Seriously…where does the time go?? I’m aware that it’s Friday, because that’s the night Ben takes the kids upstairs for movie night and I have “a night off” a.k.a. catch up on laundry, write blog entries, maybe read a few chapters and hopefully go to bed (alone!!) at a decent hour. I recognize Sunday because that’s when I get everything ready for Monday…work/emails, backpacks, lunch money, etc. Everything else is a blur until Thursday, when I have Adlani and Norah home and I basically start work at naptime and work into the wee hours. TIME FLIES!!! I feel the urgent need to slow it down before time runs out.
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We’ve been doing lots of fun stuff…I’ll start with the most recent and work backward.
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Last weekend we went to the Big Apple Circus. If you haven’t gone, GO!!! I have gone every year for about 12 years. It’s fabulous! It’s different every year and I’ve never been disappointed. It’s a wonderful charity and I join every year, which gives us access to great seats at a discount, plus the annual member party where we get free food and drinks, entertainment, face painting, and a lovely parting gift for the kids (lunch bags this year). Adlani even overcame his fear of clowns at the member party. During the show, I was asked to participate by raising an umbrella before a clown spit a mouthful of water on me. The kids were so surprised and excited. It was a blast.
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The first weekend of the month we “dropped into art” at the Danforth Museum. The girls made sculptures of animals which took so long that we didn’t get to see any of the art! We’ll be back next month…it was a lot of fun – and FREE!
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Before that, we had a date with Zineb at Chuck E Cheez (one of my least favorite places). If you don’t know Zineb, she is our niece and she lived with us for about a year when she was a junior in high school. I hadn’t seen her in a while and I’m so proud of what a beautiful woman she has grown up to be. She works at Tufts Dental School and is engaged! The kids are in love with her and we had a great time getting reacquainted.
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Easter weekend was a crazy whirlwind. We had 2 egg hunts, Lindsey’s birthday party, a swimming lesson, and Easter dinner. It was chaotic, but fun. We still have about 5 pounds of jelly beans and we all need emergency visits to the dentist. I actually just went through a dental ordeal…a toothache, a filling and a cleaning, another toothache (same tooth), antibiotics and Tylenol with Codeine, a root canal, a post, a temporary crown, and a permanent crown. I spent 8 HOURS in the dentist’s chair. At least I was able to track down my favorite dentist who changed practices after her maternity leave.
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Here are some pics from Easter weekend:
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In case my earlier post didn’t inspire you to visit this site (http://www.nuttynuttynews.com/), maybe these current headlines will:

~ Parents Replace Kids With Monkeys
~ Phone Book Typo Leads Customers to Phone Sex Line
~ Man Lost Life Savings After Termites Infesting His Bank’s Safe
…Deposit Boxes Ate Them
~ And the Worst Bad Name Is…Charman Toilette? Chastity Beltz?
~ Police Swarm Day Care Over Blanket Dispute
~ Woman Crashed Golf Cart While Drunk – Had Six Kids Aboard

And one that I’ve pasted here because the last line cracks me up:

~ Girl Gets Her Belly Button Ring Stuck in Her Nose

If you make it to the older posts, you may run across one that has been in the back of my mind for a week: Man Facing Charges for Having Sex with a Picnic Table.
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One morning this week I was having a particularly hard time getting the kids out the door, and I had asked Adlani to put his coat on at least 12 times. On the 13th time I said, “Adlani! Put on your frickin coat!!” With a big grin on his face, he yelled, “Hey Aliya! Mommy said the double-E word!” That kid has GOT to learn his letters. It’s an F-Word! Not THE F-Word…more like an F-Minor.

This morning at the bus stop…

Aliya: “Mommy, have you ever been in jail?”
Me: “No.”
Aliya: “Well, Daddy said you were.”
Me: “WHAT???”
Aliya: “Daddy told me yesterday that you were in jail.”
Me: “And what was I in jail for?”
Aliya: “For hitting and scratching Daddy. You were in jail for 18 days, 4 hours, and you kept begging him to let you out, and then you said you’d give him all the ice cream and he let you out.”
Me to Ben via cell phone: “Would you please refrain from telling people that I’ve done jail time?”
Ben: “Oh, I was just kidding around. Hahahaha.”

WTF?!?! The kids think that any piece of news they happen to hear is worth sharing with everyone they know. I’m sure all of Barbieri thinks I’m an ex-con. For the record, I have not been in jail yet. That could change when I get my hands on Ben.
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This actually happened a few weeks ago and I didn’t think about it again until the topic of farting came up at the office. My office is a large room that can have anywhere from 0 to 5 people working in it, and the swivel chairs are a little squeaky and sometimes make a farting noise. We have gotten in the habit of saying “chair” when the farting noises occur, so our office-mates know that we’re not rude smelly pigs. Well apparently when I’m not around, one of my coworkers farts and then says “not chair”, which a particularly fastidious coworker finds extremely offensive.

So here’s the story: A few weeks ago we took Grandma Ginny and Grampa B out to dinner at Chef Orient to thank them for all of their hard work on the new closets. I have no idea what I ate that day, but I wish I knew so I could eat it again when Ben really annoys me. Or when anyone annoys me for that matter. Whatever it was, I stunk. I stunk so bad it was actually quite impressive. So on the way to Chef Orient (me, Ben, and the kids in my car, Grandma Ginny and Grampa B following behind), I saved up for a few miles and then let a good one go. A REALLY good one. The kids had their shirts pulled over their faces and were begging for mercy. So I did what any good parent would do and I locked the windows. Ben was frantically yelling at me to let him roll down his window and I was just driving along cackling like a hyena with an old wildebeest leg. So Ben, in his desperation, opened the car door while I was driving, and although a small voice in my head said that probably wasn’t a good thing for the kids to witness, I was still laughing my ass off. That is, until the frantic honking, screaming, and light-flashing started up from the vehicle behind us, as the panic-stricken grandparents thought Norah’s door was open and she was about to fall out onto Belknap Road. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who found this whole episode funny, but maybe someday they’ll all look back on it and laugh.