I was sitting in a meeting the other day, and I started to doodle a little picture. It started out as just a picture of a nose, but then grew into pretty much the ultimate 'I Love You' greeting card. I was going to give it to Rach, but I wanted to make sure I had the perfect caption first. So if anyone can beat these, let me know.
And by the way: No, I'm not an artist. And, Yes, I somehow remain gainfully employed.
"Everyone nose that I picked my one true love"
or how about....
"It 'tissue who gives me something to run to"
or maybe.....
"God bless you for being nothing to sneeze at"
And P.S. How about that tuxedo t-shirt? I've never been more proud of a piece of artwork.
Okay, so I know what you must be thinking: What on earth is going on with the King clan? Is everything okay? Did their life quiet down to the point that there is nothing left to write about? Is Jeff just lazy and keeps forgetting to write a blog? Has there been so much traveling that Jeff couldn't tell you what state all of his kids are in at any given time? Did everyone get sick to the point that the Publix pharmacy people yell out, "Jeff!" every time he walks in like he's Norm from Cheers? Did Jeff gain so much weight that he's starting to resemble Norm from Cheers? Did Rach go completely crazy and stash the bodies somewhere? Did she at least go crazy enough to make Jeff pull up more carpet? Is this intro ever going to end? Will he please stop writing in the 3rd person?
And the answers: Same old, same old. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Pretty much. Not yet. Absolutely. I think so. And, Oh, alright.
A couple of months ago, Rach and I were thinking about what we could get the kids for their big combined present. Rach wanted a trampoline, but I narrowly and luckily convinced her otherwise since the slope of our backyard would consistently catapult the kids over the fence into the woods. Not so surprisingly, though, the trampoline would be a smidge safer than last year's gift, a zip line that the kids ride that shoots them through the backyard directly into the wooden fence. I'm not even joking.
Our next and only other idea was a trip to Disney World. A brilliant idea. We figured that the kids would, for the first time ever, unanimously agree on something. Wrong. When we told them that we wanted to take them to Disney World, but that this would be our only present to them, four of the kids excitedly screamed for joy (even Jaxon got in the mix), while Gavin just sat there and said, "Naw man, I want my presents." We didn't even get a chance to convince him before Tori chimed in, "Gavin, we'll still get presents from everyone else, like Maw-maw and Paw-paw and stuff." Then Cole added his two cents, "Yeah, and we'll still get presents from Santa Claus!" Ummm, wait. What? Then Rach and I had to clarify, "Umm, well actually, we'll have to send Santa an email and tell him to buy you your tickets to Disney World for us. And then we'll pay for us to get down there and get a place to stay." Phew. That was close. Thank goodness for technology. When I was little, we had to hand write letters to Santa Claus and pay for postage. Not to mention the fact that you'd have to wait up to two weeks to get a response. Now, all we have to do is just post a message on Santa's wall, or send him a tweet. I don't understand how people managed to live before the 90s.
Anyway, Gavin conceded, and Yay! We're going to Disney world! But not yet. We're not going until next week, to give us time to get all the reservations and details ironed out. But it should be fun. We're getting a house down there. Check it out.
But before we do all of that, we had to make it through Christmas. We had to get all of the kids back down to Louisiana, and like always, there were logistical issues. Rach and I brought Gavin, Scarlett, and Jaxon early last week. But Cole and Tori couldn't miss school, so they left with Maxine two days later. Then, when we got down there, we didn't know where we were supposed to be, which grandparent got which kid, who was staying where for how long, etc, etc, etc. As soon as we get down there we kind of get hit by one of those cartoon tornadoes that leaves us standing there burnt and alone when it leaves.
But the kids definitely made a good decision. Sure, WE might not be getting them any presents, but they still got presents from grandparents, step-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles, lousy-aunts, lousy-uncles (Ba-dum SHA. Thank you. I'll be here all week), friends, neighbors, pen-pals, homeless people. They made out like bandits. They've been opening presents for 2 weeks straight, and we still get to go to Disney. They got an Xbox360, or as I like to call it; The Ultimate Bargaining Chip. "Boys, go clean your room, or no Xbox......Boys, brush your teeth, or no Xbox.....Boys, go mow the lawn, or no Xbox.......Boys, go finish digging that moat around the house, or no Xbox. Boys,.....Well, you get the idea. Scarlett got 2 mp3 players (one for each ear, I guess). Tori got a new phone. Jaxon got a bike and a scooter. And he also got so many presents that, at one point, when I told him he had more presents to open, he let out a huge grunt because I was taking him away from his new 'Ramp Romp Car Set'. (Quick note: Jaxon is so completely obsessed with cars right now. Any kind of car, it doesn't matter. His favorite game to play is the punch buggy game. He constantly asks me what NASCAR number all of his cars are. The ONLY movie that he'll watch is the movie 'Cars'. He's obsessed. So you might be thinking that I'd be sacred that he'll grow up to be a NASCAR crazed redneck. But then you don't know me too well. Although it's true that I'm not much of a NASCAR fan, I am a fan of comedies about NASCAR. So his new nickname is El Diablo (It's, like, Spanish for a fighting chicken). We're gonna watch The Highlander together. And I keep telling him that if he's not first, he's last. This is gonna be awesome!)
Anyway, the point is, everyone had a real nice Christmas. And we still have Disney to look forward to. Which means that things won't be quieting down anytime soon. But who would want that anyway?
I know I've written about this before, but it can't be overstated. Racheal is crazy. I mean really crazy. Let me explain.
I enjoy Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They're probably two of my favorite days of the week. Not only because Racheal is off of work and we generally get to spend more time together, but also because of how interesting it is when I come home from work. I have absolutely no clue what I'm going to come home to. No idea, whatsoever. Trying to predict what I'm going to come home to see would be like trying to guess what kind of diseases the cast of MTV's The Jersey Shore was carrying. It could literally be anything. Maybe I come home and she ripped up all of the carpet out of a bedroom. Maybe I come home and she painted the bathroom. Again. Maybe it's something simple and I come home and she hung up life-size pictures of the kids in the front hallway. Maybe it's something outlandish and I come home and she made homemade meatballs. Or maybe I come home and she moved all of Jaxon's stuff into the boys' room, and moved Tori's stuff into Jaxon's room. (Which actually makes sense because Jaxon spends exactly zero minutes a day in his room. He sleeps in the boys' room, plays in the boys' room, makes messes in the boys' room, etc. And since Tori and Scarlett are basically reincarnations of Racheal and Maxine, I'm sure we're only about six weeks away from one of them poisoning the other. Anyway.) Maybe I come home to Racheal sitting on the couch in her pajamas surrounded by a sea of Laffy Taffy wrappers. Maybe I come home and everybody's gone. (At which point I usually panic, because it opens up the possibilities of what they could be doing to all of planet earth.) Or maybe I come home and she's rearranging the kitchen cabinets for the 11,000th time. (All of those things have happened, by the way.) But maybe, just maybe, I come home and she's done something completely indescribable. Something so ridiculous that I'm still having trouble putting it into words. I guess I'll just show you:
When I first saw this, I thought maybe that Chuck E. Cheese had some sort of new Photoshop ride. I was wrong.
