Weekly News Digest – September 12, 2012

*DJ is sporting a new do, courtesy of my handy new clipper set. My 60′s-era clippers, which I picked up at a garage sale for $1, have already paid for themselves many times over in husband haircut savings, but they were starting to jam up and malfunction, so I invested in some new ones. I figure this purchase is more than justified, now that I have two men in the house who can’t be bothered to do anything with their hair.

DJ was pretty clipper-shy after his last haircut, when a chunk of his earlobe was also trimmed, but I found that if I park him on a stool in front of PBS Kids (specifically Caillou, which is his #1 favorite – why Lord, why?) and bribe him with a bowl of M&Ms, we can both get through the process with a minimum of trauma.

I don't appreciate this, Mom.

But, I make this haircut look GOOD.

We all enjoy rubbing DJ’s fuzzy little head now, whenever he’ll let us. My husband says, “Awww….he’s like a little puppy!”

*Bee has been in a baking mood. Here she is making crepes, and being careful to level off the flour in her measuring cup.

Just about every week she asks, “Mommy, can I bake?” (I love that she still calls me Mommy – not in front of her friends though). As she gets older, I so enjoy teaching her things, and sharing the things I love with her. This week, she discovered Anne of Green Gables laying open on my bed, and she yelled, “Hey Mom! I’m reading this book right now too!” I also have her hooked on one of my all-time favorite TV series – Wings – so every night after the little ones are in bed, she and I watch one episode on Netflix before she goes to bed. She’s taken a liking to Friends, too – a girl after my own heart.

“A daughter is a little girl who grows up to be a friend.” ~Author unknown

Last night I actually, literally burst into tears at the dinner table, because Bee told me that her class had to write essays about someone they admire, and most of the kids chose athletes or celebrities (Justin Bieber, anyone?) but Bee?

Bee chose her Mom.

This reminded me of when she dressed up like me for “Hero Night” at Awana, and it just touched me so deeply, because there are few opinions that matter more to me than those of my children. I spend what seems like an excessive amount of time worrying about how I’m doing at this whole Mom thing, but when stuff like this happens, well….I figure I must be doing OK.

Cakes doesn’t like to see me cry, even if my tears are happy ones, so she immediately went to work to remedy this problem in the best way she knows how….with pencil and paper.

I don’t know how well you can read this, since pencil is Cakie’s preferred medium, but it says “I *heart* U Mom,” with a picture of a crying Mom crossed out, and a picture of a smiling Mom drawn in next to it. As kids go, I have to say….I think mine are pretty great.

*EXCEPT when they leave the living room like this!

On Monday, I wrote on Facebook that weekends seem to render every person in my family incapable of cleaning up after themselves, because every Monday morning, all the rooms in the house look pretty much like this. It’s like they all think “WOO HOO! It’s the weekend! At last, a break from picking up my underpants/hanging up my towels/taking my dishes to the sink/throwing wrappers in the trash can. And then they wonder why I’m so crabby on Mondays.

*We’re still having unseasonably warm weather here, and you know you’ve had too much hot, dry summer when you wake up in the morning, and the sun’s brilliant rays streaming through the windows almost kind of piss you off. You’re like, “Oh…another sunny day. Great.” I am SOOOOO looking forward to fall, and the idea of a cool, brisk rain, or even a booming thunderstorm is just incredibly appealing to me right now. I’m a winter hater, but I was watching some TV show where people were walking down the sidewalk during a gentle snow flurry, and I said dreamily, “Wouldn’t that be delightful?” My husband just stared at me incredulously for awhile, and replied, “I can’t believe YOU just said that.”  It’s times like this when I actually have the nerve to compare our summer plight with that of Laura Ingalls Wilder during the grasshopper plague, and then I think “Heather, those two things are not even remotely comparable, you big whiny baby! Toughen up, you pansy!”

*We’re taking the kids to the pumpkin farm this Friday because the girls get out of school early, and on Saturday we’re going to a heritage celebration at a state park about 90 minutes from here, because they’ll have food and activities for kids, plus free admission to demonstrations of their working grist mill, and one-room, rural schoolhouse tours. When the girls were younger, we took them on a tour of a Danish windmill, and we bought some freshly ground wheat flour, which Bee and I made into several loaves of delicious bread. I also took this very amusing picture in the gift shop.

I’m hoping to someday recreate this scene with all 3 kids, because it’s just so funny, and I’m that kind of Mom. You know….the kind who, after catching her kid eating clumps of mud in the backyard, will actually stop to take a picture before removing said mud from the child’s grubby little fist.

The kid had already eaten a lot of mud, so really, what’s a little bit more for the sake of this awesome shot? Plus, this is the child who filled her little tea set cups with toilet water and drank it, so you know….I figure she has an ironclad immune system.