So What's New With You?

I am probably the world's worst blogger.

I'm guessing that most people who do this update every day, but either A) they have far more interesting lives than I do and/or B) they do not have four children who are now home all the time.

Nope, it's not March/Spring break here yet.

We are homeschoolers.

Yep, you read right...homeschoolers.

We decided to take the plunge one month ago...telling the kids that this is an experiment (and one that can end at any time if they or I decide that things are not going well and we can no longer stand the sight of each other)...but so far, things have been going remarkably well...my biggest fears were that the four of them would be so sick of being around one another that there would be massive fights and screaming that could be heard from Ottawa to Toronto...or that I would be curled into the fetal position by the end of the day, hiding from them, Brian and the pets...

There have been a few moments where the boys have tried to beat each other about the head, but I put that up to them being boys (and brothers)...but the weird (and wonderful) thing has been the stunning lack of fighting, screaming and temper tantrums (from them too)...

Being home with the children all day means a few things for me...things that I was aware of, but hadn't really focussed on...like the fact that there is very little "me" time (not that there was a whole hell of a lot of it to begin with, mind you)...but that marathon I was training for? Yeah, that's going to have to wait...and updating this blog? Well, I'm a little slow on that too...

And along with home schooling, there have, of course, been new health issues to deal with...specifically, celiac disease.

I've known for quite some time now that something was up with me; I just didn't know what...and no, it's not official yet, but since I went gluten free a few days ago and last night ate one (one) piece of garlic toast with my (gluten free) dinner and my stomach blew up five inches larger than it had been before I ate the toast and was so painful I wanted to scream and because of the ten most common symptoms of the disease I have six of them and fall into the two major groups of people who have celiac disease (Type 1 diabetics and those of European descent - Scotland and Ireland are included in that - damn Viking raiders)...I'm placing my money on celiac disease...I'm actually pretty good at self-diagnosis and don't jump on any bandwagon, but yes, before you say anything, I do have a doctor's appointment on Monday and will be bringing this up with him...

By the way, the brown rice bread I bought on the weekend tastes like mdf...going gluten free is NOT something I would do if I felt I had a choice...well, I do have a choice, I suppose...I could keep eating gluten loaded stuff and suffer excruciating pain and eventually become malnourished, but I elect not to do that...

Want to know what else has been going on that has prevented me from posting here as frequently? Well, the puppy keeps eating our floors, for starters...

Yes. Eating. the. floors.

Seems Max has some separation anxiety issues and to deal with things, he has destroyed shoes (mainly mine, although Brian did lose one pair a few months ago), furniture, toys, pencils, books, boots, mittens, hats and now the linoleum floor in the hallway...

Max now has a cage...which he actually seems to enjoy, although he apparently might have to share it with Emma, who told me several times yesterday that she wanted to be in the cage too (locked in)...and when I told her it was against the law for parents to lock their children in cages, she pointed a finger at me and told me accusingly, "You never let me do anything!"

My life may be crazy, but it's good...

I Have Succumbed...

...I am a twit.

I have joined the ranks of Twitterers...

And I already have 9 whole followers...

Who cares if they are mostly people I know whose names I clicked on and followed first...

This whole thing is strange to me...Twitter, Facebook, blogs...the fact that I can find out what Sherri Shepherd (from The View) is thinking as she sits at a party with Beyonce and Jay-Z (and what kind of name is Jay-Z anyway? Who came up with that?) is weird...

The fact that I am writing about Sherri Shepherd writing about being at a party with other celebrities is weird...

I do have bigger things on my plate right now...

Like whether we are pulling the kids out of their school to homeschool them because the school is going to switch over to a so-called "balanced day schedule"-which, for those of you who may not have heard the screams of rage coming from our house, is not something Brian and I think is a good idea (and don't any of you give me any crap about how your kids/school is following this kind of schedule and it's working just fine...the reports claiming how well the balanced day schedule works are mixed, at best, and by the way, the kids are the ones not happy with it...and frankly, that's more important to me than whether the principal and teachers are skipping through the halls because they like the bsd...on top of which, I have three of four kids with ADHD, and this kind of schedule will not work for them...so there.)...

