
- Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
- Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

This was really hard as there are so many great blogs out there, but I’d like to share my award with (in no particular order):

• Hip2bmom

• Organic Motherhood With Coolwhip

• Small Town Mommy

• My Kids Are Fun

• My Life With Little Girls

• The Single Mothers Chronicle

• Vivianne’s Vista

• The Sewing Mommy

• A Thing For Pink

• Minnesota Meets California

• Mommy Is Green

• Mrs. Blogsalot

Come this New Year, it will be ten years since my father-in-law passed away.  As the world turns and the days pass by from year to year, my husband and I continue to miss him.  He was a wonderful, caring, and loving man, and words still cannot express how we felt that horrific day that we discovered he had left this world.  My children were still quite young when it all happened.  The only one who somewhat remembers is my oldest, Autumn, who is now thirteen.  The following poem is her commemorative to her grandfather.

TIME  SLIPPED  PAST  ME

Time slipped past me as I
drifted in my sleep
when the sound of weeping
wakens me.

Walking down the hall I watch
as my father crouches
in front of a picture,
tears streaking down his face.

With his hidden mask I’ve
never seen, not once, a tear fall
down his rosy cheeks.  Every tear
cried by him makes a tear of pain run down my face.

With my tears so loud my father turns
and picks me up.  He holds me in his arms.
The words tremble off my father’s tongue
and my heart stops beating.

I understood my father’s cries and wished
I could have said something, but
my heart was as cold as ice and
my mouth couldn’t move.

My tears came down hard like a stormy rainy night
and the moon cried tears
to see my father’s face.
My grandfather had passed away.

I never had the chance to tell
my grandfather that I loved him.
I never got the chance to show him I was proud
to be his granddaughter.  Instead I didn’t talk much.

My grandfather committed suicide
for he hated himself.
He thought he was a bad man and
thought that no one loved him.

As he was being hauled away
his body a statue, I then wanted to hug him;
I then wanted to say,
“I love you.”

I am saddened that now he can’t see who I am.
He just saw what I was–
a mean, sad, shy, little six year old,
whom he thought was beautiful.

I listened and held my breath as Arthur screamed at the top of his not so tiny two-year-old lungs.  I had the sense that they were at it again, my two-year-old and my four-year-old.  “Shae!  Shae!” Arthur yelled at Rayner.

I put down the greasy, glass dish that I was just about to wash (by hand since my dumb dishwasher has been out, but that’s in a previous post), and wondered what crises was causing Arthur to cry as if his favorite toy had just been squashed to smithereens.  I didn’t have to wait long as the plastic floor covering of our kitchen was soon filled with the tiny trampling of toddler footsteps.

“Mo-mee, Nerner noe shae!  He no gee me caw!” he babbled angrily, telling me that Rayner wasn’t sharing a car with him.  Before I could even call Rayner to come over, he had already summoned himself, and was chattering in his defense.  His four-year-old speech was just a little clearer than Arthur’s two-year-old babbling.

“Ahter stoe my Bo-boe-bee,” he declared.  Arthur had stolen his Bumble-Bee Transformer toy.

“No!  Mie…mie…foun i! Foun I!”  Arthur screamed.  I’m not sure where he heard it from, but somehow, he had really taken a liking to the whole finders- keepers concept.

“Can you share it with Arthur?  He wants to play with it too,” I said to Rayner calmly, trying to refrain myself from doing something I might regret later.

“O-tay, bu pease tell Ahter not to hi me.  He gi me a owie,” Rayner replied.

“Arthur, did you give Rayner an owie?”

“Noooo….Nerner hi.  See…owie,” he replied, pointing to his head.  Somehow, I didn’t believe him as he made his big brown eyes look bigger than they really were.

“No hitting Rayner, or Rayner won’t share with you, okay?”

“Taayyy,” Arthur answered, his big, brown eyes looking even more innocent than before.

“Now go play and be nice,” I said to them both.  Somehow though, my extra sixth mom-sense, the one that understood exactly what babbling and gibberish meant, knew that this wouldn’t be the end of it.

Start…Stop….Start….Stop….Start…Stop….No, this wasn’t a fun game of musical chairs, nor was I fondly trying to fix a long-lost treasured but broken video tape.  Instead, I was stuck in Dallas/Fort Worth traffic while trying to complete a number of errands before heading to my brother’s college graduation ceremony.   Having lived most of my driving career in small town Wisconsin and rustic and rural Arkansas, I am not used to driving through heavily-trafficked highways at all.  I know I am not the best driver, but I am not exactly the worst driver either.  I am just the “easy-to-panic-when-I’ve-got-five-kids-in-the-car” type of driver.

