Laid back day

It was a pretty good day today.  I am SO irritable lately, and I don’t even realize it sometimes.  Bec is obviously mirroring it back to me, because she’s so pissy with me, and in turn, I get pissy.  Anyway, today Jerry had to go to court, so he woke me up early, at around 8:20 or so.  To know me, you have to know I’m a night owl, and I sleep  until 10 usually, ignoring everything.  Someone will get the baby a bottle when she wakes up in the morning that’s toddler formula-and a real life saver as far as her nutritional needs go…she’s still only got about 3-5 teeth…she won’t let you look in her mouth to really examine it, but you can see 3 teeth very plainly…anyway, she has a hard time eating still, so she’s more of a veggie eater these days than a meat eater.  I don’t worry about it much because of the toddler formula.  So typically I get up around 10, SOME days 11, depending on how sleep deprived I’ve been, go rescue her from "jail"  LOL…she’s got plenty of toys in her crib at any given time to amuse her, so 8:20 was feeling a BIT early, lol.  Jerry put a band aid on her foot.  I got a treadmill from freecycle, and somehow the girls just DIDN’T get it that they were to stay OFF the treadmill.  Anyway, they were playing on it, and Sammi got pretty scraped up, on her foot, on her shoulder (looks awful!), and on her ear???  The ear we’re thinking is self inflicted.  I clipped her nails the other day, and thy were PRETTY long, sharp little things.  So I told him I would change her so he could get going.  Then I laid in bed, cuddling with her, until she decided she’d rather be getting into mischief, lol.  She raided a bag of cheap toys I bought Shabree to motivate her to learn her sight words, and I could tell, she REALLY wanted those toys.  Especially the little 88 cent phone (told you they were cheap)… that is, until she discovered my iPod.  OOOH… she couldn’t get enough of playing with it.  I put the headphones on her, she played with the buttons, she got real delight in removing and replacing the headphones.  The look of delight on her face was precious, and I decided to let her press the buttons, trying not to flinch, as I couldn’t replace it if she broke it.  (I miss the days of being able to buy just about any toy I want, but I waited over a year to get that iPod)  I finally took it away from her when she yanked the headphones out by the cord.  She got a hold of it again, and threw it on the floor (that’ll teach you mommy!)  I was MAD, but thankfully, it bounced on a pillow and then slid under the bed where she couldn’t see it.  I said very sternly "Samantha!  What’d you do that for?" and gave her a very mean look.  She didn’t care.    She got back off the bed, couldn’t find the iPod, so went to look for something else to get into.  She loves opening and closing the drawers in the bathroom… ugh, but there isn’t anything in them that could hurt her, she just creates meses she doesn’t clean up.  I’m careful to close the bathroom door… she LOVES putting toilet paper in the toilet to get it wet, then wiping her face with it (yuck!), and gets water everywhere.  I’ve been concerned for months she might pull herself in the toilet, so we’ve been getting in the habit, and telling the girls to get in the habit, of closing the bathroom doors so she can’t play in there.  But she LOVES toilet paper and will take it off the roll just for sport and run a trail of it everywhere.  I don’t worry as much now about her drowning in the toilet… but I don’t want to clean up those messes either!  So the bathroom door stays CLOSED.
I put her in her crib to take a shower, and then we had a bit of breakfast, 3 waffles (yikes) for me, half for her… she left half on her plate, but she hadn’t finished her bottle off either, so I don’t know if she just wasn’t hungry, or what.  After breakfast, it was 10:25 or thereabouts, and I decided to lay down for half an hour, so I put her back in her crib with a bottle, and dozed, never really falling asleep.  She was content to lay there with her bottle, though she surprised me by throwing the play phone I’d put in there to keep her amused out of her crib.  She usually LOVES playing with phones, but maybe it’s more fun when there’s someone to hand the phone off to.
