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

I've been told a lot lately by Sawyer that I just don't get "second grade humor."  He is correct.  He isn't all that funny.  At least not when he's trying to be.  Bodily functions and terrible jokes don't really tickle my sense of humor.   When neither Ross nor I laughed at his joke the other day, he said, "It's not funny.  I get it," and stalked out of the room.  Now that  was funny.  His jokes really are terrible though, and most of the time they don't make sense.  It's fine.  What he lacks in comedy he more than makes up for in confidence.   "I can cut your hair for you, Dad." "No." "Just listen, I know how to do it." "No." "You just use a comb and scissors.  That's how Viola did it in Hank the Cow Dog. " "Just because you read it in a book, doesn't mean you know how to do it.  And Hank the Cow Dog ?! No. Not a chance.  Not ever." "You just need to trust me....

 I read in the news this weekend that Norovirus was wreaking havoc across the country.  It gave me a name for the junk that just ran its course through our house.  Norovirus is an extremely contagious stomach bug that is relatively short duration, but when you have a family of six, short duration is a week of sleepless nights and discomfort.  It started on a Monday with our youngest, and then nothing happened Tuesday so we thought we had dodged a bullet.  Wednesday afternoon we were hit with round two.   Ross came home from work to find our oldest over the toilet.  "What are you doing in there, Buddy?" "Huuuughghhhrstsch!" "Calling Sasquatch, huh?" "Hoorruughstch!" "How's it working?  Seen him yet?" "Rahuuuheh." Ross laughed.  "Sorry, Buddy.  It's only funny because I know I'm next." The next night he was.   It's no fun being sick, but we did manage a movie marathon to the point that the kids were act...

 Carter deemed her nap unnecessary today.  Despite my best efforts to convince her otherwise, she would not stay in bed.  She also decided Emerson had slept long enough, and woke her up about halfway through the normal nap window.  Lord love her.   It's fine.  I was only trying to take a couple dozen quizzes, required by the state of Oregon, to prove I'm neither a moron nor the dregs of society, and am in fact fit to substitute in public schools.  (I passed, if you wondered.)  She didn't care if I was doing something valuable with my minute to myself - the boys were squirrel hunting - she just wanted to be up.  I suppose that's fair.  It was a beautiful day today.  I gave her a little scolding, during which Emerson took the opportunity to steal a doughnut off the counter.  Never a dull moment.   I let Carter go in order to interrogate Emerson.  Surprisingly, another doughnut went missing at this time.  ...

 I like to describe our house as very "lived in."  It sounds better than "dirty."  It is dirty.  And messy.  I clean all day long, but you'd never know.  My friend recently told me she hires a house cleaner.  It sounds dreamy, but it wouldn't work for us.  The cleaner would never be able to leave.  She'd never be done.  It's fine.  It's a phase.  Probably.   We were supposed to have guests for dinner the other week.  I know - it's a bold move inviting people over while we are in this stage of life.  Nonetheless, we did.  I was trying to get ahead of the mess while the kids were in bed and cleaned my floors the night before the dinner party.  The day of the dinner, everybody was sick so we had to postpone.   I decided I wasn't going to let a clean floor go to waste.  I was going to enjoy it for at least a weekend.  The challenge, I told myself, was simply to sweep things up after...

 I got into a bit of a battle with our eldest today.  He was being a little too big for his britches, and I was trying to show him that he still had some lessons to learn.  The tables turned on me, and I discovered that I'm going to have to work a little harder if I'm going to stay in the game.  Dang these smart kids.     It started innocently enough, as things typically do.  The boys and I decided to have a tea party and invited my mom and aunt to join us.  "Tea" isn't exactly on their radar for super cool boy things to do, but it was an excuse to practice some cooking skills and some social skills and some manner skills.  I gave them each the responsibility of picking out a snack to make for the party.  Fischer chose fudge.  Spoiler alert: it didn't turn out.  Sawyer chose chocolate bark with crushed candy cane on one batch and coconut flakes on another.   The morning of the tea party, Sawyer let me know he was...

  How to Train a Toddler By  Bobbi St. Clair Step 1: Wear gloves. Step 2: You can't. I thought I might write my own manuscript on childrearing since I've had a few tries at it now, but it turns out nobody wanted to publish my work.  Something about word limits and hope .  Their reasoning seemed a little closed minded to me.   We are sleep training our toddlers...again.  I thought we were done.   Turns out, they have their own ideas on the subject.  We had a good run... They don't stay in bed during naps, and I don't remember the last time they didn't yell for me in the middle of the night.  At night, unless they shout "fire!" or "I pooped!" we pretty muchly aren't getting up to check on them.  It seems like they are yelling less...I think.  So hopefully that means we are getting somewhere.   We are also navigating food issues.  They have, in the last week or so, quit eating at meal times.  But they want...