School's Out For Summer!!

Schoooool's Out ForEVER!!    Or so it seems to me...




And Mama needs a Xanax and a stiff drink!  

Let me just preface this by saying that I love my children, and I love being a stay-at-home mom...WHEN my kids are in school!  For anyone who knows me, they can tell you that I'm not exactly a Domestic Goddess.  I'm definitely more Peg Bundy than I am June Cleaver.   I'll keep restarting the dryer 4 times, just so I don't have to fold and put away and hang up clothes.  And I'll keep all the cleaning products out on the shelf, so that it looks like I've been slaving over toilets all day.   That's the type of housewife I am.  The only reason I haven't been "fired" is because my family loves to eat, and apparently cooking is the one and only domestic skill I seemed to pick up.    And when it comes to my kids, I get more than enough quality time with them between the hours of 3:30pm and 9pm, when they finally pass out.

Then I go thumbing through Facebook (where I probably spend WAY too much of my time) and I see all these Moms that are just jumping for joy at the fact that the school year is over and they get to hang out with their kids all summer.  Ummm. HUH????   I about lose every ounce of sanity when the kids are home on random holidays and snow days, and you people are excited about them being home for 3 months?   Deep down, I think they're totally full of it, and they feel the same way I do, but they're in a competition with their other Perfect Moms Anonymous Club.   But it makes me wonder, "Do I need more patience, or are my kids just psychotically worse than everyone else's??" 

First off, let me introduce these precious little angelic offspring of mine.   We'll start off easy.  There's Gibson, who just turned 1. 

His favorite activities include pulling the blowdryer and curling irons off the shelf onto his head, unraveling the toilet paper, stealing his brother/sister's food, chewing on the toilet brush and Clorox wipes, eating dog food, Lego's and any other inedible objects he can find, dialing random phone numbers on the cordless phone (I'm sure we'll have some calls to China show up on the phone bill), gnawing on the remote, and trying to climb out the dog door.  When you tell him "No," he just giggles and thinks it's a game to see how fast he can do it again. But if you pop his hand, he'll just cry inconsolably for 5 minutes...THEN go and do it again.  He's a 22lb ball of pure energy and curiosity, and he can't even walk yet!

Next, we have little Patrick (or "My name is Patrick...Jeffrey Patrick Francis!" as he likes to say when he introduces himself) who is 5.  

He's my sweet-natured, tender-hearted, handsome little blue-eyed man, who has a tendency to be slightly dramatic and is also VERY loud!  He's not being "bad", he just has no concept of how loud his voice is. (We say he is cursed with the "Swindol Volume")   And he also loves to deal with his problems with his sister by screaming in a very high-pitched squeal, which makes me INSANE!  (He's starting karate soon, so hopefully he'll be able to karate-chop her instead.)  He's such an amazing, smart little kid, and he's insanely funny!  You never know what's gonna come out of that mouth of his (a trait I think he inherited from my brother) but it's usually hysterical, and his humor is very natural.  He also can entertain himself for HOURS.  He would never leave this house if we didn't force him, and he would be perfectly content.  He'll watch his Star Wars movies (albeit about 10 times a day if we'd let him) role play with his little characters, reenact battles, and make up random scenarios.  I never have to worry about finding something for him to do.  But he does have a tendency to make something out of nothing.  If he loses a life during his Star Wars game, you can hear him scream all the way down at Jeff's house!  If he realizes that Shelby ate the last of his frozen peanut butter/jelly sandwiches, he'll throw himself to the floor, like he's going to starve to death or have a stroke in the next 3 minutes.   He actually would make a great little theater guy, but when it comes to just hanging at the house, it can be verrrrry irritating.

Now, for the grand finale, we have:   The Drama Queen Extraordinaire, Miss Shelby Renee', who is about to be 7.

Do NOT let that sweet little face fool you!   She has learned to use that innocent smile to slowly seek and destroy!  I love this girl to death, but that doesn't mean that I don't have to restrain myself from locking her in the dog kennel with a gag in her mouth every now and then.  She's SUPER-smart, loves school, she's very sociable, usually teacher's pet, she's verrrrrry helpful and goes out of her way to be a little assistant whenever possible, she's very artistic (she can draw better at 7 years old than I can now), she ADORES Gibson like he's her own child, and she's very full of life.  You know what she's also full of?  Sass and Defiance!!  She's got a mouth on her like you wouldn't believe.  She always has an answer for everything (usually a smartass one).   She will argue with a statue, she's got an eye-roll for every hour of the day, she's NEVER wrong---it's always Patrick's fault, according to her, and if she wants something, then by God, she will have it, whether it kills her or one of us in the process. She got her name from Steel Magnolias, and boy, does she live up to it every day!  The line that fits her perfectly is when M'Lynn says at her funeral "I kept waiting for her to sit up and argue with me."  That's her! 

