After church, and lunch, I took the children to the park so their father could take a sanity break at Walmart. Someone needed to get groceries.
Once home we took naps! I rode Rusty, out into the corner of the pivot. He was very good. My hard working husband finished mowing the lawn. After naps they wanted to fly a kite.
After that, because it was so nice out? Because they are insane? They ran through the sprinkler for awhile.
Not that there’s any reading in this one but we do that all the time. I wanted to show what The little Goblin Child usually rides like. When her world is not collapsing because her lead rope is the wrong color. She’s such a good little rider. Tanna and I were going out to sort some pairs and she wanted to come with us instead of riding in the pay loader with her father. Unfortunatly she faced the same delima as last time. Her horse or her saddle. She chose her saddle and was going to get on behind me on Coyote.
I put her up and let her ride by herself through the gates. In the first pen I turned her loose, she had been loose the whole time so I guess I chased Coyote away from me. He was glued to my shoulder begging me to save him from small children.
We have been working with 8 on very simple counting for awhile now. How many eyes do you have? One, two, two eyes. While swinging at the park the other day I decided to try to teach counting the way I did with The Goblin Child, I would count to three as he repeated after me then at three I would let the swing go.
He was getting it. He counted to three once. I frantically grabbed for my phone, tried to figure out how to hold it and catch him at the same time. And he never did it again. Dang kids. He got kind of close though and looked cute doing it, that’s a start.
It was the last nice day. I caught Princess Onna and Coyote and saddled Princess Onna so we could go out for a nice ride. At first it went well.
The Goblin Child’s beautiful pink lead rope is long, very long, longer than what is really useful. I traded lead ropes. Coyotes shorter green rope would be easier not to get tangled in and to keep from dragging while ponying. The long pink lead rope would work fine as reins for me and 8 on Coyote, I would just tie a bigger knot to take up some of the length. It seemed simple.
Then this started as soon as we got through the gate into the cattle and she noticed.
I was going to take her over to a fence line, set her down and tell her to walk home after I switched lead ropes and gave her the stupid pink one. It’s not that easy a thing to switch with two squirming children and prancey horses, so I tried to ignore her. By the time we got back to the corrals it had progressed to this
When we got back to the house I switched lead ropes so she had the pink one. She sat on Onna and balled. I turned 8 loose with Coyote and had at least one happy child until he fell on his little butt. Then there were two screamers.
8 has been climbing out of his crib. He is quite nonchalant about it most of the time. He’ll saunter out of his room in the morning, look around and say hi. When things don’t go smoothly is when there is a problem. He has fallen rather dramatically twice now. Twice was enough for us to decide to do away with the tall crib rail. Over the long spring break weekend we converted the crib to a toddler bed.
The next two nights my loving and supportive husband was gone. He will tell you it wasn’t on purpose. I’m sure it wasn’t, work is work after all. Maybe, I declared it an excuse to get away from children who wont sleep.
The third night he had had enough of my ribbing and promised he was going to be home. I clung to that. So when he was fifteen minutes late and still no word from him I went ahead and fed the children. I was starting to get a little grouchy. In the scheme of things it wasn’t that late but I was tired and sore and not in the mood to be reasonable.
When he came in the door, not even half an hour late I made a great attempt to be civil. The children had scarfed down what food they were going to eat and I was ready to start the battle to get them into bed. They had skipped naps and had entered that crazed, overly tired stage. But I sat down with my hard working husband, tired too from a couple of late nights at work and we talked as he ate ignoring the rotten children and what ever they may have been destroying upstairs.
After eating he went up and ran a bath, scented with lavender, and insisted I soak and relax. I protested but my will to resist was weak. He then prepared both children for bed and fought them into their beds and to sleep. All while I relaxed in a hot bath. What a man.
We all piled on the four-wheeler and rode along to check the cows. As soon as we pulled into the corrals, there was a cow about to calve. We sat and watched, the children were hilarious. 8 kept saying baby, baby, baby. The Goblin Child was full of questions, most of which you can hear in the video.
I have more video of her cleaning him up later it is >here<.
The first birthday party we planned was canceled on account of snow. The next try went much better.
We got the bouncy houses, otherwise known as the refuge, for the evening. A very carefully scheduled evening. It is booked solid and you get exactly the amount of time you reserve. There was another party immediately following ours and another after that.
We had only invited a few families but by the time whole families come it makes for a large crowd. With the bouncy houses there was room for all and I didn’t have to clean house! Plus the kids like it, I guess that’s a bonus.
With only our group there, the need for decorum and acting like an adult was gone and the grown ups might have enjoyed it just as much as the children. We all got in on it, bouncing like idiots and plunging down the slides.
It was a great night and The goblin Child was very jealous and plans to have her party there this summer.
It was out of commission temporarily while it got moved to a new server. But it’s back and better than ever.
I need to get 8’s birthday written about but first, well, I may be a bad mother.
I let him out the door then tried to hurry his sister after. She is impossible to hurry. I peeked out the door to check on him and heard screams. It scared me half to death until I saw the reason for his screams.
