Now, just before bed last night, Gabe was pretending to be a doggy. He wanted a dog toy, so Mike drew, colored and cut out a dog toy from paper. Gabe thought it was swell. Consequently, he took it to bed and when asked, what was his favorite thing, he said it was his dog toy. So, after he said his “favorite thing” he went right into his prayer on his own. Now, I think we both expected a simple, “Thank you God for my dog toy. Amen.” We should know to expect a bit more from our son though.

Gabe proceeded to say something along the lines of, “Thank you God for giving me such a good Daddy that makes me such a great dog toy. Amen.”

Man, I love that kid!

Well, we’ve had dinner, watched a SpongeBob movie and done some other stuff when Gabe, my 5-year old son, comes up to me and asks, “Do you have a sexual problem in your throat?”

What the heck? What does a Mom say to that? Do you laugh? Do you cry? Do you wonder where in the heck he heard “sexual problem”? I asked him and should have guessed that he heard it from his imaginary brother.

For those of you who are wondering. I don’t have a sexual problem with my throat and no I’m not just in denial about it.

I seem to have lost a bunch of time somewhere. In four short weeks, my first born will be starting school. In a couple months, my second born will turn 3. Whoa! Whoa! Stop the clock…or at least slow it down, please. I’m begging here.

I’m so excited for Gabe to start school but in the same thought, our lives are changing so much at the end of this summer. Soon, I’ll be getting two of us ready in the mornings. I probably won’t be leaving breakfast for Mike to handle. I’ll probably need to find time to feed two of us in the morning. We will be purchasing school supplies over the next 4 weeks. Over dinner maybe I’ll get to hear some stories about what they did in school or something the teacher said or new friends.

Mike will get to spend more time with Evie. You know she doesn’t know it, but she kind of got gypped. When Gabe was a baby, one of us was constantly holding him and cuddling him. When he was a toddler, we were working with him with flash cards. We played with him frequently. We were completely engaged. Evie didn’t get that. When she was a baby, we just couldn’t hold her all the time. We had to tend to Gabe and keep an eye on Gabe. While she’s been a toddler we’ve had very little time to work with her, play with her and engage with her. So, Evie is going to get some one on one time with her Daddy during the days and I’m excited for her. She’s got one of the best daddies in the world and will be a lucky little girl to have him all to herself.

Mike said something that broke my heart. He said, “Once Gabe starts school, I’m not going to see my son.” The part that broke my heart is that he’s not exaggerating.

Most of you know we work opposite shifts. Consequently, one of us is always with the kids. Mike is home with them during the day. I’m with them in the evenings. Mike sleeps in split shifts. He goes to work between 9:30 PM and 10:30 PM. He gets home between 3:30 AM and 5:30 AM. These days he usually gets in around 4 AM. He sleeps until 7 AM, 2-3 hours of sleep. Then he’s up with the kids all day. He goes back to bed around 6:30 PM after I get home from work and sleeps another 2-3 hours, waking around 9 PM. Once Gabe starts school, Mike may see Gabe just for the car ride to school. He’ll get a couple hours with him in the afternoon. That is about it.

Mike and I have contemplated having Mike move to a weekend only work schedule and I’ve always been against it. You see, our only “family time” takes place on the weekends. This is the only time we co-parent. The only time Mike and I have alone time is on the weekends after the kids are in bed. So, selfishly I just haven’t wanted to forfeit any of that time. Hearing the sorrow in Mike’s voice as he pointed out he would have such little time with his son was all I needed to change my mind.

He needs to be with our children and our children need to be with him. So, maybe we won’t have as much alone time. Maybe we won’t have weekends available to do fun family things or visit our non-local family…but we will make this work.

Life is changing in the Roberts household.

Where is he right now?

He’s all ready made the weekly grocery trip to the grocery store for me because I was too sick to do it. He did that after he picked up the house and did a load of dishes all while watching the kids while I took a nap to try and cure the terrible headache that I was suffering. Now he’s off doing the weekly Wal*Mart trip to get the items that are cheaper at Wal*Mart than the grocery store. People who venture into Wal*Mart during weekend daylight hours deserve a medal!

Every day of his life he sleeps very little. We work opposite shifts so that we don’t have to do daycare and one of us is always home with the children. Consequently, we don’t see each other much and we are virtual single parents. In addition, Mike doesn’t really get to sleep and he hasn’t really been able to sleep for over 5 years. He doesn’t get home from work until after 5AM some nights and after only 2 hours of sleep, he has to get up and take care of our children while I head to work for the day. Then I get home and he gets a nap and if he’s lucky he may get 3 hours of sleep before he heads off to work. He’s tired and his body aches. His memory is shot and I’m sure each day is a struggle for him.

He doesn’t complain. He does this for our family each and every day. With any luck he gets some extra sleep and maybe some R&R over the weekend…but it isn’t like you can catch up on sleep. It isn’t like his body can recover in 2-days.

I know few men that would sacrifice like Mike sacrifices for his family. I wish I could make the children understand how lucky they are to have such a wonderful man for a father. They love him very much and they miss him when he’s sleeping. I think they know they have a great Dad but are just too young to understand how great he truly is. I get it though. I am so aware every day how blessed I am. Superficially speaking I’ve landed myself a really gorgeous fellow that loves me so much. He thinks I’m beautiful when I wake in the morning and have make-up all over my face and crazy cartoon hair. He loves me when I’m sick on Father’s Day and can’t take care of him like a man like him deserves to be taken care of. I married a really great man and an outstanding Father.

