Week 1- Robert Muraine The Great- So You Think You Can Dance

Logan, the Sky Angel Cowboy

I am so glad my mom is MY mom!

But I feel for Shawn, Bert, Faith & Anthony. I can't imagine having a mother so selfish & cruel to her kids. Totally blows my mind.

Faith is still there....no baby Mason yet. However, had to yell at crazy MIL Barbie to leave my house on Saturday. She showed up when Shawn was pulling out to head out w/the boys & I was getting ready to head to Grove City. Shawn told her she wasn't allowed in, but she totally just walked in our fucking house & I'm not joking! For about 15 minutes he kept telling her to leave (with my dad sitting right there, not knowing what to do), then finally I had it. I had been keeping the boys out back so they wouldn't see her. In the meantime, she's knocking on the effin windows trying to get their attention, dumb bitch. I went in & told her to please listen to my husband & get out of our house! Actually, I yelled it at her, but damn woman, know when you're not wanted!!! So she left while saying "my grandkids will know the whole story one day". My ass! I had to yell "Go to hell" to her for that shit. I hate saying that, but yeah, she's right on one thing, her grandkids WILL know that she's an addict & needs help. She has no right to tell my kids anything, yanno? Let alone her lies she likes to make up. The funny thing is, before she showed up at our house, she went to Adam's mom's house AGAIN trying to find out where Faith lives. So about 15minutes before she got to ours, Faith had called to tell us she was at Diane's again. Faith is going this week to file a restraining order on her. She tried to Saturday, but the downtown police station was closed. So Shawn or myself will go with her. There's a little more to the story, but I've typed so much already! Basically, Barbie's husband called pregnant, innocent Faith a bitch! Can you believe that shit?! That's why we don't want them in our lives. Sorry this is a novel. :o)

Then, last night I got an email from Andrew. She has once again made him empty promises. Just an fyi, she tells all her kids, grandkids that she'll buy them something, then she won't follow through. What she does is, uses the money that her husband thinks is going to the kids, to buy her pills. SO, pitiful. Well, when all this crap started happening when she got out of the psych ward, I called Andrew's mom & told her that it wasn't a good idea for him to be staying at Barbie's house. Barbie was telling everyone she was having Andrew all last week, which was a complete lie, because we all knew he was in Kentucky.

Anyhow...here's the email he sent me, can you believe that she's done this to her kids ALL OF HER LIFE??

"I a freackin pissed because mimi told me that she would buy me shoes and then my mom told me that she calld to tell her for me to stay away from her because she is on drugs again. And i felt like i was going to cry b/c i thought that i coculd trust her but no it hgad to be ruimed from the drugs u know what for get her i guess that i can forget it about it but i have given her so many tries at coming back its not funny i thought she turned around thats why6 i wanted to cry. But can u keep this between me and u."

I love that boy w/all my heart and he's been hurt so much by losing his dad, she just needs to stay away from him!

To all my mommy & daddy friends...

A long one but you’ll really enjoy it – otherwise I wouldn’t have posted it. :-)

by Anna Quindlen - part of her book "Loud & Clear."If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringlets and the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin. All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past. Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the "Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs.There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense; matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

All Easter 2007 pics

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?&mode=fromsite&collid=87647313109.848223285109.1177008189821&conn_speed=1

Link to Kodak slide show for all Easter pics

Easter pics of the Day Fam...

We stayed in town & had my parents come over for a little while. Shawn had to go to work at 7 though, which kinda sucked. The boys got goodies & too much candy & I got that new Desperate HW Forbidden Fruit perfume from EB. It smells good but is a bit strong. You don't need too much of it.

Aiden has been running a fever since last Friday & actually got sick Saturday night. He was okay on Easter, but still hasn't eaten too much of his candy or anything else. I've talked to the doctor twice & they said to take him in tomorrow if he's still feverish tomorrow morning. He wasn't feeling too good when he went to bed, so it's not looking great. He's been home the past 2 days & I've missed work. I told Shawn it's his turn tomorrow if he's sick again!! I'm so far behind as it is! The real estate market is heating up & we've gotten a lot of new listings.

Quick story about Reis this morning. He woke up (and stayed up I might add) around 6:30ish. Aiden & I were still asleep in our room. Around 8, I asked Aiden where Reis was & he said downstairs...so I yelled for his little crazy butt to come upstairs. I was knocked out from cold meds...I think I'm getting whatever the f*** Aiden has...BLEH! Anyhow, of course he doesn't listen to me & I have to get out of bed...heaven forbid! I start down the hall & here he is coming up the steps. He says "come see mommy, come see....me make a mess!". And when Reis says that, he means it. I went in the kitchen to find that he had gotten up on the counter twice...once to get a bowl & once scissors. Then got a spoon, 6 bags of oatmeal & the milk from the frig. He proceeded to use the scissors to cut open ALL 6 bags of oatmeal & poured them & some milk in to his bowl. He did this all on the kitchen floor so the floor was covered with oatmeal!!!!!!!!!! It was so funny to picture him doing all that, that I just had to laugh! Poor guy was hungry & Mommy was knocked out in bed! Oh well...if he would've just listened to me & went back to bed!