Showertime Antics

The other day I had to wait until Amaya's afternoon nap at 4pm to take my shower. I left Elyse playing while I hopped in thinking she would stay playing for the 15 minutes I needed. Like many of my assumptions when it comes to my children, I was wrong.
When I walked in I noticed that she had once again peed in the toilet and not flushed. This is the new weird habit of both my children. I have no idea why they do it. Anyway, I turned on the shower and flushed for her before I realized I had to go to. Once the water is on you can't flush the toilet because there isn't enough water pressure to have the water running and flush the toilet. So I left it just the way I found it, unintentionally of course.
Elyse comes in and says, "Mommy, you CAN'T leave your pee-pee in the toilet. It's DISGUSTING!! You HAVE to flush the toilet!!!" Gee thanks little miss perfect...
Then she pulls back the curtain and says, "I see your butt, hehehehe" I tried to convince her that there was something far better to do outside of the bathroom but she wasn't hearing it. She stayed there for the next 15 minutes as I showered and asked me questions, stole soap off my body to "wash" her hands, and generally harassed me.
Once I got out of the shower she proceeded to slap my but as I tried to get dressed. She even blew raspberries on my butt and yes, my butt-crack. I put my panties and pants on first to deter her but then she moved up my body and started touching my boobs.
Have you ever been man-handled by your own child? I'm sure most of you have...and now I have too. I need to start locking the bathroom door...

Isn't shopping supposed to be fun??

This weekend my mother in law wanted the girls to work in the yard with her and she realized they didn't have any "weekend clothes".  All of their clothes are pretty new and I prefer that they stay looking that way. So she told me to go buy them some sweatpants on her. I figured that should be easy enough...wrong. 
While Kayla was in school I took Elyse and Amaya with me to Wal-Mart. From the start Elyse told me she didn't want to go buy clothes-she just wanted to go home. So she whined and complained the whole entire time in Wal-Mart. And of course she had to use the bathroom. I HATE with a passion public bathrooms and this kid has to pee every time I leave the house no matter where we go.
The creative bastards at this particular Wal-Mart have the clothes section directly across from the toy section so of course Elyse was begging me for a toy. I didn't really find what I was looking for and about 40 minutes later Elyse was crying because she was hungry, tired, and toyless. So of course I went home empty-handed. No problem, I thought, we'll all go home, eat, relax, and hit Marshall's in the afternoon. 
Marshall's of course didn't have anything either.  Nothing I was looking for I mean. Elyse of course found a heart shaped coin purse, a cardboard hello-kitty box, and a clear plastic jewelery box. She found all of this while she was running away from me in the store. She's that kid that when you turn around for one nano-second you lose her but if you look hard enough you might see her sneakers peeking out from underneath one of the clothes racks and hear her devious giggling.
Anyway, I'm trying to leave and Elyse is throwing a tantrum because she wants her found treasures. "Please Mommy, please. I neeeed them.  But I LOVE them!" Mind you, one of the boxes is broken and cost $10. I had to pick her up and carry her out of the store crying hysterically while also pushing Amaya in the stroller- Amaya, the "baby" who didn't cry or complain during either of my 2 trips.
So, not one but 2 tantrums and no clothes.  Sitting in the car, getting ready to drive home I suddenly remembered why I like shopping on the internet and why that may be the only form of shopping I do for a long, long, time.

Snow Day

Every day as the temperature drops lower and lower I long to pack up my crap and drive right back down south to Florida. I don't think a winter will pass for the rest of my life without me thinking about my wonderful Florida "winters" with desperate longing. It doesn't help when we are barely through fall and it frickin SNOWS! The hilarity and irony of this happening the year I move back to NY are not lost on me. While I stayed inside nice and warm Kayla and Elyse went out and played in the snow.  Two years ago Kayla got to play in the snow and made a snowman but Elyse was too young and has never seen snow until now. She was in heaven. It took about a week for all the snow to melt and for that whole week she was in love.

She threw herself in it, ate it, licked it, kicked it, stomped in it, and pretended it was all kinds of interesting things.  She is definitely going to enjoy the winters here way more than me. The "snow dog" however, wanted nothing to do with the stuff.  He was very confused to say the least.  It took me a whole 24 hours to convince him to go out and poop. I actually had to throw on my boots and sweats to walk him up the road because he refused to go anywhere near the snow.  Apparently nurture won against nature...

Happy Halloween

This halloween I didn't have the time, energy, or funds to make costumes so the girls were witches thanks to Mima. According to Kayla she was a good witch and Elyse was a bad witch. When I tried to correct Kayla, Elyse corrected me because she wanted to be the bad witch...makes perfect sense.  This was my first experience putting make-up on them. Have to say I kinda enjoyed it, it was like they were little dolls. This was also our first year trick-or-treating in the cold weather. It wasn't too bad though. They had a blast and it was fun to see all the houses decorated. People in Florida never really seemed to get into all that. They got plenty of candy, which I of course raided at the end of the night ;-)

Happy 5th birthday Kayla

Can't believe my first born is already 5 years old. It's been so amazing watching her grow and change over the past 5 years. She is definitely an interesting kid and it's been a great journey.
She wanted a Tangled birthday party ever since Elyse's birthday in July. I did what I could on my limited budget with lots of help from my mom and judging from the picture she was happy.  Either that or she's a really good actress.

Like my hand-made Rapunzel tower?

The Do

Amaya has been congested for a few days so last night I had to run the vaporizer. I gave her a bath and washed her hair before bed. When I went to check on her in the middle of the night the humidity from the vaporizer made her hair dry a little frizzy. She looked like Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Suess' Cat in the Hat. Makes sense because all of my kids hair is always CRAZY!!