Stay cool

I am not an outdoor girl. I cannot state that strongly enough. Growing up, you could find me one of three places from April to September: in a baby pool, in the pool at the country club or in the air conditioning. Give me a breeze and weather below 75-degrees and I'd see you on a swing or on my bike or in the woods. Raise the temp and let the air stand still, I'm in the water or indoors. I am thirty-one, and there are still very few exceptions to this policy. I has served me well.

My sister was a water baby. She loved the water. She was jumping in the pool (to an adult, though she was known to sneak off on you) at three years old. I loved the tanning and the fact that if you were swimming, you weren't sweating. One of the great things about a small-town childhood was that once I turned twelve or thirteen, I was old enough for my mom to drop me off at the pool after lunch (when a lifeguard was on duty) and pick me up in time to get cleaned up for supper. Before that age, I had to wait on an invitation to go with a friend or for my mom to take me. On the off days, I spent my afternoons lolling about a baby pool in my backyard with my little sister.

The boys and I spent last summer in a townhouse across from the pool in our apartment complex, and we went daily. They did tremendous in swim lessons and are graduating to more advanced swim this summer. We are a mile from two pools at the YMCA, but that doesn't mean I'm loading everybody up every non-camp, non-work day and spending it poolside at a crowded Y. Especially when there's four loads of clothes to wash, dry and fold and I have visions of Paula Deen's mini stuffed potatoes dancing in my head. They get to swim every day during camp, twice a day for the two weeks of swim lessons. And let's say Nell is willing to spend a couple hours one day per weekend fighting crowds at the Y. So, there has to be a viable alternative.

When we bought this house, I made sure the backyard would fit a baby pool, although you can't call it that and expect a ten-year-old to get excited about getting in it. Corey has to work all day today, all night tonight and all day tomorrow. After lunch, I loaded the boys up with stern warnings of knocking their heads together if they were anything other than perfectly behaved in a crowded Wal-Mart the day before Memorial Day. We made it out of there with an inflatable pool that says it fits six, a water pump and a longer water hose. Thirty minutes and much expressed doubt about the fun factor of a knee-deep inflatable pool later, we have this scene in the backyard:

Props came from the bedroom to the pool.

He looks like the son from the Munsters or the Addams Family.

I'm telling you, I could spend the entire day in this little thing, floating on a raft, reading a book.

Bonus! You get to play with the hose.

And use it to pretend you're peeing.

They're giving each other crazy hairstyles.

Shit, if it was good enough for my sister and me, it's good enough for these city boys!

Sidenote: They asked Corey this weekend if they could go without haircuts for the summer and we agreed. Jake so badly wants Justin Bieber's hair, but not only is it not allowed at Catholic school, he doesn't have silky hair. He has coarse non-straight, non-curly hair. It gets TALLER when it gets long. Just like his dad. We figure we're going to end up bribing them to cut their hair, so atrocious will it get.

And by the way, my champion grand-sired American Cocker Spaniel, a breed of dog that allegedly takes to the water readily, hates the water. I had visions of him frolicking around the wade pool with his brothers, but alas, he stayed a safe distance from the pool every time we went outside to check on the boys. He won't even stand where the ground is wet.

"Mom, you're standing in the SUN. It's only safe for us in the house!"

Not even the cooling effects of water are enough to get my dog to stay outside.

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The curtain that shuts us in

My bedroom is too dark. There is no direct sunlight, for the only "windows" in the room are the frosting sliding glass doors that open into the sunroom. The paint is too dark, so I often complain to Corey that this room gives me seasonal affective disorder. I have already picked out new paint colors for the ceiling, trim and walls. The room is loaded with details - crown moulding, thick baseboards, four doors with trim - and the quote to paint it is $450. So while I wait to have $450 my children don't need or get the nerve and ambition to do it myself, I look for ways to improve the darkness of the bedroom.

When we moved into the house, I put up these thick room darkening curtains in a bold turquoise (one of my favorite colors) that was an exact match to a color used in the bedding. I am aware of the irony in having room-darkening drapes in a room while complaining about it being too dark. The drapes are only pulled on days I get to sleep late.

This "before" picture was taken about three in the afternoon. See? Dark.

So after the living room curtains turned out so spectacular, I decided to continue one of my favorite accents - sea coral (third only to blue and white porcelain and even better, blue and white porcelain monkeys) in one of my favorite colors in the bedroom. If I could cover this dark solid color with something light and printed, I could keep the weekend room-darkening function and bring more light into the room. I also decided I wasn't going to bother with getting my mother to sew them. This was a job for hem tape. Before I commited to the look with tape, I pinned the fabric to one of the blackout panels and hung it for a few days:

Please ignore the suitcase and the unmade bed. I started on this the evening we got back from Jena.

