havocandmayhem.com

What is he worried about? Things he’s done wrong in the past. Anywhere from last week to last year. Though it is hard to tell with him when the events actually occurred because his sense of time is not that keen and because his sense of guilt is so strong I think he tries to make things appear to have happened longer ago to lessen the likelihood of punishment. It has been True Confession time around here the last couple weeks. It seems to hit him suddenly. He’ll be playing a game or something & then start crying. I’ll ask him what’s wrong and we’ll go through this “I don’t want to tell you. You’ll be angry” bit & then he confesses that once, during the summer he put broccoli under his seat rather than eat it. Or that back in October he got into a fight with someone on the bus. Now, I had found that broccoli long ago & since it never reappeared I never said anything and frankly it could not have been much of a ‘fight’ on the bus if no word was sent home to me about i...

Do you know what the boys did today? They WENT BACK TO SCHOOL!!!! Yippee!!! Granted it’s only for a week & half…they have half days Jan 13 & 14 and then have Jan 17 & 18 off … but it is still something. And by the 15th we’ll be happy to once again have some all day together time. I’ve got some color them yourself wooden toys as a project for the 4 day weekend. I think I never really recovered my equanimity from those two snow days right before Xmas vacation. They threw me off & today I am still trying to get stuff done I was going to do those two days. Like clean the pantry (blog post no doubt coming soon!) Like reorganize the office (also a good source of blog fodder) Like clean & scrub the utility room (not at all blog worthy) oh, and like sleep in uninterrupted. They have been up at 6am all vacation, including Jan 1, and except for Dec 31 when they got up at 4:05. I do lay in bed until 8 or so, but since I can clearly hear them fighting over toy...

This one is legitimately done as an assignment What I like are the expressions. Gulped & Appetizing both look happy. Neither the boarder nor his landlord look particularly pleased about the payment, possibly the boarder is behind on his rent & still has not paid up. Even the robot seems displeased by the diversity. And Grumbling… at least he is clearly articulating his problem. He’s hungry and that guy with the hot dog (who also resembles the hot dog) is not sharing. It’s not quite up to Havoc’s usual standards but he said those boxes are hard to fit things in.

He was 8 days old in this photo. 8 DAYS! Look how tiny he is! He weighed 7lbs! SEVEN POUNDS! And he somehow sensed that his parents were boring people who were incapable of entertaining him.   Not just boring parents, but odd parents.   Easily amused by babies in sunglasses And toddlers in them as well   not to mention hats He wore lots of hats until he was about 3 and decided hats were passé. This child never slept. Oh there are dozens of photos of him sleeping, but that is because it  was such a rare occurrence I felt the need to document it. His waking up at the crack of dawn was a source of serious trouble in our house and probably he watched more TV than recommended because at 5:30am all his parents were capable of was turning on Sprout and drowsing on the sofa. He only just this past year decided things other than tacos, pizza and goldfish crackers might possibly be food he could enjoy eating. All the ye...

Havoc gets his artwork posted so I feel I need to talk about Mayhem for a bit since he is not as into drawing or writing as his brother. Havoc talks non stop. All the time. Constantly. And since school started and he’s had to keep it in during the day, it comes out in a flood when he gets off the bus. And Mayhem can’t get a word in. But he persists. Whenever Havoc pauses for a breath Mayhem speaks up “You know I…” but Havoc just keeps going. Mayhem is persistent though. He just keeps interrupting and interrupting until an adult intervenes and makes Havoc let Mayhem talk. (I let it go so long because I keep hoping Havoc is about to get to the point, but he never is) Then Mayhem says his one sentence and is done. Mayhem has his own personal sound track. He goes about his day and occasionally he accompanies himself with a little tune which I cannot replicate because it sound like do do do do do do do do do. But with specific timing & emphasis. Sometimes he just walks around Targ...

by Havoc   It’s a deer, in the woods, by the river, seen from an angle. And apparently the teeth are over represented. While they were camping out by the river on Labor Day weekend Havoc saw a deer in the woods and DH suggested he draw it. I’m glad it was explained to me because I thought it was a drawing of the (fictional) manbearpig who haunts our woods on holiday evenings. Last sighted on July 4th.

WWII tanks, courtesy of several DVDs of The Century of Warfare which Havoc rented the last time he was at the library. Note the people inside the tanks are happier than the people sitting on top of them.

1. I did not see 2. I did not think 3. I did not know These were on a sign at  Ft AP Hill, where DH has spent the majority of his summer. He took a photo of it for the boys and had them memorize it. He never sent me the photo or I’d post it. Now, whenever the boys do something wrong & hurt themselves or something else we ask them “What was the cause of this accident?” I DID NOT THINK by far tops the list as most common reason. I DID NOT THINK that dragging my brother around on a small carpet by a dog chain attached to his pants would rip his pants down the side. We were just playing I DID NOT THINK wrestling with my brother by jumping on him repeatedly would cause my knee to connect with his nose and make it bleed.We were just playing I DID NOT THINK I would miss hitting my brother with the wiffle balls we are throwing at one another and break the lamp instead. We were just playing I DID NOT THINK throwing my stuffed animals at the ceiling fan to make them fly...

