Naysayers gonna naysay.

Today, T's sister threw a Halloween party.

She has been on the fence about it for a couple of weeks because some of the religious families around here are offended by it. But in the end, fun won out and she had the party. Last night, I forced the kids into making decisions about their costumes.

Monkey still wanted to be a kitty, which is good, because it's simple. R decided to be a witch, because she knows of my fondness for them. J opted to be a robot.

But he almost didn't get a costume at all.

This week, the contractors have made some progress. And then yesterday they weren't here at all. We had a day of peace and quiet.

I got one strange phone call for T at the house, and they didn't say who they were or anything, but they said they would call her cell. I wondered about it, but only briefly before I went back to being happy about my quiet, restful day.

We would be eating Shabbat dinner at T's mom's, who had just returned home from a week in Israel. She and T's father went without me even though I told them I wanted to come. So mean.

Anyway, since we would be eating there for a late dinner, I made some pasta for a snack and the kids and I sat around the kitchen table in the foyer and talked about our days. When I asked who had the best one, as usual, they all yelled to have the first turn speaking, and I let Monkey because unless he goes first, he just repeats what everyone else says or yells, "To the river!"

So, he rambled incoherently about a song or something and then it was J's turn.

"I got to go to the office today!" He exclaimed this with a big smile on his face.

"What?"

"I went to the office today. Coach B took me."

"J, going to the office is bad. That means you were doing something naughty. What did you do?"

"I don't know."

"Well, going to the office is not a good thing. It's very bad."

"It was cool."

Oh boy.

T got home a couple hours later and explained the phone call and J's confusion.

He had been spitting and saying bad words and standing and not listening on the bus on the way to school that morning and Coach B had been the one waiting at the school to take him to the office. He is not being allowed back on the bus.

So, basically he ruined our lives forever.

On the way to Shabbat dinner, the parents pried and got a few more details out of him. He still thought he was sooooo funny. He always does, and I should add in here, that when he got home from school he had been so bad I had put him to bed. He thought that was funny right up until I left the room and he had to go to sleep.

So, today rolled around and T told him he would get no costume for the party as punishment.

He cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and then she said, if she changed his punishment it would be something longer. He agreed.

He has been banned from the iPad and iPhones for a week, and I know for a fact that he is going to ask for it and then cry and freak out, but today when making that deal he was ok with it. He got his robot costume and we headed off to the party.

I looked fantastic.

So did T's mom, who was Queen Elizabeth, and a few other people. There was a family of Wizard of Oz characters. T's dad showed up as a monster but he changed when one of the babies started to cry.

Everybody was having a good time and the kids were all hyped up on candy and occupied, so I sat in on some conversations with T and the other moms. They were hiding in a corner talking about how some people were offended by Halloween.

When I said I had seen that in my church to, two Jewish heads looked at me in surprise.

"Isn't it a Christian holiday?"

"No," T said and I beamed because I have taught her so well. "It's a pagan holiday."

"But we don't worship the devil or anything." Another mom said. "So, why can't the kids dress up and be silly?"

Exactly.

Why can't they?

I know a lot of people who struggle with this holiday because of its roots, but allow me to just point out that all of our Christian holidays were pagan holidays first. Christmas was the winter solstice. The Christians changed it to show the pagans what was up. The same for Easter, which was the spring solstice. Technically, Thanksgiving was a pilgrim holiday, so that has the closest thing to Christian roots out of any of them, but it was still not started by the church or in a church or anything. It's more patriotic than anything.

So, what is wrong with taking Halloween, too?

Valentine's day was a massacre, for crying out loud. And we've turned that into romance. Don't ask me how. Americans are crafty.

So, to show all the naysayers what was what, T's sister threw her party and the kids danced and I looked fantastic and everybody had a grand old time.

So, here's to neutralizing Halloween.

Then, after the fun was over, we had to come back here to the money pit.

Today, the floor people tore out the kitchen tile and deposited five million tons of black dust and debris in my room, which was ready this time. The whole house was covered in dust, so we split the work three ways.

First, we left the two big kids at T's sister's.

Then, each female took one of the remaining two children and put them to bed while E stood around whining about being hungry.

Next, T asked E to watch the baby, who hadn't stayed asleep, while she wiped surfaces and I wiped floors. He obliged by putting the baby down and going into the bathroom for ten minutes. Baby D started to cry and T had to go tend to him.

