Favorite Book of the Week

My kids and I go to the library just about every Friday for story time. We bring the “big pink library bag” with us and fill it with four books a piece times four kids plus plenty of “Mommy please can I get this one too”s until the bag is almost too heavy to carry. We are such a sight that the library staff all know that I homeschool and that my kids love to read.

There was even a time when my husband came with us and chose to watch them by letting them explore the globe they have – this didn’t really work because they kept racing back and forth to say things like “I just found the state of Russia” “Not ’state’ sweetie, Russia is a country.” So that those who where not annoyed in the check out line asked if I homeschooled them – of course I do – what other 4 year old would seek to learn the names of countries when they could just spin the globe around and around.

And every week there seems to be a favorite book that we have to read every night and that they fight over getting to take to bed. This week it was one that I chose just because the cover was interesting and my 2 1/2 year old likes alphabet books. It is called “The Human Alphabet” by Pilobolus (please don’t ask me how to pronounce it – I have no idea). It is a really neat book full of pictures of dancers making the letters out of their bodies.

My 5 1/2 year old and aspiring gymnast – known around here as Gymnastigirl because she is always, always doing gymnastics skills around the house was thrilled with it. She even conned her almost 4 year old brother into helping her try and make some of the easier letters. Which was adorable, hysterical, and slightly dangerous – there is a reason why dancers spend half their lives training – but try to explain that to a little girl.

The boys really liked it too – it has a lot of visual interest with the brightly colored leotards the dancers wear and is like a guessing game for the little guys as they try to tell what letter/picture is being made.

As a mom who has several small children all kinda close in age (and who has been reading various alphabet books for 5 years now) I liked it because it is so different from the other books of its kind. Its so nice to see something that can capture my jaded attention.

It was also the topic of tonights post-bedtime, pre-sleep fight. Who was going to get to take this book to bed? You would think that sooner or later they would realize that no one ever wins this kind of fight because I will always choose to take the object (whatever it is) away so that no one can have it. So I guess I get to sleep with “The Human Alphabet” tonight.

 

When is too much?

This is a problem that has been bothering me for days so I will share in hopes that someone will advise/sympathize.

We live in a very nice cul-de-sac with a homeschooling family right across the way and lots of kids the same age as my kids. There is one family (we’ll call them the J family since their names all begin with J) who my kids really like. There is J1 who is 71/2, J2 who is 5 1/2, J3 is 3, and J4 who is 1. We see them a lot when we play outside and since the weather has been warm we have been playing with them fairly regularly. We even started going over there to play about once a week.

Now, when we went over there I went with them – to walk them across the street and supervise the outside play. Mrs. J didn’t seem to mind a bit and even commented that she liked having friends for her kids and someone outside watching them in case of cars coming into the cul-de-sac.

Before too long it was our turn. The little J’s came over to our house to play. Great I thought and happily invited them in. I even declared a homeschool day off (if we do five days a week or four in the summer it really doesn’t matter to me a bit which days they are) so they could all play together. I made popcorn for a snack, set up a painting craft, let them watch my kids favorite show and then I invited them over for dinner making a vegetarian dinner to suit their eating lifestyle. It was a great day.

Then the next day they came over again. Again we played and they wanted popcorn so I made it again. And again they asked to stay for dinner so I agreed.

Then the next day they came over again. This time at 10:00 in the morning. When we returned from swim lessons they were at the door and again they stayed all day eating lunch, snack, and dinner with us. They practically demanded popcorn again but were refused. This day I had to do homeschool with my kids so they just played in the playroom.

Then the next day they came over again. This time interrupting quite time (my little guys 3 1/2 and 2 1/2 still need to rest in the middle of the day especially after swim class) by coming into the room and making noise. The attitudes of expectedness had been getting worse and worse. Isn’t there a point where if you come over every single day that you stop being special guests and start being a part of the group. The J boys even went with my boys to see their fathers 5-ton – their mother let them. In fact, she was asleep when we called over there and sent the three year old back across the street alone with a note saying that she had been asleep.

After about two weeks of seeing them all day every day we were really used to them coming over. My kids wanted to play with their things and not ours anymore (you can’t really play with any of your other friends if you already have people over). I was getting a little tired of the free babysitting I was doing because that is what I was starting to feel like at this point. But she is pregnant with J number 5 so I was more than willing to cut her a little slack.

But J1’s attitude was getting on my nerves – his mother may be his servant but I am not especially with seven kids under 8 in the house all day.