We’ve swam most days. The pool has not turned green yet but it’s early days. Heat and rain combined cannot be defeated by chemicals & filters as I learned last year but I am trying to keep ahead of it. It’s been in the 90s most of the time, hitting 101 yesterday! And it’s only June. I’d like to take them to the park or something but it’s just too damn hot. Vacation bible school was this week and the little heathens have enjoyed it for the most part, but I think they are done having to be somewhere every morning. We’ve been to both libraries. They read almost daily, but we’ve been slacking off on the workbooks. DH has been gone from 6:30a to 10p weekdays for going on 3 weeks now. I have no idea when that will end. It should have been this week but it turns out large corporations are just as disorganized and screwed up as tiny companies. Which I already knew but seems to surprise some people. I’ve baked cookies twice and been to the gym 5 times. I consider that breaki...

Havoc is 7. In our home this means he has reached an age where his rewards & responsibilities begin to increase. Up until age 7 you mostly get a pass on responsibilities apart from picking up your toys and your rewards are limited to some candy in the check out lane if you were good all day while Mom ran errands. Once you are 7 you get an allowance, a later bedtime and chores. All of these things increase as you get older. The other thing you get when you are 7 is your very own library card (complete with your very own late fees, so save up that allowance). Havoc just got his this week even though he has been 7 since October. He has to be with me to get the library card & he doesn’t get to the county library much during the school year. Havoc immediately checked out 8 books just because he could. I always limited him to 2-4 books depending on how many he already had out and he had to try out his new found book freedom. This made Mayhem no end of jealous because he is stil...

The boys got home at 1pm & were in the pool minutes later. note to self:buy more waterproof sunscreen Followed by whining that they wanted specific friends to come over, but the specific friends live in the next county over & are not out of school until next week. Other friends are not home because their parents both work & they are in day care or with other family members. Obviously I need to call up some of their school friends parents and arrange some play dates or something. Later we went to the county library and signed up for the summer reading program the school sponsors & the boys came home with a few books to start with. Havoc found some age appropriate encyclopedia type books. He has one on science & technology timelines – origins of science. (The series is 8 books each covering a time period) and a couple older Scholastic Star Wars books, written before Phantom Menace & the rest came out. Mayhem has a couple story books featuring trucks and one ...

Had the meeting & it went well. Apparently we were lucky to get the meeting today because it will be late next week before everyone can meet again & Havoc would have missed 7 days of school, putting him over the 10 he is allowed to miss & still pass 1st grade. The school system has a zero tolerance policy but they also have a sense of perspective. Havoc very honestly admitted the toy was his & was in his backpack & that he hadn’t brought it to school intentionally, it had just been left in there from the weekend. This apparently made all the difference. The whole situation was gone over in the meeting, everyone agreed with the series of events as related. They explained to Havoc why toy guns are not allowed in school, his perception being that it’s just against the rule, with no understanding of why.  I think mostly they were concerned that a rumor would go around that some kid had a gun on the bus and parents would be calling them up freaking about it (...

Havoc accidentally took a toy gun to school Monday among all the other toy crap in his backpack. The backpack is a bottomless pit (or was until about 5pm Monday evening). I don’t know how he or anyone else finds a damn thing in there, but apparently some other kid was digging through his backpack on the bus ride home (why?) & found it & then the bus driver saw and that sort of thing can’t be ignored. He went to school Tuesday & the principal called me to tell me about how there has to be a disciplinary committee meeting & I’ll be getting a letter. At the very least he is suspended half a day today. We go to the meeting at 11am today to find out the full punishment. They understand he is a first grader & it was unintentional but policy must be followed. Probably he won’t be expelled but he could be suspended for a week. I’m waiting to see how it goes before I have any reaction. Because my gut reaction is humor and it’s no joking matter. This is serious. B...

A few weeks back I mentioned that Mayhem was getting up at all hours of the night suddenly. He’d wake up at 2am and come in our room wanting to chat. Or he’d wake up at midnight and play his DS until Havoc came in our room and complained about the noise. Then he spent a week or so getting up at 5am. My children are already up at the crack of dawn as it is, getting up even EARLIER is not an endearing quality. We wondered at the time what was up with this behavior but focused on preventing it rather than analyzing it. This is our standard reaction to children going through sudden periods of wakefulness. It’s a 6 year old habit at this point. We more or less know what is going on in general so we ignore it in favor of encouraging sleep.  What is going on is the child is making a developmental leap in some area and it’s keeping their brain too busy to sleep. We first noticed it right before Havoc started crawling, though the connection wasn’t made until after he started crawling be...