Happy Birthday, Baby Daddy

It's my baby daddy's birthday today. I think he would want me to show you this photo:

Or maybe one of his world-traveling ones:

But to me, he's not the soldier or the world traveler, he's my Sweet Baby Daddy.

The one who teaches the kids how to dunk.

And the best places to hide in hide-and-seek

He's our IT guy

And our most reliable mode of transportation

He appreciates a good dog pile

And isn't afraid of kid-filth

He's in charge of all of our adventures

And always has time to read a book

Or two

And he never complains when I make him dress up like Man in the Yellow Hat

Or a scurvy pirate

Or a superhero

Although he might change his mind after he sees this year's costume.....

So to my Sweet Baby Daddy, a big happy birthday - and many more-

Food is My Friend

I had to go into the office today for a meeting, and spent an hour and forty minutes in the car to get there...but luckily when I got there, the downstairs deli had bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches waiting for me. So I felt better.

Then my boss hijacked my meeting, and used up an hour and forty-five minutes of my allotted two hours. Since I had an hour-long presentation to give, we then had to extend the meeting another hour. But luckily the downstairs deli had the Kenny Rogers sandwich - which is packed full of roast beef, turkey, provolone, and unadulterated love. So I felt better.

Then this afternoon I had to put Jack into timeout three times while playing outside with his friends because he kept fighting, and while I was dealing with that, Ellie dug up Jared's flower beds to 'bury treasure' in our garage, and then I had to sit through a boring-ass den meeting with Jack. (And by the way, I REALLY don't recall my parents spending this much time on our activities. I recall my mom dropping me off, then forgetting to pick me up from our activities.) But luckily there is a Cold Stone Creamery on the way home from scouts - well, if you take the long way around and don't go directly home, there is. And they had peanut butter cups you could mix into the chocolate ice cream. So I felt better.

So pretty much, food is my friend.

P.S. - I can't seem to lose these stubborn 10 pounds. Any suggestions?

Fun With Laundry

It's laundry day, and I'm switching the first of many loads from the washer to the dryer. And I discover .... seemingly pounds of that wooden mulch stuff that you find at playgrounds. Which apparently traveled into the washer inside someone's pockets. You know, someone who spends a lot of time at a mulch-filled playground. You know, someone who likes to put things in her pockets.

Mom: "Ellie, come here please!"
Ellie: "Oh, cool, you found my TREASURE! I wasn't sure where that was. I'm done with it - you can have it!"

And she skips off.

Leaving me with a washer full of mulch.

I love laundry day.

Go Pete! (Part II)

So my brother Pete, who is running for the Gainesville, VA, supervisor seat, won his primary recently, and is now heading toward the finish line at the general election in November. So Jared and I went out to support him at the Election Countdown the other night. They had a really good turnout - and a few of the folks weren't even politicians! Pete (and Robyn) did a great job, and we had a fun little after-party at his house later. Of course, since my kids aren't as hard core as his are (those kids are HARD CORE, my friends), keeping them up that late ending up costing us some sanity later that night and the next morning. But hey, it was worth it to celebrate Pete's candidacy...and remind myself why I'm not hard core enough to be in politics.

Go Pete!

TMI

Jared says that my side of the family is too private - perhaps true, but am I wrong in thinking that there are SOME things that one shouldn't share with the general public? Like, I don't know, your challenges with diarrhea?

Mom: "Well, Jack, looks like you're all better! You'll be fine to go back to school tomorrow"
Jack: "Yeah, and I'll tell them all about my diarrhea"
Mom: "Well, you don't really have to tell them about your diarrhea specifically - you can just say that you were sick but now you're better"
Jack: "But I did have diarrhea"
Mom: "Yes, that's true, but that's not really a nice thing to talk about with people"
Jack: "Oh, well, then I'll just tell them I had liquidy poops"
Mom: "Well, I think maybe just saying 'sick' would be just fine"
Jack: "But then I'd be a liar liar pants on fire!"
Mom: "What, having liquidy poops doesn't qualify as sick? I think it does"
Ellie: "Ooh, I have a plan* - Jack can just say he had a runny nose!"
Mom: "Well, no, that would be a lie because he didn't have a runny nose"
Jack: "Yeah, I had a runny butt! Heh, heh, I said runny butt, isn't that funny?"
Mom: "Yeah, hilarious, but really, I think that's a little personal, we can just say sick"
Jack: "But that doesn't even make sense!"
Ellie: "I still think my plan is a good one"
Mom: [Banging proverbial head against proverbial brick wall] "OK, just tell everyone you had diarrhea"
Jack: "Or liquidy poops"
Mom: "Right, or liquidy poops"

