24x24: Monday, Sept. 20, 2010

6:06 a.m. - The alarm clock has gone off, but Nathaniel and Nicholas are in their totally ransacked bed, huddled under their covers. I see one foot.

6:13 a.m. - I'm checking the weather and thinking that 98 degrees is too hot for late September and that I'm going to die at the ballpark tonight. AND DO YOU SEE THE "FALL" GRAPHIC MOCKING ME ON WEDNESDAY AT 93 DEGREES?

6:47 a.m. - Nathaniel has managed to rouse himself and get dressed, but Nicholas is still in denial that it is, in fact, morning.

7:01 a.m. - I'm dressed and go in to get Jakey, who is THRILLED to see me and tells me "Good morning!" for the first time. I melt into a puddle on his floor.

7:28 a.m. - Nathaniel, Nicholas and I are in the carpool line at school, Nathaniel blaming Nicholas for sleeping in and making them too late to eat breakfast there. Thank God for Pop-Tarts.

7:57 a.m. - I turn the corner into my cube, where I will spend the majority of the next nine hours.

12:11 p.m. - I run out at lunch and pick up Gatorade to take to baseball practice later.

12:23 p.m. - I stop at The Birmingham News offices (three blocks from my office) to pick up five copies of the Sunday paper, in which there's a picture of Nathaniel and Nicholas.

12:25 p.m. - I flip to the Local section to read the story on the grand opening of Railroad Park. (More on that later this week.) I see the picture of Nathaniel and Nicholas right there!

4:44 p.m. - I head to school to pick Nathaniel and Nicholas up for baseball practice. I'm surprised by the light traffic. UNUSUAL.

5:32 p.m. - Practice gets under way.

5:56 p.m. - Nicholas takes some batting practice.

5:56:05 p.m. - He connects!

6:33 p.m. - Dusk falls and the lights buzz and begin to flicker on.

6:43 p.m. - Nicholas practices fielding the ball. He winds up to throw to first.

6:43:03 p.m. - He releases the ball ...

6:43:04 p.m. - He watches it soar through the air to first. He dreams of the Major Leagues.

6:55 p.m. - Darkness has almost completely fallen over the field.

6:56 p.m. - I rip open the Gatorade and snacks for the ravenous 6-year-olds who are about to descend upon them.

7:41 p.m. - After receiving welcome-home hugs from Jakey, we settle in to eat a late supper.

8:14 p.m. - While I help the big boys with their homework, Jakey indulges in his favorite obsession: SuperWhy.

8:17 p.m. - Jakey rewinds and fast-forwards TiVo like an old pro.

9:11 p.m. - After baths, Nathaniel and Nicholas settle into bed. Nicholas falls asleep almost immediately, while Nathaniel reads under the covers.

11:54 p.m. - After my shower and myriad other daily tasks, my laptop awaits me on the couch, my little spot to tell you the story.

24x24 is a series posted at totally irregular and unpredictable intervals. I invite you to participate anytime you'd like! Simply post 24 pictures from a 24-hour time period. You can just post the pictures alone, caption them, put a time stamp on each one ... whatever you'd like. If you'd like to write a 24x24 post of your own, grab the button at the top right of my blog and come back and let me know when you've published your post. I'd love to visit!

TableTopics FTW!

We've been having so much fun with our TableTopics lately ... every night the boys can't wait to gather at the table to get started.

The questions range from the very easy (What's your favorite color?) to very difficult (If you could erase one thing you did in the past, what would it be?) SERIOUSLY? My word. It would take me an entire weekend to cull through my life and pull out one thing. And it's kind of like the whole "flutter of a butterfly's wings" thing. because erasing one action or event could have changed the course of your life. I had to tell Grayson right off the bat that he couldn't say he would have married someone else, because then he wouldn't have the boys. GOTCHA, HONEY. TRY AGAIN.

Nathaniel's answer to that one was, "I would erase walking into the girls' bathroom by accident at the McWane Center." Yeah, when I was 7, I would probably have erased that one, too. (I would very much like to erase the time in 2008 when I walked into the men's room at Jim 'n' Nick's BBQ.)

So anyway, every night we all gather at the kitchen table.

Last night Nathaniel yelled to Nicholas in the den, "Nick, HURRY or you'll miss TableTopics!"

Right now Nathaniel is the designated card-puller and reader, but Jake likes to pull them and "read" them, too.

I thought I'd share a few of the most recent ones from the weekend with you. (We pull two each night.)

Nick: "I'd choose a toy, a skateboard. I really, really want one."

Me: "You'd choose a skateboard over a trip with us?"

Nick: "YES."

Nathaniel: "I want a skateboard, too."

Me: [OFFENDED.]

To the first question ...

