Chuck-e-cheese

I accidentally woke Garrett up..dang it! How is it possible that he is such a light sleeper?? I have that darn noise machine cranked up to one million decibels. The poor kid has had the sound of rain pounding in his room with that thing his entire life. When he gets older he is either going to be a narcoleptic who falls fast asleep any time he hears thunder, or he is going to be permanently scared by the sound of rain and run from it.


Day one of "summer":


7:00 am- Look outside. It's raining. We all snuggle on the couch and watch a lot of cartoons.


8:00 am- more cartoons and breakfast


9:00 am- Dalton announces that he's bored, and asks what he is doing today. I immediately dial up the neighbors to enquire about a playdate for him. No answer. Crap- hope I didn't wake them. Maybe they really got to sleep in the first day of summer...luckies!


10:00 am- Dalton gets an invite from said neighbors to go with them down to Provo to Chuck-e-Cheese's for a family birthday. My first response is no because:





A) It's Chuck-e-Cheese.



B) It's Provo (no offense...I am talking about the distance not the town...that much).



C) It's raining, which means that there are bound to be a handful of accidents caused by the texting/ non-seatbelt-wearing/ lipstick-applying/prescription-pill-popping crazy drivers.



and



D) It's the whole day. Weren't we supposed to spend this day together as a family? Going to the pool, going for a bike ride, enjoying the lazy care-free day?...and then I look outside, again.



11:00 am- STILL raining...so I say OK.



He is in for a day filled with hours of DS while being shuttled around on I-15, greasy pizza, germy arcade games, cheap plastic toys traded for tickets won, and many many smiles...priceless.



12:00 noon- I feed Shelby and Garrett lunch. I am still in my pajamas. Our babysitter comes over. I had originally planned on using her so that I could do some yard work. But I look outside and it's still coming down, so I scrap that idea.


12:30 pm- I take Shelby to school. It's her second-to-last-day. She's in a very happy mood.


1:00 pm- I send my sitter to the market, with Garrett in the stroller. The rain has subsided for now. She takes a hat and a blanket for him. I whip out the Oreo ice cream for a small sugar high. Then I set to work. Family room, kitchen, dishes, bathroom, vacuuming, laundry room, play room...I am on fire. I realize that it is slightly idiotic to be paying someone to watch my child so that I can clean. I realized that as I was putting the vacuum away after I was finished. Next time I pay her to stay at the house and clean. It was a bit therapeutic...a really tiny bit.



3:30 pm- baby down for a nap, house cleaned, Shelby home from school. I make Annie's mac-n-cheese to go with our chicken dinner. It is a luxury, and Shelby is excited. I leaf through July's Martha Stewart while Shelby watches a tivoed Reading Rainbow. There are recipes for about ten variations on a classic pound cake. I make a mental note to try to make each one. It's not even so much about the pound cake. It's the maple and fresh peach glaze that you are pouring OVER the brown sugar pound cake...Oy! It's somewhere around this time that I make a phone call to a dog breeder. We have been toying around with getting a dog for years. We make the rounds about what kind to get, how many. It's become a game in our family. Shelby saw that Beverly Hills Chihuahua movie back in February and HAS NOT STOPPED TALKING about getting a Chihuahua. It got so bad that I almost said "yes" just to shut her up. Now I know how Gavin feels after I hammer away at him regarding home projects I'm pining for. I eventually told her that she'd have to wait a year because Garrett would eat it or step on it. Then she said that she wanted a Pomeranian...that's been the latest infatuation. Dalton has just wanted anything big and tough looking. Gav has wanted a lab. I have wanted a Portuguese Water Dog. Can you guess who is going to win? Shelby is the biggest loser, because her dogs are small and weird looking, and Gavin hates any dog that can fit in a purse. Dalton's dogs lose because any dog that looks like it belongs in a studded collar does not fit in in our home. Gav's dog loses because as much as I love labs and retrievers, I do not love dogs that weigh as much as me and shed as much hair as I do. My dog breed is medium sized. The females weigh between 30-40 pounds. They have better hair than a poodle so they are hypo-allergenic (you don't sneeze around them). They are cute. They are good with kids. The Obama's got one (although I wanted one years before the Obama's...ask Gav- he'll tell you how we saw one at the airport years ago and I was hooked) but unfortunately this makes them more desirable which makes them even harder to get.

