*sigh* Boys. surrounded by boys...

So, My Eldest went to our Local History Museum, The Western Development Museum, on a field trip with his class to learn about how school worked in the 'olden days'. They learned how the boys and girls had different doors they went in and out of, how punishments worked, and how houses were made and how long it took to make them. They Learned about hard work, and the long days they endured. And what my son got out of this?
Direct Quote.
" There was this outhouse! it was just a hole in the ground! and they didn't even have toilet paper! They just had to shake their bums to get the poo off or something. I wouldn't like living there, because it would get too smelly with poo on everyone."

Fantastic.

I reeally, really, suck.... Flag Football 2010

And continuing on with the Suckiness which is my procrastination, Here are the videos from Eldest's and Hubby's Last Flag Football Game. If I was more coordinated, and knew what I was doing, these would've been pieced together into one, but as i am a technology noob in every sense of the word, they are not. Not sure how much more work I saved in the long run though...

Running Catches before the game.

In the opening huddle.

Eldest throwing the ball to the Quarterback, No clue what the position is. (Marvel at my magnificent Camera-work)

It's always a battle to see who gets the flag.

Coach doing what he do best. Eldest as Quarterback.

Kay, I would have more of the actual Game, but at this point the  other team had tackled our guys three times(which is punishable by severe penalty or benching. it's flag football people) two of which resulted in bloody noses and one with a nasty knee bruise for our kids, and after the second one hubby-Coach let other Coach know that his kids needed to stop tackling or they would stop the game. The other Coach laughed in his face and kept encouraging his kids to tackle. Hubby-Coach called half-time right after the third hit, and once again warned the Coach that the Kid sport crew and the Community association  would definitely hear about his behaviour. The other coach called the game, saying that if they couldn't hit, it wasn't football. Hubby-Coach then asked for a handshake from the teams, out of good manners, and then gave his team a congratulatory, and easily over-heard speech on how good  they were for obeying the rules, and didn't hurt anyone, even though they might have wanted to.

Then:

Clean up time, since game was over. If you look really hard, you can see other team doing their own game by themselves, complete withe kids tackling still.(also you can tell which kid is mine, since he stops everything just to pose for the camera.)
The Parents of our kids were mighty impressed by the way things were handled by our team, and in fact encouraged hubby to come back next year to Coach. The kids did too.
Here is the result

 And there, in a nutshell and really long post, is the last game of Flag Football.
And then we went to walmart. But that's not really part of the story...

Random thingers. Again

It snowed last night. and continues to snow this morning. I'm hoping we don't get the alarming 5 inches slated for the north part of the province, but I wouldn't be surprised. Snow is abundant in the winter here. As is cold weather. My friend used to tease me that My good ol' Norse ancestors moved to Saskatchewan specifically for the cold, so it would feel like home to them. Also, that I was pasty and couldn't tan for shit because I had come from Saskatchewan. She was probably right on both parts. Saskatchewan is the one of very few places in the World that can range anywhere from -60 degrees Celsius(with wind chill) and Snow drifts waist high in winter, to +45 in the summer with miles and miles of Sun. Because Saskabusch is Flat, and the wind bends the trees, so there's no cover. Which is partly true, but every myth has to have some semblance of truth in it.

On a sort of related note, When it comes to first snow and all that jazz, I am totally a sucker for my memories. The smell of fresh-baked cookies, wet coats and mittens, fireplace fire, etc, but the one that really stands out is the smell of Hot toddy.
Being one of the Trendiest people of my time, I am always the first one to get sick when winter arrives, and I  remember one specific elementary school year when I was 7 or 8, and both my sister and I caught the flu at the same time. I always remember my dad staying home with us when we were sick, giving us hot lemon water and such, but this one time he wanted to nip the colds we had in the bud, so he tried Grandma's Recipe for curing the ill. A Hot toddy. Now, A Hot toddy is basically a hot lemon-honey tea, but with the added benefit of rum or whiskey. I believe we had the whiskey version. So he made up a batch for both me and my sister, reminiscing to us about how his Grandma used to use this as a cure-all, or something. I don't remember that well people, I was sick!!.
Anyways, I don't remember which one of us started puking first, but one of us caught the other, and it started a chain of puking that lasted quite some time(although to my ill-induced mind, I could be exaggerating- I see it as a cartoon version much like the WB cartoon with the two pigs see-sawing a handcar, but with puke).

yeah, but with the guys harfing when they go down. pretty picture, I know..

