Dreaming

This morning I woke up at 5:45, because I had a weird dream. It was not as weird as the dream I had last week. I told Chris about it when he woke up.

Me: "I was very mad at you in my dream last night."

Chris: "Not again."

Me: "We were in Idaho Falls touring a US Mint. There were coins laying all over the place, and you were allowed to pick them up and put them in your pocket. Then when you got done with the tour, it became like Chuck E. Cheese's."

Chris: "That makes sense."

Me: "You exchanged your coins for a little piece of paper that said how much money you'd earned. Then you took your paper to the prize counter and got a prize."

Chris: "Obviously."

Me: "So when we got done with the tour I had $500 in coins. The worker people weren't sure if they could give me that much prize money since most people only had about $10."

Chris: "Were your pockets bursting at the seams?"

Me: "No, and that's besides the point. So I'm standing at the prize counter, deciding that I will forfeit most of my winnings in exchange for a pizza. Suddenly, you come up and say you've talked to the manager. I can keep all my money, because you've donated it to charity. At this point I become livid."

Chris: "Because I did something nice?"

Me: "Because I really wanted a pizza! And you'd donated all my pizza money!!!"

Chris: "Um, I sorry for trying to do the right thing in your dream."

Me: "I never got my pizza!!!!"

Chris: "I hate it when my real self gets in trouble for things that my dream self did. If I buy you a pizza will you stop being mad at me?"

Me: "Deal."

So this morning after my weird dream, I tried to lay back in bed and fix it in my mind. The fix wouldn't take. So I got up and went to Walmart to do my grocery shopping. McKay was awake, and she didn't want to stay home with the sleeping boys, so she came with me. Her hair was sticking up in a million directions. I considered combing it, but I was too lazy. Ducky followed me around the store trying to get me to buy goat's milk and asking me my opinion on Bigfoot. McKay told me she didn't like it when Ducky follows us around the store.

Chris came home at the end of the day and announced, "I have had the greatest day. How was your day?"

I answered, "I cleaned poo off the floor and tried to learn how to ride a ripstik."

Moral of this story: A weird dream is an omen to a weird day.

High and Not So Dry

Saturday was the Relief Society broadcast, and I really needed to go to escape my children.

Me: "I've thought it over, and I've decided to trade our children in for a puppy."

Chris: "Rough day, huh?"

Me: "Uh, yeah."

Chris: "What are you doing now?"

Me: "I'm on petfinder.com. Oh, look at this puppy. It's black and white."

So at six o'clock, I turned childcare responsibility over to my hubby. I went to the broadcast with my mom and left the kids and husband at my parents' home. With a steady supply of college football and snacks, what more could they want?

Answer: A clean pull-up.

As all readers of my blog know, I am very slowly and painfully potty-training Deacon. I left Deacon in a clean pull-up. I, however, failed to leave extra pull-ups in case of accidents. I also failed to leave detailed instructions on Deacon's toilet training habits. Consequently, a disaster occurred.

Note: My husband works for the Red Cross. He is trained to handle disasters.

Chris: "You didn't leave me any pull-ups."

Me: "Oops."

Chris: "And Deacon pooped."

Me: "What did you do?"

Chris: "I made my own diaper."

Me: "What?"

Chris: "Well, to be fair, your dad and brother helped me gather supplies."

Me: "Supplies?"

Chris: "Toilet paper, a pad, and electrical tape. We couldn't find duct tape."

Me: "This I have to see."

I found Deacon sound asleep, completely dry. His bottom was swathed in a toilet paper bundle, held together with many layers of electrical tape. That thing was so secure I had to use scissors to cut it off his body.

As the incident made me laugh much more than any puppy could, I have decided to keep my children. Besides, puppies don't come potty-trained.

Be Careful What You Rhyme With

Me: "It's easy peasy, Mr. Cheesy."

Deacon: "I'm not cheese. I'm Deacon William Davis."

Me: "Cleany, cleany, little wienie."

Parker: "Mom just called us an inappropriate body part!"

Grocery Shopping Wheelchair

A breakthrough has occurred in my life. I have learned how to cope with my grocery shopping disability. My wheelchair--6:30 a.m.

I set my alarm for six. I multi-tasked scriptures and breakfast. I put on my comfy shoes. I pulled into the Winco parking lot at 6:30. I did my entire grocery shopping trip in one hour!!!! I also did my entire grocery shopping trip in my pajamas. It was awesome.

Chris: "How did grocery shopping go?"

Me: "Wonderful. No kids. Empty aisles. My brain still working. I tend to slump the later in the day it becomes."

Chris: "I'm well aware of that fact. I still remember Monday when you fell asleep before the kids."

Me: "Yes, but weirdly enough I was the only person shopping in her pajamas."

Chris: "But you put your shoes on."

Me: "I KNOW!!! And I wiped the mascara off from underneath my eyes."

Chris: "And I slept the entire time you were gone."

Me: "What's not to love about this?"

Nothing. I love you 6:30 a.m. grocery shopping trip.

Home Is...

Home is the place where popsicles are kept.

I was in my kitchen, when I noticed the neighbor girl jumping over my back fence. She proceeded to walk through my back door.

