Not so adventures of the St. Clair clan...

 Why is it, when you leave town for a weekend, it takes an entire week to get caught up on laundry and housework?  I don't understand.  It's one of the cruel mysteries of the universe.  It's right up there with the missing socks - which I always thought was some joke until I started doing my own laundry.  Jokes on me...actually, jokes on the universe because I just started wearing miss-matched socks like a boss.  I can totally pull it off...here in my own house.  Mostly, because I am  the boss.  (Shhh, don't tell Ross.)   Like he doesn't know.  Ha!   I must have put my sassy pants on today.  I didn't realize they came in sweats.  Well, this is good news.  Now I can be sassy and comfortable.   This past weekend I could not be comfortable in my own pants because I was too far north.  Has anyone else had this happen: you get dressed and feel like you look pretty decent, then you head toward the city - any city.  The closer you get, the frumpier you feel?  I never c

 Most of the time, I feel pretty confident in my capabilities with the twins and taking them places - even when I'm flying solo.  We had to bow out of a few activities around the holidays that seemed like a recipe for disaster, but there's not too much we won't at least try to do.  The problem is, I started getting cocky about it.  That never ends well.  The universe has a way of dealing with unmerited pride:  Get back in line, girl!   I took the kids to the library today.  In my head, it was going to be a really cool mom  way to end the week.  And come on, books !  Our kids love books!  Books are good for our kids.  Win for everyone.  What could possibly go wrong? Our girls didn't nap today.  The red flag should have already been waving.  On our second  try, we made it into the library building with all five of us properly dressed and wearing shoes.         Are libraries still supposed to be quiet spaces?  It's been awhile since I have really spent time in a public

I hope I don't sound like Debbie Downer on these posts.  It's possible I highlight the crazy maybe a little more often than the sweet.  Truthfully, I love my stay-at-home-mom job 90% of the time, but every job has it's high points and its low points.  Hearing your baby say "mama" for the first time: high point.   Hearing your five-year-old scream "mom" from outside your bathroom door for the fifteenth time: low point.     Getting an unexpected hug from your seven-year-old: high point. Getting unexpectedly shot with a nerf gun by your seven-year-old (timing is everything): low point. You get the idea.   At the end of the day, you just hope the balance lands in favor of the positive.   Unfortunately, for us, today started in the red.  I blame prune juice. It's a long story, and it ends with me ruining my chances at earning Star Mother for the month of January.  It's a bummer because I thought I had a real chance.  I didn't get it last month eit

 I have a two-year-old on my hands who can say a few dozen words, which I think is pretty standard for this age, but the amount of sass  with which she speaks seems well beyond her years.  I get that kids are sponges, but I'm not sure where she is picking up her tone.  It leaves me wondering which wind-up toy needs to go in the trash!   Please, tell me I don't sound like this.  I might  sound like this.  Shoot.  Houston...   "Hey, Sis, can I help you with that?" "No-uh!" is the response I'm routinely given.  Or my other favorite when I'm trying to do something for her, "(s)top, (s)top it!"  Her brothers get screamed at if they aren't playing her way.   Her sister, who just wants to give her loves, gets a verbal lashing as well.  (In all fairness, I might have the same response if I'd been bitten by her sister as many times as she has.) And her dad gets lots of dirty looks, which are hilarious now, but in ten years...oh boy.    Don&#

 We all seemed to be a little salty this morning.  It might be that we were all crashing after a massive sugar high from last night's birthday cake.  Nonetheless, the day started with much screaming and gnashing of teeth.  The screaming came from the girls.  I was the teeth.  The boys were the instigators. They already have a way of pushing buttons, and the girls are barely two.  They act innocent, but I was a middle child.  I know exactly  what they are doing.   Fischer sits behind Carter's high chair and rests his feet on the base.  Then he gives it a teeny tiny  push, and she loses her mind.  Sawyer stands in front of her chair and looks at her...and she loses her mind.  She's a little sensitive before she gets something in her belly.  I know she is being ridiculous, but the boys know what they are doing, and her screaming sends me through the roof.  Emerson is even worse.  She doesn't want the boys in any part of her personal bubble or she gives them a vocal lashin

It's coming.  I can feel it in the air and in my bones.  I'm about to become....a very bad homeschool mom.  My ( second ) seed order arrived this weekend.  A trailer load of garden mulch is on the horizon.  These sunny days in January are just toying with me, but my bulbs have pushed their green tips to the surface.  And I have gardening on my mind.  All. Day. Long.   "I have this brilliant idea to move my cucumbers back to the beds along the fence," I confided to my husband earlier today.  His eyes glazed over, and he looked at me like I had spoken in French.  But I don't know French, so it occurred to me that maybe he really didn't care where I planted the cucumbers.  The fence is really a great spot for them though, and in my small worldview, a very exciting breakthrough.  Thank you for listening.  I needed somebody to be fake excited with me.   I turned the compost bin yesterday and saw lots of worms.  I love my worms.  Please don't tell the cool kids.

