Mothering Many

Batman finally looks like his regular self and I was able to get a current picture for you. Here his is with freshly dyed BLUE hair:

Batman really enjoyed playing baseball this past spring, and he likes to cheer in the fall. Here he is hamming it up for the camera at one of his games:

This boy is a little less outspoken than my other sons. He can get loud and boisterous, sure, but you are just as likely to find him quietly studying something. Unfortunately, his studying often ends up in trouble, as his curiousness gets the better of him. We’re working on impulse control, LOL. I figure at 8, he has a couple of years yet to master that concept.

Here is one of my favorite pictures of him, because it captures that inquisitiveness so very well. I figure if I can keep him from hurting himself or anybody else for another little bit, he’s gonna be more than ok.

I’m just glad he finally realizes that snow boots are not for summer wear. The ones younger than him are still trying to wear long sleeve shirts and sweats. Have I mentioned it’s about a hundred degrees outside?

As I type this, Diva and I are watching Dirty Dancing together. Now, I’ve seen it about a bazillion times. It is one of my all time favorite movies. Dang, I would love to dance like that!! Anyway, this is the first time she’s seen it, and she is glued to the screen. It’s awesome to share the things I love with my kids.

And there’s Patrick Swayze driving another generation Crayze. I think I’ll avoid telling her he died until she’s enjoyed the rest of his movies. And yeah, I own a good number of them.

You know, one more time, let me say cancer sucks. One of my neighbors has it now, and I have lost several family members due to it. Pancreatic cancer, Mesothelioma, whatever. It is all same: thief and robber.

This right here would be my oldest son. Like Spidey, he has amazed me over the past year. He’s such an awesome young man! In addition to a solid academic performance, he was a captain on the safety patrol at his school. He also won the Karen Courter award, which is the highest award given to 5th graders each year. He got more lesser recognitions than I can remember at the awards ceremony! Here he is with his plaque:

You will note here that he also has some wild and crazy hair. He is naturally a dark strawberry blonde, but I haven’t seen that color on him in quite awhile. Around here, we mostly treat hair as a fashion accessory. And oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that he got his ear pierced a couple weeks early for his 12th birthday. He fought hard for that privilege for a couple of weeks.

Here he is just a couple of days ago. We were sitting together on the couch talking and I took a picture just because.

This is my other son, and I love him, too! I reckon by this time next year, he’ll be wanting fitness equipment for his birthday. You know how teenage boys are!

Okay, I am sitting here with my head spinning. I had forgotten how loud and noisy and bickery and obnoxious this many kids can be. All day long it’s been one incident after another of yelling, leaping, crying, tattling, or breaking. And that’s just me! This is the second week of summer vacation and YOWZA! Last week they were at their dad’s and they are going back there Friday evening. Which gives me until the Friday after that to come up with some activities to keep them from each other’s throats. Ok, I can do that. I’m trainable. Especially when it concerns my sanity

I want to make it clear that I am really enjoying getting to spend more time with my kids. It’s just different. Sometimes different takes readjusting to, especially considering that the last time we were all together for long stretches like this, they had school work to accomplish!

I wonder if sitting around counting bullion would count. If I can’t find any of that, perhaps they could sit around sorting a bag of 16 bean soup mix!

Well, it’s time to talk about my second son. The middle boy. The one who has come out this year and absolutely amazed me. Not that he’s the only one who has, just that he really has.

We put Spidey in 3rd grade at the beginning of the school year, based on his age and where we probably thought he would fall academically. He’d been in school less than a week when the principal told me he probably needed to move up and she wanted to test him to be sure. His teachers did that, and he went into 4th grade two weeks into the term. He stayed on the A/B honor roll all year, and won several awards. He participated in Battle of the Books and was a real credit to his team.

But all of that is not so much what amazes me about this kid. Spidey is his own man. And he owns himself with pride. Recently, I took him to a ball game that his brother was playing. He had some stuff to carry with him, so he grabbed up one of his older sister’s discarded bags and said, “this will do”, and he wore that bag. He not only wore it, he ROCKED it. See?

Spidey and his man-bag

Spidey also has some interesting hair. Not to long ago, he buzzed it and then had his oldest brother shave lightning bolts into it. Right now, he’s sporting a mohawk. It was turquoise until last week, when the chlorine bleached it back out, and so now it is PURPLE. It is in fact the same color purple as the tail and mane on the pink My Little Pony. He’s da bomb, ya’ll.

Spidey’s purple mohawk

I hope he’s got this much self-confidence when he’s 16 and needing acne treatments!

I know, I know, I said I was going to talk about my kids in order, but I have hit a wee snag. I don’t have many recent shots of Batman, and he got bit on the eyelid by an ant, and isn’t exactly looking like himself right now. People, the eyelid. Ouch! It was swollen nearly shut and very red and angry looking, and I just didn’t think it was fair to post his picture all over the internets like that.

