The other day I first heard the term “Free Range Kids“, and when I started reading more about what raising a free range child is about, the more I got it. DH and I always joke how different things were when we were children. His mom used to send him a few blocks away to play in the 3rd largest river in the US (Columbia River) where he and his buddies would shoot at each other with their BB guns (no one shot their eye out), or rode bikes down hills too steep for cars to drive up in the winter with a friend on the handlebar.

We have friends whose 10 year old has never ridden a bike out of fear. In my hometown Tag has been prohibited at the school, all because of fear of safety for the kids. Puh-lease! What ever happened to kids learning natural consequences? Why do they need full body armor to go out and play in the back yard (heaven forbid they set foot in the front yard without at least two, armed, secret service agents). Heck, when I was a kid, my parents would not even know if I had been abducted until at least 20 minutes after the street lights went on. And what the hell is up with ‘play dates’?? Are parents now days so over scheduled that they have to pencil in little Johnny’s play time between pee-wee soccer and his gymnastics class? That is what I love about this neighborhood, if a child wants to play with my kids… they knock on the door and ask if they can come out and play…. get this, WITHOUT their parents hovering behind them making sure their 10 year old can walk a block away without being stolen.

Now I am not saying we should air drop our children over a South American jungle with two quarters and a rubber band and expect them to MacGyver their way home, but seriously, don’t you think our kids should get to share memories of skinned knees, chasing the ice cream truck, drinking from the hose, building forts in the woods, walking to the supermarket with a dollar to buy candy or soda, climbing trees, skipping rocks and wading in the creek, and snowball fights?

Now I am not criticizing anyone else, you parent your child the way you see fit, but I found letting go works for us, as long as my child shows they are mature and capable of making reasonable decisions. At the park, I have no problem watching Austin climbing a tree 10 feet in the air, or walking to the convenience store to buy treats for his brothers. When I was in labor with Sophie, I mentioned Christopher broke his arm on his scooter. He was so proud of his injury, just like he is of his appendectomy scar. When Matthew falls down we tell him to “get up and do it again”. We still kiss his owies when he hurts himself, but we don’t act like the world is going to end if he draws blood when he falls down.

Someday, I hope my kids can look back and tell their own kids how much fun they had when they were kids, and all the risks they took and adventures they created.

Last night I was talking to a friend in IMs about my lack of energy to clean my house, and took some pictures of my horrible messy house to share with her, since she was saying she has not been cleaning due to a newborn, toddler, and preschooler… sheesh, what excuse is THAT! (Joking of course, she has more reason than I do).

So last night I got inspired to put a shelf in Matthew’s closet, but the shelf I had was about 6 inches too tall, so I found the perfect one at Home Depot’s website and decided tomorrow we would go get it… thinking I could get his closet looking better and then sit my ass on the couch and relax the rest of the day feeling accomplished enough with cleaning an ENTIRE closet.

So here is the before, you may not be able to tell but I *did* have a four compartment cart in there that I put his blankets in and on. Of course you probably CANNOT tell because he tore it down and all that is left is the frame and of course the blankets.

Here is the after, I actually was able to put everything in the before shot on one shelf! I used the others to empty two drawers of Sophie’s dresser, boxes from the other side of the closet, and a ton of stuff from my room!

Ok, so since we are on the subject of the corner o’ baby stuff in my room I will show you the before and afters of it:

This is all the crap I had in there before. Swing, bed, clothes, fabric, diaper bag, baby book, etc.

And this is all that is left, but only because they are two boxes of cloth diapers (clean of course) that I need to wash before I can put them away, and then also my Hypnobabies home learning package box that I need to find another home for, and some bags of baby magazines I need to go through and my sarong I need to wash for birthing day.

Here is the after of where those big boxes ended up, this side used to be crammed full with more clothes, blankets, and the crib (which now nicely fits in the closet behind the new shelf and a couple rails in this side).

Ok, so I could not start on the closet and leave his room looking like the disaster it was, so I started picking up and organizing his toys, here is what I did with his “cubby” shelf:

The before of course, yikes!

And the after, much better!

Moving onto his shelf:

Need I even tell you this is the before?

