Adeline Decides Recap Uno

As promised, there are some recaps from the past week that we are sharing with you now.

I mentioned in the last blog post that I intend to let my 3 year old make my decisions for me for the next 6 months. She did a bang up job this recap. Let's see, we spent much of last week snowed in so by the end of all that none of us wanted to make any decisions. We did eventually escape and it was a joint effort on her part and her dad to choose to go to the comic book store.

During our snowpocalypse Adeline decided to partake in some of my work endeavors. She is now the star of my Junk Drunk Jones YouTube channel. 

I have a sneaking suspicion my future Pick of the Week posts will be like this, and feature her goofy self. Sidenote - she selected the wardrobes for both of us for this video.

We also had a family dinner tonight where she picked the menu. See:

 You will note that in the photo you can also see my 30 year old husband's beautiful blue manicure compliments of the child as well. Real men wear nail polish! Remember that ladies.

 The little dear decided to have her cake, and lick it too.

Pretty cool cake my sister had made for the family dinner!

So far no regrets with the little experiment we have going. Stay tuned for the next recap! 

Adeline Decides. An Introduction.

It all started with the plague.
Intense right? So yea, Adeline brought the plague home from preschool. She wound up with a few mere sniffles whilst I was sulking around the house in a near death state. I woke up from our nap on Wednesday with a fever to be reckoned with. I thought to myself "dinner is just too difficult to fathom right now" and  I looked around for a solution. And there sat Adeline.
I politely asked, "Adeline, mommy is on fire, what should we have for dinner?". She mulled it over and explained that we should have cereal and fruit. Ahhhhh cold foods, I was sold. She is a genius, and my thoughts snowballed from there.

So yesterday I had posted the following:
"Being an adult sucks. I've decided to let my 3 year old make all of my decisions for me. From business moves to wardrobe choices. This could get interesting!"
So, until further notice, I will be directing my burning questions about life and the universe that require a decision to the care of this completely competent and totally normal 3 year old:

I couldn't be more serious. I think I would like to adopt this method of living for at least 6 months. I think she and I could learn a lot from it. 

There are several reasons why I think this is going to work swimmingly:

• Making decisions is easy for her. Her quick wit and matter-of-factness is impressive.
• She is smarter than I am. Where I lack in certain areas Brett makes up for it, and she is proving to be a damn close 50/50 split of both of our personalities and brains. Terrifying right?
• I feel that it will help build her confidence, making decisions without second guessing herself. 
• It will help me loosen up and worry less about the little stuff. I am a certified worry wort.
• If everyone becomes aware of this arrangement I have made I can use it for excuses to get out of stuff I would really prefer to not do. Ok, that one is a bit selfish. Maybe I won't do that. Disregard. Carry on.
• It will teach us both a lot about creativity, cooperation, and compromise. You know, in case she tries to dress me in a bathing suit for a business meeting. I don't look forward to wearing a bathing suit under my clothing in order to honor her decision, but I wouldn't be opposed to it.  
• It will teach us both to trust each other. When she starts learning that I trust her it will also boost her confidence.

Obviously I have to set up the choices for her decisions in some cases (she hasn't quite mastered mind reading yet). She can't necessarily pick a dinner item that we don't have in our kitchen or easily access. I also can't facilitate any decisions such as "don't go to work today". I do want to honor her choices, but feeding her and paying our bills during this process is also fairly important. 

I will do periodic recaps on the blog here. Along with photographic evidence of things like wardrobe choices, meal plans, daily itinerary adjustments, and who knows what else. 

I will start with today, she not only chose my outfit from head to toe but held my phone steady enough to capture her excellent style:

Not bad right? One of my favorite shirts, so I was super impressed. She also picked all 3 meals for she and I. She ate better/more per meal than she has in a month. If I feel that at any point in our little experiment she is getting tired of making decisions I will cut back and limit when necessary. She seems to think it is loads of fun so far. I haven't told her point blank what I am doing because I fear telling the little dear that "you are in control and can destroy me for the next 6 months" would probably not be one of my better ideas. 

What do you think? Would you let a 3 year old make any decisions for you?

Gratefully Grateful 2013 Edition

Ta da!
This is kinda like re-heating leftovers, but I have a new batch of materialistic random crap that I am extremely thankful for. If not for anyone else, this will at least be refreshing for me after the 96 posts I had to weed through in the last few glances at my Facebook newsfeed.You will notice that this is becoming a tradition, me posting what I am grateful for (see last year's edition here).
*Luckily this was saved as a draft, and finished at a later date. It will make sense soon. I am grateful that -saved draft- is an option.

