children descended upon my house for 36 hours and I survived
I spent most of this week picking up around here, vacuuming a great deal (I finally got brave and moved the couches to get behind them. Wasn't THAT harrowing, but I did accidentally suck up an armyman that was under the sofa, left behind from when my brother lived here and the kids visited), dusting a lot, scrubbing the kitchen, etc. I got Emma Friday afternoon after getting the car seats installed. She hung out in the living room with Althea and me, watching Mulan till the boys got off the bus.
We picked them up in the car then got everyone's sleeping bags and travel bag and came back to my house. Of course the boys immediately wanted to play games, but I only have the PS2 right now (Joe took the PS3 on the road with him for this trip) and one controller that isn't possessed. We watched their PBS stuff they watch in the afternoons, then I let J.D. play some Ratchet and Clank (he did really well, he's come a long way console gaming in the past year), till his brother got really fucking fed up with not being able to play (he's 5 and I know he'd have just gotten frustrated, of course his argument is "I won't get frustrated!" Nice try, kid, I know you).
Kristen finally dropped by around five. She was only bringing her youngest, who's is in Christopher's class, as her daughter was hanging out with her dad that night. She got the coupons and pizza money from me and came back with pizza about an hour later. Her youngest is insanely loud, which cracked me up as J.D. got super frustrated with the loudness (I also think J.D. is having some hearing probs, I had the TV cranked up but he complained he couldn't hear). It's mostly funny cause J.D. used to have no volume control either. We watched the first Harry Potter, and Kristen and I talked while she got bombarded with text messages by another friend who just HAD-TO-OMG know where she was all night, and she fibbed as she didn't want her friend to show up on my doorstep. Emma, of course, went shy and refused to eat till Kristen left, which was early. We watched two Simpsons episodes (Bart the Murderer was one, we had watched a couple Simpsons before Kristen and Logan arrived and I explained Michael Jackson to them which was funny as Christopher recognized the Moonwalk right off from it being referenced other places). Then it was bedtime. Everyone staked claim on a place in the living room (two on the sofa, which is sectional, J.D. on the blue recliner, which is weird as the brown one is more comfy). I left the bathroom light on for them and the boys' night light was on in the living room. Everything seemed copacetic.
Then a small dog decided we were under attack.
I got the dogs into the bedroom. Sugar sniffed like crazy around the bathroom door, sure that I had sneaked Joe into the house and he was in there since the light was on. Any time I let Althea loose, she ran to the baby gate (that she can see the living room from) and flipped her shit barking. I had a very long night of holding Althea while attempting to sleep. Any time I let her go (and I did a few times due to hand cramps and warmth), off she went to the gate, barking and freaking the fuck out. Note for next time: have the upstairs bedroom set up.
At about seven J.D. appeared in the doorway between the bathroom and bedroom and was like "You said to come in when we get up." I got up, fed dogs and made cinnamon buns for breakfast. Holy fuck they scarfed those down quick. We decided to have a Treehouse of Horror marathon, which went well. When the little ones freaked out a bit I reminded them "You still see those characters on this show, this one is just like a funny play they all star in." That got them into it. Christopher did a lot of marker drawing (they don't get to use markers at home, but I let them since I had the solemn promise they were staying on the paper and I watched them pretty well when using them). He has an obsession with writing "TO BE CONTINUED" in all caps on everything, as they just watched all of the Back to the Future movies (courtesy of Uncle Joe and Aunt Holly) last week with their dad. It's sorta amusing, anything that uses time travel is automatically a BtoF sequel to Christopher. He also drew the pirates from my Lemax ship that's in the window and drew Homer, complete with colour (blue pants, yellow skin) and two hairs on his head.
