Pick a Leader

Saving Raphael...

2011-07-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, let's talk about yesterday morning before 7:30am, shall we?

So... Brad's away (which of course is the only reason this kind of thing happens) and I'm getting the kids up and going so I can get them off to camp and still make it to work on time(ish). Their camp is in the opposite direction from our house as is my office so we have to leave at about 7:30am in order for me to get to work on time. (Obviously Brad takes them when he's in town). So.. I'm a tasky kind of girl and there's a schedule in my head about what has to happen when so I can get them out the door without anyone getting upset.

I'm up and showered on time - early even. Check. I've got the end of Thursday's stage of the Tour on (I'm completely obsessed with it) and I have enough time to watch the very end of the stage which is perfect. Check! Jack's working on his pool bag. Check. Ted's sort of moving. Check-ish. Lunch is started. Check. Ted is now sitting up - sort of. Check-ish-ish. I'm downstairs making breakfast right on schedule and Teddy calls and tells me he needs my help. Well of course he does - he's Teddy and not always able to perform simple tasks especially first thing in the morning - like say - find underwear or a shirt. Whatever, I head upstairs to see what's going on - I got up early so I've got even more extra time than I normally build in.

Ted: Mom, Raphael (the little catfish in his fish tank) is stuck and is going to die.

I look and Raphael has adhered himself to the top of the little sunken ship in the middle of the fishtank and I'm not worried at all.

Me: Ted, he's fine. In fact when you were at camp, Daddy thought he was dead cuz he was sitting in exactly the same spot for seemingly days. Dad was all worried he was going to have to tell you he killed Raphael. He even went so far as to take the ship out of the tank because he was so convinced he was dead and not until he was several steps away and he saw the poor fish try to breathe did he realize he was still alive and quickly got him back in the water. So, he's fine, I promise. Finish getting ready.

Ted: Mom, he's really stuck. I swear he is.

(at this point we have a whole back and forth something like this - he's not stuck he just likes it there, no he really is stuck and won't be able to eat and will die, no he's fine I swear it, Mom I promise you he is stuck you have to help him, no I promise you he's fine.)

Finally we get to...

Ted: If he dies, it's not my fault.

Me: He's not going to die, but if he does, you're right - it'll totally be on me.

I start to leave and my big, strong, taller than me boy bursts into tears. OMG - okay baby, I'll push him out of the way, you'll see. I reach in the tank and push Raphael out of the way so he'll swim somewhere else and damned if that fucking fish isn't compleltely stuck. I pulled and pushed and did everything I could think of to get him out of there, but he'd somehow managed to wedge himself in between the fake barnacles and the deck of the ship. My first thought - Fuck, there goes the schedule. My second thought - it's probably in bad taste to take pictures for a future blog post while my son is crying. My third thought is - I really don't like having my arms up to my elbows in the fish tank - ick.

Okay... hmmm how to unstick a fish? I will cut off the barnacle. I go downstairs and get a pairing knife cuz it's small and start sawing. I'm barely making a dent. This ship is made out of industrial strength resin of some sort. This is going to take FUCKING hours, but you know my motto - the turtle wins the race - so I just stick with it. Of course I'm deathly afraid I'm going to slice through the end of it and filet poor Rafael and there will be blood in the water both literally and figuratively, but I don't mention this to the boys - both of whom are watching intently now. Finally I give that up and go in search of a sharper knife. I go through a few options discarding them as I went - too big, too unwieldy, not sharp enough, until finally I had an aha moment. I have jewery making tools upstairs and there is a wire cutting thingy in the shape of a small pair of pliers - this should work. I dry the arms (for the 27th time) find the tool and head back to work. It's like surgery - I have to get it in there just so - so as not to pinch (read: cut into ribbons) the fish, but still cut off the offending barnacle. I get it in place and squeeze it home and viola! It snapps off and Raphael can move!!! No blood!! I tell Teddy he's free and the poor boy bursts into more tears. Poor guy!!!

Okay - let's see what we can do to salvage the schedule - Run downstairs, get the boys to get their bags packed, finish lunches, finish packing my lunch, make my chai, and all the while.... my beloved dog is barking at us - please don't leave me, please don't leave me, please don't leave me, please don't leave me, please don't leave me. All we hear, though, is barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark breathe barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark breathe barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark breathe rinse lather repeate. Finally I can't take any more of it and I snap.

WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP (as I'm storming after the dog with my fist raised) IF YOU DON'T FUCKING STOP BARKING, I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU DEAD, DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND ME YOU LITTLE FUCKER??

I'm sort of consious of the rest of the world enough to notice my cute little 10 year old looking up at his nearly 13 year old brother with glee in his eyes as if to say - Man, I love it when mom cracks. He was full out laughing by the time I'd finished yelling at the dog. The dog wisely hid under the table for at least 30 seconds before he started barking again. And my boys wisely didn't say a single word about the incident. We headed off to camp and I was less than 10 minutes late to work.

Have a lovely day!

bad parenting, the massacre, and us

2011-05-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

More evidence of good parenting…

So – Jackson’s head is healing nicely and this is a good thing. I’m wildly anal about making sure there is sunscreen on his scar at all times. There are sticks of sunscreen in my purse, his backpack, his baseball bag, and both our cars in addition to the plentiful supply I have in the house. On Saturday before Jackson had a football game followed by a golf outing with our friend Jamie and Brad and Teddy I put sunscreen on the scar and then headed out to take Teddy to his baseball game. We met up for lunch between the games and golf and I reminded him and Brad to put more sunscreen on before they went golfing – okay all taken care of, right? Yeah well. His scar was white as a ghost at the end of the day but the rest of his face, a vee in his chest and his legs were, however, burnt to a crisp. Oops. Poor boy.

The mutant ninja massacre

Wow am I lucky or what? All three boys went golfing on Saturday and I got to have the house to myself for several house. It was bliss. Okay, well… it was going to be bliss. Seriously. I even had a small mountain of laundry to do, and I was completely excited about cranking up the tunes and cranking it out while I had The. House. To. Myself!! Best laid plans and all…

So, there I am, first load in, tunes blaring away, I’m singing at the top of my lungs. All is right with the world. I’m wandering around cleaning this, putting that away, thinking of napping, thinking of reading. You know how it is. I decide I need some water; I’m suddenly not drinking enough water especially on the weekends. I practically skip down the stairs and into the kitchen when something out of place catches my eye in the family room. Our house is really open so you can basically see into all rooms at all times and there’s something scattered on the family room floor.

This isn’t the big surprise it should be. Have you met my children? Okay, well maybe not, but let me tell you they are messy little things. And then there’s the dog – who I’m sure I’ve mentioned I don’t love. If Bandit gets pissed he gets destructive. It’s usually some poor hapless stuffed animal and we find tufts of stuffing flung around the house in little piles. Based on what I’m seeing out of the corner of my eye, I’m thinking I’m going to have Bandit to thank for what I’m about to clean up. Eh.. I’m alone, life it good. Bandit can not ruin my mood.

Okay, I was wrong about that. Big sigh, let’s go pick up whatever needs picking up and move on, shall we… Okay, not so fast. My behated dog (that’s a new word and it’s maybe my new favorite) has systematically dismembered a turtle - and unfortunately not one of the stuffed persuasion - on the floor of my family room. There were blood and guts and shell pieces all over the floor. Every where I looked my horror increased. It was the single most vile thing I’ve ever seen in my life – but a fair margin.

I am not a typical girl in most situations. Generally I just roll up my sleeves and do what needs doing. I’m here to tell you, I met my limit. I was a total girl. I started flapping my arms and saying; Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God. I finally got enough of a hold of myself to get the dog locked outside and to keep from totally losing my cookies. Then I did what any self respecting girl would do… I went upstairs and hid. I called Brad and was not surprised to get his voice mail as they were golfing. I waited a while and called him back and left a very simple, if extremely flat voiced message. “I need you to call my at your earliest convenience.”

Of course Brad didn’t get the message until he had pulled into the driveway, but upon hearing how I sounded he called immediately and sent the boys to play instead of letting them come inside. I told him I’d be right down and once there apologized for being a complete girl (which is new) and explained how I needed him to be the man (which he has no problem with). He did his best to calm the strange zombie like creature in front of him before he went inside.

