Parenting Fails and 2013 Christmas Pictures

Christmas 2013 – the first year spent as a family of 5.  More on that later – first, the parenting fails. 

We all have those less than stellar parenting moments.  You know it.  Here we go:

FUN FACT 1 – My two three year old bundles of energy & joy get up early no matter what day of the week it is, no matter what time they go to bed. 

FUN FACT 2 – I am resisting (okay, kicking and screaming) acknowledging that my lazy Saturday mornings are o-v-e-r. 

I am an early riser, but the little (but surprisingly loud) voice bellowing in my ear at 5:45 informing me “no dark outside” is a pretty painful entry in to the day, especially on a Saturday where I didn’t adhere to my 10 PM bedtime. 

FUN FACT 3 - It doesn’t actually matter if it is dark outside or not.  (If they are awake, it is “no dark outside” in their little minds.  It was once suggested to me at 3 AM in the middle of winter that is was “no dark”.  I called BS on that one and carted someone’s little hiney back to bed.) 

We have a playroom of sorts in our spare room - a guest room/storage area where toys have migrated since we’ve had the boys.  We have a TV where the boys can watch movies.  We’ve settled in to a Saturday routine where the boys will wake us up and one of us will take them to the potty.  Sometimes it’s me…sometimes I pretend I’m asleep and wait for my husband to get up.  You know you’ve done it.  After this, the boys will usually watch cartoons for about an hour.  This gives us a chance to get up and get breakfast.  This allows me to ease gently in to the day and drink my coffee in bed without two little boys climbing all over me.

My entire household was sick over the Christmas holidays.  I was the "illest of them all".  Really sick.  Dirty hair sick.  Wearing sweat pants in public sick.  On December 26th, I did allow myself a little bit of extra snooze time, even though my inner voice of reason told me this was a very bad idea.  Pneumonia or not. 

When I got up to go to the bathroom, I was treated with the site of a toilet bowl full of, say…two or three full rolls of TP.  The damn thing was gurgling.  My husband always tells me to leave the lid down and that despite my periodic lectures about playing in the potty, the bathroom is a land of inviting bowls of water for little boys.  I climbed back in to bed and muttered a brief description of what I’d found in the bathroom to my dear hubby, who had also had the misfortune of indulging in some extra snooze time.  “It’s gurgling.  You deal with it,” said I as my head hit the pillow.

God love that man, he got up without too much grumbling and went off to save the day.  When a little more yelling than I’d anticipated came from the playroom, I went to investigate.  My budding artists had colored almost everything in the room – the walls, their table and chair set, their train table, the television set, themselves.  The creative markings around their belly buttons and on their feet and legs resembled some sort of tribal tattoos.  What I found most impressive (later, after I’d calmed down) is that they’d taken off their socks and pajama pants to decorate themselves then gotten dressed again. 

Did I mention this was permanent marker?  Of course I don’t let my kids color unsupervised and I store the crayons and markers in a spot where the kids can’t get at them.  However, there was a mug of pens and markers on top of an old file cabinet that was shoved in the corner of the playroom.  They’ve never touched this before and other than a random “I should move that” thought, I’d forgotten it was there.  Parenting fail.

Thankfully, Mr. Clean Magic Erasers work well and thankfully, we keep a supply on hand.  While my dear hubby was scrubbing the walls, I took the future tattoo artists down for breakfast.  Their little heads were hanging and they had their oh-so-contrite faces on, so I decided to forego the cold cereal and make them bacon and eggs.  I sent them off to the living room to play with some of their new toys while I whipped up the most important meal of the day.  Another parenting fail.  I blame the cold medicine.

When I went to round them up to eat, I found the box of tissues that had been keeping me company over the holidays – empty.  My living room was decorated with many, many tissues.  I guess it was their day for paper products. 

Obviously, the morning snooze was a really bad idea.  Yes, I felt icky but hubby and I should have flipped for it or I should have realized that mom responsibility overrides the Christmas Crud.  We spent our Boxing Day morning elbow deep in Magic Eraser and plungers.  No harm and no permanent damage done, but this will definitely go in the archives stamped “Epic Parenting Fail.”

