Time for B: Playing catch up

My son was adorable today and I was a good parent. These two things made me want to blog. Then I logged in and discovered that its been more than 14 days, for shame!, since my last post.

In an attempt to rectify the situation I'll catch you up on my thrilling life and as a bonus I'll share my sons adorableness and my freakishly amazing parenting skills.

So, the last two weeks. I had a crazy week before spring break. Work was overwhelming, we had evening school events and I was on a hormonal rollercoaster that had me screaming at my best friend and sobbing two seconds later while she patiently listened to me unleash the crazy at her over the phone.

One of the evening school events was, "artist in me night." My husband claims that he took a video so as soon as I find the right cord I will unleash the awesomeness on all of my Facebook friends. Be warned, it's pretty cute. My twins sang Disney songs in the choir and my youngest was voted in as the choir mascot so he was the announcer for the evening. The kids were really nervous and kept forgetting to smile so my sister (the choir director) and I came up with a plan to have my youngest child appear in costumes to announce each song and surprise the kids in the choir. It worked well at bringing out their smiles and speech impediment and all he was a minor celebrity the next day. My twins love choir and I am so thankful that my sister offers it for free at their school.

Then spring break happened. Last week was outstanding! We all really needed the break. We had grand plans to build things. Our grand plans never happened but we filled our days with fun moments. Here are the highlights: date night for mommy and daddy while boys go to the YMCA, hanging out with our best friends and their adorable daughter, a great dog walk with friends, bus trip to lahaina, movies, movies and more movies, a lot of pizza, a trip to the laVendar farm, a new pet that died, cleaning out the garage, the famous Mallo ribs, lots and lots of swimming, a beach day that reminded me that we need more beach days and a craft day that began my sisters newest obsession. Like I said, we had good times!

During the last two weeks we also had the fall of the family challenge. Remember the challenge? I only exercised one day but nobody checked up on me for a week so I wasn't the first to lose. All 3 boys got 2nd chances since their challenges were unfair for some reason or other (or so they argued) Our youngest was the first to fail, he just can't seem to put anything away so about 3 days into the challenge his messy room caused him to lose. I was the second loser once they finally got around to checking on my progress. Our oldest lost after a week. Realistically he was grumpy every day but we kept giving warnings. Finally he had a day with 3 warnings in a row which my husband declared as a loss and which caused our oldest to throw the most epic temper tantrum we've seen in a long time. Two weeks in and our middle child reached his second Saturday. He was owning his challenge and we all thought he had a chance to win it all but there's something about Saturday's that just made it impossible for him to brush his hair. After several comments from people on his "interesting" hairdo we declared him a loser as well. Less than halfway through and my husband was the last man standing. Knowing that st. Patrick's day was coming up he began looking for loopholes so he wouldn't have to go beer free while celebrating 3/17. as a family we decided that as last man standing he could resign from the race. It meant no prize but also meant no punishment. And that was the family challenge. A little anticlimactic but a learning experience to be sure.

And it folds up, such a cool chair!

Sorry it's sideways and for the weird checker shadows.

The 3rd times a charm headboard plus ninja pillow.

While I'm on the subject of unfinished stories I should mention that we have gotten a lot done on the redecorating front. My bathroom is the worlds most amazing place and my own personal spa retreat. It still doesn't have a finished door but other than that, it's my dream come true. My sons rooms are all at least 75% completed. The monster room is finished except for one piece of artwork. They ran out of the paint pen I need to finish it and two months later our adorable island still hasnt gotten new stock at the one store that sells them. The ninja room is amazing and I love it. I underestimated my sons eye for design and only painted 2 walls the bright yellow that he chose. Turns out its the worlds best yellow and so I need to go in and paint the other walls. Other than that it's outstanding. The orange and red room is a work in progress. We added orange sheets and orange curtains and a disco light and he seems happy so we really haven't put much effort into the finishing touches. I even hauled all the crap out of my 4 communal closets
And reorganized and began the prettification process. So yeah, things are going well. I included a few pics that I had on my phone for the ninja room, I will do proper posts at some point.

Finally we get to the subject at hand, catch up complete. I'm awesome because I accomplished no tasks today but instead lounged around with my husband and went out to lunch with him. Usually this sort of day would leave me feeling defeated but instead I chose to enjoy the fact that I got quality time with my husband and as a bonus I was able to be extra kind to my children since I wasn't fried from working. I could barely believe it myself but I got My twins to complete their work in under 30 minutes and still produce something of quality. When my oldest started his meltdown routine I was able to talk him down from his manic state and keep him focused. My youngest was still dealing with the messy room problem so we worked on it together and he finished all his work in about two and a half hours. Parenting success moments for me.

I know two and a half hours doesn't sound like success but it includes the room clean up and the crazy amounts of talking to himself that occur throughout the homework process. I included a few pictures of him because I couldn't stop smiling at how cute and small he looks sitting at his desk (his thinking hat was pretty entertaining too) one picture shows him counting on his fingers to figure out a math problem, it was so much fun to watch! But the best moment was when he decided to school me:

T: mommy can you guess what letter I'm on in the word bus? Is it first, second or third?

T: and I'm only going to give you one hint so listen very close.

T: it makes the uuuuuuhhhhh sound in bbbbbbbb, uuuuuuuhhhhh, ssssssssss.

B: is it the second letter?

T: mooooooommmmmeeeeeee! How did you guess? Since when did you learn how to sound out words?