Tonight I spent about two hours ironing and hem-taping and ironing some more, but it's so worth it. They *almost* look better than the curtains in the living and dining rooms, which needed a heavier lining. The blackout curtains make them drape perfectly, and they really do make the room lighter, less heavy.

Hem tape is my friend.

Don't rain on my parade and tell me I'm not the first person to think of sticking some fabric to some existing curtains with a little sixteen yards of hem tape. As far as this blog goes, I did it first and I did it best. I even got the Big Smile from Corey!

In other news (and I'm going to employ this same practice in curtains for the boys' room), yesterday was the last full day of school. It feels so weird to not have an evening full of school shit to do. Today was Landen's awards ceremony and my boy got his third honor roll certificate of second grade AND a certificate of academic excellence in Science AND Spelling. It was his last day of school. Jake's awards ceremony is tomorrow and then we're DONE for the summer. They have five weeks of YMCA summer camp, two weeks of vacation with Mawmaw and Pawpaw, a couple weeks of Daddy Day Care, a few random days thrown in and start at the new school on August 10th. We have a lot of work to do to get Jake ready for a new school, but we have added a crackerjack to the mental health team and hopefully we're going to get a New and Improved Jake-a-boo for St. Jude this fall.

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Here's to you Fuzzy Wuzzy

When it became apparent to me early in the week that Corey was going to be working all weekend, I decided that I did not want to keep the boys cooped up in the house with me all weekend. We have now gotten to the point where it's too hot for me to spend a significant amount of time outside when the sun is out. I also know from a year of doing this that when the boys and I spend a weekend together, none of us are speaking to each other by Sunday afternoon and we have to take a break from each other. What better circumstances to load everybody up in the car and head to the Great Ones in Jena?!

As it turned out, we ended up in a childcare dilemma on Friday. The boys were out of school, Corey was inundated with extra flood-prep-response-related duties and I had morning meetings. The solution was Corey driving the boys to Marksville Thursday evening to meet my parents, who took them to Jena that night so that my mom could be my au pair on Friday. The boys were crazy excited to sleep over in Jena without the parents. So when I arrived Friday evening, they had been in the country for a whole day. Their faces and arms were gray with sweat and dirt. Jake's pants were falling down and Landen was in the ditch with my dad. They were so dirty, in fact, that Great Don insisted they be hosed off before they could even march through the house to get in the shower before supper.

These are the only pictures I took outside all weekend! I'm ashamed. When we go to Jena, Landen is in and out. He moves from outside to playing PopTropica on the computer to going in Great Don's study and watching TV. I have to order Jake to come inside. The boy LOVES the country. He puts on his "Jena" (rubber) boots, chases frogs, digs for earthworms, inspects the foliage, climbs trees, uses the bathroom outside. He gets up in the morning, puts his boots on and goes outside. We make him come in to eat. He's a free, happy little thing, and it's gorgeous to watch. When he's in Jena, he says he wants to live there when he grows up.

My dad reading Rudyard Kipling's poem "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" to Jake. When he sat down beside Great Don to listen to the poem, he tried to put his arm around my dad.

Landen likes to get in my dad's recliner with me so I can rock him. We have an absence of rocker in our house in Baton Rouge. Murphy goes to the crazy place when one of the boys gets in my lap, so he always climbs up too.

Friday night I snuck Jake out of bed to come look at this green tree frog that had decided to sleep for the night on my parents carport door. I am terrified of frogs and found him when I was going outside to get a cold drink, screamed and slammed the door.

For Christmas, my parents bought the boys a two-person tent and monogrammed ACU sleeping bags. This is their designated sleeping spot in Jena for the next couple years - set up in the formal living room. This is that room's only use after Christmas. That room gets the coldest in the house, so they burrow into those thick sleeping bags and sleep later than they do at home. Because they're slightly spoiled city kids, we do travel with a portable DVD player, which accompanies them into the tent.

You know the baby boy is getting some good snooze when he wakes up at 10 AM with his hair looking like that.

There must be something about grandmothers and the stocking of pantries. When Corey and I go to my parents without the kids, there are no snacks. My mother stocked her pantry and fridge with everything she could recall the boys enjoying and they took full advantage. I know Erin's mom always has her pantry stocked with the granchildren's favorites, and Corey's mom has the best snacks - great big boxes of Little Debbies - in her pantry whenever we go. Do grandmothers have some fundamental need to feed children? Do they worry that their grandchildren are being undernourished in their homes? Or are they just trying to bribe our children to like their houses more than home? This is hilarious.

