What We Do For Our Children

Despite clear instructions to the girls last night as they went to bed, detailing how they should most certainly sleep in well past 7am when morning arose, I heard 2 computers and one Nintendo Wii firing up this morning at precisely 7:01 this morning. I don't think that they took my suggestion to heart. But since they were playing nicely together, and fighting was at a minimum, the baby and I remained in my comfortable bed for a luxurious two more hours! We finally had to get up when Tubby's very wet diaper was threatening explosion.

Jonny's den was getting together this morning to work on their Pinewood Derby cars. After many too many years of making cars in the most rudimentary and haphazard fashion(although the laziest year when I made Alex just paint his block of wood red and glue 3 checkers on top to make a giant lego, he came in third), I was not going to miss this chance at actually helping Jonny make something that resembled a car. Not being able to find my dremel tool set I had purchased to file the dog's nails when she was a puppy(we gave up that idea after the first 2 failed attempts), I humbly found a rusty hand saw and painter's sandpaper to bring with us so as not to arrive empty handed. We needn't have worried, for we walked into a bustling makeshift factory custom designed for derby cars. With the fussy baby in one hand(clinging to a tube of Butt Paste), and our sad looking tools in the other, we were easy targets for the die-hard derby dads. I have never had so many people almost fighting over helping us. It was great! One dad helped us dremel and chisel, another cut away all of the extra wooden pieces, another revved up his electric sander to smooth out the dremel burns, and another taught us the fine differences between sandpapers. Jonny's car was done in no time, he even got to paint it, and it is looking great! My only goal had been to get the rudimentary cut done today...I was ecstatic that all we have left to do now is wheels and weights!

After lunch, we had to make another trip to the U of MN for a hockey game for Crispy. There was an impending basketball game incurring much traffic, and the experience of driving through campus looking for a place to park was nothing less than horrific. Honestly, I wanted to cry and go back home, but we could hardly make a turn anywhere, so I figured we had made it that far, we may as well stay. We ended up in another $9 ramp somewhere, and the kids(Melissa,Kirsten, Crispy, & Me & Tubby) were awesome as we ran a few blocks to the arena to try to make up lots of lost in traffic time. With Crispy and I wheezing & coughing, we got him dressed in all his gear in record time, and he was on the ice only 6 minutes late. That is better than we normally do! Today the kids played their game on a whole sheet of ice.....LOTS of skating for those little legs. Crispy did so well....he tried his best to skate his fastest, he made contact with the puck several times, and he even defended the goal successfully by getting the puck away from an offensive guy. He said he didn't get tired at all, and that he had wanted to skate as much as possible today. It was a HUGE change from his la-la-land skating of last week.

We stopped at the mall after hockey (it had been a little bribe to get the girls to come with me and to give Jonny a break back at home). The girls had been looking forward to it all day, and had an entire plan mapped out which included finding the new Webkinz of the month, stopping at an earring store, and ending with a cute clothing store. We managed a stop at each place on their list(we lost Grandma and cousin Dave somewhere after the gazillionth store), and finally found the new Piggy Webkinz at the 4th shop we checked out. The kids had pretty much given up hope at that point, so their excitement was uncontainable when they found the little piggies on the shelf. All 3 of them NEEDED to have one so that they could get a special gift on the web based game. As soon as they were purchased, the kids were almost running through the mall to get back to the truck and get home to the computers in order to enter their new pets into their game. Besides Melissa, no one else even wanted to take the time out to get a pretzel or any other yummy snack....they were ready to leave NOW.

Once home (at 7pm), the baby lost all of his cool and cried and cried as I frantically looked for something to heat up quick for dinner. In desperation, I had to settle on popcorn chicken again, but this time the kids ate it on real plates while sitting at the table. We rounded that out with some fantastic blackberries from Costco. Crispy and Laura came readily to the table, while the older girls had to be almost physically pried from their computer game. At least they are able to play together online using quasi socialization skills. We spent the rest of the evening all together in the library sharing computers and watching Mr.Bean's Holiday that we ordered on Pay Per View. One of those movies which is so entirely stupid that it is kind of funny, and glad to have only spent $4 on cable than to have wasted $20 on the DVD or worse yet, $40 at the theater. Thomas was finally happy enough to spend half of the movie scooting around, exploring in the dark, and trying his hardest to pull to standing at the couch. He is so close!! We got a nice call from Daddy who told us about his great day in wonderful AZ. And we got a great call from Michael.....they won their games today and will be playing for the Championship tomorrow. But the most exciting part was that he made 2 goals!! He was so excited! He sounds like he is having a great time...and though it is hard for both Bob and I to not be there with him this weekend, I think that he is probably learning some really great people skills without having us there to fall back on.

As I peek in at the 3 girls sleeping comfortably in the beloved Dora playhouse that I set up in the living room this evening, it reminds me that kids certainly do appreciate the little details in life that often only take a few short moments of our adult time. It is certainly feeling good to me this weekend focusing on being a parent to ALL of my children (including the neighbor girl who was given a lesson on how to be nice to unfamiliar kids when we were at the arena) instead of just the one or two in immediate need at that time. This has been a really good day.