Now don’t get me wrong. I really don’t despise highway driving.  In fact, I find that I do my best thinking while taking long, relaxing road-trips on highways uncluttered by other passing vehicles.  Somehow, the kids are always lulled to sleep for longer periods of time by the gentle constant cadence of our tires moving smoothly across long stretches of vacant highway pavement.  I relish these few “me” times.

However, Dallas/Fort Worth driving is far from this, especially during the busy holiday season. Yesterday was no exception, and probably even worse, as numerous school districts around the area held their last day of school before the holiday break, enabling many families to finally make their long awaited migrations to pre-determined holiday destinations.  Vehicles of various kinds and colors flocked the highways and we found ourselves in a regular start-stop pattern instead of the preferred soothing smooth-riding rhythm.  The majority of the time, I found myself paying more attention to what my kids were doing in the back of the Expedition than to my driving.  Pretty scary I know, but when you’ve got two kids arguing like squirrels brawling over the last remaining nut on the ground, a crying and screaming two-year-old (who was also trying to tear his way through the straps of his car-seat), a whiny pre-teen who would rather be home listening to her dead, uncharged I-pod, and a video-game crazed son whose Nintendo DS jingled a tune each time he paused to think, you just can’t help but turn around more often to yell at the kids.

Of course, while all this was going on inside the car, the beamer to the left was also swerving in and out of lanes like some graceful ice-skater trying to elegantly weave across the ice.  Except he wasn’t so graceful as he almost side-swiped the left front-end of my SUV, so while I was screaming at my kids, my horn was honking excessively at the driver of the beamer who, by now, had given me the finger.

Four hours later, we finally made it home. I felt like I had run a mile-long marathon even though I had only been sitting in the car yelling at my kids and honking my horn at all the lunatic drivers on the road.  By then, I had lost my mind, but at least no one had lost an arm or a leg.

Last week, my daughter sat for three laborious hours filling out the tiny bubbles to a mandatory eighth grade career assessment that she really did take seriously.  Being a somewhat ambitious child (one of my few ones), she truly wanted to know what type of career she would be best suited for.   By the time the exam was over, her brain felt as fried as okra that had been sitting overdue in the deep frier, and she was as career-confused as ever.

She wasn’t suited for teaching or anything that had to do with kids, since, according to the analysis, she despised children.  I guess living with four overly energetic boys who enjoy running around, rummaging through her things, and using them for unintended purposes has really taken a toll on her feelings towards children (particularly little “loony boys” as she calls them).  Somehow the analysis also showed that she cracks under pressure, so a career in a fast-past journalistic environment with countless deadlines was unlikely, even though writing is her forte.  She enjoyed math as much as she enjoyed children, so her chances of getting employed in a mathematics intense field was out of the question too.  She was demanding and bossy though, so according to the career analysis, the best profession for my 4 feet, vertically challenged and underweight child was being a police officer.  Hmmmm…..I guess the assessment didn’t take weight and height into consideration.

I know that my daughter wishes she were more like her seven year old brother, Wayne who is very aware of what he does and doesn’t want to do.  Once during a lesson on President Obama, he was asked by his first grade teacher if he wanted to be President of the United States someday.  He confidently told her, “No because the job is too hard.”  Instead, as he told my brother, he just wants to be a fat man when he grows up.

However, this was Autumn and not Wayne.  I wanted to tell her that I felt bad that her assessment turned out the way it did and that it was probably just a glitch, but this wouldn’t justify for other outrageous results from future career analyses that she would take.  I don’t understand why our society feels  a need to push children towards one profession or another at young ages.  I know some research guru probably decided that it would help children to be more goal-oriented, but I don’t think he contemplated how children like my daughter (children who are beginning to explore and develop their interests) would be affected.  In the end, I had no answer for my pour perplexed daughter.  All I could do was encourage her to keep up the great work that she has been doing in and out of school and tell her that she was still young and had time to develop her skills.

This week, I really had to rummage through all the posts from last week to find a related picture for What Is It Wednesday.  It didn’t help that most of last week’s posts were about pomegranates.  I guess I have Rayner to thank for that one.  However, we haven’t had any other problems since he’s been pomegranate grounded, so hopefully, there won’t be anymore pomegranate posts.  This week’s What Is It Wednesday post was a photo of the tail-light from my Ford Expedition.  Kuddos to all who guessed correctly!  The idea came from the post, “What Have I Done!?!?” where I wrote about my most embarrassing parenting blunder.  You can read the post here if you haven’t had a chance yet.

What do you think this picture is? If you need a hint, be sure to look at one of my posts from this week. I’ll try to do this each Wednesday where I post a close up picture of something that was mentioned from the past week.