Great Clare offers the full breakfast buffet to Jake and Landen - eggs, bacon, biscuits, sausage, pancakes or waffles (with regular or blueberry syrup or honey), chocolate milk, regular milk, orange juice and fresh watermelon, cantelope, pinapple, strawberries and orange slices.  

This is the face of a boy who apologized to me for pulling the tail off a lizard and spent his entire journey to the creek hoping to see a snake, but who still doesn't like to pee outside.

The owner of this face puts his Jena boots on first thing in the morning and tucks his pajama pants into them, collects rocks and interesting sticks and gets up early with Great Don to read his book in the peace and quiet.

On top of getting to spend time with my parents, which we haven't done in Jena since Christmas, I love taking the boys to my hometown for what they can experience there that I cannot give them anywhere else. Freedom to roam. And be safe. Any of the ample backyards that back into my parents are fair game for exploration. Murphy even loves to stir up the beagles in their pen on the other side of the hedge behind our house. The front yard is a big slope and when the grass is thicker, you can roll from top to bottom at top speed. At my cousin Bobby's, the boys followed him down the street through the woods in his neighborhood to the creek where he plays. I was waxing nostalgic on riding my bike up the street, through a fence and the Bank of Jena parking lot into another subdivision to get to my friend Libby's house. No worries about those unspeakable atrocities that can happen to children in any neighborhood of the big city where mine live.

I guess to Jake and Landen, city kids who endure twenty-minute car rides and rage-inducing traffic to get anywhere, going to the country must be as rewarding and exciting as it was for me being a bored girl in the country loving weekend trips to Baton Rouge and Lafayette. Landen cannot believe how little time it takes to get from my parents' house to my cousin Bobby's - three minutes. He's been expressing his delight and disbelief every time we've made that brief trip for three years. I'm not sorry this isn't the life I let them live, because three days in the country doesn't erase being a city kid. They expect delivery Chinese food, a selection of movie theatres and regular trips to the shopping mall. If I spread the trips out strategically enough, the majesty of the country and its ability to calm and entertain my children will never fade.

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I've been here before, but none of you are familiar to me

I just did this, and I don't remember a single day of it being this hard. Apparently, some genius somewhere (and I have my suspicions who did this) decided that in order to fill the time between deployments, instead of them sitting around doing nothing, the Louisiana National Guard should be preparing and protecting southeast Louisiana from the soon-to-overflow Mississippi River. And while Corey, with his full-time soldier job, was spared from schlepping out into the sun and filling Hesco containers for days on end in places where the water probably won't rise all that much, we haven't seen him too much this week.

This has been a source of great consternation for me. I was ill-prepared for 24-hour workdays and coming home every other day to shower or retrieve medicine for a vomiting child (more on that later.) You would think, by the way I showed every inch of my indignance and moodiness this week, that I had never done this before. So then, like any good behavioral therapy patient, I have to examine the source of this anger and whether it is appropriately directed.

Corey is a different kind of dad than my dad was growing up. There were things that only my mom did and things that only my dad did, not very many of which were housekeeping items, and the two did not often mix. Now, as they've aged, they've taken on different roles. When my dad is done eating, he gets up and starts doing the dishes, including the one you may or may not be using, so it behooves you to eat faster than he does. He's also developed a love of the Swiffer, but that's not what this post is about. This is about how Corey, our pater familias, spreads his duties into the Mr. Mom category. I'm not the only one here who launders, folds and puts away clothes. Who cleans up messes and studies vocabulary words and study guides. Who packs lunches and makes breakfast. I am typically not the person who gets up and gets the boys off to school in the morning, though I am the person who collects them in the evenings.

Point is, this is a team event. There is constant communication about who is going to do what based on the mess that the requested parent is elbow-deep in at any particular moment. When The Cheese (that would be me) stands alone, after six months of realigning household functions to include even distribution of labor with a capable and willing partner, she gets right pissed about it (apparently) and her pleasing personality absconds. We do not know if he's coming or when he's coming until he actually stands up from his desk and walks to his car. The earliest we got him last week was 7:30 PM. Three nights he did not get to come home at all.

So I have run out of pitties with the military, BAH be damned. There's no satisfying place to direct my anger. I have the kind of relationship with my kids where I can say "this is a situation that makes me very unpleasant. I promise not to be grumpy or yell unnecessarily if you promise not to do X, Y or Z." Neither of them have any problem reminding me if I'm welching on our deal.

