Enough said.

These pictures took all of 5 seconds yet seem to have taken 10 years off Kaleigh’s life.

Really, all this is fine, the next step of life, but it’s got me exhausted by mid-day each day and behind in my photo editing.  Where before, I’d block off the living room and she’d play in there while I edited on my laptop or maybe I’d edit while she was napping.  But with her new found courage, naps are frowned upon and she is not content whatsoever to play in the living room even one bit, not even on her new-to-her trampoline that my parents brought back from storage in their house (it was Elijah’s).

Also, and this is really the point of my post, she’s eaten very little the last several days.  I think this is simply because she doesn’t want to be in her high chair.  She wants to run.  Running is fine, but you gotta eat, too.  She cries when I put her in there and it’s not long before she’s giving me the “done” sign and/or throwing a fit.  Just a bit ago, I got her in there and she ate a bit of freeze dried fruit.  She wanted a graham cracker but then she was done and she got down.  I hadn’t even had a chance to clean up the tray yet and she was signing that she wanted a cracker and what not.  So I put her back in the high chair and she picked up the graham cracker and then started motioning that she wanted out of the high chair with the cracker.  I said “uh, no, Missy, you’re not carrying food around the house.  Eat it.”  She started to cry and act like she was going to let herself out (which she can’t yet) and I said, “No, eat your cracker, then you can get down.”  She yelled and threw the cracker on the floor where it was immediately grabbed by the dog who’s not supposed to be eating People Food.  I guess it’s a good thing I just put her on Pediasure…

I just bought an extra wide gate for our 50″ doorway between the living room and the rest of the house, it’s supposed to be here today.  Their room is off the living room so if this gate is good, that will be really nice and maybe it will help her see that these two rooms are her play area, she doesn’t need to go running around causing trouble elsewhere, the little stinker.

Guess it’s time to shower, Elijah just shut himself and Kayleigh in their room with his math book…  Hey, works for me.  If he actually gets his work done faster while on his bed than at his school desk… wow.  He went in without complaints about math, too.  Unbelievable!!

And with all of this in mind, Kayleigh is just as bad as Elijah (if not worse) at learning her lessons.  No matter what happens or how many times I tell her no or stop or whatever, she doesn’t get it, she just keeps going for it.  I’ve put her in her crib with some toys and such because I can’t take it anymore for a while.

All of this wouldn’t be so bad if it was just a little bit during the day, but it’s constant. She just won’t give it up.  She refuses to play with her toys and only wants to leave the house or do things she’s not supposed to.  I wouldn’t mind taking her outside to run around for a bit at all, but I can’t do it by myself right now, she’s too fast for me while my back is so stiff.  My back has been bothering me for a week now, I just wish I would get better already.  Of course, if I could keep from having to lift Kayleigh out of trouble.  She’s more than twice what I’m supposed to be lifting.

Sigh, I really think I might go nuts.  Someone please tell me how long this is going to last because I need to see the light at the end of the tunnel…

You know, kids these days, they do too much. So many parents are running themselves crazy trying to get them to every little activity under the sun. I promised myself I’d never be that parent, that my kids would only be involved in what they are really interested in and what is appropriate for their age and involved in things that do not conflict with… well, life!

Really, Elijah doesn’t do all that much.  He’s got church and the occasional thing with friends, 4-H as of last year, and swimming lesson as of a few months ago.  But, unfortunately, 4-H and swimming conflicted for the first time earlier tonight.  Elijah made a bird house with his grandfather for the fair and it had to be on display at the 4-H chicken dinner (which I totally was not able to volunteer with unlike all the other parents, ugh) and then go to the county fair.  It’s a bit of a pain in the butt.  Had to drop it off Wednesday at  our VFW between the hours of 4 and 6 only then had to pick it up Thursday AT 6 and take it to the county fair building.  Sounds simple enough, but swimming this week was Thursday from 5 to 6.  Elijah freaked at the thought of having to leave swimming early and they’d told me that if I didn’t get the birdhouse at the right time, they wouldn’t be there anymore for me to get it and he’d forfeit any “premiums” (whatever those are) and I guess it wouldn’t get displayed at the county fair.  So it was Sarah to the rescue.