Yep. You see that correctly. That's my blond headed baby. With black hair. Looking like a baby Wayne Newton. Except Jaxon still has all of the skin left on his face, of course. But wait. It gets worse. When I got home, I made a comment about how he looked like Eddie Munster, but that the curtains didn't match the drapes. (Meaning that his hair and eyebrows were different colors. Get your mind out of the gutter.) Anyway, big mistake. That prompted Rach to get out her makeup and go to work. She drew him some black eyebrows. Then she painted his nails. Then she gave him some guyliner. She said she wanted him to look like a little baby rockstar. Think Bret Michaels without the hair plugs and do-rag. So she put him in a little shirt and tie to make him look Emo. Sadly, he went from looking like Eddie Munster to Adam Glambert. It was terrible. I'd show pictures, but I couldn't bring myself to take any. Keith tried to make me feel better by saying, "You know, if you take away the fingernail polish and the makeup, and put some glasses on him, he kind of looks like a baby Clark Kent." Thanks Keith. Nice try.
And now, it's Wednesday afternoon, and who knows what I'm going to find when I get home. Come to think of it, I'm starting to hate Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Mimi canceled her decorating plans for this picture
Three weeks ago, we had our whole Thanksgiving planned out. We were all staying here in town, and we were going to cook Thanksgiving dinner at our house. End of story. Well, actually, we had thought about going to eat dinner over at a friend's house, but bringing our tornado of a family to a Thanksgiving dinner would be a HORRIBLE idea. I mean horrible. We might as well bring Colonel Frank Slade with us (That's Al Pacino from Scent of a Woman for all of you people who were living under a rock during the early nineties - Whoo-AA!!). Anyway, my grandma has been in and out of the hospital for a few months, and on the Friday before Thanksgiving, my mom called and said that she was back in the hospital and not doing so well. So my original thought was that I could head back to Louisiana that weekend, spend some time with my Maw-Maw, and come back in time to spend Thanksgiving with Rach and the kids. Rach wasn't going to be able go with me because she had to work all weekend and couldn't take off since she was already off Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And she was taking off the following Saturday to take the girls to the Miley Cyrus concert in Columbia. Keith wanted to go see Maw-Maw too, but he was already planning on going back to Louisiana the day before Thanksgiving to spend the holiday with his mom since his mom was going to be by herself. She was going to be by herself because my mom had already made plans to go visit my brother in Washington DC to help him decorate his new house.
Quick side note: The idea of my mom helping my brother decorate his new house is absolutely hilarious to me. I could just imagine the conversations between the two of them:
B-Lo: So do you think I should hang up this giant LSU blanket on this wall? Or this wall? What about this 1995 Intramural Runner-Up Trophy? I should put that by the doorway so people can see it when they walk in, right?
Mom: But if you put that blanket there, you won't have room to hang up all of these fake floral arrangements! And where are you going to put the 17 life size photos of Jaxon?
But I digress. My mom had decided to go to DC because my dad wasn't going to be home anyway. You see, he was flying to Minnesota to have much needed surgery on his back. Why is he flying all the way to Minnesota to have surgery? Good question. And the answer is: My dad knows a guy. He ALWAYS knows a guy. Always. I think he knows at least one person in the New Orleans area in every profession that exists (except back surgeon, apparently). And I don't think he ever paid for anything either. Need your brakes fixed? Dad knows a guy. Need a haircut? Dad knows a guy. Need to get bailed out of jail again? Dad knows a guy. I remember going fishing with my dad when I was younger, and if we happened to come back with a boatload of fish, we'd have to make about 15 stops on the way home so my dad could stay in good standing with all of these people that he knew. I guess it was sort of like the seafood mafia.
But I digress again. So instead of Keith and I driving to Louisiana separately, we decided to wait until Wednesday and take Cole, Gavin, and Jaxon with us for a boys Thanksgiving. I was kind of excited about driving down there with Keith, since normally, Racheal's version of helping me drive is to keep me awake by talking on her cell phone in the passenger seat.....When she's not sleeping, of course. Which, coincidentally is just about as helpful as Keith's version of helping me drive, which included buying me energy drinks and watching movies on my laptop. He drove for exactly zero minutes on the entire trip. In Keith's defense though, he did offer to drive every time we stopped for gas. After we were all back in the car. And I was in the driver seat. And we were getting back on the interstate. But he did ask, though.
All in all, it was a good trip. I'll go into more detail tomorrow, but everyone got to do something special:
Keith and I got to see our moms and our Maw-Maw.
Jaxon got to watch the movie 'Cars' 27 times. (He would not let us change the movie. At all. For 27 total hours of driving. Same movie, over and over. Then when we got to Louisiana, my mom DVR'd the movie off of the Disney channel so he could watch it on loop some more. If you want to get punched in the face, just walk up to Keith or I, and say, "Ka-Chow!")
Keith was actually trying to shake the
'Cars' movie demon out of Jaxon
Gavin got to shoot a hog on a hunting trip with his dad. (Which now puts Gavin in the lead in our 'lifetime pig shooting contest'. He's winning 1-0.)
Cole got to go to an LSU game in Tiger Stadium. (And he got to see the Les Miles that gets ridiculously lucky at the end of close games. And not the Les Miles that treats the end games like it's opposite day.)
Tori and Scarlett got to see Miley Cyrus in concert. Rach took them to get their hair done and got them sassy new outfits to wear for the concert. (Mark my words right now, Miley Cyrus: If you turn my daughters into mini-Britney Spears's, I will hunt you down and force you and your dad to listen to your own Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana songs for weeks on end. Without the benefit of radio commercials. And don't think that you can hide from me by wearing a blonde wig and slapping a mustache on your dad. I won't fall for that.)
And best of all, Rach got 4 days without my retardedness. Which, from what I've been told, is priceless. (Just kidding. She loves me. And she happens to be a bigger Miley fan than Tori and Scarlett put together. And something tells me that she wasn't exactly miserable while she was shopping for outfits for the girls. And although I have no evidence of it, I'm pretty sure she got something for herself).
So you see, everyone wins. Even my parents' dog Cassi:
The funniest part was right after this picture was taken, my Maw-Maw woke up from a 7 hour nap and said, "I KNOW that that's not MY hat on that dog's head!"
My nanny's dog was not as lucky:
That may look like a hug, but it'll turn into a headlock REAL quick
While Keith and I were at a baby shower (FYI, First and last time I start a sentence off that way), I found out that Cole busted his ear drum. Crazy, right? Well, I'll get to Cole's ear in a minute, but let me attempt to justify my involvement in the baby shower first:
A) It was a couple's shower, and there were actually more guys than girls there.
2) I helped plan the event, and we came up with games such as a baby toss, baby pictionary, a grab bag jar of baby food race, and a baby-bottle beer chugging race. (A race in which I came in a dismal 4th place out of 4 people. If you would've told me ten years ago that I'd finish dead last in a drinking contest at a baby shower, I would've punched you in the face. And I wasn't even a close 4th. It took me an awkwardly long time. I haven't felt that inadequate and pitied since I was a fat kid playing basketball, and everyone would cheer for me when I scored. Not just our team's parents would cheer, but the other team's parents, the other team, the janitors, everyone would stand up and clap. Thanks for the gesture everybody, but I'm just fat; I'm not retarded.)
D) Deviled Eggs!!
