So I had a little bit of drama a couple of days ago.

You know I love to take pictures of my kids. I have tens of thousands of them on Flickr, dating from their birth (well, before, actually.) And I don’t watermark them. I don’t keep my Flickr photostream private, but I do try to prevent people from downloading the larger image sizes. (Of course anyone with half a brain can take any picture they want from anywhere on the web, it just might not be very high quality.)

So, inevitably, someone takes advantage of this, and misappropriates my photos. It’s happened on blogs (one woman claimed my boys were GGB triplets), but I’ve never had a problem getting them removed.

About a year and a half ago, I got a message on my Flickr account from someone who said she was Facebook friends with a woman who had hundreds of photos of the boys in her private profile. She didn’t know this woman personally, but rather through writing and poetry message boards. She was no longer friends with this woman, but at some point she took a screenshot of the albums on the woman’s Facebook profile so I could see.

Remember, this was January 2012, before everyone had public cover photos. I went to the woman’s profile, but she had it very secure. I couldn’t message her, I couldn’t friend her, I couldn’t see anything except her profile picture (which was nothing incriminating.) I tried to get Facebook to look into the issue of my photos inside her profile, but they wouldn’t do anything. All I had was the screenshot.

So I kind of forgot about it. It really didn’t worry me or anything. I know this is part of sharing photos online. It’s a risk that I am willing to take.

Fast-forward to Monday. I was reading a new message in my Flickr account and just randomly decided to check on that crazy lady’s profile again. And voila, she had a photo of my boys as her cover photo!

Immediately, I reported the picture. There were so many things wrong with this, but in the end I decided to report that she had pictures of MY underage children on her page.

A few hours later, FB responded, saying this did not violate their community standards.

Uh, okay, Facebook. So I reported it again, this time as a copyright violation. And the photo was finally removed.

Now to tackle the hundreds inside her profile….

It came to my attention not too long ago that Oliver was no longer sucking his thumb. I didn’t think much of it, and I just assumed my low-key approach (i.e., ignore and hope it goes away) had worked.

Tonight, I thought to ask him if he really didn’t suck his thumb anymore, and if so, why not?

“Remember right before our country’s birthday, the glow-stick broke on my hand? That’s why.”

So, kind of neurotic, but pretty smart, I think. Hey, whatever works! I think I might market glow-stick liquid as a thumb-sucking deterrent.

The other day I posted some pictures from the pool with my new waterproof camera, and last weekend, I got to take it for a spin again. We went to a birthday party at the Cool Zoo (the splash pad at the, um, Zoo, if that wasn’t obvious) and I mostly got water droplets on the lens. But some cute pics…

I just have to document Monday so when I have a stressful day in the future, I can come back to this post and get some perspective.

7:50 am: Leave for work. The Corolla (the car I drive in the summer, since George drives the boys to camp in the van) has a low tire. I decide to stop at Walgreens on the way to get some Fix-a-Flat in case I need it. When I get there, I look in the trunk and there’s a can! The tire is a little low, so I decide to fill it up with the Fix-a-Flat.

Apparently the can of F-a-F is old, because after I have it attached to the tire, it explodes all over me. Up my arm, on my sweater, and some splashes on my face. Nothing dangerous, but I now smell like a gas pump. (Not the worst smell in the world for about five seconds, and then it gets old fast.)

I go into Walgreens and buy another can of F-a-F. The cashier notes that the can smells like gas. No, I respond, that’s just me.

Thankfully, the application of the newer can goes smoothly and all seems well. I drive to work.

12:45: I leave work to head back across the river to pick up the boys from camp. They have a checkup at the dentist.

1:45: We are almost to the dentist’s office when the car starts making a strange sound and is shaking. From the backseat, the boys helpfully inform me that we have a flat tire. Fortunately, we are right by a gas station and so I pull in, and we all go inside to buy more Fix-a-Flat. This time, everything goes smoothly and the tire inflates. I determine that after the dentist, we’ll go to Sam’s, which is right around the corner, for a new tire.

2:00: Dentist appointment! It all goes very smoothly. No cavities!

3:00: We arrive at Sam’s. I am informed by the gentleman behind the tire counter that the wait will be 3 hours. There are twelve cars in front of me. A little piece of me dies. There is nothing I can do, really. I would rather entertain my children in Sam’s than at a random tire place that stinks of rubber. So I say okay.

