Here's A Little Murmmering..... (by the way...this paticuar blog is wicked long)

Ahh, one of the last pictures of summer. Now that the rains have hit (And we are soooooo grateful for, of course! Even if they should prevent us from enjoying the sweet, cool, waters that still beckon to us, frigid though they are), it's too cold to get the kids in the water.

So, here I go again. With the complaining, and the trash talking, and the mummuring. I just looked over what I've written and it looks freaking long. It shouldn't be that bad to read - it might even be a little bit funny. Try it...

I love a lot of things in life, and since I've been working on what it is to "be" me, things have been going a WHOLE lot better. But once in awhile, there just seems to be something that happens - not always directly, mind you - but something that just happens and I'm like, "Geeeeez, that was awful!" or, "Wow, that just made me want to knock her big, ugly, poofy, dumb, frizzy block off!".

Obviously, one of those things happened today. I had to run to SV to get new frames for Mr. B since he ran the old ones over with his tricycle. Yep. He only had them for one week. Serious. Anyways...went to SV, got the new frames, went to Ross, then to Arby's, then to the park before the afternoon storm hit.

And Mr. B and Mikey are all, "Come play with us! Climb up here! You can't catch me! I slide first!". And I'm all, "I am so gonna catch you and tickle the snot outa you and ya'll are gonna LOSE!" Well, I didn't actually say it, but I was totally thinking it, c'mon. What I said was more like, "Oh, I don't know! You might be tooooo fast for me! I don't think I can catch you!".

There were a couple of kids there when we got there and the moms were sitting on a bench in the shade, gossiping about the moms they both knew and discussing the inferior parenting styles of those said women. I could tell that it was a deep and emotional conversation as they continued to "pick a little, talk a little" in comfort.

I, on the otherhand, was running up and down teeny stairs, sliding down slides as long as my legs, and grasping onto burning hot fireman poles while chasing after little monkeys. After one little boy threw sand on my son for the third time, his mom looked over and sweetly said, "Bradley, honey, don't do that! The sand is dirty." and quickly resumed her conversation.
When the other womans little girl shoved Mikey down the slide, her mom said, "Sweetheart, play nice!" By that time, I was starting to get a little aggrivated with these street urchins and their perfect mommies who are sitting in the shade, because they are totally missing the first 12 times that the kids do something wrong, and then they yell accross the playground for them to stop!! Sheeeeesh!! How effective is that? How about NOT AT ALL!!!!!!!!!

So my solutions could be one of 4 things:

I could go up to the little boy and tell him that if he gets near my son again with any sand, I will pry open his little mouth and fill it with the dirty grit.

I could tell my boys to shove or throw sand back.

I could ask the moms to take a more active role in their kids playtime (what I was really thinking was; ask the moms to get offa their sour, bulging, gossiping booties and take care of these rotton, ratty, monsters! ahem...I meant children...obviously not an option).

I could have some group playtime - you know, an organized game.

I decide that we are going to play a game. I like games, and I want the boys to learn to play with others (the other two needed a lesson also). "How about playing tag?" I ask the kids. "Yeah!!" they say. (You know, hindsight being what it is, I probably should have chosen another game. Hemmm, I'll jot this one down as a "Shining Mommy Moment"...or not) So we get a little more organized and we start playing tag. This works well, but we still have a little directing to do with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (real names: Bradley and Bailey). "Oh, let's not be tooooo rough with the little ones." I calmly ask Dee. "Um, you don't need to tag him that hard, Dum." and "Hey! One a time on the slide." or "Do not touch his glasses again!" then "I think I heard your mommy calling you" and finally "Is that your ball rolling into the street?". By this time, the moms are getting aggrivated that someone else is dictating to their children and begrudgingly leave the comfort of the shade and start walking over to the playground.