Imagine our delight when I got a call to come pick up Jake from aftercare on Thursday because he'd been throwing up and had fallen asleep in the cafeteria. When I picked him up, the throwing up continued, into buckets of sand toys we had in the back of the car. I took him to the pediatric urgent care, but the anti-nausea medication did not work, and the throwing up continued until about 8:30. My mother-in-law asked me if this was my first time with the stomach flu, which she said was really hard for her as a mom. I relate, because jumping up to bend your crying kid over a garbage can while he retches the tiny cup of liquid he just drank is pitiful. But I told her that I've seen Jake through so much emotional pain this past year, the stomach virus was no big deal. He was keeping food down the next morning. He ate three meals before his grandparents picked him up at 12:30.

Since we're not really flooding until the end of the week, we have an second week of Corey's Uncertain Schedule to look forward to, though they are giving him the day off on Tuesday and he's stated his intention to mow the lawn. I'm going to do two things: 1) not expect him home in time to help with anything, that way I will not be mad or disappointed when I have to do everything myself and 2) only allow myself ten minutes of pissy and pitiful a day. Okay, maybe fifteen.
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The BIG news drop, and hopefully that's it

Tonight when Corey got home from work (this was a drill weekend), we sat the boys down and broke the news about attending St. Jude in the fall. The psychologist had coached us on delivering the news in a positive ("you're starting a new school next year") instead of a negative ("you're not going back to St. Theresa next year"). We wanted to tell them before school let out, to give them the opportunity to talk to their friends and exchange contact information for the summer. But we didn't want to give them too much time, considering Jake's weakness for converting sadness into anger directed at his classmates.

It went exactly like I thought it would. Landen had about thirty seconds of unhappiness, until he heard that he gets to sleep an hour later and pick out his own school shoes (they have to wear all-white at St. Theresa). The truth is that Landen has had a rough start to every school year. We have to rebuild his confidence upon the entry of every grade, so we'd expect his few weeks of third grade to be shaky, regardless of the school. He's also had trouble making and keeping friends this year. I'm sure he'll be nervous about making new friends, but we're planning to get a jump on him not being a total stranger to some of his classmates.

Upon hearing the news, Jake started nodding and smiling and blinking and saying "okay." Which is the clearest indication that Jake is not okay. We listed the things we liked about this school - only two classes per grade, both boys at the same campus, the same campus as our church, highly recommend by other parents and families we know, uniforms are basically the same, their shoes can have color, they can sleep an hour later, they could ride the bus to and from home if they want. The bottom line is that we live in Baton Rouge. The boys need to attend school in their worship and geographical community. When Jake was throwing up at school on Friday, it took me 65 minutes from the time they called me to when I walked in the door. I would not be able to do any better for anything more severe than the pukeys, and I'm not a mom whose comfortably not being able to get to her kids quickly!

We got him to let his crying out a little bit. At first he denied and said he "was sweating from his eyeballs," but his dad has zero tolerance for trying to be cutesy in serious moments, so he was forced to be honest about why his eyes were wet, though he kept saying he had no feelings. We made him get up and go to the feelings chart on the fridge and I read him all the ones that I thought might apply and simplified if he did not know what a word meant. This is what he ended up choosing:

We did not make him go into why he selected anxious. There's plenty of time for us to work through that. His psychologist told me that since Jake and I approach things from the same high-anxiety, hate-to-feel-displaced-and-out-of-control place, I needed to think about what would worry me if I was Jake, or what would make me sad, or what would make me angry about starting a new school. So in a couple days, his dad and I will check back in with him and try to get him to talk about what's worrying him about this. Not that we can erase these worries - having to make new friends, meet new teachers, not knowing where things are are all legitmate concerns- but getting him to acknowledge what's making him worry will help us find some peace in this decision with him.

Completely by coincidence, Corey and I picked up a couple boxes of Pop-Its in a quick run to Target last night. After Jake selected his feeling so well, Corey took them outside with a box of them and we encouraged him to throw them down hard, like he was mad at it.

And a video. This is not exciting and for the first part, out of focus, but I do love Jumping Jake.

I picked up the camera after we instructed Jake to throw it like his was mad at it and he violated his first few poppers. So the Pop-Its ended the evening on a happy note, instead of sending a child up to bed without trying to diffuse his anxiety. (I just went upstairs to check on them, and Lily is in the bed laying in the small of Jake's back. That girl has learned to take attention and affection wherever she can get it. Love comes in many forms, even the sometimes over-eagerness and invasiveness of a little boy, and she's accepting it.)

The boys have four days of school this week, and a total of two days next week. So we've given them enough time to get what they need to stay in touch with the friends they want to keep, and given one of them in particular very little time to take out his anger-veiled-sadness on some kid at morning prayer. His friends have been to his house now, so he can grasp the concept that they can always come back. Poor kid. I know this decision is the right one, but I wish we hadn't had to make it.

