Playing Board Games With Preschoolers

...Otherwise entitled, "Praying for Patience."

While I was playing Candy Land with the twins today, I think time slowed down.

In SUPER S-L-O-W M-O-T-I-O-N we crawled along the board with our game pieces, only to be sent back again and again.

"Oh no! I drew Mr. Minty!" (GROAN)


The whole thing was further complicated by:

1) Little Boy's threats to jump to the finish line regardless of the cards' directions. (Him: "I win!" Me: "Um. You can't win while the rest of us are out of the room.")

2) Little Girl's ill-wishing of her brother. ("I hope he gets Plumpy!" "Please let him get stuck in Molasses Swamp!")

We had to reshuffle the cards THREE times. I thought the game would never end.

Still, at least game-playing teaches them good sportsmanship. Right?

Little Boy paused in his gloating over winning to reassure me. "You losed, Mom! But you did good losing."

They DO grow up... eventually

Yesterday my five-year-old daughter streaked through the house screaming, "i have to poop; I have to Poop; I Have to Poop; I HAVE TO POOP!!!!"

Then she stopped just short of the bathroom and said, "Oh. It was just a poot." She calmly went back to playing in the living room.

This child has NO SHAME.


This might concern me if I didn't know that kids grow out of this.

I can remember being mortified by my oldest daughter's antics as a preschooler. I had my mother sew her little frilly bloomers to wear under her church dresses so she didn't flash the congregation during the children's sermon. I thought she would never stop lifting her skirts over her head.

Amazingly enough, as a sixteen-year-old, I notice she never does this anymore.

Neither do the thirteen and ten-year-olds. Their skirts stay resolutely down. It's great how they can manage to go to the bathroom all on their own, too.

I may be a little TOO blase about this sort of thing now, however. The preschool teacher had to remind me last year to make sure Little Girl wears shorts under her dresses. I was thinking, "She's FOUR. Who cares if people see her My Little Pony underwear? SHE certainly doesn't mind."

In any case, at least she'll learn a semblance of modesty by age sixteen.

My least favorite letter of the alphabet

Okay. Pictures are disapperaing inexplicably from my blog.

I would understand if they were someone else's photos that I was unauthorized to use, but these are my OWN pics!

The first time this happened it was on my post about Bug-Bombing the Van. ET had snapped an awesome photo of the roach she saw fleeing the van to show me as evidence, and of course I had to include it in my post.

I posted it, and it disappeared, leaving behind a little box with a tiny red "x" in it.

So I reposted it, and a few days later, Mr. Tiny Red X reappeared.

I growled and gave up.

Then recently I had an awesome pic of Little Girl waving a pair of thong underwear like a flag. It was such a cute image that I built a whole blog post around it.

Enter Mr. Tiny Red X.

Grrrrr....

And NOW, Mr. T-R-X has invaded my reading blog!!!!  I had a lovely ratings system I'd created with photos of my own hand giving each book the thumbs-up or thumbs-down. But now, all my books have received only.....

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

ARRGH!!!

I have NO IDEA how to fix this!

I have now resorted to a crude cartoon hand-signal system.

I know, it's completely pathetic.

And it still may not be safe from that evil third-from-last letter of the alphabet who stalks me.

CURSE YOU, MR TINY RED X!!!

I give you a big THUMBS-DOWN!

UPDATE: My very-smart friend emailed me privately after reading this post with some suggestions on how to deafeat Mr. Tiny Red X. The gist of it was... LEARN TO OPERATE YOUR BLOG PROPERLY! Sigh. I'll work on it.

The Beefaroni Incident (Illustrated)

I made the kids some beefaroni for lunch. Hooray! They wanted to eat by the TV.

I placed the twins' bowls on the table, but Boo carried her own bowl.

Little Girl was so excited that she vaulted herself over the back of the couch towards her beefaroni bowl.

Unfortunately, the upward momentum of Little Girl's foot caught Boo's full bowl of beefaroni.

Everyone yelled and I came in to witness the carnage.

The good news is, all the children survived the incident unscathed.

I can't say as much for the furniture.

Apparently I am a robot...

You know those security-test thingies on the internet that make you type in some random letters and numbers to prove you're an actual human?

I can't seem to pass those tests.

I'm serious. I just spent like twenty minutes today trying (unsuccessfully) to download a game for my daughter to play on my phone while we waited at the orthodontist.

Yes, it WAS a game for my daughter, you Doubty Mc Doubter.

So I had to set up an account in order to download the app or whatever, and it wanted to make me prove I wasn't a robot.

I groaned when I saw it. "I can never pass these tests," I told Boo. She laughed like I was kidding.

I wasn't. I couldn't do it. I kept messing up the characters. I'm going, "Is that a number one or a letter I? Is this capital or lowercase? What is that weird twisty thing? Is that supposed to be a digit or just a blob?"

Long story short: the orthodontist was finished adjusting GG's braces before I was able to get any sort of entertainment loaded on my phone.

It was pathetic.

Mommy takes the kids to the movies

(image from http://wallpaperan.com/world-war-z-2013.html)

I took the older girls to see World War Z.

Yeah I'm the kind of mom who takes her teenagers to zombie movies. That either makes me cool, or crazy. I'm not sure which.

Anyways, it was PG-13.

It was still super-scary. Lots of people got killed, albeit with a minimal amount of blood. But in the end, Brad Pitt single-handedly figured out how to save the whole world.

IT WAS SO COOL. I loved it!

Then as we were leaving the theater, ET started poking holes in the ending.

Apparently it wasn't realistic enough for her. (Because, of course, realism is REALLY important in zombie apocalypse movies. Right?)

She thought it was ridiculous that Brad-the-not-scientist would find out how to semi-defeat the zombies all on his own.Wouldn't someone else have discovered the solution way before Brad did? That's what she thought.

So I had to respond to these anti-Brad comments in a mature and parental manner.

I put my fingers in my ears and yelled, "Brad Pitt saved the world and that's it! La-la-la-la-I'm-not-listening!"

Sometimes you have to set the example.

What about Paula Deen?

I don't watch cooking shows. This is because they are all about... you guessed it! ...cooking, accompanied by no eating, which is of course cooking's only redeeming quality.  To me, cooking shows are a lose-lose situation.

Still, I can't help hearing about Paula Deen. It seems everyone has an opinion about what's been going on with her.

(image from http://www.people.com)

The internet rumors seem divided. Is Paula being persecuted wrongly for an idle comment made twenty years ago? Or is she taking a deserved hit for continued ill-treatment of minority employees? I don't know whom to believe. 

There is one opinion, however, that I think has not been properly considered. I heard two Southern Black ladies talking the other day:

Lady 1: That sure is too bad about Paula Deen.
Lady 2: Mmm-hmmm; sure is.
Lady 1: I saw it coming though.
Lady 2: You did?
Lady 1: Sure did. I knew, once she stopped cooking with all that butter, Paula Deen was going down.
Lady 2: That's true enough. Trying to lighten up her recipes! My lands!
Lady 1: Who's gonna eat that?
Lady 2: Sure enough.
Lady 1: Nobody wants to eat that.
Lady 2: Mmm-hmmm. That's what I'm saying.
Lady 1: So I knew she wouldn't last much longer.
Lady 2: Just goes to show.
Lady 1: Sure does.
(Pause)
Lady 2: Still...You got to watch what you say though.
Lady 1: Ain't that the truth.

So... Maybe Paula's problem isn't about what she said or didn't say.

Maybe it's simply the fact that she betrayed her commitment to butter.

Something to think about...