I would love to tell you that Alex came back home Sunday and transitioned seamlessly into our regular routine and our regular rules, and I guess technically I could tell you that, but it would be a lie, and seeing as how I punished Alex this afternoon for not telling me the truth about his alleged involvement with pushing the buttons on the TiVo, I should probably practice what I’ve been preaching.

So the truth of the matter is that it’s feeling increasingly like some sort of toddler behavioral detox in our neck of the woods. OH MY MERCY it’s taking every ounce of patience I have to handle Mr. Sassy McBritches and not to go in our bedroom and shut the door and eat Ruffles and french onion dip while maintaining a non-stop connection to an endless diet Coke spigot.

While watching “Notting Hill” and “Ocean’s 11” over and over and over.

Be sure to visit here often for more Effective Parenting Tips!

And it really is good to have the little man at home again – especially just a second ago when I took a couple of hot dogs out on the deck for D. to cook with the hamburgers, and Alex jumped up and down and said, “OH! I LOVE! HOT DOGS! THANK YOU MAMA!”

(The child totally has my number with the boundless enthusiasm deal. Because I pretty much don’t care what you tell me as long as you say it! With exclamation points! And then! It’s all better!)

But in addition to trying to figure out how to wrangle the little man, I’m trying to figure out how to wrangle myself, too. I can, um, get a little, um, obsessive about my house, and having it on the market seems to magnify that tendency. I am trying to make my peace with the fact that people may actually be sitting on the couches, that I may actually have to cook in the kitchen, that I can’t actually live with some sort of protective plastic covering on the stairs (I really did suggest that last one to D. yesterday after we had the carpet cleaned, and I was Totally Serious).

Perhaps I need to find a little balance in this situation.

You think?

So right now I’m letting Alex splash in the tub, despite the fact that he’s making a bit of a mess. And there are two plastic bins of toys completely emptied out in the middle of the living room floor. And there are dishes from supper just sitting in the sink, because I am LAID BACK AND DEVIL MAY CARE-ISH, that’s what I am!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to run the vacuum for the fourth time today.

(Issues! I have issues!)

This post by Antique Mommy sums up so much of what I feel when I look at my own little man lately. Very bittersweet to watch the “baby” get older.

This post by our friend Kevin is just beautiful. Love his heart.

Finally, while I promise that I didn’t write this post
at my friend Big Mama’s, I could have. OOOOOH I could have. And my OCD is in RARE form these last few days what with trying to get the house ready to sell. Last night Alex actually looked at me and said, “Mama? I need some TOYS.”

Have a great Tuesday!

This meme courtesy of my friend Barb…

Favorite memory of your mother?
I have lots of favorite memories of Mama – some sweet, some funny, some downright hard to believe. I don’t think I can pick a favorite, although this one is certainly way up there.

Another Mama Memory – and one I’ve never blogged about – is from the night D proposed. I was spending the weekend in my hometown, and I didn’t get to Mama and Daddy’s house until late that Friday afternoon. D was coming into town, and Mama and Daddy knew that he was planning to give me a ring (being a good Southern boy and all, he had asked my daddy’s permission several weeks beforehand).

Anyway, when I walked in Mama and Daddy’s house with my weekend luggage, Mama surveyed me from head to toe and said, “Are you planning to wear that tonight?” I had on a pair of jeans and a sweater, and I thought I was perfectly attired for the trip to a Mexican restaurant that D. and I were planning.

Ever the clueless one, I said, “Um, yeah – we’re just going out to eat.”

And Mama, in the most gentle of tones, said, “Well, I think you might want to change. You might want to wear something a little dressier tonight.”

I ended up not changing clothes, and D. did in fact propose about an hour later as we sat on Mama and Daddy’s couch.

And later that night, I realized the reason for Mama’s concern with my attire: she didn’t want me to get engaged with blue jeans on.

If you’re a Southern girl, you can totally appreciate that.

Favorite memory of your father?
When Alex was about four months old, he would sit in Daddy’s lap for hours on end. Alex would kick his legs constantly, and Daddy thought it was so funny…they would just look at each other and giggle, completely entertained by one another. It was the beginning of a very sweet relationship between those two. Seeing Daddy as a grandfather has given me a whole new appreciation for him as a father. It’s been a good thing.