1) I am grateful for prescription glasses. Well, contacts too. I haven't quite been able to bring myself to letting a doctor shoot my eyes with laser beams. I rather like being able to see, so I am thankful for glasses. I am also thankful for the old man who works at my eye doc who successfully fulfilled my request for frames that would look like "Roy Orbison and Lisa Loeb's glasses had a baby." Sidenote- I hope they fired the 18 yr old who didn't know who Roy Orbison or Lisa Loeb were.

                                                   He totally nailed it right?


2) I am grateful for Woodchuck Hard Cider. I drank a healthy amount prior to typing this. That stuff is delicioso. I can recall trying to find booze while vacationing in the Poconos (jk nobody vacations there) and it took dad and I several hours half a day to figure out how you are supposed to successfully buy alcohol there. I wound up with two 40s of Cider. Someone was winning at life that weekend, and I think it was me.

3) I am grateful for Antiques. They are the basis of my life now. If you told the history nerd 10 year old me that this is what I would be doing when I was older I would have never believed it. Or, I would have gotten one hell of a head start, and be retired by now. That realization just blew my mind.

4) I am grateful for Mylar balloons. I never really payed attention to different species of balloons until I had a child. I don't even know how latex balloons still exist, they deflate when you look at them the wrong way. Mylar balloons? Those bitches stay floating for 3+ weeks. I am looking at one in my living room right now that is going strong at 4 weeks. I usually have to have this whole "I am tired of looking at you so I am cutting you down man" scenario play out.

** At this point I have realized I am just drinking and looking around my living room and picking random things. I am surprised an "I love lamp" hasn't made its way into the list. I think for the sake of good writing I will take a little siesta and hit this up at a later juncture.

Switched rooms to blog in, regrouped, and continue:

5)  I am grateful for my family. Not in the "the sun rises and sets in their asses" kind of way. Some days it does. I am grateful for the fact that individually, everyone in my family is fairly dysfunctional, and when we all get together it is a bit of a circus. A harmonious circus. We are all guaranteed to laugh at some point too, I am severely entertained by my family and our inner workings. From the outside we might appear to some to be rather Brady Bunch, but peel that back and we are a big fat can of crazy. I seem to have married into a similar situation, however it is apparently less acceptable to divulge in the craziness of people not of your own blood.

6) I am grateful for confidence. I have never felt more confident in myself, and the direction my life is going in as I do now.

7) I am grateful for liquid eyeliner. Really makes my dirt brown eyes pop.

8) I am grateful for the library. Ever heard of one? Oh it is really neat, has books and such. You take the books home for a while, hope your toddler doesn't eat them or hide them in a toilet, and then you give them back. Last month I managed to lose my library card, but was too lazy to pay the $1 to replace it because I just knew it was "around here somewhere". Forced my husband to get a library card to make up for my  incompetence - but not before my family heard my plight and my dad pleaded with me to take a $1 to replace the card and quit being an idiot. In other related news, my child looks so forward to Storytime Saturdays. She is a regular at our library with the staff, and I couldn't be more proud.

So, I am gratefully grateful. I hope you all have a joyous Thanksgiving holiday.

Half a Decade. America.

This celebratory post is in honor of two things.

1- TODAY IS OUR ANNIVERSARY. I married that big ol lug 5 years ago. That is 1,826 days, half a decade, or more awkwardly, that would be 33 years in dog years.
I wouldn't trade a single one of those 1,826 days/33 dog years.

2- MY HUSBAND BECAME AN AMERICAN TODAY. Kind of ironic that his day of oath was scheduled to the date, 5 years from our wedding day.

American, or Canadian, I have had a limited amount of complaints with the guy. He puts up with a whole lot (whole lot) of shenanigans. I am constantly scheming things, typically insane business ventures. Steadily dragging random old stuff into our house and claiming it as decor. I buy too many shoes and I gradually takeover our entire closet (and bathroom sink respectively). I am constantly whipping up something new and delicious highly experimental in our kitchen.

But? I can count the amount of knock down drag out fights petty squabbles we have had on one hand. That is a pretty sweet track record. There is no such thing as fighting a Brett Jones. He is double my size, and has accidentally hugged me into throwing up. It helps tremendously that we have the cutest freakin' kid to direct a hefty portion of our attention. Our little trio is fairly unstoppable.

