Sidewalk Chalk can be Body Art too

... Just got done wiping the Princess down from head to toe.... she colored herself all over with pink sidewalk chalk. She also wallowed all over the couch before I had a chance to wipe her down. She still has a faint pink glow all over her arms, and kept saying "Mommy do it too!"... No thanks, princess, I'll pass... we don;t have enough sidewalk chalk to cover me anyways!

I want to thank....

Whomever gifted this "Bath Foam" to my kids for Christmas. Sundance Kid was in the bathroom, actually using it, instead of playing in the sink, and he started yelling "No, Princess NO!!!" so I went to see what was going on. Princess had come in there and found this lovely foam and coated herself in it, smeared it all over the bathroom, AND poor Sundance. Its looking like she might be as bad as the boys, and that scares me.

Minding my own business

I was just sitting here in my chair by the window when something wet hit my face. BC shot me with a water gun, point blank range, through a window screen. He does not fear me. And I can be very scary. This scares ME.

Good ole Glue

While I was either taking a shower or dealing with LLL, one of the Herd swiped a bottle of glue and spread/slathered it in various places in our Rec Room. Here are a couple of samples of their work. They wouldn't rat on each other initially, but when I started putting the screws to them, they all started blaming each other. I'm betting it was all of them.

The Three Stooges

When the three bigger kids start slapping and pulling hair in the backseat, this is the only way I can make them stop. Sitting on their hands doesn't work because they can still sneak pinches below the line of the seat where I can't see them do it. They look kind of like tiny POWs.

Toothpaste.

On the bathroom wall. Dried. I love finding these random messes that have obviously been there for awhile... Im betting this is the handiwork (bahaha I'm soooo witty) of the Sundance Kid. I'm basing this on the height of the handprints and the fact that he locks himself in the bathroom to play in the sink.

The J Lo Wanna-be

I keep making the Princess zip her PJ's back up... Then a few moments later, she's unzipped it back like this. In an angry growling voice she would yell, "No THIS way!" She also keeps putting her hands on her hips and strutting around with her clothes like that. The Princess may give J. Lo a run for her money in this getup.. Maybe Princess has been watching fashion TV while we're all asleep.

I wish I could get into his Head sometimes

After putting LLL down for the night, I walked into the hall and smelled.... Something. It smelled yummy, but out of place. Husband and I kept trying to figure out what it was, and finally I tracked the smell down to the room where all of the older kids were sitting. Then I tracked the smell down to BC. Apparently, he thought it would be a good idea to coat his body in this :

Thankfully none of them tried to drink any of it... He's in the shower being de-oiled. By the way, the oil burner oils like this were put away in a cabinet. He just randomly went and got it to do this.

Boys Just Want To Have Fun...

.... Especially when they're told to NOT do something. Sent them out back to play, and told them no less than 5 times to leave the hose alone. Think they listened? You be the judge:

This picture is BC spraying the window I was looking out of and telling or um yelling at them to turn it off. He kept saying "huh !? Ma'am I can't hear you?! What?!" I'm soooo being paid back for the backtalking I did as a child. LOOK at their faces.

The Princess Cowboy

Princess just made me gut laugh .... She was galloping around the den, butt naked, screaming " I'm a COWBOY!!!!!!" while running around on this :
For obvious reasons, I can't post a picture of her happily riding around, naked, but just know that it was hilarious!

They Can be Sweet...

... When they want to be!!! Here is Sundance reading to the Princess... It's his favorite book and he has it memorized

Chocolate Pudding, Markers, and two small outlaws

Okay. You have to understand something, first. We have locked the boys in their bedroom every night for a long time, for their own safety and our peace of mind. Before we did this, BC would sneak out every night, and get into things he could get hurt with or hurt someone else with... Out of sheer curiosity and wanting to "experiment" and see how various things, forbidden things, work. Like matches. Yes, matches. So we started locking their door at night, because they were stealthy. And ruthless. And no other incentive or disciplinary action worked. We caught a lot of flack from a lot of people about the door-locking, and after a long time of doing this, the husband decided we should "give them a chance" and see what they do. Plus, he was tired of having to get up at random times to let Butch and Sundance out to go to the bathroom. We were hoping they would seize the opportunity to be "big boys" and show some restraint. We. Were. Wrong.

At approximately 4AM ( we are basing this on the last time I was up feeding LLL, and therefore knew they were still sleeping) the outlaws crept out of their rooms in a ninja-like fashion and swiped 9 pudding cups, a host of markers and some crayons, and returned to their hideout (aka the boys' bedroom) and proceeded to "decorate". They splattered and threw pudding all over their walls in a manner that would have pleased Jackson Pollock immensely. It looked like a gorilla had gotten angry and slung poo all over it's cage. Or two gorillas. They also drew enough marker and crayon pictures all over the room to make it look as if a caveman decided to write a novel. Picture my face walking into this hellhole. I was furious. And tired of cleaning up their massive messes (they have emptied their closet and dresser of its contents SEVERAL times). So I decided that when they got home from preschool, that they would clean it up.

