First Video Game for the Budds

Our family has never owned a real video game - Nintendos, Game Cubes, X Boxes and Playstations have been requested by our children over the years, but never allowed. We always figured that they would present parenting battles for us if they were in our home. And since we are outnumbered 3 to 1 by our children, we choose our battles very carefully.

Of course, when this new system came out, our children begged for it also. But since it is a video game, we automatically said, “no”. They kept telling us how different this was from all the other games and we pretty much ignored them. Then our family was at Jesse and Jessica Sportsman’s home a couple of months ago and played with their Wii. My precious children and loving husband really enjoyed tormenting and mocking me. The fact that I actually have less electronic athletic ability than real athletic ability surprised no one. Everyone has animated stories about watching me try to catch balls in our backyard. Apparently, it is very funny.

What we did notice was how interactive this game was. It didn’t seem to promote the the ‘zoning out’ that other games tend to do. We actually liked it. So, still tentatively, we broke down and agreed to letting our children purchase it. (We have much better things to do with our money - like eat.)

Daniel (13) cleans a decent amount of carpet with his dad, gets paid for it and, for the most part, saves his money. (A Wii and an extra controller cost $300! That’s enough money to feed our family for almost a week. - Wow!) So, I took him and Daniel Smith to Best Buy this morning, stood in line (?) and waited for the store to open. He walked out of there hugging his new toy.

David is walking!

In the last week David has gone from taking a step here and there to walking all the way across the room. In a couple of days crawling will be a thing of the past for him. He is almost eleven months now and weighs a whopping 15 pounds. All of the Budd children (except Daniel) were such little things. Everyone who sees him is just amazed that such a little guy can walk. It seems normal to me - they all were pretty early walkers.

Walking, of course, will open up a whole new world for him. He will be able to reach, grab and spill everything in site. Michaela is just coming out of that stage now. (I am glad that I married a carpet cleaner!) If he is like Michaela, he will be climbing the fence in no time at all. Although, he seems to be much calmer than the average Budd child. (Elissa was my other calm child.) I have done my time with the wild ones and earned another calm child. God knows how old and tired I am. It is true, even at my age, that part of me still really does enjoy the noise and chaos. My house is full of life and it shows, all the time. But, I am not objecting if God has seen fit to give me a quiet, compliant one.

Sleeping in the tub

Five-year-olds beg to sleep in the bathtub. It is an adventure. All a child in the Buddhouse would have to do was express a passing desire and I would throw her a pillow, blanket and turn out the lights. No questions asked. This was no great feat on my part. Easy as Pie. But . . . at some point they outgrow that.

Today something miraculous happened. But let me back up. Space is a very precious thing in a house with eight people. As even our frequent guests can attest, privacy does not exist in any way, shape or form here. Since we homeschool and run a business from our home, we want to provide as much sanctuary as possible for everyone. If we are all going to be in the same house all the time, let’s at least give everyone a small little corner they can call their own.

Stina will be home for the summer in a little more than a week. We are all ecstatic about this but the question remains, “Where will we put her?”

I was planning on putting the younger ones in the same room and giving one of their rooms to Stina. She complained that the bright colors on their walls would hurt her eyes, give her headaches and she would die. (Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a bit here, but not much.) So that wasn’t optional. None of the older children wanted to bunk with a toddler either, go figure.

Daniel had already sacrificed his room on two different occasions for almost a year each when we had house guests living with us. So he was starting to whine when that looked like that was where we were heading again. Elissa gets up really early for work and is very particular about her things, so everyone is afraid to share a room with her. Stina and Sarah don’t share the same level of cleanliness and putting them together threatened to disrupt the peace in our household.

There are absolutely no more rooms in our home. Before our fifth child was born, I even put up walls in my laundry room so Daniel would have a space of his own. Sure it is only 9×10, but it is his. So I am searching out every square inch of our home, trying to find a solution - wishing for the days when they would beg to sleep in the bathtub.

And then it came to me: The closet underneath the stairs! Who could I gently convince that inhabiting this 6×3 space for his or her room was almost as fun as sleeping the the bathtub. Now, sleeping in there every night wasn’t really an option but the girls in our house have an every night slumber party anyway. (Girl talk is pretty much a 24/7 thing here and they wouldn’t dream of missing those last few moments together each evening.) I really needed a place where one girl could just put her precious belongings and have a little sanctuary.