And the after.

His bed, before.

And after.

This is the changing table & Sophia’s dresser, before.

And the changing table afterwards.

And some misc after pics, because a clean room is so much more fun to take pics of:

His dresser & his diaper stash.

And his shoes on the back of his door.

Another project I have been putting off is my freaking NASTY toilet seat. I took a belly pic with my toilet seat up and could not use them because the underside of my seat had been scrubbed so much the paint was coming off, so it was stained REALLY bad from anytime anyone was sick (think splatter, EWWWWWW!) Here is a tiny before, since it is so so bad.

Gross, gross, gross, GROSS! Can you believe a new seat was only $10? Had I known this, I would have replaced it when we moved in! I seriously think the old owners cleaned the seats with turpentine, the other bathroom needs a new seat as well (of course I notice this AFTER we get home with the first seat).

Another before. And no, we did not paint, it was the only room in the house that was not white when we moved in.

And here is the toilet after, amazing how much $10 can make over a bathroom!

Much like the new shelf in Matthew’s room inspired me to clean the room, the toilet seat accomplished the same thing.

This is the right side of my bathroom vanity before.

And after.

Center part of my vanity before.

…after.

Sink before.

The sink after, not TOO much of a change there.

I also vacuumed my entire upstairs, even my bathroom because the jackass designer of this house thinks bathrooms should be carpeted, gag. I also cleaned the upper shelves in my walk in closet where I keep the curtains for my family room I need to put back up, and also the shelf where I am keeping all my pre-pregnancy jeans. All in all, this ‘makeover’ cost a total of $70, $50 for the shelf, $10 for the toilet seat and the final $10 was for zip-ties and tax. The zip ties are for redneck baby-proofing, to make sure she crib and shelf is secured to the wall. I also had a ton of help from Austin and Christopher (and a little from Bobby, who claimed he wanted no part of my “wicked shenanigans”) and between 4-6 hours of time. We got one box together of items to donate to Goodwill when I hit the drive through on Thursday after my prenatal appointment, and one large garbage bag of garbage. I also got about three arm fulls of toys to add to his cubby from his toy box in the family room, which was getting too full to clothes. So two rooms down, nine rooms to go!!

I love it when you have a dream that is so realistic, that when you wake, you almost feel as if you are still in the dream.

Last night I had a dream about World of Warcraft, and online multi-player role playing game. I occasionally play, but Bobby spend most of his free time playing. Sometime this is an issue with me, sometimes not because he has always put us first when we need him. The dream though, really brought out my anger and frustration and blew them out of proportion. I woke up feeling abandon, neglected and unloved.

When I heard Matthew playing in the hall, I called him into my bed to cuddle me to make me feel better. Well, being that he is all of three years old, he was not interested in stroking my broken ego. I got maybe 2 minutes of being allowed to hold him before he was off again to conquer bigger and better tasks.

Now that I have had an outlet to vent I am starting to shake the feelings I had in the dream, but some of them are not entirely false, just blown way out of proportion. I look forward to again only having realistic carryover a few times a year, not a few times a month like I do when I am pregnant, they are very frustrating because they feel real, but I know they are not real.

Housework sucks so bad right now, because guess what? Dishes stink, laundry stinks, garbage stinks, vacuuming makes me cough and coughing makes me want to puke and my energy level is consistently somewhere in the negative levels.

However I thank my lucky stars for this pregnancy daily, don’t get me wrong…. but why does something so wonderful like a baby come with all these lovely side effects?? One would think morning sickness and fatigue are “natural birth control” for future children, except for the lovely mom-nesia in which you forget ALL the bad the moment you hold the baby and think to yourself “I could totally do this again, I LOVE being pregnant” WTH!?! Talk about mixed messages body!!

I wonder if I can talk Bobby into hiring a housekeeper for me a few times a week? LOL Hell, it’s half tempting to beg my friend to come clean my house for $10 an hour one day a week while I take a nap.

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Now playing: Norah Jones - Lonestar
via FoxyTunes

Ok, since I sold the kids out on their messy room, it is time for me to confess a mess of my own, it’s only fair.

We have a landscaping problem.