Does this take me out of the running for “Mom of the Year 2013”?  So close! 

And now for the Christmas pictures, since the rest of our holiday season was incident-free. Unfortunately, I did not get pictures of any of the above-mentioned damages. 

 

Kyle at the CACH (Children Adopted from China) Christmas Party.  This was at the end of November and a nice way to kick off our holiday season (even if we were celebrating Christmas before Thanksgiving). 

Me and the kids after the tree lighting on base.  Kyle was like "who is this guy" and Zack was clearly wanting no part of this Santa thing.  

Christmas Day Fun!

 This makes our tree look so skimpy!

Neighbors brought us scones right before Christmas - Kyle LOVES them!

Making Reindeer Dust

And the stockings were hung...

Zack:  I have better things to do. 

This snowman thing was in the lobby of the Enlisted Club.  Since when does Frosty lie down and assume such a coy position?  Huh?

 Laura and Zack at the Christmas tree lot.  There was a dog nearby, so naturally, Kyle was crying and refused to be in the picture. 

And, of course, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a trip to the Gryffindor Common Room... 

This nice dog carried our tree to our car, hence the reason for so many tears from Kyle on Christmas tree day.

Christmas feast at Hogwarts...this is where we had our Christmas dinner, of course.  Just kidding! 

 Laura and I after the Jingle Bell Run.  It's the vest - I swear I'm not this fluffy!

Making Reindeer Dust!

Laura and I at Lee's squadron party. 

 The boys got a kitchen for Christmas.  They LOVE it.  They make me "dinner" about 6 times each day!

Santa was good!

 A Kindle!  Excited she is getting in to reading!

One of Zack's many faces... 

I'm so glad Laura likes to bake!

Getting ready to tie the tree to the roof!

All dressed up!

Elfaliscious

The elf on the shelf has been all over the social networking sites this holiday season.  No doubt, someone on your friends list is entertaining you (or boring you) with daily elf antics.  You’ve probably seen posts or tweets with a more derisive tone that bash “those elf people”.  Maybe you’ve seen some the “naughty elf” pictures that are circulating.  This is my favorite - boom suckas, indeed.  Indeed.  

 

We are one of “those families”.  Our elf is Sam and yes, December nighttime conversations focus on where to position Sam for the kids to find in the morning.  Although…I’ll admit to having several “oh $h!t, I forgot to move the elf” moments when I wake up and have to scramble to throw Sam in a new location before the kids wake up and notice that he’s in the same spot.  Parenting fail narrowly escaped. 

 Getting ready for a soak in the tub...

Just hanging around...

For those not familiar with the elf, he’s one of Santa’s agents, as all elves are.  The little (some say creepy looking) doll “watches” the children during the day and flies to the North Pole each night to report on their “naughty or nice” rating du jour.  This is the logic behind him landing in different places when he returns to home.  The elf must not be touched by human paws because he will “lose his magic”.  He will fly back to the North Pole on Christmas Eve, to return the following Christmas.  There you have it, although I think Sam may have stayed at our house a couple of extra days last year.  Who can blame him?  We are pretty cool people and I can totally see not wanting to go back to the North Pole in December - brrr.

I’m old school.  I was raised on “be good for goodness sake” and a healthy fear of a lump of coal in my stocking if I didn’t meet Santa’s threshold of goodness.  For the truly bad children, there were switches.  I totally ate this notion up when I was a kid.  I’m learning that there are an alarming number of people out there that believe it is damaging to a child’s psyche to be pressured in to maintaining good behavior so that Santa will bring presents on Christmas morning.  There are those elf naysayers who think it’s creepy…unhealthy, even…to give kids the idea that a little elf is watching them and reporting their actions to Santa.  To this I say “Bah Humbug” and “overthink much”?  It’s Christmas, people.  A little bit of carrot dangling to encourage good behavior is part of the magic of the season.  Anyway, we elf unashamed and are having a blast with it. 

