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Doohickies and Wigglebops: Did I Remember Everyone at Christmas????

Doohickies and Wigglebops: Did I Remember Everyone at Christmas????: As each and every Christmas Season rolls on in, I'm always in the daunting task of making sure Santa does not forget anyone!  I'm ...

Did I Remember Everyone at Christmas????

As each and every Christmas Season rolls on in, I'm always in the daunting task of making sure Santa does not forget anyone!  I'm not an organized mom!  I don't even think disorganized could be a description.  It's much worse than that....I'm not even sure there's a definition of it!

I'm about to head to one of my sons rooms to sit through the clutter and start counting out how many presents I have, and how to distribute them properly.  I try to make sure that all of my kids get the same amount of presents.  Not sure why I do this, but it's a part of how my brain operates.  I start to make piles, then I start to dismember the piles, then I remember that this one asked for this and his this is in that one's pile....OH NO  have to start all over again!

Somehow on Christmas Eve, Santa manages to get it all right.  But it's always by the skin of Santa's teeth.  My mom used that expression all of the time as I was growing up!  Never understood it, but at Christmas time it seems to take on a meaning all it's own.

I have no idea what I'm going to do when grandchildren start to enter my already crazy life.  I may have to actually start writing stuff down, as my husband tells me to do all of the time.  But my biggest problem is....when I write something down, I put it somewhere safe, then I forget where the safe spot was, then the rest of my time is spent trying to remember where the safe spot is, and I lose all of my shopping time for the kids.  It's NEVER worth writing down for me.  Even if I put it in my phone, I forget to label it correctly, then I end up going through endless tasks and messages in my phone looking for the same thing that is written down in the other safe place.  NO NO not worth it!

In the end, we still have the most joyous of Christmas' with tons of chaos, lots of wrapping, lots of lost parts, making sure we don't throw the cat away, (he likes the boxes and usually is in one), and making sure the dog does not run away with one of the little ones toys thinking it's for him.  

Have a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!!!  From my family to yours!

Doohickies and Wigglebops: Guinea Pigs and Thunderstorms.......

Doohickies and Wigglebops: Guinea Pigs and Thunderstorms.......: So if you have read any of my posts before, you know that we started with one little sweet guinea pig named Kevin, and ended up with 22 gu...

I'm an Elf on the Shelfer

YES! I admit it...I'm an Elf on the Shelfer, I am an avid Elfer! I have plans each night before I go to bed to talk with the Elves and see what their next adventure may be, what they are thinking might be a good spot to place themselves on that evening, and what they would like to accomplish on their mission. In fact, I've woken up in the middle of the night realizing that Arnold and Brittany may still be sitting in the same spot as they were the night before, and I have to make sure that they understand that in order to keep their magical powers they HAVE to move, they just have to move! Otherwise, I will have a few very disappointed Elf believers. 

 Our Elves have been fishing in the fish bowl...swinging from the ceiling fan....climbing up the Christmas tree...and more recently sitting in the foot massager while it was running. We don't have bad Elves, they don't get into the confectioners sugar, and they stay away from marshmallows. Thank goodness, because with 8 kids I really don't have time to clean up after bad elves.

 I know some mommies and daddies would prefer that Elf stay on the store shelf, and never enter their homes, but I have to say I was not an Elfer at first until someone brought him to my home as a gift, now there is no getting around a Christmas season without Arnold and Brittany! Somehow they eventually enter the season without us even realizing they are there. They can be cute, and I promise that as long as you train them well they usually end up pretty disciplined little guys and gals. You just have to stay on them like puppies each season.

 Although there is a certain way to loose friendships if you're interested, and that is to gift an Elf to a NON-Elfer...so if you are so inclined to slim down your friendship list, and have less Christmas presents to purchase this season, then may I suggest that you purchase an elf or two and send them over to a less than friendly relationship. Otherwise, enjoy the season, train your elves, keep the powered sugar, and the marshmallows locked up in the pantry and let Christmas begin.

 Have a very Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!!!! Sincerely, Momma Wigglebop!!!

Funny Nose Squirts.......

I know, that headline sounds pretty disgusting!  But all in all, it's probably one of the funniest things you've ever encountered yourself, go ahead and admit it, you know you laugh at nose squirts!

Eating lunch with my kids, eating dinner with my kids, oh heck eating lunch or dinner with my husband can lead to a nose squirt moment!  Someone tells a story, someone starts to laugh, then we all start to laugh, THEN all of a sudden!  There it is, in all of it's own glory, the infamous NOSE SQUIRT!  One of my poor unsuspecting children with a mouth full of liquid starts to laugh uncontrollably and there it is, the squirt that only cartoons are made of.  Which then leads to more hysterical laughter, and more nose spritzing.

There are stories at my dinner table that make an Ellen Degeneres show look like mild drollery.  There are the great poop stories, the amazing hair removal stories, the gym stories and the throw up stories.  We tend to tell them over and over again as a family, but each time it takes on a more elaborate narration.  

Having 8 kids makes me wonder how we've ever survived one dinner much less years and years of dinners without someone chocking on a chicken bone!

