He went to the Indy Car time trials with his dad and grandpa. On Saturday morning the boys left at 8am, which I found unbelievable, I didn’t know that the two big boys knew there was an 8 in the morning. I mean they only get up that early if they have to go to work.

They left with just a loose plan of spending as much time at the race as S could take. I mean when you are dealing with a 5year old everything is a crap shoot. If he isn’t feeling good or if the event is too loud he may end up asking to come home early…..as it turns out he LOVED it, and so did Dad and Grandpa.

They stayed there for almost 5 hours. As it turns out, they watched a bunch of time trials, had snacks, had lunch and then walked the exhibit area at least three times.

They came back with over 65 pictures. Which about ½ of which are of blurry little cars zooming by on the big black track. Grandpa even bought cute little Danica Patrick (he has a little crush on her) lanyards for all their ticket stubs and stuff.

My husband took several (I mean SEVERAL) pictures of Danica’s car, truck, full size poster for Grandpa. S came back with oodles and oodles of memorabilia pins, stubs, posters, stickers you name it he got it. It was the perfect birthday present for him.

The girls weren’t left out. N got to spend the day with Grandma. It was extra special because she got to ride in Grandma’s car in the booster seat. She looked so grown up; I thought grandma was going to cry.

Poor A, she spent the day with me…I didn’t really have anything amazing for us to do; luckily A had a birthday party to attend later that day. Otherwise, she might have been in a terrible funk.

I did break out the booster seat and let A ride up front, for our errands, which is a very big deal. If N would have got to ride up front with Grandma while A was relegated to the backseat with me, would have caused a big kerfluffle.

We went shopping for the birthday gift, had lunch and then went to the library. After lunch A had left over pizza and wanted to know if she could eat it up front…why yes I said and she said “oh right I can eat up front cuz I’m not driving”-she is so weird.

We even stopped at a rummage sale and A bought a new package of water paints. Still when we got home and the other kids weren’t home yet, A got pretty mopey.

It was hard for her to get excited about her upcoming party, it just seemed to far off.

Eventually, everyone came home. You could tell it was a little hard for A to see all the goodies the other kids brought home. N had bought a stuffed mouse, and she went out for lunch and gelato, S had all his race goodies.

A handled it pretty good, but she did step up her “is it time for the party yet campaign”

Finally, it was time for A to go to her party. It was a gymnastics party and she got a HUGE goodie bag, so that made up for the rather mundane day she spent with me.

Luckily, the appointment was not 2 hours long, like admittance paperwork suggested. I couldn’t imagine being held captive at a Drs office for that long. We had her pack a snack and a stack of books, just in case.

We even left her brother and sister with their grandma. Which thrilled her sibs, they considered it a date with grandma. In fact, I think N felt a little cheated that she had to go to a dr appointment and everyone else got to play with grandma.

We picked up all the little kids early from school. It made sense why send grandma to wait in line for them? I can’t see my mom having the patience to sit in line waiting for the kids. The kids were so excited to have the excuse notes to hand to the teachers and spent a lot of time giggling and talking about leaving early.

Of course, no one was ready when we got there to pick them up, we had to fetch them out of their classrooms. N really did well at the appointment, even when she got her eyes dilated, which I couldn’t watch. I don’t like when my eyes are dilated let alone my little peanuts eyes. When the kids were little and had bouts of pink eye, my husband did the eye drops.

The wait for her eyes to dilate was soooo long, and it was getting hot in the waiting room, I think we all were in danger of falling asleep. Her sibs were very jealous of her cool (not really) flimsy throwaway sunglasses she got after the appointment to protect her eyes in case her eyes were light sensitive. I think she kept them to use on her stuffed animals.

She has one more follow up in 2 months and then we will schedule the surgery. I don’t think she has any idea that she is getting an operation, I know she heard the words, but she doesn’t have any concept of an operation. The doctor made it sound simple and quick, keeping fingers crossed on that… two months is so long to wait.

Therefore, in that regard I am glad that N doesn’t seem to care/understand that she is getting surgery.

In fact, it was so infrequent that her Grandma never noticed it (and Grandma’s notice everything). Still was apparent that she needed her eyes examined.

So we made an appointment. N’s eye and the appointment became the only thing we talked about during the days leading up to the appointment.

These kids have a way of beating a subject to death.

The day of the appointment came and N was very excited!-I think it is just that she was getting special attention. You have to love kids at this age, things like the eye doctor are not a chore they are EXCITING!!

Her brother and sister packed big bags of stuff to do while N was being examined. We arrived and her brother and sister got all spread out and comfortable in the waiting room.

I was a little worried about leaving A & S alone in the waiting area, those two aren‘t know for getting along, but they surprised me, they were so good. Not to brag or anything (okay I’m bragging) but the staff commented on how well behaved the kids were….yes, I did think my real children had been replaced by pod children.