E then stood around thinking while I mopped. T returned and we finished up. She gave him a little attitude for his method of help and he sighed. When she went upstairs to get dressed to go out, he shook his head.

"This is why people get divorced after they redo their houses."

I laughed.

"You need to work through it. Your homework tonight is to rewatch The Money Pit. Clearly, it's not fresh enough in your mind."

And then for my homework, I set up shop on my couch and watched a scary movie and did this.

Today was long.

News and such.

I'm doing homework with R. She's in kindergarten. My mind is a little bit blown, not only that she has homework, but by the amount of it.

I think it stands to reason that if my generation and the ones previous did not have homework in kindergarten, and that the generations are getting progressively dumber (they are) that this homework overload has got to be part of the problem.

I'm against homework at any level, aside from studying and paper writing. But kindergarten? Really?

She's five and she's already in school until 3 o'clock.

I find this to be mindbogglingly annoying.

Anyway, today's bout of renovation went well. So did yesterday's.

The kitchen looks twice as large with that one dividing wall missing. And today they put plywood down on the floor where there is no tile, so the rain of dust and debris in my room should ease up. The walls and ceiling are primed and look ready to go.

Old fridge is gone. A plumber came to stop the water line for an ice maker that continued to drip after the fridge was out and we couldn't find a valve to stop it. Much was accomplished.

And then E thought it would be convenient to have this crew take a look at a rotting support beam for the second floor porch. It turned out that not only was that one pole rotten, but the entire right side of the porch was on the verge of collapsing.

That needed some attention, so while we set up our coolers in the living room and stuffed all the cheese into the mini fridge in the basement, I took several vitamin C's to combat the cold the kids gave me and drank my body weight in tea and ginger, the crew got to work replacing beams outside.

They ran long, so we cooked some stuff from the freezer in the Foreman grill on a chair in the foyer and talked about our days.

So much has come up that E and T didn't plan for, but it's coming along nicely.

T missed a doctor's appointment for the baby yesterday in all the chaos and forgot to tell me the most wonderful news I have ever heard.

Because of my obsession with aiding Africa, all the kids have an obsession with it too. They talk about Africa and the children there who need help to go to school and get vaccines. They pretend they are going to Africa when they play games. They ask me when I am going again and if they can come. They want to send all their old clothes to African children who are smaller than them and can still wear all their favorite pieces.

So, T has started an African aid program at the school here.

I don't know what it entails yet; I'm not sure T does either. But YAY.

I love seeing things like that happen, and I love that my presence here is being used. God is amazing.

And wise.

Because every time I start to get restless about being here so long, He does something awesome like that to make me stay.

I'm watching Psych right now.

So, please, don't hold me responsible for any incoherent passages in this post.

It has been a long few days.

This week, our small kitchen modifications escalated into a complete kitchen makeover.

The horrible fridge being horrible is what sparked the whole thing. This fridge was purchased because it was all that fit in the nook. Now that it has been exposed as horrible, and GE has agreed to buy it back, E and T are ordering a new one. I may have told you this.

And I know I told you about our flaming dishwasher.

So, the new dishwasher is an inch taller than the current space, which will require cutting into the counter top or ripping out the 30+ year old tile beneath. So, while we were hemming and hawing about what to do about that, the construction team went ahead and ripped out the wall they were told to and it was discovered that there was no tile under the cabinet that had been against that one.

There was tile underneath the smaller cabinet they removed, but somewhere in that process they put a HUGE gouge in the counter top.

Then, E and T realized that our forty million year old stove will eventually need replacing, and the trend with these old appliances is that they are smaller than everything being made right now, which is weird, because all those commercials call them slim and sleek and compact and yet they LIIIIIIEEEEE.

Anyway, the good news is, our three to five day project turned two week project is now probably going to be a three week to one month project.

We're getting a new floor, because the team went ahead and destroyed this one. The fridge is being picked up next week, but the new one isn't coming until the construction is done, so we are going refrigerator-less for a while. A new stove is being picked out, new floors will come and yes, next week, my new dishwasher.

None of this really bothers me, except during working hours when the construction makes a lot of dust and we have to flee. But even that is kind of fun. There's nothing to clean, because it's all going to get covered in dust again in ten minutes anyway.

There's a lot of chaos and not a lot of food, but that's all well and good.

The roughest part of my week has been getting a handle on my horrible emotions. I usually keep them turned off, but sometimes things happen that make them malfunction and there's nothing I can do about it. I stayed home from Shabbat dinner last night to collect myself.