So back to this afternoon...I called the breeder who told me that she had a dog that fit my needs exactly. This dog was beautiful, and charming, and "the perfect PWD"...so perfect that I would have to agree to allow this breeder to show this dog at dog shows, and let her breed this dog for future puppies. I was a bit taken a back. "Some people really like to have the puppies in their homes, but if you don't she can have them at my home and you can have her back after she's weaned the puppies," the breeder says. OK...yeah, there is pretty much no way in Hell that Gavin is going to want a dog having puppies in his house. And what's in it for US? Do we get to sell the puppies and make bank? NO. Do we get the dog for free? NO. So, what's the draw? I look at pictures of these dogs online, in the dog shows, and they look like freaks. They look like Poodles with the puffy tails, and the shaved legs...eeew...so not in to that.

She also tells us that she has to come inspect our house to make sure that it is suitable for the dog, and she needs to watch our children to make sure that they would be well-behaved with the dog. When she asks about the kids, I tell them all about my well behaved eight year old boy and almost-five-year-old girl. I mention that I have a baby. I am hoping that she pictures a babe-in-arms, and not Baby Hewey, the battle baby, slash Energizer Bunny, slash Cat chaser extraordinaire. One "observation" of Garrett pulling Amigo around the house by his tail, and she'd ban us from ever applying. So maybe this isn't the dog for us. The breed- yes. But the dog, no. We need a dog who we can take camping and not groom...I can barely groom my kids for cryin out loud. I call Gavin in Boston and tell him about this dog. He says that unless it can cook and clean our house there is no way we are getting this dog.

5:00 pm- dinner time. Shredded BBQ Chicken (that Gav made before he went out of town) reheated, mac-n-cheese plated, broccoli steamed and cut...we are ready to roll. I go down to the playroom to get Shelby for dinner and...she's asleep. NOOOO! The baby has just woken up, so he is crabby because he hasn't had a bottle. Shelby is crying because she is woken up by Garrett yanking on her hair. I am carrying both of them up the stairs. Eventually I hold Garrett's hand and let him walk up the stairs. I tell Shelby that this is like "Topsy Turvey Day" from Clifford, because my baby is walking and my big girl is getting carried. She continues to cry for about another ten minutes. Finally, after eating three bites of mac-n-cheese, she is soothed...aren't we all. Garrett inhales the dinner. Especially the broccoli. Good mom am I...my one year old eating broccoli! Pat on the back for me.

7:00 pm- Dalton arrives home. Begs for a movie party with same friends that he just spent eight hours with. Sad when I say no. I tell him that we will do a rain check for tomorrow and we'll do a "movie party" with just our family tonight. He is consoled. When we say "movie party" it means that the kids get to watch THE WHOLE MOVIE instead of the thirty minutes they usually get when it's a school night, etc... very exciting! They usually hope that there is a treat associated with it. Fifty percent of the time there is. Tonight it's ice cream. But not before I tell them that they have to say that I am the best Mom. They do. :) ...oh, what ice cream buys!

