Little Bits of Normal

I think it might be hard for anyone to really know what normal is anymore but as far as I can tell we had a bit of it around here this past weekend.  Hold on there let me back the train up and mention our minor derailing on Friday evening.

Miss Fabulous in all fairness had not had the best week.  I mean from her point of view with it kind of stunk it up bit.  You know with the whole summer school/ enrichment program's Mrs. Teacher expecting her to do work and all and then not letting her have recess with the other kids when she did not do said work.  And you know Mom called her out on several things this week, also in the no likey category.  So I pretty much knew we had it comin so to speak.

Friday night she got through pizza dinner with no problems, go figure.  However, when it came time to clean up the toys which meant get ready for bed which meant that we the parents would be discovering the fact that her pants were not clean which meant she would need to get a bath ... ah heck she just decided to blow her lid a big one.  I mean it was no holds bar going right for the violence and aggression.  Poor Dad was taken a back and it took him a minute or two to get with the program.  He tried to block and redirect her but she wasn't having it and she wasn't being safe.  He did a great job of keeping her safe and when it was all said and done she cleaned up the toys and got a bath.  Bummer, I would have preferred to skip the rage outburst and just get right to clean up and bath but it wasn't my call.

Oh yeah so where is the normal you ask?  After that she did pretty well for the rest of the weekend.

She played with the siblings.  She did not want to include Mr. Man and we do understand that the sisters like to have some play time with out boys so we set a time when it would be Mr. Man's turn to join the "play date".  Funny thing was she was all done playing when it was his turn to join.  Mom directed the crew (the 3 oldest kids) to go ahead and enjoy their play date.  Mr. Man wanted to play with his beanie babies and Big Sis was okay with that so they moved forward.  3 2 1 "Mommmmmmmmmmmmmm Miss Fabulous is being mean and has a bad attitude and isn't playing nice."  Enter Miss Fabulous crying hysterically that Big Sis was tattling on her.  Mom asked if what Big Sis said was true?  To which Miss answered YES!!!  I said then Big Sis was not tattling and that she could return to the play date or she could have a tantrum and then return to the play date.  Banshee screams and door kicks and two minutes later she went back into the room and played beanie baby mania for all of 5 minutes and then Mr. Man was all done with the play date too.

Our current focus is to help Miss Fabulous finish things and follow through.  Sometimes we have to play with a sibling for a few minutes just to be nice people and that's life.  And ... tantrums won't get her out of what she needs to do.  Darn!  Going up sure can be full of a lot of things you don't want to do.  And that's one to grow on.

This weekend included:

1.  a trip to the mall where no one fell apart before during or after the outing.  Good stuff! 
2. A day trip to a Florida Spring which included swimming in water that was 72 degrees (sounds warmer than it is),
3. packing our own back packs for what we would need for the day (we are all becoming independent little people),
4. car trip, dinner out, changing clothes in a public restroom, piling in and out of the van multiple times,
5. loads of inquiring looks containing questions such as "are these people all together?" "is this a his hers and theirs situation and if so where is the Latino DNA giver?" "is one of those kids Asian too?" and last but not least "did that kid just try to pee in the grass over there?"

Yes it was a fun filled action packed weekend!  As far as the peeing in the grass goes um well you see we have a pool and Lil Bro sometimes has to go pee while swimming and we don't want him to pee in the pool for goodness sakes so we have um well kind of said that yeah he could pee in the grass since we have a privacy fence and all.  Probably not the best idea but ... anyway so when Lil Bro was swimming in the spring and I said "do you have to go potty" and he nodded yes and I turned to make sure that another adult knew to watch the other kids while I took him potty.  Why yes I did turn around to see my 4 year old's swim suit half way down and he was preparing to pee in the grass and yes an on looker nearly hurt herself laughing her behind off. 

What can I say?  We keep it interesting!