So after about 7 hours of baby showering ('baby showering' looks a little strange as a verb, no?), Keith and I were sitting there, watching a UFC fight (yes, I'm still trying to boost the perceived manliness of the baby shower), and Rach calls me. Now at this point, to my knowledge, Rach and a friend were taking the kids to the movies at around 7pm, although that was not what the tone of the following conversation led me to believe.
Rach: Where are you at? (Not the time to point out that she ended her sentence with a preposition.)
Me: We're still at the---
Rach: What?@! Yall better get your @sses home, right now! I just left the hospital! Cole's got a busted ear drum, and I'm at Walgreens getting his prescription!!
Me: Wait. What happened? Is he---??
Rach: (Click)
So Keith and I ran out of there faster than you could say, "I'm scared to death of my wife."
So what happened to Cole, you ask? We still really have no idea. They were all in the theater watching the movie, and Cole started complaining that his ear hurt. It started hurting so bad that he went to the bathroom and threw up. The doctor said it looked like his ear drum had been busted for quite some time, but there was no way to tell when or why it happened. Cole hadn't complained of any ear pain, and said he didn't remember doing anything that would've caused it. (This is why I need to become a doctor. For situations like this. I think med school will pay for itself with the money we save on ER visits alone.)
Apparently, Rach's distress stemmed from the fact that Cole had just puked all over the floor in Walgreens, and she'd be damned if I was going to have any fun while she was cleaning up half digested popcorn and JuJuBees.
So the next day (Cole was fine, by the way.), Keith and I were joking around with Cole about his puking episode:
Keith: So you just puked right in the middle of the aisle?
Cole: (Kind of sullenly) Yeah.
Me: Did they come over the loudspeaker and say, "(Squawk) We need a cleanup on aisle 2, cleanup on aisle 2."
On Sunday, in order to get back at me for having fun the night before, Rach made me watch A Walk To Remember. Quite possibly, the girliest, most depressing movie ever made. Nicholas Sparks, you have no soul. And I hate you. The thing that really confuses me, though, is why on earth Rach would even want to see this movie. She had already read the book, and admitted to barely being able to see the pages through her tears. So she basically knew that she was going to cry for about two hours. I mean, can you just kick me in the groin right now and get it over with? In a 24 hour period, I went to a baby shower and watched a Nicholas Sparks movie. Monday morning I forced to myself to eat shards of broken glass while I hit myself in the stomach with a sledgehammer just to be able to call myself a man again.
I know my wife is crazy, and you know my wife is crazy, and hell, even she knows that she's crazy. But damn it if I don't love that crazy broad. Her crazy is never boring, always makes me laugh, and keeps me constantly on my toes. It's the kind of crazy that I'm going to grow old with. Or it's the kind of crazy that's gonna kill me in my sleep. Either way, should be fun.
Jaxon has come home with all smiley faces for two consecutive days. In my opinion, this streak makes Cal Ripken look like Carl Pavano. (For all you non-baseball fans......Ahhhh, screw it. Just laugh. I don't feel like explaining it.)
I mean, how can you give him anything BUT smiley faces...... Oh, wait, I forgot; he's a demon.
Tori danced in a Veteran's Day program at her school. I got some video, but couldn't get close enough to be able to really see what was going on. It was really good though. But I REALLY should've gotten video of her teaching me the dance later that night. Twinkle Toes, I am not. I guess there was bound to be something that I'm not good at.
Well, we've got the swine flu. In our family, though, the swine flu was about as inevitable as a Mike Tyson airport altercation (but in this case, can you blame him? And of all the people to stick a camera in their face, you pick Mike Tyson? While he's walking in the airport with his 10 month old daughter? What did you expect would happen?). But the swine flu? Seriously? I was about as shocked to hear that Jaxon had the swine flu as I was when I came downstairs to find Rach ripping the carpet off of the stairs. She had no explanation or anything. Just, "I hate this stupid carpet on these stairs." Which got me thinking; it must be nice to be her. To be able to immediately remedy anything that you don't like at any given time. Don't like the carpet in the downstairs bedroom? Pull it up. Don't like the paint in the bathroom? Start painting it at 11:30 pm. Don't like the way the front door squeaks? Just rip it off the hinges. Don't like your husband's camouflage shorts? Just throw them away. Don't like his sleeveless tuxedo T-shirt? Just hide it from him forever. One of these days, someone is going to tell Racheal that she can't do something, and I do NOT want to be there when that happens. One time, I tried to explain to her how we're all bound by the laws of gravity, and she shoved an ice pick up my nose and said, "Oh yeah? Where's the gravity on this ice pick, huh? Where's your stupid gravity now?" Okay, maybe that didn't happen. But you don't know for sure that it didn't happen. All I know is that I'm fairly certain as soon as Rach gets our house to look the way she wants it to look; it'll be time to move. I've already resigned myself to this.
Okay. I'm done. Back to the swine flu. So Jaxon was sick a couple of weeks ago, but the doctor said it was just an upper respiratory infection, not the flu. He was on antibiotics for a week, and seemingly got better. But then when I picked him up from school on Monday, he was running a pretty bad fever. His teacher said that he hadn't been acting like himself all day long, but that, coincidentally, his behavior was better than it had ever been. Yay fever! Then Monday night the fever got up to about 105º. Poor little guy. It's such a helpless feeling when your 2 year old is sick and you can't do anything about it. I imagine it's a lot like what Chris Paul is going through this year.
But other than the fever, Jax seemed fine. At about 1:30 am, Rach was on the phone with the on-call doctor, and Jaxon woke up and overheard Rach say something about going to the hospital, so he very happily says, "Yay! Let's go hospital! We go hospital, Daddy!" But then immediately fell back asleep. It was very Abe Simpson-ish. So Rach took him to the doctor Tuesday morning, and they confirmed that it was, in fact, swine flu. No big surprise though. Our house is basically like a damn Petri dish. Jaxon is in daycare all day with 15 other snot-nosed kids and the other kids go to school with 300 other snot-nosed kids. Short of keeping them lathered in Purel, there's not a whole lot we can do to keep them bacteria-free all day long. (I know these things, I'm studying to become a doctor.) But the good thing about living in near 3rd world conditions is that our immune systems are pretty much rock solid. Jaxon's body just laughed at the swine flu. His fever broke Tuesday afternoon, and he's been fine ever since. I'm convinced that all of us have already had the swine flu at some point. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if we were all carriers of the ebola virus too. We might even be combining existing diseases in our house and making new superdiseases. It's gotten so bad that The WHO (That's the World Health Organization, not these guys) sent us a shipment of mosquito nets just to be safe. So bad that all of the cockroaches had to move out of our house because they were all getting sick. Hey, You don't know that it didn't happen.
Here's a sick Jaxon waiting for his prescription at Publix:
After Jax left, the chair at Publix started coughing
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. As a fat kid, I loved Halloween for the candy. Then as a college student, I loved being able to dress up in ridiculously hilarious costumes. (Some were better than others, of course. But I think Jesus may have been my favorite. Surprisingly, no one wanted to drink with Jesus, though. And no one wanted to pick up a hitchhiking Jesus at 3:30am either. Weird.)
And for the last couple of years, Halloween has been an excuse for Rach and I to go out in public in as little clothing as possible. (while going to grown up parties, of course. Not while we're trick-or-treating with the kids. Although there was definitely a lot of that going on around the neighborhood. I think 'slutty mom' was the costume of choice this year.)
