Get off my lawn, Wolfdog

We have new neighbors across the street.  I am sure they are nice enough people.  The problem is they let their giant wolf dog out without a leash to poop on our lawn.  One day we pulled up in front of the house to see Wolfdog circling our front flower bed.  Suspecting his intention, I started honking the horn and yelling.  The boys started yelling.  The windows were up so all the yelling probably wasn't very effective.  We then got to watch Wolfdog do his business into my flower bed, right beside the front door. We then watched him run back to his "mom" who was waiting for him at her front door.  We approach our house.  The boys start yelling, "It's huge!  it's steaming!!"  We have a dog that is smaller than some cats so they weren't prepared for the size of the poop, I guess, or the smell. I was not prepared for the assault on my delicate nostrils, either.  I can't imagine what that beast was eating to smell like that! You may remember Boy 1 had a delicate stomach (see "Where's all my stuff" for a refresher).  I struggled to open the front door while he gagged and Boy 2 jumped up and down. I don't think that had anything to do with the poop beside the step.  I dropped the keys and had to bend down, closer to the smell, and almost passed out.  Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration but it was really bad.  By the time we got in the house I was enraged.  Who lets their dog out to poop in the neighbor's flowerbed?  Of course I take immediate action.  I phone PHD.  "The neighbor just let her dog out to take a giant steaming crap in my flower bed!!!"  The boys thought that was hilarious, "Giant steaming crap, giant steaming crap."  Set those words to the tune of the "I know you are but what am I" schoolyard taunt and you get the picture. Sensory overload - my brain can't take smell and noise polution in such a short period of time.  Damn that Wolfdog.

Anyway, PHD went over as soon as he got home and said, "Your dog took a crap in my front yard."  The lady was apologetic, immediately dug up a plastic bag and came right over.  She then blamed her landlord for not putting up a fence for her.  PHD suggested a leash.  Apparently she didn't want to invest in that either.  I have seen the dog running free a few times since then. Today the boys ran in the door gleefully announcing, "There's another steaming crap on the lawn!!"  I asked if they saw Wolfdog do it.  That started a big debate "We didn't see him but I am sure it was his because the poop was huge."  "But it wasn't really steaming anymore, so maybe it wasn't his... "  Like that dog's poop steams forever.  In no time at all we will have the most disgusting sauna in the world, right in our front yard. That's some fine detective work going on at our house! 

So, I am open to ideas.  How do I get Wolfdog to stop pooping on my lawn? I really don't care for saunas...

Yes, that is a TV in my hallway

"Hello, Dr. Zazio." That will be what I say the next time I answer the door, if we don't do some serious cleaning soon. If you don't know who Dr. Zazio is, you need to go watch Hoaders immediately.  This has been in my hallway since Boxing Day when we bought a new TV:

We can't decide what to do with it so it waits patiently for us.  PHD wanted to give it away.  I didn't think anyone would take it.  I wanted to turn it into a night table with a diorama inside. He wanted to know what a diorama was.  That distracted me as we launched into a "All the weird things you don't learn growing up in Nova Scotia" discussion. Once we sorted out what a diorama was, PHD started looking at me like I was cracked, and shaking his head sadly.  The TV waited in the hall.

Lately Boy 2 has been obsessed with trying to scare me.  He is rarely successful, I think because I am always half expecting someone to jump out at me, throw something at me or  yell randomly at any moment.  One night boy 2 woke up while I was in the bathroom.  (Think 2 am, dark hallway)  He quickly recognized the excellent scare opportunity and ducked behind the TV in the hallway.  Luckily for me, I noticed him ducking down just as I came out of the bathroom so that when he jumped out at me I threw out a nonchalant, "Hey" and went to my room.  Must have been very disappointing for him.  He keeps trying though.  Give him determination points, for sure.  One night I returned the favor by ** dropping out of sight under the kitchen table and popping up when he wasn't expecting it.  He was so scared he jumped, knocked a picture off the wall and started crying.  He promptly announced he loved Dad more.  I of course felt bad and spent the rest of the night bribing him to love me again. In my defense, he started this whole "scaring is funny" thing, I am just playing along...

