The Wrath of Mom

That's what Mike calls it when I get all angry at the kids.  Yup, hard to believe, I know, that the mother of 3 boys sometimes loses her cool.  But I do.  In spades. 2 days ago, all three boys were doing (or not doing) things to set me off.  After putting kids in corners, sending them away from me to clean rooms, and finding them playing instead........ I really lost it.  Mike came home from work to find me standing in the middle of Pete and Zach's room directing the cleaning efforts.  The simple concept of you each have half a room, keep your stuff on your side.....seems to not be so simple.  Steve was being trusted to work on his own room and clean the linen closet in the kids bathroom.   HHMMM, in checking his work, I will be standing in the middle of his room today....  He has been told to not even consider eating breakfast today until he cleans out the closet and under the bed - where he threw everything when he cleaned his room.  I heard his alarm going off at 6 AM this morning, guess he got an early start.  Why is it teenage boys believe that ALL their clothes (whether clean or dirty) belong on the floor of their room?  Mixed together.   So you have to use the sniff test to get dressed.  YUCK!  Hopefully, after all this, the wrath of Mom can be put to rest and we can have a good time together for the next few weeks.

Party Pooper

Last night we were watching the world championships of Irish dancing (think Lord of the Dance).  There were both boys and girls of several different ages, from all over the world.  I saw lots of blond or red haired girls dancing in their short dresses, curls bouncing.  I asked Mike if we should find Irish dance classes for our Asian children, since that was one ethnic group I did not see competing -wouldn't they be cute?  he was starting to comment on how cute they WOULD be but, just about that time they showed some of the back story of the reining world champ (20 years old) and it said the costume she wore tonight cost several thousand dollars.  Mike now says no, he doesn't think our kids need to take up this particular activity.

Just Keep Marching On

Steven has now finished his practice sessions for Marching Band.  First they learned to march, then they learned to march straight ahead with their bodies turned to the side and feet forward.  They have to memorize their music instead of having the little stands that fit on their horns like I remember my sister using when she did high school marching band.  Steven is so excited.  He is sore from all the marching muscles he is learning to use, but he likes the high school band kids.  He is having a lot of fun.

 He told me last night that he does not understand WHY they have to march forward with their bodies sideways, they could just side step. 

Steven, it would not look the same. 

Well, Mom, you have no idea how HARD marching band is with all the marching, and holding your arms up, your instrument steady, memorizing the songs.....

Steven, my sister and some friends did marching band.  I think I know what you are doing.  What you mean to say is that YOU had no idea how hard marching band would be.

Oh........yeah.

Now he is done for a month until Pre-Band Camp starts in July.  Then he has regular band camp in July.

Great!!

On most Saturday mornings, Mike and I get up and make breakfast for the kids.  It's the same thing every week, but they love it.  Whoever comes downstairs first puts biscuits in the oven then Mike makes sausage patties and I make the eggs.  Since most of us do biscuit sandwiches (Zach likes to keep all his food seperate), I scramble the eggs, but cook them more like an omlette, without the omlette ingredients, but the egg stays on sandwiches that way.  Last Saturday we decided to shake things up and make breakfast burrittos.  Mike crumbled the sausage and cooked it, and  I did scrambled eggs the traditional way.  Zach was really impressed.  He still did not mix his food to make a burritto, but he thought the "crumbley" eggs were really good.

Mom, you're a really good cook, right?

Yes, Zach, I am.

Good thing he's still young enough to be impressed by the little things, like a different way of cooking eggs.

You're Doing That NOW??

Every school day my routine was to get up with Mike when the alarm rings, go wake up the kids and then come up to make Mike's lunch and make sure everyone gets breakfast.  The kids are usually hard to wake up, especially Zach.  I come into bedrooms singing some kind of good morning, wake up song (I have 2 or 3 I switch between) and with some tickling, and threatening to decide for Zach what he will wear to school, it takes about 10 minutes to get kids out of bed.  Now that summer vacation is here, everyone's bed time got pushed back about an hour.  With that they get to sleep in.  The last 2 days, Zach has gotten out of bed before Mike and I and even come downstairs.  I come down to find Zach on the couch, under a blanket, playing his new game boy he got for his birthday.  Now WHY could he not have been so easy to wake up when he was going to school?  He used to complain that he was TIIIIERD (you have to put a little whine into that to get the true feeling for it) and wanted to go back to sleep.  Now I want to go back to sleep after I make Mike's lunch, and before I have an toddler in the house again - we all know they never sleep in.......

You Know, Those Moon Shaped Things

Yesterday afternoon I was trying to distract Zach from something he wanted to do, so I reminded him that we were going to the Chinese restaurant for dinner. 

What are you going to order, Zach, those steamed dumplings you always get? 

Yeah, and rice. 

MMMM that sounds good

And what are those orange, moon shaped things?

hhhhmmmm, I guess you and daddy will have to talk to the lady who runs the restaurant to see if they know what you want (sometimes he remembers stuff he ate while living in China, that's how he started eating dumplings, they figured out that was what he wanted after he described it to the lady who owns the restaurant.)

No, no.  Never mind, I don't want that.

So we go to the restuarant, order his dumplings and rice.  I then look at the menu trying to see what I want (you mommies know that you get the kids set, and THEN can figure out what you want) and Zach got really excited. 

I want THAT!!!  (pointing at a picture on the menu)

OH, shrimp.   Yep, orange and moon shaped.  He had talked about eating shrimp a couple of weeks ago when he saw a Red Lobster comercial on TV, telling us he likes those.

Cancell the dumplings, order the shrimp.  And because the owners of the restaurant like Zach (he's so cute, who doesn't like him?), they gave him a bag of  Chinese Almond cookies for his birthday.  He was a very happy camper on his birthday.

Happy Birthday Dear Zachary

Today is our very first birthday celebration with Wu Ke Ji (in China the surname is first), soon to be known as Zachary KeJi Lee.  We let the kids pick a restaurant to have dinner at on their birthday.  I told Mike to prepare, Zach just might pick McDonalds, he is in love with the playland.  I started listing all the restaurants he likes to eat at and he ended up picking ....... Chinese food, or when he lived in China - food.  He loves steamed dumplings.  Not Pete or my favorite type of food, but we have found things at the Chinese restaurant that we like.  Then we will go have some ice cream.  He is really looking forward to his birthday party on Saturday.  We got him a used Nintendo DS,  the thing he has been asking us for, as his gift.  He has been living with us for 10 months now,  grown 2.5 inches in that time and his English has improved dramatically.  He's the love of our lives, as much as any biological child could be.  Happy Birthday, Zach, may be have 50 more years together of celebrating birthdays!!!  We love you!