Noise and such.

What was that noise coming down through two floors at six in the morning?

Why, it was baby Monkey! Screaming for someone to let him out of bed.

We need to teach that kid how to read a clock.

I normally don't hear him, but after a string of particularly vivid and disruptive nightmares I woke up for the third time around that time and listened through intermittent dozing until it was time to get out of bed.

Today's theme was ill-timed visits from as many people as possible.

Mom E showed up fifteen minutes before Monkey's lunch time and had to be ushered out the door again. But before she left, she eyed the leftover chicken pot pie I had made the other night, tried a piece and then told me everything that was wrong with it and suggested I stop feeding the children bread.

She tells me that all the time; how they don't need to eat bread or carbs. Really?!

She's really starting to get to me.

When she had finally gone, I put him to bed and got some housework done. I picked up R at the bus as usual and she got picked up for Hebrew school a bit later.

When T came home to drop off J, he had brought a friend along and I was shoulder deep in four loads of laundry. This particular little visitor is very well behaved but he's MESSY and he always manages to poop while he's here.

I don't mind too much, especially because he calls it the Spanish word for pooh, which is fun for me because I have flash backs to some kids I watched years ago.

But like I said, literally suffocating in the back up of responsibilities from serious slacking off this weekend.

He went home around 4, after surviving several attacks of the monster baby.

T brought R home, along with the ingredients for dinner and I zipped around the kitchen getting it put together and feeding the rascals. We were about five minutes into dinner when Grandma dropped by and briefly upset everything.

Fortunately for me, she is much better with the kids and she told them she would leave if they didn't keep eating and she even joined us, so they settled back down and ate.

However, R let it slip to Grandma that my birthday is on Wednesday, something I told the kids when they asked me point blank when my birthday was, but had successfully kept from the adults up to that point.

She immediately asked me what my clothing size was. So nice, but so unnecessary.

We got through a bath and dressing for bed before Daddy came home and R continued spilling the beans about my birthday. So much for discretion.

I'm not complaining; I love presents. I just don't like people feeling like they have to get me something. AND I really don't like the fact that I am still aging against my will. What is up with that?!

As I am finishing this post, word is being spread in the living room that it's my birthday and E and T just yelled through the quiet, sleeping house that we're going out to dinner to celebrate on Thursday.

E added that I have the same birthday as his mother and offered to send the pair of us on a cruise.

Oi vey.

"Ok." I called back. "But she might not come back."

So dinner is on.

They rock.