He later described it as similar to cleaning a crime scene which I’m hopeful he only knows from watching TV and not from first hand experience, though we’re never ever going to speak of it again so I will never know.

Anyone want a used Jack Russell Terrier? He’s really cute, I swear he is.

And finally... a family picture

Taken on Easter and not so good of me cuz I’m all leaned back on the slouchy couch – but aren’t my boys cutie-pies???

The ipad as crack and funky servers

2011-05-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

I've been totally absent and that's never good for me. Here's a few things to catch up.

The ipad as crack
It's an amazing thing. I'm sure that's true, though I don't know this from first hand experience. I got Brad one for his birthday. It was a great present because he wanted one so badly and he thought I was going to put up a real fight about it. The problem is its crack-like properties. It's only been in the house for a week and already all three males are completely addicted. As an example Jackson comes into my room at 6am this morning. Brad and I were still sleeping. He marches over to my side of the bed (cuz he's nobody's fool and knows not to poke the sleeping bear on the other side of the bed) and immediately starts whining.
Jack: Mo-om, Teddy got up at 4 and has been playing the ipad the whole time don't you think it should be my turn now?
Me: uh... what?
Jack: It's not fair. He set his alarm for 4 and he's been playing this whole time. (let me break in here and say it normally takes an act of congress to get Teddy out of bed)
Me: I'm sleeping here, is it fair that you just came in and woke me because you want to play a video game?
He left with his tail between his legs because as I said - he's no fool.

But... this isn't the first time. Clearly I am the fool as it's taken me this long to think about doing something about this powerful drug in our home. Earlier this week, they both together slammed into my room looking for the damn thing (again this means that Teddy was up before anyone bodily pulled him from the bed) waking me before they slammed out again. There's been constant whining and fighting about the need to get their fix - even Brad has gotten in on it.

Of course here's the best part.... Teddy gets up at 4am this morning and discovers his eye all gunked up and uncomfortable, what does my very bright boy (who's now taller than me by the way) do??? He wipes it off and desperately makes his way to get his fix on. Phew, that was close. He gets his soccer game up and he's finally able to get the shakes under control, even if he can't completely see the screen. Does he mention his eye problems to his parents this morning? No. No he does not. Does he think about possibly spreading whatever he's got that caused said gunk? No he does not. So he happily heads off to school high on the soccer game and hands over the ipad to his brother (who's not doing his homework by the way!!) who happily gets his shakes under control with Angry Birds. Teddy gets to school and realizes his eye is really still bothering him. So... now our brain trust tells his teacher - I think I've got pink eye. He was home within the hour. After Jackson got his fix on and Brad got his as well. My hypochondriac husband immediately complained of eye problems.

Our CFO is gone
He's in Ireland for two weeks where his son is studying abroad. I'm so thrilled for him I can't stand it. While he's gone, of course, I take care of whatever he might have handled. This wouldn't be a problem if he wasn't also our IT Manager. He just happens to have a personal affinity for it and we are lucky to have someone so capable of wearing two such distinct hats. I've been the number two IT person for years and for the most part have the company fooled about my abilities. I can talk a good game and know who to call who can walk me through whatever needs to be handled - but the reality is - I'm mostly freakin clueless.

Normally things run very smoothly and and I'm just making sure the back ups work properly. No biggie. Yeah, well in these two weeks we've had 4 separate servers go down, been attacked by man eating viruses, had to shut part of or the whole system down multiple times, had two computers have to be taken out of the building to be repaired or rebuilt and about a million other things that I can't remember at the moment. Any thought of doing any part of my job was killed very early last week. I've met every single employee of our outside IT consultant firm; I'm hosting a happy hour tonight.

Oh and now the President has also gone away for two days. Yippee... Seriously. And today is monthend. What am I doing? Am I doing one of the million things that I need to get done before I leave tonight?? Uh that would be a no - I'm blogging. Cuz, as I've previously pointed out - I'm a fool.

