Sunday February 12, 2012

All this sorting / fixing up / selling / moving stuff has turned my brain from hyper to ADHD status. I misuse words, forget what I’m saying in the middle of a sentence, call the boys by the wrong name constantly, and feel completely inefficient. I start posts and can’t finish coherently, so here’s a dump. Some day I will be back to normal. For now, you never know what all is going to be included.

Funny, exasperating boys.

Oh, my. They are my life and the cause of my premature aging all rolled into one energetic, noisy package.

One minute I feel like I’m shouting. The next I’m laughing. The next I’m rolling my eyes. 

Liam’s vocabulary is doing the most fun explosion. He’s grasping bigger concepts and I hear his language development start happening as he tries to follow us. So we have conversations like this on the way home from town as we drive past the Dollar Tree.

Adam: “I HATE Dollar Tree. And Dollar General.”

David (calmly): “I hate Walmart.”

Liam: “I HATE mushrooms.”

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He picks up a word and uses it all the time. At completely random moments of the day he will look at me with big sober eyes and say, “I feel nervous.”

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He is totally into faces right now and describes women like this, “She has a very nice face.” He’s totally smitten with a few girls he keeps trying to describe to me and I cannot figure out who they are. When I told him to show me he said he will just tell me in a secret when he sees them so no one will laugh. He also says David’s face is nicer than mine. It’s always special being the well-loved mom.

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Speaking of being loved, Adam is so done with my cooking. I will admit, I’ve gotten into a rut. We eat a lot of repeat menus from week to week because I just don’t have enough free brain cells to follow up on my pinterest leads at the moment and even less desire to crack a cookbook. Between the overload and Liam’s confines, well, if you want rice and beans or a huge salad, or roast beef or sweet potatoes of some kind, you’re pretty likely to get them at some point if you stay for a week. Adam is thrilled with all the carry ins he’s been attending and he doesn’t hide his reason in the least. “Oh, GOOOOOOOOOD, because now I won’t have to eat your food.”

It got funnier. One night as we were getting ready to say bedtime prayers David asked each of us what we wanted the others to pray about for us. I was way too tired and said I just couldn’t think of anything that night. Adam piped up immediately, “Well, we could pray that you would cook better food.” I literally howled with laughter.

The problem was, it wasn’t a one time thing. I woke up to the fact that he was an incredibly ungrateful child. A while ago I was working very hard to make sure I actually cooked things for breakfast … mostly breakfast casseroles and baked oatmeal or cooked oatmeal or scrambled eggs …. trying to get one step further from processed foods this time in the name of cereal. Adam complained every single morning about wanting cereal. And almost every other day he was complaining about the food in his lunch. Well, with everything else taking over, we are back to the land of cereal in the mornings (at least for him since he hates my homemade granola) and, you guessed it. He peers into the cereal cupboard and complains about wanting something else.

It gets worse. Pretty much every clothes purchase gets a rolled eyes and an, “I don’t like that one.” And if I come home and didn’t get anything for him, he nearly tears up.

Today I said, this is it.  If this were only about solving frustration at our house now, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.  But suddenly I saw Adam’s life flashing in front of me as a completely ungrateful, life owes it to me adult.  After a pretty pointed talk on ingratitude I told him that if this continued I would not be buying one single thing just for him for six months. And if something came up that he needed, he would simply do without. I talked to him about what God thinks of ingratitude. He can voice an opinion about what he likes but he cannot just complain about everything he gets in every shape and form. I talked to David about it when he got home from work and he took it a step further. For every complaint about breakfast, Adam will be eating cooked oatmeal for a week (his least favorite breakfast). If he complains about lunch, there will be plenty of leftover hot food, but no chips or cookie. If he complains about supper, there will be a week of rice and beans (which he loves, but he hates eating the same thing again and complains wildly) and if that doesn’t cut it, it will get changed to rice with stew beans (which he hates). He asked Adam if he thought this was fair. Adam said, “Yes.” I also told him that if I hear gratitude voiced for something, it will redeem a meal. He can’t just sit and spin off five random thanks because he knows he’s in trouble though. He so rarely expresses any thanks or gratefulness in any shape or form.  Even when given something extra special, he has to be prompted to say “thank you.”  Life completely revolves around him. And half the time I don’t think he even knows what he wants. He just wants whatever he can’t have. So, it’s a deal.

I knew he was terrified of the new deal, but he took it with fortitude. We talked before dinner because there were going to be mushrooms. “So Adam, tonight when there are mushrooms, what would be a nice way to talk about them instead of saying, ‘I HATE mushrooms?” He hemmed around and finally said, “I will eat these mushrooms.” I’m not interested in lying or forced love of something he actually doesn’t like. I just expect respect. “How about, ‘I would be happy to share these mushrooms with anyone who wants some’?” David suggested he ask about how many he needs to eat. Adam nodded. Nothing prepared me for what happened when we sat down.

“Mommy, I would like to try one bite of that hummus (he hates it).” Oh, how I cheered.

And a minute later, “I think I’ll eat all of these mushrooms tonight.” I could not believe it. But I just smiled quietly when one mushroom later he offered to share the rest after all and I gratefully obliged.

