The Eye Dilemma

"Can you see your eyes move when you look in the mirror?" my man asked me.

I thought he was referring to my lazy eye. I was born with crossed eyes and had surgery when I was one year old to correct them. Now when I am tired or have a headache one of my eyes will drift slightly. I thought he was asking me if I could see that an eye was not tracking when I looked in the mirror.

"Yes," I said.

"I've always wanted to be able to see my eyes move when I look in the mirror," he said, looking much more excited than I thought was warranted. "I've tried to. I move my eyes back and forth, but I can't see them moving. I have to keep my eyes still and turn my head from side to side." He demonstrated by keeping his eyes fixed on me and turning his head back and forth. "Then I thought, I bet Analei can see her eyes move!"

I realized I had no idea what he was talking about. It certainly wasn't my lazy eye.

"Wait. What?" I said.

"Can you see your eyes move when you look in the mirror?" he repeated.

"Uhhh...I don't know. I've never tried," I answered. "I thought you were asking if I could see my lazy eye."

"No," he said, slightly disappointed.

A while later I went upstairs to use the restroom. As I was washing up I glanced at myself in the mirror. And then I started to wonder, could I see my eyes move? Feeling a little silly, I looked left and right while keeping my nose pointed at the mirror. Nope, I couldn't see my eyes move. Then I stared at the mirror and turned my head from side to side. That time I was able to watch my eyes slide back and forth in their sockets.

I went downstairs and said to my man, "Just for your information, I cannot see my eyes move when I look in the mirror." And then I added, "I can't believe I just tried that."

My man grinned at me.

Now I bet you are going to try it too.

A Verrrry Special Decoration

JayJay's assignment was to decorate the Christmas ornament and then write about it. This is the result.

A Battle to Keep Christmas Secret (Which I Won)

My man pulled the car into our parking stall and shut off the engine. He and I got out and stepped to the rear doors to help the kids get out of their car seats. I opened the door and unbuckled Max, then stepped back to let him get out. I looked over the roof of the car at my man.

"Give me the keys," I said. "I'll go check the mail."

"Can I check it?" he asked.

"Ok," I said. "But if there are any packages, you cannot open them!" I had been doing a little Christmas shopping online and was expecting a package any day.

"I'm going to open them," my man threatened.

He went to the mail box while JayJay got out of the car. When Max was out on my side, I bent into the car to unbuckle Third from his car seat in the middle. By the time I had him extricated from the straps and had shut the car door, my man was unlocking one of the package bins. He pulled out a package.

"You can't open that," I reminded him.

"I'm going to open it," he answered.

I approached him. "Give me the package."

He dodged away from me. "No! It's not fair that you get to know everything about Christmas!" Let me remind you that this man is very nearly 34 years old.

On a side note, it is NOT my fault that I know what everyone, including myself, is getting for Christmas. My man cannot keep a secret. The end.

Anyway, I chased him. He ran. Of course there was no way I could keep up with him. I was carrying a nine-month-old baby and the parking lot was icy after our recent snow storm. But I kept chasing and each time I got close, he scampered away. JayJay and Max stood by and watched and laughed. After several minutes of this pointless hullabaloo in the parking lot, my man ran to the front door, unlocked it, and ran inside with the package.

I was close enough on his heels that as I reached the front door, I looked inside and saw him heading into the kitchen. The house was still dark. He hadn't paused to turn on the lights in his eagerness to escape with his contraband.

As he turned into the kitchen, he stepped on a library book lying on the floor. The plastic dust cover combined with the smooth surface of our laminate wood flooring turned the book into an ice skate. It slid to the side. My man's foot flew out from under him and he went down with a heavy thud. His head or hand hit the dog's dish and sent it flying across the kitchen with a clatter. Various other detritus of a dirty, three-boy house scattered away from the impact zone.

"Oh, ouch!" he said.

I stepped inside, closely followed by JayJay and Max. I turned on the lights and set the baby down while my husband moaned on the floor of the kitchen. I was a little concerned. My man had broken his left hand wrestling only a week and a half before. It was splinted, but not in a hard cast. Because of the direction he was turning when he fell, he might have tried to stop his fall with that hand first.