Anyway, we left A & S out front and N and I went into the exam room. It was so funny to see her climb into that big exam chair. It is like 3 times as big as she is.

She has such a tiny voice; you could barely here her as she dutifully answered all the Dr’s questions. At first, the even the doctor couldn’t tell that N had something wrong with her eye, but as the exam progressed she discovered that it was more then just a lazy eye.

It seems our little N has Amblyopia and Strabismus. Both fancy ways of saying that her eyes are misaligned and that one eye isn’t functioning properly (lazy).

Now, I went in there expecting glasses. Our whole family wears glasses there is no that our kids will escape having to wear glasses, I was even expecting and eye patch for the “lazy” eye….I wasn’t expecting the doctor to say Specialist and SURGERY.

Any parent, who has been in the exam room with a child and has heard the word surgery, knows that you immediately stop listening, because you are so completely focused on the fact that your little one may need surgery. Once, we got out of the exam, got pamphlets and other facts about the conditions, I am pretty sure that surgery wont be necessary….still it is a tiny possibility and it’s a little scary.

After the exam, N picked out her new glasses (purple Barbie frames). She has such a tiny little nose (really, she does) that you just aren’t sure it will support the glasses.

Okay, I for sure sound like a mom but DARN SHE LOOKS cute in her glasses. I tell you the kid tried on quite a few pairs and they all looked good (for the record she looks good in hats too).

She can’t wait to get her glasses; I think the whole school knows that she is getting glasses. What was really funny is that her sister (big nosy bear sister) made sure to tell everyone in her glass all about N’s appointment and the fact that N might get an eye patch and glasses. It’s like “ahem” miss A this is your sister’s thing not yours.

Spending time together is the best gift of all.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the kids didn’t get me gifts. They did, I got a bunch of great homemade (or made in school as the case maybe gifts).

My son made a cute little cookbook. All the Kindergartners were interviewed about their favorite meal. They were also asked to describe how their mom prepares the special meal. By reading all the little interviews it is apparent that little kids have NO idea how cooking works, but it is sweet.

It is also apparent that all moms shop at Wal-Mart, Target and Pick n Save (or local grocery that has a monopoly on the area) because every little kids “recipe” started with “First my mom buys the food at…..”

It also includes a very cute picture of the kids dressed as chefs.

N daughter wrote a lovely poem. It is her trademark I love you do you love me style. Yes, she actually ends the poem with do you love me.

A daughter made cookie mix in a jar.She added all the ingredients except the flour. She was very proud of her creation. She also wrote a top 10 reasons why she loves me list. Trust me I will treasure it. The teen years aren’t that far away.

I also got a set of silhouettes made by my mom.

They are traditional profile silhouettes done on black paper. She put a lot of time into them they are very very cool.

The silhouettes proved tricky to do, she tried to do them using the kids and tracing their profiles on the wall. That just didnt work.

So since, my mom wasn’t able to do them that way, she had to ask me for help and to provide her with photos.

This made A upset because then  my present wasn’t a surprise.She really has a thing for surprises.

She got further upset when the gift the kids bought for me with their dad wasn’t a complete surprise either.

I had to tell her that it is very hard to surprise a mom.

Even though they didn’t surprise me with it, I still love the mini fish tank and an Angel Fish that they got me. As usual, the kids were right there helping me set up the tank and monitoring the fish during his first afternoon in the tank.

Usually, we go outside and DO things before the party to keep the “is it time to go yet” to a minimum. Unfortunately, this weekend was non-stop rain! It rained so much and so unpredictably that you couldn’t even send the kids outside to ride bicycles or scooters when it wasn’t raining.

That meant a whole lot of inside time for the kids. We did get out on Saturday to go run a few errands. A local party supply store was having a 21-year anniversary sale.

As you can imagine a party supply store knows how to throw an anniversary party. They had slushies, coffee, cookies and popcorn all the things kids like….well, maybe not the coffee.

Hey, it got us out of the house; the kids got snacks what could be better? We also hit the dollar store. The kids scrounged up a couple of bucks and each of them got something from the dollar store. N got a beautiful seashell necklace; she loves shells and jewelry so you would assume this was a win win situation.

Nope, you’d be wrong. See her sister got a word search book and magic dough (the dollar store equivalent of play do)….see the word search book has stuff you actually DO the jewelry just lays around your neck looking beautiful.

Kids don’t like when their “toy” doesn’t do anything and the other kids toy provides hours of fun. Naturally, N assumed that A would gladly share her magic dough and word searches with her, I mean they are TWINS after all.

Yeah, A wasn’t having any of that; she bought the stuff to play with too bad her sister bought stuff that just laid there. Much squabbling ensued. Finally,

A relented and allowed her sister to use the magic dough and to search for ONE word in the word search. Ahhhh sisterly love.