Anyway, I'm sure we totally grossed out my dad, but in the end it did us little to no harm, and my dad learned a very important lesson. And as my husband makes this after he eventually catches my colds, I cringe a little inside. To this day I cannot drink whiskey in any form, unless I try really, really, Really hard. *shudder*

And now for something Completely different-

My eldest son is obsessed with poop. Or at least the word poop. He's 6, so I'm not really surprised when he starts singing 'Mary had a little poop', or 'This old man, he had poop', but also with his extreme science knowledge,as he can now berate my husband about their head-farting contests,(charming, I know) letting him in on just how one gets pink-eye and the like. *sigh* My house is a never ending battlefield with new horrors every day. I would have my youngest stay small forever, so I don't have to endure three half-grown males all at once.

Jumpin' Jiminy!!!

We got a jolly Jumper for the youngest, since he wants to do nothing but stand, and he's a heavy bugger, so to save our arms, we got him one.

The first thing we did before buying it though, was to look up on the loverly internets what we would be getting ourselves into. And lo and behold, the Horror stories that have been tucked in the static-y folds of the internets... no sooner had we typed in, 'Is a Jolly Jumper Safe for my 4 month old?', than we were barraged with vengeful, worried, and misinformed mothers spewing forth tragic things that had happened to youngsters, or cautionary tales of what happened to a friend of a friend of a friend's kid. heads getting caught in the chain, the thing collapsing on the child, bowlegs and whiplash,tippy-toe walking and loss of balance in the stabilizer muscles, horribly bent and deformed spines as a product of bouncing like a maniac, etc. One woman stated that the jumper permanently damages the thoracic curve of the spine, showing her sources, and when we clicked on it, it came up as a Dr. Sears website(Don't know who that is, but assuming it's the Dr. Oz of the internets), and the website basically stated there was no proven risk of spine damage on the jumper, as long as a time limit was enforced. And common sense tells us that jumping is a stabilizing exercise, so this toy is pretty much Not a toy, but a baby exercise machine. After all, do adults and kids not have trampolines? Bungee cords? same dif. There was also one really good answer to the question on yahoo answers, basically saying, it's your kid, do what you think is right. Get your info from the source, that way you know it's true.  So we went to the source, and the Jolly Jumper website has multitudes of links on safety, it states all the safety measures you can take, and gives thorough instructions on how to put baby in a jolly jumper. they've also been making this product for about 60 years, so they must know what thy're doing by now. So we got him one. And as soon as we had attached him to the spring cord, he went NUTS.  Then he proceeded to crap himself so spectacularly, while jumping, that the force exerted by his spring caused his poo to jump itself. All the way up to his neck.  So after a thorough bathing, he went back in, and we took this.

p.s. whilst looking for a picture of the jolly jumper, I came across a picture of the only man I ever crushed on in daytime children's TV. Other moms might have their favorite Wiggle or some dirty fetish with one of those rainbow-coloured Doodlebops, but I was always, and will remain, a Huge fan of - Sportacus- *sigh*.

He had  arms you could eat, and a-maz-ing flexibility... drool. Even his name sounded like something out of a cheesy romance novel. For a while I wanted to be stephanie. *more dramatic sigh* Confused?    Here.        See for yourself. That is all.

Bruises, Phones, And JohnoVision

I sometimes have panic attacks about my children.
I have two boys, and there is a 6 year age difference between them, and though my youngest is still a newborn, I fear what life will be like when he gets older and can pick a fight with his big brother. I myself have never had a brother, but I have had a sister, and let me tell you, fights between siblings when they're the same sex can get pretty fucked up. Boy or girl.