And Halloween remains my favorite holiday because we still get lots of candy (still a fat kid at heart), we get to dress the kids up (always funny), and it's over by 9:30 (did I mention how old I've become?). The problem that I have with Halloween now is that it starts way too early. We had kids come to our door as early as 4:30! 4:30? That's ridiculous. If you're worried about getting your kids to bed on time, then stop trick-or-treating earlier. But don't make my kids feel like they're running late by bringing your stupid kids to my house at 4:30. I don't need the collective anxiety in my house to go up because your pansy son in the Thomas the Train costume goes nighty night at 6:30. Okay, I'm done. Sorry about that. Just had to get that off my chest. And I apologize if your kid went dressed up as Thomas the Train. I'm sure it was cute.
Anyway, on to our costumes. I think they all came out pretty good.
The Boys
Cole recycled my Leonides costume from last year, and I think he made some improvements. He definitely classed it up a little from last year's version.
Like Father, Like Son........well, sort of
Gavin went as a skull motorcycle rider, but it was pretty hot outside and he got pretty sweaty pretty quickly. Then he took his jacket off. So within 20 minutes of dressing up, Gavin went as 'Gavin With Gloves'. Jaxon went as the Incredible Hulk. He had been sick all week, and hadn't really started to feel better yet, so he was extremely reluctant to let me paint his face. Finally, in order to get the make up on his face, I didn't tell him what I was doing; I simply acted like I was brushing something off of his face.....repeatedly. Then he asked, "What you doing, Daddy?" So I showed him a mirror, and he got all excited about having a "Geen Face!" And if you don't think that I was thiiiiiiiiss close to painting myself green and matching Jaxon's Incredible Hulk costume, then you don't know me very well. I decided against it because I could never compete with his abs. I mean, he's even shredded up while he's sitting down:
Is it bad to be jealous of your 2 year old's costume?
So Cole, Gavin, Jaxon, my parents, and I started going through the neighborhood trick-or-treating. Cole and Gavin were complaining a little bit about Jaxon slowing us down, so we decided to let my parents take Jax while I took the boys. Within 10 minutes of being on our own, the boys started complaining, "My feet hurt." and "It's too hot." and "This mask stinks." and "Do we have to walk the whole time?" So we headed back toward our house. And on our journey, one of the houses had this giant inflatable cemetery thingamajig. It was huge, and had an archway that you had to walk through to get to the door. As I was waiting for the boys on the sidewalk, I see the cemetery move up and down out of the corner of my eye. I look over, and there's Cole faceplanting into the grass. Then I look over at the lady still standing by the door, and she yells out, "Oooh, I'm sorry. There's a few ropes in the yard!" Cole then proceeds to get up and fall back down on his face about 9,000 times. It took him 20 minutes to get out of her yard. It was like watching Stevie Wonder go through an army obstacle course. Gavin and I just stood there and watched in amazement. High comedy.
Scarlett
Scarlett went as a witch. But she didn't want to go as just any witch. She wanted to go as a dead witch, so I had to do her makeup. And when it comes to doing someone's makeup, I'm about as useful as Obama in a toll booth. (Get it? Can't make change? C'mon that's pretty good, right?) So here's Doonie's before picture:
That is one sassy witch. Where's the Gucci broom?
And the after picture:
I seriously missed my calling. Because if I can make someone as pretty as Doonie look like this....
The funny thing is, I didn't actually do her lipstick. I finished her makeup, but she said she still wanted to look pretty. So she put on some hooker red lipstick. Nice.
Tori
Tori didn't want to dress up at first. She said she was too cool for school. (Okay, she didn't actually say that. I said that. But she's getting to that age where she's juuussst about too old to trick-or-treat.) But then I told her that if she didn't dress up, then she didn't go trick-or-treating. AND her Uncle Keith told her that if she didn't dress up, then he wasn't going to get her an LSU shirt like he had promised. So this led to Tori and a couple of her friends scrambling around for last minute costumes. They decided to go with 'dead softball players'. So my dad cut a few softballs in half, we tied the half softballs to their heads, I masterfully painted their faces, and voila! Dead softball players. Although the softballs didn't last too long on their heads.
Without the softballs, they ended up looking like Tammy Fay Baker at a charity softball game.
Racheal and Maxine
Rach and Maxine stayed behind at our house to pass out candy and decided to have a little fun of their own. They hung a giant black sheet of paper over our porch to make everything really really dark. Then they put a strobe light behind it to make it kind of creepy. Then they put one of our barstools on the porch with a candy bowl on top. Then they crouched behind the front door and front window and waited for people to walk up to the house. Whenever someone would reach into the candy bowl, Rach and Maxine would scream as loud as they could and bang on the door and the window. And I'm not talking about just a normal little scream. I mean, these chicks were brutally loud. (By the way, I think Racheal and Maxine screaming to scare people is a little like putting horns on a crocodile. Aren't they scary enough? Couldn't Racheal just as easily have opened the door and done the crazy, one eyebrow raised look she gives the kids?) Anyway, they were scaring the ever loving crap out of people. As I walked up to the house, there was a rather largish woman at the candy bowl. Rach and Max started screaming their lungs out, and Rach reached through the window and grabbed the lady's arm. She turned around and Usain Bolted her ass out of there so fast that she knocked over three little kids on her way to the street. There ended up being a congregation of people outside our house with people saying to each other, "You go. No, you go. I'm not going. You go." It was absolutely hilarious. Just one more reason to love Halloween.
(Editor's Note: I meant to post this last week, but never got around to it. My parents came in town, then had sick kids, then Halloween, then had more sick kids. I'll post some Halloween pics later this week.)
I am officially the John Kerry of progress reports. Yes, I did vote against the progress reports after I voted against them. You see, the entire time I was in school, I HATED interim grades, or progress reports, or whatever you want to call them. I absolutely hated them. They were pointless. Because I was notorious for slacking off for the first half of the nine weeks, then barely squeaking out A's on my report cards. So every nine weeks when it came time for interim reports, I'd come home with nothing but bad grades and yabuts. Don't know what yabuts are? Then you must not have school age children. The yabut is how every kid starts off any response. And not just about school, kids use the yabut for questions pertaining to just about anything:
"You have a D in Spanish?" "Yabut the teacher said that if I do my extra credit, I can pull it up to an A."
"Didn't I ask you to clean your room?" "Yabut I didn't know you meant right now."
"Did you just stab your sister with an ice pick?" "Yabut she was making faces at me."
So anyway, I'd come home with my progress report, my parents would yell at me, threaten me, take things away, things like that. Then a month later I'd come home with my report card full of A's, and my dad would look at it, obviously expecting something bad, stare at it silently for about 5 minutes too long, take his deep slow angry breath and say, "What's with the 93 in Social Studies? You gonna pull that up?"
"But dad, a 93 is an A!"
"Yeah, but a low A. Don't be a slacker, son. You're better than that."
And then I'd think, 'Wow. He's crazy.' For the record, I still think he's crazy, but now he's just kind of 'quirky' crazy. I used to think he was like, 'Gary Busey' crazy. Like 'I'm gonna cut your tattoos off in the middle of the night with a fillet knife' crazy.
But now, however many years later, I've completely flip-flopped on my progress reports stance. I think they're great. I think they should send them home every week. (Which is actually already happening in middle school because their grades are being posted online. That's reason number 7 of why I would hate to be in school right now, right behind having to re-learn the Dewey Decimal System. Wait, what? They don't have to know the freakin Dewey Decimal System?! Well then how do they check books out of the library? What a crock!) When the kids came home with their crappy progress reports (You can read about it here), we were able punish them and get them to clean their rooms, and do all of their homework, and eat all of their dinner, and etc, etc, etc. It was kind of nice. And I didn't have too much reason to believe that their report cards would be much different.
Tuesday morning, the day they were getting their report cards, Tori tried to convince me that it was okay for her to get C's. She said that all of her friends can get C's, and because C stands for average, and she's just an average student. And that Drew Brees is an average quarterback. (Alright, she didn't say that about Drew Brees, but what she said was still just as ridiculous.) So I explained to her that if she is, in fact, average; then when she gets to high school she would have to get an average job to pay for her average car to go along with all of the other average student friends. She quickly realized my point and conceded to being well above average. Does anyone want a 12 year old?
Well I was pleasantly surprised when I picked her up that afternoon, and she showed me a report card with mostly A's and a few high B's splattered around. She said that she knew the whole time what her grades were going to be, but she just wanted to see what I'd say if she came home with C's. Seriously, do you want a 12 year old? (Just kidding, she just got braces this week, so I'm going to start getting her back by eating lots of candy around her. And maybe sunflower seeds. That'll show her.)
That's a report card smile
Alright, so we got one kid's grades in the books, but Racheal was at home with the other kids when they got off the bus that day. And when I got home, I was half expecting to walk into a Gitmo type atmosphere. But it was quite the pleasant surprise to see their happy little faces when I walked in. Scarlett got mostly 3's with a couple of 2's (3's mean she's beyond a 2nd grade level, 2's mean she's at a 2nd grade level), Cole brought up his grades to all A's and B's, and Gavin was a couple of points away from straight A's. The only 2 B's that he got were a 91 and a 92. I mean, this could quite possibly be the biggest one year turn around ever. Bigger than last year's Miami Dolphins. Last year, Gavin didn't feel comfortable reading ANYTHING. He hated it. It was like pulling teeth. (Which he coincidentally had to have done the other day, but I digress). But this is how far he's come: The other night, I was sitting on the couch studying my MCAT flashcards (Oh, by the way, I'm studying to become a doctor), and Gavin comes over and sits down next to me to see what I was doing. So I explained to him how I was studying, and he asked if he could help. So he started reading the flashcards to me, and pronouncing words like 'mitochondrial membrane' and 'homologous chromosomes' and stuff like that. It was really cool. If this were baseball, people would start making HGH and PED innuendos.
So there you go. The kids get to go trick or treating. And I get to keep using phrases like, "A 91? C'mon, you can do better than that!" and "Well your room isn't going to clean itself, now is it?" and "Next time you leave the light on, I'm going to make you pay the light bill" (FYI, Before having kids, I had never referred to our electric bill as a 'light bill', but this is one of those little things that you do that you said you would never do). It's all part of my slow painful metamorphosis into my parents.
Lance Armstrong won 7 Tour de Frances (Plural? Tours de France? Tour des Frances? Tour de Franci? Who cares. Let the French complain, "Ohh, stoopid Amedicans. Caant even pwonounce ouwr pwurals. Dey aw soo stoopid. Wif zer beleafz dat dey aw zo vedy much beder zan uus!") with only 1 testicle, but he had new blood each time he did it. Roger Clemons and Barry Bonds broke all kinds of records, but they had steroids to help them out. NASCAR drivers can go over 200 mph, but they have cars helping them out. (Okay, the cars are doing ALL of the work, so maybe that's a bad example). But the point is, all of these great accomplishments were achieved with some degree of cheating involved. I bring this up because I may or may not be in the middle of pulling off the greatest achievement of my lifetime. I think this might be my white whale. My swan song. And it's taking every ounce of self control to accomplish it without cheating. It would be so much easier to just cheat and get it over with. But I'm staying strong. Even if it is going to cost me my sanity. Or Racheal's sanity. Or everyone in the house's sanity.
Of course, if you've read this blog at all, you could have guessed that I'm talking about doing a social studies project with Cole. He has a project to do on Leif Ericson (Spelling? Leif Ericson? Leif Ericcson? Leif Erikson? Eh, who cares. Let Sven and the Nordiques complain, "Yaa, fer sure. Oudin pronuncin Leif Ericson wrongin. Nyurgen Flurgen.") He's had over a month to do it, it's due this Friday, and we've spent 742 hours on it. That may be an exaggeration, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. Anyway, he couldn't have picked an easier explorer? Columbus maybe? Magellan? That guy from Man vs. Wild? I mean, Columbus has got a whole freakin day! There ain't no frazzlin Leif Erikson day, I'll tell you that. But that's beside the point. I honestly think I could've gotten the stupid cat to do this project faster than Cole. Or even our new pet spider.
I should get Racheal and Keith to figure out if this spider can hold a pencil
It's gotten to the point where it is taking Cole longer to do this report, than it took freakin Leif Ericcson to discover Newfoundland. I probably could've taken Cole to Norway, shown him Ericson's house, retraced Leif Ericsson's steps, and embarked on a Norwegian cruise by now. Can you tell how frustrated I am? Maybe this will explain the frustration a little more.
Do you ever go pump your gas? But maybe you want to clean out your car a little while the gas is pumping? So you rig your gas cap in the handle to keep pumping gas while you're cleaning out your car? But as soon as you walk away, the pump somehow stops pumping? So you've got to keep going back to set up the gas cap back in the handle? And it works for a second? But every time you walk away, it stops again, and it becomes completely useless? Well magnify that frustration by about 7 katrillion, and that's what you get when you help Cole do a project.
If it were up to Leif Ericson to get Cole to do this report; and he knew back then how hard it was going to be to get this done, I'm pretty sure he would've said, "Ehh. Nevermind. Let someone else go out there and discover the new land. It's pretty cold out there anyway."
And I could've finished the report for him a few thousand times by now, but I'm not going to cheapen this moment. I'm not going to set myself up for a situation a few years from now when the news media gets wind of this, and my social study project integrity is questioned. That would be like Lief Ericson using Jay-Z's yacht to travel to Norway.
During the course of working on this project, I think he's spent a total of 37 hours looking for a pencil, sharpening his pencil, and asking questions about longitude. I mean, this kid is a stall genius. I haven't seen stall techniques this amazing since I had to go number 2 in a Mardi Gras port-o-john. And I'm getting so frustrated that, in order to calm myself down, I'm imagining myself back to that peaceful time. Right there in that tiny little square of piled up poop. Ahhh, things were so much simpler then.
On another completely random note: This morning on my way to work, I saw a halfway homeless man (Halfway homeless is a technical term describing someone who is most likely homeless, but could just be a crackhead) limping on the side of the road wearing a Reggie Bush jersey. Is it a pretty good indicator that your 2nd overall pick is a bust when you immediately expect the homeless man to stop walking forward, take a few steps back, dance around a little bit, and then fall down in traffic? And another question: How did he come about getting the Reggie Bush jersey? Did some fed up, disgruntled Saints fan throw it in the trash? Or was this guy a productive member of society in 2005, and the Reggie Bush jersey purchase served as a catalyst for a downward spiral series of really, really bad decisions? I would've stopped to ask him, but I was scared that my expectations of his answer were probably a little too high.