This was one small section of the wall. The entire room looked like this.

I handed them blue plastic gloves, magic erasers and wet rags, and sent them to work. I felt a lot like the prison guard in "Cool Hand Luke" overseeing the proceedings. No one wanted to play "rabbit", however. They thought that cleaning was fun for about the first 10 mins, and the next 2 hours were pure drudgery. There was begging. There was pleading. There was no mercy, until it was all clean. Hopefully, this will at least give them pause next time.

Just another Sunday...

Husband went fishing this morning... Herd has been wild and crazy all morning. There has been fighting over who sings "Soft Kitty", from Big Bang Theory,the best. The icing on the cake, however, has been the Rice Cereal Incident.

Apparently, while I was in LLL's room, attempting to get her to sleep for the 3rd time (the kids kept running and knocking on her door over unimportant things... Like Sundance demanding "may I have some olives?!".. For which they were threatened with a lifetime without toys if they didn't sit on the couch and wait for me to finish, and to not come get me unless someone was bleeding) The Princess swiped an economy size box of rice cereal from the pantry, and dumped it all over the carpeted den floor. I swear I spend half of my day cleaning up messes... Butch Cassidy had to show me how to use one of the vacuum attachments to clean it all up. He's finally earning his keep.

Before I could even say "why didn't one of y'all stop her?!" or "why didn't y'all come get me ?!", BC reminded me, "We'd have stopped her but you told us to not move off the couch! We didn't come get you because no one was bleeding". Then he SMILED at me. Sometimes it's a real pain to look into your child's face, and see you're own smart-ass self staring back at you. I do it daily.

Welcome to the Herd

HERE IS THE UPDATED POST WITH INFO ON MY HERD!2/17/14 Updated Herd Info

Hey everyone! My name is Jessica, and I've been married for almost seven years to an amazing man, the Husband. I'm a Stay-at-Home Mom/Professional Child Wrangler. We have four kids under the age of 6, and because keeping them safe and moving them all from one place to another is a lot like herding cattle, we refer to them collectively as the Herd. Our house is insane. All of the time. Never stops. No break in the craziness. It's just straight up WHACK most of the time. We do our best to keep it all together...  a lot of times all we can do is look at each other and laugh at those people. When we're not screaming.

Allow me to introduce you to the Herd.
Our oldest son, aged 5 years and weighing in at around 50 pounds, I'll refer to as Butch Cassidy, or BC. He is a wide-open, pedal to the metal wild man. He's also wicked good at taking things apart.... and by things, I mean EVERYTHING that he gets his hands on... yes EVERYTHING.... but a lot of times he can actually put them back together. We're hoping he chooses a career in Engineering rather than, let's say a life of crime. More on that later.

Our second son, aged 4, who has the face of an angel, but is usually plotting mischief behind those wide, Precious Moments-esque eyes, will be called the Sundance Kid. Sundance and BC are 14 months apart in age, and are attached at the hip. Sundance usually acts as the lookout for most of their escapades, but here lately he's been taking a more active role in the havoc. He has Radar Ears and hears EVERYTHING. He also has a memory like a steel trap. This is good, for say, memorizing poetry, songs, prayers and such... but not so good when he hears us say something that we don't want repeated. He also argues like a future Clarence Darrow.

Our oldest daughter, age 2 and a half, is the Princess. She is sweet, adorable and loves to play dress up.... but her wrath should never be underestimated. Just ask her brothers. The Princess isn't scared of anything, and is remarkably assertive... she refuses to let her brothers take what's rightfully hers... or rightfully theirs. She's as prissy as she can be, but also plays rough and loves going head-first down slides... which starting at 15 months of age. The older she gets, the scarier her audacity gets.

Our youngest daughter, who is 4 months old, is called the Lucky Lil Lady or LLL. There are a few reasons for this name... to begin with, she was born on 11/11/11. Yep. To a Daddy that LOVES to play craps. Birthdays don't get much luckier than that! She was also born at 11 AM... Crazy, I know. LLL is also lucky in  that she has me for a Mama... because I have been able ( so far, anyways) to handle her craziness and cope with the insanity of a severely colicky/refluxing baby AND the stunts of her older siblings. She's also very lucky to have three older kids in the house that would kill anyone who messes with her.

Well there you have it. More on the Herd and their insane adventures later. Just to warn you.... the next post will involve nine cups of chocolate pudding, markers, a bedroom wall, and indentured servitude to rectify the chaos in which these items played a role.