7:30 pm- I try to put Garrett to bed, but he complains (cries...a lot). He usually doesn't do this. He has this little "Linus Blanket"

that he usually sucks on for thirty seconds and then he flops over and is out cold for the night. But something is off tonight. After rocking him for twenty minutes, with no improvements, I bring him back to the front room and he gets to watch the rest of the movie with us. I am racking my brain for what could be causing his crying. That's when I notice some raised bumps on his face (hives) and think back to what has caused my other two past babies to have hives and scream bloody murder...broccoli!! Argh. I can't believe I forgot about that. Now my two older kids LOVE it. But as babies it was toxic to them. So I give Garrett a few spoonfuls of Oreo ice cream to apologize and soothe his stomach. He was happy again. And so, after some sugar and some "Hotel for Dogs" with his siblings, he was ready to go back to bed.

9:00 pm- I tell the kids about the dog breeder. Shelby is having heart palpitations at the thought of A) having a "fancy show dog"... She now tells me that a PWD is definitely the type of dog that she has always wanted. and B) having litters and litters of puppies born in her home..preferably ON her bed. Scenes from 101 Dalmatians are floating through her head. Dalton is pretty excited too. I think because his friend Jack is about to get a new little female dog...which makes the whole "female" part alright. They begin to foam at the mouth and start to shout out name suggestions. Dalton wants Dawn (from Pokemon). Shelby wants Rainbow Dream or Daisy Flower. Dalton is doubling over with disgust at the thought of these names.

9:30 pm- I tell the kids that it's time for bed. Shelby asks "Can we have one of those talks in my room again? Like the one where we talked about friends and the one where we talked about God?...remember?...but this time let's have it be all about dogs??" How can I refuse? So in we go, to Shelby's room to have one of our "deep talks". These tend to take place when Dalton is sleeping in Shelby's second twin bed (which is 70% of the time) and they want to drag out bed time, and when Dalton has some topic that is weighing on his mind. I love these talks. I wish that I had them recorded. Their attempts to wrap their minds around these concepts that are bigger than anything that they can comprehend...it's humbling for me to try to bring it down to their level, without "dumbing it down". Kids catch on to that. They want you to "give it to 'em straight". If they wanted BS, they'd ask you for it. So, we talk on and on about dogs. Dalton is a little worried that one of the other potential buyers is going to snatch up all the dogs. I have to continuously reassure him that there will always be new litters, so even if we don't get a dog with this newest litter, eventually we'll get a dog. Shelby asks if a PWD wears a collar. When I respond in the affirmative, she beams. I see visions of bedazzled collars dancing in her head. She asks if the PWD puppy will be so small that it will have to be carried everywhere. I respond in the negative, to which she is visibly disappointed. Why would she want a dog that walks, when she could have a little invalid one that needs to be constantly carried by her, in an ultra stylish doggie purse? And so it goes. I tell Dalton that I heard that one of the kids in his class was telling all the boys what sex is. He says that he didn't hear about it, but Jack and Luke heard about it from Colter. I breathe a sigh of relief as Gav is in Boston and I do not feel like having that talk tonight on my own with him...with Shelby in the room. OMG, I can barely handle her questions about the dog, let alone THAT.

10:00 pm- we say good-night. I get a LOT of kisses tonight...thanks to talk of the dog. Funny how the anticipation of something is almost as good as the actual thing. I find a bug in the kitchen...the kind you DON'T want to find there. I trap it with a cup and spend the next thirty minutes debating on whether or not to kill it. I'd seen it a few days back in the hall and had hoped it would just live out it's life in Gavin's hall closet...passing away amongst his athletic socks, but no such luck. So now I am forced to kill this bug. Damn it. I hate doing this. I get queasy. I am imagining the sound of crunching a fat gross body on my counter. I truly am dry-heaving as I am envisioning all of this. It motivates me do every end-of-the-day chore I usually dread, like switching out the wash, and putting away the toys in the living room, so I don't have to confront this awful bug's death. Eventually I do it...with a folded paper towel and a Clorox wipe. I have to do it twice because the thing's body is so fat that the first time I just kind of gave it a hard hug. I HATE KILLING BUGS. It's over. Then I accidentally wake Garrett up when I go back to my room. That is where I began this post. I just put him down again, damned broccoli...time for bed.