After our Treehouse marathon, where else should we go but church. There was a tryout thing he wanted to do. I'd never been in their church. holy COW it's huge, but pretty cute. J.D. was nervous about trying out for singing and doing skits for his age group, but I refused to let him back down, as it was just a minor nervousness and I remember backing out of lots of things i later regretted at his age. I felt pretty clever telling him "the guy interviewing is wearing a Ninja Turtle shirt, dude, everything's cool." He did a long ass interview too. I felt I got some odd looks around the church since they may know kids but had no fucking clue who I was. At least the younger two look like me so it didn't look like a thirty year old chick dressed like a teenaged boy kidnapped three children (the funniest part of this, as I was lacing up my shoes to take them out to the church event, Emma told me I looked beautiful, "bug bites [I'm a little broke out]" and all. She also informed me I don't have wrinkles, but I later ascertained she meant "freckles" cause she said she had them.
We had an uneventful trip there, where they behaved the whole time. I'm guessing Scott gives them lots of "we behave at church" talks cause they didn't even put a toe out of line, so we were off to eat. Apparently their mom took them to McDonalds like twice last weekend, so J.D. objected heartily. Since the one with a playground still isn't finished yet, we ended up at Bojangles, where they acted like complete angels until they ran out of/got bored with food and we went back to their house, listening to my 80's CD, while everyone in the car (sans me) tried to out-fake burp each other. J.D. and I continued our impromptu Harry Potter marathon while Christopher apparently "did science" or "rescued the world from evil." I'm not quite sure which he was doing, as he had a cape on, but I didn't catch most of the monologues going on around the rest of the house. Emma took her kids to the store, which consisted mostly of nekkid baby dolls and teddy bears in a toy umbrella stroller and going back and forth between her room and the living room. She also insisted that I inform her of how fake her fake burps were. She's something else. She was also punch drunk from no nap that day.
Eventually she conked out (I love how she just goes to bed: say it's bedtime, crawl in, get a pacifier, zonk) after a mock fire drill from her space heater making a smokey smell and setting off the somewhere between five and forty fire alarms in my brother's house, and Christopher and J.D. took to making books while Chamber of Secrets played in the background. When the movie was done, off to bed, however J.D. was up a couple of times, sort of spookily appearing in the kitchen. He's like a goddamn ninja, seriously. I managed to stay up till Scott made it home, and J.D. didn't appear again after I'd called his dad to see, since he couldn't conk out, what I could do.
I had probably the best sleep of my life, but I feel like I have a hangover today, probably due to all the diet soda and junk food of the last two days. I'm probably going to have to graze on the lawn for the next few days to feel better, but we definitely had an interesting couple of days.
We picked them up in the car then got everyone's sleeping bags and travel bag and came back to my house. Of course the boys immediately wanted to play games, but I only have the PS2 right now (Joe took the PS3 on the road with him for this trip) and one controller that isn't possessed. We watched their PBS stuff they watch in the afternoons, then I let J.D. play some Ratchet and Clank (he did really well, he's come a long way console gaming in the past year), till his brother got really fucking fed up with not being able to play (he's 5 and I know he'd have just gotten frustrated, of course his argument is "I won't get frustrated!" Nice try, kid, I know you).
Kristen finally dropped by around five. She was only bringing her youngest, who's is in Christopher's class, as her daughter was hanging out with her dad that night. She got the coupons and pizza money from me and came back with pizza about an hour later. Her youngest is insanely loud, which cracked me up as J.D. got super frustrated with the loudness (I also think J.D. is having some hearing probs, I had the TV cranked up but he complained he couldn't hear). It's mostly funny cause J.D. used to have no volume control either. We watched the first Harry Potter, and Kristen and I talked while she got bombarded with text messages by another friend who just HAD-TO-OMG know where she was all night, and she fibbed as she didn't want her friend to show up on my doorstep. Emma, of course, went shy and refused to eat till Kristen left, which was early. We watched two Simpsons episodes (Bart the Murderer was one, we had watched a couple Simpsons before Kristen and Logan arrived and I explained Michael Jackson to them which was funny as Christopher recognized the Moonwalk right off from it being referenced other places). Then it was bedtime. Everyone staked claim on a place in the living room (two on the sofa, which is sectional, J.D. on the blue recliner, which is weird as the brown one is more comfy). I left the bathroom light on for them and the boys' night light was on in the living room. Everything seemed copacetic.
Then a small dog decided we were under attack.