Enjoy your stories, embrace your stories, one day all of the stories grow up and yes there are more tales to come, but there's nothing like an old tale to stir up a good nose squirt!!!!

I am MOMMY!!!! Hear me ROAR!!!!

Do you ever feel like all you do all day long is put out fires?  There's milk on the floor, clean that up!  There's chocolate on the chair, clean that up!!  There's toothpaste stuck like an epoxy glue in the sink, scrub that up!  There's dirty underwear on the bathroom floor, oops, find the tongs to pick those up!

Someone needs clean underwear!  Since you can't find any, you run to one of the other kids rooms that is just about the size of the kid that never washes his underwear!  You steal a pair so the kid that never washes his underwear doesn't try to put the same ones on that you just found out he's been wearing for 3 days now!

You're running out the door frantically, with the kid that never washes his underwear, to get to an appointment and as you get in the car you smell something horrible!  What is that?  OH!  Yep he stepped in dog poo!  Now it's time to either wash the shoe in the driveway, or take another 15 minutes to find another pair of shoes.  So you wash the shoe, get splattered with the dirty dog poo water, try to rinse that off, get back in the car and realize the poo is on the carpet of the car!  Oh well, you can handle that for a while!  Then you finish the appointment, get in the car, OH yeah.....the sun bakes the dog poo and now the car smells like raw sewerage!

Now you're home and have to wash the carpet of the car!

You get inside your house and the big giant St. Bernard runs to great you, his tail is so big and winding that he knocks the smaller kid down the steps and now you have a crying kid.  Put out that fire, only to get upstairs to find out the toilet is stopped up!  Someone didn't realize there was a stopped up toilet so they just went potty in it and now it's REALLY stopped up!!!

With each and every fire, I try to realize myself with a new hat on....Maid!, Taxi Cab Driver!, Plumber!, Dog Whisperer! Kid Whisperer!

Oh well, it's all in a days work!  And I don't even get paid for this....it's a volunteer job!  But I do love it!  I am mommy hear me roar!

MOOOOMMMMM can you CUT the CHEESE?????!!!!!

Did you ever think that a question as simple as "Mom can you cut me some cheese?" could turn into a complete blog post?  Well in my house the answer is "YES it can!"

Lucy's favorite food item is cheese, I can put cheese on almost anything and she would probably eat it, cheese pizza, cheese quesadillas, cheese anything!  

While walking through the grocery one day Lucy and I were talking about all kinds of silly stuff, from pink unicorns, to blue frogs.  The talk is usually endless with this little girl.  She kept asking me if she could have different food items as we passed them on the shelves, some I said yes to and others were a definite NO!!

As we were standing in the meats and cheese isle, there were a few people around, some shopping and others that worked for the store.  Lucy starts asking me if I would buy her some cheese, I told her of course I would and did she want to pick some of her favorites, she said YES!  Then in what seemed like the loudest voice she could possibly use, she blurts out, "Hey MOM, when we get home, can you CUT THE CHEESE?"!!!!!!  I started to laugh uncontrollably, and this perfectly funny guy looks at her, then looks at me (laughing), then he looks at her very seriously and says, "well if you're mom can't Cut the Cheese, then I'm pretty sure I can, I had a mighty lunch today!"  BAM!!!!  he was perfect!  I on the other hand had a hard time even making it to the check out counter, my eyes were tearing up from all of the laughter!  

Guinea Pigs and Thunderstorms.......

So if you have read any of my posts before, you know that we started with one little sweet guinea pig named Kevin, and ended up with 22 guinea pigs from Kevlina!  I have managed to get rid of several of our little piggies, but we still have 6 that live with us and their loving family!  The family consists of 8 kids a mom and dad, a St. Bernard and a kitty that actually loves his guinea pig family and is caught quite often sleeping in the cage with them!

A couple of nights ago we had a torrential thunderstorm with sheets of rain and 60-70 mph gusts of wind, it was more like a mini hurricane rather than a thunderstorm.  It woke most of us up, and as my hubby and I were watching our trees bend over in half to the wind one of my sons comes downstairs and says "MOM!! the guinea pig cages blew over and the pigs are running all over the yard!"  My immediate thought was "Born Free!!"  but when we went out to make sure that none of them were hurt, I could hear these little tiny "wee wee wee's" coming from their hiding places!  So "Born Free" went out the backdoor, and "Catch me if you can" started to play!

So at 3 in the blessed AM, Tommy and I picked up our weapons of choice, umbrella's, and took off after the pigs!  The boy pigs were only interested in the fact that the girl pigs were out and this was their chance to do a little guinea pig courting....they were like little horn dogs chasing my poor little girl pigs all over the place just to....well you know!  So as we were capturing most of them in their little pig huts, we realized that Snowball, our hook toothed, albino, blind, deaf, special needs piggy was no where to be found!  Now this did make both of us sad, so Tommy got a flash light and in the torrential sheets of rain took off to look for her!  I was trying to eye up the area but could not see her, when all of a sudden Tommy yells "found her!"  She was lodged up against the house about 60 feet from the back yard, I guess her natural instincts when on overdrive, and she was completely safe from the wind and the rain! I grabbed a beach towel that was conveniently "not put away" and Tommy grabbed her and gave her to me, I dried her off, we reassembled one of the blown over cages and put it under the house so we could start catching pigs and drying them and putting them in the DRY cage!!

