Buy me some lugnuts and cracker jack ...

This week Fancy had her first t-ball game.  She's a Lugnut!  I love me some little baseball players, with their too-big shirts, helmets that make them look like living bobble-heads, and swings that send baseball t's flying into the outfield.  I love me some!  But now what I REALLY love are little girl baseball players.  With their pink bats and pink cleats, so full of gumption to be on a team full of boys!  Fancy just loves it, and it's fun to watch her do something unlike anything she's ever done before.  Team sports just might be her thing.  We'll see.  For now, she's cute and I've got a bazillion pictures to prove it.  Have a look and you'll love you some little baseball players, too.

Running from 1st to 2nd | doing a little ballet in the outfield

She saw lots of action in right field (which was really deep first); doesn't she look worn out after that big throw? ;)

Next game I will paint ner nails red. 

Cable Guy

Tonight someone from the cable company is here working.  I was upstairs helping Rella get ready for bed when he arrived.  After brushing her teeth she said she wanted to see the cable man before she went to sleep.  As he was out at his truck, I told her she could wait at the top of the stairs and watch for him to come inside.  After several minutes of waiting, Geof walked by and Rella asked to go downstairs to see the cable man.

Geof says, "no, you can wait at the top of the stairs just like Mommy told you."

Rella whines replies, "but I want to go downstairs!"

Geof asks, "why do you need to be downstairs?"

Rella whines replies, "see-cause I need to get a closer look at the cable man."

Zoo Crew

During spring break, we took a day trip out to the NC Zoo (just like every other creative Raleigh family did that week! ;)  As usual, the kids were enamored with, in awe of, smitten with, head-over-heels for the animal statues.  Next year I will go to the zoo with the mindset that it will be a great day for the kids to hike, play, snack and climb, and  it will be a great day for me to look at animals.  I could stand and watch the animals for hours.  It's worth it - while my kids were sitting in the elephant tracker's tent eating fruit snacks and complaining of the heat, I got to see an elephant give himself (herself?) a shower by sucking up water and spraying it back out.  No good pictures of that, so if the kids want to see that scene they'll have to come out of the tent next time and watch. :)  I also stayed with the lions while the kids stayed by the stroller and fussed about who would get to ride, and my patience paid off with lion feeding!  Here are a ton of pictures from our day:

Waiting for Mom and Dad to clean up after our picnic lunch in the parking lot

So excited about our day that they danced all the way to the ticket gate

Dad's checking in with our passes - they're still excited!

This is always our first stop

We never got a good view of the zebras that day.

Smiling and dripping

I do heart them.

Waiting around for me to stop taking pictures of the animals

hatchlings

the sun was in their eyes for this one.

taking a break

He wasn't actually grumpy.  Just relaxing with dad.

Statues

She's bold.

Hard-headed creatures.  All of them.

Bea and the bees

Concert Preview

Hi-Hat announced yesterday that he's prepared for another concert tomorrow night.  He brought me his white board that he plans to have on hand as a visual aid to the lyrics he has written.  I haven't heard the song yet, but I can give you the long and short of the salvation metaphor he came up with.

First, we start off as broken bottles, bound for the trash can, which is the equivalent of going to "hayell" (not sure if he's mispronouncing or just has a crazy strong southern accent for that one word). But then through prayer we are plucked from the garbage and placed in the recycling bin, and then we are sent to the recycling center where we are repurposed and made good as new.

I personally CAN'T WAIT for this concert.  I also can't wait to see what God has in store for this little guy.  He just seems to have something special with all this music and writing stuff.  But then, he's mine, so I might be a little biased... :)

play ball!

It's spring!  Time for baseball around here!  This year Fancy decided that she also wanted to play baseball, so we signed her up for the City League along with Hi-Hat.  Thankfully none of their games or practices overlap, but that also means we're going to be spending a lot of time out at the diamond.  Last night was Fancy's first practice.  It was a late one, starting at 7:00, and the weather was so pleasant that it made up for her being out on the field, running the bases past her bedtime... :)  She's quite thrilled with her pink-trimmed cleats and baseball socks (I believe she was overheard at big box sports store saying, "won't I be pretty in my baseball costume?"), and she's been working in her new glove.  Her only complaint is that she can't play baseball in a skirt.  She did her fair share of staring at the sky and twirling in the field, but she also proved pretty good at hitting off the tee and man oh man, can she run!  She's got hustle around the bases.  After practice she just kept running.  I'm seeing Hershey Track Meets in her future.  Anyway, sure to be more baseball pictures to come.

every time she grabbed her hot pink bat, she had to strike a pose.

