When it comes to cries for “HELP!” I’m generally the first responder.

Take yesterday, for instance.

He was yelling for me as loudly as he could.

“MOM! HELP!”  He was stuck.  I was 100% shocked when he got after me for getting him down.  Apparently, he didn’t want down.  He wanted in the crib.

He’d cabbaged onto a Candyland game board, so I thought he wanted to play.  I told Lacy that Trent wanted to play Candyland with her, and she happily hopped into the crib with him.  I went into the kitchen to clean or something else housewifey when I heard Trent screaming.

I went in to see them fighting over the game board.

“Trent!  It’s MY! I just got it for my BIRTHDAY!”

“MYYYYY COMPUTER!”

Ah.

Computer.

And all this time I thought he was actually using it as a game board.  Never once did I see it’s “lap top” capabilities.

Can you see them now? When you fold the game board in half and tote it around, it looks like a very thin very large tap top. And when you open it?
Magic!

Lucky for me, I happen to have TWO Candyland game boards on account of Lacy’s sabotaging her first on with all manner of playdough and juices.

Within minutes, the problem was resolved and went back to watching Bleak House. Er, I mean… cleaning.

Growing up, the meal that brought our family together was not dinner. Sometimes it was. But we couldn’t really count on it. Dad owned his own business and ranched/farmed/irrigated on the side, and as the years went on my brothers and sister and I became involved in basically everything (not to mention the ranching and farming and irrigating), so having dinner together didn’t happen quite as much as having BREAKFAST together.
Ah, breakfast. The best meal of the day with the best food selection.
Pancakes! Eggs! Cream of Wheat! Pancakes! Pancakes! Pancakes!
Rarely do I ever order anything but breakfast when I go to Denny’s.

I once heard my mother remark that she was getting tired of the same old routine of setting the breakfast table: the butter, the sugar, the honey, the salt, the pepper, the homemade jams and jellies… only to take it all off again and be left with a mess of dishes haphazardly thrown in the sink as we all made our way out the door to school or work. I often wondered why she got sick of it. In my ignorance, I thought… ‘isn’t it her job?’
Well, yeah. It is. But now that I’m a mother, I could kick myself for not falling down at her feet when she said it and thanking her for making an effort to let us have that meal together! Waking up to the smell of bacon sizzling or walking up the stairs and catching the whiff of maple malt o’meal on the stove was literally the BEST part of my day. What’s more: it gave us all a chance to sit around the table and talk between bites. Dad always had something to say that would make us laugh (like the time he took a hold of the Rice Crispies box and scribbled out letters so that their animated health “spokes person” Timmy the Tooth Head became Timmy the Toot Head. I don’t know what was more funny -his doing it or mom’s disapproval of it). It always gave me a solid start to my day, and I’ll be danged if I’ve ever thanked my mother properly for it.
The side effect of my wonderful breakfasts is that I automatically wake up hungry. Truth be told, I’m more liable to spring out of bed if I know there’s food on the counter, even -or I should say especially -if it’s cookies.

I shouldn’t be surprised, then, that my son has this same tendency. When he crawls out of bed (which he does before his sister) and I’m the only one up (because his sister and his dad love sleep as much as Trent and I love breakfast), I take him into my arms and take in a big whiff of newly-woken up boy. It smells sweet right now and I’m trying to soak as much as I can in before he starts stinkin’. After our good morning hug, I immediately start offering him food.
“Do you want Bob?” I ask.
“SURE! A BOB!” And he bolts into the kitchen.

Bob, it must be known, is what we call bananas. The thing is: the kids were crabby one day, so I picked a banana up and started pretending it was a phone with a personality and a name: Bob.
“Bob,” I said, talking to the banana, “I want to call grandma.”
“NO!” The “banana” yelled back in an irritated tone.
“Bob,” I scolded, “You don’t tell mama’s no.”
“NO!” he yelled back.
“I’ll spank…” I warned.
“NO!” he yelled back.
So I spanked. And while I spanked “Bob” yelped out in anger.
The kids went nuts for the Bob routine, much to my immediate delight and eventual dismay. They asked for Bob all of the time. Now I’ve got a son who is addicted to Bobs and I’m going through three bunches a week.
Literally.

Yesterday, while my son was napping, I streamed a movie while I folded laundry on the couch. The movie ended up being really touching!
It was a story about an old man named Robert who lived alone. He worked in a grocery store, bagging groceries. A woman moves in across the street and asks him out on a date. Their budding romance was so adorable that I got lost in it. By the end of the movie, tears were streaming down my face and only then did I notice that my son was bopping around the living room.
“Oh,” I said, quickly wiping my blubberings from my face, “Good morning, son!”
“Goo’ morneen.”
“Can I hab a kiss?” (Don’t you hate it when you start talking like them?)
“Sure, big kiss.” He walked over to me and LAID one on me. Strangely enough it tasted exactly like maple syrup.

I got up from the couch where I’d been folding and went into the kitchen where I found a chair pushed up to the counter and

TWO spoons in the homemade maple syrup.
He woke up hungry.
I couldn’t blame him.

I woke up hungry this morning, like always, and after we ate breakfast together as a family I dropped Lacy off at preschool and took my son to get the mail.

I seriously want to send every person who sends me a REAL letter a check for $100. I mean, I can’t…. but I want to. That counts for something, right?