The concerns about pulling the kids out of school to teach them here has less to do with my abilities to spend all day long every day with my children than with the fact they won't get to see their friends as often...Avery, being the school nut/fan that she is (she was upset that she had to stay home two days this week because she had a sore throat), was one I worried about...in fact, she told me yesterday when I asked her what she thought about the idea of being homeschooled that she didn't like it because she wouldn't get to see her friends...when I told her that arrangements could be made for her to see them, she still wasn't convinced, because, as she told me, she doesn't know where they all live...after being told that we could find out that information, she still wasn't sure...until I told her that being homeschooled meant that we could take a three week vacation in the middle of winter if we wanted...then she exclaimed,

"A three week vacation in the middle of winter? I'm there!"

Jamie doesn't like going to school anyway...neither does Ian (especially since he deals daily with other kids picking on him-and yes, we have gone to the teachers, resource teacher and prinicpal about it...which is fine and what we are supposed to do, because they talk to the kids in class, tell them what they can and cannot say to other students, the children politely agree and then they go out into the hallways and onto the playground and revert back to the snotty brats they were...which is what kids do, I know, but that doesn't make it any easier to keep your temper when it's your kid being picked on)...Emma, after taking nearly a year to get into school, finally decided in the last week of school last June, that she did like it and wants to keep going...unless everybody else is complaining about how much they don't want to go to school (Avery aside) and then she joins in the chorus...

So really, there is a lot more to think about other than Twitter or Facebook or...well, maybe just one more quick peek...

All The News That's Fit to Print...

It has been over a month since I posted (which seems to be something I say regularly)...

Ian is dealing with being bullied at school...

Avery is officially a Brownie...

Emma has lost her two bottom teeth and received the requisite payment from the Tooth Fairy...

Jamie has become the world's foremost authority on Wii bowling...

Brian has learned to survive (and just barely) on three to four hours of sleep a night due to his workload...

Max the puppy is now the size of a small pony...

Murphy has decided that Max is allowed to chew on her ears, but only for so long before she tries to bite his face off...

Taffy the cat remains as disdainful as ever...

And me?

I am now officially an Examiner...

My area of "expertise"?

Parenting.

Go figure...

Countdown, Part Two...

I am in a state of shock.

We actually have every gift purchased, wrapped and waiting to be placed under the tree...

In 13 years, this has never happened...

Ok, that's not quite true...since Christmas 2001, this has not happened...which means that since Ian was one and a half years old, we have been up until long past midnight wrapping gifts for children, for each other and for various family members...

And since we have four young children, that has meant that every Christmas morning, we have dragged ourselves down the stairs while our children tear down to the living room to see if Santa actually made it to our house...

But this is Christmas Eve...and technically, it's not even "Eve" yet; it's only 4:20 pm and we have everything done...

I didn't even know this was possible for the Lilley household...

Wow...a Merry Christmas indeed!

Calgon, Take Me Away...

Since Brian left for Scotland a week ago, this is what I have had to deal with:

- painters, hired by the condo board, destroyed my vegetable garden
- the kitchen was flooded by the children seeking to fill water guns
- Jamie woke up at 1am Sunday morning, only to stay awake until 9 pm that night
- the following night, both girls were up in shifts for the entire night
- in the pouring rain, standing in Costco's parking lot, the children and I found the keys to the van - locked inside
- there is a dent in the dining room wall - from where it was kicked
- the same children who desperately needed to play with water guns in the hour and a half of sunshine we've had in the last two weeks, and who got so wet with said guns their clothes had to be wrung out before going in the laundry hamper, played outside under a cloudy sky for 20 minutes and then began yelling at the top of their lungs that it was raining and they were getting wet
- I have seriously considered changing the front door to a revolving one so I don't have to listen to it slam shut one more time
- and finally, the near constant to-the-death-I-hate-you-I'm-going-to-kill-you!- fighting amongst the children...Ian vs Jamie, Jamie vs Avery, Avery vs Emma, Emma vs Jamie, Ian vs Avery, etc...