The next three and a half hours:

It wasn’t all fun and games. At one point, I peeled the boys away from the iPad display (which was very handy for me, as I was able to keep my phone charged) so we could go wander the aisles, and an older woman working a sample station said, “oh, triplets! how terrible! I feel so sorry for you!” (or something intensely negative, along those lines.) I looked at her with disbelief and said, “no! I am very lucky!” I mean, it’s not as if the boys were doing anything obnoxious at that point. So we went to drool over the cupcakes (downside of Sam’s: couldn’t buy the boys one cupcake. And I wasn’t going to buy them thirty. At least they give out cookies at the bakery section.) and a few minutes later, the woman came back over to me and apologized. I couldn’t believe it. She said she didn’t mean it the way it came out, and my boys were beautiful and well-behaved, blah dee blah blah. So that was actually pretty nice to hear.

But THEN. We had been there about two hours. We were walking over to the tire department to check on how things were moving along, and one of the boys walked in front of someone’s cart. No big deal, he got out of the way, but then I heard this evil bitter old hag say to her friend something like, “that woman needs to control her kids.”

OH, HELL NO.

I was SO mad. I called over to her, “EXCUSE ME? I CAN HEAR YOU!” She just looked over and kept saying nasty things to her friend and kept walking. I was SO angry. HOW DARE SHE? What did she want? For me to have all three of them holding hands, silently, walking carefully? They’re kids. They’re five. We were in Sam’s, not a china shop. It took everything in me not to curse loudly at her, but the boys were looking at me, wondering why I was so angry all of a sudden. Man, I am getting pissed just thinking about it. They weren’t even misbehaving. Now, had she seen them while they were running down the aisles and playing hide-and-go-seek, I might have been SLIGHTLY more understanding and might have just flipped her off behind her back. But this…ugh.

We were sitting at a table in the cafe area having Icees when I saw her leave with her friend. I took a picture. It made me feel better.

Anyway, some time after that, our car was done! At least it was cheap.

Got home, and I immediately escaped and went to the pool to relax and unwind. Ahhhh….

You’d think the kids whose mom takes a gajillion pictures of them would be better behaved than this, right?

Not so much.

(Sing as if to Journey song.)

Took this picture of Oliver in the shower last night and couldn’t help but compare it to this picture of him in the bath three years ago. Awww!

I have a new post over at the New Orleans Moms Blog today, a very “you young people and your fancy doodads” post.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Top 13 Things Heard as a Parent of Multiples. I am working on a sequel, because there’s just so much more good stuff you hear when you have multiples.

Back in May I wrote a post about taking monthly photos of your children. My monthly photos page is pretty much the most visited page on this blog, so if you want to read more about it, you can.

If you live in New Orleans, I hope you’ll join us for our first Moms Night Out. It’s going to be seriously amazing. The swag bags are worth WAY more than the ticket price, and there will be food and adult beverages and great conversation. Hope to see you there on August 10!

And while you’re here, can you click on the “Top Mommy Blogs” button over to the right? I just want to get back into the top 25.

The library across the street (diagonally) from our house re-opened! Finally! It’s been closed for years, and we’d lost hope that it’d ever reopen, but hooray, it actually is open! So exciting. It’s pretty tiny, but there are enough books for the boys to “read” and I can always get them sent to this library. Now, I never have an excuse for a fine again. (Actually, I never did, considering the drop box has always been right across the street (diagonally.)

Returning books

Perusing the shelves

Looking for our house out the window (it’s next door to the one you can see there.)

Also, we have a pumpkin plant growing in our backyard. That would be from one of the ones we got back in October. I wonder if anything will come of it?

Legos are all the rage in our house right now. Aunt Jenny got the boys some building sets from the Lego store, and Mommy has spent the evenings putting things together and back together. It’s okay, it’s fun.

(I love this new love of Legos. I’ve already started planning their 6th birthday party. Guess what the theme will be?)

I bought a new point-and-shoot the other day. I’ve been wanting one, and when I saw one on sale at Sam’s, that was waterproof, no less, I was sold. I’ve been wanting to take better pictures of the boys at the pool, but not enough to risk my two most beloved devices, my iPhone or my Canon 7D.

It’s so fun! Look at the pictures I got!

So fun!

PS: This is the camera I got.
http://rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=pamsbooklinks&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00ATM1MF6

The other night, I was watching Oliver sleep (not in a creepy “Love You Forever” way, just a “checking in before I went to sleep” way) and was struck by how much he reminded me of his newborn self. So I took a blurry picture, and sure enough…same kid, for sure.

Not to be confused with the other comparison shot we have of Oliver from his younger days…

And, that should cover the last few days. Whew.