We went and picked up Shabree after I put her car seat in the van.  I put her on the porch while I put it in, and when I went to get her, she was sitting on one of the "big wheel" type toys that have gone through I don’t know how many of the girls.  She was LOVING it.  But she was just as happy to be picked up and put in her car seat.  We picked up Shabree, were early, so i started reading "The Testament" by John Grisham, and got a chapter or two in before Shabree’s class let out (I read really fast, and I almost always finish my books the same day I start them, so I either have to start early in the day, or I’m reading all night.  I’m not the type of person who can usually put a book down for long once I’ve started reading)  I decided that since Jerry was gone to court, I’d take Breezy and Sammi to Burger King for dollar menu food and the play center.  I typically do this once a week or so, used to do it more often, but can barely afford to eat out these days (hence the dollar menu!), I bought a Whopper Jr w/ cheese no onion for me, and Shabree for once decided to go with the Rodeo Burger, Sammi got chicken nuggets, and I got a medium fries and a value soda, which we must have refilled four or five times while there. 
Sammi is a 17 month old with no fear whatsoever.  She can, and will, go up the play structure by herself, or with the help of a bigger sister, it doesn’t really matter.  She loves to go down the slide.  She will climb any ladder, but I suspect she prefers the one with a slide down, because she really doesn’t climb DOWN ladders yet…she sort of gets herself stuck on them, if there’s no slide, lol.  There were a TON of kids at B.K. today, so they had plenty of kids to play with.  We were there for a good two, two and a half hours.  Sammi really didn’t want her nuggets, she ate fries, shook her head no at the nuggets, and did the bird thing with the soda… the bird thing being a VERY cute (for now I’m sure) opening her mouth to show she wants food or drink put in there, lol… it’s cute AND funny.  She loves soda, of course, and I can’t say that I really deny her it when we go to B.K. though I do try and let her have her own straw (she bites them, it’s annoying), and I let her finish it off, then get a refill for Shabree and me.  Though she usually has to have some of that too.  She’s a greedy gut when it comes to soda.  I pretty much always opt for Diet Coke.  I practically had to make her eat the nuggets, I finally took away the french fries.  And after she dropped the soda for one of MY fries, I was getting a bit upset with her.  That was the first time she dropped the soda.  She managed to drop the soda about 3 times.  Oh, and once she gave me a good scare.  I don’t really bother with the high chairs any more, she just fights them anyway, and it’s a long drop from them.  Well, she lost her balance on the bench, and fell backwards…but thankfully, oh so thankfully, managed to save herself a bit and fall in a way that landed her on her butt, NOT on her head, but I swear, I watched her life flash before my eyes… ugh.  I couldn’t react quickly enough.  I ran to get her, and she cried a bit, more from the fear I suspect, than from any injury… I mean, she did fall on her butt…it’s pretty cushioned.
So Shabree got bored, and I’d read pretty much all the sections of the paper I picked up from another table I wanted to read… sigh, got to read about the Billy Joel concert that hit town night before last, that I didn’t get to go to, because we lack FUNDS… I’m SO TIRED of being out of money!!!!!!
It was getting close to two, I figured… I hadn’t taken anything to tell the time, but I’d asked someone awhile before, and it had been one then.  I was concerned, because I didn’t know exactly when Jerry would be getting home, and I didn’t want the older two girls getting home from school to an empty house.  So we left, and sure enough, it was about 2 p.m.  I put Sammi down for a nap (which ended up being painfully short) and when the girls got home, all they could think about was the talent show that was tonight.  Okay, I have to admit… I usually have a pretty good day with just Shabree or Sammi, or the both of them.  They play pretty well together, there are no arguments because Sammi can’t talk, lol… and Shabree is generally easy to get along with, so is Sammi.  But when the older two come home, they bring pissyness, arguments, huge messes in the kitchen that no one cleans up, and in general, I just feel rotten and horrible and angry when they get home.  I know they aren’t going to do one thing I say, there’s going to be resistance when it comes to homework (at least on Syd’s part) and I just… well, I have to admit, I don’t like them very much…. I should NOT say that, but in my current condition, I hate dealing with them.  For example… I tell Syd, "Get y our snack and get to your homework" and she answers me back, rather snottily "WHAT homework?"  I told her, "Syd, don’t speak to me like that.  I am not a mind reader, and I had no way of knowing you had no homework.  You could just say, I don’t have homework"  I told Bec that her Karate routine would be better with music, and she told me in a pissy voice that she can’t possibly do it with music because it throws her off.  I told her that she shouldn’t expect to win a prize if she doesn’t do it to music, and she just told me I was hurting her feelings a LOT.  And perhaps I was being snotty too… I don’t know, we all tend to feed off each other.  I went upstairs, and the hallway was just LINED with clothes that WERE on the counter, and had been neatly folded by me, and I told them to come upstairs and clear the hallway of their clothes.  Their answer?  Dump them into a basket so I could deal with them again, AND fight with each other about who’s "fault" it was the clothes were there in the first place, AND tell me how NONE of the clothes were there because *I* hadn’t washed them!!!!!  Now, I keep telling them, I can’t wash what I don’t have.  I have told them each time I was going to do laundry, and told them, get me your clothes.  Well, lately, it’s been Sydni who can’t be bothered to come give me her dirty clothes….so you can imagine how having THAT thrown in my face by her really pissed me off.  Not to mention, it simply wasn’t true.  There were some clothes of hers in the wash, I washed them, folded them, and put them on the counter, and they were part of the HEAP on the floor.  I told them, Fine, you guys can clear ALL the baskets, and thank you for arguing with me.  Well, this was met with MUCH screaming, and crying that they weren’t going to get to eat, were going to MISS their talent show, and finally, with Sydni SLAPPING Becca.