All I'm gonna say is, there had better be a damned good gift coming back from Scotland...

"Don't Stop Believin'...

...hold on to that feelin'!"

Nothin' funnier than watching four kids jump around the room, shaking their bums to Journey...

God bless Adam Sandler, that's all I have to say...

A Moment in the Day...

I went to get Jamie and Emma off the bus today and had the following conversation...

Me: "So how was school today, guys?"

Jamie: "It was good. I got to play."

Emma: "I didn't get to play, so it was bad."

Me: "Why didn't you get to play?"

Emma: "Because I was singing with Mr. Hamer."

Me: "You didn't get to play because you were singing with Mr. Hamer?"

Emma: "Yeah. Mr. Hamer is the singing guy."

Me: "So you got to sing with Mr. Hamer and the other kids? That must have been fun. You like to sing and you have a beautiful voice."

Emma: "I didn't get to use my beautiful voice because all the other kids were singing so I didn't get to use my beautiful voice."

Me: "You didn't get to use your 'beautiful voice'?"

Emma: "No. But we're a team."

Me: "Who's a team?"

Emma: "We are."

Me: "You mean you and me? We're a team?"

Emma: "Yeah, you and me, we're a team. Can Jamie sing?"

Me: "Oh yes, Jamie can sing. He has a beautiful voice too you know. He can be on our team too."

Emma: "Yeah, he can be on our team too, but he has to sing with his beautiful voice when I sing with my beautiful voice too."

If only she was always that sweet and accommodating...

Why?

Why won't the kids play outside, now that the sun is finally shining and it is warm?

Why are my children complaining that it is too hot outside to play?

Why is my front door never kept closed?

Why are all the parents in my neighborhood standing at their kitchen windows with the same look of panic?

Summer vacation is closer than we think, people...

It Must Be Monday...

My children hate me.

Not really, but some days it seems as though they have formed a club whose sole mandate is to drive me around the bend.

These people have been off school for over a week (if you count the first weekend of March break-and I do, since they were at home for those days), have had brilliant weather for most of it (yes, it's been a tad chilly for the last four days, but the sun has been out even then), and Jamie has asked me every single morning, "Is today a school day?" and has then repeated the question before climbing into bed at night, "Will tomorrow be a school day?"...each time leading me to believe that he actually wanted to go to school...

So why did Brian have to pick the child up, carry him out the front door and onto to the school bus this morning, while the young charmer yelled at the top of his lungs the entire way, "I don't want to go to school!"?

I'm surprised the neighbors still talk to us with the amount of noise that comes from our house...

Every Day One of Them Says Something...

Any time that Ian sees Brian and I display any form of affection for one another, like the times we give each other a kiss (and I'm not talking about any big, wet, sloppy, inappropriate-for-the-children-to-see kisses here - just a quick joining of lips), he scrunches up his nose and yells at the top of his lungs, "E-e-e-w-w-w!"...which is probably normal for an almost-nine year old boy who still thinks that girls have cooties...

This morning Brian and I stood in the kitchen, sharing a few precious seconds together. Arms wrapped around one another, we gave each other a kiss. Through the pass-through window to the dining room, Avery watched us from where she sat at the table drawing.

"Avery," I asked. "Does this gross you out?" (thinking of Ian's usual reaction).

"No," she replied. "It beauties me out."

Some Days You Just Won't Win...

Yesterday my kids were "meeting" each other on Club Penguin. For those of you that don't know, Club Penguin is an online kids community created by a group of parents in British Columbia who wanted to make sure their kids had a safe, online venue.

