Benefit of Siblings

The University of Florida published the results of a study they conducted on the benefits of siblings on the development of social and interpersonal skills. They have concluded that “through cooperative play, helping and teaching younger siblings, and negotiating and resolving conflicts, siblings have opportunities to refine their communication skills.”

I didn’t need a scientific research study to tell me that. I knew David was learning something from his sisters when his first effort at combining words into phrases resulted in a toddler screaming, “Go away! Go away! Go away!”

Where do you think he heard that?

Impatience

Our bathroom is still not done and I'm getting really impatient! I'm posting this pic to remind myself that the results will be worth the wait. Anything is better than this!

Outrage

You certainly know that I’m a baby addicted Mama, but I don’t brag about my stepmonster status very often. I don’t talk about it here very often because it is a role that fills me with frustration. It’s not even my teenage bonus daughters that vex me. It’s society in general.

Since school is starting next week, Hubby called their schools to provide his contact information and request their class schedules, open house schedules and information regarding parent teacher conferences.

Can someone explain to me why such a simple request is always met with hostility from school administrators? Why must they always be suspicious and defensive? Is there a good reason for the rudeness and dismissive attitudes we always encounter? Not only would you expect a father to be involved with his kids’ education, but he actually has a court order that allows him to be involved.

I believe that God gives children both a mother and a father because his divine plan was for a child to feel the love and support of both of those parents. If that’s true, why does our society dismiss the role of fathers as unnecessary and an inconvenient interruption to the status quo? Why is it that schools, daycare centers, and health care providers make it so difficult for divorced dads to remain involved with their kids? Shouldn’t the guitar teachers and soccer coaches be delighted to see all the parents at classes and practices? Shouldn’t dads feel welcome at ballet recitals and football games? Why do all these folks discourage participation from Dad’s and then society frowns on the deadbeat dads that aren’t involved with their kids?

Am I the only person on the planet that sees the paradox in these attitudes?

My vent is over, but the frustration is never-ending.

Home Temporary Home

Nothing brings out the love in a family like sharing one room for too long. Since our bathroom is torn apart, we are spending a couple of days in a hotel. That means Mommy, Daddy, Skywalker and Little King David spent hours upon hours in a tiny hotel room last night.

Granted, the room is not actually tiny, it is only tiny when filled with four people and all their junk. I was relieved to find that the hotel was clean and tidy upon our arrival. Luckily, this Motel 6 was formerly a Fairfield Inn by Marriott and just changed management recently. The bedding looks fairly new and the room was remodeled at some point in the not too distant past, so we were definitely comfortable. That was a very good start to our extended stay.

The kids settled in nicely with a pillow fight and an invigorating jump on the beds, then David helped Mommy find the ice machine. We made the mistake of passing the pool, which made David crazy because he wanted to go swimming NOW, NOW, NOW, but we had lots to do getting settled in.

After we unpacked, David took a bath in the tub and he was allowed to splash as much as he wanted. He got his pajamas on and read his bedtime story. After his book, he grabbed his blankie and said “night, night” to everyone. Then he began to gather all of our shoes and said, “Go. Go.” as he pointed to the door. He didn’t react very enthusiastically when I told him that we weren’t going home.

As David had his meltdown, Daddy and Skywalker began their hour long fight over the remote control. Daddy wanted to watch Discovery Channel and Skywalker wanted to watch a cheerleader-teenager-romance-chick flick. I found both choices to be incredibly annoying, so I decided I had my hands full enough with screaming toddler that I didn’t need to vote on the television debate.

David finally fell asleep in his Pack-N-Play and I was able to take a shower all by myself, which was the goal of staying in the hotel in the first place. I even shaved my legs! The little pleasures in life!

We all slept well and I woke up at 5:30am without a struggle. Unfortunately, it’s absolutely impossible to get dressed in our hotel room without waking the baby. David’s eyes popped open shortly after I got up and they stayed open. It wasn’t too much of an inconvenience since I had showered the night before and I forgot my makeup at home, so it didn’t take me long to get ready this morning.

Despite only having a few minor inconveniences, I have to admit that I am incredibly crabby about this entire situation. I really cherish my routine and I didn’t realize how important it is to me until this week!

Luckily, my jury duty assignment has been postponed until next month, so I at least have the comfort of my normal routine at work.

Only two more days to go until the bathroom is done!

