I had to buy Monkey Girl a pair of black pants for her band concert, on Thursday, and so after school, she and I headed to the Walmarts.

(No idea why, but I just love to call it “The Walmarts.”)

We picked up a few pair of black pants and she headed into the changing room, and I said, “I’ll be right across the aisle, looking at the…”

And before I finished my sentence, she muttered over her shoulder, “…wallets…I know.”

I am constantly on the search for a wallet.

Every store I go in, I spend a good fifteen minutes in the wallet section.

I don’t really know what I want in a wallet.

I go between wanting a folding wallet that will take up less space in my purse and a long wallet that might have a little more space for things like gift cards and courtesy cards, etc.

I don’t have a very large purse, so space is important, but I’m just not always sure that a folding wallet is what I want.

Right now, I have one of those long, hard case wallets, like this:

Except, mine has butterflies on it.

Because, you know, I’m 41.

For awhile, I was carrying a Vera Bradley strap wallet that was a wallet attached to a strap that went over your shoulder, so it was like a purse, except you couldn’t actually carry anything in it except for your money and credit cards, etc.

It worked really well for a long time, but I really need somewhere to carry my inhaler and my chapstick.

So, the purse I am using now is a hand-me-down Coach purse like this:

Although, I am saving up for this purse, because I haven’t had a purse that wasn’t a hand-me-down in a very, very long time:

(JBZS…if you are reading this, Monkey Girl confiscated the purse you gave me for Christmas…she says it makes her feel “sassy.”)

So, anyway, I am always on the search for a wallet.

Whenever Real Man walks into a department store or a mall, he is on the search for shoes, because he wears through his work shoes faster than Baby Monkey wears through Batman costumes.

What about you?

Is there anything you are constantly searching for, but never quite find, while shopping?

I’d love to hear about it!  Let Real Man and I know that we aren’t alone!

So, I went ahead and made my own font.

My own, personal, handwriting font, so that I could write the blog in my own handwriting. I bit the bullet and bought the iFont Maker for the iPad and spent some time writing my own font.

However, now that I look at it, I’m not sure I’m digging it in blog form. I mean, it’s cool to see typing in my handwriting. However, it’s kinda clunky when I see it on the screen.

Plus, it’s a bit of work to actually get the blog in this font. I can’t just select it.

There’s HTML code involved and it has to be written in front of every single line I type.

As you all know, some days, I can get a little wordy.

Not my idea of fun.

So, we’ll see.

I’ll use it for today, but we’ll just have to see what I decide to do in the future.

Thoughts? Because I’d really like to know if this makes it harder for you to read the blog. If so, maybe I’ll just use the font to write on photos and things. You are the readers and so your opinion matters the most on this.

For 2013, I believe I will try to be joining Jodi in her 52 project. A year of portraits, of my children, posted every Wednesday. A series of photographs capturing moments from a year in their lives. A way to watch the passage of time and to pause and capture those little moments that are the essence of them.

Jodi has a link-up on her blog for those participating. It is so much fun to check out what other people are photographing.  Enjoy!

Nothing special happening in these pictures.

Just after dinner on a Tuesday night.

Quite a weekend around here.

It started with Tiny and I being sick and ended with everyone sick except for Real Man.

Luckily for the monkeys, the 24-hour stomach bug seems to be just that.

For me, what my doctor told me, on Friday, was a viral infection turned into the gajillion hour stomach bug.

Monkey Girl and Baby didn’t get hit until Sunday night and Monkey in the Middle survived until Monday at precisely 3:02 pm, so we were able to get in some fun.

There were games to be played, a visit to the mall, two hockey games, snuggling, playing on the iPad, a Red Cross Babysitting course, costumes, pantry rearranging, and finally, as one falls asleep at the table, signaling round three with the virus in our house, one starts smiling again.

So, I’ve been kind of down for the count this weekend, and I’ve caught up on all of my DVR’d shows and then moved onto flipping through the 30,000 HBO channels.

I came across “Cheaper by the Dozen,” which was about twenty minutes in.

I was interested because I remembered the book from many years ago, and, to be honest, it has Tom Welling and Piper Perabo in it, and I’ll pretty much watch anything with Tom Welling and/or Piper Perabo.

The book was all about living frugally and relying on each other in tough times, and so that’s pretty much what I was expecting from the movie.

I was severely disappointed.

The movie centers on the Baker family.

Mom, Dad, 12 kids.

Dad is a football coach and Mom is a stay-at-home Mom who manages the brood.

Their oldest daughter is grown and out of the house, they have a son who is a quarterback of the hometown football team, and a daughter who is a junior or sophomore, and the rest of the kids range from about 12 to 4 or 5.

Dad gets a big-time job coaching a college football team with an old friend of his and so he uproots the family to move to a suburb of Chicago.

Gorgeous house in a swanky neighborhood where everyone is preppy and…mannered.

The Baker kids are not.

So, just as they move to the new home, Mom gets a book deal for a book she has written…titled “Cheaper by the Dozen” and she needs to go on a book tour to promote the book, leaving Dad at home to care for the kids for two weeks.

Dad can’t seem to manage taking care of the kids (who are in school all day) and doing his job and chaos erupts.

They try to call in the oldest sister, but the kids hate her boyfriend (Ashton Kutcher) and so they soak his underwear in meat and sic the dog on him.

Sister and boyfriend leave, leaving Dad in the lurch.

Here’s why I didn’t like the movie.

