Wednesday morning - just the girls

Caleb's at school today, Steve's at work, so once again it's just the girls at home. Even the cat.

Speaking of cats, Julie's favorite kitty past time is to grab the cat's tail as the cat passes, then Julie walks behind the cat holding its tail. It looks like a weird leash. The cat doesn't seem to mind. In fact, Julie seems to abuse Grey Cat more than the other 2 kids did and Grey doesn't seem to mind. Go figure. Maybe she's still so happy to see us after our 6 month absence that she doesn't care what Julie does to her.

Caleb gave me a couple of chuckle moments this morning. He came into our room while I was watching the weather and told me that he wanted to watch it too. When I asked perplexedly, "Why?" he told me that Mrs. Bowyer (the aide in his class) watches the weather and that he told her that he was going to work on watching the weather, too. Oooooohh-kaaaay. Whatever, kid.

After this proclamation, I told him to go get dressed. He said that he wanted to get dressed with Steve. He meant that he wanted to stay in our room and not be bothered with getting any clothes. I told him that he at least needed clothes to get dressed with Steve.

So after Steve went to check on Caleb 5 minutes later, he comes strolling back into our room chuckling. I asked him if Caleb was getting dressed and was surprised when he told me that not only was Caleb not dressed, he was playing in his room. This surprised me because normally Steve would be irritated and would at least be getting the paddle from our closet as a motivator for Caleb. So when I asked Steve what was up (meaning why wasn't he mad with Caleb) he told me that Caleb said, "Mom said to at least get my clothes. Here is my shirt and here are my pants," then he went on playing.

So we're to the point now where he takes my words literally and uses them to his advantage. Great.

Steve told Caleb that I meant that in order for him to get dressed in our room, he needed "at least" to have clothes.

Changing topics now, here's a picture of the Audrey-colored ottoman:

This shot looks fine. No green apparent.

Julie is chasing the cat with her toy hammer. Nice.

Up close you can faintly see the marks underneath the seam in the upper 1/3 of the picture. Overall it's not bad. I think I've become a faithful customer of Sofa Mart and their warranty and cleaner.

On another note: we've started a new discipline program with the big kids. They have a certain number of tickets each day. When they misbehave they lose a ticket. If they lose all their tickets, they go to their room for the remainder of the day, only to come out for meals and bathroom trips. If they keep all their tickets, good for them. As it was explained to me, they don't get rewarded for behavior they are supposed to be using just as adults aren't rewarded for acting like we're supposed to. For example, if you don't go to work drunk (or high), you don't get stars by your name on a chart. But if you *do* go to work drunk, there are negative consequences.

We've been doing this program for almost 2 weeks and so far it's working pretty well. We're on the first step (of 5 steps) with 15 tickets. Soon the number of tickets is going to be reduced by 3 to 12 (step 2). The number of tickets is reduced when they can go for a few days in a row without getting all their tickets pulled. The goal is to get down to 3 tickets. And we'll stay on 3 tickets forever. Until they're 100 years old, I imagine. This system is from John Rosemond and a friend told me about it after I had a particularly tough morning with Audrey. Surprisingly enough, Caleb is the one who has lost the most tickets in all. One day he went through 14 tickets in 3 minutes. It was ugly, but he got himself under control for fear of losing all his tickets.

So we're on a good path with the big kids. Julie, on the other hand, is another matter. She's moved from just screeching when she's mad at her sister (or brother or parent) to screaming and shaking with what can only be described as "baby rage." Uh-oh. Not pretty. We're going to have to nip this in the bud.

We've all been trying to get over a tummy bug we picked up over Spring Break. Caleb had it first (Wednesday), then I got it over the weekend, closely followed by Steve and the girls. Caleb had it worst (he usually does if it's a tummy bug), but he's better now and is at school. The girls and I have missed Bible study on Tuesday and will miss again tomorrow because of it. I felt lousy yesterday and Audrey is complaining of an upset tummy today. I think she's still contagious and I don't want to get anyone else sick. Maybe I can catch up on laundry and do some housework.

The house looks awful. We came home from Spring Break and just dumped stuff. There's still things we took with us that I haven't touched since we've been home. How shameful! I should get my large (but somewhat smaller than last year) hind end off this chair and do some work. I have a new wonderful MP3 player loaded up with Harry Potter books that I enjoy listening to while I do housework, so I really don't have any excuses. Just laziness. My greatest foe.

Ok - I'm going now to do something productive.