My boys are very young, and thus, easily entertained.  All I have to do is put Sam in a different spot in the house and they ooh and ahh over the magic of it all.  I have been out on Pintrest and YouTube to get ideas on different things to do with the elf, but honestly, these are ideas that are probably best suited to the older child who can appreciate the cleverness and/or mommies and daddies with a LOT of spare time on their hands and/or a need to out-elf their friends.  There’s always somebody like that.  You know what I mean. 

Here are some elf ideas that I think are particularly noteworthy and/or alarming:

“Have the elf write a message for the child in lipstick on the mirror.”  Anyone else find this slightly unsettling?  Besides that, is the elf going to whip out a tiny bottle of Windex and a miniature roll of paper towels and clean that crap up?  I don’t think so. 

“Switch out closet clothes (i.e. take chunk of child’s clothes and switch with chunk of sibling or parents clothes) or switch out dresser drawer clothes”. Yes.  Because I am that person with enough spare time to rearrange our closets and drawers for no good reason.  Twice. 

“Create a mask and cape out of paper or cloth – Super Elf!  Perhaps he can be hanging from the ceiling by fishing line.”  In spite of my initial response of “ain’t nobody got time for that” and my lack of craftiness, I actually like this one.  I think I will keep this in the files for when the boys are older and can appreciate the notion of “Super Elf” just a little more. 

“Hang a child’s unmentionables on the Christmas tree.”  Sure…why not?  We have good insurance.  Paying for therapy on down the line won’t be a financial hardship.  I can totally see one of my kids lying on a couch in a shrink’s office.  The question “tell me about your mother” will bring an anguished “well it all started when she hung my BVDs on the Christmas tree for all to see…”

“Type/write a letter listing all of the wonderful qualities the elf has observed in your child.”  Awe.  Very warm and fuzzy, touchy-feely.  I might save this one for later…right now the letter might read something like “I saw you hit your brother over the head with an all-metal Tonka dump truck but you did a great job cleaning up your toys after your mom told you to do it seventeen times.  Love, Sam.” 

“Turn all of the kitchen chairs backwards.”  Hello?  Poltergeist flashbacks, anyone? 

“Play cards”.  Sam actually did this last year.  He and several teddy bears were caught on camera playing spades with chocolate coins.  It was only that one time, so I don’t think Gambler’s Anonymous is in the cards for our elf. 

“Have the elf hang out in child’s bedroom while sleeping; take pictures.”  While this sounded creepy on the surface, we actually did this.  We took pictures of the boys after they’d gone to sleep, printed them and staged them downstairs with Sam and the boys’ toy camera.  Yeah…it was a slow night in the Robbins household.  The boys loved it and carried their pictures around for the entire morning.

And so on.  There are all kinds of crazy elf ideas out there – from the very simple to the ridiculously time-consuming (building a “family fort” out of ice in the front yard).   I like the idea of forming new Christmas traditions that my family can enjoy year-to-year.  Some of the things that I do around holiday time are things that my family did when I was growing up, so who knows – maybe my grandchildren will have their own elves someday.  I like that thought. 

So, to all of you anti-elf naysayers, the Robbins family will stand tall and be proudly elf-a-liscious.  Merry Christmas to all…and elf on. 

 

Six Eggs

I was recently inspired by a blog post written by my friend and foster-in-law, Kristin.  The post was about feeding a family of 8 on a budget.  She took pictures of her family meals for a month and gave some very awesome frugal living tips.  I have done something similar. 

You can read her post by clicking this link:
 http://tryingtocontrolthechaos.blogspot.co.uk/

If you are curious about what a foster-in-law is and why I have one you can click the link below.  Pretty awesome.   
http://jillr-addingbranchestoourfamilytree.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/a-thread-from-past-link-to-future.html

My cooking skills have been challenged lately.  In the space of about a year, I have gone from feeding two people to feeding five.  A pan of hamburger helper no longer provides two dinners and leftovers for someone’s lunchbox.  Nowadays, a pan of hamburger helper will feed all of us only if I’ve made a couple of really substantial side dishes.  If  no one is super hungry.  And forget leftovers. They are a rarity now.  It happens occasionally, when I make stuff that the boys don't really like on the nights when Laura is at school.  But it is not our normal. 