Now, if someone had offered me a new Asus, I might have briefly reconsidered, but they didn’t, and so the post on him will have to wait until he looks like himself, and this is just a place holder to remind me to write it. Tomorrow, you get Spidey.

Drama is now six, and recently graduated Kindergarten. She received the principal’s award and several other honors. She’s a much quieter child than her siblings, until something goes wrong, and then she can raise the roof with her piercing shrieks. Hence the name, DRAMA. Word is out, though, she’s a faker!

In her less intense moments, she’s getting quite self-sufficient. She can read pretty well, and likes to tell us stories. And she’s getting more and more social. That sounds like she’s been antisocial, which is not what I mean at all. I’m trying to say that she’s learning to demand her share of positive attention in the family instead of crying to get notice. He personality is beginning to real shine, and she’s a lot of fun to be around.

I took all of these pictures on her graduation day. I was so happy to see her so proud of herself. She’s had a very big and change-filled time over the last 18 months or so, and she’s bouncing back like an India rubber ball.

P.S. She was very pleased with her end of school goodies, which included promotional items like free bowling and free french fries and such.

Well, I’m thinking it might be time to show off my kids again. They’ve certainly changed a lot since the last time I did this!! We’ll start with the youngest and go up, because if I don’t do it in order, I will surely forget what I am trying to accomplish here, LOL!

DaBaby is four now. Man, that’s hard to believe. I mean to say, I can obviously look at her and tell she’s growing up, but what is hard to believe is that my youngest child is now four years old. If I hadn’t had such crazy life changes since she was born, the pattern would indicate that there would be 2 more younger than her. Oh well, that’s life, things change, and the very strong likelihood is that she will forever be DaBaby.

She is such a laughing, happy child. This picture was taken when she came with her Grandi to visit me at work. It was in April, and hot, but she was wearing the hat I made her. She had a great time looking at the yard decorations. Er, lawn ornaments for you fancier folks.

She gobbles up life in huge chunks. Here she is sipping a soda through 2 straws. How can you not laugh at that?

And here is one of my favorites, the two of us coloring the same picture. We had major discussions about whose side was whose.

She’s happy, she’s healthy (no allergy mattress covers for her at least) and she’s DaBaby!

I don’t remember if I bragged sufficiently on my children over their end of year achievements on this blog or not, but just in case I didn’t, and because it bears repeating, let me post here what I posted on facebook the other day:

Well, with all of this year’s awards ceremonies behind us, I can say that the Darrow Bar has been set high. It is a general standard of excellence in character as well as academics. All of my children have more than surpassed what I thought they would achieve in their first year of public school. I am proud of ALL of you!

I am so very pleased with all that my children have accomplished in school this year. I have a rising high schooler and a rising middle schooler, so I know that next year will be full of adventures, too! It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them were engaged in lsat prep in a few years, although that may have more to do with their ability to argue with me than any actual intellectual achievement to date.

Anyway, yeah, we passed. With flying colors!!

I don’t think I mentioned it here, but until this past weekend, we’ve been without hot water here for about 2 and a half or three months. Now, I still say that hot water isn’t a necessity, only a convenience, but it sure is nice to just be able to throw the kids in the tub again without planning ahead for an hour to heat enough water to make it bearable for them.

Now, here’s the scarier part. For most of the last week of that time, we were without running water at all, as we tried to install the new water heater. Like, 2 days without, and then a day and a half with and then 3 days without again. Luckily, school was still in session, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

But no running water means no laundry done and no dishes done and limited cooking options. By the time it was over, we had no plates or silverware or pots left, and the laundry pretty much filled the kitchen. Did I mention that 8 people live in this house? Yeah. So, I have been digging out from that disaster all week. I’ve discovered that with this many people, it takes about as long to get out of a mess as it takes to get in one. There’s just so much I can do in any given day, yk?

But tonight, I am pleased to report, I finally reclaimed one side of my kitchen, and got the laundry down to it’s normal confines. And whatever was in there that smelled like poo is finally GONE. I didn’t need any herbal weight loss pills because the stench was enough to keep me from wanting to eat. Apparently, I was the only one who was really offended by it, though, since no one volunteered to take care of it while I was at work. Hahahahahaha. I’m teasing, they all wrinkled their noses up as they walked through, LOL!

I’m still not one hundred percent sure this was the total cause, because I did a lot of scrubbing, but I am going to offer up this one piece of advice: do not let an egg pan soak for longer than 12 hours. Just don’t. If you have one soaking and then can’t wash it, just dump the water out and start over again later. But don’t dump it in the toilet you can’t flush. No, we didn’t do that. But just think of it. Or better yet, don’t.