Eventually, we're going to stop throwing this kid into an emotional blender. The school change is the last one I'm anticipating, and I try very, very hard to control what kind of game-changers I throw at this boy. The most important thing moving forward is to avoid surprises that change his schedules or his expectations.

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I'm putting off cooking bacon

I don't have a relevant, witty title for this blog post. We're having waffles and bacon for dinner tonight, and I'm fighting starting the bacon because while I love to eat it and can smell it for miles and miles, I do not enjoy cooking it. I'm also not particularly good at cooking bacon.

For Mother's Day, the boys each made me something at school. Landen made me fish out of his hands with little heart mouths and bugeyes. He's very proud of it. He keeps asking me if I like it and gets all bright-eyed when I tell him how much I ADORE it.

Jake make me a small cross. I'm not sure of the pattern - it looks almost camouflaged - but it has red in it. He made it clear that his teacher made them do those. I do not get offended by such statements anymore, because he's still working through his shit. When I told him that I loved it and held it to my heart, he smiled, hugged me and patted my head before saying "you're welcome," wrinkling his nose like he knows I love (it's my favorite Jake face) and running upstairs.

Corey bought me My Passion for Design by Barbra Streisand (I worship) and from the boys, he gave me the Chef Basket. I've been hinting that I needed that more than life itself for several months now. You can boil pasta in it (though clearly not spaghetti or angel hair) and fry shit (which I do not do) and you can turn it upside down and steam vegetables in it (50% of the people in this house eat the type of vegetables you can steam.)

So, for Mother's Day I want to reflect and share on the tools that help me not screw this up. I haven't been told I wasn "the Worst" in a while, since I sent Landen to school dressed for Santa pictures with no money for Santa pictures.

This idea I got from a friend of mine. I don't have a name for this wall. I'm open to suggestions. This is located in the laundry room, right off the kitchen.

The top left clipboard is the Parent clipboard. It has the color coded calendar for when which child has a test or project due, early dismissal days, class parties, extracurricular stuff and the weekends they go with their grandparents. That clipboard also has important mail, the monthly and yearly school calendars and weekly bulletins. To the right is a whiteboard where I keep track of what I'm cooking with day. The two bottom clipboards are for each boy. That's where party invitations, weekly schedules, spelling words, certificates, homework assignments and projects. The poster at the bottom is our Allbritton House Rules.

The second tool I rely on is our feelings chart. My therapist will make me use one like this in sessions. When Jake brought home F's in reading, we knew that something was going on in his little brain. So I pulled up a feelings chart with kids' faces on it on the computer and we used that for him to get his feelings out. I found this magnet on Amazon.com and it had a little frame that identifies the feeling for that day. Landen puts a funny one as a joke in the mornings, but we have made Jake stand in front of it and pick his feeling when he's having trouble.

Today we are hopeful that Corey, whose unit has called up volunteers to help with flood prep, will come home to us tonight. Where there will, hopefully, be bacon waiting.
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The Slumber/Sleep Part is a Lie

I was always the girl with the toothpaste in her ear or the frozen panties at slumber parties. I lose interest in anything right quick when I get sleepy, and I can get sleepy in the middle of any activity. I had no problem - at eight, ten, twelve - adjourning myself to go right off to sleep. I may be an anomaly this way.

Jake was given a choice between a big party with one small gift or a sleepover with five friends and a big gift. He went for the sleepover and big gift, which he requested be a trampoline. Later he asked for a trampoline's amount worth of Harry Potter-abilia. We ended up with three friends sleeping over. This is a very significant event in Jake's life. For various reasons that are identified elsewhere in this blog, Jake's living situation has never been conducive to having lots of friends over. This is the first time any of his friends from school have been to his house and only the second time he's ever had a non-relative sleep over. He was so excited to have his best friends from school see his room and meet his dog. It reinforces that we have kids who've been dealt more than most but just want to be like all the other boys, and they shine when they feel normal.

Corey and I bought him four Harry Potter wand replicas and a Horcrux locket. (This makes no sense to you if you have not seen the movies.) So the theme of the party activities was Nerf guns and Harry Potter play.

First there was playing upstairs, and we let Landen participate. Until Jake came down and said that Landen was being mean to his friends. I'm not entirely sure this was true, because Corey heard his say something about his "dumb brother," which got his ass called back downstairs with a stern warning about never punking his little brother to his friends again. Landen was allowed to visit the boys upstairs a few times during the evening, but for the most part, he remained downstairs with us watching TV and snacking. He had an offer to go have his own sleepover at Cydney's house, but he was reluctant to be away from the action.

