William the Conquerer; Evie Returns; Potty Talk; and finally, You Should Be My Neighbor

This is a long one. Apparently cutting my Zoloft dose in half  (because I didn't want to DO anything and kept yawning all day long!) has brought my chatty back :) So grab your beverage of choice, use the potty if you need to, and I'll catch you up....

William kicked my butt today. I thought I'd gotten my butt kicked this morning when I let Jillian torture me with Day 1 of Ripped in 30, but really, she wasn't that bad. I Shred, so Level 1 was manageable. After today though, I can only imagine what Week 4 will bring. But since this isn't a DVD review, back to William. Apparently I am the Worst Mother In The World. Never mind those people that lock their kids in closets, don't feed them, or any other kind of horror - it's me. I asked him to - wait for it -  take a shower. And when he tried to sneak downstairs, after a full day of arguing with me and not doing what I asked, I told him he'd won himself a ticket to EARLY BEDTIME! Do not pass go, do not collect your $200, go directly upstairs to bed. Well. You can imagine how that went over :) Dear William, your life would be SO much easier if you would just do what we ask, within the first 3 times we ask you to do it. Funny - I commented to Matt today how awesome Evie is - she's back from camp you know! - and he agreed - and then I reminded him that only a year ago or so we were talking about how much Evie stank & what the hell were we doing wrong with our bratty kids? But then you talk to parents with older kids & realize it's all a phase, and the years from 9-ish to 12-ish are actually pretty great before it all turns to crap again. Happy Happy Joy Joy! William is getting his second set of ear tubes in 2 weeks, so at least he won't have the excuse that he can't hear us anymore.

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Evie's home! We're back to our routine of annoying YouTube videos of silly stuff playing all day & lots of interruptions about the most venomous animal in the world and what's going on with Shark Week or something or other :) I didn't realize quite just how much I missed Evie until we walked down the hill at camp to the picnic table where she was waiting - she gave me a huge hug and the tears were right there in my eyes. Go figure, I really did MISS her in a palpable way! The tortilla on her face I could do without, but she's home safe and sound :)

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I'd like to introduce you to bob. He's our new best friend. I've forever been saying, if only we had some way of just SHUTTING OFF THE TV, life would be easier to manage. Because between the four of them, the idiot box was on all.the.time. We tried telling them no more, but they'd just move to another room. I tried unplugging the whole thing. Jason just plugged it back in. So one day while headed somewhere in the van, Matt & I were talking about it, and I Googled TV timers. Enter bob. Bob is an amazing little thing that you plug your whole system into, and then it locks around the plugs - so little people can't unplug the TV from it. And then you assign up to 6 different users a PIN number, and a time allotment. In our house, each child gets their own PIN - we need to work with Jason and Sarah on not sharing theirs out loud with the other kids - and a one hour allotment of time. When their time's up, the TV gives a one minute warning and then shuts off. LOVE!!!!! We have the master code and can turn it on and off at will, and assign additional time if we like, but so far so good. You can assign time daily, 1 hour a day, or weekly - say 7 hours total, in which case it's up to the kid to manage their time. Evie gets a weekly allowance, Sarah and Jason get daily. William gets nothing until we return from the beach because he flooded his bathroom :(

Which brings me to Potty Talk. Jason's still in pull-ups. I really thought he'd be done by now, but - it is what it is, he knows what to do & how to do it, and I can't really do the rest for him, he needs to. We're anxious to get him finished because he starts preschool in 3 weeks, and while they'll take him in pull-ups, we'd like to just put this all behind us. So Matt came up with a brilliant strategy this weekend, and so far it seems to be working: Jason gets an extra 15 minutes of bob time every time he pees on the potty. And if he poops on the potty, he'll get an extra hour. So far this weekend, everytime the tv's shut off, Jason's gone running to the bathroom yelling "I HAVE TO PEE!!!" Today he kept himself completely dry :) Bribery? Sure. But whatever works, right? I'm hoping once he gets the hang of #2, we'll wave goodbye to the days of diaper changes....

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 Once a month we try to get together with some of our neighbors for an evening of socializing, and I can't believe it, but this Saturday was the first time we'd gotten together since January? February? Way too long. Anyway - If you were my neighbor (and we liked you!) you could come over for appetizers, conversation, and some drinks, and then once everyone's nice and relaxed we bring out games, and possibly 110 proof alcohol. That comes with its own fancy spoon and requires sugar cubes and precise amounts of water to be added.

Matt's always wanted to try Absinthe, but couldn't justify buying a big bottle of something he might hate. So our neighbor Rob brought some over! Once they opened the bottle & I smelled that black licorice smell, I knew I wouldn't be trying any, but it was interesting to watch. You pour the water over a sugar cube on the fancy spoon & the sugar quickly dissolves...

It goes from a radioactive-looking clear green to a cloudy green (still smelling like black licorice), and then you can either sip it, or toss it back. The smell alone was enough to keep me from trying it, although the licorice haters at the table who did try it said it wasn't that bad. I'll take their word for it.

Cheers!

And then we all played Trivial Pursuit, the 80's version.I got to be Have a Heart Bear :)

Some of the questions were really hard. I thought Rob was going to pull his hair out. Although after the pitcher of Mai Tais I'd made and various other things, I'm surprised any of us could answer any of these questions...

While I was the first to earn all my pie pieces & try for the final question, in the end Matt won the game. Because I don't know anything about Sports & Leisure, and he got the easiest 80's Movie question on the face of the entire planet. I want a rematch.

So who wants to be my neighbor??