The kids each get their own penguin, and roam around the "town", meeting each other or playing various games to win coins, which they then use to either buy things for their penguins or their puffles. Puffles are pets to the penguins, and you have to feed them every day, or they will run away, and then you have to play more games to get more coins to get another puffle to feed it and keep it happy and so on and so on...

One of the places the penguins can meet is the dojo. (Yep, apparently there are ninja penguins in the Antarctic...don't see that on the Discovery channel, now do you?) My kids, using my laptop, my husband's laptop and their computer, like to go to the dojo together, where they try to advance from one belt level to the next.

However, Brian and I have to keep telling them how to pronounce the word, "dojo". They keep calling it a "doo-jo". We tell them again and again that the proper pronounciation is "doe-jo". They do not believe us. This is a conversation between me and Jamie from yesterday morning...

Jamie: "Ian! (Jamie also pronounces Ian's name as 'Eon', another habit we're trying to break) Meet me at the doojo!"
Me: "Jamie, it's called a 'doe-joe'."
Jamie: "No, it's not, it's called a doo-jo!"
Me: "No, Jamie, it's called a doe-jo..."
Jamie: "No, it's not, Mama! It's a doo-jo!"
Me: "Doe-jo!"
Jamie: "Doo-jo!"
Me: "Jamie, will you please just accept that I am your mother and I know a few things that you don't? It's a doe-joe."
Jamie: "Mama, it hasn't been called that for centuries!"

I couldn't say anything else.

In This Corner...

In a battle of wills betwen an adult and a four year old, who will emerge victorious?

At this point, if you're guessing the four year old, I'm thinking you might be right.

Emma refused to eat her dinner last night. Absolutely refused to open her mouth. Since I don't believe in forcefully shoving food down her throat (and just how would one do that anyway? I mean, you could get it into her mouth, I suppose, but how could you make her swallow?), that meant no dinner. (And no, I did not offer her anything other than what was on the table; I am not setting that as a precedent)

This morning she had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. She had a pumpkin muffin a bit later, and has eaten nothing since.

Did I mention that it is now close to dinner?

I did offer her the plate from last night (reheated, of course) while her brothers and sister enjoyed their lunch.

Again she refused.

At snack time, she attempted to block me from giving the others their food (she was unsucessful), and told me (several times over) that she wanted a "snack food that is not the food from last night".

I informed her that if she wanted something to eat, she was more than welcome to finish her dinner from last night.

You can guess how that idea went over.

So here we are, nearly twenty four hours later, and my youngest daughter has barely eaten. I'm sure she won't starve, but I am not looking forward to dinner tonight. Emma's dinner will once again be her "disgusting" (this adjective for food she hadn't even tasted) dinner from last night. This ain't gonna be pretty folks...

The question is this: just how many times can a plate of food be reheated before it turns into a science experiment?

I guess we'll find out tonight...

Can You Say Brrr...?

So today was one of those frigid Canadian winter days when all you want to do is stay curled up under the covers, only coming out to grab a nice, hot cup of cocoa or maybe a wee snack to keep you from gnawing your arm off. Today was not a day I wanted to haul my kiester out of the house, and yet, the children still had to go to school, so crawl out of my cozy nest is what I did.

Sometime around 8:15 or so in the morning, Ian decided that wearing a short sleeved shirt to school would be a good idea. Brian tried to convince him that this was in fact a very bad idea. Ian, being 8 years old and absolutely convinced that his father was simply trying to exert some sort of parental control, would not believe that it could possibly be that cold outside.

So I decided to prove him wrong. "Ian," I said (quite calmly, I might add). "C'mere for a moment, would you?"

I opened the front door and the frigid blast of cold air nearly froze our breath as we stood in the front hall.

"AAAUUUGGGGHHHH!" screamed Ian,standing barefoot and bare armed. "Shut the door! It's freezing out there!"

After carefully closing the door, I turned to my son. "Now will you wear a sweater?" I asked.

"Uh, yes, yes I will," came the response.