I remember this one fight when I was nine and my sister was five. We were finally allowed to stay home after school, but I had the added responsibility of 'babysitting' my sister, which I promptly shoved in her face as soon as we had stepped in the house. I continued this tirade of me being the more 'responsible' one, her being the baby, our parents not trusting her alone, her being scared of her own closet so how could she stay home alone?, etc. She in turn (because she's five and has the mental capacity to release stress like a FIVE year old people) started throwing things at me. Dolls, lego, her pudding spoon... so I, with my not so best judgement, first tried to use my excellent negotiation skills, yelling that I'd lock her out of the house,I'd cut off all her hair when she was sleeping, I'd rip all the heads off her Barbies, to which a look of horror came into in her eyes, and she whispered "you're not serious" So I, kvelling in the fact that I might finally have won the fight, yelled triumphantly, (the best Freudian slip Id ever had till I was 15)  "I'm sooooo Not serious!" to which my sister started laughing, so I did the only other thing I could think of that would shut her up; I slapped her. Which of course escalated into a huge fight with us both screaming and crying and slapping and pulling hair, and then she threatened to call mom home. Which is capital punishment I'll have you know, So me being the genius, ran and unplugged the Main phone in the kitchen. But my sister, being the clever kid she was, ran to my parents room where the only other phone was in the house, slammed the door shut and locked it. Well I though I was going to get in mondo trouble, so I started banging on the door and screaming, "It's NOT my faaauuult!!!!.bang. MOM!!!.bang. It's NOT MY FAAAAAAUUUUULT!!!!!!.bang. AAGGH, I'm going to KILL you!" BANG. And my sister , on her one final moment of glory, opened the door, looked me in the eye, and said "you suck at babysitting".
And then she threw the phone at me.
So, one broken phone, a giant goose egg over my eye, and an episode of JohnoVision later, My mom comes home. None the wiser about our fight of course, cuz my sister thought it would be a better idea to damage MY VISION than to rat me out. which is, of course, what sisters are for. After that first big episode, we had a few more broken phones, as well as other objects-around-the-house, though none of them hit their mark as cleanly as the first.


This incident in particular, as well as a few others, sticks out in my head when I think about how life will be in a few years. That, and when my eldest gets excited over the time he'll finally get to babysit his little brother.

My son the parrot, and Stereotypes proved right

My son's last day of Flag football was yesterday, and being that my hubby's out of town for work, we had to have our assistant coach step up to the plate. I'm probably the only one who notices it, but there is a super distinct change in listening skills with the kids when an alternate Coach comes on. My hubby tends to leak authority where ever he goes, and even from the first moments of him coaching, the team was well aware of who held that authority. This other dad just doesn't seem to hold it. but I digress.

I wanted to talk about sonny's last full game of flag football for two reasons. #1 being how my son stood up for himself, and #2 being Mr. coulda-made-it-to-the-big-time coachie of the opposing team.

So without further ado:

#1. My son has always had issues with standing up for himself, he would never hurt a flea. He's somewhat an emotional child as well, which has always given me little pangs of grief for how his school upbringing will be, and  the torture he'll go through. We all know about bullying, and we all know that the bullies who do the worst damage are the ones that we never even suspect to be the bullies. Besides, my son's never even been able to take a hit, he got pushed by a 3 year old, (even though this kid had ham hocks for arms and a mean left hook) and he just fell down and then walked away from the kid without saying a word. We had to show him how to stand up for himself, and this has been an ongoing thing, what to say, how to react, that it's okay to show emotions but not to give in to them.etc...

So last night, during pre-game warm up, they were practicing catching the ball. Sonny and another child both got their hands on it, and wrestled a little. Meanwhile, another kid, lets call him bob, runs over to the wrestling pair, shouts at sonny that the other kid had got it, and then, even though the two on the ground were giggling and not really fighting over the ball, bob goes over to sonny, yells that he never got the ball, why doesn't he just quit now, he's not very good, and then bops him on the head, not just a little bop either, he reared up for it.

And what does sonny do?

Well, he gets up, no tears, and goes over to bob, and give him the whatfor in Mommy speak.

Example: How dare you hit me! Don't ever do that again! That was just stupid! You try that again and you won't like what happens next!.

So I guess we need to work on what to say when someone bullies you, but I'm so very glad that he had the courage not to just lie there and cry, but to get up and get back in that kid's face and tell him it was NOT okay to do that.