The Little Comforts

As the bathroom remodel continues at an agonizing snail-like pace, we have decided to spend the next couple of days in a motel. I can (barely) endure not having a functioning shower in the house, but I can’t live without a toilet. After a couple of days of showering at the YMCA, I’m ready to have my own personal shower. Besides, I think the YMCA staff are beginning to think that we are homeless. We go into the locker room, come out with wet hair, and the pool is closed. We’ve earned a few curious glances from the folks at the front desk.

We’ve made reservations at Motel 6 because Priceline hates me, or in other words, they wouldn’t accept any of my bids on a really comfortable hotel for a ridiculously low price. I suppose my expectations are a little high, but considering that we got a room at the Marriott in Pittsburgh for $29 per night back in November, you can understand why I was so optimistic about getting a great room at a cheap price.

I am hopeful that Motel 6 will be a good compromise. The hotel is less than a year old, so it shouldn’t be too filthy yet. Besides cleanliness, my other major worry is that Little King David hasn’t slept in a hotel room since he was nine months old. He is slightly less easy going now than he was then, so I wonder how well he will sleep in his Pack-N-Play. I’m also concerned because he just started sleeping through the night (finally, after seventeen long months!). I really don’t want to jeopardize his new sleep routine.

Tune in tomorrow for a hopefully uneventful and boring post about how our hotel room was immaculately clean and why I didn’t have to karate chop the front desk staff like a Jackie Chan body double.

Back to School

I suppose it’s already been a couple of weeks since my Summer semester course ended, although I feel like I just blinked and Fall semester is staring me in the face already.

I was really hoping beyond hope to take an English Composition course because I absolutely love to write really long, rambling, incoherent term papers, but the course is completely full. Honestly, I do love to write, even if I’m not really talented. I thought this course would be a breathe of fresh air and I might actually learn something that is relevant in real life. Wouldn’t that be refreshing?

Unfortunately for me, I haven’t checked my student email account in ages, so I have about 349 unread messages. One of those messages must have been the announcement about early pre-enrollment, which allows folks to hold space in classes that they have no intention of registering for. By the time I realized that I needed to register, the English classes were full. So were the history, math, and science classes that I need but am avoiding.

I started to panic when the only class available was Listening to Music 101 because I have absolutely no musical talent and no appreciation for fine art. We recently received free tickets to the Cleveland Orchestra and Hubby actually wanted to go to the concert, which I am convinced was a form of punishment for something I did.

God must have heard my whimpering, because a seat opened up in the history class this morning. Although it’s not the English class I was lusting for, the History of Modern Civilization does sound fairly interesting. The added benefit is that Hubby and Skywalker are history buffs, so our dinner conversations might include a question from me on the Industrial Revolution and lots of note-taking while they ramble on about something that I really should have read in my textbook but didn’t.

Sometimes, it’s a good idea to surround yourself with pretty nerds.

Flush Flush

There is an unspoken rule that every home improvement project must include an unexpected glitch. My Dad would call it Murphy’s Law, but I’ll call it Just My Luck.

We’ve been ripping tile out of our only bathroom for the past week in a desperate effort to have everything demolished before our contractor arrives to begin work on Thursday. We needed to save a little cash on this project, so we thought ripping out some tile would be easy enough to do ourselves.

If you’re done laughing at me now, I’ll tell you how the project is going in reality. The tiles popped off the wall in the blink of an eye. The floor tiles were a little bit harder to get off and we damaged some concrete underneath them with our overzealous use of hammers and crowbars.

Once we got the concrete off the floor, we discovered that one of the floorboards is damaged and has to be replaced. We were very happy to find the weak floorboard, because we were worried that we destroyed the concrete for nothing.

Last night, the contractor stopped by just to review the work that would begin on Thursday. The original plan was that the remodel would take three days and we knew that we wouldn’t have the use of our shower during that time. We planned to take showers at the YMCA (finally using that gym membership!) We would be able to use the toilet every night, but would need to go to the library or gas station to tinkle during the day.

Well, now that the concrete has to be replaced on the floor, we will not be able to walk into the bathroom for three days.

No toilet.

At all.

Three days.

I’m looking for hotel rooms on Priceline right now…

My Advice

If you think you love your husband, I advise you to begin a major home renovation together.

Don’t hire a babysitter for your toddler, don’t have all the tools you will need, and make sure you find an unexpected problem in the middle of your project. You should also have an unrealistic deadline.

If you are still talking to each other when it is all over, then you really did love each other.