Coming to Terms with Independence

Shelby has been testing my patience the last week or so.  Mostly with her attitude.  I tell her to do something, she says "NO"!  What is most annoying is it is an automatic response.  She says it without (in my opinion) even processing what I said.  I don't know how many times a day I hear, "You're mean"!    Last week was a long one of nothing but a difficult job of tearing down the wallpaper in the dining room.  Thursday night I did not go to bed and on Friday I did not get a nap.  My parents arrived Friday afternoon to paint.  Friday evening Shelby spent a lot of time in her room playing, or so I thought.  She was actually rearranging her room.  At first she put her bed up against the wall like it was when she first moved to a big girl bed.  The only problem with that is it takes up a lot of wall space and leaves a big area in the center of the room.  Then she moved the bed into a corner.  This was better use of the space for the bed but she hadn't come up with a way to get the rest of her stuff along the walls.  Her solution was just to get rid of it.  I had 3 problems with all of this.  1.  She didn't ask for permission.  2.  She didn't get help with moving a large piece of furniture.  3.  She too easily was willing to give her stuff away just to have her bed in a new position.  So by Friday evening, I was in no mood to deal with this.  I let her leave her bed in the corner for the night, but on Saturday she needed to get her vanity back from Morgan and return it to her room.  She wrote me this note before she went to bed:

I

In case you can't read it this is what she had to say.

Dear Mom, will you PLEASE consider my room being like this!  I promise I'll find a way to work out my things and were they are.  Please exsept!  And if you don't think you like it you can tell me. (But I'm not going to like it!)  If you want to talk to me about (find a good time).

Love, Shelby

Saturday morning, Nonny came to her rescue and helped her get things situated so it all fit.  She's happy and I'm fine with it.  Now if we can just get on the same page regarding other aspects of life. Same page, heck I'd settle for the same book!

Grandpa Bud

We saw Nate's Grandpa & Grandma Bud at Christmas.  His Grandpa was having a good day then and was in good spirit's.  Mid January things weren't going so good for him so he has been in a nursing home since. We stopped in to see him quick this morning on our quick trip south.  With baseball season approaching we needed to take advantage of being somewhat in the area.  He looked good and was in a good mood.

The girls did good.  Visiting a place like that can be an eye opening experience.  Ours was in more ways than one.  As we were preparing to leave Grandpa's room, there was another resident making his way down the hall in his motorized chair.  The poor fellow didn't get his pants pulled all the way up before he sat down.  So as he rolled by we saw a little more than we needed to.  He stopped at the shower room so he was just getting a head start, right??? :)

Clearing up Confusion

I wanted to clear up any confusion that is floating around out there.  I AM NOT PREGNANT!  You may be a reader of this blog and have no idea what I am talking about.  I started my blog in 2008.  I want to go back and record each pregnancy, the births and the major events of the girls' first years.  So if you check the blog by logging onto www.rlifeisbaseball.blogspot.com you need to check the archives for these posts.  You will find the archives on the right side of the blog page.  I have started with my pregnancy with Shelby so look in 2003.  Her birth will be in 2004.  Morgan's pregnancy was in 2005 and birth in 2006.  A select few readers receive the blog posts directly in their email so they don't see a back post date.  It appears as current information.  So, if they do not read closely, let's just say they can be misinformed!

Alex the Cheerleader

A few weeks ago, Shelby dressed her new AG doll Alex in the basketball outfit she got for Christmas.  She made a GO Shelby sign and taped it to her hand.  She insisted I was going to hold the doll up and have her cheer when her team scored.  I did carry the doll in and stood her up on the bleacher, but that is as far as I could take it.  Morgan did help her cheer a few times.  

GO SHEBY!

Heart Day 2012

Valentine's Day started a little loveless around here.  Being Monday's are late nights, Tuesday was a crabby morning.  Emotional drama took over as it usually does and there were tears for #1 over a hair clip disagreement.  She refuses almost all of my suggestions and does not agree with that old saying, "Mother Knows Best".  I hope one day down the road she remembers these days.  Every difficult child deserves 1 of their own that is worse than they were.  However, I don't remember being a difficult child.  Hmmm, Nate???  Anyway, I made my way to Oakdale for the exciting class parties.  Hard to believe it is the last one of the year.