She met us at the community center after work.  I paid for her to come swimming and we had gotten in early at 4 (yes, me too, for exercise), she got there about 430.  I got out at 515 and showered and dressed, picked Kayleigh up at the tot drop (she didn’t like swimming the one time I took her with us) then we left Elijah and Sarah there.  On the way to the VFW I called and ordered pizza for dinner.  Had to get Kayleigh out at the VFW and go in and wait a bit.  Then they said to take the birdhouse so I started to and saw that there was no ribbon attached.  I knew he was supposed to get one, in his age group they all get one – next year that won’t be the case (I think) – and he’s always saying he never wins anything, so I’m letting him think he won this ribbon.  No harm, no foul.  And I understand that people forget things, but, go figure, it would be me that has to wait because we were forgotten.  (Murphy’s Law.)  Got the ribbon and had to carry K and the birdhouse and stuff back to the Jeep and put them all in.  Then to the youth building, practically down the street, where I had to get K and the birdhouse out again and go inside where…  of course… no one knew where I was supposed to put the blasted thing!  And, as is typical, the second person I asked told me to ask the first person I asked…  Finally, the fourth person knew.  She also told me when to pick it up… and yay.  That’s going to pose another problem.  Sigh.

But finally that was done.  I went back to the house and waited for Sarah and Elijah and when they showed up, I let them in and passed K off to Sarah and left again to pick up the pizza!

That all wore me out… yet, here I am, at 1 am, just finishing up editing a photo shoot.  Some certain people had better love me lots and lots because said photo shoot was only on Tuesday… I worked fast!

The art of being busy, right?  And it all starts over in T-minus 3 hours 20 minutes…

Well, either way, up there we have a pic of E with his ribbon and a bad cell phone pic of him with his eyes closed and his bird house.  He and grandpa did a great job on that bird house.  It wasn’t a kit or anything, I printed out plans from the internet and they picked one out and went for it.  I was unable to get to see them do any of it and certain other people failed to get photos for me (ahem, haha) but hopefully when we get it back, we’ll get a good pic of him and Grandpa with it.

Normally, I might say no we are too busy but I really thought it would be good for Elijah to get to do something like that with Grandpa and good for him to have something in the fair.  Of course, now that it’s been built for a week and a half, he acts like he doesn’t care about it anymore.  Guess we’ll hang it out at Grandpa and Grandma’s when we get it back… since our few trees seem to keep dying lately…

ugh.

(Quite literally, too, since TBS sees fit to show this clip constantly in the commercials and Elijah literally copies it second for second because he thinks it’s hilarious.)

Yesterday he said to me, “So, Mommy, your first car was a Lovo, right?” (Volvo.) When I answered that he was indeed correct, he started firing off questions about our vehicle history! He’s so interested in everything, he wants to know what make and model of vehicle, what color, how long we had them, how old our current vehicle is now, etc. It’s unreal.

It’s really one of the main reasons I can’t lie to this kid! Big things like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aside, I can’t even, apparently, mention just once that, yes, I saw what you were doing behind the couch because I do, indeed, have x-ray vision. ‘Cause then, for the next 3 weeks, I have to listen to: “Are you SURE you have x-ray vision?” The daily questions for this have died down, but I still get asked on at least a weekly basis now. He does, however, completely believe that I have eyes in the back of my head. He doesn’t seem to realize that just because I know what he’s doing it doesn’t necessarily mean I can see him. I’m not even sure where he got the idea of the eyes in the back of my head in the first place, one day he just started asking me about them and, while playing behind me, telling me to “close your back eyes…. ’cause I don’t want you to see what I’m doing.” Oh, yeah, that means I’m not going to look!!

X-ray vision and Back Eyes aside, I really do have to be conscious not to stretch the truth or brush him off with a lame non-true answer about something like parents do, or say something that will be taken the wrong way. When K was still in the hospital, my friend had him with her and they went to the store to get a new prescription filled for her father-in-law. She saw the new price and said, “Ohhhh Grandpa’s going to have a heart attack!” Ever since then, Elijah has been extremely concerned about his friends’ great-grandpa having a heart attack! He went on and on about it for about 3 days even though we were all telling him that she was just kidding that it was just a figure of speech, and now, months later, if it comes up, he still remembers.

The other day, out of the blue, he mentioned a certain couple that I have not seen in over 3 years now, nor spoken of around him in about 2 and a half or longer. I met the wife online and we were friends for a while and they visited here in July of 2006. The other day, Elijah just started talking about something her husband said or did while they were here. It took me a minute to figure out who he was talking about (because he never used the man’s real name but called him by the pet name the wife did, haha). I mean, dang, kid, that was half a lifetime ago for him!

On the upside, his memory is great when it applies to school. However, I think that he also has employed some selective memory when it comes to math. Though, I do also get the feeling that if he’d just stop and think for even a second and not be worrying about how long it’s going to take him to get finished or what not, that he’d know the answer right away. Great for reading though! He’s been acing his spelling tests.

Oh, speaking of elephants? A few weeks ago he was sitting on the couch and out of the blue he muttered to himself: “I hate elephants… cause of their long trunks.” I about fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard!