Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Love Note and A Grilled Cheese

If I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard, ‘Wow, never a dull moment in your house,’ I’d be loaded rich because it’s so totally true. Some of those ‘moments’ make me laugh, some make me cry and some make me just walk straight to my filthy master bathroom that the boys view as their personal urinal and sit while I practice my breathing. Not so much the pregnant, hoo-hoo breathing but more of the ‘I’m gonna break something or someone in half if I don’t calm down and count to ten’ breathing. Last week was no different……

And because my boys know my OCD tendencies and how I like things to be equal and balanced, they all gave me their own individual funnies to write about. These actually made the laughing moments list….well, eventually I laughed at d1 after a few minutes and d3 after a few days…..

Let’s switch things up a bit and do last born first…..

One of the hazards of d3 being a boy is his love for outdoors. He loves all things sports {duh} but when he’s at pre-school, it would appear that he loves to spend his playground time in the sand box. I know this not because his teacher tells me so but because every day when we get home and he takes off his shoes, he dumps out a cup of sand onto the floor. Every day. No big deal, really. We have a stellar vacuum and this carpet has seen way more nastiness than a few thousand grains of sand. We do have a garage where he could easily kick his shoes off but getting that kid to do something he does not want to do is not an easy task and we choose our battles rather than fighting day and night. Oh, the similarities I see in him to another certain lad in our family but that's beside the point.

Back to the story. I recently determined something else about his travels to the sand box that I really didn’t want to. As I was changing a blowout nappie of his last weekend {potty training is next on our to-do list and we can’t hardly wait }, I was having a hard time wiping his hiney. It felt….gritty. How could that be? He hadn’t been in the sandbox for at least 24 hours and he had had a bath the night before. A few hours later, he had another doozy of a diaper and, again, I couldn’t help but feel like I was exfoliating his bum. What in the world?

Oh wait. I get it now. Gritty-textured diarrhea can really only mean one thing – this kid is supplementing his two meals plus two snacks at pre-school with a helping of parasite-enriched sand! ICK. Should I be worried that he’s lacking some important nutrient that makes him crave this crud? Sheesh. I am hopeful, though, that he had enough and realized it’s really not at all tasty because I haven’t changed anymore of said diapers since last weekend. Whatever bug he swallowed {literally} must have made its way through and taken all the playground padding with it.

Now for a priceless quote from the middle son during one of our conversations on cooking…..

d1: Mommy, how do you make grilled cheese?

Me: You butter two slices of bread, throw a piece of cheese in the middle and cook it in a skillet. Easy as that.

d2: Well, what makes it black?


Bless his honest, itty-bitty self. He really had no idea that he had just insulted my cooking. And I did burn the last couple of sammies so I just chuckled. Although he’s never really been a picky eater and typically the one asking for salad before pizza, he’s gotten into a bad habit lately of complaining about what we’re eating and how I cooked it wrong so the fact that his question wasn’t really a complaint but more of an observation was somewhat refreshing.

And for the finale from my first born son, never to be outdone….

This week has been a struggle for him in the behavior department, specifically backtalk. Actually, I think D1 and I are the ones struggling with it because he really doesn’t seem bothered much by it. So far, he’s only popped off his mouth to us and not his teachers, which is good. That is, until this past Wednesday night when he took it with him to church. Unacceptable.

The consequences were steep for this offense – weekend sleepover cancelled. He.Was.Devastated. For two days, he asked over and over and over if we would change our minds and each time we said no, he melted down. Over and over again. I’ll admit – a lot of times we’ll soften up and let him ‘earn it back’ but not this time. It was clearly having an impact on him and we needed something to help the lesson sink in.

Here’s where the humor comes in. This morning, the day of when the sleepover was set to occur, d1 wakes up and asks me if I found his note. I have no clue what he’s talking about but he told me to go back to my room and look around for a note from him. Um, okay. So I go look on my night stand and dresser. I look under the bed, on top of the mounds of dirty clothes on the floor, under the bag of chips on D1's side of the room. Still, I see nothing. I glance over at my rumpled up covers on my bed and do a double take when I see this…..




Surely not. Is that blue ink on my cream colored sheets? Why, yes. Yes, it is. He wrote me a note, alright. On my SHEETS. Oh, the thoughts going through my head were not motherly. Maybe not even legal. So what if the note starts off with a declaration of love? That was merely the preface to a plea so, in my mind, it kind of cancels out the sentiment.

Here’s the funny part, crazy as that sounds. I thought he wrote the note to me directly on the sheets but, if you look closely, the writing is actually on a piece of Scotch tape that is stuck to the bed.



Apparently he came into my room last night when I was in the shower and wrote it on the tape {which now explains why I saw the craft bucket randomly dumped out on the bathroom sink last night} and then placed on my side of the bed. I think he knew he would have been shipped off to that boot camp place I refer to far too often had he gone and scribbled directly on the linens. He must also think that I carefully climb into bed each night and examine my sheets thoroughly before falling into a peaceful slumber. Not so much, kid. More like collapsing every night from exhaustion and fatigue, hence the reason why I slept on top of your love note.

Sleepover ruling was not overturned, despite the innovative appeal. Nice try, though.