The last day they came over we had an incident. J1 and J2 were throwing sand. And as my usual M.O. since I wasn’t there and I had my daughter B telling me something that I didn’t see while they denied it I made everyone leave the activity, the sandbox in this case. They would not leave. They just stood there staring at me. I told them that in my house they have to do what I tell them to do. They still stood there. I told them I was going to have to call their mother. That had no effect either so I did. I got their father on the phone (that’s right readers, both parents were home and three out of four J’s were still sent to my house at 10 am). I said to them that their father was coming to get them. This statement alone would have gotten my kids to change their attitudes and fast but not them they just continued playing.

Fifteen minutes later when their mother arrived I told her that with this many kids in the house they have to do what I ask them to or chaos will break out. She agree. She rounded up her kids and took them home giving them a very mild lecture on the way.

They haven’t been back since. I have been thinking about this for the two days since it happened. I wonder if I was justified in sending them home. I wonder if I have severed the relationship with a family that my kids like playing with. I wonder if I should go over there and make some kind of peace. I wonder if they will come over again. I wonder if they understood that they are welcome as long as they follow the same rules as the kids live here.

Any thoughts out there?

Something to talk with your husbands about.

• If you are like me you try to talk with your husbands in the evenings. You talk about the kids, general news about the people you mutually know and then….well….that’s just about it. ( the news maybe if your hubbies about news junkies like mine) Tonight you can talk about something different – guns – a topic sure to get his attention. You can say that you found some great links on this new blog you found.

• Don’t worry – I am not going to spend the rest of my blogger life pushing various links or things. But this really is a place that my husband went to a few years ago and LOVED! So when he asked me to put the link up on my brand new blog I was happy to do it. The lone four people who even know who I am will just have to check back for more relevant content

• Front Sight Firearms Training
• Ignatius Piazza – founder of Front Sight
• Ignatius Piazza Blog
• Ignatius Piazza – in Las Vegas Mercury
• Front Sight – in The Mail on Sunday Review
• Ignatius Piazza – in Times Democrat
• Front Sight – on CNN
• Ignatius Piazza – in National Enquirer
• Front Sight – in Icon Magazine
• Ignatius Piazza – in Chicago Tribune
• Ignatius Piazza – in Gun World
• Ignatius Piazza – in San Francisco Chronicle
• Ignatius Piazza – in Fort Worth Star Telegram
• Front Sight – in Financial Times
• Front Sight – on BBC News
• Front Sight – in Gun Web
• Front Sight – in New York Times
• Ignatius Piazza – in Small Arms Review
• Front Sight – in Sierra Times
• Ignatius Piazza – in Forbes Magazine
• Ignatius Piazza – on World Net Daily
• Front Sight – in Guns & Ammo
• Front Sight – on USA Today
• Front Sight – in Santa Cruz Sentinel
• Ignatius Piazza – in Handvapen Guiden
• Ignatius Piazza – in Las Vegas Sun
• Ignatius Piazza – in Las Vegas Life
• Front Sight – in US News & World Report
• Front Sight – in London Times
• Ignatius Piazza – in Washington Post
• Front Sight – in El Pais Seminal
• Front Sight – in Pajaronian Register
• Front Sight – in Black Belt Magazine
• Front Sight – in Cybercast News Service
• Ignatius Piazza – in El Mercurio
• Front Sight – in Los Angeles Times
• Ignatius Piazza – in Playboy
• My Experience at Front Sight
• Ignatius Piazza – on Reform America

Hello from Me!

Since this is my very first post on my very first blog I can trust that no one will be reading this tonight. Therefore, I will just rattle on about myself until I have readers who will want to read something amusing. In fact, I will interview myself.

Why collection of memories?

I am a scrapbooker. In fact I love my scrapbook. In it are all the pictures, things, stories, art, and sounds that make up my memories of my family (though, it is admittedly almost all about the kids.) I am so into it that my husband likens my obsession to that of a collector – he says I am a collector of memories. I guess he is right and I am happy to be that.

Why write about scrapbooking?

Because it is such a great way to remember the good days. There are almost no pictures from my childhood so even before I became a mother I knew that I would take a ton of pictures of my kids and remember all the cute little stories for when they asked what they were like as kids. But I see too many magazines/shows/idea books that focus so much on how many different kinds of papers or embellishments you can fit on a page with one picture on it. That is not me at all. And I hope that there are plenty of other mothers who want pages that have lots of pictures, words, and objects on them to really tell the story of the day not just to see how many dollars worth of things they can glue in a 12×12 space.

Why should anyone read this blog?

Because I will show how a scrapbook page can really capture a memory and how a mom on a budget can preserve the lives of three little people (or more) without it looking like it came off the Wal-Mart clearance shelf. And because I am sure that my life is crazy enough for me to come up with some amusing stories to tell for the in between times.

That’s it for today – enjoy.