He is thrilled! The girls have had their bikes for about 2.5 years now, and they have had the training wheels off since last summer.

This means S has been watching his sisters zoom around on their bikes, without a bike of his own for way to long (in his humble opinion). You can imagine the moping!

To make matters worse, before the girls had their training wheels off he practiced pedaling on their bikes. That stopped as soon as the training wheels came off.

No training wheels any practice for S, this is because the girls are never off their bikes. I swear they spent last summer glued to their bikes.You should see the calves on these kids.

I couldn’t wait to see how S was on a bike, mainly, because he completely skipped the tricycle. He went from learning to walk to riding a scooter.

He attempted to tricycle but he just didn’t have the patience for the pedaling. I think this was because by this time the girls had their bikes and scooters and the trike just wasn’t fast (or cool) enough.

On the trike, he was constantly reminded that he was LITTLE. On his scooter, he could pretend to be big. My son does have his own scooter, he can really motor on it, but there is no way it keeps up with a bike.

He gets exhausted and frustrated if he tries to ride around the block on his scooter and I hate carrying the scooter home.

Since the weather turned nice he has been watching his sisters riding endlessly up and down the street and he wants to join the fun. So finally, he can.

He got a very cool red and black bike the Easter bunny was extremely lucky and got us a fully assembled bike (yah go bunny).

This bike is very boy, with flames and what not all.

Unfortunately, the bunny didn’t include a helmet for him; he will have to live with a hand me down helmet.

Luckily, the helmet that A had isn’t to embarrassingly girl! It is purple and black…not to bad. N’s on the other hand is blue with flowers.

If that was our only choice, we might have had to resort to spray paint, to make it more macho.

For sure, he will get a very boy helmet for his birthday…, which is only a couple months away. So, now he is big man with his bike. After finding it where the Easter bunny hid it, he immediately hops on and pedals away! He was all impressed with himself until he started rolling back down the driveway.

He hasn’t mastered braking yet. He is surprisingly good at riding that bike. It is the stopping that he is finding a little difficult. He frequently allows himself to roll off the driveway onto the grass instead of braking.

He has the pedal brakes, just like his sisters. It takes a little practice to master those. He is slowly getting the hang of it. In all fairness, he is learning really quickly. I think the younger sibs always do, they are so eager to catch up with the older kids.

Our first ride around the neighborhood went well he pedaled his heart out. He was a little scared about going down hill. I stayed right by him and hung onto the collar of his shirt on the hills and reminded him when to start braking.

What you shouldn’t do is say OK as I did. It sounded like a doable plan when my mom suggested it. She really, really wanted to do an egg hunt in the park by our house.

She had all the details down (I swear this woman was a five star general in a previous life). Her plan was to get to our house at 6:30am grab the eggs (which I had to leave outside in the car for her), hide them in the park and then return to our house, ring the doorbell and pick up the children.

Then off they would go to hunt eggs. Simple right? Very little involvement for me so I figured what the hey she is doing all the heavy lifting why not!! Come Sunday morning 6a the kids are up and bristling with excitement.

I am beginning to fear they will see their grandma drive up and spoil the surprise. I can hear them moving around in their room talking and giggling…I keep my fingers crossed that they don’t peek out the window.

I mean my kids are normally early risers, but 6a is even early for them, I know they were excited but they had a little help in the waking up from out animals. That is because the minute the cat and dog sense that my eyes have popped open they are right there in my face, meowing, hopping on and off the bed and generally making nuisances of themselves.

They feel that it is in their contract to eat breakfast at 7a come hell or high water. Even if that means pestering me from 6:01 to 6:59.

I tried valiantly to ignore everyone, the kids dancing round in their room, the cat meowing in my ear, the dog tap dancing by his food bowl, to no avail, I got up to feed the animals…I didn’t let the kids out of their room, because I didn’t know if grandma was done hiding the eggs.

At 6:40, the doorbell rings.

I am right in the middle of pouring out the dog’s food and the dog is so shocked that he doesn’t know if he should bark and make a fuss about the doorbell or eat his breakfast. He compromised and inhaled a mouthful of kibble and mumbled out a woof!

I open the door to Grandma all decked out in a homemade Easter hat. The hat was a remarkable sight bedecked with flowers and plastic eggs. Words cannot describe it.

Poor grandma was almost frozen to death the temperature was not quite 33 degrees. She had finished the egg hiding and couldn’t imagine waiting outside in the car until 7a she wanted to get the egg hunt started before she got hypothermia.

I got the kids up, stuffed them into their warmest clothes and sent them out to find eggs. After they disappeared down the driveway, I ran around hiding more eggs and toys in the backyard along with the bike the Easter bunny brought for my son.

By the time, the kids returned they were loaded down with eggs, cold but still willing to hung a little bit more. They were thrilled with the toys and bike.

