Soccer, Jelly Beans, and Kate plus 8

Well, the World Cup came, saw and conquered our household. I now have a confession to make.

I like the sound of the vuvuzelas. I'm going to miss them.

We had a few people over this afternoon to watch the game and eat BBQ, chips and summer corn. Yum! The girls went down for naps early but then woke up before the game was over. They actually woke up prior to the winning goal by Spain, but that's beside the point.

What's right on the point is that they were awake and active for the finale so I made the brilliant choice to try to keep them out of the hair of the gathering of soccer fanatics by giving them jelly beans (oh my! I just realized that "fan" is from the same root word as "fanatic" and I think my head might explode with the joy of recognition and my delight in the English language!).

My misstep was in giving them jelly beans. Mia and Maggie offered jelly beans to each person without prejudice. One friend, Ben, we actually privileged to get a jelly bean Maggie had already taste-tested for him. We watched her put the bean to her mouth, lick it, decide it was a no-go for her taste buds, then walk up to a distracted Ben and simply pop it into his mouth.

I cringed, Isaiah yelped, and Ben said, "No problem!" and munched away. I think it was cinnamon flavored. I know it was red.

Shortly after my daughter shared spit with a guest as a sign of hospitality she decided to help our friend Jake get a little more comfortable. This involved putting jelly beans down his shirt so that he could have an “egg hunt.” Best as I could tell from that game, Jake was the field, the beans were the eggs and Maggie was the searcher and hider all wrapped into one.

In addition, in order to really help Jake feel the warmth of our hospitality, Maggie sailed by with her bowl of jelly beans and reclined Jake with no warning. He was understandably surprised when his feet popped out from under him and his head dropped four inches as his torso leaned back. He might have squealed a little but I wouldn’t write that here for fear he would feel a bit unmanly. After all, a squeal in addition to becoming an egg pasture might give him a complex.

That's what you get when you relax and stop watching your back around here. On your toes, men, on your toes.

After a bit more jelly bean fun the girls retired to the bathroom to hide under the sink.

One of the treats of moving from an apartment so small you could hit one wall while standing at the other with the seeds from a watermelon-spitting contest is that when you get to the "Big House" you don't have enough stuff to fill every crevice. Our bathroom cabinet has been empty from the get-go, which translates into Mia & Maggie believing that under the sink is their own personal hidey hole. They are constantly crawling underneath and playing games. As long as they leave the plumbing alone, I’m ok with it.

Finally, after we finished the soccer watching season of joy and got the girls to bed I watched Kate plus 8. Such a bummer! I was a HUGE Jon & Kate plus 8 fan back in the day when they weren't divorced and Jon wasn't paying Lindsay Lohan's dad to be his friend. I've been with this show from the beginning (another byproduct of Maggie's infancy and nocturnal tendencies). I knew Kate post-babies, pre-tummy tuck.

As much as I liked the show before their lives turned into a disaster, on her own I just felt sorry for Kate and also a little exasperated at how she played to the camera. I guess I should accept that reality television is never going to be quite right.

Which is a reason why I’ve decided our good friends who just found out they are expecting TRIPLETS shouldn’t be on a reality show! Sometimes privacy is a good thing for a family. :)