Mike, thank you for all that you do every day for our family. We are blessed to have you. Happy father’s day, my love.

I’ve never laughed quite like I’ve laughed as a Mom when my kids say or do something funny. For example, my son knows that there are two kinds of pizza. There is pizza with “big pepperoni”…like homemade pizza, pizza you order for delivery/carryout or some larger frozen pizza. Then there is pizza with “little pepperoni” like the small personal pizzas that we keep on hand for the kids that are easy to microwave and quick. Gabe calls them “little pizza”. The pepperoni is chopped into tiny little pepperoni squares. Similar to what might be found on a Totinos pizza.

Well, my hubby being clever put some left over “big pepperoni” on one of the small personal pizzas before heating and serving to Gabe. At which point my 4-year old son exclaimed, “HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL! Big pepperoni on little pizza!” Mike told me about this while I was at work and I literally laughed out loud. My cubicle neighbor even commented because I got such a tickle out of it, so I had to tell her about it too.

I’ve never felt fear quite like the feeling when one of my children is critically ill.

Parental emotions are really overwhelming but the most wonderful part is the JOY. The overwhelming joy that I feel every day of my life because of my family and my beautiful, wonderful children. The joy that brought tears to my eyes as I kissed my daughter and laid her down to bed tonight and she says to me, “Aw woo woo Mommy”. Words that maybe only Mommy and Daddy can understand. Words that mean so much and I kiss her sweet little face, as a tear of joy rolls down my cheek and I say, “I love you too, Boo. Now get some…”

She finishes my sentence, “seep.”

So, we bought ALL of the paint and got started in the living room. That was our first painting experience and consequently it took a lot longer than expected. We did everything by the book and I was probably a little too cautious. We also chose a deep red color for the living room, which took a few more coats than expected to even out…since we didn’t prime first. Lesson learned. So, nearly two weeks after we started the project we were done with the living room and it looked fabulous. It was exhausting though and we needed a break before we took on the dining room.

Well, pregnancy and our first born came along before we ever started the dining room. Then when he was old enough to deal with while painting…pregnancy and the second child came along.

So, five plus years later we dug the paint out of the basement and last weekend we began to finish the project we started many, many moons ago. Since then we had a little issue with a window unit air conditioner and we had some water damage on the ceiling that we were eager to cover.

So, my brother-in-law and family came over to help us out with the project last Sunday. We got started before they arrived with the first application of KILZ on the ceiling. Well that was the plan anyway. Soon after starting to apply, the textured ceiling starting peeling and flaking off all around us. Now, we never liked the texture, because it was a dust magnet that was impossible to clean but we certainly thought it would be easiest to paint over it and call it done. We realized that wasn’t going to be the case…so we promptly changed our plans. With family coming over to help we knew it wouldn’t be prudent to remove the texture Sunday, so instead we decided to go ahead and get the walls painted and tackle the ceiling later.

We did just that. We got the dining room and the hallway painted Sunday night last week. I had Monday off, so I spent Monday working on the trim and a faux finish on a few of the walls. It turned out lovely, except for the water damaged, pocky, icky looking ceiling.

So, this week, we took that project on. Mike and I, but mostly Mike, spent all day Saturday removing the ugly cottage cheese texture. The house is so full of dust, it is absolutely absurd. Today, we got two coats of KILZ on there and soon we will get the nice and nearly smooth ceiling painted with the tan color that matches the non-faux walls in the dining room and will also match the ceiling and trim in the living room, pulling both rooms together as originally planned.

So, some basic remodeling that was 5 years in the making will be done this week and I can get my house back together, because it is driving me crazy…but it is looking so good!

If we knew that then, we never would have considered calling the city. In fact we probably would have done what we could to help. We didn’t have children at the time, so that would have been possible.

I remember thinking that I would think twice before ever considering an action like that again because you never know the circumstances.

Well, I’m thinking twice and I think it is time to make a call. The neighbors on our bordering property are terrible neighbors. They always have been. It isn’t that they aren’t nice, I suppose they are nice enough…but they don’t maintain their property at all. One of them is a convicted child molester. They have littered the neighborhood with cats that they don’t care for let alone spay or neuter. A few years back they tried to sell the property and someone I know toured the house. He claims it was roach infested and terribly run down. This didn’t surprise me…in fact it confirmed my suspicions. Every now and then we’ll see a roach in our home or outside our home. We don’t “have” roaches. In fact we can go several months without seeing them…but yet we still see them occassionally. I always thought a home nearby must be infested.

In addition to the roach issue, we live on the edge of the bluffs and have a problem with poison ivy growing in the yard. It is a problem that I think would be significantly less if our neighbors took better care of their property…but they don’t so it makes it nearly impossible to ever get rid of the poison ivy. This is a big concern because I don’t want the kids around it and Mike is terribly reactive to it.

Right now, their yard is in particularly terrible shape. I’m sure the city would respond with haste if they were called. But here is the catch. The man that lives there that does the yard maintenance and probably any other necessary maintenance was taken to the hospital. Even though they are terrible neighbors that buys them some time. Especially after the situation mentioned above with our neighbor, John.

But last night…the absolute most disgusting thing ever happened. We had some nice steaks to grill. Our grill sits near the fence line of our property. Mike went out to start the grill, removed the cover and 4 roaches go scurrying along our patio. 3 more roaches were taking cover on the side shelf of the grill and the grill cover was full of them. It has been less than a week since we used the grill, so that happened in a few days. Their yard is completely over grown and I’m sure the interior of the home is in terrible shape.

I think this warrants a call to the city? What do you think?