3 kids sleeping

All of my children are asleep at the same time… in the middle of the day!  This may be a miracle.  Right now Allie still takes 2 naps a day and Drew takes 1 nap.  Are they at the same time you may wonder… NO!  She sleeps from around 10:30-noon and then again from 3:30-5 pm.  Drew likes a nap around 1:30-2.  I try to keep him up so they sleep at the same time but this just makes him cranky before the nap and not want to go to sleep until 9 pm because he is rested from his late nap.  All of this leads to me being tied to my house all day because one of my kids is always sleeping.  Addison no longer needs a nap on most days.  I do try to give her ‘quiet time’ in the afternoon while the other kids sleep.  We usually work in a workbook or color and if mom is in a really tired mood, we lie on the couch and watch a movie.  I may or may not watch the backs of my eyelids during this time.  It depends on the day and the kids mood (if they want to harass me while I am on the couch or not).  Addison has a bit of a cold and because of this has been tired.  Today I have the glorious opportunity to do whatever I want while they all 3 sleep.  What did I do?  First I sneaked around the house and took pictures of them all sleeping like the stalker mom that I am.  I worked on my volunteer job, did some online shopping and then decided to tell you all about this.  I could have been productive and cleaned or prepped dinner but that would not have been any fun.  It is hard to be on the computer and have cohesive thoughts with 3 kids around so I took the opportunity and ran with it.  I hope at least some of you get one of these miracle moments this week! 

We can't have nice things

Fruit Ninja is a game where you pretend to slice fruit with a sword on a screen, iPad, etc.  The more fruit you slice, the more points you win.  My children decided to play “fruit ninja” on our television with a pen and a nail file yesterday.  This resulted in deep gouges across the entire screen.  Of course this has happened the day before the Super bowl and we are having 6 of Andy’s cadets over to watch on our now distorted screen.  I was almost physically sick over this.  The TV is not that old either.  All I could think is “this is why we can’t have nice things”.  Andy and I have had the ‘we can’t have nice things’ conversation before.  We had a dining room set that was purchased at a garage sale, then used by my uncle, then my grandparents and then inherited by us when we moved to Oklahoma.  We made an agreement that when he got promoted to major that we would get a new dining room set.  In the time between making this agreement and him actually getting promoted, we had children.  I realized that getting my dream dining room was out of the question.  Our dining room table has huge gouges in it from the kids stabbing it with a fork.  I made a compromise that I would get a new hutch and cheap Ikea chairs and keep the old table until they would stop ‘forking it’.  We now have an entirely mismatched set and I am still waiting on my ‘fancy’ table and chairs.  I got a new couch while Andy was deployed sometime after having Addison and Drew.  I paid a million extra dollars for the highest grade of fabric that the store claimed was ‘kid proof’. I also got the extra warranty where they will come and clean the couch for you a handful of times.  The couch is stained by milk, juice, cheese crackers, you name it.  The fabric has held up well if you actually clean it.  The process to get your couch cleaned under the warranty is a nightmare and is not even covered for crayon, marker, etc.  I found this out the hard way involving a small child and a sharpie.  The carpet is equally stained.  They have broken or destroyed almost every toy they have owned and most of their clothes have holes or paint all over them.  Again, this is why we can’t have nice things.  I don’t think they do any of this maliciously.  They are just kids and my kids tend to be a bit wild.  They play a lot and they play rough.  I am okay with this.  What I do want to know is when does this phase end?  High School?  When they are out of the house?  I am not sure.  Until then I guess we will just deal with the scratched, the dirty and the stained.