#2. We all know or at least have heard of the Guy who played Football in his highschool years, perhaps his college years, was very good and had hopes of going pro, but just wasn't quite good enough to get there? The guy who stays up late at night to draw out plays, and relive old days, watching each football game that's on t.v. with a renewed fervor, knowing all the mistakes and coming up with alternate plays that 'Surely would've done the trick'? The guy who has all the sports packs on tv, in HD, The guy who has tsn.com and espn.com on bookmark, the guy who makes sure to answer all the tsn polls even if they're just on Jersey colour?
The guy who still wears his college t-shirts to anything and everything, even if they're massively sweat-stained, holey, and don't quite fit anymore?

Well, that's the guy who coached the opposite team. I wish I had a picture, it was extremely stereotypical, like he looked up all the symptoms for a failed NFL/CFL player, just so he could look the part right...

Sorta like:

or maybe like:

you get the picture...( he was a fantastic character, btw, too bad they changed him up for a chick...)

Anyways, he spent the entire game yelling at his team about Angles, ANGLES!, checking his CFL regulated clipboard, blowing his whistle, and sweating profusely.

It was Classic.

And by the way, I told hubby about this, who is sort of a minor version of this type of guy, but with baseball, and he told me that they don't do angle training until highschool or later, whatever that means. But attempt to teach a 6 year old this, a 6 year old who is still only able to aim inside the toilet bowl about 60% of the time, seems kinda pointless to me...

My Family Can H-O-R-S-E around

My son may not be the most Sporty of kids, but he tries.
And boy does he Love Flag Football.

My hubby, The Coach 

In for a huddle

lining up

Sonny running after a kid from the other team that he accidentally passed the ball to...

And he only ran in the wrong direction 3 out of 5! gettin better. What a hoot...

Extra curricular sports, and how I don't want to be like my mother

My son started Flag football this past weekend. What fun. The best part is that My hubby put his name down for volunteering at the Community association, and since he was the only one to actually volunteer, he's now the coach for my son's team. 

But- He thinks since I only put down my e-mail address on the form, that I want to take part in the coaching experience, so I have been enlisted as the informal secretary and resident e-mailer, since I signed up only my e-mail address.... yay! well, whatever, gives me something else to do besides clean my already despicable immaculate house... 

They play on Saturdays and Mondays. This past Saturday's game went extremely well, each team had two touchdowns, and lots of fun. This Monday, however, was a different story.

Firstly, hubby was sick. And he never gets sick, so you can imagine how big a baby he is when he does get sick. He comes home around 1pm, and lets me know that I need to find a coach for tonight, cuz when he goes outside into the cold-ish air, he 'feels like he's going to throw up and pass out' *insert big whiny baby voice here*. That's my big strong man.....

So I e-mail around, and wouldn't you know, every dad wants to coach, or at least their wives' think they do. So I header down to the playing field, which this time is ALL THE WAY ACROSS TOWN, which in a city of 300,000, isn't really that far, it only takes 20 minutes to get anywhere, but looking for a specific field in a specific park in a new area of town is still confusing no matter where you are. I did find the park after a bit though,(yay for me and my mad directional skills!) so I lug all the equipment, my junior Peyton Manning, and myself down to what I assume is the right pitch. Luckily, all the parents found the same field that I did, so big plus points for me~! However, somehow our rival team failed to produce themselves, and judging by the area and field, that's not really surprising, but it still gave me a little glow of pride to know that even though our team is a bunch of spoiled little east-siders, they still showed up for the game, and then, stayed for the inevitable practice that ensued, since the replacement coaches and I decided that they should do something so as not to feel that they wasted their time. (and the spoiled little east-siders I'm talking about are the parents, as the kids aren't yet aware that they are over-privileged.)

Best line of the day from the parents: 'You would NOT BELIEVE how hard I had to search to find a decent coffee place over here! Do they even know what a Starbucks is?'

Best line of the day from the pseudo coaches: 'Ummm... so how do you play this? my wife made me come...'

Best line of the day from the kids: 'Aww, where's real Coach? I want to show him my snot-swing-back-play' ( proceeds to drool a loogie to the ground, then as it touches icky-grass and mud, suck it back up in a swinging fashion as he throws the ball right into one of the pseudo coaches nards. I'm not even shitting you! It was uber gross Fantastic a horrible indecency to the coach who totally did the classic America's Funniest Home Videos' thing, grabbing himself, falling over, and wheezing 'ohh my balls'!  which apparently is still only funny to me...)

