Holiday Headache

    I realized, last Halloween, that Halloween is my favorite holiday because it's one of the few that doesn't require being around my extended family for hours.
    It became my favorite holiday when I was quite young. Kindergarten.

    Now that I'm an adult, I almost take joy in missing holidays.
    We decided to have our own Thanksgiving again this year. It was a relaxing day.
    Christmas however, is still up in the air.

    I don't want to deny my kids the opportunity if they want to go to family events.
    I also will never, ever ever again leave any of my children with those people unsupervised, so, this means that if they do want to go up there, it's the same stress that I've lived through in my childhood.
    Lame.

    I also have a deep resentment for the winter holidays, which I'm sure my kids can feel.
    I get exciting ideas about cutting snowflakes or frosting cookies, and then when the time comes around, I'm cursing up a storm in my head about my mother and grandparents. Instead of doing fun, together things, I have a grumpy day.

    I don't know how to fix it.

    I've been trying to celebrate alternative holidays. Obscure holidays that my family doesn't celebrate, or care about. Like Wintereenmas, a video game playing week. Or pi day, a day to celebrate the math idea of pi, by eating pie!
 

    I'm not sure how to alleviate this stress.

    One very stressful solution would be to give those that stress me out a list of "What I need in order to continue our relationship."
    Like "I don't feel comfortable leaving my children with you without me present. If you want to continue to have a relationship with me, don't ever tell my kids that they are staying the night with you, ESPECIALLY before asking me. Unsupervised time with them is not an option. In return, we can all go to public places together, like the carousel and parks."

    It seems very aggressive, but I doubt it's any more aggressive than trying to remove myself from the family and not talking to them ever again. That's what I've been doing so far and despite my stubborn intervals of silence and grumbly hatered, they still as me to holidays.

Something New

    It seems like, I'm happiest when I get outside every day. So, I'm thinking about trying to wake up all the babies and get them dressed before 7 am. That way, we can all go to our little park in the morning to drop the oldest off at school.

    I'm hoping that playing in the morning will wear them out and they'll be more willing to sleep at bedtime. Maybe even nap time to.

     I believe step 1 is to get them dressed and out the door as soon as they wake up at 9.
     I'll do that for a while, timing how long it takes them to get dressed when they have the promise of park. Once they can get dressed on time, I'll start waking them up at 8, and then 7.

    Today is an early day, so I'm off to try right now at 8.

    Wish me luck!

Alligator in the Bathroom

    Well, my husband jumped out of bed, prepared to save a lizard.

    He rushed past me with the lizard on his chest and started the bath with lukewarm water.
    I called our park manager and asked if anyone had reported a missing iguana. She said no, so I told her to pass on my number if someone did.
    She recommended I check Craigslist for their lost and found, and I did, finding nothing.

    Eventually I had to head off to work.

    He might have been dead when we brought him in. The water didn't ripple at all. He didn't seem to be breathing.

    After the mind-draining work, I came home and had completely forgotten about the lizard in the bath tub.

    Well, the next day, my animal-loving baby-child, Lulu needed to potty. She has a little kiddo potty that she uses in the living room, but she wanted to go "to the big potty."
    So I took her, and she noticed.

    She gasped in delight, and remembered.
    "Momma!" She gushed excitedly. "There's a alligator sleepin' in the bathtub!"
    Oh! My sweet little girl! I thought. My heart ached for her. She had discovered a new pet, and it was already gone.
    "Oh, it's sleeping?" I whispered to her. "We better be quiet then."

    "Yeah," She whispered back. "Gotta be quiet. He's sleepin."

    At this point, we'd had the lizard in our bathtub for a day and a half. We had to forgo tubbys for a night, and I was getting really antsy about bleaching it.
    I made one last vain attempt to find an owner before I snuck the lizard out the back door when Lulu couldn't see.

    Well, she remembered, and a few hours later, she insists on checking on him.

    I hadn't bleached the tub out, or thrown out the bottle he was resting on. I did wrap him up in the towel he was on.

    She peeked into the tub.
    "He's gone!" She whispered.