I walked into the kitchen. My man groaned.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"I don't know," he answered. "Everything hurts."

He still held the package in his right hand. I snatched it away from him. Then I gave him a kick in the pants for good measure. Nope. I'm not above kicking him while he's down.

"You can't open it," I said, unyielding. I headed for the stairs so I could hide the package in my bedroom.

"Get her, boys," my man said.

Immediately, JayJay and Max started for me. I shrieked and ran, racing up the stairs with JayJay hot on my tail.

I made it into my room and had the door mostly closed when JayJay thumped into the other side. We fought. He tried to open the door. I tried to shut it. Max quickly joined the contest and then my man showed up and I had to surrender the door to them. But I certainly did not surrender that package. They backed me into a corner by my bed. I held the package tightly.

I had to resort to using the only weapon I had left to me, my will. And when I brandish my will, there isn't anyone who can stand against me (except my man and my sons occasionally, ok, a lot, but there was no way I would let them win this one). After a few stern, but clean words, my family conceded the fight. Eventually, I managed to chase them out of the room and was able to hide that package. It won't reappear until Christmas morning, so help me God.

P.S. My man was not hurt from his fall.

Cerebrum Matriarchalitis Strikes Again

I really wish there was a cure for this disease. Sometimes it can be very frustrating. For example, I once was parking our new car in the carport a week after we bought it and scraped the entire right side of the car on the pole. And just a few weeks ago I somehow managed to run my cell phone through the washing machine even though I had not forgotten it in a pants pocket. Luckily, my most recent encounter with this disease was more amusing than upsetting.

I shave once a week. I'm much to lazy to do it every day so I shave only when I am going to be wearing a skirt and people will be able to see my legs. Other than that, my body hair gets free reign. Sorry if that's too much information for you, but it's relevant to this story.

So last night I was showering. I shaved my right armpit which had a normal weeks worth of stubble, about 1/3 of a centimeter. Then I turned to shave my left armpit. Holy moose! The hair in my left armpit was nearly a centimeter long! Disgusting! Somehow the week before I managed to shave all my body hair except for that growing in my left armpit.

It's like there is a hole in my brain.

Hooliganism

Recently, a representative of State Farm insurance knocked on my door. He wanted to see if State Farm could give us a better deal on car and home insurance than we have with our current insurance company. I gave him the information he requested and he left. A few days later, I received a call from a State Farm agent. She wanted a little more detail about our insurance. I agreed to speak to her because I am always looking to save money. She proceeded to ask me questions about what type of cars I own, who our insurance provider is, how much we pay for insurance, etc.

During this process, my rambunctious little hooligans were doing laps around our tiny house and baby Third was kicking around on the floor. The older two were creating a thunderous din over which I could barely hear the woman on the phone. I have been on the other end of similar phone calls and I know that the background noise was probably deafening to the point where she struggled to hear my answers to her questions.

I chose to ignore the chaos so I could end the call as quickly as possible, figuring it would be easier than trying to discipline JayJay and Max while talking to the insurance agent at the same time.

But I looked up and there was Max standing on top of Third. He was holding onto the rocking recliner so it probably wasn't his full body weight on my poor little baby's chest and tummy, but he was literally standing on his baby brother.

I snapped.

"HEY, GET OFF THE BABY!!!!" I bellowed without even taking the phone away from my face to dull the roar.

Max hopped off and continued to gallop around the house after JayJay. Third seemed unperturbed and wasn't even crying. The pandemonium continued with barely a pause. I remembered I was in the middle of a phone call. Oops!

"Sorry," I said to the caller, wincing. I had probably just ruptured her eardrum.

She was laughing. She laughed and laughed.

It turns out she had six kids of her own and her youngest was a senior in high school. So she knew. She knew.