I generally am not a fan of movies that involve kids behaving badly, however, they usually learn their lesson by the end.

Love the Nanny McPhee movies, because she teaches them more than just how to behave and they are completely different kids by the end.

Also, the kids in those movies are misbehaving because they are adjusting to some tragedy or trauma.

These Baker kids had it made.

They were just jerks.

Every time these kids misbehaved or cooked up some scheme, they got their way.

Don’t want the boyfriend around?

Soak his underwear in meat and he leaves.  They don’t have to apologize…they just lose their allowance for a month.

Want Mom to come home from her book tour?

Act like complete animals and guess what?  She cuts the tour short and comes home.

Not a great message.

I also am completely not down with the fact that both parents gave up when the going got tough.

Instead of believing in her husband, Mom comes home from the tour.

Instead of sitting down and talking with his wife and children about ways that they could all work together to make their new lives work, he quits the new job.

I understand the whole concept that the family is the most important thing, but the message is sent in completely the wrong way.

When those kids grow up, if things get tough, are they just going to give up, because that’s what their parents did?

Bad message.

I’m also against the whole “Dad as bumbling idiot” and “Men as completely inept” message that many movies send in their efforts to be funny.

That’s not funny.

It’s pathetic.

I thought it was pathetic that this man couldn’t take care of his children.

Kids were being neglected, behaving horrifically and he pretty much threw his hands up with an “This is too much for me.”

Seriously?

You’re the Dad.

If your wife can do it, then so can you.

Personally, I find nothing sexier than confidence and competence.

Real Man bathing the kids, helping with homework, washing the dishes, etc. then heading to work or off to play hockey?

Good stuff.

If he threw up his hands with a “You’re leaving???  What am I supposed to do with the kids?” every time I needed to be somewhere, we’d have a huge problem on our hands.

I think the majority of women feel this way, so I’m always surprised when movies portray men this way.

Finally, as a working Mom, I was offended by the fact that the only way the family could survive was if Mom was home.

She had to sideline any hope of her own path, her own career, because no one at home could manage without her.

Really?

I strive to raise independent children who can make good, solid decisions for themselves whether I’m there or not.  That’s how I know I’ve done a good job.

If my kids act like animals the second I’m away, then I haven’t done my job at all.

So, the fact that she had to give up the book tour and her own dreams (yes, her book still hits the bestseller list, but you see what I’m saying) so that her children would behave is not a mark in her favor, in my book.

And please note, this is not a knock at stay-at-home Mom’s.

It’s a knock at the perception that a family cannot be happy, loving and thriving unless Mom is home.

So, while it was a cute movie…some cute moments, nice how much they all love each other, Tom Welling…I was upset at the messages that the movie sent and disappointed that it strayed so far from the original premise of the book.

I recently bought a stylus for my iPad.

I had a gift card from my birthday and I had been thinking about getting an app called “iFont Maker” for the iPad, and figured it would be easier to work through it with a stylus, so I decided to use part of the gift card on the stylus.

However, I have yet to purchase the app, because, in thinking about it, I’m not sure what I would use my own font for, so I’m using the stylus for other things that don’t really require a stylus.

Words with Friends.

Facebook.

Twitter.

When I use the stylus I feel like Mr. Pitt, cutting up his Snickers bar with a fork and knife.

Seinfeld, anyone?

The stylus makes me feel like a complete and utter snooty pants.

Baby Monkey, of course, finds the stylus very useful in his physics games, because he can move gears and levers around with more precision than with his thick, little fingers.

Me?

To justify the purchase, I’m even turning the pages in my Nook books with the stylus to justify my owning it.

Ridiculous.

So, let me know I’m not alone.

What purchases have you made, only to realize, once you made them, that what you bought had no redeeming value in your life whatsoever?

Leave your stories in the comments below…I look forward to reading them!

As an only child, I really have a hard time gauging what is normal sibling squabbling and what is not.

As the youngest of four, Real Man is often able to give me a better perspective on it all.

Perhaps it’s my unfamiliarity with the ways of siblings, but I also seem to have less of a tolerance for all of it.

There are other things that are a flash point for Real Man, but for me, there are some nights when I think that if I hear “He touched me!” “She’s pushing me!” “He grabbed that out of my hand!” my head is going to explode.

Monday night was one of those nights.

On Monday nights, we’re all a little grumpy.

First day back after the weekend, long days at work, long days at school…it’s always an adjustment.

So, after dinner, as the children were literally climbing over each other to get into the pantry to find a little treat for dessert, and my ears were already ringing with “She’s stepping on me!” “He’s grabbing my dessert!” and my favorite “No Fair!”, Real Man met my eyes across the table and knew I was right at the edge.

“Okay!” he bellowed.  “Enough!”

And, in his patient, infinite wisdom, he created the “4 Square Rule.”

From now on, when they are just too much in each others space and they refuse to get along, they need to stay four kitchen tiles away from each other.

Doesn’t sound like much, but we have some pretty big kitchen tiles.

Here’s my foot in one of the tiles and I’m a size 8.

It worked like a charm for two reasons:

1.  Their arms aren’t long enough to reach each other from four squares away.

Monkey Girl’s legs could have reached, but she’s not a kicker.

2.  They were all so engaged in making sure they were four squares away from each other, they forgot to fight, they started to laugh, and they started to work together to figure out ways around Dad’s rule.

Often, I’m the voice of reason in this house.

But only Real Man has the ability to turn tears into laughter around here.

And I’m so grateful.