    "Oh goodness!" I said. "Where do you think he went?"

    She thought for a bit.

    "The window!" She was still whispering. "He go outside."

    "Ah! I bet you're right." I whispered back.

    "Let's go look for him." She had such impressive conviction. "Alligator," She called through out the house.

    At some point of getting her outside clothes on, Daddy had asked her if he went outside and found his family.

    So we headed outside and looked for the alligator and his family.


    It's been a week and when we walk to the park, she still looks for him.
   

Surprise Neighbor Attack

   Once upon a time, about last Saturday, our neighbor came knocking on the door.

    It was morning so I was still in my jammie pants, and I'm paranoid, so naturally, I hissed at the closed door.
    It was a day I was letting my fantastic husband sleep in, so I answered the door all morning looking.

    "Did you guys lose an iguana?" He asked.

    "N-no, why? What's up?" I stammered.

    "There's one out back on the rose bush, and as far as I know, they're not indigenous-" He goes on a bit and I'm processing that it is currently 29 degrees Ferienheight (that's about 4 degrees below freezing). I happen to know that that will easily kill our cold-blooded friend.
    I mentioned bringing him inside.
    "They bite, don't they? I don't want to grab it if it's gonna bite me." He said.

    "Well alright," I said. "Let me put this baby down and then you can show me where it is."
    I bustled into the bedroom, which woke up my husband.
    "Sorry Love! I didn't mean to wake you. We have to save an iguana."

    Having had iguanas in his youth, my husband jumped up, jumped into clothes and jumped outside to rescue the iguana.

    . . . to be continued . . .
 

Rolling with the Punches

    I love holidays.
    Well, I love some holidays.

    I love Halloween and the Day of the Dead. October is very much my favorite month.
    Every year, on November 3rd, I think about starting on next year's Halloween projects.

    "If I start now," I explain to myself, "our costumes will be SOOO AWESOME!"
    Or, "I can start knitting right now and have a garland of tiny scarecrows to hang up next Halloween!"

    It seems like a lack of money always prevents me from my goals. I'm going to try again though!

    Knitting scarecrows, autumn leaves, and pumpkins! Here I go!

    Two of the little ones fell asleep right before trick-or-treat time, so me and the two oldest ones went around our neighborhood.

    It was fun. They wore themselves out.
    On our way home, I was asking them if they wanted to hit the houses with lights on.
    My oldest was complaining that her legs hurt from going up and down the apartment stairs, but every time we were about to pass a house;
    "Just one more." She'd say. So cute.
    My 3yr old was dragging her bag of candy, but she'd point to the houses as well. They weren't done until we were home.

    I love Halloween. I love autumn. I love the cool air at night and I love the lack of Christmas songs.

Redefining Holidays

    Holidays are usually so stressful. I end up thinking too much and complaining about how far out of our way we'll have to go to cater to all the grandparents.
   This year, the two tiniest babies fell asleep, and our car died about four days ago. Since my car died I've been needing rides to work  and it's really draining to think about. With a family that doesn't fit in the standard car, getting a ride for Halloween was just about impossible.
   It really pushes your limits to be put on the spot like that. And stressed. It really pushes your limits to be stressed all the time.

    Given what we could at the time, I ended up taking the two oldest girls out while Daddy watched the two smallest ones sleep at home.
    We didn't visit each and every grandparent to show off costumes. We didn't drive to each end of town, and we didn't find "all the best houses." We just went and discovered who lives in our own area.

    You know what? It's was incredibly nice!

    I really don't like the area I'm living in. Leaving is my motivation that keeps me blogging every day. However, there are a lot of nice people who live around here and I'm glad I know that now. Had I not been forced to look past the loud, obnoxious people I see every day, I probably wouldn't have known we had anything else.

    I get the feeling that exploring your own space during Halloween used to be more community. I expect before cars, playing around in your neighborhood was more common.
    I can't wait to find a place where we can fit in. A place with lots of parents who have done parenting classes and CARE about their little ones.

    I can imagine wandering around my own neighborhood on Halloween, where everyone is an understanding parent, and it sounds amazing!