After finding Snowball, the real work started, we now had to get the pigs that were in their huts to the dry cage under the house!!!  This is where the fun began!  Tommy started chasing them out in the backyard, they were running all over the place once we took the huts off of them.  As Tommy would catch one, I was standing under the overhang with the towel, he would throw them through the air, I would catch the flailing, squealing pig, dry him or her off and place it in the newly put together home!  One by one we caught, threw, caught again, dried and housed these little guys and gals!  They were so cute as they shook off the water, licked their fur and then YELLED for some hay!!!  Yes we caught them all, and now we are hoping that none of the girls are pregnant again!  For all concerned, they are safe, dry, well fed, and just waiting for us to put them back in the grassy area so they can eat themselves into oblivion!  

THE END.....for now!!!!!

Babies at Breastaurants.......

If you've ever had a child then you know that once breastfeeding moms get together there are endless stories of leaks, squirts, pain, poops, and even private showings of the boob!

I have breastfed everyone of my 8 children, some for longer than others but most of them for at least a year.  

One of my kiddos used to make the funniest sounds while nursing...he would hum, smack his lips and some of his sounds even came from the back end which were embarrassing at times, since I was never sure that if others heard him they would know it was him and not me!

One day I was at a gymnastics meet with my daughter and I had the baby with me...of course he did what all babies do and that was WANT TO EAT!!!  So I turned my back to the people sitting next to me...covered up and started to nurse.  There he started....huuummmmmm....smack, smack, smack....hummmmmm......pfffft (out the back end)....and some more smacks!  There was one of our team dads sitting right next to me, so I turned to him and said "sorry but I'm nursing and he's quite noisy".  The poor dad looked at me with a very uncomfortable smile, and said "no worries, that's what babies do!"  I said yes and smiled (but I was thinking, I don't think they all do it with this much gusto!)  This poor dad, I could tell was very uncomfortable with me next to him, so I decided to get up and move to a spot where no one was sitting.  I sat down at the other end of the bleachers and made myself comfortable and started to nurse again, I looked up and there was another dad looking to sit next to me. I said, "I am nursing, I moved over here so that no one would feel uncomfortable, if you're OK with a nursing mom, then sure go ahead and sit down."  So he did, and proceeded to tell me that his wife had nursed all of their kids and he was quite the expert at nursing babies.  So I proceeded to feed him and there went the noises again!  Hummmmm.....smack....smack....hummmmm.....Then all of a sudden he gave a grunting, loud push and pooped all over me, him, the blanket, and the bleachers!  All I could do was sit there and start to laugh hysterically.....this poor guy next to me looked over at me, I thought he was going to pass out!  He got up and told me "good luck with that one!" and walked off.

So I cleaned up as best I could.....thank goodness this was one time I had extra baby clothing with me....got him all sparkly and dressed, then he went right back to the breastaurant, of course he was now on empty!

Repeating Mommy......Repeating Mommy......

I find myself repeating myself often these days...not quite sure why...not quite sure why...wait did I say that already?  I can't seem to figure it out!  It's like I have 8 kids or something....

Wash your clothes.....WASH your clothes.....

Clean your room....CLEAN your room....

Take out the trash......TAKE out the trash.....


and the list goes on and on and on

So I've changed my strategy after all these years!  It's starting to work!  I now use the "Mommy asked, not she's pissed" strategy!  Otherwise known as the "Make them feel guilty" strategy...

This is how it works, I may be preaching to the choir at this point, but somehow I feel accomplished that I've finally figured this out!

Now all I do is ask ONCE!  "Can you please take out the trash?"....If nothing happens, like it usually does, then I start with the "under the breath guilt dissertation"
It goes something like this (bear in mind that if you're going to use this method, you really need to perfect the level of sound in your voice, up for the capital words, down for the lower case words, it works I promise):

"All I do around here is take out the garbage! I cook for them, I clean for them, I teach them, I NOW wash some of their clothes cause they just won't LISTEN to me...and NOW I have to take the TRASH out too!!!  You'd think that just ONE of them would see all that I do, AND that I carried them for 9 months in my body, gained all kinds of WEIGHT, had cravings for stuff that any normal human being would get sick on, then went through the PAIN to bring them into this world, got PEED on, pooped on, SPIT up on, and I, their lovely mommy now has to take out the trash!  TOO!!!!"

Usually at about three steps downstairs I have at least one of my kids running behind me to take it from my hand and bring it out for me!!!  And their excuse is always, "Gee mom why didn't you ask ME, you know I would have done it!"  (suck up!!!)

This has become a tried and true strategy....I suggest it to the world of Mommies....I have more, but try this one first, see the outcome and pass it on to those that are flying by the seat of their pants......they will thank you one day!!!