This afternoon Christy was asking me if we’re still having table manner troubles. Oh, you bet we are. And then she gave me the greatest solution from (drum roll) pinterest. Put a little toy pig on the table. Any person caught displaying poor manners gets the little piggy beside his plate with a quiet explanation. At the end of the meal, whoever has piggy in front of them needs to clear the table. Cha ching. Adam thought it was the greatest idea ever. And oh, how relaxed and happy our table time was tonight between moves of piggy which were always met with giggles from somewhere. Absolutely stellar. Liam cleared the table, and I was secretly relieved. Adam had a lot on his plate for one day!

I’m really curious about how this is going to play out.  Adam was so respectful the rest of the day, but what surprised me even more was that he voiced pleasure about things occasionally.  I think he’s going to knock this bad habit yet!

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On Thursday I suddenly realized we had twenty-one days til the day we thought we’d have the house ready for market. TWENTY ONE! David would have to go without sleep from now until then in order for that to happen. It does not help at all that his new clients suddenly need meetings on his off time. He defends them saying they work five days a week until 5. I said he does, too. Apparently it doesn’t matter. He works until they’re finished talking. Oh, well, vacation is coming. And hey, the grounds will look $10,000 better later in March anyway so it may be God’s way of keeping us held back, biting impatiently for no reason. The good news is, we ARE making progress. How is this for a little living room wow factor?

Before:

(Still haven’t found a good one of the wall pre-built in. Obviously I was avoiding it in pictures!  Here’s a little bit of perspective.)

After:

Remember the white leather furniture? We didn’t buy it. I was sad for awhile. I’m not anymore. It honestly would have been the most perfect thing in this living room ever. But I am equally convinced we’ll like this set better for our next house so I’m living without regrets.



And while I am a huge fan of Adam and Liam’s artwork, I am an even bigger fan of David’s. Can everyone just say wow, wow, wow?! Is it not awesome? He is truly amazing. The realtor who came by to give us feedback on the house said she doesn’t think doing the built in will add that much.  I said, “You underestimate my husband’s work.”  Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t.  After touring our house, guess who she called when she had a small house fire in their bathroom? 

I adore the furniture feet and the drawer hardware makes my heart do faster than normal thuds. The first night after he installed the main shell we turned the recessed lights on and sat in the dark talking until twelve. It totally made the living room grow up. Aaaaaand, please don’t miss the fact that my Christmas gift 2010 end tables now also have drawer hardware. The carpet that bulged within two years of being laid is re-stretched and I will be very happy to spread the word on who NOT to hire to install carpets in this area if you need a reference. Not only does he lie repeatedly about when he is coming and when he will have the job done (all while telling you he’s too busy going to prayer meeting), he does very shoddy workmanship. David stretched it himself this time because aforementioned carpet installer refused to come back and look at it. Everything is cleaned out, the walls, light, and trim has been washed. With a bit of touch up paint and some window washing when it warms up, we have one room ready to go.

I totally felt like my mom when I made the pillows for the sofa. I *adore* this one on Pottery Barn, but the price not so much. I had leftover fabric from the chair we reupholstered and I thought of my mom and said why not? She never spent a lot of time thinking about why she couldn’t do something. She just figured out a way and did it. I grabbed Adam’s brown craft paint and one of the boys’ paint brushes (sometime I want good brushes in the house, not a $5 multi-pack) and brushed away. It’s not perfect and it’s better to look at the Pottery Barn version and then go iron for an hour and then look at mine, but the resemblance is there. What I want to know is this, why when I make square pillows that are exactly square pieces of fabric do the corners puff up like owl ears when I stuff them?

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It’s crazy cold outside.

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Adam is trying to invent a new airplane.

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It makes me want to cry when we tell our neighbors that we are moving and they get so sad. It happened again today. The truth is, I’ll miss them terribly. No, we don’t know all of them, but the ones we do are the kind you just never want to give up. When N and A were here for dinner last month, N almost convinced us to just rent the house out instead of selling it. I’m 90% sure we’ll sell; but one of the biggest reasons I’d want to rent is the great people who live around us.

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I have about six adorable ideas for Valentines Day. I wish this year I could be the cool mom who carries them out.

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Today at church the pastor talked about how we often think that when Moses came down off the mountain with the ten commandments and the people were dancing around worshiping the calf, Moses was so angry he threw the stone and broke it.  He thinks Moses came down off the mountain and saw the people worshiping the calf, he knew the first commandment said “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and he instantly knew that the knowledge would condemn them to death.  God hates idolatry.  Moses threw the stone out of love and pity for the people.  David and I were discussing it on the way home and had no idea Adam was listening until he broke into our conversation.  “Mommy, I always thought Moses came down and saw the people breaking the law (figurative) so he broke the law (literal stone).”  Is there possibly anything more precious and fresh than hearing a child’s perspective and logic?  I adore that child.

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On Friday I spent most of the day with my friend, Tamseela, who grew up in Pakistan and moved here a few years ago when she got married.  We had a crazy, fun time together talking and laughing and shopping for curtains for her house.  Her cooking is fantabulous!  Have you ever had anything made with fresh ginger root?  It is truly amazing.  Maybe Adam’s prayers are coming true.  I’m definitely feeling a bit more inspired about the kitchen. 

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