The Christmas party and the space cadet

2010-12-13T19:08:00.000-08:00

The Christmas Party

Was great fun! Dare I say a big success? Why yes, yes I do dare. We added more groups of people this year like the parents of kids our kids play various sports with (well the ones we like anyway) and some old college friends I just discovered live in the area and there was an unexpected and totally lovely mix of people. Several of the new people we invited knew people who come every year and so it was fun to see how people know each other – it really is a small world – okay – maybe not that small since the vast majority of the people who came all live in the same county… Still it was cool to see.

We had such a wonderful time! We haven’t done a final head count, but we had 70 yes RSVPs on evite, so I expect it was somewhere in that neighborhood. We’ll be doing the post mortem later this week where I go through everything I served plus everything people brought and make notes about what we needed more or less of. I have found the list invaluable, but it’s truly something that needs to be done within a couple of weeks or so of the party or our old brains start deteriorating.

Space Cadet one to Air Head two

Last night was the 2^nd of a two day middle school concert extravaganza – I know you’re all jealous again! Day one (Monday) was for band; jazz, lower, and upper. Teddy and Matt (our neighbor and his best friend) are both percussionists in the upper band. Then last night was for chorus and orchestra. Brad’s going to take Ted separately to get there on time and I was going to follow with Jack a bit later. Just as Teddy was putting on his coat there was furious pounding on our door. I rushed to open it and it’s Matt in full concert wear and his mom Lisa.

Lisa: Space Cadet 1 needs to talk to Air Head 2. Space Cadet 1 has no bell mallets or music for what they’re playing tonight?

Me: um… Playing? I thought that was last night, they’re singing tonight.

L: They’re doing both. I think Ted’s playing for two groups and Matt for one, but Matt needs to make sure Ted has the music for the thing they’re doing together and he’s managed to misplace his.

Me: (In my head I’m thinking…. No way in Hell does my air head have any music. This was the very first time I had heard he was doing anything other than singing for the chorus concerts so I certainly have never once suggested he practice his drum parts for chorus – and there’s no way on earth he’d think to do it on his own…. We are talking about Teddy here.) but out loud I said – Come on in, he’s just putting on his coat.

Matt – (rushing in) Do you have the music?

Ted: (looking totally clueless) What music?

M: For the bell piece

T: What bell piece?

M: (big exasperated sigh) The one we’re playing with the 6^th grade chorus.

T: (serious deer in headlight look…. Then) Oh. My. Gosh. Dad! We’ve got to stop at the school!! (the concert was at a different school).

Me: Um, honey, the school is long closed.

T: But we’ve got to!

Me: Not going to happen, you’ll just have to do your best.

T: (deep breath, then looking at Matt) Okay, we’ll be fine.

They sounded great and looked like they knew what they were doing up on stage, but later Teddy reported that they’d totally screwed it up…. oops! Oh well, what’re you going to do?

I am thankful for.....

2010-11-25T08:22:00.000-08:00

My beautiful Teddy - though he constantly challenges me with his teenage attitude he never ceases to amaze me with his thoughtful curiosity and beautifully gentle ways (when he forgets to hide those parts from us).
My amazing Jackson - his witty, dry, humor keeps us laughing even while he's creating the mischief only his warped brain can find.
My husband Brad - I know confidently I'm a better person for having his kindness and love and support in my life and my children are truly blessed for having such a big kid as such a loving protector.
My life that allows me to be writing this from the Wilderness Lodge in the happiest place on earth while my husband and kids are wrapping up an early morning trip to the Magic Kingdom (letting mommy sleep in a bit) before we all head over to Blizzard Beach for an afternoon frolicking in the water before coming back to have a Thanksgiving Day bar-b-q with Mikey and friends before heading out on a pirate ship to watch the fireworks - who does this? So much fun and we are so blessed to be able to do it!!!
My friend Camille who knows every part of me; the good, the bad, the perverted and warped, the goofy and deranged, the kinky, the scared, the hopeful and the doubtful and loves me for (not despite) all of it.
This on-line community that has allowed me to connect with so many people I might have lost forever or never met at all!

And so many, many other things I can't begin to single out - I am truly blessed and hope to take more time this year to appreciate every bit of it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Mom-of-the-Year.... The fish died.

