Every so often I like to take 5 minutes out of my morning to take a shower and enjoy the steam and peace and quiet. More often than not someone comes in to chat, they are usually under 3 feet tall. The other morning I Tivo’d “The New Scooby Doo Movie” and thought it would mezmerize the kids and give me at least a few minutes of me time to start my day. I turned on Scooby, hopped in the shower and I swear I could hear all the kids trying to tell me that the movie was over. How could it be? I just turned it on! Well, turns out I recorded a Scooby Doo with commercials. I didn’t realize that our boys have NO clue what a commercial was, in this day of Tivo and DVDs they had never seen one and had thought that their show was over. So much for my peaceful shower!

Just to start this little segment off, know that I can fix things. It’s a freakish trait that started when I was little and fixed my grandma’s ice maker in her fridge just by fiddling around with it. I have no training, just like to tinker. It appears that Trey has the same gift! The other day I bought a new toy at the Value Village that seemed cool and was still in the box, a Storybook Reader. You put certain books in and it reads the story, and will make a certain noise to tell the kids when to turn the page. Kind of like my old Disney storybook records that I played on my little white plastic record player, but without the needles and skipping and all. I was excited, got it out of the box for the boys to play with and it didn’t work. I changed the batteries and all but nothing worked. I left it for the kids to disassemble and low and behold, Trey brings it over and it’s working like a charm. He’s a genius!
Baby’s leaving on Saturday. It’s bitter sweet but the best thing for him, and for us since we’ve already fallen in love with this little boy. His new foster mom is SO excited. He’ll be a great addition to their family, he’s such a sweetheart and one of those extra special kids that come into our lives. Makes your soul feel good just for knowing him!

Here are the pictures of the boys from Halloween. Since I had to take a picture of the pictures they look all messed up and blurry, sorry about that. You get the general idea, though. The first one Trey is giving total stink eye, true pirate form.
We’ve had issues with the whole “no warning” parenting the last few days. For the most part it’s working but Levi is revolting. He has been in time out more than he’s been free, all because he’s just being naughty. He’s taking toys from kids, is pushing, ignoring us when we talk to him (damn, if that’s not a pet peeve of mine) and even acting out at school a little. If he thinks his behavior is going to be rewarded, well, he surely hasn’t paid much attention to how things work around here. The no warning thing is working for me, though, it’s so much less stressful to not get all worked up about things and let the boys make their own mistakes and deal with the “time out” consequence.
On a side note…I was watching an old rerun of Home Improvement tonight and I see many similarities. We are living the sitcom! Scared of that.
I’m feeling fragmented. I just realized that it’s almost December 1st and usually we have our Christmas letter done and mailed, the shopping list done and partially checked off and this year I’ve done nothing. Makes me crazy.

If you’ve been to our house, or been around our family much then you’ll know that we are a loud type of family. Sure, there are some quiet times, but those are few and far between. This weekend the boys had been truly winding eachother up and it’s left Dee and I exhausted. Three against two aren’t fair odds…just because they are babies doesn’t mean anything, they can wipe a mother (or two) out. We’ve intentionally separated the boys a couple of times this weekend and it’s seemed to help out a lot. We’ve also pulled out some of our Love and Logic training and have worked hard at not getting worked up about the things they do, but let the boys deal with consequences for the things that they do. It’s seeming to work and they’ve mellowed out a little. YIPPEE!!

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It’s funny, it’s been awhile since our last foster placement and today we took the kids out for dinner and then to see Mr. Magoriums Wonder Imporium (my review….uh, it was ok) and when we got home there were 3 messages on the answering machine. The first was from Tacoma DSHS looking to place a 5 month old baby tomorrow, the second from Bremerton DSHS for a 4 month old baby on Monday and the third was from Seattle DSHS, not sure what for. We wanted a baby-free weekend so we didn’t take the Tacoma baby, but we are going to take the baby from Bremerton on Monday.

Tomorrow is going to be hectic but I think in a good way. Our day will start first thing, Dee’s making breakfast and Mary’s going to cut the boy’s hair. Thank God for that, they are looking like hippies! Then the boys get to go to Saturday Club, a mini daycamp type program where one Saturday a month where they get to play games, do art, etc. We’ll pick them up and head over to a birthday party for one of Carolyn’s little ones. It’ll be especially fun because we’ll get to see our little baby N again, can’t wait! Carolyn has gone to a lot of work to have a nice party, it’s cool because not everyone would do that for their foster baby’s 1st birthday.

Big news of the weekend….Dee and I get to go to the Seahawks game. We won some great seats (10 yard line, about 20 rows up) and we’ve never been to Qwest Field. Hoping it’s not too cold, but we’ll survive. Wish we had some Seahawks gear, we get the boys all decked out in their jerseys for “Football Sundays” but it kinda works out that we don’t have anything. Bummer. We’ll be great 12th players either way.

So it’s midnight and I’m WIDE AWAKE. This is going to come back to bite me in the backside tomorrow, I have no doubt. I’ve started mini scrapbooks for the boys. It’s my project for foster kids (that I’m working on slowly but surely) and thought our little ones would like to have a scrapbook/photo album just for them to have. Levi’s is almost done, just have to add the captions to the pictures then onto working on ones for Carlos and Trey!

I better at least try to get some sleep, morning comes early and the boys won’t be giving me a break if I’m tired.