I got the dogs into the bedroom. Sugar sniffed like crazy around the bathroom door, sure that I had sneaked Joe into the house and he was in there since the light was on. Any time I let Althea loose, she ran to the baby gate (that she can see the living room from) and flipped her shit barking. I had a very long night of holding Althea while attempting to sleep. Any time I let her go (and I did a few times due to hand cramps and warmth), off she went to the gate, barking and freaking the fuck out. Note for next time: have the upstairs bedroom set up.
At about seven J.D. appeared in the doorway between the bathroom and bedroom and was like "You said to come in when we get up." I got up, fed dogs and made cinnamon buns for breakfast. Holy fuck they scarfed those down quick. We decided to have a Treehouse of Horror marathon, which went well. When the little ones freaked out a bit I reminded them "You still see those characters on this show, this one is just like a funny play they all star in." That got them into it. Christopher did a lot of marker drawing (they don't get to use markers at home, but I let them since I had the solemn promise they were staying on the paper and I watched them pretty well when using them). He has an obsession with writing "TO BE CONTINUED" in all caps on everything, as they just watched all of the Back to the Future movies (courtesy of Uncle Joe and Aunt Holly) last week with their dad. It's sorta amusing, anything that uses time travel is automatically a BtoF sequel to Christopher. He also drew the pirates from my Lemax ship that's in the window and drew Homer, complete with colour (blue pants, yellow skin) and two hairs on his head.
After our Treehouse marathon, where else should we go but church. There was a tryout thing he wanted to do. I'd never been in their church. holy COW it's huge, but pretty cute. J.D. was nervous about trying out for singing and doing skits for his age group, but I refused to let him back down, as it was just a minor nervousness and I remember backing out of lots of things i later regretted at his age. I felt pretty clever telling him "the guy interviewing is wearing a Ninja Turtle shirt, dude, everything's cool." He did a long ass interview too. I felt I got some odd looks around the church since they may know kids but had no fucking clue who I was. At least the younger two look like me so it didn't look like a thirty year old chick dressed like a teenaged boy kidnapped three children (the funniest part of this, as I was lacing up my shoes to take them out to the church event, Emma told me I looked beautiful, "bug bites [I'm a little broke out]" and all. She also informed me I don't have wrinkles, but I later ascertained she meant "freckles" cause she said she had them.
We had an uneventful trip there, where they behaved the whole time. I'm guessing Scott gives them lots of "we behave at church" talks cause they didn't even put a toe out of line, so we were off to eat. Apparently their mom took them to McDonalds like twice last weekend, so J.D. objected heartily. Since the one with a playground still isn't finished yet, we ended up at Bojangles, where they acted like complete angels until they ran out of/got bored with food and we went back to their house, listening to my 80's CD, while everyone in the car (sans me) tried to out-fake burp each other. J.D. and I continued our impromptu Harry Potter marathon while Christopher apparently "did science" or "rescued the world from evil." I'm not quite sure which he was doing, as he had a cape on, but I didn't catch most of the monologues going on around the rest of the house. Emma took her kids to the store, which consisted mostly of nekkid baby dolls and teddy bears in a toy umbrella stroller and going back and forth between her room and the living room. She also insisted that I inform her of how fake her fake burps were. She's something else. She was also punch drunk from no nap that day.
Eventually she conked out (I love how she just goes to bed: say it's bedtime, crawl in, get a pacifier, zonk) after a mock fire drill from her space heater making a smokey smell and setting off the somewhere between five and forty fire alarms in my brother's house, and Christopher and J.D. took to making books while Chamber of Secrets played in the background. When the movie was done, off to bed, however J.D. was up a couple of times, sort of spookily appearing in the kitchen. He's like a goddamn ninja, seriously. I managed to stay up till Scott made it home, and J.D. didn't appear again after I'd called his dad to see, since he couldn't conk out, what I could do.
I had probably the best sleep of my life, but I feel like I have a hangover today, probably due to all the diet soda and junk food of the last two days. I'm probably going to have to graze on the lawn for the next few days to feel better, but we definitely had an interesting couple of days.