*Ellie always has a plan

Off the Evil List

My Jack has gotten himself off the Evil List. Poor kid is home sick today, putting me in a bind since I had several telephone meetings already scheduled. But he has been a DREAM. I set him up next to my desk with the iPad and some snacks, and the kid has just been hanging out with me, entertaining himself.

How can a kid go from Devil to Angel in one day?

I guess that pretty much defines kids, though, huh.

Evil Twins

Ellie wore a ponytail yesterday to church, and she told me she thought she could trick her teacher into thinking she wasn't really Ellie, she was Ellie's sister. I told her I thought her teacher would know, but hey, Ellie's 4, and doesn't really believe much that I say. So apparently she acted up quite a bit during class, and every time her teacher would say "Ellie...", Ellie would say "I'm not Ellie, I'm Ellie's evil twin!"

Well, apparently she wasn't kidding, and Jack's evil twin has joined us as well. Because we drove carpool today and....brace yourself....their friend Jacob sat in Jack's seat and then their friend Gracie wouldn't sit next to Ellie. Oh. My. The. Horror. Let me break it down for you.

(1) Jack, I mean, Jack's Evil Twin yelled and screamed at his friend, jumped out of the car, and ran to the front door, screaming that he wasn't going to school today. When Jared (who got back into town today and had the morning off) offered to walk him separately to school, Jack's Evil Twin stuck his head back into the car and yelled "see ya later!" in the meanest way a 6-year-old can muster.

(2) Meanwhile, Ellie's Evil Twin threw her booster seat out of the car onto the lawn. Because that's how we roll. Then when I forced her into her seat and closed the doors, she proceeded to scream the entire way to school. Our poor friends sat in the backseat, shell-shocked with their hands over their ears.

Both Evil Twins have lost their iPad/computer/Wii privileges, and I'm planning out which baked goods I need to offer the neighbors as an apology.

Oh, and I expect my Mother of the Year Award to arrive in the mail anytime now.

Birthday Party Fun

You know, yesterday morning, I pretty much wanted to sell my kids on eBay and run for the border. Let's just say they were being very 'spirited,' 'active,' and 'feisty.' But I sucked it up because it was the day of Jack's birthday party and I figured it'd be bad form time-wise.

Well, I'm glad I stuck it out, because we had a BLAST at the birthday party.

Jack decided that he wanted to have a joint birthday party with two neighborhood buddies (Noah and Will (aka "Dubs")) who had birthdays the same week as Jack. So I got with the other two moms and we planned out a laser tag party for all the kids on the block. We started out the afternoon by decorating our team tee shirts. Then it was an hour-and-a-half of laser tag craziness, followed by pizza and cupcakes. By the time the party ended, my usually sleep-avoiding-Jack-and-Ellie were ready to zonk out. So I call that a success!



Decorating our team tee shirts. True to form, the boys scribbled their names on their tee shirts and were on their way, while the girls colored, swirled, and practically bedazzled their shirts.

Although we bought an equal number of blue and red shirts in various sizes, the reds were much more popular with the little ones (leading later on to frequent losses by the young'en red team)

Laser Tag Brian instructed the players on the rules - when he mentioned getting 'killed,' one crying girl had to be comforted by her parents, so he assured the rest that it was just FAKE killing

Go Team Red!

And there's Team Blue! You'll notice the big kid shows up on two teams. The poor guy had a recent growth spurt - neither colored shirt would fit him, so he roved between teams.

Ready, set, go! Ellie really turned out to have the Eye of the Tiger, and was a killing machine

It touched my heart to hear all the parents scream "kill the little one! kill her!"

All the 'dead' kids, waiting for the next game to start. As you can see, they didn't really mind being dead and all.