**as I was typing this Boy 2 crept up on me and tapped me on the shoulder.  I heard the dog coming and was ready for him.  For the record, he thinks it would be really funny if I put 'bat" in front of dropping.  I am putting that out there, you can decide if that's funny or not! 

PHD, however, has advanced scaring skills.  For example, last Friday night we went to the mall.  (Error - retreat!!) Anyway, Boy 2 wanted to get the parking ticket so PHD pulled the car up a bit farther and opened the back window.  Boy 2 leaned out the window and grabbed the ticket but instead of getting back into the car and giving the ticket to me, he leaned further out and tried to give it to PHD, outside the car.  PHD meanwhile, thinks the child is in the car and that the gate is going to close on the car if he doesn't advance immediately.  He starts driving, I start screaming, "STOP he's not in!"  He stopped the car probably a foot later, not going far enough to actually endanger the child,  just long enough to skyrocket my blood pressure.  I guess he was a little flustered, too, because after we are all settled in the car, he tried to drive into the parkade via the exit ramp.  I start screaming, again, "STOP, wrong way!".  Do you think he's toying with me?  Maybe Boy 2 is in cahoots with him and is therefore more successful, and far more advanced at scaring me than I think!  Does that sound paranoid??

Oh, Dr. Zazio, can you please come over right away??  I/we have many issues to discuss!!!

2011 Resolutions

Boy 1:  "I will read all these books by the end of the year."

Boy 2:  "I will beat the Harry Potter Game."

Me:  "I will stop using words and phrases that show my age such as 'walkman' and 'nails on a blackboard'".  The kids probably thought I meant mailman, not walkman, but ours is a woman, so that's confusing anyway, and they don't use blackboards in school anymore.  I asked Boy 1 if he ever sees blackboards anymore he said, "Yeah, I saw one once so I thought, 'what is this?' and I dragged my nails down it.  That noise gave me shivers."  That made me laugh for a long time.  I am not sure why.

PHD hasn't publicly stated his resolution so I will assign him one.  Practice wearing new glasses more.  He hasn't quite adjusted to the progressives, yet, so he does things like look around too quickly which causes him to sway weirdly or he misses the bottom step and almost falls down.  (And then looks proud when he saves himself from going down.  You know that look - we all do it! Whoo hoo, I am awesome, I almost fell but I saved it!)  Anyway, his antics are always fun to watch but probably not completely safe.

There you have it.  I will keep you posted on our progress!

Cake Pops

My running friend Michelle offered to take the boys to a movie one afternoon so I could go shopping.  The boys took along the non-toxic stress balls they got in their Christmas stockings. I guess that's in case they needed to work through a troubling issue while they were waiting for the movie to start.  Part way through the movie Michelle hears an "Uh oh" and looks over to Boy 2 who is enveloped in a cloud of flour.  I guess non-toxic means filled with flour.  There is flour on the boys, on the floor, on the seats, in Michelle's purse.  She is a smart lady so she encourages the boys to get ready to bolt before the lights go up.  In the lobby she and Boy 2 are congratulating each other on the quick get-away when Boy 1 says, "Uh, Michelle, you have flour all over your jacket."  Not such a smooth get-away, after all.
 

I  have been obsessed with  Bakerella ever since that day, for some reason.  So, I tried to make her cake pops.  I think that little exercise got me over the obsession.  I will have to keep looking for my special gift - it obviously isn't cake pops.  Cake pops take forever...

A bit lumpy but not bad...

Maybe I can cover the lumps with markers or more sugar...

A little assistance from Boy 1 and the magic Flower Frog

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the largest tongue of them all?

Yummm!

I can't even work edible markers, it seems! The cake pops are very tasty, though!  I put some in the freezer so we wouldn't eat them all at once.

We went skating at the Meewasin Rink to try and burn some off some of the cake pop calories.  Beautiful rink! You can see the river behind PHD who is yelling, "Get back here, Mom wants to take a picture!"