Our boys would like to cordially invite everyone they know to our house for a pizza party.  Pizza to be followed by a performance that they will be starring in.   The performance will include tree acrobatics and songs about war.  We aren't sure what the lyrics are yet, but they are guaranteed to be inspiring.  They are also guaranteed to be sung out of key and fairly monotone, although the hand motions will certainly help. The seating arrangements are pieces of playground equipment we have yet to assemble (don't judge me Becca), and the cost for adults is $3.  Kids are free and are also welcome to join in the performance. Those are all the details I have at this time.  I have viewed several rehearsals, however, and the tree acrobatics are stunning.  Especially, when Fischer wears his hand-me-down pink snow boots, skinny jeans and a t-shirt.  The combination adds drama to the overall performance.  Mostly because the boots like to get stuck in the tree branches.   Actually, one &

Like ninety percent of people I know, we have been experiencing a lot of sickness in our home recently.  It's been a range of symptoms from not great to tolerable, but it's gone on for so long that it is wearing on us.  It has cycled through everyone at least once and most of us twice, and now I'm hoping we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Everyone I talk to has been sick, so I can't really complain.  I did decide to take a  mini-vacation, however, in the midst of it all. Now, before you start thinking I'm a totally reprehensible human, I didn't actually go  anywhere.  I just gave myself a day (mostly) off from housework.  I did the minimum to just keep everyone fed and clothed.  I sat on the floor and played with the kids and didn't worry that they put nothing away.  I let the boys make their own breakfasts and lunch.  I put a movie on in the middle of the week - a treat usually reserved for Sundays.  I chose the path of least resistance on

I got in a wrestling match with a toilet paper dispenser today.   I know, I know.  I do more bathroom talk on here than my five-year-old at dinner.  But this blog is called the Not So Adventures , and that's all I've got for you.  Sorry.  Back to my TP story. I was at church and was running late.  Seats in the sanctuary were quickly filling up, but I needed to...I was overhydrated and my nose was dripping.  You can't sniff your way through a sermon without freaking people out just a little.  So I ran into the bathroom and picked the nearest open stall.  Then my jacket zipper broke.  That has nothing to do with the story.  I just wanted to acknowledge it was a very frustrating period of my day.  My nose started really running, and I was desperate to blow it, so I tried to roll out some toilet paper.  The roll was jammed so tight in the dispenser, I could only turn it a 1/4 turn at a time, and I couldn't locate the end.  I'm turning and turning, thinking very unchurch

 I heard my husband coming down the hall tonight, so I jumped up from where I was mindlessly browsing my phone, threw my ice cream bowl in the sink and opened the dishwasher.  I didn't want to get busted.  I have an image to keep. He doesn't care if I sit for any period of time and browse on my phone or that I eat ice cream after the kids go to bed.  But if nobody sees  me doing it, then the Calories don't really count and neither does the screen time.  So, crisis averted.  Plus, I got the dishes done.   Am I the only weird one who does this, fakes things?  I'll be working-out in our room doing push-ups or sit-ups (usually, I'm just trying to get warm before freezing my tush off in our bathroom), but if I hear someone coming, I jump up and pretend to be doing something like laundry.  Why?  I have absolutely no idea.  It's okay, I have enough self-confidence to be a nerd alone.   Let's talk about that cold bathroom for a minute.  I hate using a cold bathro

 I haven't given up on wanting a family milk cow, but now I want a pig to go with her.  Two pigs, actually because they need a friend.  Now hear me out, I haven't come to this conclusion on a whim.  I've given it at least a full sink load of dishes worth of thought.   I need  pigs.  We discard a lot of food.  My picky eaters, love something one night and won't touch it the next.  I never get everyone on the same page at the same time.  I hate food waste.  Currently, we compost it.  Which is great.  It feeds the worms that create really nice mulch for the garden.  And then I grow more vegetables that nobody wants to eat.   Pigs.  Pigs will also eat that discarded food, and pigs turn food waste into bacon.   My whole family will eat bacon.  If the bacon was grown on discarded vegetables, and my family eats the bacon, it stands to reason that they are actually eating their vegetables after all, right?  Mom for the win!  Now, that I have a solution to my first-world problem

I have a squirming two-year-old on my lap.  She was screaming in her crib for the last ten minutes, and I ignored her because a) she should be asleep and b) I was trying to enjoy a kid free bowl of ice cream.  It didn't work.  It's hard to enjoy eating and listen to screaming at the same time, but I didn't share, so I feel like I kind of won.   The squirming-screaming two-year-old was a newborn when I started this blog.  Ross had just returned to work after taking paternity leave.  I was home alone fulltime with four kids and clearly must have been bored.  Kids demand so little, especially newborns.  Especially two.  My goal was to share some of our parenting adventures and misadventures and to have some adult conversation.  Even if it was only one sided and mostly in my head.      In two years a lot has happened, but very little has changed.  I am still home fulltime with the kids, and we are still misadventuring daily.   To that point, we found Carter chewing on a Vics Va