A “family sized” can of Campbell’s tomato soup might feed all of us for lunch if no one is super hungry.  The grilled cheese sammies that go with the soup will use up half the loaf of bread.  We’re going through 2+ gallons of milk a week, when two years ago, we’d often throw our half gallon container out because we didn’t drink it all before it went sour.  The other morning at breakfast, I scrambled six eggs with some turkey sausage and cheese.  Kyle, served first, was asking for more before I had a chance to put eggs on everyone’s plates.  Lee said “Six eggs?  What were you thinking?”  Not much more than a year ago, four eggs would have been just enough.  Nowadays, I might as well cook the whole dozen and usually do. 

So…I have done my month of meals, more or less.  I have skipped a few pictures and I haven’t taken pictures of what the kids ate on nights that Lee and I went out.  I do like to cook but anything fancy has completely gone out the window.  Our dinners are basic, nutritious and most importantly, quick.  We don’t do organic, gluten free, fat free, low carb or anything like that.  For the most part, what I put on the table each night is pretty similar to what I grew up on.  I try to keep things balanced and round it out with a salad or some sort of vegetable.  We don’t do a lot of junk food and keep everyone active, so this works for us.  I put pics up and some brief descriptions of what we ate, and I put tips at the end of the post. 

Here are some of my pictures frm our November meals.  Since we had Thanksgiving this month, we ate very light leading up to Turkey Thursday and nothing but leftovers for the rest of the month, so our pictures are a little sparse. Enjoy - and if you enjoy reading this, I would love to put together another post about your favorite meals.  Cheers, people.   

Turkey sausage, canned carrots and crockpot cooked pintos.  Turkey sausage is one of my "I'm in a hurry and I don't have a meat" mainstays.  As you can see, meat is not the star of the plate. 

 

Cowboy beans (canned pork & beans with spices, BBQ sauce and ground lean beef), leftover broccoli rice casserole and cornbread. 

Buffalo chicken, black beans & rice (boxed) and salad veggies

Shamelessly rocking the lack of green.  Leftover sloppy joes, meatloaf, pintos and fries. Sloppy joes and fries were a meal not pictured.   

 No explanation needed on this one.  The meatballs and garlic bread were frozen and the sauce was from a jar.  We did have a salad with this.  We had spaghetti one other time in November with ground Italian sausage. 

Must be in my genes...I LOVE beans and cornbread.  It is absolutely one of my favorite meals.  For the record, I do not serve and have never knowingly eaten squirrel gravy.  

Meatloaf (the real deal), canned corn and boxed scalloped potatoes.  

Cheeseburgers & broccoli rice casserole.  I buy the pre-shaped patties. 

These are my boys' plates.  We had a big green salad with this  but my littles will not eat lettuce, so I give them salad veggies with dip. 

Crockpot BBQ chicken, canned green beans and REAL mac & cheese

Campbell's chicken noodle soup and one of my wraps done up in the grill pan.  Voila!  Paninnis! 

One of my many "fake Chinese" specialties.  This is Ramen and scrambled eggs. 

Hamburger goulash and canned green beans

 

 

Here are some of my tips:

Like Kristin says, we rarely go out to eat as a family.  Lee and I will do “date night” as often as we can and there are the times when we’ll catch a meal out on the fly (usually in conjunction with a medical appointment or something like that) but for the most part, we eat our family meals at home.  The littles are pretty well behaved if taken to a sit down restaurant, but meals out are expensive here and we really don't "do" fast food.  To pay $15 for a plate of food when I have to fuss with restaurant high chairs and trying to keep my boys entertained so they don’t disturb other diners…just not worth it in my book.  I’d rather do tuna noodle casserole at my own kitchen table and save the fancier, more expensive stuff for “adult night” when I can fully enjoy and appreciate a meal out. 