Ponytail holders and a candy bar

It's funny how one can have a nice long break from the normal routine, have plenty of mornings to sleep in, think she is refreshed and ready to hit the ground running when the normal routine starts up again, and then WHAM!  The normal routine becomes immediately overwhelming.  Or, at least, it makes very apparent how thickly I am in the throws of motherhood.

This has started off as an asthma week.  Several trips to the doctor and the pharmacy and trying to contain a boy who just wants to run around and play outside in the yellow-green haze.  I'm trying to wrap my head around all the medications, side effects, seasonal plans and remind myself that it's better to have him healthy and breathing on medication than suffering and hooked to oxygen at REX. 

I cleaned many many many a dirty bottom today.  On a little girl who really should be potty trained but just isn't interested and just doesn't have a mom with the discipline to get it done right now.  And because she's not trained, it adds searching for Pull-Ups deals to the never ending list of things to do.  Ah, the coupons.  That's not for this post.

And I have yet another child who it turns out has been picked on at school for a couple of weeks and I had to be THAT mom who calls a child's parent to ask for help in having her child stop the kicking, spitting, punching, name-calling, crayon-breaking, and paper ripping.  And I had to find more encouraging words for my child who came home again today with the report that she was "only pinched a few times" and that only a juice box was squirted on her new shirt. 

I had a list of things to accomplish today.  Like working on a fun project for beasknees that would result in a press-printed book to show at auctions or other promotional events.  Like putting away our weekend's suitcase that is still half-packed in the hallway and, I fear, threatens to mimick the suitcase episode of Everybody Loves Raymond.:

Like put the drawer (yes DRAWER) of long sleeved shirts back in my dressser where it belongs, rather than on the floor right in the pathway to my bathroom.  Like crate the dog whenever I left the house.  Like clean up all the Easter baskets and candy and goodies that are littering my dining room table and front hallway.  I'm sure there were more things to do, but I didn't bother to actually write out a list, opting instead to let it rattle around in my head until it settled somewhere to be likely forgotten.  I can't say any of this got done.  I made no templates, moved no suitcase (except maybe to nudge it when I vaccuumed around it), stepped over the drawer once again, let the dog run free (thereby necessitating use of the Green Machine's mama, the Purple Machine) and vaccuumed around the Easter goodies piled in the front hallway.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I just added to the piles of stuff around the front hallway.

It was a day when my hair was inexplicable.  When I couldn't bear the thought of wearing anything other than my yoga pants and t-shirt.  When I just felt like a slug and didn't know where to start trying to dive back into the routine.  I glanced in the mirror at the doctor's office this morning and thought, "well, at least she [the doc] knows I have a sick kid and probably understands why I look so awful."  I thought about running to Target afterward to replace the hair dryer that died on me Saturday, but I was too embarassed that the clerk would think I was purchasing it to try to fix the nest that angry squirrels had built on my head.  I had chicken lunches thrown at me through the car window, but at least I took them to school and ate with my kid, who didn't care about my hair or my chipped toe nail polish or my ill-fitting yoga pants, so long as he could eat with me and retell a tale of Geronimo Stilton that he read last night and then trade made-up jokes with me over shared french fries.  It was a day when I knew Geof would be home late and I would do dinner on my own, but I somehow made it through, getting homework done, supervising entries for a coloring contest and feeding the kids.  At one point while cooking in the midst of seemingly excessive noise and activity, I halted my immediate reaction to "tone it down or move to the basement," and just kept my mouth shut and listened.  Just tried to soak in the noise and let it be.  And then when it was time to head over to church to register for next year's session of Bible study (a study that tends to send me into a tailspin of anxiety over wardrobe, costume jewelry, boutique children's clothing and cute handbags, such that it gives me pause over whether or not to register), I just went.  I did tame the squirrel's nest, mind you, but my wardrobe was subpar and my nails were still chipped and I just went.  I just went.  Because I'm a mom.  And I'm in the throws of motherhood and I've had a day.  A lot of days.  And I'm tired and I need a hair cut and I have great kids and I'm tired of my dog and I overextend and I need to be in the Word.  So I just went.  For me, and for them:

And then on the way home I bought myself ponytail holders and a candy bar.