Since the red team was a bit out-matured by the other team, Laser Tag Brian gave them a leg-up with some extra 'lives' on their guns. It helped ... some.

Towards the end, some of the dads even got in on the game.

After laser tag, it was time for pizza.

Since Jack doesn't like sauce, I even got a small pizza that had only cheese, no sauce. And wouldn't you know it, the kid had exactly half a slice.

Then it was time for cake and cupcakes. Noah's cupcakes were Angry Birds, Dub's cake was Batman, and Jack chose Phineas and Ferb.

Despite all the sugar we pumped into them, the kids were completely exhausted at the end of the evening. Score!

Happy Birthday, Jack Attack!

You know what I like about our Jack? He is a man of simple needs. When I asked him (repeatedly) what he'd like for his birthday, he said there wasn't really anything he needed, and when pressed, he just said "oh, some action figures might be nice." When I asked what he wanted to do for his family birthday party, he just responded that he'd like to eat some Mexican food and have movie night (which we do every Friday anyway). And when asked what he wanted to do for his friend birthday party, he just wanted his friends there, that's all. Oh, and both chocolate and white cupcakes, since he likes chocolate but his friend Jacob doesn't. That's all. Simple needs.

You know what else I like about Jack? He's a genuinely nice kid, who draws pictures with "I love you Mom" written on them for me just about every day and gives big hugs. But at the same time, he's a good old-fashioned boy's boy, who likes to chase his friends around with swords and climb on the railings and shoot baskets and play superheros.

But you know what I like best about him? That he's Our Jack. When I watch him head off to carpool in the morning, or run out of tae kwon do in the afternoon, I just think, that's Our Jack. And that's awesome. And he's awesome.

Happy Birthday, Jack! We love you!

Humbling

Humbling is.....

...Chasing a 15-pound dog around the house so that you can clean his tail off, since his fluffy tail sometimes, ahem, gets in the way of his business.

...Arguing with a 4-year-old about the proper way that girls should pee...and being assured by aforementioned 4-year-old that you are indeed wrong and a 'poop head.'

...Being asked 1st-grade-level science questions by your 6-year-old...and not knowing the answers. Then hearing your 4-year-old say, "Jack, you'd better ask Dad that, he knows more than Mom."

...Having to resist the urge to defend your intelligence and your SAT scores to a 4-year-old.

...Having your daughter ask you questions about the 'olden days,' and then realizing that she means when you were a kid.

All About the Learnin'

So Jack is really into chapter books now. Before school started, we were at the bookstore looking for books that would inspire him to want to read more. He loves to be read TO, but gets kinda bored actually doing the reading. So we ran into the Magic Treehouse books (which he's listened to on CD), and he got really excited. So we bought a few of them, and he absolutely loves to read a chapter to me. One chapter is about our limit before his attention span runs out, but hey, I'll take it!

We bought a chapter series (Junie B. Jones) for Ellie, too, because she was feeling left out, but she's not really interested in reading yet. She makes a show of carrying them around, but eventually ends up on her first love, the iPad.

But meanwhile, Ellie is focused on a DIFFERENT kind of learning. She's decided that it's boring to just go to the bathroom the 'regular' way. So she's set off on a set of scientific experiments to test out different ways to, ahem, pee.

(1) So the first time, I discovered her trying to pee boy-style, standing up. Yeah, didn't work out so well for her or our floor.
(2) Then she decided to sit on the toilet, but facing the opposite way (toward the tank). A bit awkward.
(3) So the other night, she decided that the whole pull-down-the-underwear step was really impeding her progress, so she'd just kind of push them aside in the critical spot. Yeah, I had a bit of extra laundry that night.

She hasn't figured out her next step, but give her time, she's a wily one. And we're all about the learnin' around here.

Playing on her iPad? Or devising a new pee method? You be the judge.