This is the second time I can recall where the difference between their ages actually caused a separation between them, other than being in different grades. The first was the crushing blow of not being allowed a rolling backpack like Jake's, because you have to be in the fourth grade to be allowed a backpack with wheels. The second was tonight, and the realization that Jake had his own friends and his own interests outside of Landen, and temporarily preferred those activities to being with this little brother, was difficult for Landen to grasp. Jake did go and tuck Landen into our bed when we put Landen down (with a movie the sleepover boys weren't allowed to watch) so I think a tiny part of Jake understood this separation was alien and sad to his brother.

We ordered pizza, and there's not a slice of it left. We had cupcakes (with no icing but Ready-Whip for those who need a little extra sweets) and presented Jake with his trampoline amount of Harry Potter presents. Very animated (read: loud) play resumed after dinner until Cydney and I made palettes and Corey made every one lay down and turned on a movie. He went back upstairs twice between 11:30 and 11:31 to tell them it was late and the noise level needed to come way, way down. They needed reminding in a louder, sterner voice one minute after the original "shut the hell up" declaration was made. Seriously? Nobody told anybody to shut the hell up. The worst it got was "did you not hear what I JUST said?"

I sent Corey to bed before midnight because he had to go in to work today. At midnight I went upstairs and told the boys, who were all sitting in the middle of the floor playing with each other's Nintendo DS, that when the movie was over, the TV and all electronic devices needed to be off. I had to go up at 1 PM and shush them. At 1:30 it finally went quiet and I went to bed. At 7:30 AM, they were up at at 'em. Dammit! In the morning, before Landen's eyes were open all the way, he was asking if he could go upstairs, and I asked him to go let the big boys know we had donuts. That message didn't get delivered because when he appeared upstairs, they asked him if he wanted to play.

There was a Nerf guns versus swords battle outside earlier this morning, after breakfast. They returned upstairs to continue the destruction of Jake's room and have been watching Jake play his favorite Medieval Total War on the computer. They're still including Landen this morning. These are all very well-behaved kids. Thre have been no arguments. They mind their manners. I didn't have to go back upstairs to tell them the room needed to go dark when the movie was over last night. They self-enforced that. One little boy LOVES my house. Another little boy brought a present for Landen. As far as overnight guests are concerned, I'm quite certain I subject my mother to worse. But, I can't wait for my nap. We're going to have a mandatory quiet time this afternoon. As soon as these mamas come get their boys at noon.

A note about the people in this house who did not enjoy slumber-partying. I got this face from Corey when the noise level was at its highest, around 7:30 PM.

Murphy did not care for all this commotion. It was very disruptive to his chi. They would get going upstairs and he would stand up and huff at the ceiling. Once I let him upstairs to see what he'd do, and he stood in the doorway of Jake's room and barked "BE QUIET" as loud as he could.

I couldn't get a picture of Miss Lily. I do know that she spent part of the evening hiding in the shower and jumped out and scared the beejesus out of one of our houseguests while he was using the potty. I heard her around 1 AM walking around Jake's room and meowing her head off, which is what she does when it's past everyone's bedtime and she wants people to get in the designated places and go the hell to sleep.

Overall, I guess it turned out successfully, because one boy was allowed by his mother to spend the night only after she met us and saw our house. I passed some sort of private-school mother acceptance test, and that's damn cool. Another boy who was on the fence about sleeping over decided about two hours in that he wanted to stay. The biggest measure of our success in an endeavor bigger than a sleepover was when Jake asked Cydney if she thought it was always like this. Like what? Did she think everybody always had this much fun at a sleepover?

Look into my crystal ball

Monday night I had to stay over in New Orleans for work, and while I missed my little family unit terribly, and the TV remote did not work in my hotel room, I enjoyed my night alone. After my meetings were done on Monday afternoon I got to go visit the Mayor and his team/my friends in City Hall, which is always a treat. And a heartwrenching experience. Then I got to eat at one of my favorite New Orleans restaurants (Byblos on Magazine) with one of my favorite New Orleanians (Sarah), and three hours of Greek food and wine and laughter passed before we knew it, and we had to adjourn ourselves to be grown girls, getting in bed at a decent hour to go to work the next day.

This meant that Corey had to, for the first time in YEARS, do some single-parenting. The agenda included checking two boys out of school early to take them for a scheduled appointment with their psychologist which lasts two hours, go to the grocery store to get lunch supplies and snacks, go to the pet store to get Murphy some food, feed them, get their homework done, finish a cloud project for science with Jake and get them to bed at eight. There also ended up being some light laundry involved, because Corey gave Murphy cake icing on Sunday night and on Monday, Murphy ralphed in my white club chair. Corey said everything went great, but when Landen got in the car yesterday, he told me that Murphy cried for me all morning. And by the way, he missed me too. Then he called me "Mom" twice yesterday.