So I picked the right moment and started in on Sarah, our twelve-year-old. After we spoke, she wanted to do all that she could to make our summer magnificent. (It does help that living with Christina is pretty much just a constant party anyway.) So she eagerly and happily agreed to move into the closet under the stairs for the summer.

The problem was. This is what it looked like:

So we spent the night getting rid of boxes and boxes of stuff that we will probably never miss anyway. As you can see, this closet had become the place that the children would stuff things instead of finding the correct place when I told them to put it away. Then Sarah chose the leftover gray paint from the bathroom (it must have reminded her of her bathtub sleeping adventures) and I painted it. I got some wood and we put up a couple of shelves and . . . this is what it looks like now.

Less junk and more room. Happy, peaceful children. Who could argue with that?

Elissa’s Drinking Water

Sure the Budd children mildly resemble other normal children . . . but behind closed doors they are all really quite strange.

You would think that I could leave Michaela’s bathtub crayons within reach of my 13-year-old son, Daniel without too many problems. But this is proof that almost nothing is sacred to them. Even the toilets in our home aren’t safe.

William’s Doll

I found this link on youtube - if you are any younger than I am (42) this will probably seem pretty odd to you but it gives me warm fuzzies! My family didn’t have many albums but we did own this one and we listened to it all the time.

Boys and Dolls

Okay - I am not a man. I totally get the fact that when God gave me two boys, He knew that I couldn’t teach them how to grow up and be men. Only a man can teach a boy how to be a man. If my two boys grow up to be exactly like their father, not only will I be happy, the whole world will be blessed. But still. . .

Is it totally necessary to freak out if my eight-month-old son, David, crawls over to a doll that his two-year-old sister left on the floor and touches it?

I guess I grew up with Free to Be You and Me crowd. Sure, Alan Alda and Marlo Thomas are not the role models I would choose for myself and my children, but really - is it so bad for a boy to have a doll. I really do agree with the reasoning presented in the following song:

When my friend William was five years old
He wanted a doll, to hug and hold
“A doll,” said William, “is what I need
To wash and clean, and dress and feed

“A Doll to give a bottle to
And put to bed when day is through
And any time my doll gets ill
I’ll take good care of it,” said my friend Bill

A doll, a doll, William wants a doll
Don’t be a sissy said his best friend Ed
Why should a boy want to play with a doll
Dolls are for girls said his cousin Fred
Don’t be a jerk, said his older brother
“I know what to do,” said his father to his mother

So his father bought him a basketball
A badminton set, and that’s not all
A bag of marbles, a baseball glove
And all the things a boy would love

And Bill was good at every game
Enjoyed them all, but all the same
When Billy’s father praised his skill
“Can I please have a doll now,” said my friend Bill

A doll, a doll, William wants a doll
A doll, a doll, William wants a doll

Then William’s grandma arrived one day
And wanted to know what he liked to play
And Bill said, “Baseball’s my favorite game
I like to play, but all the same

“I’d give my bat and ball and glove
To have a doll that I could love”
“How very wise,” his grandma said
Said Bill, “but everyone says this instead”

A doll, a doll, William wants a doll
A doll, a doll, William wants a doll

So William’s grandma, as I’ve been told
Bought William a doll, to hug and hold
And William’s father began to frown
But grandma smiled, and calmed him down

Explaining, William wants a doll
So when he has a baby someday
He’ll know how to dress it, put diapers on double
And gently caress it to bring up a bubble
And care for his baby as every good father
Should learn to do

William has a doll, William has a doll
‘Cause someday he is gonna be a father, too

My husband is an EXCELLENT father. He spends tons and tons of time with our children. I have never seen a man who is so totally head-over-heals in love with all of his children. I do trust his judgment and I will continue to rip the innocent little toys out of my curious son’s hands in order to appease my husband but I don’t feel like it is a big deal at all if a boy has a doll. (Especially at eight months - he plays with anything that is within his reach.)

I know that as soon as I blink my eyes, he will be old enough for fireworks and will attempt to blow up Michaela’s dolls. My brother, who is three years younger than I am, got a tool set when I was six or seven. The first thing he did was saw off the noses of most of my dolls. I think this is normal behavior and I expect that David will do those kinds of things. So really, how necessary is my husband’s vendetta against dolls?