See? It's all about speaking to them in a language they can understand.

A Brief List That Explains Why No One Understands My Children...

One rare night, not too long ago, my husband and I were out. Alone. The children had been left at home with a babysitter, and we had escaped to spend some quality time alone (read: no one interrupting every 30 seconds to demand anything or squeal on one's sibling/s). We hadn't been gone very long when we received a panicked phone call from the intrepid young lady looking after the kids.

"Help!" she cried. "The kids want circles and kikis...I have no idea what they're talking about!"

Laughing, my husband translated for our confused sitter. "English muffins and their blankets," he told her.

I'm sure most families have their own unique language and slang that makes it hard for those outside the circle to understand what they are talking about. And so, here is a brief list of the terms that my children use...and explains why no one but Brian and I seem to understand them...

circles - as previously mentioned, english muffins to the outside world, circles to us (you can understand right? Their shape? Obviously, they are circles.)

chicken cereal - aka Corn Flakes; a name given to the illustrious cereal when Ian was about 2 years old...because of the big green chicken on the box

kazoo - ski doo - last Easter at my sister's house, my then 5 year old daughter came into the house telling me that "Auntie Shelley wants to take you for a ride on the kazoo"; when I asked what a "kazoo" was, she informed me, "You know, the thing-a-ma-jig!"

honey nut cheerios - Jamie's name for all Cheerios, regardless of brand name or flavor

kikis - Emma and Jamie's blankets...we think the name derives from them hearing Avery calling for her "blankie"...but kiki is what they call them...interestingly, Emma's kiki is a girl and Jamie's is a boy...I personally never knew blankets had a gender, but what do I know?

binny - pronounced "be-nay" - kind of like an Italian mobster from one of the "Godfather" movies...also known as Ian's blanket (and what he started calling it at the age of 2, and no, he's never seen a mob movie, so where the accent came from, I do not know)

heart cereal - Avery's favorite cereal. Most people know it as Bran Flakes; to Avery it is heart cereal because of the heart check symbol on the box

hanitizer - hand sanitizer... Ian couldn't say the word when he had to use it starting in grade 1, and so it is now "hanitizer" to all of us ...

pooter - computer...I'm sure we're not the only ones who use this term, but it is funny when it's a pair of four year olds using it...

orngin - oranges..."Orngin" is what Emma and Jamie call them, and no matter how many times I try to tell them the right way to say it, they are still "orngins"...although frankly, it's a little too close to the old slang word "injuns" for my liking...

So there you have it...my children in all their unique and highly amusing glory. I'm sure that as the years go by, more and more terms will be added to the list, but for now, I think I'll step away from the pooter, pick up kikis and go grab an orngin to eat.

I blame the children...

So in trying to find my brand new blog this morning, I discovered to my shock that someone else had "stolen" my website! Someone by the name of Melissa (which coincidentally is the name of one of my sisters) had somehow managed to get my "watermelon" name and created her very own blog.

I sat on the couch, blinded with fury. The beginnings of a major temper tantrum began to manifest itself. "How dare she?" I fumed. "It's MY name! She can't just take it!" A few other choice names began to percolate in my brain (I didn't actually spew any of them out, what with a four year old boy sitting peacefully on the couch with me, I do have some semblance of parental judgement).

And then my husband came downstairs and calmly removed the computer from my lap. He stared at the screen for about thirty seconds, then handed the thing back to me and told me to look very carefully at the domain bar (or whatever you call that thing-y)...

It would seem that no one had stolen the "watermelon" site from me. I spelled it wrong when I registered the website.

I have heard many times that women lose brain cells from the moment of conception and continue to do so for two full years (yep, that means until the kid is past his or her first birthday)...since I had four kids in less than four years, I make the claim that I am only now starting to recover a few of those lost cells.

So first, I apologize to this poor girl "Melissa" for accusing her of heinous crimes, and for my inability to type in a simple word correctly, I'm going to blame the children...