Favorite memory of your siblings?
It’s a long story, but my absolute favorite memory with Sister is the time we were driving a UHaul (or, as my mama says, a “U-Haul-It”) down Peachtree Road in Atlanta, and when Sister applied the brakes on an incline, the ladder in the back of the UHaul hit the door, which in turn opened just enough (that little “safety lock” feature wasn’t working, apparently) so that the ladder landed in the middle of Peachtree.

I laughed so hard that I really think I lost consciousness for a brief period of time.

My favorite memory of my brother is when we were in New York City about five years ago. As we were leaving this pretty snazzy restaurant, we found ourselves underneath an awning with Ivana Trump. I didn’t dare say anything, mainly because I was afraid she’d poke out one of my eyes using only that perfectly coiffed tower of hair on the top of her head, but after we all got loaded into our car, my brother leaned out of it and honored Ms. Trump with the loudest, most redneck whistle you’ve ever heard in your life…the kind of whistle where you have to put your fingers in your mouth first so that it’s really good and shrill.

I didn’t lose consciousness from laughing that time, but I definitely wet my pants. Cracks me up just thinking about it.

What one skill would you like to wake up tomorrow and be able to do (though you’d never learned it)?

I would sing like an angel. I’d also love to be able to draw.

Which one of your dreams has come true?

I am not, by nature, a dreamer. I tend to err on the side of practical. But, as a teenager, I used to hope that I’d be married to someone who was also my very best friend – someone I could talk to for hours and who would make me laugh. So if we’re calling that a “dream,” it definitely came true.

Yay. :-)

Now I’ll tag anyone else who is suffering from writer’s block…leave me a note in the comments if you decide to do this one!

Our house goes on the market Tuesday, which means that D and I have been in full-on home improvement mode since Thursday. And right now I’m really tempted to say that I’ve been “staging” my house because Emma Kate informed me this afternoon that the word “staging” really gets on her nerves, so I asked her what in the world would I call all the arranging and re-arranging if not “staging,” and she said that I should just say “fixin’ it up.”

So, just for Emma Kate: we have been “fixin’ up” the house. Because goodness gracious doesn’t that just sound so much better than “staging”?

Anyway, we have been busy. And since Alex has been at his grandparents’ house, we have really enjoyed our time together. It’s been a real reminder that we don’t need to wait until we decide to put a house on the market to take some time for just the two of us. It’s been fun – and as ready as I am to see the little man, I am very, very grateful to have had the last four days with D. It’s been good. Great, in fact. We needed it.

Don’t forget that Lauren is having her Bloggy Tour of Testimonies today…I’ve posted mine before, but if I can find it in the archives I will certainly be adding it to her Mr. Linky.

In the completely trivial news department, if you watch “Project Runway,” are you shocked to learn that Uli – the designer who makes every single dress out of a print – is 25? Because I saw that this weekend when a re-run was on, and I was FLOORED because no kidding I thought she was in her late 30’s (in other words, MY age).

I’ll be back with some form of narrative cohesion later. But right now I have to go get ready because I have to be back at church at 5:15. We’d love for you to join us.

All my brain can piece together this morning are random bits of information. AREN’T YOU EXCITED?!?!?!?!

1. One of you science-type people needs to conduct a study on what would no doubt be called The McDreamy Effect. Because just like phone usage shoots to its highest level on Mother’s Day, phone calls and emails – at least on my end of the world – seem to drop to all-time lows between the hours of 8:00 and 9:00 CST on Thursday nights.

You don’t call, you don’t write….

2. And I may be a little late to this particular interweb party, but did y’all know that you can watch full episodes of your favorite ABC shows (assuming that last phrase isn’t an oxymoron) FOR FREE? By going here? I had no idea. I don’t watch a single one of the shows they have listed, but now that I can watch them on the interweb FOR FREE, I just might have to start.

3. A few weeks ago I got an email from Folger’s – and I know some of you other bloggers did, too – asking me if I’d try a new product of theirs. I agreed. I was expecting to receive three single-serving samples, sort of like what you might see in your hotel room next to a little 4-cup coffee pot. But a couple of days ago the coffee arrived, and I had not one, not two, but THREE full-sized packages of the New Coffee Product. Haven’t tried them yet – but tickled to death by the Free Stuff.