The Wise Ones

The Wise Ones:
Jack (after a particularly long day - when you read this, you must visualize a 40-year-old man, returning from a long day working for The Man):
Jack: [Long sigh] "I think what you don't understand is that I had to wake up really early, and go to first grade, which if you don't know is pretty hard, and then go to tae kwon do, and then go to soccer practice, and what you don't understand is getting sleep is very important, and how am I supposed to get enough sleep with so much to do in my day?"
Mom: "Well, you could go to bed earlier tonight"
Jack: "I don't think you understand the situation"

Ellie (while at the mall)
Ellie: "Mom, are we for-real shopping or window shopping?"
Mom: "We're window shopping today"
Ellie: "Hey, I have a great day - let's change this a little bit - we'll do window shopping, but instead of doing the window shopping where we just look at things, we'll do the window shopping where we buy things! Isn't that a great idea?"

The Not-so-Wise One:
Me, who spent the whole bleepin' day driving around with the bleepin' windshield wipers on intermittent (even though part of the day we had torrential downpours and part of the day we had no rain at all) because I haven't figured out how to use the bleepin' wipers in the bleepin' minivan

MiniMom

It's happened. After all these years of mocking minivan-driving soccer moms....I am now a minivan-driving soccer mom.

Sigh.

Now, even when I have a minivan, I still hate them. When I was a kid, we'd load like 18 kids into a station wagon, but now, anytime a suburbanite has more than one kid, they MUST get a school-bus-sized minivan monstrosity. And open your own doors? Who can be bothered. We must have automatic sliding doors, because we just can't be BOTHERED to open our own doors. Or apparently to have just one beverage - we must have 37 cupholders.

In my defense, I did not want a minivan. I did not even want a new vehicle. I was just fine with our nice, run-just-fine, not-to-old, fully-paid-off cars. But, when you're married to my husband, sometimes you come home to discover your husband buying a minivan. In years past, I've also come home to discover him buying a $2,000 bicycle and an ankle-biting Pekingese.

Yes, it's a good thing he's cute. I mean Jared, not the Pekingese. Although the Pekingese is kinda cute too.

But enough of that.

So yes, now, you may mock me. If I were you, I'D mock me.

Just call me MiniMom.



Here's the minivan. And yes, it has automatic sliding doors. Because I simply can't be bothered anymore. I'm waiting for my "Proud Parent of an Honor Student" sticker to come in the mail. I had to order it, because, well, my kids aren't honor students.

And to complete my minivan-driving soccer mom tableau, here are my little soccer-playing suburbanites

"Mom, check out my skills!"

He likes to sing opera on the soccer field, and even HE mocks me about the minivan

Jiggety-Jig

What do you do when your husband is worried about his next PT test and your daughter is patting your tummy and saying it looks like there's a baby in there? Well, then, it's time to amp up the exercise. So Saturday morning we were off for a long run and bike ride around the neighborhood.
Jared led in the front, with me in the back to catch any stragglers.

At the halfway point, we stopped to let the kids scramble around on the rocks in the park.


Then on home again home again jiggety-jig (that's the sound my thighs make).

School is Hard

I'm plum tired, people. Either a very industrious tsetse fly has flown all the way from the wilds of Africa to bite me...or this whole school thing has worn me out. I really am a rookie.

We're at the end of the first week, and so far so good - it could just be a honeymoon period, but so far the kids seem to be doing great in school. And logistically, it's easier than I thought - the kids have been waking up at 6:30 without complaint, and it's been super-easy to drop them off and pick them up. But mentally, I'm TIRED. I really want my kids to love school, and have been trying like a maniac to engineer things so that they'll be as happy as possible in school - and then worrying all day about whether it's working. It really is quite sad.

So, next week I'm gonna chill out. Just drop the kiddies off at school with a hearty handshake and a "have a good time," and stop worrying about it. Maybe I won't even stop the car, but just slow it down enough that they can jump out and hit the ground running. Or heck, why can't they walk themselves to school? Yeah, yeah, that's it. And no more worrying - I'll just check the backpacks in the morning to make sure they're not bringing knives to school or anything, and otherwise let them be the teachers' problems.

Who am I kidding. I will worry. I will fret. I will sprout a couple more gray hairs. And I'll probably drive the kids bonkers with my cheerleading routine about the love of all things school and how fun, fun, fun it is to use nice words with our friends.

I know, I know, I'm sad. Really, what I am is a rookie. So, all you pros, feel free to mock the rookie. Because a few years from now, I will GLADLY mock all the new rookies.