2010-11-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

We suck as parents; fish and otherwise. My poor Teddy has lost every pet that’s ever been only his. First there was the gecko; supposedly the easiest animal to keep as a pet. I don’t even remember his name, but you have to feed the gecko live crickets, which is fine. But that means you have to keep a cage for the crickets you haven’t yet fed him and feed the crickets. Yeah, okay. So we bought this gross gel stuff and fed the crickets and fed the crickets to the gecko. Great, right? Yeah.. well, we are useless. That’s all I can say. We didn’t read the bottle of gel cricket food. It has to be refrigerated after opening (come on, seriously we have to refrigerate cricket food?) Anyway, we didn’t do that and the food became “bad” and we fed the crickets anyway and then we fed the now tainted crickets to the gecko and he died. Oops. Teddy was heart broken.

Then there were the hamsters. Two dwarf robo (I think) hamsters who he named “Dwarf” and “Robo”. One night I go in there for bedtime and check the hamster’s water; which I would have said I did regularly (apparently I can be a little spacey too) and it was empty. So what did Mom-of-the-Year do? She started in on the lecture about how if you don’t give your hamsters water they will die. This is your responsibility, Ted. You convinced us you were old enough and mature enough to handle this…. you get the idea. One of the hamsters was sitting there at his nearly empty food bowl shaking. Ut oh. They need water and they need it now!!! I went to fill a little tray with water to put right in front of their mouths telling Ted to find the other one and see if we can get them in the same place. I’m on my way back when Ted comes barreling into my arms hysterical.

Yup, Mom-of-the-Year here. None of you can claim the title. It’s mine. I had just asked my kid to dig around in his hamster cage until he came across the dead hamster. OMG. I know I haven’t survived that trauma yet, Ted seems to have fared a bit better. What the hell was I thinking? Anyway, the 2^nd one died, a slow and I’m sure painful death about an hour later with Teddy and Brad looking on. It was not a good night. We did our best to back peddle and take all the blame so he wouldn’t be scarred for life, but, it was just another banner day in his life with pets. Jackson’s are still alive and well.

And now it’s the fish.

This time I do, in fact, think it’s totally Brad’s fault. Ted desperately wants to care for a pet of his own. We thought…. How hard could fish be? Brad took him to the pet store and they came home with a tank too small for a heater and 2 balloon mollies; Tom and Joey. Of course the pet store people knew what they were doing and told them it was probably going to be okay. But mollies apparently do much better in heated water. And if you leave the light on all the time (in a non-heated tank it’s the only source of heat) then you encourage algae growth. Yadda yadda yadda. Whatever! First Joey died and then Tom didn’t look so good, so Brad cleaned the tank and somehow Tom survived that and looked a bit better and then I went to the store for more supplies and this is when I learned that mollies are considered tropical and should be in a heated tank and yadda yadda yadda. I bought the tank and Ted and I set it up last night. I was told to let the filter and heater go for 24 hours before you add the fish, but we decided we’d just wait till morning because Tom didn’t look so good again. Well he was dead this morning. Teddy said he didn’t care at all in the way only a near teenager can manage. We suck.

The Basement, Disney, and the Party

2010-11-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

The basement

is nearly done! The mountain of boxes that was our foyer is now gone!!! Woo hoo!!! I can’t tell you how lovely it is to see from one room across the foyer into the other room again. The fact that this now highlights the disaster that is both rooms is something better left unsaid. There’s a little problem with the new carpet and Brad and I did our good cop (him) – bad cop (me) routine with their rep yesterday. The rep totally saw the problem (a long seam that doesn’t meet flatly, it peaks up and I’m afraid the dog will snag it cuz it’s higher than the rest of the carpet) and immediately diagnosed the problem as….. a bad dye lot from the manufacturer. LOLOLOLOL. Can you say pass the buck? No, it’s not our installer that didn’t stretch the carpet correctly; it’s the carpet manufacturer who sent out carpet that has some color variation (which we clearly don’t have enough experience to see). Mmmkay, whatever you say as long as my issue is ultimately fixed, I don’t really care how you go about doing it.

