Slow Down, Gym Shoe!

How To Have A Merry Christmas

Hi everyone! I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! I can't believe thanksgiving happened already... Didn't this year fly by? A busy couple of months is ahead of us. Not only do we have Christmas and New Years, but Monkeyboy's birthday is also in a couple weeks!

Speaking of Monkeyboy... last night he went out with some friends who live in the neighborhood. He came home, and walked into the house with his hood up and his head down, his hair falling in his face. Diana and I were watching TV in the living room. Monkeyboy stood in front of us and said, "Mom, how would you feel if I told you I got a piercing?"

We thought he was joking... until he took his hood down, and flipped the hair out of his face, so we could see his bloody lip!

I kid you not! His friends pierced his lip for him!

I didn't think to take a picture of it, in all the commotion afterwards. But I will put a pic of him here if he'll let me! I don't think it looks all that bad. Diana has already told him he will not be allowed to have a ring in it, just a little stud. So it won't be too noticeable, I guess.

Anyway. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. Christmas. Because of the crappy economy, nobody in my house is actually working regular hours right now, and we are pretty short on money! Its going to be a very simplified Christmas! Diana is a little worried about this, because she's always gone all out for Christmas, making sure each kid had a giant pile of gifts under the tree. I guess the precedent was set by Monkeyboy, who was an only child for the first six years of his life. It was easy enough for Diana to spend her Christmas bonus making sure he got everything he wanted from Santa! By the time Little Bear was born, Monkeyboy was already used to Christmas being this way, and when Little Bear got old enough to know the difference, it was only fair to make sure she had a comparable pile of gifts under the tree. Then Pufferfish was born, and... well, its getting more and more difficult to pile up those gifts, especially while everyone is broke!

So this Christmas we're gonna dial it down a bit. Because Christmas shouldn't just be about gifts, right? But. Since there will be less gifts, we should replace it with something else, don't you think? So my question to you is, can you think of some ways to make Christmas more special for a family with three wild and crazy kids, without spending a lot of money?
Little Bear and I have already chosen a child in foster care, through our church's "angel-tree" type thingy, to buy some gifts for, so Little Bear will at least experience picking out gifts to make an anonymous child happy. So there's that. But what else? Can you think of anything? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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Diana: "Ugh, I'm not looking forward to this Christmas!"

Me: "It will be our best Christmas ever! We'll all learn a valuable lesson! It will be a very special year for us!"

Diana: "This isn't a Disney movie, Nicki!"

Stop, Thief!

Several months ago, when Little Bear and Pufferfish and I went to the library, Little Bear picked out this one book called Who Are You, Baby Kangaroo. Its a board book, sort of too easy for Little Bear, but she really wanted it, so we checked it out. I figured, if nothing else, Little Bear could practice reading it to Pufferfish!
But the book turned out to be Little Bear's favorite! She usually doesn't really get into books that much. She'll ask you to read them, and then she's done. With this one, she wanted to read it over and over again, and very quickly she memorized the entire thing so she could "read" it along with us. The story is about a puppy who goes from animal to animal asking what the name of a baby kangaroo is, and the text is very repetitive. Only the name of the animal changes from page to page. (Think, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?)
We read this story over and over again. i usually keep the library books in a story bag, but I kept finding this one stashed in Little Bear's room! Finally, when it was almost time to return the books, I told Little Bear that we'd have to return it and that maybe we'd check it out again. She put it back in the story bag, and eventually I returned all of the books in it!
Lately during times when Little Bear is out playing and I just have Pufferfish to watch, or when Little Bear is at her dad's, I've been trying to read some stories to Pufferfish too. She enjoys pointing at the pictures and turning the pages. So just yesterday, I went into Little Bear's room to look on her book shelf for some board books that would be good to read to Pufferfish. And guess what I found? Who Are You, Baby Kangaroo?
I brought it out and told Little Bear I was going to read it to Pufferfish, and Little Bear came and sat by me and cuddled up to read it with us. To my surprise, she still remembered all of the words!
I told her I really have to return it to the library, or they're gonna charge me $20.00 (for a book thats only worth $6.99!) but I think I'm going to order another copy on Amazon.com and have it sent to her in the mail. That will be a fun surprise, won't it?
In other news...
We live really close to the public pool. This year Monkeyboy and most of his friends are old enough to go to the pool by themselves! So yesterday I brought Little Bear and Pufferfish up to the pool for a while, and later on Monkeyboy and his friends rode their bikes over.
I stayed several hours with the girls, and brought them home at about five. Soon as I got home, I got  a phone call from Monkeyboy. Of all things, he wanted me to go up to the store, buy him some goggles, and drop them off at the pool for him!
I told him, no, I had just gotten the girls home and settled down, and I wasn't about to drag them out in the 90 degree air again to go search for goggles!
Monkeyboy hung up, mad at me. (Ugh... 11-year-olds!)
Five minutes later, Monkeyboy calls me up again. I thought he was going to keep on begging me about the stupid goggles. But this time he was calling me, asking me to pick him up at the pool, because his bike had been stolen!
So, I load up the girls back into the car after all, go scoop up Monkeyboy, and take the whole crew over to the police station to fill out a police report. (Unfortunately there's really not a lot they can do about a stolen bike, especially since we don't know the serial number or anything!) In our ghetto neighborhood, bikes constantly get stolen!
Later on I found out several things.
1.) Monkeyboy did own a bike lock, but he didn't know where it was, and just hadn't really bothered to look for it.
2.) Jimmy had warned Monkeyboy, just that morning, not to ride his bike to the pool because, without a lock, it would probably get stolen!

