Tooth Fairy Take Two

I have previously confessed to being the worst tooth fairy ever here. Well, I was ashamed to blog when my worst tooth fairy experience repeated itself. However, we are always trying to improve ourselves. Last night we had a much more positive tooth fairy experience.

Once the kids went down last night, Mark and I collapsed on the couch and started to watch the Biggest Loser. That's when we heard the dreaded sound - little footsteps coming down the stairs. Usually, that sound means that we are about to be tortured by Micah for an hour as we try to get him back to bed. We were pleasantly surprised when it was Elena that came around the corner, but she did not look very happy.

When anything happens that might rock Elena's world and it is after 7:00, we're in for an emotional cry-fest. Her big brown eyes were brimming with tears - I was almost afraid to ask what the problem was. "I have to tell you something..." she began.

Elena then proceeded to delve into a long, overly detailed story about losing her tooth. I'll just share the shortened version: Elena had some candy at church. It started off as a chewy candy, but then it started to crunch in the middle, and she thought is was strange, so she threw it away. Well, it turns out that the crunchy part of the candy was actually her lose tooth that fell out. She threw the tooth away with the candy. As she was laying in bed, she realized what had happened.

At this point in the story, with the way that she was telling the story, I was starting to worry that she really wanted us to go to church in the freezing cold and go from door to door, looking inside hoping that a janitor would let us in. I could already picture us with our winter jackets on, leaning on our cupped hands, looking inside for anyone to help. Instead of letting her come up with a solution, Mark interjected, "Why don't you just write a note telling the tooth fairy what happened?"

If you recall our last tooth fairy blog, Elena has plenty of experience writing to the tooth fairy. She liked this idea and perked up as she went to find a piece of paper. Once she went to bed, Mark got thinking, "Why don't we take one of the old teeth that we have upstairs and stick it under her pillow with the money and see what happens?" And that is exactly what we did. (You might wonder why we still have teeth laying around the house - when you do the tooth fairy thing at midnight you just throw the tooth on a high shelf and deal with it later.)

Mark went to go grab the note and place the substitute tooth and a gold dollar coin. He brings back a cute note that read:

Dear Tooth Fairy, I thought my tooth was a rock because I had candy and felt it. On axadent I threw it away. (I never claimed that she would win the national spelling bee. LOL)

This note was way better than the last note. The last time that I failed my tooth fairy duties was when Christina lost her first tooth (or at least the first tooth that she actually could find after it fell out.) I swear that note used the word "please" about 10 times....

The next morning Elena runs in the room. First, she said, "The tooth fairy came the first time!" (*ouch*) Then she said, "She found my old tooth. I guess she dug it out of the trash? Can I put it back under my pillow and get another dollar?"

Thus continues our tooth fairy adventures...

Who wants to be a millionaire?

I decided to blog today just because I am feeling a little burnt out. Micah called 911 for the 6th time this morning and Isaiah just walked by with a huge Tootsie Roll pop that he found somewhere in the house, leaving a dripping red trail of stickiness behind him. I feel like my sanity is about to reach the tipping point, so it's time for a little stress relief.

My last blog was about our last trip to McDonalds. As I was writing it, I remembered the other half of that adventurous fast food trip. Elena discovered the McDonalds Monopoly game. She is convinced that we are going to win a million dollars.

It all began when she saw the Monopoly tabs on the side of the french fry box. She pulled the tabs and started reading them. She asked what they were for. I told her that they were for a game and showed her the boards.

All of the sudden, she is peeling every game tab off of every box that we have, and then she began searching the floor for more. She was so excited, "Mom! We have Park Place. All we need is Boardwalk and we'll have a million dollars!" If only it was that easy...

Now everyone we meet and everywhere we go, Elena is sharing that we are going to win a million dollars. I don't have the heart to tell her that McDonalds has most likely only produced 1 Boardwalk tab and it is probably on a french fry box in the windiest part of the country, where the experts know that it will blow away before it will ever make it back to their corporate office. Actually, telling her would probably make my life easier.

As soon as we returned home from McDonalds, she had to call Mark and tell him the wonderful news. Then she pleaded for him to go to McDonalds for lunch so that he might find the "golden Broadway ticket." Mark must have been skeptical, because then she went into detail about the game works and how she is sure that the Broadway ticket is only a Big Mac away from fruition.

I remember when I believed that I was going to magically become a millionaire without lifting anything but a sticker on the side of my food box. Now I realize how the world works, but I can't break it to her. She hasn't believed in Santa since she was 6. I have to give her something! Plus, I have guilt from being the worst tooth fairy ever, but that is an older blog.

I'm not sure I'm done with this blog, but I have to save Isaiah from certain destruction. He's standing on my dining room table next to my crystal cake pan...

Survivor Part 2

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my scavenger child: Isaiah. He loves to find food and eat it - no matter how old it is. Well, he has reached an all new level.

