Posts Tagged With: Parenting

~ Dapper Moose ~

March has hit The Little Cottage, full-tilt!  The children’s art wall now sports homemade St. Patty’s day clovers from years-gone-by.

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Every year, our family has gathered at the kitchen table to make our own artistic renderings of shamrocks.  No, we’re not Irish, but we do like to celebrate like we were!!!

Who wouldn’t?  No one, that’s who!

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This was Varmint’s, from last year……

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…and this was Critters from 2008….he had a hard time writing his name (Garrick), and so this particular shamrock is known as the “Gorrk Shamrock”.

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And this one was Grandma Jane’s from way back in….oh, wait…it was last year.  Let’s be honest…she pencil-whipped it.  Grandma Jane has a problem with whipping up motivation to make shamrocks.  I think that particular shamrock was her way of saying “Here’s my bleepity bleep bleep family shamrock…can we eat now?”  She’s like that….

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And after we do the shamrocks, which everyone except Grandma happily does, we dress up the Moose.   He has a nice top hat and bow tie.  He’s dapper, that guy.

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You’ll note the yummy muffins in the background.  I wish I could  brag that they were homemade, but this particular carbo-loaded pile is fresh from the store.

I’ll be honest, my muffins suck. No Blarney.  For real.  I’ve rarely been able to turn out a perfectly fluffy muffin.  Got a C in Home Economics on my muffins because I was too rough on my batter.  Some things never change.

Don’t tell anyone.  I live in shame, to this day.

Where was I?

Right, the Moose.  My Captain dressed him yesterday.  He did it super fast, too.  Faster than you could look up how to spell Shillelagh….which took me longer than you’d believe because I’m a bonehead, apparently.

He walked out there, all casual-like, threw the costume on lightning-quick, and hightailed it back to the house before more than a couple of cars passed the house.

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Our Dapper Leprechaun Moose.  Do you think My Captain was embarrassed to be seen doing that for me?  That’s love, I tell ya.

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Eleven more days until St. Patty’s day!   Not that we’re counting or anything!

Don’t judge.

 

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~ Critter’s Quest ~

If you have children…  Or if you had children, and they are now grown….  Or if you ever were a child yourself (wait, what?), then this story will take you back, make you smile, and put warm squishy fuzzy feelings in your gut, similar to that of gas from a Taco Bell Volcano Supreme Burrito.

THIS is Critter’s living room fort.  It spans the entire room, and uses all of the chairs, including My Captain’s favorite recliner.  To get into the fort, you have to say the password.

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How do you get the password?  You have to go on a quest for it, of course.

I had just picked up My Captain from the airport shuttle this evening, and he was exhausted from several days of training out in San Diego, and feeling sick in general.  He wanted nothing more than to pop open one of his high-falootin’ fancy schmancy micro-brew beers, kick back in his recliner, and let Sir Monty of Stinky Butt curl up in his lap to bring his blood pressure down.

But he didn’t know the password. So guess who had to start a quest for the password, and was good natured enough about it to be resigned to said quest, instead of stomping his feet and ripping down the fort?  That’s right, My Beloved.

Here was the beginning:

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Aha!  Cookie’s gravestone is in the Hosta Garden out back.

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We’ll start there!

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There, buried deep in the hostas and Lily of the Valley, lies Cookie, our sweet calico who lived to the ripe old age of 18 before she passed on to the great catnip fields in the sky.

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We followed the smashed hosta leaves to Cookie’s grave marker, and found the next clue. Note to self: Remind Critter that henceforth we will NOT be placing clues in any of mommy’s flower beds.

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Hmmm.   My Captain wonders if Critter is crazy enough to mean the country road we live on.

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We shudder to think of him crouching down on this road….long enough to tape a clue to the pavement.

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Who knew scotch tape worked on asphalt?

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The only ‘ride’ we ever had was an old Zip Line we had, that a tree took down during Hurricane Sandy. And the only part of that left is the stand My Captain and Papa built for it.

And it is all the way back UP…

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the stinkin’ hill. 

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(Did I mention My Captain was tired from traveling several thousand miles today?)