Beans are your friend.  Beans are nutritious, cheap and versatile.  Pinto beans with ham served with cornbread or spicy black beans over rice make a good low meat/no meat meal, and they are great winter comfort food.  I make a pot of beans about twice a month, usually on a weekend day where they can simmer on the stove at a low temp.  I’ll usually freeze half and typically, beans are the main course versus a side.  I am not a vegetarian and I love a good steak, but I do like low-meat meals most of the time.  My meat portion is usually very small in comparison the other things on my plate. 

Tuna Noodle Casserole-my tuna casserole picture got lost, but I make one roughly every other month.  I make this with whatever is on hand…I don’t follow a particular recipe.  The one we had in November was  elbow macaroni, a large can of tuna, a can of mushroom soup, a small can of mushrooms and some Progresso breadcrumbs.  I used onion powder and Pampered Chef Applewood Rub to season it up a little bit.  Pasta and canned meat casseroles are a mainstay for us because they are quick and everyone likes them.  If I really want to save time and know what I'm doing the night before, I will sometimes pre boil my noodles and put my cans on the counter the night before, so that when I get home from work, I can just slap everything together and throw it in the oven.  Yes...I totally look like a Ninja when I'm doing this. 

Frozen Pizza-When we lived in the USA, Papa Johns was a great (albeit expensive) fallback for those "OMG we have nothing for dinner/I don't want to cook" nights.  Online ordering made pizza delivery an all-too-tempting option.  We don't have the same pizza delivery options here.  The base has a good pizza place but it's pretty expensive and the extra stop to pick it up after a long day at work when I'm rushing to pick up kids usually makes it unattractive...I know that might be a lazy way to look at it, but I usually don't want to stop.  We've started keeping a couple of premium quality frozen pizzas (I like DiGiorno) on hand for those "I have nothing to make" nights.  The boys really like pizza, so we're about past the point where one will feed all of us.  One frozen pizza is usually a pretty light meal for us, unless I make other stuff to go with it. 

Meatloaf - I probably do meatloaf about every 3-4 months.  As with the tuna casserole, I sort of throw it together with what I have on hand.  This one was hamburger, egg, breadcrumbs, onion & garlic powders, canned tomatoes, BBQ sauce and A1.  I mix this up and put it in the loaf pans the night before and I don't have this on a night where I'm working late or when Laura is at school since it takes awhile to cook. This is also one of my standby potluck dishes.  It's easy and people like it. 

About convenience foods - I use a lot of them.  The alternatives to doing that are to leave work at 3:30 each day or to eat dinner after 7:00.  My boss probably wouldn’t be cool with the first option and the boys go to bed at 8:00, so I do what I gotta do.  Canned and frozen veggies, boxed potatoes, frozen meatballs, etc.  I do prefer fresh and I do enjoy cooking, but on the weeknights, I just don't have time.  I'd rather put together something balanced and have us all sit down together and have a family meal with relative ease than deal with the extra stress of chopping and dicing.  

About prep work - I really try to plan things out in advance.  I shoot for planning the meals for the week over the weekend, but I like to have at least a couple of days at a time planned out.  I try to do as much prep work the night before as I can - browning or marinating meat, boiling noodles, chopping any fresh ingredients that I am using - but honestly, prep work means I am usually setting cans and pans out on the counter the night before.  I am busy at work, I don't like to sacrifice a nice dinner, and I like to spend a bit of time with my whole family between walking in the door and putting my littles to bed. 