Nail Clippers Guessing Game

I always marvel at how different my oldest two boys are. For example, we took JayJay and Max to see the movie Brave while it was in theater. When the part with the scary bear came on, JayJay cuddled up against my man and whimpered with fear. He was four at the time. On the other hand, two-year-old Max jumped out of his seat and shouted, "Bear! Yeah! ROAR! ROOOAAARRRR!!!!!"

Well, their differences were recently demonstrated for me again.

JayJay had something in his hand. He hid his hands behind his back and asked me to guess which hand he was holding the object in. Luckily, I guessed right the first time. So he hid his hands again and instructed me to guess again. I guessed the other hand and was correct. We went through this process over and over. Each time I guessed right since JayJay kept switching hands back and forth. Not once did he keep the object in the same hand twice. He finally gave up.

"Wow, Mom!" he said. "You're really good!"

He was very impressed with my guessing skills and I was feeling pretty smug about myself. I love having my boys think I am Superwoman.

A few days later I sent Max upstairs to fetch some nail clippers so I could trim his toenails. After a while he returned.

"I have the nail clippers, Mom," he said. He hid his hands behind his back and said, "Guess which hand."

I guessed a hand. Wrong. He hid his hand again. I guessed the other hand. Wrong. He hid his hand. I guessed the same hand twice. Wrong. Over and over again I guessed wrong, no matter what tricks I tried to catch him with the clippers in the hand I guessed.

Finally, when I guessed wrong again, he kept his empty hand held out in front of him. "Guess the other one," he said.

So I guessed the one hand still hiding behind his back. He brought it out and opened it to show me his palm. "Nope! See? Nuffing!"

Yep, he didn't even have the nail clippers. He had me guessing just so he could give me the run-around. That's pretty sophisticated humor for a three-year-old. I certainly don't feel quite so smug anymore.

JayJay's First Ear-Worm

"Be quiet!" five-year-old JayJay said as he came down the stairs. "I'm listening to my brain sing."

I laughed and asked him, "Your brain is singing?"

"Yep," he answered. He wandered around for a minute and then sat down on the couch by me. After a moment, he suddenly blurted, "Don't get too close!"

Amused, I asked, "Was that a part of your brain song?"

"Yes," he said.

"Sing it again," I said.

"Just a minute," he replied. "I have to wait until it gets to it again." Then after a while he repeated, "Don't get too close! Don't get too close!"

I smiled to myself while I browsed Facebook. Suddenly, something bumped into the side of my head. It was JayJay. With his forehead pressed against my ear, he said, "Here. You can listen to my brain. Do you hear it?"

"Yes," I pretended, trying not to burst out laughing.

"It's a good song, huh?" he said. "Do you like it?"

"Yes," I said. "It's an awesome song!"

"Dad," he said. JayJay got up from the couch and went to my man who was sitting in the rocking recliner. He pressed his head against my man's ear. "Do you like my brain song?"

"Yeah," said my man.

"It's a rock song," said JayJay. Then he sang, "Don't get too close! Don't get too close!" over and over again.

Twenty minutes later he approached me again. "Mom, I want you to listen to the music with me." He pressed his head against mine, ear to ear this time. "Listen until it gets to another one," he instructed. He waited and waited with his head against mine for five minutes.

"What song is this called?" he asked me.

"I don't know."

"Dad, what song is this?"

My man didn't know either. Finally JayJay said, "We're going to stop now because the song is ending."

But we were really curious. What song was he hearing in his brain? My man looked for songs titled "Don't Get Too Close" on iTunes. He played two of them for JayJay. No luck. Neither song was the one he was hearing. So I searched Google for lyrics that contained the line. The first one to come up was "Demons" by Imagine Dragons. We just happened to go to an Imagine Dragons concert recently and their music is all over the radio. So we played the song.

"This is it! This is the song!" said JayJay. "Mom, do you know what my favorite part is in that rockstar song?"

"What part?" I asked.

"Don't get too close!" he sang.

"I can tell," I answered.

"That's my favorite part," he said, "but I like all of the parts."

He's got one serious ear-worm! I'm glad the mystery is solved and what a great song to be playing in his head over and over.