It all started out simply… in July ‘04 we bought our first home. Our ‘yard’ had nothing but weeds that we thought we could tame. The flower bed had silk flowers that we figured we could replace with a lush oasis of wildflowers, and it has a sprinkler system, with a timer! Soon we learned some things that made our hearts sink.

• Our soil was made up primarily of sand, and we were lucky we could even get weeds to grow as ground cover.

• Plants take a long time to mature.

• Our sprinkler system was manufactured sometime before the birth of Christ, AND it was leaking.

From the time we purchased the home until last fall we tried everything from seeding and watering like crazy, planting a “tree” and shrubbery, to fertilizing, aerating, thatching, weed n’ feeding, using round up, tilling, to finally throwing up our hands in disgust.

For the last two weeks I have been calling landscapers and arranging estimates. We have interviewed four landscapers, have one more coming on Wednesday and have received one estimate back for the total of around five thousand dollars. Some have given us a time line of having the work completed in anywhere from 3 weeks from now, to three MONTHS from now.

So without further adieu, I give you all my Yard of Shame.

This is a view of my front yard from the street… this is what all my neighbors see, this is my “curb appeal”. Nice huh? Notice the lovely patches of dead grass. THAT is what type of grass grows when you don’t have good top soil.

This is my sweet little “overgrown weed” as my neighbors refer to it; we get a lot of razzing for this sweet little tree. My mother, who lives in Washington, has a yard full of trees that are probably all 15-20 years old. This little guy was a volunteer from her maple tree that she put in a pot and gave to me to take home. I drove this little tree 1400 miles home to Colorado and planted it with the help of Bobby. Bobby does not love it as much as I do, and he is not against ripping it out and putting a more mature tree in.

This picture shows you how tiny this tree really is in comparison to my neighbors trees. The sad thing is, the two neighbors on the same side of the street as us also have young trees. Theirs were the classic 1 1/2 inch diameter trees that one can usually find at a nursery, I expect our little maple to be the size of their trees in 3-5 more years.

This is my sad little flower bed. The saddest part is, you can barely see the difference between the Potentilla shrubs, and the tall weeds. However, the positive part of this picture is I have had the potentilla for 2-3 years and have not managed to kill it! This is impressive for me. Generations upon generations of talented gardening genes in my family, from my paternal and maternal sides, have all managed to skip over me. However, these messy little bushes are a vast improvement over silk flowers sticking out of bead-board.

This is my lovely sprinkler system (not the hose, though that would probably work better). It has a timer, but the previous owners said it did not work, and the timer is mounted in my basement behind my washer and dryer, so even if it DID work, we could not get to it. We also found out that the pipe broke sometime before we moved in and so we have been throwing money out the window each and every day as this thing leaks all over the place.

This is my backyard. It has no sprinkler system and no landscaping (unless you count weeds, overgrown ivy, holes from the dogs, or chewing damage from the dogs landscaping). The fence is thrice the age of the home and needs replaced badly, however we need to get our two neighbors to agree to do a couple things. The neighbor to the north of me would have to kill his ivy and replace his own fence that is putting weight on mine. Being he has 4-5x more fence than we do this is easier said than done. The neighbor to the west of me would have to replace a retaining wall that the previous owners of their house ripped out. The husband is deployed to Iraq and the wife barely speaks English so this is not happening either. Those two 2×4’s you see are from a windstorm we had that caused the fence to partially collapse since about a quarter of my support fence posts are rotted at the base and broken.

This is a view of the west part of our fence and most of our backyard. Those pieces of plywood are nailed to the fence to cover the holes my dogs are creating to assist the neighbor dog in her escape to my back yard. This is also where my yard is sinking into the neighbor’s yard, along with my support posts for my fence making it that much more unstable.

Anyways, if you wish to view the entire set of pictures, make sure to visit my Flickr set titled “Yard of Shame“. [Opens in a new window]

Matthew cannot say the word pizza; he thinks he can, but we won’t let him… especially in public. See, he says the ‘pea’ sound in pizza like ‘poo’ and the ‘zah’ sound in pizza ‘tuh’. I won’t write the word he says, or the exact translation of his word, but we can say it is a very well known Spanish word that means ‘prostitute’. If you don’t know the word, google a free English-Spanish translator, ask a 10th grader, or just ask my 2 year old to say pizza.

Now let’s not teach him the words “fork”, “asphalt”, “bench” or “ship” until he is at least 5.

I have a not-so-secret-anymore crush on Kevin Smith, the writer and director of movies such as Clerks, Clerks II, Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I have always admired his subtle, sophisticated humor and I also think he is quite good looking. My husband, Bobby, knows of my many crushes, to include Kevin Smith AKA Silent Bob.

Yesterday, Bobby had some dental work, and when he came home, his mouth and tongue were still numb making it almost impossible to be understood when he talked. I was laying down in the front room with Matthew when he walked into the door, to communicate with me he was using a mixture of ASL (we both sign with Matthew) and some made up signs. He gets sort of a devilish look and leans back against the closet door behind him. It was as if he became Silent Bob; not only did he nail the look with his longer hair and beard, but he also nailed his facial expressions, mannerisms, and gestures. And then, as if I was not laughing hard enough, he had a “light-bulb moment” and turned around and pulled his full length leather trench coat out of the closet and REALLY starts emulating Silent Bob.

I love my husband so much, he always knows how to brighten my day and put me in a good mood. He is a great actor and comedian, and even though he may not have the drive to make it in Hollywood, in my book he wins the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role any day.

Today some friends of ours gave us three fish their son did not want anymore, an angel fish and two algae eaters. They showed up around 4pm with the fish in a bag and I set the fish (in the bag still) in the tank for them to adjust to the temperature. Well, I forgot about them. Oops!

Five hours later, when I remember, the bag is seemingly full of dead fish. Oh great, more fish I killed in the last 30 days (I accidentally dropped a baby fish out of the tank while transferring it to clean the tank); however the two algae eaters swam off, but the angel fish just floated to the bottom. The kids are sleeping now, so I am sure in the morning they will discover the missing new fish and I will have to fess up that I am a bad fish-keeper.

The new Angel Fish, aptly named Sushi had it’s very last swim, when I “buried” it at sea; it seemed so graceful as it swam in circles around the bowl and finally dipped out of sight.

Lately I have been addicted to these daytime drama shows; Divorce Court, Jude Joe Brown, The People’s Court… I love them all!  Now I am not bad enough to where I have to watch them, but if they are on… I am hooked.  I cannot believe how ignorant some people can be… it reminds me of the women I saw on Cops last week… One woman said “She took my $10!  I tried to buy crack from her and she took my money and did not give me my drugs”.  The second woman said “I did not take her money, I don’t sell drugs.. I am a prostitute!” OH MY GOODNESS!  What kind of defense is that??  Is one evil lesser than the other?

There are moments when I do not enjoy being around other people’s children.  For instance, I cannot tell if the baby I watch is waaaaay more demanding than my own sons, or if we just lack the bond of a mother and her child.  I can see this in a way because she does not calm down for me like she does her own parents, and things that would not annoy me about my own children annoy me about her.  I don’t like that she will only sleep without fussing if she sleeps ON me, which I am not able to do because I have to take care of Matthew.  It annoys me that she won’t lay still for a feeding and her head darts from side to side and gets mad if the food does not come with.  It annoys me that when she naps she wakes up every few minutes to yell for the first 20 minutes.  It annoys me HOW much she fusses before she will sleep.

Don’t get me wrong… I don’t hate watching her, I am just stressed today.  It is not just her, I feel impatient will all children that do not belong to me.  This is what is stopping me from starting the process of foster-care, I am not sure if this same indifference will transfer to foster-children, which is NOT how I want to be.  I want to provide a home full of love and be a safe place for them to fall until they are waiting for permanency.  Maybe it will feel more permanent than babysitting since they will be in my home all day and night, I will be in charge of all aspects of their daily care, and they will go where I go without me being “stuck” at home.  Maybe just those differences there will make all the difference in both me and the child bonding…. but maybe not.  Who knows, until I have been in that position it will all be a mystery.  Some day I will know if I am willing to take that chance.