The Nausea From Spinning Around in Giant Strawberries Ain't Got Nothin on The Pain of Leif Ericson
One of the disadvantages of having a 'blended' family, (Perhaps blended isn't a strong enough word. Maybe pureed? liquefied? chopped? diced? scattered? smothered? Oh wait, that's WaffleHouseHashbrowns. Nevermind...) is that no one knows how to refer to anyone else. Especially when we're in a car. I'm not sure what we were talking about, but we had this conversation the other day:
Me: No. Your mom said no.
Scarlett: My mom?
Gavin: My mom?
Me: Yes, your mom. No, not you, Scarlett.
Cole: Wait, were you talking to me?
Me: No, your sister.
Gavin: My sister.
Me: No, not your sister.
Scarlett: I know. Because I don't have a sister.
Me: I know that. I was talking to Cole.
Cole: Huh?
Scarlett: He was talking to you.
Cole: Who was?
Scarlett: Daddy.
Cole: Who's daddy? Gavin's daddy?
And around and around we went. I couldn't get them to school fast enough. It was like a really bad episode of Abbott and Costello, mixed with an episode of The Three Stooges. Cole and Gavin may have even been doing the eye-poking gag. Who knows?
On another note; I miss Keith. (Keith went back to Louisiana for a couple of weeks to work a concert festival.) I really miss Keith. Part of the reason that I miss him is based on how much he helps us out, how much we get to hang out, and how we get to watch retarded shows like 'The Ruins' together. But the majority of the reason that I miss him is because Racheal misses him. You see, Racheal constantly needs a project to work on. I mean, always. When she doesn't have anything to do, I come home to rooms without carpet. Or new paint on the walls (I should say part of the walls. She starts it so that I'll have to finish it). Or new appliances that need to be installed. Or plants that have to be planted (like this time or even this one). And Keith provided me with a bit of a buffer from these projects. And Keith really is the perfect buffer. He's about as 'go with the flow' as Racheal is 'I'll determine the flow'. And so he goes along with all of her kakamamie (love that word) schemes and projects. Here's an example. Last week, Keith found a huge spider spinning a giant web in our yard. We all went out and looked at the spider, 'Wow. That's a big spider.' And that was that. But not for Racheal and Keith. Racheal had to know what type of spider it was, where it came from, what its name was, what its kids names were, what its credit score was, etc, etc. And the really crazy part is: They spent the next 4 hours youtubing and wiki-ing lawn spiders! Lawn spiders?
And just because that A-Hole went home and they weren't able to take their weekly trip to the children's museum to take pictures like this,
I was stuck replacing our mailbox, putting up shelves in our closet, hanging pictures in the kitchen, and fixing our dishwasher again. And that was just yesterday! I'd like to say that Keith is dead to me, but I need my buffer back.
Alright. I'm officially scared. This really makes me nervous. I really don't even want to write about it, but I'm afraid that I'm not going to make the blog quota that my editor (a.k.a. my mom) has set for me. But writing about this right now is kind of like talking about a perfect game in the 5th inning. And this woefully makes me feel like Joe Buck (Minus the Miller Lites and the vasectomy.) And you know why I'm getting that jinxing feeling? Why I'm so nervous? Because nothing's happening. I have absolutely nothing to write about. Jaxon hasn't pooped in anything other than a toilet for almost a week. Cole is going on eleven consecutive 'good days/great days' from his teacher. Nobody's grounded. Grades are improving. Their rooms are relatively clean. Altogether, the kids folded about 17 loads of laundry yesterday.....and didn't complain. A small part of me was a slightly disappointed that they didn't complain, because I had a bunch of witty retorts lined up for their bitchin. (Just kidding. About being disappointed. Not about having the retorts lined up.)
So here are a couple of funny little stories about everyone. (Note: I put headers on top of each story to let you know who that particular story involves. Just in case you have a favorite character and want to skip ahead.)
Jaxon Like I said, Jaxon has been relatively good lately (emphasis on the word relatively), so I took him to the park. Here's some video.
Racheal and Keith Keith's laid-backness finally came back to to bite him in the Kardashian. It's not his fault, really. It could've happened to anyone. Last week he was just about to go run some errands, when Rach came in and said, "Hey, I've got some errands to run too. I just have to go to the store. We should go together." Now at this point, Keith SHOULD have lit himself on fire and jumped out of the nearest window. I mean, let's pretend for a minute that Keith had the wherewithal to say no. And let's say that Racheal's errands involved simply going to the grocery for bread. And that Keith's errands involved going to the Bermuda Triangle to cure cancer. I would bet my life that Keith would come back first. So I could completely understood the look on Keith's face when he got home that night after being gone for approximately 9.5 hours. His look was a mixture of fatigue and confusion. Like he had been trying to box a caffeinated monkey for 9 hours. He started to tell me where he had been, but I already knew. He had been everywhere, yet gone nowhere. He had shopped for everything, but purchased none of his intended items. Essentially, he was in the exact same place as where he started. About ten minutes after he got home, and once I stopped laughing at him, I realized that Racheal had not come inside yet, "Where's Rach?"
"Oh, she just dropped me and Jaxon off back here. She had to go to the store. We never actually made it there." My wife, ladies and gentleman.
Tori That same night, I had to bring Tori to softball practice. But before I did that, I had to figure out what we were going to have for dinner. Now that might sound like an easy task for most people, but you've obviously never been to our house. You see, I live with a swarm of locusts that would chew the sheetrock right off the walls if they didn't have so much paint on them. (Seriously, we've painted our house so many times, I'm worried about the dwindling square footage in the house. It's gonna kill our property value. Oh by the way, Rach wants to paint again. The whole house.) We go to the grocery store about 4 times a week, but it's never enough. And if you try to tell me that I should go to Sam's Club, I'll punch you in the face. Because it doesn't matter how much food we have in the house; no matter what, it'll be gone in two days. So saving 13 cents by buying a gallon of mayonnaise is not going to help, because that would just cause the kids to eat mayonnaise sandwiches for 37 hours straight until it was gone. I don't think we've ever had a bag of chips even make it to the pantry. We've even tried buying healthy stuff like fruits and vegetables, but they eat that too. A friend of mine gave me 8 huge boxes of family sized multi-grain cheerios because they made his pregnant wife sick, and my kids devoured them in about a week. Anyway, that night I managed to find 5 lbs of ground meat, taco seasoning, and a stack of small tortillas - Gracias a Diosporlos Tacos!! (That's how you say 'Thank God for tacos' in PuertoRican)
Anyway, by the time Tori got home from practice, the locusts had ravaged through all of the tacos. I didn't even realize it was happening. I honestly didn't know they were all gone until Tori came and sat next to me on the couch. And I use the phrase 'sat next to me on the couch' a lot like you would say 'Maine sat next to California on the US map'. Arms folded, staring straight ahead, looking like she was trying to make the TV explode with her eyeballs. So I asked, "Did you get something to eat?" And then it happened. She was taken over by a demon. No, really. It was as if Linda Blair herself were sitting across from me on the couch. Her head spun around 360 degrees and her eyes started glowing red. The only thing missing was projectile vomiting pea soup, and Uncle Keith throwing water on her, "The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!"
