OlymPICS of the day!

Awesome! We can debate over money being better spent elsewhere, but it is quite a spectacle to see regardless of opinions.   Oh, and these girls are NOT 16. Your thoughts?

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There are no words.

How can a child slip through our (society’s) fingers? Nothing funny today; instead we have an article to read. I can’t even be a little funny after this.

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Stupid Cellular Security Blanket.

When you are married to a techno geek you can’t just get a new cell phone, oh, no. You must first read all of the reviews, reports, and price check. This usually takes about…..oh, six months or so. (This is where you roll your eyes and say Hey You acts like a stupid girl) Two years ago when it was time to upgrade phones, I wanted the Pink Razor. It was in the store, it was a decent price, and most importantly, it was pretty. It matched my makeup bag, and the inside of my purse would be cute. Since it would be pink, we would never pick up the wrong phone by mistake. The Husband said it was a crappy phone, and we were not getting one. After many reviews and discussions that ended with me pointing at our old phones being held together with duct tape, the KRZR K1 (see above) was the phone that was deemed worthy for both of the Huckablogs.

They only came in the above blue, and I whined. Immediately we started getting our phones mixed up. He was avoiding Heartless Cellular Company on my phone, and I was avoiding Batsh!t crazy Ju–, er boss lady, on his. I whined some more. I wanted to go to one of those kiosks in the mall and get a skin thingy for my phone so it would be pretty, but no, apparently those are somehow bad for phones. I whined some more. For Christmas last year The Husband put in my stocking a hot pink metal body for my phone he had found from Hong Kong or someplace. It required him to completely rebuild my phone to put it in the new body, thusly making our phone insurance NULL and VOID. I am sure you can pretty much see where this is going.

My phone got dropped yesterday (anybody care to guess who did that?). The one teeny tiny non-metal piece snapped. The Husband took it apart and spent a good hour with his soldering iron last night trying to make it last until it is time to upgrade in the fall. I, of course, threw away the old ugly blue case months ago in one of my thorough, if infrequent, cleaning sprees. The Husband has ordered a piece to fix it, but it will take a couple of weeks to make it here from Thai Pae, or Phnom Penh, or wherever he ordered it from. I am at a loss without my phone, I might miss important calls! About play dates, or um, other important stuff I do. And the camera! I actually use my camera phone, what kind of world is this where I can not take that millionth picture of The Son on the slide?

Long story short: phone dead, email or call the house (for those who have the number) instead. Don’t expect me to call you, because every single number of every single person I know is in that pile of pink and screws. I had to write down my home phone number to remember it today. What did people do without their cellular security blankets back in the day?

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Seriously Y’all

I am having to do a lot of editing of comments that have everything but our SSN in them!  Please, no real names or identifying places.   There actually are a lot of people we do not know reading, and safety is important.  The Husband just read a comment that about gave him a stroke.  And he is old now, so we must be careful!

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Vacation my ass.

On second thought it is probably not that great of an idea to use the word ass in a blog post about church. Instead insert ….um…..Oh! Foot! The title should read Vacation my Foot. This is the week that dozens of children who we usually only see at Christmas, Easter, and chasing the ice cream truck join the half dozen, or so, kids who attend our church regularly in a five-night Jesus extravaganza we call Vacation Bible School. (I think I will pause here and mention I sincerely do not mean this to be sacrilegious. If it comes across that way then start over and read again in a lighthearted, Hey You goes to church multiple times a week kinda way) This year’s theme is “Power Lab”, so everything is bedecked in sciency stuff. We do science themed projects, play “experimental” games, watch a video about a talking chipmunk and a stressed, but not mad scientist. Oh, and learn that Jesus is powerful.

The last couple of years The Husband and I have been “crew” leaders. This means more than five, but less than ten, elementary schoolers pull on us and say, “Miss Hey You! Miss Hey You! She got more than me! But I wanted blue! Green is yucky.  Miss Hey You, will you take me potty?” “Mr. Husband? Why does your toe look like that? Mr. Husband? Can I climb on you? Mr. Husband! Garret farted (I HATE THAT WORD!)” The funniest is that The Husband has one kid who calls him Coach Husband. It cracks me up every time I hear it because it is:  a. Such a southern thing – all male teachers are “Coach”.  b. My darling husband is about as far from a “Coach” as you can get. Unless you can coach children running around like banshees?

Because we are working together, but still have our own distinct groups, the differences in how we relate to kids is painfully obvious. I am VERY strict. I do not tolerate running around, leaving the group, talking out of turn, using even slightly foul language (do as I say, not as I do!), or being disrespectful.  I also sing all the songs, dance and do all the hand motions to the music. I play all the games, do all the crafts, and generally am just excited to be doing whatever the curriculum requires. The Husband pretty much lets the kids do whatever. Their lines are nonexistent, never mind army straight like mine. They climb all over him, pick flowers out of the church garden, sit during the songs, and never finish their group questions. He does not participate in the same giddy way that I do, and is shy about getting up in front of them to lead. He is also so-o-o-o patient with them, he listens to them one-on-one. He sits next to them while they eat, and helps them with their projects. The kids adore him. We always request to be on the same team of “crews” because it comes down to the fact that we complement each other wonderfully.

