My Front Yard On An Average Afternoon

I LOVE that my front yard is W.I.L.D. after school. The theme is usually race cars and they draw the track with sidewalk chalk complete with pit stop area and parking lots. Today it's swimming without water and scooter races to win the title "Princess of the World".

Picture Day!!

Remember school picture day?  Everyone gets all fancy.  I always had to wear a nice Sunday dress and lights and cool slippery shoes that make neat clip clop noises in the hallways.  Except for maybe fifth grade when I must have begged and begged because I am wearing a pastel blue sweatshirt with an embroidered duck or goose or something.  I bet I fought hard, but now twenty five years later I wish I had lost that fight. I have no shame. If it wasn’t in storage somewhere in DC I’d post it for you.  It’s awesome. Sorry.

 

Yesterday was picture day for Maddie Mae and she woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  This girl is froo froo to the max and loves fluffy dresses and fancy everything.   But not yesterday.  Brian pulled about every dress in the closet out for her and we have a TON thanks to having five girl cousins supplying us with hand me downs. In the end she was finally persuaded to wear something that wasn’t my favorite but certainly acceptable.

 

Then her hair. She almost never lets me fix her hair.  Brushing it out is mandatory and beyond that she can choose what she wants.  Nineteen times out of twenty it’s, “Nothing today mom.  Just down.”  That can look just fine, but right now she is growing out her bangs.  She asked for braids.  Wincing I replied that I would do my best.  I ended up with a half pony tail then braided as best I could approximately three quarters of an inch and threw another elastic in her hair at the back of her head hoping nothing would actually show.

 

Next we sat down to do her morning reading on the couch.  She is every bit of five years old this kid.  She wriggled and twisted, twitched and wormed her way around on the couch as she read me the story.  In the end she succeeded in rubbing all the nicely secured hair on the sides into a nice mess.  Realizing I could fix it now but in two hours she’d look exactly the same…I just let it go.

 

In the end she revealed to me that her entire goal was to make herself “look like someone not in our family.”  How am I supposed to take that?  She reassured me that it was okay though because her teacher Ms. Kiran would be able to find her on the playground because she has glasses and she’s the only kid with glasses so she could be tricky and everything would still be fine if no one else knew who she was because of the braid in her hair.

 

Ben’s picture day is today.  Or not. Or yes.  Wait. Let me check the email from his teacher.  Yep.  Today. Nope. The other one says sorry for the mistake it’s Thursday.  Hey, the next email says the first one was wrong.  And this one says the other two emails were in error.  Hey, there is another email sent today after most his students are on the bus already – it says yes it IS today.  Then after my kid left on his scooter for school the new email says on Thursday.  School has begun.  One last email.  Oops again. It is TODAY…but only half the kids sitting in the classroom are dressed for it….hold on…he’ll talk to the administration and see if the whole class can be redone on the Friday makeup day.  Poor, poor man.  He’s just trying to do his job but what a mess. Frankly I’m glad I have a boy.  No fancy shoes, tights to get runs on the playground and nice dresses to prepare and making the hair just right.  Just slap a collared shirt on the kid and his hair should mostly stay put since he has a fresh new haircut.  Heaven help the moms of the girls. And bless the poor teacher. I think he needs a weekend break. At least in the teacher stuff that matters, Ben thinks he is doing a pretty great job and that is way more important than picture day.

Maddie Quote of the Day

The kids are all playing upstairs in the play room.  Maddie rushed downstairs to get a paper out of the printer drawer. “Mommy, I really have to rush this art. I have to rush this art because Jacob’s giraffe is really cold and I’m making it a blanket.” And off she went to the office to find scissors where she cut out a 3”x5” piece of paper to wrap the plastic giraffe.  “Oh.  Thanks,” says Jake. 

 

Phew.  Another crisis averted.

Power Tools for Primary

Two more weeks of teaching primary before the ward split goes into full effect. Brian hasn't technically been called to a teaching position with me but he helps me every week. I affectionately call him the bouncer. With a guaranteed capes size of ten and last week hitting a record of eighteen kids I can teach a lesson just fine but for heavens sakes I need a little help with crowd control. Mostly it's the twelve rowdy seven year old boys stuffed into long pants, button up shirts and fancy shoes. That recipe just screams trouble. Mostly though we have a great time. We learn about Jesus and God and the scriptures each week and when they are listening they are sweet kids.

After being together for six months now I asked Brian if he were the teacher would he,as a man, he delivering lessons straight from the manual or adding crafts and games and atttention getting object lessons from all the online sources noting that www.sugardoodle.net is my favorite. He though only just a second before he replied, "Nope. That's not manly at all. I would defiantly go to Power Tools for Primary though." he said the border of the page would have to be decorated with cool power tools and man stuff. He cracks me up.

All Dressed Up to See the Doctor

Maddie got a Little Mermaid costume for her birthday yesterday and was pretty sure it was appropriate to wear to her eye doctor appointment today. I made her put on pants and a short underneath but why fight the creative soul God sent my way. A mermaid it is. She couldn't feel more pretty and confident in her outfit and that is all a girl wants out of life anyway-to feel pretty.

Pregnant Tired Isn't Over Yet

Those energy filled days are amazing after you’ve wanted to sleep for months on end.  It felt great to have washed, hung, dried, folded AND delivered ALL of the laundry to closets, wardrobes and drawers last week.  I was so excited to have a burst of energy and to know that my poor husband didn’t have to go to the backyard to get his clean clothes every morning before he showered.

 

As nice as those days are, sometimes they feel like a slap in the face when you get three days in a row when all you want to do is crawl in bed again.  Frustrating.  Today is Maddie’s birthday and all I want to do is spoil her and make cool stuff and have a great day…but all of that after a three hour nap, okay?  Jake is watching Word World on cable while I answered emails.  It is Dog’s birthday and Pig pulled out his cookbook to make a cake.  I had to laugh.  All he needed was a “C”, “A”, “K” and an “E”.  Then you push them together and magically a CAKE appears.  Where can I get those ingredients? 

 

I already got up at 4am (because I’m pregnant not because I’m a fantastic mom).  Put her presents together all cute because presentation matters more to this kid than to anyone else in the family.  Baked brownies to take to school before we walked to school at 7:30am.  She wants cupcakes for dinner because I’m not making a castle cake until her birthday party…which doesn’t fit into our calendar for the next three weekends.  Poor girl. At least she doesn’t seem to mind waiting for a party and castle cake.

 

Right now I think I’ll shut off the computer, settle Jake in for another 30 minutes with his Red Rocketship buddies and close my eyes because we have an appointment tonight at 8pm so I know I can’t crash early. Is it Saturday yet?

Jakey Learns His Numbers?

Seriously? I worked with Maddie, who turns five on Thursday, almost every single day the entire summer to help her recognize her numbers. We played this game tons of times. It's called Zingo and you match the number of objects in the picture to the proper numeral.
Jake, 2 1/2 years old, hung out next to us and I thought he was just enjoying the slide action of the number dispenser. It's been four or five weeks since we last had it out and today he asked to play. That kid knows 1, 2, 8, 0 and 10. Maybe next summer he can tutor Maddie for me. There are advantages of being he oldest because your parents have more time and energy to teach and do things with you. Looks like we are starting to see the benefits to being younger. You learn stuff just by random exposure.