Today was better, and then after E talked us into not going out to dinner, the three adults ended up in the ripped up kitchen, eating all the food left in the fridge and drinking all the wine, whether it was in the fridge or not, and it was immensely therapeutic to toast them and laugh with them and just relax tonight.

Tomorrow, I get to go to church for the best kind of therapy. I can't wait.

Now I know.

I've been watching Psych for two days straight and I am so tempted to just write up all my favorite parts right here, but I'd rather finish writing this and get back to watching Psych.

We're on day two of construction, which explains why I have so much TV time. Without my kitchen to clean and cook in all day, I have had to find other ways to fill my time. Although, normally even while I'm in the kitchen I am watching something on my little phone.

But today and yesterday I had to watch TV on my phone while hanging out with the baby in the rooms that weren't being affected by all the dust construction creates. We had some good times. He showed off a couple of new moves, like pulling himself up from any position into any other position. He tries to stand, which is hilarious, because he can't. But he has mastered sitting up and crawling, which is awesome because he doesn't get stuck in the corner of the play pen anymore.

While I was watching Psych today, I reorganized R and J's closet with the Space Saver bags I finally talked T into getting. She found a huge set at Costco after I bragged about how wonderful mine were for a while.

I packed two huge shelves worth of too small and too big clothes neatly into one beauteous row on about two-thirds of one shelf. I should be in their commercials. These things are AWESOME.

After that was done, the kids started coming home from school and the hectic part of the day started. I managed to watch TV throughout getting their snacks and feeding the wee one. The new dishwasher was delivered this morning, but the plumbing was bad and so all afternoon, in addition to the construction crew, we also hosted a plumbing team and appliance delivery men who couldn't deliver their appliances.

We had the pleasure of admiring the giant hole in the side of the house where the door will go in tomorrow.

And then this evening, I got to go downstairs and look at my room all covered in dust and tarps and sheets.

Yesterday, we hadn't thought that part through and I left my room unprotected. When the took down the mud room wall, directly over my room/bed, my belongings were draped in dust and rubble.

I made the discovery and spent a good fifteen minutes screaming in shock as I beat dust off my camera and computer and shoes and clothes. When everything had been saved, I covered it all in sheets and promised to stop leaving it all so helplessly unattended whenever destructive forces came into the house.

But day two of construction ended with fewer surprises, and the kids gladly ate their second takeout meal in a row and then we herded them off to bed.

Tomorrow, I will need to pull a few more items from the kitchen to get us through the day. And hopefully we will have pizza for dinner, because we've intended to twice and plans have changed both times and my hopes are up, way up.

Tonight, I will go watch Psych and hopefully stop sneezing sometime soon and eventually I will go downstairs and get some pajamas and find a couch up here to sleep on.

Fire, snot and tears.

Ok, so the other day things got busy and I ended up with all three boys here while the weather was less than perfect and all the kiddies have been feeling under it. I couldn't put all those runny noses in a stroller to go get R, so T's mom came over a bit early to hang out before going to get R for me.

True to her anxiety disorder, she showed up a good hour early and spent her time smooching the baby while Monkey was sleeping and J was snacking and watching TV in the playroom. About ten minutes before T's mom needed to go get R, she started following me around the kitchen asking if she should go yet.

The school is seriously within two minutes' walking distance from our front door if you walk really slowly.

I was loading the dishwasher, texting and hand washing pots and pans while reassuring her she had time to spare, when the smell of smoke filled the kitchen.

I stopped washing dishes and took a gander at the dishwasher I had just started, and sure enough, smoke was pouring from it.

Still, I had the queen of overreacting standing behind me, so I just turned it off and pretended that was totally normal and returned to the sink until she left for the school.

Once she was gone, I frantically turned off the water and assessed the kitchen fire situation. But first, because this is the technology generation, I texted about it.

Nothing was actually on fire that I could see, but the dishwasher let a new burst of smoke into the room when I opened it up to inspect.

Finally, the dishwasher that has needed replacing since I started here, had kicked it.

I danced with joy and then closed it up again before T's mom came back.

E came home early that night so I could go out. I told him the "bad" news as I ran out the door.

Our other bad news this week: the contractor continues to tell us dates to begin our renovation and then never shows up, the refrigerator has been deemed unrepairable by GE, but we have yet to find a replacement unit and we have a time limit to do so, which we are going to miss if the renovation doesn't start, because that fridge BARELY fit into this house and we need the new door that is going to be added to the kitchen, in order to get the new fridge.

