Back to school!

Josephine, Elizabeth, Katherine, and Victoria the night before school started with their German Schultueten. It's a German tradition to give our school kids these decorated paper cones filled with candy and school supplies.

I feel a little amputated this morning. It is the third day of pre-school for our three older girls, Victoria, Josephine and Katherine. This morning I dropped them off at the bus at 7:45am and was already exhausted. Stuffing "limp noodle" kids into their clothes in the wee hours of the morning is about as easy as nailing jello to a tree. Before school started I had these visions of a clean house, sweaty work outs, made from scratch dinners, me time and more. It hasn't happened yet. Instead I watch the clock for when it's time to go pick them up again, or waste time on the internet. I am still adjusting and trying to fight the urge to just get pregnant with another baby to fill the silence ;-)

Our littlest one, Elizabeth, loves to have me to herself. She doesn't seem to mind one bit that all her sisters are gone half the day. As soon as we get home from dropping off the older ones, she starts singing and dancing and putting on variety shows for me.....She's loving the one on one attention for sure.

While I love the headstart program our girls are attending, and am grateful for some time to catch up on chores, I do miss spending all day with my girls. They are hilariously funny and more spiritually in tune than I am most days.

Of course, they're also just crazy 3 and 4 year olds, whose logic often eludes me......like many of you I have wondered why it seems reasonable to a toddler to, say, flush a toothbrush down the toilet or lick the dust of the TV.

The other day, Torrey and I bought a memory foam mattress. Because it was used, whe took the cover off of it to wash it first, so when we put it on our boxspring to try it out, it was just the plain foam with no cover and no sheets. The girls of course were crawling and climbing and jumping all over the bed as well. Finally we asked them to get off, so we could test the mattress by ourselves. They were all standing around the bed, while we were relaxing for, oh it must have been at least 37 seconds, when I sat up to find Josie and Katie biting big chunks out of the foam.

In 37 seconds they had almost worked their way through the top foam pad, spitting out the chunks before taking another mouthful. I stared at them in disbelief, way beyond words, when Torrey jumped out of bed and dragged them into their room for time out. When I heard him yelling: "We just got this new bed, and you're eating it???!!!! Arrrggghhh!" Aaaahh, words I never thought I'd hear in my life time. Kids will change that.

By now I had lost all control over trying to be the serious, firm mommy and was shaking with hysterical laughter. In an attempt to not confuse our oldest daughter Victoria further, I buried my face in my hands, just as my husband came back into the bedroom. He sat down and patted with on the back to comfort me, when he realized I wasn't crying.

Later when we sat the girls down for the obligatory "We just can't have nice things"-talk, Josie explained to us in best 3 year old logic the reason for the apparent "misunderstanding". She informed us plainly that after their nap they had been hungry for a snack and thought it was safe to take a bite, after hearing us talk about our new "bread". Well, I guess it rhymes with new bed, but come on! We still have yet to decide whether we think they just made up some elaborate excuse to not get into as much trouble. We might never know. What we do know is that this is one of those priceless stories that will keep getting funnier every Thanksgiving :)