The psychologist says the boys are doing great, that Corey and I are doing everything perfectly (the only time in life anyone will probably ever say that to us) and we just need to keep on keepin' on, because the improvements are steady. We're going to take a hit when we tell Jake he's not going back to St. Theresa next year. That will earn me at least two weeks of animosity and unpredictable behavior, but he's entitled to it, I say, and so barring any disrespect to adults or violent behavior, he gets the room he needs to get those feelings out.

This weekend, Jake the Snake turns ten years old. He's having his first ever slumber party sleepover on Friday night. I'm told that I'm not supposed to call it a slumber party because that's what girls do. I got excited yesterday thinking about teaching the boys to play "light as a feather, stiff as a board," which was one of our slumber party sleepover favorites, but Corey says I'm not allowed to make them play games with me. So I told him HE could teach them how to play the game, and he said neither parent gets to participate in fourth-grade slumber party sleepover fun. This would make Jake look like a loser to his friends. Downtrodden and indignant, I asked Jake if that was true, thinking OF COURSE it couldn't be, but he said "kinda." Which means "yes, but Dad gets mad at me when I hurt your feelings." He also told me I am not allowed to tell him I love him or call him any of his pet names while his friends are here. He did grant me permission to take pictures of various events of interest during the slumber party sleepover.

What is happening here, people? How can this outgrow me? It's just not possible. I do not accept this.

Landen is being kicked out of him room for the night, but he does get to choose anywhere else in the house he wants to sleep: the guest bed, our bed, the pull-out in the living room or the couch in the sunroom. I'm wondering if Landen is going to have separation anxiety with Jake being so close to him, but having to stay away from him to give him space with his friends. We have seen a reduction in the smartassitis, for now, although there was a split second last night I though he may not make it to nine. He likes to sneak up and startle people. It almost never works because children by definition cannot be quiet, but last night he crept up behind me while I was sitting on the sofa and yelled "BOO!" Part of this surprise was apparently tapping my head, but he did it so fast that he actually HIT me in the back of the head with both hands. I yelled "DAMMIT" in surprise and pain. Corey was sitting in a chair facing me, and the LOOK on his face when Landen whacked me in the head was frightening even for me. There was miraculously no yelling (except mine.) He glued his ass and his arms to the chair the entire time he delivered a come-to-Jesus to Landen about how the days of sneaking up and scaring people are over in our house for eternity. Then there was wiping of tears and kissing of heads and we all rode off into the sunset, bound for the dinner buffet.

As I write this post I keep thinking of that poem (I am not a poetry person) buy that whiney poet (aren't they all?) who died three hundred years ago. I've just described all of them. Robert Harrick wrote "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying. And this same flower that smiles to-day to-morrow will be dying." Which says to me that my days of my oldest looking forward to seeing movies with his parents are numbered, as is Landen's interest in anything and everything we're doing that he could participate in (he's "helping" Corey hang curtains in the picture above) as long as we're together.  Soon they'll think we're the stupidest people on the planet. That having to spend time as a family unit is a strain on their mental resources and a sacrifice to their social calendar. And it'll be ten years before we'll get them back over to our side.

We'll have to produce another one to validate and entertain us in the meantime.

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Fixed up for company

The last time I posted pictures of the house (and the only time) was when I posted non-staged pictures of what it's like to live here. Since we spit-shined the house to get ready for company (Landen's First Communion) I seized the opportunity to take pictures of the house in that rare people-are-coming museum-perfection state of being. Though I have highlighted signs in these photos signs that despite its clean and polished surface, people do really live here. We'll start upstairs.

I went through all the trouble to do those cute little thought bubbles for my animals, and then you can't read them for the size of the picture. Lily is happiest when Murphy is out of the house. She is second happiest when he's pissed because he can't reach her. My boy would give anything to be able to hop up on that bed, though for all his exuberance all he does when he manages to get near her is put his front paws down. So this is the guest room, a.k.a. Lily's Room, and it's about to get pinked out. I'm refinishing a chest of drawers and a mirror in a raspberry color and re-using a comforter from my single-girl days when all my shit was pink. I'm subtly telling the universe when it's time to have a baby, I need it to be a girl.

This is the boys' room, which is undergoing a redecoration process. We got rid of the little-boy pirates theme, and now we're themeless, with browns and greens and blues. The pictures above the bed are photos Cydney Wilson took on a day last year when Justin took them fishing. They both caught fish and were photographed holding them up. There are curtains in the plan and two big blank walls. Like I said, it's a process.