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What is high as an elephant’s eye?

Wait a minute, Varmint was in the musical Oklahoma earlier this year.  We found ourselves singing:”The corn is as high as an elephant’s eyyyyyyyyeeeeeee.”

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He couldn’t have put the next clue all the way out in the corn field, could he?

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Through the magical fairy path in the woods (yes, complete with glitter on the trail….)

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and through the prickers, raspberries, and poison ivy….

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Until it opens up to the great corn field.

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and we find the password.

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All of that effort for this ridiculous password.

Was it worth it?

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Eyup.

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You bet your sweet Schnitzel it was.

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~ A Critter Christmas Tree ~

Since our Christmas season this year is going to be rather abbreviated for various reasons, we had to squeeze a pound of Christmas Do-ings into an ounce of time this weekend.  We hunted for and cut down our Christmas Tree, 2014-11-29 14.13.04 pruned it, put it up, realized it was crooked, and put it up again, decorated it, and decided it was facing the wrong way, so we moved the whole ding-dang show until My Captain’s OCD was satiated.

AND, we went to two shows:  “A Tuba Christmas” and “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells.”

Don’t judge me.  I’m trying to entertain people from the ages of pre-teen through Senior Citizen.  It’s tough to make everyone happy.  Fortunately potty humor is our universal love-language, and we do just fine at venues like these. 2014-11-29 13.41.39 Hunting the tree on a crisp, cold, clear day was lovely, as it usually is every year. This year we actually forgot to bicker, and clearly we need to go back and have a do-over.

A Christmas tree hunt without some minor family squabble feels just plain weird. But without much ado, the tree was agreed upon. 2014-11-29 14.13.56 The children each got their try at cutting….2014-11-29 14.13.22…though to be fair, they might have been napping, it was hard to tell. 2014-11-29 14.15.28 And My Captain, as he does every year, had to finish the job. 2014-11-29 14.19.25 I supervise.  At my age and girth, it is my God-given right to just stand there and supervise. 2014-11-29 14.13.28 Critter found a couple of oddities this year at the Tree Farm.  Most notably was a dead possum at the base of one of the trees in the field. 2014-11-29 14.15.10 Because nothing says ‘Live Christmas Tree’ like a halfway rotted corpse of some unfortunate overgrown rodent.

But also, he found the tree tops of two Christmas trees that someone else had clearly trimmed and discarded right there in the field.

MOM!  I’ve got to have these!

Er, okay.  For curiosity’s sake, why?

I need to make a couple of Critter Cristmas trees!  They’d be like Charlie Brown Christmas trees, only REAL!

My Captain’s mind was way ahead of us.  Right after he got our precious family tree up for us to decorate, he took Critter to his work area, 2014-11-29 19.37.59 and proceeded to do manly things like glue with super heavy duty, oh-lord-don’t-get-this-on-your-clothes wood glue.   2014-11-29 19.43.12 and drill with a heavy duty, two speed, supercalifragilistic drill, 2014-11-29 20.03.30 and nail…gently, so you don’t split the wood!  And because Mama is watching, and you KNOW how she gets. 2014-11-29 19.45.12 And the next thing we knew, Critter bellowed, “Eureka!” and it was done.

Okay, there was no “Eureka!”   It was more like a “Behold!”  Or maybe it was a “Woot!Woot!”  I can’t really recall.  But what I DO remember is his face.  It reminded me of the Absentminded Professor right after he invented Flubber. 2014-11-30 11.00.21 But a Critter Christmas Tree is way, way, WAY better than any silly ol’ Flubber.

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~ What Kids Really Need ~

I took Varmint and Critter to see the movie Mr. Peabody and Sherman a couple of days ago, then afterwards stopped at My Captain’s fire station to visit.  We hadn’t been there long before the munchkins, who were fired up after eating precisely 5.356 pounds of gummy bears, each, during the movie, began to be raaawwwwthar annoying.  You know…..

“I’m not touching you!”

“Quit it!”

“I’m not touching you!”

“Quit it!”

“I’m still not touching you!”

“Mom! Tell him to stop!”

“Critter, stop it.”