So, my kitchen is in a state of disarray and EVERYTHING that had been stashed in the mudroom is now all over the place.

Both mothers have been asking me what's going on and I don't want to be the one to tell them, so I stay busy and run out of the room whenever they are here.

But I had so much time off this week, that I can't really complain.

And I had another run-in with New Nanny and I continue to thank the Lord that I am not in her shoes.

Tonight I am working late, and since everybody still has sniffles, this requires me to run up and down the stairs at least four times an hour. The bigger three went down ok, and I turned on a space heater in Monkey's cold room, hoping to boil his cold out of him. He hasn't coughed at all, so I think it's working.

Little Munchkin, however, HATES to be hot, so he's in a sleeper and he cries every time I put a blanket on him. He also cries every time he rolls over, so I caved and he is now sleeping on the couch beside me.

Sick babies are too cute to ignore.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Judge me all you want, but I bought a new copy of All Dogs Go To Heaven at Target for $5 and I'm watching it right now. It came with its sequel but who cares about sub par sequels?

My old copy was the VHS tape we grew up with and it kicked it a few months ago when I unpacked it and tried to rewind it and the tape inside literally snapped in half. So, that was that.

I came home early from Shabbat dinner with three tired kids who were out late last night too. J was somehow miraculously hanging in there, so he stayed out with his parents. Last night he fell asleep at our outing but tonight he seemed to be holding up just fine when I left. Each child shines in a different place.

R prefers her grandmother's on her mom's side because she can play with better toys and run from room to room. J prefers E's mom because he has older cousins who dote on him and let him play on their iPhones. Monkey will take what he can get because he just wants to be allowed to go.

So the three with me are down and I am indulging in a children's movie that they haven't watched yet. Oh, I am also indulging in wine.

Yesterday was one of the worst days I have had here so far. This wine is my reward.

Baby D has been ruined. While I was away last week, he was picked up every time he started to cry. Now, I can barely put him down before he starts to cry. I spent yesterday trying to break him, but I also had all three of the others all afternoon and add them fighting and crying to his crying and the 784% humidity, I was horribly grouchy.

I told T I was thinking of selling the kids, to which she replied, "You can get a lot for them. They're cute." But didn't try to stop me. She was stuck at work all day.

I kept them only because my phone was dying and I needed my battery for the dinner party.

At T's Mom's house I got another dose of New Nanny, who I must say, I am not fond of. Should she friend me on Facebook, I will delete this paragraph and deny I ever said it, but she rubs me the wrong way.

Still, we made it through the night, passing the seven kids between us. I ate half a giant bowl of guacamole before starting on the challah. I noticed New Nanny spent a lot of time pushing this horrible beet salad around on her plate. At one point I asked her if she liked that salad and she said no and I told her no one did and she shouldn't feel bad sneaking it off to the trash and getting some of the other, wonderful food.

T's mom has been pushing this one particular salad on us a lot lately. She really wants us to like it. It's Persian and most of the Persian food is delicious but nobody, not even the other Persians, likes this dish and she won't stop making huge bowls of it at every party.

The kids got to bed so late last night that I fully expected today to be awful, but it wasn't.

They were all kinds of agreeable at breakfast time. I napped all morning and then T went to work and I had school pick ups all afternoon. Everyone came home happy and hungry and then we went to the playground. It had been so beautiful outside and it seems that everywhere else in the Northeast is now mosquito-free except Long Island.

So, in spite of myself, I was reminded why I hate this place, but the baby was doing so much better being out of my arms so I worked through it. We were at the playground for a while when J came running over to me, holding his little butt in his hands.

"Kimmy, I really have to go poo poo."

"Oh, yeah." R chimed in. "Me too."

The walk home is less than five minutes, but they both pooped their pants a little.

Fortunately, they're big enough to clean themselves up for the most part, so even THAT didn't ruin my day.

We had a snack and sang some songs before E got home and then T and the whole night began.

We were dressing for Shabbat, passing each other on the stairs and in the halls when T announced that construction would start on Monday in the kitchen.

"What is happening in my kitchen?" I was both scared and excited. I love change. I'm not one of those people who gets all settled in and never wants to lose control of anything. I'd like to lose control of EVERYTHING. Please, bring on the change.