This is my beloved oldest, Jake. I told them to get off their beds and out of the picture I took above, and they both opted to hide in the small crack between their beds and the wall. There are some signs of life you just have to allow in a kid's room: hats on the headboard is one of them that I hate but choose not to fight. Signs of sweet life are the pictures of his mother and a girl from his class that he lurves on the dresser beside his bed.

Landen has a picture of his mom by his bed, and behind all these pillows is the fuzzy purple heart pillow that belonged to Erin, that he sleeps on every night. Sometimes I think he's trying to put the pillow away and lose the crutch, but he's just not ready. Last night it wasn't on the bed when I went to put him in it, and when I asked where it was, he smiled and retrieved it from the trunk of costumes in the corner of the room. We don't push, except that I do hide it when company comes because it doesn't match. And other little boys might not understand why he has a fuzzy purple pillow and tease him. 

This is the sunroom, in which we attempt to block most of the sun from coming in with lined bamboo shades. You may notice the blinds on the right are lifted a bit. That's so my puppy dawg can see when I've pulled into the carport and wag his tail SO HARD waiting on me to get inside to him that his head shakes from side to side. This is also the room where Jakes does his computer homework and plays Rome: Total War on the computer. It's the room where Landen plays Xbox and gets banished when I don't want to listen to SpongeBob in my living room. And where we shoot martians on the Wii as a family of snipers.

Behold our bedroom, with the chests I lovingly sanded, primed, painted and polyurethaned with help from the Mister. Most of those pillows actually live one of the two wingback chairs in the little sitting area on Corey's side of the bed - one othem holds five unused bed pillows and that throw and the other holds ALL HIS CLOTHES. Don't buy lamps from Ikea. They're garbage. But I like the way they look so much and I don't want to spend money on new ones. I'll have to wait for a happy accident to stumble upon a ridiculously-low-priced pair somewhere.

Our house has three larger-than-average bedrooms and two and a half apartment-sized bathrooms. This is the master bath. Thank God for double vanities. I hate these mirrors. They're leather-framed (?) and on my list to replace with something oval and frameless. There are two, yes TWO, blue-china monkey soapdishes in this bathroom, because they are my kryptonite and I cannot help but buy a blue-china monkey when I see one. That mirror leaning on the window is there because I sit on the toilet backwards and apply my makeup. Whatever works. That little spraybottle is this amazing stuff I got from my mom. It's called Poopouri, and you spray it in the toilet when you take a shadoobie and it makes the bathroom smell lemon-y and not poop-y!

Even though you don't see him, I promise that Murphy is in whatever room I am taking a picture of. He follows me everywhere I go. Every day. All day. My mother cleaned the fronts of my cabinets with 409 this weekend. My handi-capable mother, sitting on a stepstool, washing cabinets. It did not occur to me until I saw this picture that the stickers are still on my garbage can, and maybe we should remove them. Idiots live here sometimes. Shit happens.

I had a vision of coral-print curtains when I moved into this house, and it took me six months to find a suitable and affordable version. Affordable ended up being stalking several online fabric stores for months to find the lowest price on thirteen yards of fabric needed to make four 96-inch curtain panels. Corey also gave me shit when I told him how high he needed to hang the rods. Don't f**k with me when I have a vision, a Southern Living vision. I got the fabric on Wednesday and spent the better part of Friday night cutting the fabric and lining and pinning all of it. Don't scoff. When you pin shit, you have to measure at every pin to make sure the seam is the same size on each side. I'm not meant to be crawling around on my floor. The bedroom was the only place in the house where I could lay 105-inches of fabric flat to pin seams. Then my mother spent Saturday morning sewing the panels on her 40-year-old Singer. Oh, what a glorious difference they make!

Signs of a party: fresh flowers on the ottoman and a sheetcake on the bar instead of my grandmother's silver tray with carafes and wine glasses that live there normally.

Dining room ready for guests, except (signs that people live here) the backpacks in each of the (broken) chairs by the sideboard. I got that mirror on sale with a gift card my parents gave me for my birthday. The next piece of furniture to move for an extended period of time into the garage for a facelift is that sideboard. I'm thinking about painting it a blue so dark it looks black from a distance. That's a project that shan't be started until after the hot sumbitch of a Louisiana summer passes.

I do have a kitchen, but I don't believe in taking pictures of it. Nor the laundry area or half bath, and the boys' bathroom hasn't changed since we moved in and hung the map shower curtain and the picture of Bo Obama in front of the White House. So yeah, this is our love shack. It's 1,850 square feet of moi, or the version of moi that's married to an Army dude with two little boys, a bulimic cat and a dog who takes every toy out of his toy box and hauls it into the living room every morning. I love to turn down my street, and I get excited every. damn. time. because I know I'm going to be reunited with my house soon.

We're in a relationship together, my house and me.

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