Lord, grant me the patience...

...to do crafts with children. Breathe...inhale...exhale...ahhhhh.... I have a long-standing policy of not doing crafts with children. I am very artsy-craftsy myself, so it surprises many people to learn that I rarely engage my children in craft projects. I do a million and one other things to stimulate, educate, and entertain my children; I simply do not have enough patience to do crafts. Furthermore, I do not feel the least bit guilty about it.
Crafts are messy. They are time consuming. They test my sanity. Did I mention messy? About once a year or so, I have a lapse in judgement and decide it would be fun to do some craft project. I mentioned something yesterday to the children about possibly painting some valentine's cards this afternoon; since then all I have heard is: "MomisittimetopaintMomisittimetopaintMomMomMom..." So far, every child has paint on their clothes. There is pink and red paint on the table, chairs, floor, walls, and dog. I've probably got pink paint smeared on me somewhere as well, which I'm sure I won't notice until I'm out in public later today. I've broken up sixteen fights over who is hogging the paint, who is hogging all the red hearts, and whose fault it is that there is paint on the dog.
But...sigh...they are having fun. At least, until I start making them clean everything up; then there'll be more fighting. It could be worse. One year we did valentine's with glitter. That was several years ago, and I am still finding glitter on things that should not be glittery.

Eat it, and they will come.

Here is Paul eating half of my grapefruit. I had gotten it out of the fridge and cut in in half, and left it on the counter for a little while (because I like my fruit room-temperature, not cold.) Paul saw it and came and asked if he could eat half of it. Sure, fine kid, go ahead. Of course, immediately upon hearing me grant this request, a different child piped up and asked for the other half of my grapefruit. *Request denied.* This was my food, that I got out or myself. We've had grapefruits in the fridge for two weeks, and no one was interested in them until I got one out for myself to eat. Similarly, a few weeks ago I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Now, prior experience has taught me that oatmeal raisin cookies generate a huge number of- "I hate raisins why did you put raisins in the cookies next time make chocolate chip" -type complaints. I happen to like oatmeal raisin cookies, so I separated out a small portion of cookie dough to add raisins to for myself, and put chocolate chips in the rest of the dough. Wouldn'tcha know, suddenly everyone developed a taste for my oatmeal raisin cookies, and ate them all before eating the chocolate chip ones (which, let it be said, I do not like as well as raisin cookies.) These are just a few examples of this phenomenon that occurs nearly every time I make food especially for myself.

Mid-winter Randomness

We've spent the better part of the last four weeks passing the stomach flu around the family, which for the enjoyment of my readers, I have refrained from blogging about. While it was a whole lot of no fun, I guess cleaning up after sick people was at least one way to pass the time.

When not throwing up, the children have been finding new ways to amuse themselves indoors. That thing in Renee's hand is a Nerf gun with a laser night-vision sight on it (how's that for Nerf technology?) The kids don't use the red laser light as sight; rather, they shine it on the floor and walls to tease the dog. The little girls especially have gotten hours of entertainment from watching the dog chase the little red dot around, and the dog has still not figured out that she won't be able to catch the dot. Also on the Nerf battle front, the boys have recently acquired a full set of Nerf battle gear. Someone thought it would be great fun to dress up little Renee in the padding, goggles, and target vest and then use her for target practice. Fun for the big kids, yes; advisable, no.
Here's my Joe, who has always been a quirky kid. Often times too quirky, which has caused me a great deal of forehead-palming over the years, but always amusing. Today after his first breakfast of eggs he was still hungry, so made himself some waffles. For his own quirky reasons, he decided he wanted them to look like the waffles and pancakes they show in advertisements and IHOP commercials- a stack of waffles with a neat square of butter on top, over which the syrup is carefully poured. He explained his reasoning to me as he made his little creation, and happily ate the results. I remember some time ago, he wanted me to make him lemonade like he saw in all of his picture books- in a real glass, with ice cubes, and a straw. I guess these kinds of visual presentations are important to him.

Still winter.

Around the Becker house, we've been doing a lot of standing on our heads waiting for spring to come (some of us taking 'standing on our heads' more literally than others.) There's just not that much to do here in the winter; every day looks pretty much like the day before. Ho hum.