Morgan before school

Shelby had to wait (no tears in my photos)

 Morgan's class reading waiting for the party to start

 Morgan & teammates for the game

turn a classmate into a snowman

27 of the little crazies

4 where missing

it's a shame when that can be a blessing! :) 

 craft/snack was a heart cookie to frost & decorate

my stomach started to turn just looking at some of these!

 ahh, YUCK!

 Before I had to watch Morgan attempt to eat that cookie, I headed over to Shelby's room.  Luckily she was in a better mood then the last time I saw her.

 their game was a scavenger hunt to find a list of stuff

in their valentines

 a picture opportunity without tears

After school we headed to the public library for Partners in Reading.  After that we headed home and got some homework done before Shelby went to basketball practice.  When they returned we had supper and the sugar filled wheels began to fall off.  Our night ended a lot like it started, loveless.  So the girls went to bed without opening their gifts.  

Wednesday before school we tried again.  There was more drama (sugar hangover I suppose) and you can see that when you look at Shelby's face.

 Nate the Great makes everyone happy

 Dad had flowers delivered for his girls

That was our love day.  Typical with children, school and activities I suppose.  Only thing missing was some love.  I'm off now to go find some.  But since it's homework time, I doubt I'll find any!

January's Journal

Each month, Shelby works in a daily journal.  I like reading the stuff she writes in it.  The journal includes worksheets with math facts, sentence correcting, poems and blank sheets to do their writing.  I thought I would blog about a few of the funny ones from January.

It is a new year.  It is January 2012.  Some people make New Year's resolutions.  A New Year's resolution is something a person is going to do the whole year.  My New Year's resolution is to get along with my sister more.  By playing nicer with her, and playing what she (underlined 3 times) wants to play!

If I could change something about myself it would be nothing.  I think I am perfect just the way I am!  I can be a little bit crazy, but I like that!  I also like everything I do!  But there's one more thing I like about me.  I like baseball!  I want to win a trophy for a national baseball game.  I want to win the game because my dad is depending on me.  He also likes baseball.

I like to help my parents by obeying.  My dad goes to work a lot, so that leaves us with our Mom.  My sister and I can't go a single day without our mom yelling!  I hope we can survive!

These are my top 3 favorites.  I have more than once reminded her of her New Year's Resolution.  As a mom I was happy to read that she likes herself because most days I wouldn't say she felt that way.  And finally, I hope the mom can survive too!

Young Authors

The girls participated in their school's Young Author's Competition.  I tried to scan the pages of their books before they were sent to school, but it wasn't working out.  I gave up and just took pictures of each page.  Hopefully you will be able to read the words and see the pictures.  After all the time this took, I feel like now would be a good time to start next year's books!

Shelby's book is about friendship.  She changed her topic several times.  She often comes home from school upset about 1 so called friend or another not being such a great friend.  Trying to get an almost 8 year old girl understand the mentality of an 8 year old going on 5 year old boy is difficult.  I talked her into the friendship topic hoping she'd learn a few lessons herself.  The fairy idea came from her Fiona the Flat Fairy she created with Nonny Martha last summer.  We don't do Flat Stanley her so they treated Fiona like one and took her all over.  She didn't use the actual fairy they created and laminated in the story but did use Fiona as the name of the fairy.  For the names in their stories, I told the girls to pick the name they would like if they were not named Shelby and Morgan.  Shelby went with Zoe and Morgan with Katherine.  This will be a long post with both stories and I'll start with Shelby's.  Enjoy!

Not as clear as I'd like but hopefully you can get an idea of the books.  Now here is Morgan's and what else would she write about other than, a baby doll!

Morgan's dedication page did not come out so good but hopefully you can read it.  There you have it.  My authors.  Glad to be done.