To which Jerry went upstairs, took Sydni into her room, and told her she was going to miss the talent show.  Except he then said that she had another chance, had to apologize to EVERYONE (she was the main source of the drama, Bec and Shabree were getting the laundry sorted out, if reluctantly), and if she couldn’t calm down WOULD miss the talent show.  She managed to pull herself together sufficiently to do all those things.  The girls ate kind of a hurried dinner (it was microwave meals that had been started before I asked them to clear the hallway, which, I might add, has been a mess for the last week or so, and was pretty much strewn EVERYWHERE tonight, and  was finally enough of a source of frustration for me, which is why I finally told them to clean it up) 
I don’t know what it is… they HAVE rules.  They have expectations,  we don’t allow them to run wild… and yet, they have this attitude that if asked to do ANYTHING, they ignore it for as long as possible, until a parent is yelling (even Jerry, and he really doesn’t yell.  He scares them big time when he yells)  or do so half assed a job, that it has to be done again (and sometimes again)  It’s really frustrating.  Becca and Shabree wanted to trade rooms.  Jerry and I had a quick discussion, and together said, no way.  Becca asked me, I told her to ask her daddy (if he said yes, then it was HIS problem to make it happen)  So I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but when Becca came downstairs, I asked her what he’d said, and she said that he said "Maybe"  Okkkkaayyyy….   Little later, I asked Jerry, and he said "I told her it probably wasn’t going to happen"
I guess we just have to put our feet down with them, and use the word "NO"
Anyway, that piece was a couple of days ago.
So about the talent show….   they figured they were going to win.  I thought to myself "HA"  Okay, so that was mean, and I wasn’t very encouraging, but Becca especially refused ANY constructive criticism, Sydni did… she was originally going to sing Hannah Montana, and I told her that her voice just wasn’t mature enough for Hannah Montana, so she did cup stacking instead, which because Sydni practices cup stacking at almost every opportunity she can get, I had no doubt she’d do well with.  Personally, the noise of the cups bothers me greatly, but Sydni actually is pretty good at it, and practices a LOT… it was one of the reasons that I got her a fairly expensive set for Christmas with a mat and a timer and a DVD, the whole works.  Plus, one of the toy stores was having a massive, every store going out of business sale, so I managed to get them for a pretty decent price.  She tends to sing very nasally, and she did NOT know all the words to the Hannah Montana song.  And despite the fact that I am to where I cannot STAND Ms Miley Cyrus, she’s actually rather hard to sing to!  Becca… up until LAST NIGHT, had NO clue what her routine was even going to be for the talent show… she hadn’t practiced, freaked out about the music because it "threw her off" and was sure she’d freeze up with stage fright, despite the fact that I told her "Well, if you PRACTICED, then you’d know it so well, you probably would NOT freeze" She froze a couple of years ago, because a WEEK before a play her grade was doing, she got a part in it suddenly, and she just didn’t have the time to properly memorize her lines, so yes, she froze up a bit in front of everyone.  I guess it has stuck with her.  I have reminded her that she only had a week to prepare for that.  She’s had a month for this, give or take, but that girl… I swear….  she decided to have Mr Kang help her come up with a routine she could use, but then she NEVER followed through on getting a time, she just blamed him for not giving her a time.  We got a time last week that she could go in last Friday, and she decided, I guess on her own, that since Mrs Kang and I had come up with the time, it must not be the RIGHT time (it was a time they use for make up classes and such… pretty much "open" time, so it would have been FINE…and even if it hadn’t, he would have told us then what would be a good time later in the evening, though we ended up picking up the treadmill later in that particular evening)  So… I can’t help but feel it was excuse after excuse…she could have picked up the phone, called ATA and found out when specifically Mr Kang would meet with her, but she just didn’t.  I guess easier to blame him for her failure?  Well, not a failure, but you get the picture, I would hope.  Her refusal to take responsibility for herself.

