Life's Lessons Learned

I’ve learned a couple of things after yesterday’s babysitting adventure: 1) I may be able to handle caring for 3 kids, but not more than that...for a while. 2) I have a very helpful son, and little L is helpful as well, but not necessarily at the same time. 3) I’m really glad I was at my mom’s house so that she could help me out! It’s nice that baby E is still so young that he doesn’t really do more than eat, sleep, poop and fuss every once in a while, but when I have to take care of him, the other two jump right in and nearly stomp on the poor kid’s head. There were a couple of near fatal collisions. Fatal, because I was gonna kill the older ones for stomping the youngest one into the ground. But they were good and I think I was fairly good too. I’m just really glad that I don’t have 3 kids 24 hours a day.
I’m having some annoying computer problems. I have tried running my anti-spyware programs, but this message keeps popping up that I have an unsafe connection. It’s getting annoying! I’m hoping that my younger brother can help me figure it out...without destroying my computer completely! (He’s been known to do that before!) Anytime I’m on the internet for more than a few minutes it kicks me off! It tells me that some other program is using my modem (okay, so I have a SLOW dial-up connection, but it’s all I’ve got!) So I went through their whole thing trying to figure out what was wrong, but I’m still getting annoying results. So for my two friends I kept attempting to IM last night, I apologize for my stoopid computer. I’m sorry. Maybe we could talk another time...if I can get this to work again!! But for now, I’m trying to do as much as I can online WITHOUT signing into my two favorite IMs! (Like right now, I’m typing up my blog in WordPerfect and completely offline....much less annoying than trying to work with blogger!)

Cameron has such an imagination sometimes. Today he begged me to make his bed and I was confused. Since I’m a LAID back mommy, I don’t enforce bed-making (I don’t even make my own bed most days...) So I was wondering what he was talking about. So I took him in his room and showed him how to do it, so that someday he’ll learn to do it on his own. After making his bed, he asked me to make his bed into a tent. When we bought his BIG bed last year, we thought it would be nice to think ahead. We were hoping that by this time we’d have another child, but we still don’t. Anyway, so when we bought the bed, we bought the kid a bunk bed. Every once in a while I’ll take some extra blankets and drape them over his bunk and make a "tent" on his bottom bunk. So I took his blankets and tucked them nicely around and made him a tent. Then as I was trying to type up this post, the boy came into my room begging for toys off of the top bunk. He’s got the hang of going UP the ladder, but he can’t quite figure out DOWN. So I helped him and came back. Needless to say, I’ve been back and forth between the two rooms about 20 times now. I just went in there to take a picture of his "tent" and he was kneeling in front of his bed with his trucks and NO BLANKETS!! What!? I did all of that work and now they’re piled up on the floor! I asked him what happened and he told me that he didn’t want a tent. I think he’s just trying to keep me moving and active. What a kid!!

*********************
Now for my singing time tomorrow. The songs are going to be review songs: 'Dearest Children, God is Near You', 'Scripture Power', 'I Know my Father Lives', 'Follow the Prophet', 'Holding Hands Around the World', and 'Did Jesus Really Live Again?' As we sing the songs, I’ve prepped a teacher (our only male teacher) on what to do. I’m going to give him a cheap tie that he’ll wear to church. I’m going to have him come up and "judge" the kids on their singing. I’m going to give him some score cards. I’ll find a happy face or something nice for good singing, and a frowny face or something icky for not so good singing. If he gives the kids a good review, then we’re going to cut off pieces of his tie. He’s going to react to the cutting like he does NOT want it cut...it’s his favorite tie...etc... I’ve done this in the past with 2 judges and we have the room compete one side versus the other side. But then I find that I want to reward both sides, and I don’t really cut the ties evenly...plus the price of cheap ties at DI has gone up. I used to be able to buy each tie for a dollar, now the price is closer to $3-5! So I’m trying to save myself some money, and have the kids work TOGETHER with their singing. It’s going to be fun. They sing their BEST whenever I play this game. It makes me wish that I could do this during the sacrament meeting program, but I know that it’s too irreverent! It’s just something fun I try to do at least once a year, and so far, it’s been Fathers’ Day BOTH times! I’m excited for it!