"Stay away from those boys, Dee and Dum!" mom #1 shouts. "Don't play with them, they look like they are playing their own game" says mom #2. "Come here Dee!" says #1, "Come here right now! No! We are leaving, you can't stay any more. Don't go under that - I said DON'T! Get over here right now young lady. No, you cannot go down the slide one more time. I said - stop tha - don't go - can you hear me? Ok, 1......2....if you don't get over here by the count of three, you're gonna be in BIG trouble! 1.......2......2 1/2.......2 3/4.....I'm almost to 3! Stop that! It's time to go! Do you want something to eat? Are you hungry? Let go get some ice cream! 1.......2....... 2 1/2......Bailey Nicole, get over here right now. Am I going to have to come over there and get you? I really don't want to do that! I'll get sand in my sandles. GET OVER HERE! 1.........2.......2 1/2.......Ok, here I come and I'm not happy!! I mean it! Get your butt over here!" Mom #1 then proceeds to precariously pick her way throught the nasty field of sand to try to get Dee. Then, seeing that the sand is much "ickier" than she anticipates, she turns back and starts yelling from the sidelines again.

Mom of Dum, on the other hand, yells and says, "Get you butt over here right now or I'm gonna spank you!" to which Dum yells back, "No!!! I'm still playing!". Dum is rather angry so I should have known better than to think that mom could take care of everything, but right then, Mr. B came toddling by on the bridge. "I'm a troll and you can't pass!" (well, at least he got the troll part right), and Mr. B, not yet instructed in the ways of the 4 year old temper tantrum, innocently says, "No, thank you." and trys to push his way (rather roughly, I will admit) between the troll and the bridge. The troll leans back, pulls his hand back, and gets ready to whollip my almost 2 year old son.

This is it...the last straw. I take two steps and am on the kid in a minute. I grab his wrists (firmly but not hurting him) and tell him that he cannot hit little babies, it's not nice. Dum screams like mad when I catch him in the act "I didn't hit him! Let me go! I'm telling! He pushed me first! He started it! Owwwwwww!"

Dee is watching this scene and must have realized that nobody was watching her, so she tried, once again, to push little Mikey down the slide. In his attempt to not go down the slide sideways, he grasped empty air until he felt something solid and he held onto it. Except that solid thing happens to be the little girl's skirt. And he pulls it down. And she falls down the slide along with Mikey. Oh, brother....it looks bad for us.

Seeing the small scene of chaos before them, the mothers finally concede and quickly make their way through the "icky" sand towards the screaming children.

They are mad at me and ask me how I could let my children cause so much trouble.

I ask them how they enjoyed their chat in the shade.

They glare at me.

I let the screaming troll go. I get down and pick Mikey up out of the sand. They say, "She can't be their mother, look at her playing around, look at her hair. Look! She's dirty!" As if I wasn't there to hear them. Making sure the boys are ok, I look at these mothers and say, "As a Mom, I would rather get dirty, sweaty, and grimy while playing with my kids than get dirty, sweaty, and grimy while yelling at my kids and picking their spoiled bodies up outa the sand."

As they walked away muttering the words, "Irresponsible! Do you want ice cream? Disrespectful! I'm gonna count to three! Rude! Do you want something to cry about? Immature! Because I said so!" over the wailing of their kids they were dragging, I smiled as I climbed back up the steps to catch two little monkeys. I am one of the luckiest women alive to know what I know and to enjoy what I do. But I still wanted to knock #1's big, ugly, poofy, dumb, frizzy block off.

Here He Is!!!

Wow! Just when I was about to go searching for some other place to host our little family blog site, blogger gets back on track and everything seems right in the world again. We also recently returned from driving around and visiting family for a week, so I was able to calm down a little about this silly situation.

So, here he is. Mr. Bentley with his cute little coke bottle, ahem, I mean glasses, on. I will be updating more soon, but here's a quick shot of him eating dinner (which is now a MUCH less of a messy affair than it had been before.

Two days after he got them, he scratched them and we only get one new pair a year (for a two year old!!! give me a break!), so he is just dealing with it for now. Then, while riding his little trike around in the kitchen, yes - it's that big, and he took the glasses off and promtly ran them over. I panicked! After all, these are corrective, they have to stay on so the next pair won't be as strong. Oh, and did I mention that this happened on the Thursday before we were suppossed to leave on our trip to see the family? Yep...I called the eye doc and the girl says, "Oh, come in right now. We don't have any appointments. Tomorrow we are completely booked all day and we aren't open on Saturday". I roll my eyes and tell her that if I leave right now, I still won't be there for another hour and a half. But we are leaving on Sunday and we can't just let him not wear his glasses for 9 days. Sheesh, the things ya do for your kids. So we all hop in the car and leave for SV immediately to get the things bent back into shape. He still has to get new frames.