My MOPS group had a play date at McDonalds last week. All 4 children were with me because it was fall break. (By the way, does anyone else remember fall break? I keep sending my kids to school and the school keeps inventing reasons to send them back. Sorry, I digress...) Isaiah slept while the older 3 kids were eating. When he woke up they swept him into the play structure.

I try my best to not think about what might be happening in the play structure. They are designed to let really small children in only to a point. At that point there is some type of barricade that prevents them from going further. As long as Isaiah looks desperate enough, some other child will always hoist him over the barricade and he will find his way into the part of the structure that dangles 12 feet in the air. I keep telling myself that the equipment is safe as I see him waving from a place that there is no possible way I can get to. I at least had my older 2 girls with me. Whenever one of their brothers is in distress, they are always willing to drag them kicking and screaming and throw them down the first available slide.

Well, apparently, the girls threw Isaiah down a slide and failed to tell me. I was chit chatting with some other MOPS moms when I looked over and saw Isaiah holding 2 half eaten ice cream cones, licking from them both one at a time. I was horrified. When he exited the slide, I guess he looked up and saw all of the left over food that other kids didn't finish just sitting on the tables. He felt free to help himself to whatever he could find.

One of my MOPS friends saw Isaiah and told me that the ice cream cones belonged to her kids, but he could have them. I wish I could express how embarrassing it is to have THAT child. I have the child that steals food. When I took the empty cones from him, he started casing the food tables, looking for his next tasty snack. That's when we went to visit the food counter. Now I know why he always seems to have a runny nose.

The moral of this story is: If you see Isaiah at McDonalds, and your kids want to save their food for later, then you must hide your food in a location that Isaiah cannot see. Then, it may be safe. Some children aspire to be astronauts, some aspire to be firemen. My child aspires to be a homeless person.

Package Deal

My kids are a package deal. I have very little patience for kids that want to play with one of my kids and won't let the others participate. Now, I understand that younger kids can sometimes be a pest (especially little brothers), but I'm not okay with any of my kids excluding another for no reason at all. I always tell them that friends may come and go, but you have your family forever - so you should treat each other with love.

Elena just had the ultimate character test around this principle. She was forced to choose between her friend and her siblings and she chose her siblings. I just finished comforting her as she told me the story in tears. I want to share because I'm so proud of her! She is a pleaser and hates to ruffle any feathers, so I know that what she did was very hard for her.

Let me begin with our shopping trip yesterday afternoon. Elena and Christina were NOT getting along in the back seat. Usually they have fun together, but I noticed that Elena was being a little ruder than usual. I realized that she had been spending a lot of time with one of her friends, and whenever she plays with that friend, she is a little more negative and more rude with her siblings. After I separated the two, Christina suddenly blurted out, "I miss Elena! She and (her friend) wouldn't play with me and now Elena is mad at me!"

I asked Elena what the deal was. She said she never said anything to which Christina replied, "No! They said that I couldn't play with them and it hurt my feelings!"

Elena then began to explain the situation. Apparently, her friend said that Christina couldn't play with them and Elena said nothing. I told Elena that when she said nothing, she was essentially agreeing and was just as wrong. I have been especially passionate about this school of thought since I read The Autobiography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He said, "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." After our chat I think she understood that what she did was just as wrong.

Fast forward a couple of hours. I was talking to a friend and she said that her son thought that Elena was mad at him because she wouldn't play with him. That was when I learned that the situation with Elena wasn't a solitary incident. Mark and I had another heart to heart chat with her. We tried not to accuse her about the situations, we tried to put her in the shoes of the other person. I told her that her friend was sad and then I asked her how she would feel. She looked at me with her big brown eyes and said, "I would feel terrible!" That was when we knew that she understood.

Skip to today. Today the friend came to the door. I told her that I was not okay with her excluding the other kids. She tried to say that it never happened, but I had 3 witnesses. She agreed and I called Elena. Christina came up to me a little later and said, "Way to go mom. Thanks for standing up for your kids." I had to chuckle at that comment.

The kids played together well for a couple of hours -- and then the drama began. Elena came upstairs to the kitchen where I was baking and was visibly upset. She said that they were playing together on the Wii when the division began. Christina just left frustrated, but Micah was trying to play with Elena and her friend and the friend didn't want to play with him. Elena said that she stood up for Micah and the friend left mad at her. She started to tear up as she told the story.

Elena hates to make anyone mad, and she was so heartbroken. My heart was hurting for her. I hugged her. She was trying to not cry, but I told her that when something that hurts her this bad happens, it is okay to cry. "Sometimes it is hard to do the right thing, but we need to do it anyway," I shared with her.