Boy 2 mood, not so beautiful:

Recovering momentarily with the discovery of large chunks of snowy heaven and the removal of the helmets:

And, of course, all is well with Boy 1 as long as he has a book:

Might as well have a quick bike ride when we get home. Yes, a bike ride...

  

Later that night....

Boy 2 found cake pops in the freezer.  The end result was him sick from 12 - 2 am.  Thanks a lot, Bakerella.

Michelle, are you beginning to understand why I am so twitchy???

You probably don't need that anyway

Today, at the ripe old age of 7, Boy 2 lost his first tooth !!  

He showed me the minute he got home and said, "I got to sign the big tooth in our classroom and so did two of my friends!"  I said, "What a coincidence, everybody losing their teeth on the same day!"  He said, "I told them just to wiggle hard and one friend lost one tooth and the other friend lost two!"  He must have painted an excellent picture of the benefits of the tooth fairy.  I hope he learns to use his powers for good...

December

December was so crazy I didn't have time to post much. So, here is my summary of the month of December:

Went to the Festival of Lights at the Forestry Farm, which I always love.  Don't love that my PHD won't stop the car so I can take a nice picture because he doesn't want to hold up the people behind us. See what I mean:

I think he actually sped up for the last one.

We saw Santa!  We even caught him on video this year, at our friends', Maryann and David, acreage.  When I watched the video back, I noticed that while the kids are jumping up and down, screaming, "Santa, Santa!" and I was yelling, "I want diamonds, Santa!", Boy 2 accidentally twisted the handle off one of Maryann's drawers and was surreptitiously trying to screw it back on before anyone noticed. Right in front of Santa.  Poor kid was probably stressed right out!  Boy 1 enjoyed the party by doing this all night:

Rock on!!

We went to the kids' annual school Christmas concert, which I also love. The principal dressed up as Santa  and sang a cute song with the Kindergartners then forgot to take the wireless mike off when he was backstage.  You could hear, "Ho, Ho, Ho!  Awesome!"  while the hand bell choir was trying to impress the crowd.  It made me imagine what would happen if I forgot I had a mike on and wore it all day. It would be like that Jim Carey movie the Truman Show.  But even more embarrassing with bad parenting examples sprinkled throughout.  Not "Awesome!".

I had two weeks off at Christmas to coincide with the boys' school vacation.  They spent the first day saying, "I'm bored" and punching each other until I said, "The next person that says "I'm bored" gets a ten minute timeout."   It actually worked.  They started finding interesting ways to amuse themselves.  For example, they decided their beds were waaaay too uncomfortable and that a sleepover in the furnace room would be great fun.  I thought the cold cement floor might be more uncomfortable than their beds but I guess that's why moms don't know anything. Here's another example of something Boy 2 did to amuse himself:

I am not sure how to describe that.

Meanwhile, I ran around like a crazy person.  My "to-do" list for the month was three pages long.  Here's PHD's list:

He was probably overwhelmed, too.  To be fair, he did complete everything on his list.

We ate out twice in one week, which is unusual for us.  Can you guess where we ate?

I made cute little paper quilled gift tags:

Most of them ended up in the giant pile of ripped up wrapping paper. Don't tell anyone but I pulled them all out again and I will " re-purpose" them next year! 

I also made lots of jewelry for gifts then a bunch for myself because I felt left out.

Boy 2 helped model for me:

Boy 2 also helped me wrap presents.  The haircut seems incongruous with present wrapping but it is cute!

I spent lots of time trying to get the boys the most perfect presents then took them all away when Boy 2 got himself into baaad trouble. I overheard Boy 1 telling him, "You better pull it together, tomorrow is Christmas Eve!"

They did end up receiving presents, these were their favorites:

My family came over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It seems the tradition has become to bring our body weights in food and presents to the festivities. So, now I am on a diet, again.  Starting tomorrow.  Or the next day...

Happy New Year everyone!  May 2011 be filled with great health, wealth and joy!!