Icing on our happy little cake is that he got to ditch his green card today and be an official American citizen. We have both worked very hard over the last 5 years to get to this day, and I am very proud of him!

Here's to 5 years, looking forward to 100 more! Yes, I totally plan on the two of us being 127 and 130 years old. We will blend in perfectly with all of the antiques I am filling our house with.

Monday Wins.

My household decided to start this Monday off at 4am. FOUR O'CLOCK ANTE MERIDIEM (I know, it is too early for latin).
So, unless you are bringing me gifts at any point today, I don't want to see your face. Acceptable gift items may include but are not limited to: money, baked goods, pumpkin flavored items, or alcohol.

I am sure we can all guess who kicked off at 4am first. The kid. We took her to the fair for the first time last night. Apparently hanging out with carnies for hours and hours throws her beauty rest schedule off.
She opted for a two hour play date from 4-6am.

I have some sage parenting advice for anyone with a restless toddler in the house. This will apply for parents taking their 100th trip into their child's room to coax them back to slumber land.
You ready?
Play possum. 
There aren't any requests from your little dear for that extra story/glass of water/pillow fluff that can get through mommy acting as if she is dead to the world. Throw in some snores for good measure. Eventually the child will give up and follow suit.
60% of the time it works every time...

This parenting tip might just be as effective as my How to Potty Train Your Toddler in 3 Hours post. God bless anyone who ever takes anything I write seriously. 

Don't forget: I am still upset that it is Monday all day long, and I am still accepting gifts. 

Let's wrap up this post with some fair photos (sans the carnies):

Riding "Butterscotch" who she was convinced, was a donkey. 

Holy fun clown fish batman! That kid is having the time of her life! 

She was definitely the whitest kid in the bass boat. But not a care in the world! 

Pretty good lookin' crew eh? Those two probably shouldn't team up like that, it makes me look even shorter. 

Why Ya Wanna

Brett: "Brantley Gilbert and Jana Kramer broke up!"
Me: "I bet he finally heard one of her songs."
Brett: "Cold! Or maybe, and most likely, she finally told him about her feelings for me."
Me: "She must've heard about your extensive comic book collection... Irresistible."
Brett: "That was uncalled for."

I should have prefaced that a bit. When "Why Ya Wanna" came out Brett sang it- all the time. Horribly off key might I add. However, he also wouldn't skip a beat each time in telling me that she was going to run away with him one day. That song was almost as annoying as "Call Me Maybe". I see from a general search on the interwebs that Jana has a newer song out now called "I Hope it Rains". I would have to agree, I too, hope it rains, just loud enough to drown any chance of me hearing her (or Brett) sing.

I Miss You

...Hi, it's uh, it's me. Just dusting off the blog here, a little surprised no one has called DFCS and had her taken away from me due to neglect.

I know, I can hear you now:
"Where have you been? Who have you been seeing? Come home, the kids and I miss you!"

Shortest version possible is that I have been over here, doing work stuff. Big girl stuff, worky work, responsibilities. I could say keeping the house clean, but that is a total sham of a lie. I would lose my kid in this mess if she weren't freakishly huge for a two year old.

Another time suck lately? I have been working on legalizing my man friend. Resulting in hours of helping him study for the naturalization test. Apparently he and I learned that the President's cabinet does a lot more than "hold shit". May I point out that most citizens would not be able to answer half of these questions correctly without studying (wanna test yourself? click here). They could, however, tell you about 3 recipes they found on pinterest. Or what Miley Cyrus was wearing when she twerked herself into a media frenzy.

With the amount of ridiculously dumb people that can be found here in 'murica I was bewildered to see the crowd of folks at USCIS still trying to get in to join us. No wonder we get our feathers ruffled and cry "they take our jobs!". Well duh. Determined, bilingual individuals tend to make regular joes look like chumps. Especially if regular joes spend 99.9% of their time on facebook making typographical errors and posting pictures of themselves while drunk/something bacon related or both.
Read a book America, a book with words! 
Back to our process- Brett passed all of his tests, and is currently waiting on the final approval along with a notice to go in to take his oath. 

That short version of where I have been as of late got really out of hand didn't it?

I want to promise that I will write more often. However, I don't want to be like the husband who works "out of town" all the time, so I will cut it to you straight. If you don't see me here, take a look over at the business page. I am halfway appropriate over there. I tend to keep the sailor talk to a minimum, but some Mrs. Jones blogging is better than none right? So chin up! My sincerest gratitude to all of you who actually read the things that fall out of my mind.