My Halloween Decision

I think the hardest decision I make all year is deciding what to be for Halloween. It's already April and I am pondering all of the possibilities.
Last year, if you didn't know, we went as Monster's Inc! It was awesome - check out my first blog entry to see photos.

I always toss around several ideas before ultimately asking my oldest daughter what she thinks we should be.
This year she's telling me that she wants to go as "Plants Vs. Zombies" characters.
If you're not familiar with the game, you plant different plants on your lawn as a defense against different kinds of zombies. There's a slew of plants or zombies to choose from. She wants to be a blue frozen pea shooting plant.
It's a thought. I would have to make almost all of the costumes from scratch because I'm pretty sure there aren't blue frozen pea shooter costumes in the stores this season. :)
I have some ideas if we need to be plants vs zombies.
I am leaning towards trying to get the kids on board with being characters from Peter Pan. You know, Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, Wendy, Captain Hook, Mr Shmee, the lost boys. There's so many that we could go with.
We already have a skunk costume if one of the kids wanted to go as a lost boy.
We also have several TinkerBell costumes as well.
And to tell you the truth, I kind of want my husband to be Captain Hook and me be Mr Shmee. :) I think it would be pretty funny.
No, he's not going to be Peter Pan. I can't get him to agree on that one. Sorry. :)
I think I might be able to talk the girls into being Wendy and Tinkerbell, and one of the other girls be Peter Pan. This may be a hard sell, though. They love Tinkerbell pretty equally, and I'm sure a fight would happen if I tried to let one of them be TinkerBell over the other. This is why I think I may have the baby be TinkerBell, and the other two girls be a lost boy and Peter Pan. That way, there's no arguing. :) Ellie should be Peter Pan. She'd be so cute. :)
But then again, there's Tiger Lily. So, if I need another girl character, I could always use her. Maybe I will end up talking Andy into being Peter Pan after all?! :)
See how I go back and forth over these things? There's a terrible war going on in my brain over it all.

I'm sure that there will be many more idea that come to mind before the Halloween Season hits. Sept 1st for us is "Halloween Season, " and when I start putting up all of our Halloween decorations.
Well, the Halloween decorations that aren't out all year long. Because there are still a lot of those.

Only time will tell.

Here's a photo I found online of a family Peter Pan costume idea:

And here's Plants Vs. Zombies. 

A list of only a couple of characters. 

There are way more. 

Too many choices. How will I ever decide just one idea this Halloween?!

Bad Days. We've all Got 'Em.

I was having a bad day today.
I may still be having a bad day later, the day isn't over yet.
It didn't start out too bad. All of my kids woke up happy and smiling!
The sun was shining and the birds were chirping. I was ready for a downright Disney kind of day!
You know a Disney day, where everything is going your way... zippity doo dah!
Well, DDay quickly turned into D-Day : Dooms Day.
The kids started fighting over everything. There was physical violence involved and time-outs started immediately afterwards. I made coffee, got breakfast for the kids and then things went down hill even more....
Cereal was dumped on the floor. Bananas were smashed into hair. The baby pulled things from the table onto the floor and ripped up bits of paper. We call that "Rippy Bits." It's a no-no in our house.
Then, it was time to clean. Instead of cleaning, the kids decided it was time to break toys and scream and fight again. Even the baby. She was shoving the other girls to get to toys. Screaming and shoving always turns into hitting and pushing onto the ground.
More Time-Outs.
In the midst of all of this I still hadn't had my coffee and I was getting a little anxious about it, and my fuse was getting shorter and shorter.
I separated the girls into their own rooms, and while I sat with Georgia in her room to clean it, Ellie went into hers. I would give her 1 thing to do, then she was to complete it and report back to me.
Instead she went into her room and pulled all of her books from the shelf.
I went into the bathroom to clean the toilet and the floor that my 2.5 year old had just peed on because she waited too long to go to the bathroom. When I got back into her bedroom, the baby had pulled every single diaper off of the changing table.
Can you feel the weight of the day pressing down onto my shoulders? Sheesh, I can!
And this is all before lunch!
So, I picked up all of the diapers, instructed the kids to pick up their books and Barbies and Ponies.
I went into the basement to move laundry around. You know, move dry clothes to the hamper, clean and wet  clothes to the dryer, and dirty clothes to the washing machine. I realized that there had been a toy in the washing machine that was no longer going to work again. ( a favored toy, of course. )
There was also a pair of jeans that turned some other items in the dryer a dark blue. They have been washed several times before on their own, but today they decided that they needed to release their dye into my zebra print pajama pants and my brand new pair of underwear from VS.
Wonderful.
Not to mention the dog getting too excited to see me when going into the basement to feed him breakfast, he slammed my leg between himself and the wall. My ankle has a nice scrape and bruise on it.
Back upstairs. Remove baby from Pack and play because she's screaming.
Coffee..... My cup is dirty, I have to wash it.
I break the sponge/soap thingy I use to wash dishes. Oi Vey.
I use a dish cloth, no biggie.
The girls' rooms are destroyed with toys now, even more of a mess than when I left them.
I instruct them what needs to be picked up and put where.
Laundry folding time. One of the drawstrings from a pair of sweatpants has managed to ensnare several other pieces of clothing and ripped a hole in the sweatpants. My dryer eats clothes for every meal.

The thing is, these chain of events just kind of spiraled out of control for me and I felt like a runaway train. I had to sit down and recollect myself.
I felt like all I had accomplished since I woke up that day was just picking up after kids and nagging them to pick up their own toys.
I once devised a chore chart to help myself from being overwhelmed, but that was when the baby was an infant, and immobile. Now she can go from room to room, Godzilla'ing the entire room in a matter of seconds. I'd like to run away like a scared villager... but instead am shaking my head in the wake of the destruction. And at that moment, I feel bad for Godzilla's mom who has to clean up Tokyo after his destruction.
Nowadays all I do is cruise from room to room, picking up all the small messes that the kids have made.
Small messes in every room really add up to one big mess.
The days that the kids refuse to help are bad ones. I try to explain to them the fairness in it all, but they are 4 and 2.5 years old. They don't understand that because they made the mess that they should clean it up. They want me to do it because they've seen my do it since they were babies.
I don't mind picking up after babies. They can't do it themselves. It's when they're older that really steams me when they're capable of picking up their own toys, but don't.
So back to today.
I made lunch. ( I still haven't gotten my coffee )
I made PB n J with trail mix and strawberries.
The baby finished her lunch, so she went down for a nap.
I got out a small rug that has tea party place settings on it, and placed it in Ellie's room.
I put their food on the place settings on napkins and led them into the room.
Ellie said "You're the best, mom!"

So, here I sit, watching them eat their lunches. My day got a little better.
But like I said, the day isn't over.... who knows what other torments are waiting for me.
If you have any bad news for me, save it for tomorrow. I don't think I can handle much else today.

Dear Tokyo,

I am very sorry for the actions of my Godzilla. The terrible twos!

Whatchya Gonna do, right? Right?

Love, Godzilla's mom.

Godzilla's Mom