"Hi, I'm home," she said, as she opened my freezer. "I just needed a popsicle." With popsicle in hand she was back out the door.

Home is the place where mom says no.

This afternoon I find Deacon trying to drag his scooter up the stairs.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to ride my scooter down the stairs."

"That's going to be a no."

This evening after Deacon successfully used the potty, I pulled out the matches for his "blowing out fire" reward. Deacon grabbed the matchbox from me and put it in his pocket.

"Deacon, hand me the matches. It's time for bed."

"I want to play with matches in my bed."

"That's going to be a no."

Home is where we learn.

Today while teaching Parker a lesson on weather, I dragged him over to the window.

Me: "What kind of clouds do you think are in the sky? They look like stratus to me."

Parker: "Holy cow! Look down into Chewie's yard. You can see all of his poop from here!"

Ahh, home sweet home.

Grocery Shopping

There are a few things in this world that I am completely and utterly helpless at. I am parallel parking disabled, copy machine disabled, and grocery shopping disabled.

I have learned to cope with most of my disabilities. Parallel parking is an easy one to adapt to--just find another spot, even if that spot is miles away. I've tried to adapt to my inability to correctly operate a xerox machine by avoidance. The last time I had to make copies, Parker was in kindergarten, and I was volunteering in his classroom.

Parker's teacher: "Could you make some copies for me?"

Me (beginning to sweat): "I'm slightly disabled when it comes to making copies."

Parker's teacher, laughing hands me the paper to copy. "This is easy."

Frowning, I take the paper. I return twenty minutes later, holding the solitary paper. "Here you go. I broke the machine."

I'm pretty good at avoiding parallel parking and making copies, but I have yet to figure out how to avoid grocery shopping. No one has stopped eating in my family, and it's kind of annoying. As I push the super-sized, kid-friendly cart that allows me to push all three kids and towering cart of groceries through the store, I enviously look at the people pushing their tiny carts with a handful of groceries through the store. I bet it only takes them thirty minutes to shop, and they spend under $50. It takes me two hours every single time, with or without children. I cannot understand why. I cannot understand how despite my couponing it always costs me a bazillion dollars. I cannot understand how my cart full of groceries will be consumed in three days. I am retarded when it comes to grocery shopping.

So today as I pushed my mammoth cart through the store, Deacon decided to jump off and stand in the middle of the aisle, completely blocking an elderly couple from moving. "Deacon, move out of the way, kiddo," I said, as I tried to shove the produce I had in my hand into a bag. Of course, no movement occurred. "Come on, move it." He stared at me. "Parker, move him." Parker picked him up, and Deacon was vocally unhappy about it.

This sweet-looking old woman turned to speak to her husband. I expected some comment about "how quickly they grow up" or "remember when ours were this tiny," so I was quite surprised by her comment. In a sarcastic voice she said, "Let's have more children."

Ha! For the rest of the shopping trip whenever I felt my patience ebbing, I thought of that little old lady and smiled. It helped ease the pain of my grocery shopping disorder. At least for this trip.

Vacation and Stuff

After spending ten days in Utah, I feel like I should write a truly epic post to chronicle our adventures. But I find I have no talent in summarizing big adventures. I only know how to write about the minutia of life. So here's the summary on vacation: It was fun. Thank you friends and family.

Now on to more interesting matters like the price of spilled rice in the Davis house.

This morning I was sitting at the computer paying bills. I was fairly focused on the task at hand; consequently I was completely ignoring my children. Ignoring them until I heard Parker say, "You are in big trouble. Mom!!! Come here!!! Who made this mess?"

>

The mess would be about five pounds of rice that my two youngest children were gleefully spreading throughout the kitchen. I was still fresh from vacation, so my children got to deal with good mom instead of frazzled mom. I handed them two brooms. Two minutes later McKay began whining.

"This is too hard."

"I'll clean up the rice for you. But you will have to do one of the chores I would have done if I wasn't cleaning up the rice."

"O.k."

"I need you to take Deacon's jammies off, sit him on the potty, put a clean pull-up on him, and get him dressed."

"O.k.," she said gleefully, excited to play the "mommy" role.

A minute later she's back, happily showing me a potty full of yellow liquid. (Note to self: Assign McKay the task of potty-training Deacon.) "Deacon didn't want to go upstairs to sit on the potty, so I brought the potty to him."

"That's fine."

"I put it inside the laundry hamper where he was playing and let him sit on it there."

Unconventional. But it worked...

A few minutes later, I came to check on McKay's progress. Deacon hopped over to me. Literally, hopped. Both of his legs were in one hole of his shorts. He did not seem at all concerned about this.

"McKay, we have a problem. Both of Deacon's legs are in one pant hole and for some reason your shirt is off."

"Well, I tried to take Deacon's shirt off, but it was too hard. So I had to teach him how to take his own shirt off by showing him how."

Glancing at my topless son, "You taught Deacon how to take off his own shirt? And you got him to go pee-pee in the potty? You are hired, my dear."

McKay gave me one of her smiles accompanied by her happy little laugh, which literally sounds likes someone saying "heehee."

"Now about pant legs, McKay. Generally, we have two..."