Key-Uhs

A few things. First, I am no longer spell checking my entries because the changes to Blogger are HORRIBLE and I can't spell check without losing my formatting. If you are familiar with Blogger and know how to alleviate my FRUSTRATION AND RAGE, please share. Second, summer is heeeeeeeeeere!!!!! We've broken out the picnic blanket and had outdoor brunches and barbecues. The picnic table is scrubbed clean and the kids spent a good twenty minutes today running around in the nude to celebrate no longer being screamed at that it's too cold to do so. We spent this week doing more of the usual. School, walking, timeouts, yelling, force feeding, playing outside, lying in the grass, screaming at Willie to get out from under foot. On Tuesday, I ventured out to Pennsylvania to "visit my mother" and by that I mean, to meet a friend and watch ALL of the Harry Potter movies. On Friday, we had a quiet Shabbat, opening with my brother calling me to wish me Shabbat Shalom. He's confused. The kids were in bed on time and all was well with the world. On Saturday, T decided what she wanted for mother's day and it was pictures of her kids. E has entirely rebuilt a townhouse mansion in the city, from the ground up for the last six years. It's for sale now and T is showing it quite frequently these days. It's a five floor, marbled beauty so we dressed everybody up on Saturday morning and spent a few hours taking pictures in every room of the house. It was so fun. We got a nice Victorian formal in front of a fireplace and then the kids in the fireplace, on the kitchen counters, crawling up the stairs, jumping on the roof, playing in a giant empty bathtub. If you have access to any mansions, they are great scenery for taking pictures. After that, since it was so gorgeous out and since we like when Monkey doesn't get a nap and screams at us all day, we went to Central Park and ran around for a bit. We went to lunch and ran around outside the restaurant too. The restaurant had a tiny little garden outside so after we ate, while the grown ups were finishing our wine, we herded the monsters out there to run them around a bit. They were tossing rocks and talking with their friends who we met up with there, when some lady in an apartment above the restaurant opened her window and threatened to call the police if they didn't cease their noise. Then she looked at E, who was wearing a white button down shirt and holding a plate of food so I suppose she thought he worked there and she was reminding him that the establishment wasn't licensed to serve food outside. I burst out laughing, waved at her and headed inside with the kids. E laughed and said, "Welcome to New York." Monkey cried for the first twenty minutes of the ride home at bedtime. With no nap, he had fared pretty well throughout the day, but when he is done, he's done. The only way to distract him from his sleep-deprived distress is to question him and his new fallback, dyslexic reply is "key-uhs" (because), which he yelled through tears every time we spoke to him. When finally he was calm, the other two passed out and he continued to sing and moan and wiggle until we got home. I took him upstairs and tossed him into bed and then spent a good fifteen minutes prying out three splinters R had acquired in Central Park. Only two came out and she screamed bloody murder the whole time. When I was partially deaf, I turned her over to her mother, and went to retrieve a sleeping J from the car. He was stuck in his seat, because he destroyed the release lever that lowers the seat in front of his. He was aslo dead asleep. I was stuck getting him key-uhs T still can't move and climb real well, and key-uhs E was vomitting up his dinner key-uhs, as T puts it, "he is lactose intolerant and doesn't want to admit it." I somehow dug him out of there and deposited him in his bed. Mother's day was all about brunch. I had my alone morning time and then we hurried the kids out the door after nine to stuff our faces at T's mom's house. When we were finished there, we headed over to E's sister's house to stuff our faces again. It felt just like home. When the kids were tired and grumpy, we sent them with Hot Doctor and his sisters to go get ice cream and we all snuck home to nap. We were just sitting down when Monkey came home screaming. I don't know what he was really saying but all I heard was, "YOU JERKS DON'T GIVE ME A NAP TWO DAYS IN A ROW! YOU PUT ME TO BED LATE AND DEPRIVE ME OF MY NAP AND LET ME RUN AROUND IN THE HOT SUN ALL DAY AND YOU EXPECT ME TO BEHAVE LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING?" I gave him a cucumber and ran away for a while. T's mom had sent us home with dinner so at some point we fed it to them and hustled them off to bed on time. This evening has been glorious. I think I'll stay up watching movies all night just key-uhs.