The Great Baking Soda Debacle of 2009... and other mayhem

Really. It WAS quite a debacle.

THIS is the first thing I see as I walk out the back door...

Then this...Then there was this...
Not even the firepit escaped...Nor did the dog bowl...

Yet she still gives the impression that she's totally innocent...

This little event wasn't the only fun part about this week, no sir..

There was also the "pants in the toilet" gala - where I went to use the restroom (in MY bathroom, I might add) and found a small pair of pajama pants floating in my toilet. I already know from experience that Abby is the guilty party, so I called her in and questioned her motives... and got the following response.

"I couldn't reach the toilet paper."

And here I was hoping that the pants were merely placed in the toilet out of mischievousness. Nope, there were certain needs to be met, and met they were, in an astounding case of resourcefulness. I'll let you guess what was floating UNDER the pants.

The really sad part? They were Ryley's pants.

And last, but certainly least... there was the "Notorious Theft of Starburst from a certain Movie Rental Establishment". It was a dark and stormy night (okay, perfect and sunny...whatever!) and the girls and I went to rent movies to ease our pains from missing Daddy. You may also recall this is the fateful night where Marley and Me forever ruined our Saturday night. Well, turns out we came home with a little more than a depressing movie... my youngest daughter has begun what is surely to lead to a lifetime of crime.

I'm thinking of having her fingerprinted now, to save a lot of heartache and policework later on.

MMMMMIIIIIKKKKKKKEEEEEE!!!!!

Another milestone already??

That's right... Ryley begged and begged to have the training wheels taken off her bicycle today, so we did. And then she hopped right on and took off. She's a little wobbly on takeoff, but otherwise looks like an old pro!

This was immediately followed by Abby begging and begging to have the training wheels removed from HER bicycle... which we may try this afternoon, and may hold off until next weekend. I want to make sure Ryley gets her time to shine. Plus, Mommy's poor heart can only take so much growing up in one day... One milestone per family, per day please.

No more Marley and Me

It's the end of week one without Mike, who's in China on a business trip. He'll be gone next week too. He's been several times, but most of those were when the girls were much smaller. This time they're much more aware of his absence and it's obvious they're a little freaked out by it. The kids are acting out more often and I've noticed them yelling at each other quite a bit today. I can tell my patience is wearing thin, too, because I then yell at them for yelling at each other. It's (not) very effective.

They made it through the week okay. Today must have really hit home ... no school or gymnastics to distract them. We passed the morning by picking up our horrifically messy living room and kitchen, then had lunch, napped, and decided to go rent movies to take our minds off missing Daddy.

Seemed like such a good idea at the time. Hannah picked a Scooby-doo compilation, Ryley chose the sequel to Narnia, and Abby chose Marley and Me. I'm guessing it's the giant picture of a Labrador puppy on the front that grabbed her interest. I vaguely recalled seeing the book but didn't read it, and after a quick reading of the back of the movie cover decided it was pretty harmless. Some of Hannah's friends had seen it already and told her it was sad, but we're not particularly emotional people about movies so I figured we'd be okay. We even KNEW the dog was going to die at the end.

Oh, if only I had known... an hour and a half later, as all four of us sat bawling our eyes out... Ryley declares "That is the worst movie EVER!!!" In the midst of my tears, I looked at our pitiful bunch and started to giggle. Somewhere in all of our misery I figured most women don't consider crying at movies to be odd and, in fact, probably rent movies like Marley on purpose.

As for us, we WON'T be watching that movie again. Certainly NOT after a whole week of no Daddy. Thankfully Mike called us shortly after the movie had ended (while we were drowning our sorrows in some Pop-Ice popscicles) and the girls cheered up a little. Some after-dark bike-riding in the driveway helped too. Marley has been replaced in its cover and safely stowed until its return to the video store.

Maybe I should go ahead and ban Where the Red Fern Grows just for the heck of it. I'm still traumatized after our fourth-grade viewing of it back in '89.

Another milestone in kid-raising

Ryley successfully completed her kindergarten wellness exam and last round of shots today. SIGH. She did great, and didn't even cry when they gave her the shots.

Of course, now her legs are sore so she required me to wash her hair in the bathtub AND lift her out of it... think somebody might be milking the situation much???

I'm not that mom that cries hysterically when her children go to school (but I am totally NOT judging if you are). I'm excited for her and she is excited to be a "big girl". I think she was ready last year, but as her birthday falls after the age cutoff, she'll now be one of the older ones in her class. And probably one of the tallest.

This should be very handy for her in high school... as one of the first to have her driver's license. Yikes.

Anyway, she's very healthy, with good vision, eating habits, and spine alignment (seriously). We were lectured momentarily on the importance of bike helmets. What horrible parents we must seem to be... I'm all for carseats and sunscreen, but the bike helmet I just can't get excited about. Perhaps my feelings will change once the training wheels come off and top speed reaches higher than my jog. And people, my jog is SLOW.

And guess what? Abby will enter Kindergarten NEXT YEAR. If I'd thought about it for more than 5 seconds we would have just done all her doctor stuff at the same time.

