Tattoo Artist..amongst other things

We have had a very "interesting" week, I guess you could call it. My kids have been driving me absoulutely crazy! My sister-in-law asked me if they had formed a conspiracy against me. If one is not doing something, the other one is. Add to that all of their fighting with each other, it has been a very challenging week.

On Sunday, Hallie found a marker while I was feeding Tucker and Derrick was gone with Carson. Hallie was upstairs and I thought she was being a little too quiet, if you know what I mean. When Derrick got back, I sent him up to check on her. She was being her own tattoo artist...


I particularly like the black toe nails. Anyways, he put her in the bath, after discussing why we should not color on our bodies. He came down to show me the pictures he took of her and Carson started screaming that there was water everywhere. Derrick ran back upstairs and found 1/2" of water on the floor.Then, while he was cleaning this up, Carson started screaming that she colored all over his door.
Needless to say, she was in big trouble that night. It is a good thing she is so cute because if not, she would be sold to the highest bidder, or maybe the lowest bidder. Actually, I would probably just give her away.

Last night, I took Carson to football practice and was taking Hallie out of her car seat. Her bum felt a little less padded than normal, so I checked and sure enough, she had taken her pull up off and put her shorts back on commando. Once we had remedied that, we walked over to the practice. It was really windy and where Carson was practicing, there was a lot of dirt. Hallie kept throwing the dirt in the air and watching it shower down on everyone else watching the practice. She wouldn't stop and of course, I was trying to shield Tucker from the wind and couldn't make her stop. So we had to go over on the grass, where I couldn't see Carson practice, which I was frustrated about because Derrick was out of town and I knew I was going to be quizzed on how he had done. We sat down and I started talking to our friend and all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hallie grab a handful of grass, open Carson's water and throw the grass inside.

These are just a few "highlights" of the last week. Maybe it's been a week and a half-- they all kind of blur together. Carson has been no means on his best behavior. I think his ears aren't really functional. They've stopped working about the same time that Hallie took a let-me-get-in-as-much-trouble-as-I-can-find pill. The other night at dinner, I kept telling him to get his feet off of Tucker's bouncy seat. He ignored me and I finally told him, a little forcefully to knock it off, that he was going to kick Tucker. Carson looked right at me and said, "All right Mrs. Bossy Pants!" I was so tempted to strangle him! And Tucker has decided that he has had enough of being the easy going child and he should be held at all times, making it more difficult for me to keep up with the other two.

On top of that, Carson continues to have problems with getting "hurt" at school. We had a lot of problems when school started with him coming home telling me that he had been hit that day, or punched, or thrown to the ground. It turned out that it was a 2nd grader picking on Carson. His teacher addressed it and we were good for a few days and then I started getting reports home again of him getting hurt. This time it was a different kid each day. I talked to his teacher again and from what we gathered, he was playing with a group of kids that were playing games that were on the rough side. We've been talking to Carson about staying away from certain kids and now certain games were off limits and thought we had things figured out. Then this morning, I took him to school and was watching him play before the bell rang and 2 boys came up and started picking on him. The first one just stole his basketball, but the second one started yelling at him and bumping him with his chest. Carson just stood there, like he had no idea what to do. I walked over and told the kid to knock it off, that you don't do that to other kids, but it is just so frustrating. He came home from school today with a black eye. Who knew that elementary school was a full contact sport? I am at a loss of what to do at this point. It would be a lot easier if it were just one kid that picks on him, but for the most part, it is different kids every time. Does he have a huge target on his back? Or does he contribute by playing with the wrong kids? It has been so frustrating trying to answer this question. This morning's incident was not provoked by him at all. But are others? And when you ask him, he always tells me he didn't do anything. The joys of parenting-- trying to figure this out!