Her favorite activities include torturing her little brother, back-talking me, wrapping her father around her finger and convincing him that she's a perfect angel and that Mommy's just mean, hateful and crazy, torturing her brother some more, blaming her brother for the 10 tons of candy wrappers that I find hoarded in her room and the couch, destroying her brother's hopes and dreams, telling her brother that Uncle Jeff is gonna arrest him and send him to the bad place on Police Women of Memphis...I think you get the picture. 

She can't entertain herself....at all!   She must have a planned activity for every second of every day, or else, she's practicing her art in places where it should not be (like going through my checkbook and making out fake checks to her friends).  And somehow, when she's home, Patrick then forgets how to entertain himself as well.  Instead, they find it much more entertaining to pull the cushions off the couch and every blanket out of the basket to pile drive each other off the mountain of cushions.  And car rides?  OMG!  She'll put his finger on him, he screams his high-pitched scream at her, she'll slap the crap out of him, he'll cry and attempt to slap her back, but she's more vicious, so she just pummels him.  Meanwhile, I've lost my voice from screaming at them so much, so I just crank up the radio as loud as possible and try to get into my "happy place."  Of course, then Shelby yells over the blasting radio "You know, you can still hear me!  I can still talk!"  Aarrggghhhh!!!     I really would love to invent a device that has big, mechanical arms on it, and I could reach it into the back seat and it would just repeatedly slap back and forth.  I don't exactly want to wreck the car by trying to smack around in the back.  And a fly-swatter doesn't seem to reach. (Oh yes, I've tried that)    But until I do, I'll just crank up the Crue and pretend that they aren't there.   And poor Gibson just sits back there in his little seat, staring at these two, probably praying to God "Really??  400 billion families in this world, and THIS is the one I get??  Seriously??" 

Now, if you get any of them on their own, they're PERFECT!!  Shelby's the best helper and she'll be so sweet and affectionate.  Patrick will play by himself, or he loves to play video games with Daddy.  Gibson is a sweetheart and if he's alone, it's a lot easier to keep him out of the tichen cabinets.    But put them all together, and you have a nuclear explosion!!

On top of that, throw in our two slobbering, 80lb boxers, Peyton and Jorja, and yeah, we've got a house of chaos 24/7.  And this chaos usually begins around 6:45am---that is, unless they have to BE somewhere at a certain time.  Then I'm having to shock them with jumper cables to get them up.  But if we don't have anywhere to go and could sleep in?  Oh yeah, 7am at the latest!   But yet, I'm a bad mom because I'm not jumping for joy at the thought of having them home for 3 months??   Suck it.  They hadn't even been out of school for a full 24 hours when I already hearing "Mooommmmmmmm, I'm BORRRRRINNNNNG!!!" -- yes, she says she's "boring" instead of "bored" --   and then cut to a couple days later, when she was screaming at Patrick that if he didn't give her iPod back, she was gonna get a bad man to come in his room and chop off his wiener!   (can't really fault her for the threat, though...I'm sure I've used that one a time or two myself)  Then 2 hours later, Shelby was off to her first overnight camp at church, and these 2 are hugging each other and crying like she was being sent off to boot camp!   Bi-polar, I tell you, they're bi-polar! At this point,  I'm actually calling up Bolivar to see if they have a room with a view, and finding out how visitation works.  (Maybe it's ME that's bi-polar??  Hmmmmm...)     I've pretty much signed them up for every single VBS, camp, zoo passes, spray parks, swimming lessons, literally whatever I can find!   If there was a Bulgarian Sign Language camp, Shelby will be going.

So before I'm berated yet again for why I wouldn't want to spend every last waking moment with my lovely little heathens, doing crafts and having Family Game Day, I wanted to just pass along a glimpse of my life.  Needless to say, I'm counting down the days til Aug 8!!

Now, I must go tend to my little G man.  The sounds I hear resemble that of a pre-toddler dumping all the Tupperware out of the cabinet and filling it with dog food.    Happy Summer Everyone!