Nick: "I scream and throw things because it makes me feel better. IT REALLY DOES."

Nathaniel: "I think about you and Jake and Daddy."

To the second question ...

Nick: "10 siblings."

Nathaniel: "10 siblings. That one was SO easy."

To the first question ...

I can't remember how they answered, but I do remember that they both ranked Freedom first. I thought that was interesting. I was completely unable to rank them in any order at all. I have a TERRIBLE time with those Sophie's Choice type of questions. Ranking is not my forte.

To the second question ...

Nick: "Yes, I would travel to the moon."

Jake: "Yes, I would travel to the moon. I like the moon."

Nathaniel: "Nu-uh."

Me: "No."

Grayson: "Yes."

I think those answers are very true to all of our personalities.

Nathaniel: "Your ability to stay up late. WE WANT TO STAY UP LATE."

Nicholas: "YEAH, WE WANT TO STAY UP LATE."

Jake: "STAY UP LATE."

So, you know, apparently the fact that we have a later bedtime than they do is really all that's keeping us afloat in their eyes. I think we need to up our game a little to give them something more to aspire to.

Sunday morning

Jakey and I just welcomed all the other boys home from their Cub Scout campout. They are stinky, covered in dirt, exhausted, and can't stop talking about what a great time they had.

Nick has a huge blister on his left hand from flashlight tag at 10 p.m., as well as a big gash on his left leg from a run-in with a prickly vine during the same game. Nathaniel has some less-visible injuries but would like for me to recognize them as just as serious as Nick's.

Time to start cleaning up and bandaging the wounded so we can get ready for a full day of baseball. I'm hoping for a beautiful day with no whining and no more injuries ... but I suppose I'll settle for "no bloodshed." See you tomorrow!

What a week!

I have to say, this was a whopper of a week. I'm so glad it's the weekend and we're able to enjoy our time as a family.

Last night we did something we've never done before, and it was a BLAST! One of Nathaniel's classmates, Mary, invited the whole class and their families to their house to watch Night at the Museum ... outside on a big screen set up in the front yard! And while it was 95 degrees earlier yesterday, it had cooled down to the high 70s by dusk, so it was actually pretty comfortable.

We popped popcorn, drank lemonade and enjoyed the movie from the comfort of our picnic blanket. It was so much fun! The boys are already begging to do it again, so we may have to figure something out.

Today we're meeting my friend Vanessa downtown for lunch and then heading over to the new park near my office, which just opened on Thursday. They've been building it for a couple of years, and it's so pretty! I can't believe it's finally time to enjoy it. Hopefully I'll have some pictures to share soon.

It has some play equipment, as well as a walking trail and a skateboard section. There are two ponds and a small amphitheatre, so all in all, there's a lot to see and do. I don't know if it has any swings, but if it does, we'll be more careful with Jakey than this guy was with the poor child on the left:

And with that, I'll leave you to enjoy your day.

I stood there with my mouth agape

When I was in high school, I heard the song More than Words on the radio one afternoon.

I heard it, and I loved it. It was a beautiful acoustic ballad that sounded like it was sung by two guys, but they didn't sound familiar to me. I basically became obsessed with it and listened to the radio nonstop, always hoping that it would come on sooner or later -- much the way I'd been with Richard Marx's Right Here Waiting two years before. (I'd lay awake on a school night listening to my brown clock radio until 3 a.m., waiting for that song to come on. It usually paid off. I was weird.)

Anyway, this was back in the day before Wikipedia and Google ... before the Internet as a whole, actually. 1990, otherwise known as The Dark Ages. And it seemed like the DJ never gave the pertinent information like the artist's name or the name of the song when I was listening, and I didn't know how else to find out.

Enter my boyfriend at the time, Jason, who would have done anything for me. (He once filled my room with 144 red roses for Valentine's Day and 144 Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs for Easter. He was over. the. top.) I dropped by his house one day after school and he pulled a cassette tape out from behind his back. With the sun glinting off of the cellophane wrapper, I couldn't see what it was, but I eagerly grabbed it out of his hands.

And I saw THIS:

I stood there with my mouth hanging open. PORNOGRAFFITTI? (And misspelled, no less -- at least the "graffiti" part of the word. I don't remember that part, but on the ole Internet these days, it's misspelled on all of these album covers.) I was afraid to unwrap it because I had no earthly idea why he'd given it to me and I thought my parents would confiscate it if I took it home with me.

A gift from my boyfriend titled Pornograffitti? Yeah, THAT wasn't gonna fly at home.

He burst out laughing at the expression on my face.

Jason: "I know what you're thinking. This tape has that new song on it that you love."

Me: "WHICH song I love? I can't think of a song I love that would be on an album like this."