“Mom! I never touched her!”

That kind of thing.  I was tired by that time of the day, and wasn’t in the mood to deal with it well.  I begged the guys on the shift to help corral the brats.

One of My Captain’s Shift’s Master Firefighters, Craig, has kids of his own, and knew exactly what to do.  He walked into the office, and said, “All right, kids, time to wash the truck.” And then he turned and strode confidently to the engine bay, without looking back, as if there were no question that his order would be followed.

Both kids looked at me, perplexed.

“Well, Go On!” I nodded.

They whined and griped, but reluctantly followed him.

I waited a couple of minutes…just enough to let Craig get them started, then snuck into the bay to catch this on film.

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They spotted me and glared at me.

I snickered.

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“This is so unfair!” one muttered.

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“We’re not even getting paid.” one whined.

Craig chuckled and pointed out spots they missed.

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And he kept them at it until it was done.

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And then, something wonderful happened.  Halfway through, the whining stopped.  You could see my brats start to take pride in how clean the truck was.

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Some of the other guys on the shift stopped and watched.  You could tell the kids knew they were being observed, and made a show of putting extra elbow grease in.

It was attention, for the right reasons:  They were helping.  Being productive.  Being selfless.  They felt like a part of the team, like their efforts mattered.

And they were proud of it.

THAT is what kids need.  They don’t need more toys or channels, or more Ipods and x-boxes.  They need to be put to work, so they can prove to themselves that they matter, and what they do matters.  You can tell them until you are blue in the face that it’s not what they say in life, but what they do that makes them, but until they actually do, DO, it can’t really register.

Master Firefighter Craig has several kids of his own….he knew what he was doing.  This wasn’t his first rodeo!  He turned their negative behavior around…morphed it into positive, self-image-building work, and, quite possibly saved their lives in the process.

Thanks, Craig!

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~ Picnic In A Hurricane ~

It all started with the small idea that we go to Lowes and buy a simple $90.00 picnic table for Pop-Pop’s cottage at the beach.  A table where the kids can eat without getting yelled at for doing so in wet, sandy-butted bathing suits.

My Captain got that familiar look in his beautiful eyes and said in his deep, quiet voice, “We could build one way stronger than anything on the market.”

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The next thing we knew, he and Varmint and Critter were doing math computations, and trying to say “3 and 3/16ths” three times fast.

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There is something you should know about My Captain:  He has more structural engineering background than one OCD man should have… and when he has a structural challenge before him, he takes it seriously.

Perhaps a little too seriously.

This anal-retentive trait served him well when he was the Task Force Leader for Maryland Task Force One during the rescue mission at the Pentagon on 9/11.  This served him well when he was working the rubble pile at the OK City Bombing.  This came in handy when he was at Hurricane Katrina’s Search and Rescue efforts.  But when he takes on a small task like a picnic table….it becomes a little overkill.

He was putting struts and braces on his struts and braces.  He was using a heavier wood than would normally be required…and more of it. He had impact drivers and hammer drills out.  He used pulleys and mechanical advantage systems.  There was rebar littering the deck, and he wasn’t even using concrete.

He was building a picnic table so structurally sound, it could withstand a Class V hurricane….complete with Tsunami….during a tornado.

But we love him and his good intent, and cheered him on the whole time.

After day one, we thought he was finished.  Silly, silly us!

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Apparently, he had just begun.

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On day two, he added cross braces and more diagonal struts.

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On day three he added double reinforced cross supports for the umbrella stake.

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This table, I kid you not, weighs at least 2 tons.

And after day three, he turned to me and said, “Ok, you take it from here.”

I blinked innocently, and he handed me the Dewalt Sander.

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And I’ve been sanding ever since.

You see, all of those cross braces and struts and double reinforced thingy-ma-bobs have hard, splintery edges that are kid unfriendly.  My job is to make it kid friendly.

And in the shower, while I’m picking saw dust out of crevices on my body that would prefer NOT to have saw dust, I can’t help but wish a hurricane would come to test the table.

We’re THAT proud of it.

Obviously we need to get out more……

 

Bethany Beach, DE, USA

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