Anyway, I was dreading the stupid talent show.  It started at 6:30, and there were THIRTY FOUR contestants!  It went on FOREVER.  Becca did NOT embarrass herself… her bit was short (turned out mercifully so, lol) and not too bad… it WOULD have been better with music, but she did all right all the same.  It was not award winning, but I guess who really cared?  She said she messed up a time or two, I told her no one noticed.  Actually, the girl who won played Fur Elise (a rather tough Beethoven piece, actually) flawlessly on the piano.  She was pretty blasted good.  Becca ended up second or third because they were having serious issues with the sound, and they needed some non music acts, so she had originally been 14, and she was the second one to go… or third.  With 34 acts, we quickly lost track of the time.  There were quite a few singers… the better ones went a cappella and belted out some R &B and were usually little black girls… one little girl was in the third grade, could not really carry a note, kept taking long pauses in the middle of her song, so we kept clapping, then laughing because she’d start back into her song with SUCH gusto… I mean, she was CUTE.  I think given a few years, she could really sing.  At that age, as I explained to Syd, the human voice just isn’t very mature.  One girl, she did REALLY well, and her parents were right in front of me, so when she came and sat next to her mom, I told her, You have a fantastic voice, and you had GUTS to sing that song a cappella.  There were a couple of dancers from somewhere probably in the orient, I’d guess India… very good, though except for the piano player, I’m really not sure who won, because they called out their numbers instead of announcing them by name and what they’d done.    There were three kids who did cup stacking, Sydni was the first of them, at contestant number 23, and she did the best of all of them, no fumbles, again mercifully short (some of the kids went on for what felt like forever!) and she was also the smoothest, and got quite a bit of clapping when she was done.  If the contest had been between the three of them, I am pretty sure Syd would have won, lol… it’s just really hard to compete against a flawless piano rendition of Fur Elise!

So it was almost 9 when we got home.  I had spent a good deal of my afternoon reading my book, and after sending the kids to bed, I finished the book… got a snack of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and sat down to write this very LONG entry, and now it’s 2:30 a.m. and I am exhausted, and think I will go to bed…. I loved the book though, it was one of his best, greatly entertaining.  I love to read, I’m just afraid to do it much, because it borders on obsession for me, with NOTHING else getting done while I read.  I just can’t put a book down, unless something demands it.  I’m kind of surprised I read the paper to be honest, though I knew I wouldn’t get another chance at the paper, but the book I own and could read any time.  I spent more of my time at B.K. making sure Sammi didn’t make a run for it (the door was non existent, no seeming reason why) so I actually didn’t get much of a chance to read anyway.   At least the paper wasn’t quite as absorbing as the book would have been :).

Well, better get to bed… I’ve really got to try and control my own pissiness.  It’s hard, considering my current hormonal state, but I need to at least try.  It can just be really hard when you’ve got three girls all pulling in opposite directions, all vying for control, and none of them really helpful nor cognizant of the ways that she’s contributing to the chaos.
But I guess that’s a battle for tomorrow, not tonight.

Oh, and one last note:  NEVER let an 8 year old prepare you a bowl of ice cream, if you’re either on a diet or trying to limit the amount of sugar you consume.   Because they will throw you off of that… and you will be forced to share with someone else.  LOL… and OMG.  Let me just lay out the picture for you:  Large bowl… large banana, TONS of ice cream, and COATED in magic shell, mixed in… gag.  Thankfully, both Sammi and Jerry were willing to share with me!  So I DIDN’T, thankfully, have to eat it all by myself.