In any case, I’m going to send my cousin a check this week. She sent me this GEM of a card -arrived today! -and I’m going to order more. And as I opened and reopened and reopened the card this morning, I decided I’m going to forevermore pay my cousin to send me stationery (should she feel up to the task) for I’m going to send the crap out of these note cards. Be watchful lest your mailbox begins to resemble Harry Potter’s fireplace, teeming with real handwritten letters.

Perhaps I can convince my children to write letters with me. Perhaps they’ll really take to it. Perhaps then the cinnamon rolls and the frosting and the maple syrup will STAY PUT!

(Did you like my manicure in the picture above?  The lady who does my nails is only FOUR years old.  Can you believe it?  She was born with a talent.  Oh, and she gets her feelings hurt if I remove it.)

This post has no point.

There.  I warned you.  Read on if you dare.  It’s simple a smattering of thoughts, pictures, and what nots.    I believe all of these items deserve mentioning, but none of them can form a post all their own.  They’re not strong enough, so I’ve banded them together.  A conglomeration of smatterings that have no point and no purpose… but they have each other.

First:

Every boy should be so lucky as to holster his squirt gun in his cowboy boots.

Here’s the girl.  Apparently, she’s been eavesdropping on my piano lessons.She told me they were Middle Cs.  I was so stomping proud that I didn’t dare correct or refute.  They look like Middle C’s to me!

If you’re looking to take a gander at some clever craftiness, please click

HERE

and take a look at the cards my cousin made.  I’m in love, I’m in love, I’m in love (with a wonderful guy) (props to the one who can name that quote) and I ordered some from her.  I get giddy just thinking about getting original tweets in the mail.  Squealing giddy.

While driving the other day, I snapped a picture with my camera phone.  Camera phones, as we know aren’t all that amazing.  Keep that in mind when you look at this picture.  Try and see what I saw.  The sun was beginning to set, and just as I came over a hill, the sun hit that PERFECT place on the horizon where it illuminates everything with gold in what feels like an instant.

Nothing gold can stay. That’s why I snapped a crappy picture.

Isn’t that NICE?   Look at all that! Miles and miles and MILES of just… fresh air.  I love the feeling of being able to breathe.  It’s all very Dixie Chick.

I wanna be the only one, for miles and miles.  ‘cept for MAY-BAY you and that… simple smile.

I love where I live.  Desert? yes.  Ugly? absolutely not.  The only downfall in having miles and miles all around is that I can’t take a fencing class or live out my whacky dream of playing Miss Hannigan in a stage production of “Annie.”  But I’ll live.  The fresh air is rather a great comfort.

Here’s another to add to the “She Posed Like That” pile:

Here’s them by a mural that I love on account of my obsession with history.

Please note the way my son is clutching his behind.  He lives with his hand attached to the back of his pants to hold them up.  You should see him run sometime.

Next to the mural were some tiny purple flowers (weeds) and Lacy put some in her hair. Not to be outdone, my son asked if I might put one in his hair. He gave me the flower he wanted in his hair, and like a good mother… I obliged. I mean, as best I could, I obliged.
Yesterday, I sat down at my computer for just a few minutes and ended up running into a thousand great things. Two hours later, I emerged a changed woman.
I wanted to share part of it with you. I already did, if you clicked the link to my cousin’s cards above. Here’s a little something more in the form of my friend’s labor story. If you’ve ever had a child, you’ve got to read it. If you’ve ever been bothered by a dirty shower, you’ve got to read it. If you’ve ever done squats, you’ve got to read it. If you’ve ever seen “Oklahoma!” you’ve got to read it.

CLICK HERE

And the last of all the smatterings is a couple pictures of my Beehives. We had a little out-of-the-box talent show on Wednesday with all of the young women. A few examples of talents include: toe popping, back bending, baton twirling, and pogo stick hopping. Our beehives did a “magic” show where they performed obviously not-magic magic tricks. They wore matching pink capes and they looked adorable.
One of the girls sang along with Miley Cyrus to that party in the USA song (my finger slipped just now and typed “USD” I laughed for a good thirty seconds over that). Because I forgot my camera (like a FOOL) I was forced to use my delaying camera phone, but I did get this picture:
And it makes me happy every time I see it.

I sort of off-handedly made a remark a few days ago to my daughter about going on a date.  A GIRL date.  I didn’t think much of it.

“We need a girl date, huh Lace?” I said and then thought about what to make for dinner.

She set immediately to making plans.

“I needa change!” She said, running into her room and rooting through her drawers for JUST the right outfit.

I had to explain to her that we weren’t going out right then, and she accepted that under the condition that we fix an actual date and time.  So we did.

Denny’s.  Friday afternoon.  Pre-dinner cake.
We split one piece. I had originally planned on splitting a milkshake with her, but when she saw the big picture of the moist slice of chocolate cake… it was all over. It’s always been like that with chocolate and Lacy.
It’s hereditary, I think.
The next day, I found her on another date. I mean, I didn’t know it was a date. She had to tell me. But after she did… it was totally obvious. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.

She went all out. There’s even a BLANKET over the Lightening McQueen table.

Please don’t ask me to explain the tiny whisk in my son’s mouth.
I can’t.
But I can tell you this: that chocolate cake was delish.