We all come home hungry, exhausted, and happy. This is The Son’s first year to participate in something other than the nursery. Tonight when it was time to go we could not leave until he had kissed his teachers good-bye. He had sung, and danced, made crafts, played, and prayed with other toddlers. VBS is a lot of work, but it is worth it to give other kids that same feeling that he gets, and if they happen to decide that church is for more than Christmas carols and Easter egg hunts, then all the better.

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Do you mean that you do not sit on the couch and drool all day?

Pre-school for a one (almost two) year old is a place where you learn….um. Okay, it is where you achieve…riiiiight. It is a place for people who need to work to put their children. Now don’t get me wrong, there is NOTHING wrong with that, hell I was one of those people six months ago. However, I do not appreciate the implication that The Son is not learning anything at home with me. In fact I would challenge anybody to find a more verbal, more kind, more funny, more active, or smarter child than him. (Yeah, Yeah, I know I am biased, but I would welcome the people who know him to give their input)

I can pretty much guarantee that there is not a pre-school teacher in the entire county who has the level of education that I do. I also am confident that The Son gets a lot more interaction with his teacher than he could anywhere else. Can you tell I got my first hate mail because of my blog? Can you tell they insulted my parenting skills? Does this mean I have ARRIVED in the mommy blogosphere?

Not because I have to, or because I think this person deserves any kind of explanation from me, but I will give you a glimpse into what it is that The Son and I do all day, if for no other reason than to show you some cute pictures. I will also promise to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. The Son wakes up at about 7am. The Husband picks him up, takes him potty, and deposits him in our bed. Once there, The Son sleeps and nurses for about 45 min. Many times I will roll over and turn on Little House on the Prairie and all three of us will watch in bed. (What? That show is totally educational, well it could be.) We then get up and I watch exactly five minutes of The Today Show while fixing us breakfast. We all sit at the table and eat together, or if The Husband is working away from home, The Son and I eat together at his little table. We then go to his room where we read a book or two and then get dressed. Four days a week we either go to the library for stories and crafts, or to gym class, or in the summer we go to swim class.

After we get changed we sometimes nurse, sometimes not. Then it is off to the park or to run errands. We either have lunch with someone, pick up something and eat it at the park, or come home and watch a little Elmo and eat sandwiches here. Afterward we will do crafts, or work on one of our projects, like his container garden. He planted them, he waters them, he replanted them when they got blown over in a storm. The bonus science project is the cocoon that popped up on the side. We even saw the day that the moth broke free and was sunning itself on the side. Cool huh! (Take that, you pansy anonymous emailer )

We then read another book, are you counting? We are up to four already. Nurse, yes, again. He takes a nap for a couple of hours and then we will read another book as he has a snack. When he is chock full of goldfish, we play cars, or trains, or blocks, or put together puzzles. I do admit to turning on a Mighty Machines or Elmo for him to watch while we play, but never is he just sitting on the couch drooling and staring at the TV.

When The Husband comes home, we figure out dinner together, pray together, eat together. Then we play together, outside or in. We give The Son a bath together, we sit on the futon in his room and all read stories together. The Husband lays next to us as The Son and I nurse, we both give him kisses and put him to bed. Through the whole day we are talking, talking, talking, never using baby talk, or watered down vernacular.

There, for those of you who think I plop him in front of Nick Jr. (we do not even have cable!) and blog all day, you are wrong. I am a Mommy first and a blogger about tenth or eleventh.

“I will tickle you into submission you mean, anonymous emailer! ”

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To Whom it May Concern: You get what you pay for.

To Whom it May Concern:

I take my family’s follicle appearance very seriously. I also have made the lifestyle changes necessary to make it possible for my family to live on one income. This leads me to you. In exchange for the use of our heads to practice your fledgling skills and four dollars of course, you give us hair cuts. The whole point is that we tell you what we want. You do that. Your professor watches and makes sure you don’t screw up. Simple.  Why did I not think of charging other people for my education?  I could have made millions of….pennies from the people who I had to survey, or write thesis (thesi?) on.

The problem comes when the professor has three other people he is supervising at the same time. And when the professor won’t shut his yap long enough to pay attention to something other than himself. And when the professor has differing tastes in what looks good from the one who is paying aforementioned four dollars. To be honest, I really do not care if you jack up other people’s hair. Maybe the guy next to us liked that slanty flat top you gave him. I do care when it effects my baby’s head.

I said I LIKE IT LONG! I said JUST GET IT OUT OF HIS EYES! The sad thing is that the student did an okay job. The professor walked over, took the scissors out of his hands and proceeded to cut off whole inches of my darling baby’s hair. *sob* You left him looking like a boy. A boy with a bad hair cut. So what are you going to do about it? Glue it back on?

Bah. You suck. I will skip a couple of happy hours at Sonic and pay the eight dollars down the street next time.

Sincerely,

Hey You E. Pissed Off-Huckablog

Before (with chocolate frosting)

After

Okay, not really, but it is still much to short. The Little Deuce Coup pictures were taken post haircut.

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