Brain Dump

I honestly don’t know what to blog about without it all turning into some sort of rant or complaint.  I guess that’s partly due to this headache I can’t seem to shake.  It’s been a couple of days now.  I think it’s caffeine withdrawal.  I had lots of pop this weekend and went cold-turkey and the headache showed up.

At any rate.

I caught up on a couple of podcasts I’d gotten behind in listening to and remember Dawn talking about the jumping on the bed.  That part of the conversation made me smile.  I know exactly why I don’t let the kids jump on the bed.  It’s hard on the waterproof mattress pads.  I don’t want those expensive things to tear.  And, darnit, they have a trampoline out back for goodness sake.

I’ve got to tackle some email responses and start scheduling for mini sessions but I cannot seem to *think* with the constant noise that three boys under the age of 4.5 make.  It never ceases!

Oh!  James was approved to attend the elementary school David wanted him to go to.  I don’t know how that will change our lives yet as I don’t know if a sped bus will travel from that particular elem to CPMS in the afternoon or not.  If a sped bus did make that trip, we would be able to have James ride the sped bus directly to David’s school in the afternoon without having to get on a big bus and ride the entire route.  If there isn’t a sped bus going straight to CPMS, I’ll probably play the wait-in-line game every afternoon smack in the middle of the little guys’ naptimes.  2:30.  The little guys usually nap from 1:30-4.  I’m wondering if I can push their naps up enough for them to get the rest they need and yet still not have trouble going down for their naps.  If I pushed their naps back any, they’d fight bedtime.  Maybe the solution is to drop naps altogether (that will be very rough on Korben for sure) and push bedtime up by two hours.  Wow, that would mean David not seeing his guys all week long.  Any which way it ends up going, it will work out in the end, I’m sure.

Is it crazy that I don’t even know where this elem school is?

Registration is May 5, so they still have time to un-approve James.

I just bought a flash portfolio site so I’m waiting on the email from them… they need to ask me to provide the .otf file for the custom font I paid for (according to their FAQ).  I’d go ahead and pre-emptively email it to them but I don’t want to mess up their system, assuming that they have an organizational structure already established to the order in which they get this sort of thing done.  They did send an auto email saying that the lady who usually does this stuff is in the hospital with preterm labor (you know, that sort of thing does happen) and they were training a new lady to take over for her in the meantime, so the process might be delayed but I’m still waiting for that email from them first.  I have the file open and highlighted in a finder window already.

The three boys are all on Lowell’s bed with books and there is no fighting.  Yet.  Give it a minute or two.

Our bluetooth dongle is dead.  It’s a quick fix but inconvenient still.  I have the full-sized USB keyboard plugged in and it feels like typing on something from the 1980′s.  Huge.  Clumsy.  Like when you walk in tennis shoes with about 4 inches of mud stuck on the soles.  Loud.  I miss our wireless bluetooth keyboard.

I’m loving the iPhone though the novelty of it is wearing off.  It’s a lot easier to browse the web on the big computer.  It’s way easier to type on the big computer, even with the amazingly huge and hard to manage keyboard.  I don’t know  how much the data plan is really worth it.  I used it for a good 24 hours before getting the 3G —and there is the fighting on the bed, yep two minutes, I was right— activated and it does fantastically well solely on wifi.  I don’t text.  Never have, really, and I don’t see the point in starting.  That’s what we use IMing for, I thought.

The phone is amazing at little things, for sure.  There’s an app for everything.  The most useful one I’ve found is a household cleaning checklist one.  The games for kids haven’t really impressed me yet.  It seems that, overall, programmers assume that a 4 year old is a lot more simple-minded than they really are.  I do like a sightwords flashcard one that I downloaded for James… but I’m looking for a maze one where you trace your way through the maze.  It seems like the maze ones just don’t work  or use the marble-tilt model.  Hm… I’ll keep looking for that for James.  Where’s Waldo is pretty cool but we can’t do it for very long at a time because it’s a little “advanced” for James.  I also like that Meebo keeps me signed in to chat all day and I can check it and catch up on all the IMs I’ve gotten throughout the day and reply.  David doesn’t call me at all.  He does IM though, so that’s how we stay in touch throughout the day, as long as he gets some free moments on his computer now and then.

The other thing I have to do is some address  book maintenance.  The address book on the mac is not very well designed for use on an iPhone and I sync’d ‘em so now the phone has a TON of contacts missing phone numbers that are only in the address book to begin with because they are somehow or another related to David and get Christmas cards in the years that we actually mail them out.  Don’t know if anyone has noticed but we tend to be an every-other-year kind of Christmas card family.

I just got asked by my 4.5 year old if I like playing Mario Kart.  I know what he was really asking, though.  Someday he will learn that Mommy does not like playing *any* video games simply for the sake of preventing *him* from playing games.  There are a few that I do, really, enjoy.  But I’ll never let him know that.  Not until he’s out from under our roof (and payroll).  Our policy on games is that the consoles only get turned on on Fridays and weekends only when David is home.  I did not bring those into this family so I do not like supervising the gaming.  Now, if the boys asked to learn knitting and wanted to knit all day, I would completely absolutely allow that.  Games, though?  Drive me nuts.

Lowell is mostly 99% potty trained (still having a random accident upon waking up every now and then) but still can’t quite climb on or off to do the deed.  James is learning how to wipe.  And Korben is the poopMaster.  Korben eats anything and everything.  Of course, the more he eats, the more he poops.  Lowell’s feet are gigantic.  Out of proportion.  He looks like a clown-kid.

Both James and Lowell are wearing highwaters until the shorts season officially begins.  I don’t want to buy them new jeans/pants right now and have those already be too small by the time next fall comes.  Plus, the pants that are long enough for them now are generally too big around their waists.  We’re waiting it out.  It makes me smile to see them in too-short pants.

Okay, I’m done rambling.  I have to go fix lunch and become Mommy Waitress.  I will likely not get a bite in edgewise.  If I starve to death it will probably be while trying to feed these boys of mine.