This week in Review

It's been a long week. Tuesday morning Pierce kicked my coffee (unfinished from the day before... I hadn't even gotten that far yet) and the coffee spilled all over the desk. A few drops hit the laptop keyboard, but I wiped them off quickly and didn't think too much of it. And then. Twenty minutes later, after creating 18 soap labels to sell soap, the g and h wouldn't work. Then the backspace quit working. Then the whole screen went black. It was like watching a bad movie play out in front of me.

The laptop is quarantined with little hope of revival, the old dinosaur has been dusted off and is proving itself fairly reliable despite it's age and the little "full hard drive" messages it gave me at first. I've never been so glad that we never got rid of it as now.

Tuesday morning, moments after the laptop met coffee (but before I knew the extent of the problem) I tried to wash the dishes with the pizza cutter instead of the sponge.

Yesterday, the nurse at the doctor's office asked me if I was babysitting. The look of horror on her young face when I said each and every one of these young children belonged to me made me wonder if I should laugh or cry.

Charlotte didn't cry for her shot. She still is talking about how it hurt her leg but she was tough.

Pierce thought the finger prick was the coolest thing he'd seen all day. The shots he disagreed with, however.

Sterling doesn't know who Big Bird, Cookie Monster, or Elmo is. He says Sesame Street doesn't exist. He does, however, know Bert and Ernie. They're in a book. Barney is another unknown. I'm not sure if our level of social norm education is quite adequate. But the tv is eerily, blessedly silent in my house when children are awake.

Pierce can stand up, pick up the push toy, turn it the other way, and continue along his chosen path. But he won't walk alone willingly.

After grumbling at my children at the number of minutes it was taking them to exit the van so we could enter the fabric store, I told them that the sooner we got inside, the sooner we could find what we needed and be done. My exact words are sketchy, but it was something along the lines of "You guys are what is making this take so long! It doesn't have to be so stinking hard!" or something like that. Sterling, however, had a different reason after watching me stare at the fabric choices for more than 1.6 seconds before making my decisions. "Mom, you're the reason the stores take so long. You keep stopping to look at stuff!" I didn't have the wherewithal to correct his attitude. I was too busy laughing.

Clean-release tape is on my hit list. I'm spending my available moments repainting everywhere it took all the paint, primer, and top layer of sheetrock off in my laundry room.

My van has been squeaking for months. At first, I was concerned it was mechanical - until I realized it squeaks whether it's running or not. Still, it's been driving me nuts. I made the kids jump, trying to get it to do it again and locate it's origin. (That resulted in two girls knocking their heads on the roof of the van. I'll admit it. I laughed.) I've walked around the outside, making them jump, trying to find out where it was coming from. No use. I couldn't find it. Some trips it wouldn't do it at all. Some days it wouldn't stop. Finally, months of hugely annoying squeaking later, I saw Sterling move his seat belt shoulder strap and it squeaked. After making him do it again several times, each time resulting in another screeching noise, I located the problem. The seat belt on the third row, driver's side. Blaine promptly went and bought silicone spray and fixed the problem. My hero.I almost lost my sanity over that one.