Tori: No! I didn't get anything to eat! There's no more tacos left! You know how much I like tacos! And you didn't even save me any! Uggghhhhh! Now there's nothing to eat!
Me: I'm sorry. I forgot, um -- (Yeah, maybe I shouldn't tell the lunatic preteen that I forgot that she didn't eat.) I, um, there's none left? Why don't you make yourself a sandwich or something?
Tori: I don't want a stupid sandwich! That's all we ever eat! Sandwiches! I hate stupid sandwiches! What'd we eat last night?! Sandwiches!
Me: Umm, Actually, it was leftover chicken.
Tori: What'd we eat the night before?! Sandwiches!
Me: Umm, yeah, that was sandwiches. But the night before that was meatloaf!
I really think that if she had a knife, she would have stabbed me in the neck when I suggested that she make a sandwich. But then five minutes later she was back to being our normal fun, smiling Tori. Ca-Razy. Man, I can't wait for her teenage years. I'm looking forward to it about as much as my first prostate exam.
Scarlett Friday night, Scarlett lost another tooth. Normally, Scarlett will tell you that she has a loose tooth for three solid months before she'll ever let you near it, but this time, she just pulled it out. Surprised the hell out of us. Anyway, the Tooth Fairy in our house is in desperate need of an organizer. Our kids have got to wonder how the Tooth Fairy has been able to keep a job this long with all of her missed appointments. It's terrible, I know. I'm thinking of farming out Tooth Fairy duties to Uncle Keith. Is that allowed? That night, Scarlett fell asleep in our bed watching TV. Later, when we were going to sleep, I carried her back into her bed. Saturday morning at about 7, Scarlett came into our room, crying like someone just told her they didn't like her shoes. Through her intermittent sobs, I was able to decipher that she was mad at me because I moved her while she was sleeping, and that the Tooth Fairy didn't know where she was, and that she'd never be able to get her money. She told me that she put the tooth under the pillow that she had been sleeping on in our room (Racheal's pillow). So I go back into our room, frantically looking for the tooth, bouncing Racheal's sleeping head around the pillow like Weekend At Bernie's 3. I found nothing. After ensuring Scarlett that we'd find it, and the Tooth Fairy would be back tomorrow, she mentioned that the tooth was IN the pillow case. So I snuck back upstairs, grabbed the tooth from inside Bernie's pillow, and inserted a five dollar bill. A little while later, I told Scarlett that she should double check the pillowcase, because maybe the Tooth Fairy put it IN the pillowcase. Sure enough, she came back down with the money, and a snarky look on her face. So then I had to listen to 15 minutes of 'I told you so's and 'I can't believe you didn't know where it was's from a 7 year old, while I made excuses like, "Well I guess she must've taken the tooth before I moved you." Man, I can't wait until she's a teenager.
Cole and Gavin I took the boys to the gym with me yesterday so they could play basketball while I worked out. I had planned on just working out, but we ended up playing 1 on 2 basketball for almost an hour. It was the first time that I was able to bring just Cole and Gavin, and didn't have to worry about them fighting with Scarlett, or have to deal with Jaxon eating the basketballs. And coincidentally, it was the first time we were able to play a semi-real game of basketball. I was showing them how to run a trap, how to play defense, how to make the defense guard you before you pass the ball, how to take open shots, etc, etc. And they were listening to everything. And it wasn't just Gavin. Because Gavin would run himself into a brick wall for 2 straight hours if you told him to. But Cole was listening too. At one point, I had a rough time getting around a pair of 9 year olds. I mean, I still whooped up on them. I haven't fallen off THAT far. But they made me work for it. I definitely need to find a way to get the two of them on their own more often.
Maxine Yesterday in church, we sat behind a bunch of aggravating, disrespectful teenagers. They were being typical teenagers; snapping each other's bra straps, texting, talking, slapping each other. Just being outright annoying. And they just so happened to be sitting directly in front of Maxine. And if you know Maxine, you know that she's got the same amount of patience as Michael Jackson's doctor. At one point, one of the teenage boys leaned back to stretch, and in one quick motion, Maxine slapped the kid's hands and apologized for it all at the same time. It was quite impressive, really. We eventually had to make her move seats so we didn't get ourselves kicked out of church. But then she was fine five minutes later, back to being sweet Maxine. Man, I'm glad I wasn't around when she was a teenager.
I've mentioned before that Rach is not exactly Bill Gates when it comes to tech savvyness. In fact, she's the anti-Bill Gates. Would Bill Gates repeatedly email you files to 'pdf', even though he has adobe pdf on his computer? Would Bill Gates try to get files off of his dead hard drive by randomly shoving cables into every open slot on his computer? (Seriously, she tried plugging anything that had a cord into her laptop. Even a hairdryer.) Would Bill Gates take video of his husband and son playing on a playground while holding the camera sideways? Ummmm. No. Because I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a husband. And maybe some other reasons. So you'll have to turn your monitors sideways to view these videos. (Just kidding, mom. Please don't call your IT guy, Kenny, to come turn your monitor sideways. Just tilt your head.)
Climbed up the ladder thingie fairly easy
This was WAY more uncomfortable than it looks
BEHAVIOR
So yesterday when I picked up Jaxon from school, I walked in and found Jax playing with a toy cash register. There were three kids crowded around him, lurking like vultures, waiting for him to put the toy down. I'm not exactly Nostradamus, but I could predict that this was not going to end well. And normally I approach picking Jaxon up with the sense of urgency of a bank robber. I try to be as nice as I can to the ladies working in there, but my internal clock is ticking the entire time. I've got to get out of there in less than two minutes. If I'm running low on time, screw it; I'm not going into the vault to get his blanket. So when I walked in there, and saw the palpable tension that the toy cash register was creating, I knew I had to make a quick exit.
2:00 - Notice the toy cash register situation while I'm signing the sign out sheet.
1:46 - Hurry over to Jaxon's cubby to get his things.
1:39 - Get stopped on my way to the cubby by random snot-nosed kids wanting to either high five or hug my leg.
1:17 - Shove other kids out of the way to pick up Ashley and give her hugs and kisses. (At some point, Ashley may have to be a character witness in one of Jax's trials. Have to do whatever it takes to keep her on our side.)
0:53 - Fight back tears of joy when I see that Jaxon got all smiley faces on his report for the first time ever. (Begin celebratory daydream of Jax and I happily running towards each other in slow motion with 'Chariots of Fire' background music......)
0:42 - Snap out of daydream and pick up the rest of Jax's stuff.
0:36 - Teacher tells me that Jax was well-behaved all day. I responded with, "I see that. This is the first day he's gotten all smiley faces." And then she said, "Oh....Really?" But she said it in the same friendly yet sarcastic way that you would respond to a six year old that just told you that the earth was round. "Oh....Really? I never would've guessed that!"
0:21 - "Alright Jax, you ready?" (I can see the vultures getting antsy. They start getting uncomfortably close to him.) "No. I playin with money."
0:13 - "You playin? Okay, but we have to go. Why don't you let one of these vult-- kids play with the cash register?" (Now there's a crazed look in some of the vultures' eyes. Like ravenous hungry birds.) "No. I playin."
