Eating snow, making messes, etc.

So like I've posted previously, I am desperate for ways to keep my kids entertained during this dreary Erie, winter. 

Currently they are each eating their own bowl of snow that I scooped from our porch. They are in heaven. Who knew? Snow+bowls+spoons=happiest kids ever. They are mixing, and distributing to other bowls and plates from their play kitchen. The snow is melting faster than they can eat it, creating a wet mess, but at least it's just water. 

We've also been baking up a storm. We made cranberry orange bread, more chocolate chip cookies than you shake a stick at, cranberry chocolate chip bread walnut bread (which I ate the entire loaf in 2 days). We painted pictures. We played a made up game "dinosaur of the forest" in which Abigail is always the dinosaur and she chases Olivia and I around the house. She yells "ROOAAARR!" Olivia and I scream terrified screams and run away from her. Then we laugh uncontrollably. 

We go from one random toy to the next. Never putting away. Leaving toys strewn about all three floors of this apartment.

And we watch TV. Probably more than an hour a day. Probably closer to 2 hours a day. And I'm kind of okay with that. Today Olivia watched the Cat in the Hat and she learned the colors of the rainbow, and which order they appear. I asked her a couple hours after the show was over what color is on top of the rainbow. She told me red. I asked which was on the bottom, and she told me purple. So I feel justified in letting her watch TV since she's not just mindlessly sitting there, but she really does learn what she watches. And then sometimes I take what we watch and try to create a little lesson about it. Or activity or something. So today we painted rainbows and hung them in the playroom. 

We leave tomorrow for ARIZONA!!!! My house is a disaster and the laundry situation is out of control. No packing has even begun. I need to get busy. 

And all I could think was this will be a good story for the blog.

Seemed like a morning just like any other. Drop Aaron off at school, come home for an hour, go to Jazzercise, play at Chik-Fil-A for an hour then pick Aaron up. Well at least that's how it should have gone. Everything was fine up until it was time to leave Jazzercise. Well maybe back up a bit. Olivia didn't want to go to Jazzercise this morning. She whined and cried like I was taking her to the dentist (well she's never really been to the dentist yet, but like I imagine she would if she knew what a dentist was). Oh wait back up even further. Get home from driving Aaron to school and there's a van in my parking spot. Both kids are in feety pajamas because I'm lazy, and didn't get them dressed before taking Aaron to school. (I at first wrote bad parent, but they had jackets on too, so I'm not bad, right?) So I had to carry both of them from the un-numbered parking spots which is MILES away from my parking spot (or maybe just across the street). And there was someone just sitting in the van! I made sure to give him my angriest glare, with a baby on each hip. So back to getting to Jazzercise. Olivia = nightmare. Get her screaming/tantrum throwing butt into the car. She is still throwing a fit when we get there. She's super clingy the whole time, and has to go to the bathroom. Meanwhile there are like 10 other kids in there I'm responsible for taking care of - I can not leave and take her to the bathroom. And she is capable of doing all this on her own. She just doesn't want to. lfkjasioguerjhagnklajgio;a

So then it's time to leave. I take her to the bathroom. While holding Abigail, and wiping her butt. How's that for a mental image. So then we have to walk like 5 feet across the dance floor, to where our shoes are. Olivia suddenly can't walk. Goes limp, cries, begs me to carry her. So again, one baby on each hip, get to our shoes. As I'm putting my shoes on Olivia miraculously regains the use of legs and takes off running around the dance floor with her shoes on. She will not listen to my hisses, yells and threats. I have to take my shoes off (no shoes on the dance floor rule #1) and physically grab her. Sit her in a chair and threaten her with her life if she moves while I put my shoes on. And before I have my feet back in my shoes she is running again. Well that's it, no more Chik-Fil-A. So she screams and cries. And as I'm dragging her to the car by her arm, with Abigail in my other arm, she sounds like she's being taken prisoner. Screaming bloody murder. And then as I go to strap her in her car seat she slaps my face and pulls my hair. OH NO YOU DIDN'T GIRLFRIEND! So her hand gets slapped. She cries and cries and cries and screams and tells me it's not nice to hit. Yeah. Good thinking. So now instead of spending an hour letting her play, and then conveniently going to pick up Aaron right at noon, I have to go home, unload them, find a way to entertain them for 45 minutes, then load them back up into the car and go to get Aaron.

Fortunately we picked up Aaron without much incident. Things were better once he was home. And mail came. A very generous gift from my mother. And the charger for the extra sprint phone we found. Woohoo! Except then once we plugged in said phone, it did not work. Boohoo. So that leads me to spending hours at the Sprint store, on the phone with Sprint customer service, and I still don't have a phone. But I'm getting one. No hate to Sprint. They are fine. It is just a process.

And then I tried to thread my sewing machine and almost poked out my eyes out of frustration.