We're losing the dividing wall between the kitchen and the mudroom to make the eat-in part of the kitchen actually usable. Right now the table and the highchair take up the entire corner and no one can get in there. We're also gaining a door to the back yard, a pantry and a new nook for...GUESS WHAT?

A NEW REFRIGERATOR.

GE can take their fridge and shove it.

After more than ten service calls for this brand new piece of garbage that keeps breaking down and either getting too hot in the freezer or too cold in the fridge, GE is finally refunding E and T and they are getting a new fridge.

I'm very excited.

Less exciting are the suitcase and book bag that are still sitting in the middle of my room waiting to be unpacked. I washed all my dirty clothes from that trip and they made it into drawers somehow, unfolded. But whatever was left clean and all of my toiletries are still in my suitcase along with who-knows-what else because it's been a week since I even looked in there.

Today, I needed something out of the toiletry bag so I took it out and thought, "Ok, now I will unpack at least this." Then, I got what I needed and scoffed at my suitcase for thinking I even cared about it at all and dropped the bag back in and ran away from there.

I wore a wrinkled dress from that bag to Shabbat dinner tonight.

Oh, Autumn weather, I missed thee.

The rest of my vacation after I wrote to you people was very nice. We spent days at the beach, with family, with friends and then of course, traveling home. I didn't sleep especially well at any point over vacation and by the time we landed I was kind of delirious.

We went from the airport to my mom's and then right to my nephew's birthday party down the street. It was an outdoor, monster-themed affair and it was ADORABLE. In addition to stuffing my face with food, we had a bonfire and watched a movie and had an all-around good time.

I didn't sleep well that night either, because it was my genius idea to take an eeeeeeearly morning bus back home and I spent the whole night having anxiety about over-sleeping and missing my bus and losing my job. Which wouldn't have even happened had I missed the bus, but I don't like to disappoint people I like.

I spent two days recovering from vacation. It was like lack of sleep and eating all the meat and garbage that I don't usually, and eating it in mass quantities, had all caught up with me at the same moment and the result was disastrous.

I nursed it like a hangover, treating it with coffee and carbs and trying to get to bed early. Unfortunately, going to bed early doesn't always mean I am going to sleep early, and the last couple of nights have led me to the realization that I really need to invest in an alarm clock that isn't my phone so that I will turn off my phone at night. There was a time, long ago, before my iPhone had ever brightened my life, when I was able to shut off my electronics and let my insomnia be caused by other things. I think it's time to try that again.

The trouble is finding an alarm clock that won't make me spew curse words every morning, because the typical beeping and buzzing of most clocks makes me border line homicidal. And that adorable little "radio" setting doesn't even make me twitch. I would never wake up to that.

What I need is an alarm clock that pats my shoulder and says, "Kimberly, it's 7." And then shuts up for a bit. And then later goes, "Kimberly, it's 7:25 now. Do you want me to turn on the light?" And then later sits up straight in bed and gasps, "IT'S 7:45! I CAN HEAR MONKEY IN THE KITCHEN! I CAN'T FIND YOUR SLIPPERS OR YOUR BRA! GET UP! GET UP!"

Does anyone know where they might sell this?

In addition, I think it is nearing time for me to buy a real computer again. Lil Marta the mini wonder has served me well, but I'm starting to have storage problems. I have an external hard drive that stores everything I don't need on hand, but I need my photo editing software again and lately when I recently had to remove my iTunes from the computer to make room for other files and that has made my life less musical and drastically more boring.

I think it's time.

Sigh.

So, the computer shopping shall begin.

In the course of writing this, Baby Frogger has both served as my laptop desk and my iTunes. He fell asleep singing and I had to put him down in order to fill J's order for apples, but not too many, just enough so he can have ice cream.

In spite of his best efforts, he's fattening up and has been blessed with little love handles where his little, bony ribcage used to hang out. The other two are approaching growth spurts, getting taller and leaner all the time and the littlest one is a hefty one, squeezing into nine month and twelve month clothing at the ripe old age of almost six months. I love him.

I love them all, and going away for a week only confirmed that.

I haven't seen New Nanny since I got back, but I'll let you know if anything new happens. I did snag a ten minute conversation with Nanny K and she is home and happy and I'm happy for her. It's weird that she's gone and I have no one extremely local to bother for late night decaf, but this just means my church friends are about to start getting several more propositions from me at 8pm. I hope they enjoy it.

I also hope J will stop passing gas and stinking up the playroom and just go to the bathroom already.

Little boys are gross.