She took a big breath, and kept trying to hold it in. I could tell that she just wanted to burst into tears, but she was trying to be strong. I finished what I was baking and she stared out of the kitchen sliding glass door. Then, she said, "Mom, I have to tell you one more thing..."

I looked at her and she started crying and babbling. I couldn't understand her between the tears. I sat with her and tried to get her to calm down. Finally, she told me the rest of the story, "When I stood up for Micah, she told me that she didn't like you, Micah, Isaiah or Christina anymore and then she left." This, for her, was the most terrible part of the story. She put her arms around me and started to cry non-stop. I could just hug her and assure her that she did the right thing. I think that her friend's last comment just justified her in her own mind.

I feel really bad for Elena. She is so good at pleasing people. In fact, I am so opposite from being a people pleaser that it really scared me. I was afraid that she would always go with the crowd as long as the crowd consisted of people that she really liked. Now I understand that as a parent I may have enough time to work with her so that she is able to stand up for what is right. Now my job is just to go cheer her up a little.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” - Edmund Burke

Of Churches and Parking Lots

Our church just opened a spectacular new building. There is more room in the sanctuary, classrooms, and children's areas. There is more room everywhere but the parking lot.

I knew going into this church campus change that there were going to be less parking spots, but I didn't realize how much that was going to affect me until the switch happened. In short: there are nowhere near enough parking spaces for the amount of people that come on Sunday. This changes me from the already stressed out mom that had to get 4 young children ready for church kind of woman into the crazy woman who has to drag children into a church building so you better not park in the close spots kind of woman.

One day (no joke) there were about 20 spots open when I dropped Mark off to help out in Sunday School (we're always running late so he has to be dropped off and run like crazy). I missed the area that I wanted to park in, so I decided to drive once around the building and park in my favorite area. When I came around the back of the building I saw (and I am totally not kidding) about 6 cars race to get the last of the parking spots and a bunch of other cars go into stalk mode and start following people that might be attempting to leave. There is a street nearby and I saw about a dozen huge SUVS trying to parallel park on the street before any more people came. It was total mayhem!

Now, the church does provide a shuttle service from a parking lot that I've heard exists, but you cannot see from anywhere within the vicinity of the building. The last thing I want to do is park there for two reasons: I will have to drag my children onto a shuttle bus and we talk a lot after church so that shuttle might just not be there when we need it. Then I will have to drag my 4 kids down a sidewalk conveniently placed between a high voltage power plant and a curvy road. Nope, I'm fighting for my parking space.

This morning I dropped off Mark and 2 of my kids early and he got super HELPFUL, which takes a super lot of TIME. He started wiping off the baby's face and fixing his collar. Within the first 30 seconds, I saw about 10 cars fly past us heading towards the last precious parking spaces. I finally told Mark, "I know you're trying to help, but GO! Those cars are going to park in my SPACE!" I then jumped in the driver's seat and took off, leaving a bewildered husband behind. I headed towards the area that was always open, noticing that the last of the close spots had just been filled. Luckily, I got one of the last spots around the corner. When I got of the car, the gentleman who got the last spot looked at me and breathed a sigh of relief. "We just made it!" he called to me over his car. There is a sense of camaraderie when you claim the last precious parking spots.

On a positive note, they are expanding the parking lot. The expansion is halfway done. But until it is completed, I will fight for my right to park within walking distance of the new building.

Survivor

I write this post after my son's 5th call to 911. When he would call in the beginning, they would always call back to make sure that we were okay. Now they don't even care anymore. *sigh*

This post is actually about Isaiah - the ultimate survivor. If there were a show that was really about survival (and not about group dynamics like the TV show Survivor), I would totally enter Isaiah. Well, I'd enter him if there were no minimum age... I really think that if something happened to us and Isaiah was the only one left, that he could live on his own for a month or two.

You might ask why I believe that my 16 month old is the ultimate survivor. Well, let me explain...

Since Isaiah was first able to crawl, he has had an attraction to the trash can. When we first put him in his high chair, he was immediately drawn to the assortment of food that lay in the trash can. (He can see down into it from his chair.) I remember having to move the trash out of his reach at the earliest age. Then, when he was first able to crawl, one of the first places that I had to banish him from was the trash. He would sneak over to the kitchen, crawl up on the chair and see what kind of wonderful foods he could find. Our lid for the trash broke a couple of years ago, so we can't keep it covered. Isaiah likes it that way.

Isaiah never cries for food. He scavenges. The other day I heard knocking on the patio door in the basement. I walked downstairs to see what was going on, because my four kids and the neighbor were just watching a movie. Apparently, Isaiah was the one who had been knocking on the door (which is right next to the TV area). The kids, not really thinking about the fact that he's 1 year old or that that was raining, let him out into the backyard. I'm sure that if the movie wasn't so good that they would have thought twice about letting him out into a monsoon-esque rain storm. By the time I got downstairs and realized what was going on, Isaiah was knocking on the door from the outside. I opened the door, and he came toddling in the house with a half-eaten rotten apple in hand. He was as happy as can be. He proceed to sit down with the kids and eat his find.

