Busy, Busy Life

Lots to say. It's already late and I've been stressed from life combined with minimal sleep, but here's a quick update. Ben LOVES kindergarten. Okay. He actually loves the bus and snack time. He just endures the rest. If we're lucky, Brian will post about his first day getting on the bus. It was my job to meet him at the bus stop after school. It drives past us and turns around before it begins it's drop off route so the kids don't have to cross the street. It was so cute to see all the little tiny heads looking out the heavily tinted windows. All the little kindergartners heads just barely showed over the window ledge. I could pick out Ben by his glasses and his head followed me until the bus had past. When it returned five minutes later to deposit him in my care, the driver asked which kids me and the other mother wanted. We called their names onto the bus and lickety split, off came Anthony. Waiting, waiting, waiting. "Ben?" "Ben Zufelt, this is your stop," I called again. I climbed on the bus and he was stuck. Apparently, another girl stood up in the aisle thinking it was her stop, but she didn't sit down. Ben had a stressed out, worried look because he couldn't get off and she had no idea he needed to go past because he didn't say a word. Just waited. If that last minute hadn't occurred, the day probably would have been perfect. He recovered quickly enough though, by the time we had walked to the corner. Overall, the whole school situation has inspired a new sort of independence in him. It's a beautiful thing to see. Yesterday we bought Ben elbow and knee pads. Today I carefully observed his bike riding skills and then offered to take the training wheels off. I thought he'd say "no way" but he was totally into the idea. Off they went and we didn't have so much as a single spill. He did great with a quick tutorial of where to put the pedals to get a good start. When Brian came home he showed off his new skills and decided to go down the curb into the street. I gave a shabby explanation of how to do it (go fast, hold on tight and do it away from parked cars). I saw it all happen in slow motion. He went off the curb near parallel to it and crashed and burned hard. It was the end of a good day of biking. We're grateful for the elbow and knee pads now and when I gave him a good night snuggle, he told me his hands were all better and he was ready to ride after school tomorrow. At school today, the kids watched President Obama's speech to the elementary kids. Ben's unsolicited comments on it were that "it was sooo long and I didn't really understand anything." Sort of made me smile. I read it Monday night before it was given to review it and choose if I wanted to opt-out or not. Pretty neutral I figured. Just talked about working hard to be an asset to your country, but now looking through five year old eyes...yeah...it was boring and long. Cute kid. Today when I got Ben from the bus, he was chatting and was slow coming off the bus because he was telling someone something of the utmost importance, I'm sure. It was cute to see he'd become so much more comfortable in a fast 24 hours. When he climbed off the bus, the first thing I saw was a big, fat, swollen, bloody lip. Mother's first response? Who's picking on you? See, I have this fear that he'll be picked on, teased and beat up. I've always worried about it. He's the smallest of his age, he's young in his grade, he's quiet. Then he got glasses. I had glasses. To me, it sealed the deal. He was going to get bullied. People always made fun of me. I quickly snapped out of it, realizing that his fat lip was probably fine. Not likely he got punched by a nasty sixth grader on his second day of school when he was sheparded every step of his day and sheltered as a kindergartner. Turns out he was looking out the bus window when it went over a bump on the way home and it smashed his face into the metal window seal splitting his lip. Poor kid. After the bus, we had a playdate with Anthony, his little sister and their mom. The boys enjoyed zooming like crazy people on their bikes around some new orange cones. It was a good diversion and gave me the incentive I needed to stay outside and let the kids enjoy the perfect weather and wear themselves out. Maddie doesn't like boys anymore. I think the root cause has something to do with boys not letting her play dominoes in nursery class at church, but I'm not completely sure. In any case, Brian, Ben and Jacob are all boys so she doesn't like any of them anymore. Maybe this is why mothers and daughters are so bonded. There's no one else left but mom since all the boys are bad. There is no convincing this girl that boys are okay. Oh well, it will pay off when she's 16. Guess what? Maddie can read. Yep. She always is telling me, "It says, Mmmm Ahhhh ExxonMobil" if she's reading the sign at the gas station. "It says, Mmmm Ahhhh Princess Castle," for a picture of a castle or a toy. The Mmmm and the Ahhhh are what she deems to be the names of the letters that spell the words she proclaims to be written in front of her. I guess all words start with Mmmm Ahhhh. Jacob started walking last week. Both Ben and Maddie walked at 8 months. Last Monday, Jacob only had five more days until he hit the magic 9 month mark and Brian started talking to him about how he better pick up the pace and get walking or he would be the "slow kid" in the family. Well, even at his tender age, he must have understood, because the little man can walk. I declare that he walked on September 3, just two days shy of being "slow." Way to go, Big Boy! Of course I tried to record him with the camcorder for a long time and got zippo. He walks just fine for four to six steps if we're not involved. If we're there, he gets so stinking excited, he falls every time. Jacob also goes NUTS over climbing the stairs. If he sees the kids opening the gate, he goes as fast as he possibly can and sticks his head right in the crack as they get it open so he can climb them. It's becoming a bit of a problem. They can't go anywhere without me coming to hold Big Boy back. I've tried and tried to teach him how to go DOWN the stairs so we can ditch the whole gate phenomenon all together, but he's too wildly excited to concentrate and it just isn't safe still. I've been working my tail off to get ready for teaching Maddie's preschool. I have a weird obsession with having complete sets of things. I printed all the visual aids for every single lesson through May for both the regular lessons and the kindergarten portion (letters, numbers, color, shapes, etc.). Now I have to cut, bag, label and sort it all. I made some serious progress today. Maybe a waste of time, but it is such a life saver and makes a big difference in the amount of daily prep work I have to do to teach, so in the end, it will be well worth the work to get started. Our place in California still isn't rented, though we're getting hits now on our craigslist post. It will happen soon enough. We aren't exactly a Fortune 500 company, so when we run a credit check on potential tenants, we aren't allowed to see their credit score, but are given a 1-100 ranking that interprets where their credit score falls. We've done several to date. It's been our good luck that they have all been above 90. Great tenants. We had laughed once or twice wondering if the scale was really any good since we didn't get any variance. Well, Monday night we ran one that made me laugh. They scored a one. You read that right. One. My first question was if I read it right. Second question? What the heck to you have to screw up to get a ONE? I guess if you get evicted four months ago and are trying to move again already, it sort of looks fishy... Like I said. The place still isn't rented. Go figure, we didn't choose them. I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this one, but I've agreed to host a political blog for all things affecting people living here from the neighborhoods on up to national news. It's been stressing me out, but hopefully it will all come together. I'm crossing my fingers and have a volunteer to help tutor me remotely. The sheer volume of information is overwhelming coming in from the two other people doing it. One gal spends countless hours finding articles and summarizing them for posting. The other gal is an editor and crosses the t's and dots the i's so we have everything in order. Then I have it set up to auto-post (thanks Erin). Now my job is to make the blog fancy with tabs and stuff. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. Brian is busy too. Not to sure with what. Computers and painting mostly I think. He's finally getting to some things he's been meaning to do for a very long time. It seems to be satisfying to him and I'm glad. Having the nagging list for eternity gets old. The clock keeps ticking away and the alarms will ring soon. Oh yeah, I have rarely used an alarm since Ben was born. That's FIVE years, people. Now with Ben in school we have the whole schedule thing going on. I hate it. I hate hearing the nasty buzz. I forgot how I loathed that sound. Just hoping I don't pass out again when it goes off. That's what happened a few months ago. Anyway, alarms will start ringing in six short hours. Signing off for tonight.