As a consequence, Monkeyboy has to use his own saved-up money to buy a new bike, because Diana wants him to have a bike for the summer so he's getting some exercise and not just staying at home playing video games and using his lack of a bike for an excuse. I guess the whole thing ends up being some sort of valuable lesson for Monkeyboy. It still sucks though. Who would steal a bike? I mean, I know it happens all the time. But can you imagine seeing a bike and just thinking in your head, "Hmm, I guess I'll take this bike?" And just riding off on it? And if its a kid who takes it, can you imagine being a parent and seeing your kid come home on a mysterious new bike and just saying, "Hey, cool new bike!" I mean, WTF?

Well, over and out for now!

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War Games

This morning during the rush of getting the kids dressed, ready, and off to wherever they had to be, Monkeyboy and I found ourselves home alone for an extra half hour or so after Diana and the little girls had left. Monkeyboy begged me to watch him play a video game. He's always done this... he loves to play video games, but he hates to play alone! On the other hand, he knows that I (and some other members of the family) suck at video games. So his solution is for us to be entertained by watching him play!
So I went into Monkeyboy's bedroom and watched him play this game called Call Of Duty. And it freaked me out!
Basically its a game where you're in a war. But the freaky thing is that the graphics are so realistic, its like you're watching a movie or something, instead of playing a game! Its almost like virtual reality. Check out this screenshot... Remember to click on it to see it in full-size!

During the part I watched, my nephew was a sniper hiding out in some sort of hotel. He had to get a good shot at some dude in a black leather jacket, who was talking to some guys in camouflage and everything. Apparently the black leather jacket dude was selling some sort of goods to the camo dudes, and he wasn't supposed to. I didn't really understand the reason why we were supposed to kill him, and I doubt Monkeyboy did either! The whole time, an unseen companion with a Scottish accent whispered instructions to my nephew, about paying attention to the wind levels and some other factors. "Remember what I've taught you, lad!" he'd say, and if my nephew missed the shot, the guy would snap, "Are you daft?"
Monkeyboy missed his shot several times, before he finally managed to blow off the black leather jacket dude's arm. His Scottish companion whispered, "You took off his arm! Blood loss and shock will do the rest. Now lets get out of here!"
Monkeyboy and his invisible friend then had to jump out of the hotel window and scale down the wall before the hotel was blown up. He had to run to some sort of place where he would be picked up in a helicopter and whisked away. However, he didn't make it! "Aw, I just died," he said, as he shut off the game.
As I drove Monkeyboy to school, he told me more about the game. He described a part of it where ordinary citizens were kidnapped and tortured by the bad guys, and he had to try to kill the bad guys. In one scene, citizens were hung. In another, according to Monkeyboy, they were eaten alive by dogs. Even children were killed in these scenes, Monkeyboy said. "But you gotta admit, its cool to watch, right?" he prodded me.
Yeah, I do have to admit, it was kind of cool to watch... the way watching a war movie is interesting. Just seeing how realistic the graphics on the game are was interesting!
On the other hand, in the past I've heard some claims that games like these are actually funded by the government, as a way of making war seem exciting to kids, and teaching them some early combat skills, so that by the time they're old enough to join the army, they'll make perfect recruits! I used to scoff at these ideas. But after seeing this game, I have to wonder. I mean, I know Monkeyboy understands that its just a game. But somewhere in the world, its not a game anymore. Somewhere in the world, a young boy  who grew up playing war games on his Nintendo is now standing in a strange country with a machine gun in his hand.
Scary, huh?

*****

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