Realizing that he was hungry (and eating a really gross looking apple), I went outside to grab him a fresh apple off of our apple tree. I took the rotten apple from his little clutches and replaced it with a perfect, fresh picked apple. He immediately threw it at me and started crying and pointing at the rotten apple. It took me a while to realized that he prefers rotten apples because they are easier to bite. Once I had this revelation, I would cut a slice out of a fresh apple. Then, he would resign to eating it.

I wish I would say that this was a solitary incident, but it is not. Mark planted a garden this year full of carrots, strawberries, and tomatoes. Isaiah doesn't like the tomatoes, but he loves everything else. He digs in the strawberries until he finds some good little morsel that he can get his hands on. If he can't find anything, then it's off to the apple tree to find another rotten apple!

Isaiah tries to be a well-rounded baby, so he doesn't limit himself to food. Last week, I was standing in the kitchen making dinner, and Isaiah walked right past me to the patio door, which was open. He walked with purpose, so out of curiosity, I watched to see where he was going.

Isaiah climbed down the deck stairs, and walked to the play house, where the kids had left a couple of plastic cups. He grabbed a cup and then turned around, walked to the stairs and climbed back up to the kitchen. Holding his cup, he walked past me again, down the hallway and into the bathroom, where he pushed the step stool up to the counter. He climbed the stool and onto the counter, where he turned on the faucet, filled his cup with water and started drinking. That's a baby that knows what he wants!

Now I just have to be more aware of Isaiah when we're out and about - I can imagine how excited he'll be about eating out of someone else's trash. At home I bury anything that has touched raw meat in the bottom of the trash - or if it is empty, I throw any dangerous items in the trash outside. Now I just have to come to terms with the fact that my kids don't need me anymore. My 16 month old doesn't even need me! Actually, now that I'm writing this, it's actually kind of liberating. Hmmm... I wonder if I can potty train a 16 month old. We already know that he can climb onto the toilet...

911 - Not An Emergency

This morning Micah woke up earlier than Mark or I was willing to wake up. In a sleep-induced fog, Mark turned on his cell phone, found a game for Micah to play, and then handed him the phone. Micah was quiet and happy, but Mark jolted awake when he heard a distant voice say, "Is your mommy there?"

Apparently, Micah had gotten bored with Brick Breaker and had moved on to bigger and better things-such as calling 911. The 911 operator was the friendly voice that Mark heard on the other side of the phone. I wish I could say that this was a solitary call to 911. It is actually our 4th call to 911 this year.

Is it possible to be "The Boy That Cried Wolf" when it comes to calling 911? Will the police station recognize our phone number and stop calling back to see if there is really a problem? Micah has the greatest knack for calling 911. He has called 3 out of the past 4 times. I don't even think he knows what 911 is. He just knows that if he pushes a certain button (we're not sure if there is a special emergency button on Mark's cell phone), that a friendly voice will talk back. Don't even bother suggesting that we lock the phone. There is some special way to call 911 with the lock on. The funniest thing is, Mark and I don't know how to call 911 with the lock on-only Micah has solved this mystery.

Isaiah has joined his brother in the excitement of calling 911. Our 3rd call of the year was my then 15 month old dialing 911 from the fax line. There is no phone attached to this fax line, so when the police called back, I couldn't answer the phone and tell them not to bother. I knew I was about to get a visit.

The first thing I did was look around the house. It was a Monday morning, and the house was a disaster from the weekend and I hadn't yet had a chance to clean it. (Not that I was really going to clean it right away, but I figured that I at least had a reason for the mess.) In anticipation of my visit, I started running through the house, cleaning as fast as I could (well, I was mostly cleaning, but I just had to update my Facebook page about what was going on). The house was looking better, but was definitely not perfect when the officer showed up at my door.

When the police officer showed up, I explained to him that my 1 year old dialed 911 from the fax line. I thought he might be impressed at how smart he was, but instead he looked at me like I might be a little crazy. I guess with a lame reason like that he figured I might be held silently at gun point and had to resort to making up some last minute story to get rid of him. He just said, "I need to check out the house, ma'am."

Now, when a police officer is checking out your house, you notice all of the things that are laying around that just didn't bother you before he showed up. He methodically checked every room until he saw the boys in the basement. The baby was happily playing with a toy and Micah looked up and gave him a wide grin. At that point, he stopped checking the house. The boys were obviously under no stress. I breathed a sigh of relief that he never made it to the laundry room. I was a little behind on laundry.

The officer politely left and I thanked him. I breathed a big sigh of relief - hoping that I didn't have to deal with 911 again. Then, there was this morning. My kids keep me wondering what excitement each day will bring.