Jason: "Yeah, you know the one, More than Words or whatever. Something like that. I went to the record store and I kind of hummed it for the guy and told him some of the words, and he said this was it. And I TOLD HIM, 'Oh no. Nope. There's NO WAY my girlfriend would like a song from these people. You'd have to meet her, but, no.' But the guy swore to me that this was it. So I bought it for you!"

Me: "It can't be. I can't open this. My parents will kill me if I take this home."

Jason: "Let's open it and play it in my car and see."

See, not only was this way before iTunes, but it was also even before the music stores would let you open a tape or CD and listen to it on earphones so that you could decide whether or not you wanted to buy it before you left the store. THAT didn't happen until I got to college.

So we opened it and listened to it, and SURE ENOUGH, that acoustic, innocuous song was indeed on that album.

And that's how an "A" student who was at church every time the doors were open came to own a tape that included the words "porno" and "graffit(t)i" in the title.

A Freezer Fable

Once upon a time (night before last) in a land far, far away (our basement), there was a deep freezer.

And the wall outlet nearby should have looked like this:

 But instead, it looked like this:

And the Mommy and the Daddy were concerned. So they opened up the freezer and what did they find? Lots and lots and lots of spoiled food!

There were tater tots and pizza rolls and mini corndogs. Chicken parmesan and fish sticks and pizzas and taco soup.

Jenny Craig entrees and tiny lemon cakes and dainty little brownies.

Pork tenderloins and ground round and even a few steaks!

The Mommy and the Daddy unloaded and unloaded and unloaded, and finally, all in all, a big box and two garbage bags full of food were removed from the freezer. 

And all the while, the Mommy was wondering when she would start to gag, because the smell was really, really bad.

For as it turns out, a defrosting freezer is an absolutely disgusting! thing! mainly because of all the nasty stuff! that comes out of previously frozen food!

AND THEN THE INTERNET THREW UP.

So the Mommy hurriedly got started on the cleanup effort.

And after lots of blotting and wiping and scrubbing from corner to corner to corner to corner -- and almost falling in while reaching for the deepest depths -- the freezer was finally blissfully spotless.

And all was right with the world once again. Minus the $300 or so in lost food.

The Mommy asked the oldest son, "Did you have anything to do with this?" And he said, "No."

So the Mommy asked the middle son, "Did YOU have anything to do with this?" And he said, "No."

And so the Mommy asked the youngest son, "Did YOU have anything to do with this?" And he said, "No."

And the Mommy couldn't prove that anyone had done anything wrong, so she went and washed her hands very thoroughly and then sat down with the middle son to do an hour of homework.

THE END.

Sunday afternoon at our home away from home

Sunday was chock-full of places to be. Nathaniel and Nicholas each had baseball clinics, and Nathaniel and Grayson had a Cub Scout community event, too. We needed to divide and conquer to get everyone where they needed to be, so Grayson took Nathaniel to his clinic and then onto the Scout event, and Jakey and I escorted Nicholas to his clinic.

Once out on the field, Nick looked, um, JUST LIKE a ballplayer.

When he wasn't busy adjusting himself, he busied himself NOT looking just like a ballplayer. He sort of looked like a 5-year-old who was fascinated with dirt. SO MUCH DIRT.

Eventually he was able to bring himself back to the task at hand.

And luckily for all of us, it was a gorgeous day for ball.

The clinic had the boys rotating through seven stations for 12 minutes each. While Nick was busy rotating, Jakey and I rotated ourselves right over to the playground.

Jakey's a big fan of the playground at the ballpark.

It's intended for kids slightly older than Jake, but that's never stopped him.

After all, he's 2 going on 12.

Every once in a while we'd go track Nick down on whatever field he was on, and it always looked like he was having the time of his life.

So once we'd reassured ourselves that he was doing OK without us, we'd head back to the playground.

It was a beautiful -- albeit HOT -- day, so after about an hour we took a snack and drink break.

Smarties ... the snack of champions.

Nick's final station was a batting station, so we loaded up our things and went to watch him there. He connected with the ball repeatedly.

He thought it was really weird that they played with a "baby ball," as he called it, since they use real aluminum bats and regulation baseballs, typically. But that didn't stop him from running the bases like it counted.

As he ran for home plate, he was in it 100 percent.

Perhaps even 110 percent. He slid like a pro.

They're really not supposed to slide yet, since they haven't practiced the safe way to do it.

But, um, HAVE YOU MET NICHOLAS? First of all, he doesn't think the rules apply to him.

And second, it's soooooooo tempting when you just put home plate in front of him like that. Taunting, is what it is.

So after he impressed the heck out of everyone there, he got up, dusted himself off and danced a little home plate jig.

And I was all, DANG. Now I'm gonna have to wash those pants.