Swamp People doing Math and other Unrelated Events

I've been a bit overwhelmed with the responsibilities of being an adult and all...like you mean we have to think of something to eat for lunch AND supper? I have to work at my job AND have enough energy to play with, read to, bathe, and put my toddler to bed? I must keep up with my Google Reader AND Google Alerts AND facebook AND twitter AND respond to Words with Friends pushes in a reasonable amount of time (14 hours, so you might not want to start a game with me, or maybe you do since I haven't won one game yet)? I think you can see how blogging made the list just below keeping a minimal amount of clothes and dishes clean.

I'm trying to speed this post along so I can get back to the riveting programming currently displayed on my TV. What's that? You didn't know Wednesday night is BIG GAME night? And I'm not talking about those sweet vacation memories I have of watching the original Let's Make Deal and $25,000 pyramid on the game show network while eating 17 Mr. Freeze's followed by multiple E.L.Fudge cookies (the gold ones with the fudge filling). I think they only get the gameshow network in Florida, which kind of makes sense when you consider the population. Anyway, it's not THAT kind of BIG GAME night, it's BIG GAME night like two dudes in camo shooting elk on the Sportsman Channel. You can tell I'm super-motivated to wrap this up so I can see more commercials of a guy from Swamp People cross-multiplying on a green chalk board to prove which brand of cross-bow shoots at $1.16 Feet Per Second. "Before you buy a crossbow, DO THE MATH, people!"

Anyway, I have little of significance to report, so I'll just put all these unrelated topics into a list that may or may not make any sense.

• Ryan still loves playing teeball but drags the tee all the way to the back of our property to the small patch of gravel. I think it gives him a more authentic feel. You can tell he's into the authenticity of the sport since he insists on wearing his fireman's helmet while batting. I'm sure it's been fully tested and approved to deflect whiffle balls.
• Ryan still runs the full list of "word associations" when we mention my dad..."Grandpa, tractor, feed the cows..Kabota!" I'm sure he's happy that cats finally dropped off the list.
• We've gotten to see lots of things up high the air lately: the crop duster who buzzes our neighborhood at 6:45am, a cool hot air ballon (or "hot balloon") and even a "heli-tractor" (copter) since we live near the hospital.
• I finally got on board with that lame "get your kids to exercise" commercial where the mom makes her daughter look all over the house to find her purse. Yeah, that'll solve our obesity epidemic. If a kid falls for that more than twice, we have bigger problems with the children who are our future and it's not their weight. Anyway, I thought I'd give the method the good old college try, not because my son has 3 ankles (on each leg) but because he had some energy that needed to be burned, badly. So, I sat on the couch and kept all the books in his room at the other end of our house. Every time he wanted another book read, he hopped down, ran as fast as his "elbows like a washing machine" form could take him to his room, then ran back. We repeated this about 9 times and it worked like a charm. Another thing I did was let him chase Nika around the living room for over 20 minutes. He giggled (and huffed and puffed) the whole time and ended up with 2 rosy cheeks and a dog-tired dog.
• In sorting through Adam's "box of treasures" from his mom, we came across a book of poems his class had made in 7th grade. I enjoyed Adam's literary treasure of a poem about roller coasters, but just about cause a fight when I questioned the rhyming of "fighting" and "riding" in the poem his friend Jess and he wrote about Wild Buffalo Bill. I'll let it go with his insistence that they were taking "artistic liberties". Sure you were. You were just trying to get your poem done as fast as possible so you could go shoot arrows from his tree stand and tell him his sister was good-looking.
• Ryan is one of the messiest eaters I've ever seen (and I've seen about 2-3 toddlers eat in my lifetime, so I'm pretty much a child development expert.) He managed to get peanut butter smeared on the top of his wrists while eating a SANDWICH. I've also never seen someone succeed at eating all the cheese first on a grilled cheese sandwich. It's one thing to eat around the crust, but eat around the BREAD? He can handle a fork and spoon well when he wants to and the other morning I asked him to please use his fork, so he promptly reached into his mouth, pulled out the half-chewed bite of pancake with his fingers, put it on the tines of his fork and returned it to his mouth. Nice.

Well, that's all for now until my camera battery gets charged and I can download our 37 attempts to get a picture of Ryan, Emily, and Lincoln with Grandpa and Grandma. Back to watching guys wear blavakas who've been "waiting all week" to shoot these 3 turkeys but are having communication problems between them. Women would not have that problem--they'd be screaming "SHOOT THE TURKEY! QUICK! BEFORE IT, LIKE, FLIES AWAY!"