All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening, and my sad litte sicko at home got a smile out of how, even though they've only had one game, he still made a lasting impression on the kids, and a good one, which is rare. (hubby has a way of sticking his foot in his mouth whenever he decides to open it)

Now if you'll excuse me, my littlest just managed to spew INSIDE my shirt, and it is currently trickling into my armpit...

Mr. Burns's Revenge of the Poo..

my two month old has it out for me.

I don't know why, but I seem to be the only receiver of the "oh no, Cover it, Cover It! awww...." poops. I swear, he does it on purpose.

So I'm changing the diaper, thinking that the coast is clear, when he gives a massive grunt and a smile and this crazed almost religious glow comes into his eyes, and somewhere deep in the pit of your stomach you swear you can hear a deep and ominous voice crying VENGEANCE!!! and whoosh! boy can that kid project. and you know if it's comin from the back end, the front will surely follow. So this kid lays there all happy with his shit-eating grin on his face (sometimes literally) and pee all over himself, and poo all over mommy and the trail from him to me shining like the path to salvation...

I swear I've done this before. I've been a parent once already! Don't I know what I'm doing? I don't know if I was just more aware when my first one was in diapers, or if my kid really does have a price on my head. He probably consorts with his dad on the next move to crush my sanity and self-esteem.

Once, after a vigorous sneeze from him mid-change, and a shower and redress from me later (poo was everywhere.) I passed diapering and holding duties off to dad so I could escape from his clutches to grab something from the grocery store. While waiting in line to purchase my nessecities, I noticed a smell not unlike poo-cheese... I thought maybe myself or someone around me had bad breath, but I couldn't very well ask everyone to close their mouths while I weeded out the cause of the smell. It was only when I stepped up to the register and the cashier there pointed and then gave me a kleenex, did I realize that  in the midst of changing over from the poo laden clothes into cleaner ones, that somehow I must have dragged part of my stylish-yet-affordable t-shirt through the gobby mess in the laundry basket.

So My bright Blue T-shirt ( I don't know why I even think I can get away with colour. Black, girl, Black is the new whatever's going to get shit on..) had this Bright Greeny-Yellow mess leading from mid-back to upper rib-cage. And it was fresh. I can't get away from it. Back at home my son is probably losing his breath from newly formed maniacal laughter, while my poor naive husband is getting out the camera to capture baby's first laugh.

'Aww, cute', husband will say.

And in what I can only describe in my vivid imagination to be the voice of Mr. Burns, Baby's first word will be, 'Excellent'.

Seriously? Seriously. Serious...

My eldest likes to play board games and make-believe with his baby brother, which he can't do in actuality since littlest is like 2 months old, so he just pretends that baby brother is playing and does his turn for him. It's part of his baby brother time, when he gets to be the big brother and 'look after him all by himself ' by playing tickle games or giving him the occasional bottle -or pretend the baby is playing a board game with him(I'm usually in the kitchen making lunch, or on here) which is kinda cute and usually mostly quiet, so i say whatever. They're spending  time together and not fighting or breaking shit, and how long am I gonna get that for, right?

Anyways, today was Scrabble day, apparently. So kiddo brought out his kid's version Scrabble game to the living room,  and set it up next to littlest's baby recliner so that they could 'play together'. Some time passes, and then kiddo comes up to me, a little mischief in his eye and a fake pout on his lips.
"Mom, I don't think baby should play the game anymore, because he's not taking it seriously."

Seriously? Seriously....

My son chooses to kick his little brother out of the game because he spelled 'cornpoop'.
So I tell my son that technically that's not a word, so he can't kick his little brother out of the game, and he says,' is too a word, it what happens after you eat a corn on the cob and then you have to poop and you can see the corn. cuz it can't turn into poop. cornpoop.'

Klassy.

Oooookkaaaaaaaayy...........

(by the way, I showed husband these pictures and he said none of the words on there were actual words you could use in scrabble, palm tree being two separate words, and doc being an abbreviation, which isn't allowed. Leave it to my hubby to take cornpoop seriously. shit.)