The only glitch, we left out plastic eggs filled with candy and helpfully labeled Mr. Bunny & Mrs. Bunny. I forgot to scoop them up; the kids thought the Easter bunny didn’t like his present. After that, I was ready for the nap but the kids wanted to play with all their new toys!

The little girls recently bought some flarp, which if you are unfamiliar with it, is a gooey substance that resembles the blob and makes grotesque farting noises.

The flarp was hiding in the dollar bin at Target. Some how N spotted it and naturally she had to buy it, what little kid can resist a product that claims to be a “noise putty”.

I really didn’t want the flarp, but since it was N’s own money, I had to let her buy it.

As soon as we got in the car, N was ripping the packaging off the flarp and massaging it around to get it to fart….and did it. The other little kids were watching and waiting for the noises to begin and begin they did!

The noises that emanate from this gelatinous blob are just amazing. With every little squeak and groan the putty made the kids burst into gales of laughter.

You couldn’t help but laugh along because they were enjoying it so much. Still, my kids are simply not content with playing with a toy in its intended way.

Once the kids got the flarp home they had to do more with it then just make noises. This meant they started rolling it out (with my rolling pin), cutting it into shapes and generally having a good time with it.

Of course, they had to go too far (don’t they always). It “somehow” was stuck on the ceiling….uh huh wonder how that happened. After I scraped it off the ceiling they stretched out to see how long they could make it, and did god knows what else with it.

They did enjoy running up and slapping the flarp on my hands (it is sooooo slimy feeling) so that they could hear me scream EWWWWW.

Naturally, they dropped it on the floor, where it became covered with dog hair. Therefore, N decided her flarp needed to be washed. She ran it under water….let me just say water and flarp don’t mix.

I got suspicious when I saw her slipping her hands into my yellow rubber kitchen gloves. I asked her what happened and she explained that she had washed the flarp.

The water turned it into a really disgusting squishy mess. There was no saving the flarp. Poor N, she was crushed!

A couple days later, we had to go back to Target (we always forget something) and she spent another dollar getting replacement flarp, and she convinced her sister to spend a dollar and get a tub of flarp for herself. So now, we have twice the flarp fun!

He is the kind of little guy that notices when you have new earrings, compliments your outfit and remembers that you like certain things.

Now, he does this in a very nice manner, it is in no way ingratiating or smarmy. He is not a mini Eddie Haskell or anything he really is a natural.

He always has a compliment for his grandma when he sees her. And when I pick the kids up from school he is the only one that asks me what I did that day.

In terms of grandma, he is the first kid to notice if she is wearing a new pair of earrings.

Of course, not all of his compliments are super smooth, one time he told grandma that her Halloween top resembled the Halloween tablecloth she had (it did). She took it graciously.

This weekend at a Spring Fling (a ladies lunch) hosted by my mom, the little boy was in fine form. He wore his suit.

It is the typical little boy suit, pants, long sleeve button down, vest and tie (clip on). The girls were dressed in party dresses also, just for fun.

As S walked in one of the women said, he looked like a miniature Tom Jones.

S was a model boy, not one burp, fart or silly comment, and he is the king of these at home. Not that the girls don’t hold their own in ALL that stuff, they can burp and fart with the best of them.

So, during the luncheon, S is sitting next to one of the women and he asks her in his smoothest voice “so what are you doing this weekend”.

I thought my mom was going to fall over she was laughing so hard. The kid is a natural with women I tell ya!

Some time ago, this became a tradition at our house. I think it started when the girls were in daycare.

Their teacher at the time sprinkled glitter all around the classroom and knocked toys and chairs over to show that the leprechaun had been there. I decided that having the leprechaun visit our house on St. Patrick’s Day and leave chocolate all around was a really good idea.

This year I was lucky to find the foil wrapped coins. A few times, I haven’t been able to find the coins and ended up using Rollo’s or Hershey Kisses.

The kids still remember the year they got up early and scared the “leprechaun” he was so surprised that he left behind his whole bag of chocolates.

Yes, the little wieners caught me red handed! Somehow, I managed to convince them that it wasn’t me hiding the chocolates. Never mind that I was standing their holding an open bag of candy. Luckily, kids are easily distracted. Yes, I am proud that I fooled a bunch of kids (I take it where I can get it).

The kids were up at 7 sharp this morning to hunt for the chocolate. They even had little brown paper bags with the initials on them set aside (this was A’s idea).

I am not sure how much chocolate they expected to find….. I hid three little packages worth, I made sure to hide them in easy to spot places, and it is no fun if the kids get frustrated. I always let them have a piece of chocolate with breakfast…really starts the day off right!

They were fascinated by the gold coins, which were printed to look like real money. After collecting all the coins, they spent a lot of time determining how much money they had (chocolate coin money). They were very happy with their haul.