Hello again!

Hello, Blog World! I bet I fooled you into thinking I dropped of the face of the blogosphere, didn't I? Well, I did, kind of. I have been dealing with some fairly sucky shit here in the real world that I can't write about because much of it revolves around the whole custody battle for my step-son, so I have basically thrown myself headfirst into the land of denial as a fairly decent coping mechanism. Despite it's bad press, denial really can be great when you have those pesky long-term problems ~ you know ~ the No End In Sight variety. I highly recommend it. Plus, who wants to read a bunch of wimpery-whiney bologna anyway, right? You probably want to read it as much as I want to put it to ~ um ~ paper (digital paper anyway), and that is abaout as much as I want to stick a pin in my eye, so onward with some fun stuff!

It was recently Eighty-Eight Fingers' fifth birthday, and I truly was meaning to write something for him until I found myself immersed in a shit storm. And I will write EEF his ode. He deserves it, and it is coming, I promise. Basically, his birthday has been a huge distraction in a good way from some of the negativity and stress around here. I spent hours shopping online for the most awesome present I could find for him. I finally settled on a wooden castle with knights on horses. He and the Fellers (the two-year old twins) love it! They have been waging wars on dragons, mastodons, dinosaurs, cows, pigs, Shrek's Puss 'N Boots minus his hat and ears and some GI Joe-like guys on motorcycles. Also, I managed to get EEF alone one day, leaving the shadows (fFellers) with Daddy, and we took Great Grandma shopping. We went to Toys 'R Us and signed EEF up for the birthday club. He got to be a king cruising around the store with his tricked out cart complete with horn and a paper crown on his head that kept falling off. Never mind the presents, the cart and crown was a blast! It felt good to let him be the star of the show for a change. With all the kids in this house, he unfortunately sometimes gets lost in the shuffle.

However, soon he will be getting much more Mommy and Me time because I enrolled the Fellers in preschool at the high school where Hubz teaches (He teaches at a small school and the students are very excited to have Mr. X's twins in class). There are thirteen 1 1/2 hour sessions until the semester ends in the morning before EEF goes to school, which works out perfect schedule-wise. The challenge for me is to get three boys dressed, bundled up, buckled into car seats and ready to go by 8:15 AM two days a week. Yikes! The pressure! It takes me almost twenty minutes to load the car with Fellers, and we don't move too quickly in the mornings here anyway (Mommy must be fortified with gallons of coffee before rapid movement is even a remote possibility), so getting out the door so early should be interesting. One funny thing about this is it is for a child development class, so there will be a test at semester time. Apparently, in one part of the test the students must name the child from a picture. Boompas and Stink are identical twins. While I have no trouble at all telling them apart, most of their relatives have to guess when the see them and give themselves a pat on the back and a big hoorah if they get it right, so it is unreasonable to expect kids who will only see them for a grand total of thirteen sessions to get it right from a picture (2-D is much more difficult. I even have to think a little when presented with a picture). The teacher is thinking of only putting one of their pictures down and accepting just a last name. I don't know how I feel about that. I mean, it is her class, obviously, and she can do what she wants, but this class is a two period elective for juniors and seniors. For them to devote that much time to the class, one might assume that it is a potential career choice or at least a major interest for many of these students. One might also assume that if it is a career choice, that this is not only a unique opportunity to experience twins and learn first-hand that even though they look alike they are two astoundingly different people, but also that they will potentially experience twins in the future and must figure out how to distinguish them. In any event, I will have my first real opportunity to give my schpeel that although they are twins, they are individuals ~ please treat them as such and do not expect them to be alike or clump them together as a set. They are not always going to want to play together, stand together, or do the same things. In fact, they might be happy to have a break from one another and that is okay. Please don't treat them as "twins", but just as two different people, kids, who happen to be the same age and have the same bad haircut.

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I love Halloween, so another distraction for me lately has been constructing costumes for they little guys. This year, they are going to be knights (yes, I know I just gave the whole individuality speech but in this case all three must have similar costumes or there will be a fight guaranteed ~ the compromise is a different colored t-shirt/tunic). I found a website that gives instructions for making a helmet from poster board. I made the helmets and painted them silver. Too bad they weren't really metal ~ keeping paper helmets safe from this set of knights until Trick or Treat is like trying to keep a dog from wagging his tail. Wish me luck! I also painted their wooden swords and shields. They will dress in gray sweats and hoodies for the "armor" and have oversized t-shirts with a cool dragon crest I designed as the tunic. I can't wait to display the finished product here! I will (hopefully) also display some pictures of our jack o' lanterns. *Hopefully* is the key word here because my digital camera is acting sort of hokey and is probably dead. The odds of replacing it any time in the next five years is slim to none.

Edited to add: Four of the pumpkins we grew in our own garden, so that made carving them all the more special...

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Apologies for being all over the place here ~ I have a lot to say and not so much time to say it. In fact, I have to get moving, get this sucker posted so I can fit in another load of the never-ending heap of laundry before Feller Lunch Time so we can get EEF of to school on time...