About Fake Chinese - I have another planned post about my adventures in Chinese cooking, but...I gotta say, I have totally mastered what I call "Fake Chinese".  My boys love Ramen and I love Ramen too...it is super cheap and super fast.  But...it is salty and full of calories.  I have taken to boiling dehydrated noodles (I try to use the Chinese noodles but I use plain ole spaghetti in a pinch) with low sodium chicken broth and a little bit of soy sauce and seasoning.  I will add all kinds of things to their noodle bowls - leftover meat and veggies that I need to use up or scrambled eggs.  My boys love noodles for breakfast, but the rest of us like eggs, toast, pancakes and oatmeal first thing in the AM. I will often whip up ramen for the two of them while the rest of us are having more traditional Western breakfast - a package will satisfy both of them if we add some eggs and give them some fruit and/or yogurt (these little dudes EAT).  Rice mixed with Chinese Five Spice and meat or eggs and veggies is a quick crowd pleaser, as are the Ling Ling frozen dumplings (which, in my opinion, are nearly as good as the ones in China).  We steam them, pan fry them or boil them in soup.  Fast and easy.  When our boys joined our family they were NOT used to eating Western food, so the "fake Chinese" and the more authentic Chinese things I make for them seem to be comfort food for them in the way that Mac & Cheese, apple pie, and pot roast may be for some of us.   

Wraps-I make up wraps or burritos in large batches when I have the time.  This month, I did scrambled egg with peppers, ham & cheese and bean & cheese.  These freeze well and can be thawed/nuked for a quick meal.  They are a good side dish with soup or a salad for a light meal. There are some more nutritious options out there for tortillas/wraps, such as gluten free, whole grain, etc.  I usually use the plain old Mission brand…I like the taste and honestly, as long as you don’t eat a ton of tortillas, it isn’t that bad for you. 

Goulash- I am a big pan of the one-skillet meal.  I usually make my goulash with macaroni, hamburger, tinned tomatoes and mushrooms and season with garlic, onion and worse-ter-shire sauce.  Yeah…I refuse to learn to spell that word.  I did not have mushrooms or onions this time – I used onion powder and zipped it up with Manwich sauce.  It wasn’t bad. 

The Crockpot-I have two crockpots an I use them a lot.  I will sometimes use them for beans, but this is not my preferred bean-making method.  My main weeknight use for the crockpot is "Chicken a la Jill" - whatever that happens to be.  Usually some sort of frozen chicken and whatever I have on hand/feel like throwing in.  Typically, that is some variety of "cream of whatever" soup or bottle barbeque sauce.  I experiment with different McCormick seasoning packets or different spices from my pantry.  I usually use frozen boneless, skinless thighs that come in the bag in the freezer section. 

So...six eggs for breakfast doesn't quite cut it for us nowadays.  We are still figuring it all out.  Having a blast. 

 

 

 

A conversation with Doodlebug

Last night, I was poking through the fridge and saw my mostly empty tub of Country Crock.  I had just been to the grocery store and had, of course, forgotten to buy one of the things I’d actually gone in to buy.  Doodlebug was finishing his dinner.  DAWDLEbug might be more apt...he is a pokey eater. 

Me:  Crap, I forgot to buy the butter.  What am I going to do?

DB:  You go to the store and buy more (looking at me like…well, duh, mom.)

Me:  (both taken by the length and clarity of the sentence and amused at his matter of fact answer) Why don’t you go to the store and get butter, Zack?

DB:  You do it mommy, I can’t do it.

Me:  Why can’t you do it, honeybun?

DB:  Because I said so.(He hears this ALOT).

I thought the exchange was funny and frankly, I was impressed by how far he’s come with language.  When Hubs came back in to the kitchen, we did a little instant replay.  Doodlebug knew I was putting him in "show pony mode" and gave me an indulgent little grin as if to say, “whatever, mom.  I’ll play along”. 

When I asked “why can’t you go to the store honeybun?” his answer was this:

“Because I said so.” And, after a reproachful little pause...“Two times, now”. 

Doodlebug is three years and five months old.  He d has been home from China for 15 months (where he lived until he was 26 months hearing not a lick of English).  He is a smart boy, to be sure, but the resiliency and adaptability of these kids is something I am continually in awe of.  The strides he and Peanut have both made in their development in such a short span of time is something that never stops amazing me.  Of course, it could be that my kids are just really that smart. 

Off to buy the butter.