0:06 - "Okay, let's go." (I scoop him up out of his seat just as one of the vultures grabs the cash register, and run through the door just in time.)
Phew! That one was close. As soon as I got Jax in the truck, I called Rach to tell her the great news.
Me: It Happened!! It Really Happened!! He got all Happy Faces!!
Rach: Yay! That's Awesome!! Well, I didn't have to work until late today, so I didn't drop him off until about noon.
Me: Oh.....And it says here that he slept from 12:30 until 2:00.
Rach: And it's only 4:00 right now.
Me: Sooooo.....what you're saying is that he was only there for about 2 hours?
Both of us: Ehh, screw it. We'll take it!
POOP
Jaxon's been doing a pretty good job of going to the bathroom by himself lately. Sure, we've had some minor setbacks, but for the most part he can take his pants off, get on the toilet, do his business, get off the toilet, and put his pants back on. Although his underwear goes back on backwards more times than not. The one thing that he does not do, though, is ask for someone to help him wipe his butt. So a few days ago, Keith was checking on him a couple of minutes after we sent him to the bathroom. Keith called me over and said, "Hey, is this normal?" I walk in to find Jaxon standing in the tub, with his butt cheeks pressed against the faucet with the water on. "I clean butt, Daddy. Look, Daddy, I clean butt. I clean butt." No, that's not normal, but very creative. He invented the redneck baby bidet.
I think this time he got put away for wearing a PUMA shirt...... And rightfully so, I guess
I think I've mentioned before that the most nerve wracking 2 minutes of my day are the walk from my truck to Jaxon's classroom. I'm always half expecting to walk in and see him in a straight jacket, strapped to a moving dolly, wearing a weird looking face mask with bars on the mouth, creepily saying, "Hello Clar--I mean, Daddy, I've been expecting you." Everyday, thoughts like that go through my head. Well, everyday but yesterday. Because yesterday, when I pulled up, I noticed Jaxon walking across the parking lot with the 1 year olds. At his school, anytime the teacher walks the class anywhere, she walks backwards while holding onto a rope that has a bunch of rings attached to it, and each kid holds onto their own ring. Apparently, this is common practice, but something that I've never personally seen. (This is not too big of a surprise. There are lots of things that are common practice but that I've never personally seen. Like living in a house with less than 7 people. I'm sure it happens pretty often, but I've never seen it. Or like being able to make dinner with only 1 box of macaroni, and less than 2 lbs of chicken. Fairly common, just never seen it.) Anyway, it was strange seeing Jaxon, holding onto the first ring, walking with the 1 year olds. He's never with the 1 year olds. When I walked up, I could tell he was excited to see me, but he wouldn't let go of his ring. He knew he wasn't supposed to. The teacher told me that Jaxon wanted to go for a walk with them, and asked if he could help her take the 'babies' for a walk. Then he looked at me and said, "Walk with us, Daddy? Wanna help babies walk?" "Of course, buddy. I'll help the babies walk." So we continue on the slllloooooooowwww journey back to the classroom. As we're walking, one of the babies tripped and fell. The teacher grabbed her really quick, but asked Jaxon to lead the rest of the kids back to the classroom, and told the little kids, "Okay, now everybody follow Jaxon." So Jax turns around and starts walking backwards like the teacher was. When we got to the door, he even held the door open as the little babies walked through it. You could tell that he knew he was in charge, and he seemed so completely conscious of their well-being. It was the sweetest thing I've ever seen. And they must've been doing some sort of construction in the building, because my eyes started to get watery. Or maybe it was allergies. Or someone was peeling an onion. Or pink eye. In both eyes. After seeing all of this, I started to feel guilty for ever calling him a demon, and making jokes about his impending prison term. But THEN I walked into his classroom. When I picked up the clipboard to sign him out, I noticed a folded up green piece of paper with the word 'King' written on it. Oh boy. I've seen these before. They always put the bad notes on green paper. I guess it's better than a pink slip.....for now. So I open up the green piece of paper and scan through the 'Jaxon bit a kid' note, but I was distracted by what I saw underneath the green slip. Another green slip that had 'King' written on it. Seriously? Crap! So I open that one up, 'Jaxon bit and punched anoth---' but then get distracted by yet another green slip underneath IT. 'King'. You gotta be kidding me? So I shoot an embarrassed glance over at the teacher, who was quietly waiting for me to look over at her. Immediately, my nervous retardedness took over, (I have a tendency to say retarded things when I get nervous. I just hope I didn't pass this trait down.)
Me: So are these just backdated from the past few months? or.........um......?--
Teacher: Nope. Those are all three from today--
Me: But just three copies of the same incident? or.........um.....?
Whenever this happens, and the teacher has to tell me about some fight that Jaxon got into, I feel like she's waiting for me to confess that we're a family full of biters or something. It's as if she thinks that deep down I know why Jaxon is always getting in trouble, but I'm just not telling her. Like we're teaching him Jiu Jitsu at home, preparing him for the octogon. Or maybe she thinks that he's learning that behavior from home, and I'm a wife-beater. (But she's got that all wrong. I WEAR wife-beaters. I'm not A wife-beater. There's a difference. Besides, anyone who knows Rach and I's relationship knows that I would be the one on the receiving end of any domestic beatings) Or maybe she, like Racheal, thinks I look like someone who needs to be arrested.
This actually happened, by the way. We went through a DUI checkpoint one night on our way home from the beach. I had Keith, Gavin, and Cole in my car, and Rach was in front of me with the rest of the kids in her car. Of course, I got stopped because I somehow retardedly left my license at home AND didn't have a copy of my registration in the car. Rach saw me get stopped, then pulled over to the side herself. When the cop approached her car to see why she pulled over, she said:
Rach: That's my husband back there. He has some of my kids in his car. I'm just making sure he's not getting arrested for anything.
Cop: Why would he be getting arrested for anything?
Rach: He's a big, muscular, bald guy with no shirt on and tattoos. He looks like someone that needs to be arrested.
Cop: (Radioing back to the other unit) Use caution, unit 247.
But what if I passed on the 'face that people love to punch' gene? Anytime any of my friends started a fight at a bar, or even if it wasn't my friends that started it and it was just random people fighting around me as I minded my own business, I was always the first person to get punched in the face. Most of the time I was the only person to get punched in the face. So maybe Jaxon's fighting woes are my fault. Maybe they can be explained through complex DNA, Biogenetics, Genetic Engineering, and some other high end science stuff. Yep. Lets' go with that explanation. At least that way I'll have something to tell the teacher when she gives me the disappointed look next time.
"Everyone nose that I picked my one true love"
When I first saw this, I thought maybe that Chuck E. Cheese
Mimi canceled her decorating plans for this picture
Keith was actually trying to shake the
The funniest part was right after this picture was taken,
That may look like a hug, but it'll
I don't care what you say,
I mean, how can you give him
After Jax left, the chair at Publix started coughing
That's my boys!
Like Father, Like Son........well, sort of
Is it bad to be jealous of
That is one sassy witch. Where's the Gucci broom?
I seriously missed my calling. Because if I can make
Without the softballs, they ended up looking like
That's a report card smile
I should get Racheal and Keith to figure out
I think this time he got put away