Now I'm ready for bed.

"King of the Juice"

I am seriously considering changing the name of this blog to something like, "Overheard at the Opie's" since my main topic of writing is random funny things Olivia says.  As you know from my last post I have been trying to find ways to entertain without TV. And Christmas is coming up so we've talking a lot about Jesus and his birth. The whole no room in the inn, born in a manger, was getting kind of old. So I added a few more details, like King Herod asking where is this "King of the Jews"? And ordering his execution. I know a bit much for a 2 year old, right? Anyway, she was like, "Mommy, why was he the king of the juice?" 

Yes, Jesus, King of the Juice.

Wanting to be better

I always want to be better than I was yesterday. And even better tomorrow than I was today. I struggle a bit with feeling good about what I did, and wanting to be better. It's easy to paint a picture of a perfect life on a blog. And it's also easy to read other people's blogs and compare your life to their blog life. Talk about comparing your worst to someone Sunday's best. A few people put real life on their blogs, but for the most part you don't really want to blog about a fight with your husband, disciplining your kids, or gaining weight. Anyway, so I was going to write this post about how today my kids only watched 1 hour of TV, and I stayed away from the internet for most of the day, and spent quality time doing fun things like making Reindeer food, and putting up our Nativity for family night.

But really I spend way too much time on the computer. I spend far too many mornings plopping my kids in front of the TV, and sitting in my PJ's on the laptop. Of course it's justified because they are watching PBS kids. I mean really it doesn't get more educational than that, right? So I decided last night I'm only going to come on the computer when the kids are sleeping. And I didn't even really do that today. Mostly I did, but I kept coming to check just "one thing".  But I realized I'm going to get to a point where my kids are going to be in school and I'm going to miss this time I could have been spending with them. So now I'm trying to come up with creative things to do when it's way too freezing to go outside. That doesn't involve the TV. Yeah, it's not so easy. Especially when my kids have the attention span of gnats. Or toddlers. Which is probably shorter than gnats.

I watched this video on Youtube about this mom with two kids with special needs. The video was very inspirational. But the one line that stood out the most to me was when she said, "I'm a mom, and I take my job seriously." I really haven't felt like I take my job as a mom seriously. So I started today. And I'm exhausted. And now I'm rambling. So yeah. I'm trying to be better. I should probably start with the dishes...

A perfect Sunday. Woke up at 7:00am, got ready for church. Was able to sit through most of Sacrament Meeting, until Abigail hit her head and cried at the very end. Nursery was quiet. All kids were pretty happy. We got to leave last hour for Relief Society. Came home and had homemade chicken soup for lunch. Took naps. Cleaned up living room a bit. Had a yummy dinner of baked potatoes and bbq brisket. Drove around and looked at Christmas lights. Now kids are watching a movie, until bath/bedtime.  A moment to remember:

Olivia is wanting to do everything herself. She put on her own pants (inside out and backwards) and then she wanted to put on her own shoes. She had them on the wrong feet. I said, "Wow Olivia, when did you get so big, you can do all this by yourself?" And she replied, "I have to. That's because I'm a GROWN UP now."

It was just too cute to see her sitting there with her pants backwards, shoes on the wrong feet, some dinner still on her face. And she's a grown up.

Port Farms Christmas

Tonight we went to have cookies and hot chocolate with Santa. I loved it. Here a few picture highlights.




Again with Olivia's faces....










Cute kids, huh?

Olivia moments to remember

Today was Abigail's turn to wake up with a fever. Awesome, right? I was telling Olivia that Abigail had a fever and we had to take good care of her today. Olivia stood up and looked at Abigail really carefully. Then she told me, "She has smoke inside her tummy. And the smoke comes up in her throat. That's why her throat is hurting. And the smoke is making her head hot."

I absolutely love the science of the little children. And can I just say for a moment that she's a freaking genius. I mean, obviously that's not how it works, but it amazes me that her two year old little mind is trying to figure stuff like this out. That sounded like a theory I probably would have come up with when I was like 10.

Later while Abigail was sleeping we went to the playroom. Olivia, all on her own, said she wants to give some of her toys away to little boys and girls who don't have anything. I was feeling all warm inside at the sweet generosity of my daughter, until she brought me the toys she wanted to donate. Her basket included:

-1 puzzle piece (when told she would have to give the whole puzzle if she wanted to give that piece she quickly changed her mind)
- one part of a McDonalds toy (the other part was "too special" to give away)
- another part of a different McDonalds toy
-one scoop of fake ice cream from this fake ice cream kit
- a nutcracker decoration she took from entry way
- and one of my bath fizzie things (she said "for kids who hab bafftubs but dont hab any bubbles for dem".)
But not the basket, that was also "too special".

And now I have to go because I was just informed that there are "two spider in the potty, and dey won't flush". Better check this out.