It's really hard to get him to wear them after about 4 in the afternoon. He is so polite when I say, "Hey, sweetie! Come put your glasses back on please!". He relpies with, "No, thank you, Momma". And this is only the first few weeks....This one is going to be a loooooooooooong row to hoe.....

Here's The Picture...

I don't know what's up with blogger right now, but I can't post any pics and it's aggrivating because I like to post w/pics. It just doesn't seem fun w/out them. Sheeesh....they'll be hearing from me shortly....

News From The Lambsons...

This isn't the greatest picture, but it's all we have right now. We will have more later. Or not!! Blogger STINKS!!! It won't let me download any pictures right now, so you'll just have to read this w/out one. How fun is that? Sorry. Will post ASAP!!!

Here I am again, with another stressful week behind me. Not only did Gila Man cut his wrist really badly at work, but Mr. B is cutting 4 new teeth and has been up every 2 hours at night for the last 4 days. Then the front door latch broke while we were outside and we were locked out for an hour until we remembered we had left one of the windows open. The cooler pump went out, the handles and hinges fell off my doors in the kitchen... sheesh! Things have just been a little off this week. BTW...I'm still happy to have a glass, I just need to vent a little.

The biggest news for our little family right now is that Mr. B (who will be 2 on October 25th) had his eyes checked and is extremely farsighted. Because of this, his eyes have to work very hard to see things up close and by the end of the day, his eye muscles just give up and his right eye rolls in toward his nose. I feel bad saying this, but I was heartbroken!! Oh, sure...things could have been worse, MUCH worse. If we had waited to see if he would "grow out of the problem" as was suggested to me by some friends, he would most certainly had to have had surgery. I don't know how parents deal with major illnesses in their children. I mean, the whole way home I kept thinking, "What did I do wrong? Could I have done something differently? Like eat more carrots while I was pregnant? Or chicken? Or fish? Or feed my kid more vegtables?". I just felt so guilty.

And face it...Nobody wants their child to have any handicaps in life. No matter how small. I don't want anything bad to happen to my little boy in his life...EVER!! No pee-wee football for this little man! He will be the newest "bubble boy"! Oh, help the first girl who breaks his sweet little heart.

Ok, so I'm going a little overboard and ya'll are thinking that I'm fanatical or something. Some would say you're right (I think that would include my husband, but don't listen to him. He has a biased opinion), but I do think that he looks cute. Like the little boy from Jerry McGuire and Stuart Little. And they stared in movies with big, famous, people...right? But if I had things my way, my sweet boy would learn all the lessons in life with out feeling even a little bit of pain or having hard times. But then, I guess he really wouldn't learn much that way. It's just a Momma's dream for her baby.

My Glass

Here is a picture of Mr. B with all his grandparents. I have one of these of me when I was his age, and I love it.

"I don't care if my glass is half-full or half-empty. I'm just happy to have a glass"


I don't know who wrote that but I think it's awesome. That's how I'm feeling right now - so darn lucky to have what I have and be who I am (though sometimes I am a little to kooky even by my standards, and that's A LOT). I HATE (not a word I use lightly) my hair and my new haircut, but at least I have hair. My head aches from watching other people's children all day, but I was able to spend this whole day with my son. I have heartburn from eating a boatload (really, like, a smallish cruise ship) of spaghetti for dinner, but at least I had dinner and got full from it. I just had to put more gas in my vehicle so I can drive tomorrow, but I have a REALLY nice vehicle and I am thankful that it's so dependable (AND I had the money for the gas, double points!). My house is a disaster right now! There are toys in every corner of the living room, wet footprints and towels in the foyer from our water fight this afternoon, crumbs on the counter from lunch, crayons and paper on the table, and I am just to tired to pick it all up. But I can look at that stuff and think about what I was doing with those kids today, and I immediatly smile.

I am one darn lucky woman. I am happy to have a glass.