4. Our house is eerily quiet without Alex running around. Something tells me that my mama and daddy are having a completely different experience right about now since our little Chatty McTalkerson is staying with them.

5. My to-do list for today and the rest of the weekend is ginormous. Our house won’t officially go on the market until next week, but OH MY WORD at the work we have to do. Oh my word.

6. Even though we have tons of work to do, I am happy happy happy that D and I will have a whole weekend to ourselves. It’ll be like a little vacation at home. A vacation where we get to paint trim and put out pinestraw and plant pansies and I’m really not using any of those phrases as a euphemism. I’m being quite literal.

7. My TiVo is going to explode, I fear, with the sheer volume of unwatched programming that it’s storing. I haven’t watched anything all week long – not even my beloved “Dancing With The Stars” – so hopefully I can watch it today while I make my way through the list-o-chores.

8. Yesterday an elderly gentleman was telling me something I thought he intended to be funny, so I laughed, but he was actually being quite serious and not wanting a laugh at all, and when I think back on the sheer awkwardness of it all (D and our realtor were there to witness my cringe-worthy performance), I really think it would have been preferable if the floor had just opened up and swallowed me whole.

However, D seems to enjoy being able to tease me with comments like “before you insulted the elderly gentleman” and “when you laughed at the man who was telling you that his brother died,” so I guess in the interest of comedy, it was all worthwhile.

9. I’m off to organize closets now!

I was only about thirty minutes into trying to get the house ready for the realtor when I realized that having a three year old “helper” was going to be an eye-opener. The last time D and I sold a house we didn’t have a child, and let’s just say that I was slightly unprepared for the challenges of “staging” a house for showing when there is an entire GeoTrax train set in the middle of a bedroom, not to mention a conductor of said GeoTrax train set who wants to have all trains visible at all times. Preferably in the middle of the floor.

And when it took me four hours to get my kitchen sparkling clean night before last, primarily because Alex insisted on turning the rug in the kitchen into a racetrack for his “Cars” cars, I realized that there are certain times in a mama’s life when she can use a little “grandparental” reinforcement and that this is one of those times.

So I picked up the phone, called Mama and Daddy, and I had barely gotten the words “Do you think Alex could stay with y’all…” out of my mouth before Mama said, “Yes. When do you want us to get him?”

If you’re a grandparent whose grandbabies live out of town, you can probably relate to her reaction.

Long story short: Alex is on his way to his grandparents’ house right this very second. D is meeting Mama and Daddy halfway between their house and our house, and Alex will have four glorious days with all the diet Coke he can drink and an unlimited supply of donuts. He will get to ride in the truck with Daddy and make daily trips to the dollar store. He will sit in my mama’s lap until he falls asleep every single night, and she will cater to his every whim. He will be spoiled rotten when we pick him up Sunday afternoon, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Alex has been talking about his “vacation” non-stop for the last twenty-four hours, and this morning when he came down the stairs, he was holding his stuffed froggy, his stuffed monkey, and a little stuffed dog that someone gave him when he was a baby. I made a comment about how he must be bringing all his friends to breakfast, and he said, “Oh no, Mama – I’m taking them to Pappa’s house!” He obviously had been thinking about his trip since the second he opened his eyes, and the fact that he didn’t want his stuffed friends to miss out on the adventure made me want to kiss his little cheeks until I got every ounce of sugar out of them.

It’s been easy, these last few days, to get caught up in the whirlwind of buying, moving, staging, planning, financing and selling. But this morning, as Alex cradled a few well-worn stuffed animals and talked excitedly about his trip to his grandparents’ house, I couldn’t help but think about what really matters. And I truly believe, way down deep in my soul, that if I were to sit down and write out The Important Stuff Of Life, a house would be pretty far down the list.

But a three year old little boy? Collecting his toys for his “big trip” to Mississippi? Excited beyond belief at the prospect of spending a few days with his grandparents? Knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that they adore him completely and unabashedly? Knowing that he loves them just as fiercely in return?

That ranks way up there. No doubt about it.