Five All Mine

Pet seal

fiveallmine — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:06:15 +0000

I am an animal lover. I love all animals and would love to have tons of pets- if I wasn’t allergic and if I had a farm AND enough money to pay people to take care of them.
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Regardless, one pet I have never dreamed of having is a seal.
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Yet somehow, I have one.
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He barks just like a seal and he has stinky breath too.
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Yes, it’s my little pus bucket. Now he is barking up a storm, sometimes coughing into his elbow and sometime coughing all over the counter, table, or anywhere he happens to be.
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I’m not particularly thrilled to have a pet seal. And I definitely, definitely, don’t want any more.

Wrestling..it’s a family affair

fiveallmine — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:51:35 +0000

I used to pride myself on having boys who were calm and gentle.
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I should have waited before congratulating myself. Now that they are 13, 11 and 8, Jeremy, Jack and Gregory seem to have begun training for the WWF championships.
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At any point in time, except maybe when they are eating, my boys will topple onto one another and begin twisting and bending one another’s body parts until someone screams for mercy.
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This can happen in the front hall, kitchen, living room, bedroom, even the bathroom. And although it can happen at any time, it tends to happen a lot at bedtime. Seems that wrestling is a good way to procrastinate.
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Sometimes I wonder if it’s a flash mob….sometimes, ALL of my children stop what they are doing and pile on top of each other. The screams and giggles are so loud that I wonder if the neighbours are going to call the police.

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But they don’t. And so the game continues until either I yell REALLY, REALLY loud, or someone starts to cry.
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The game is over when someone starts to cry.

That can’t be a good sign

fiveallmine — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 18:40:10 +0000

Poor Jack, being the most patient child ever, was sick all week. He went to school but didn’t feel well, complaining of having a sore throat and being unable to eat.
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Being such a good mother, I didn’t get interested until he mentioned spitting out water all over his classroom floor because he was unable to swallow. (For the record, my throat was sore too so I wasn’t sympathetic).
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I called him over to a big window and told him to open his pie hole. I wasn’t sure what I thought I was looking for, but what I saw was gross. On his tonsil, was a good size spot of creamy white pus. I had him swallow, I brought him a drink. The pus was still hanging on.
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So. I took my little pus bucket to the walk in clinic because of course it was after hours and our doctor’s office was closed.
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After a short wait, the doctor arrived and asked what the problem was. I told him that Jack had a sore throat and some gross pus. The doctor shone his light into Jack’s mouth and said ‘Eww, that IS gross.’
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Even though that wasn’t a good sign, the strep test was negative. So my pus bucket and I went home with some anesthetic mouthwash. Now I’m making my guy tea with lemon and honey, and hoping this virus doesn’t contaminate the entire family. We leave in a few weeks for our first trip to Florida and I’m not sure we can enjoy turkey legs at Disney is we have sore throats!!!

Hearing impaired?

fiveallmine — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:35:48 +0000

I mentioned that my children are hearing impaired.
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It’s called selective hearing, I think.
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When I call for someone to help me do something, no one hears me the first time. When I want the laundry folded or someone to take over stirring the soup while I run to the bathroom, no one hears me.
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But the second- the SECOND- that I rustle a bag of chips on the counter, or crack open a can of pop- there is a thunderous sound of ten feet coming tearing into the kitchen from all over the house.
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I am living the ‘temptations’ cat treat commercial over and over again at my house. Shake, shake, shake, and in runs my peeps.
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I don’t buy chips or pop a lot. But I’m thinking I may keep an empty chip bag hidden away for when I need something done…hmm, I think I might be on to something here.

Unnecessary modesty

fiveallmine — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:53:53 +0000

The other day, 8 year old Gregory was being modest, and wouldn’t change out of his bathing suit in the backyard (the way I want him to).
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He was wet from the pool and wanted to come into the house because it was cold outside. I didn’t want him to come in wet and drip all over the floor.
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After some discussion through the sliding screen door, Gregory whipped off his bathing suit and raced into the house.
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13 year old Jack chided Gregory, and offered him these words of wisdom:
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‘Don’t be self-conscious unless it’s hairy.’
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Well said, no?

2nd requests…

fiveallmine — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 11:31:09 +0000

I am sooo sick of my kids not listening to me. How about you?
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Even to simple requests like ‘pick up that sock’ or ‘hang up that towel’.
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They always respond that they will do what I ask, but when I return to the same spot, the job has not been done. They have forgotten.
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So. Now I’m serious. And really, really, sick of hearing my own voice repeat myself. So I told my gang of hearing impaired people that if they do not do what I ask the FIRST time, they will lose a privilege or be grounded for a WEEK if I see my request has gone undone.
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Now when I ask for something to be done-its ACTUALLY GETTING DONE! And I’m not losing my voice from repeating myself so much.
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We’ll see how long this last for, but so far, so good!

Basketball and gardening does not mix

fiveallmine — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 11:25:07 +0000

I filled two big planters with beautiful plants a few weeks ago and placed them at the bottom of our porch steps.
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Jeremy, Jack and Gregory play basketball outside every day in the driveway. We have a long driveway so we have created our own basketball court by putting two basketball hoops out, and then parking farther down, closer to the street.
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Every time the ball does not go into the basketball hoop, it bounces off either one of my flower pots, or something in the front garden. Okay, maybe not every time, a lot of the time.
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I sit and watch my boys playing ball, and the entire time I am flinching as flowers and stems are flying up into the air with each bounce of the basketball.
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I’ve given up caring really, because I really love watching my guys play basketball. But now I need to avert my eyes from my planters or I feel sad.

When getting A’s sucks

fiveallmine — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 19:24:53 +0000

11 year old Jack was never an ‘A’ student before this school year. He barely studied, never looked at his notes.
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This year, I taught him how to study. Read, highlight, make notes on highlighted material, use as study notes. read and re-read study notes.
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He has been getting ‘A’s’ all year…I’m not tooting my own horn, I’m tooting his. Now he has the skills he needs to succeed and his marks have been consistently ‘A’s throughout grade five.
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What sucks for him is this… Now we are used to him bringing home an ‘A’. He brings us the test, we sign it, mumble some comment about it being ‘great work’ and continue to put away the dishes.
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Prior to bringing home consistently good marks, it was a BIG deal to see an ‘A’, even a ‘B’, to be honest.
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I would kiss him all over his beaming face, give him cookies and milk, tousle his hair…then I would tell everyone who entered the room what a fantastic job Jack had done. Paulina and Jeremy have always excelled at school, so they would snort and say something about how we ignore them and their marks and what’s the big deal that Jack brought home an ‘A’ (or ‘b’) anyway?
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So I learned to stop telling those two.
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But I realized last night that now when Jack brings out his papers for us to sign with ‘A’s’ all over them, I say ‘good job buddy, now load the dishwasher’.
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That’s kinda mean, isn’t it? Oh well. His success should be reward enough! Right?

Anyone need a babysitter?

fiveallmine — Fri, 31 May 2013 02:29:41 +0000

I’ve always hated those ice cream trucks that cruise around neighbourhoods, lurkng around every busy corner, annoying music blaring, kids screaming to their parents that they want money..you know what I mean…and it always comes around at five oclock when dinner is being made.
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My kids, being deprived, don’t get ice cream from the truck very often. Maybe twice a year if they are lucky and only on VERy scorching hot days in the summer.
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This is why after school the other day, Paulina raced from the house when she heard the music and chased down the truck in the street. She organized her siblings money and got them all a cone…Hubby and I were not home from work yet.
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The worst part of this story is that 14 year old Paulina was heating up a pot of soup on the stove when she heard the pied piper’s call, and left it unattended on the stove when she raced like a cocaine addict to her dealer in the street.
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Luckily her 13 year old brother has more sense than she and stayed in the house, so he heard the soup spilling over the top of the pot and sizzling, as it burned off on the burner…he had the common sense to turn the stove off and remove the pot from the stove.
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This was the same day that Paulina allowed all of my little people and their friend who was visiting, to go play in the backyard (we have a pool) and then she went upstairs to her room.
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I walked into the house and found the burned stove top and four young kids playing in the backyard unsupervised.
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Mama wasn’t happy. I reemed her out really good. I made her sit and look at me while I told her off so that she couldn’t use an excuse that she didn’t hear me later on.
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No kiddies are allowed outside if mom or dad are not home. This has been re-established. A new rule -no leavng food burning on the stove in order to chase down the ice cream truck, has also been introduced.

This is Canada, eh?

fiveallmine — Tue, 28 May 2013 11:33:29 +0000

Most Canadians can tell you that we find it annoying how many misconceptions there about us and how we live.
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Yes, we do have lots of Canada Geese… Sorry, had to get that in there. Heh, heh..
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But no, we do not live in igloos, get to school by dog sled or have polar bears in our backyards. We do not have snow all year round. In fact, where I live in southern Ontario, we sometimes have very little snow due to global warming.
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In my general area, we have the same weather as New York.
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On vacation in the U.S., I was once asked by a woman if we still have the ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ method of law in Canada. I looked around to see if people were laughing. No one was. I honestly thought that I was being ‘punked’. When I said Canada had NEVER had any such system, this lady insisted that we had. Um…NO! That would be a different country.
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Anyway, my point is this. There are many misconceptions about Canada and Canadians. We are not part of the United States. Some of the time, our dollar is valued higher than the American dollar. We have socialized health care which means that as Canadians, we are entitled to doctor visits because our tax money pays for it. We pay a LOT of money in taxes. It is expensive to live here.
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There is your mini lesson about Canada. You can blame this rant on this t-shirt that my son received as a ‘hand me down’ a while ago. I had never really looked at it closely, and when I did, I was annoyed.
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We are definitely bringing it on vacation with us this summer.
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…okay, so as usual I am having technical difficulties..can’t seem to get the image to upload to this post. The tshirt says ‘Toronto, Canada’ and has a picture of a snow covered CN tower, an igloo and a polar bear.
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Brutal, eh?