I wonder what it will be like when they're all in school? I plan to change my work hours again so that I can either drop them off or pick them up more often. I'm trying to convince Mike that he needs to become a VP, like FAST, so that I can stay home. Yes, I'm that lady that waits until her kids are in SCHOOL to stay home with them :) and I am not ashamed. I love those girls but sometimes I need to love them when they're somewhere else, and they need that too.

Okay, so I've gone all random now. Anyway, just wanted to share the milestone with you. Anybody got a new baby I can hold for a minute? Mine seem to have time-warped out of that stage straight into the teens.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

at least I tell myself that's why I haven't posted in so long. In actuality, it's been a very hectic last month or so, and I simply have chosen to let the blog go in favor of more important things... sleep for example.
The last two months at work have been very, very busy. I've had several large cases come to major decision points around the same time, and paired with my already busy workload, makes for a very cranky and stressed-out Courtney. I am happy to say that these cases have since either been closed or are very close to closing.
If you've forgotten what I do for a living... I handle about a third of the audits that are conducted routinely by the 46 states with a corporate income tax. (Hooray for those four states without one!) And, seeing how I work for the world's largest retailer, we are audited by most of the other 46 states on a regular basis. I work on a team with three other great people who all do the same thing. We have split the 46 states among us in as close to a "fair" way as we could, but sometimes the workload shifts depending on what's going on in those particular states at that moment. These last few months have been my moment.
Anyway, I have spent many hours at the office and at home dealing with all the many moving parts involved in closing a large audit. As expected, there are always a few people that make the process painful and I have many times been quite frustrated with those people. Some days I wish that my job really was only about the numbers. Wow - I really am a nerd!
I learned that I don't deal well with stress any more. I think I used to - but that's been so long ago! Apparently I have some physical stress symptoms - lovely rashes and two separate bouts of sinus infections/bronchitis. I also haven't been the most enjoyable person to be around either. I know, it's a shocker.

The girls have been really good, though. They're getting older, and as they do we're trying to get them out of the house to do more things as a family. This new initiative has made for some very interesting times, but overall they've done really well. We have a "family allowance" for going out to eat or the movies or whatever, but sometimes we just stay home and roast hot dogs over a fire, too. I've noticed a marked difference in mainly the little girls' behavior out in public and also at home.
This weekend, for example, we went to the park, out to eat at Chili's, and to the Razorback Lady Gymnast Regional Meet. I was nicely surprised that even though the Chili's event and the gym meet were both fairly late in the evening, all were nicely behaved (even Mike!). Okay, so there was a lot of wiggling and fidgeting, but hey, that was all me.
Hannah wrapped up her gymnastics season in the fine town of Pine Bluff (yikes, people) and did fine. It's nice to have some free weekends now, although I will miss seeing her perform....not so much the other 99 girls that don't belong to me. If you haven't experienced a gymnastics meet for youngsters, congratulations... they average five hours with awards and your gymnast performs for less than four minutes of that time...yes, you heard me right. And lest you hope that those four minutes are consecutive...nope, one minute every hour or so. How did I not see this and advocate for soccer or softball?? We had some issues with her goofing off this year, but we had a serious discussion about doing our best all the time and we'll see where that gets us. She is, after all, only nine. But, I got the impression she thought she HAD to do gymnastics, which is not and never has been the case. So, hopefully we've cleared all that up and she'll learn something about work ethic in the meantime.

Ryley will be starting Kindergarten this fall. She's been learning sight words and can read a little bit. She's also grown about a foot and weighs a ton. She's my cuddly, people-pleasing, super-sensitive sweetpea. Lately she's been struggling with the "big-girl" complex and of course since she is not one yet, life isn't fair. She's at an awkward age where she can't do the things that Hannah does yet, but she's capable of more than Abby. It's been tough to balance that and I plan to spend some alone time with her in hopes of alleviating the "not fair" issues.

Abigail will move up to the last year of preschool this year and will go to Kindergarten next year. She's all about keeping up with the Hannahs and the Ryleys, so she's trying to learn Ryley's sight words too. Well, only when there's jellybeans involved, anyway. She's my spunky kid (AKA "rotten") with a rebellious streak a mile long. We've finally (for the most part) conquered the potty training problem... and I do mean FINALLY. She was a tough one. We have regular bed-wetting issues, but that comes with the territory. Tasmanian devils apparently sleep really hard and thus don't wake up to go potty. Since she does sleep so well, I don't sweat the bed-wetting. I mean, I NEVER wet the bed... (cough)

Mike and I are also exploring what our life together looks like when we're so busy. Neither of us are happy with our jobs and so we've been pretty snotty to each other lately. The good news is that we're big enough to realize WHY, and haven't gotten really upset over it. We struggle to find time together, and I find that when we do, it's so foreign that sometimes we struggle for conversation. It's a bit like seeing an old friend after a long absence - there were a million things you wanted to tell them but they escape you at the moment you're together. It's an odd place but we're doing okay with it. The family outings have helped a little, and we find time when we can. I'm sure it's nothing out of the ordinary for any busy family. We're not really stressed about it most of the time.

Well, there you go. That's the Martin world for the last few months. It was a long post, but since I've kept all of you waiting I felt I owed you some serious content. Either way, at least you got a nice nap in.