Disney World

We’re leaving in three days, I’m so excited and… well… maybe.. just a little bit freaking out too. My brain has been on other things; the basement, the mountain of boxes, the carpet issue, work, kids, sports, the wonderful old friend I've recently reconnected with who we had over to watch my poor Skins be annihilated last night, etc… But now.. Seriously… I can’t put off thinking about it any longer. It’s… Three. Days. Away. Holy shit. I’ve gone so far as to create a staging area and put a handful of things on it (sunscreen, goggles, and pool toys totally count as a handful). But that’s it. Tonight I’m going to Target to get some travel sized things for the kids and a few other odds and ends. And then I guess I have to go home and pack for me and the boys because did I mention…

Brad is out of town. Dork! Okay, it’s not his fault, but come on. Seriously, you have a good night sleep down there in NC! Watch a little TV, go to the movies, hey, maybe go out and have a few good meals at a few of your favorite restaurants, you know you will anyway! I’ll just be up here making sure our suitcases are packed. You don’t worry about us up here at all. By the time you get your pretty little head back up here the suitcases will be by the door, the house will be ready for the painters to come while we’re gone, the new fish tank will be installed and the fish WILL NOT DIE and the hamster cage will be cleaned and the boy who’ll be caring for both will have been trained…. Really, I’ve got this. Don’t you worry at all. It’s just a little laundry, summer clothes hunting, cleaning, moving, packing, shopping and whatnot. Sure, I’ve still got to go to work every day and make sure the rug rats get fed and get their homework done – no problem. Really, I’ve got this.

The Party

Happens 1 week (that’s 7 days) from when we get home from Disney. I’m thrilled!!! I love this time of year! I love, love, love my house at this time of year. Okay, that’s a lie – at this actual, specific, moment I sort of hate my house. It’s completely dusty from the recent basement work. (Brad changed the family room ceiling fan to turn in the opposite direction last night and we were all showered by huge hunks of dust falling from it – how lovely.)

The plan was to have the house just about decorated before we left for Disney which if you’ll remember is in 3 days. Um… yeah, I don’t think so. We are having our hallways painted while we’re gone – again – woo hoo, that’s freaking fantastic!!! But, of course that means I can’t put up any garland on the railings or the tree above the front door, or certain pictures on certain walls, but oh well.. There are 2 trees up and in the correct rooms. Just because they are standing square in the middle of the rooms is not reason to panic. Just because we haven’t even identified the movers who will come to our house on the Monday after we’re home (5 days before the party) to move all the excess furniture down to the basement where it belongs is no reason to panic. Just because our house was just registered as a national disaster area with legos and stuffed animals and kinex and so many nerf weapons I can’t stand myself flung haphazardly around every friggin’ flat surface and we’re leaving in 3 freaking days is not a reason to panic. That there are 8 or so of our closest friends coming over the day after we get back (6 days before the party) to help us “finish” decorating (Please note the quotes around the word finish. As if we’re close enough to be ready for that), that may be a reason to panic. (hanging head in shame.)

It’s a good thing I’m going to see my patron saint Eeyore – I need me some good pity parties.

A story by Jackson

2010-11-10T18:12:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time a kid named Bill was walking down to the creek with his buds Jim, Bob, Bonnie, Billy, Bobby, Jackie, Jack, another Jackie, Jackson, Ben Cameron, Will Ryan, Willie, Tim, Timothy, Justin, Jamie, Jessica, Jennifer, Harry, Ainsley, Niall, Siama, Yashas, Kate, Katie, Sol, Josh, Joshie, Joshua, Carlos, Calvin, Hobs, Hope, Grace, Jon, Chris, Brittney, Clyde, Larry, Jerry, Gary, Spongebob, Buddy, Guy, Pat, Friend, Bud, Thomas, Able, Jason, Jason, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Elizabeth III, Queen Elizabeth II, Morese, Cathrine, Ashley, Renee, Christine, Uma, Sryia, Anagam, Soun-Young, Susan, Teddy, Syney, Sydney, Devlin, Matt, Matthew, Jake, Jakie, Jacob, JJ, Gracie, Lara, Nitya, Isah, Emily, Theresa, Sophie, Chae, Neha, Brad, Brandon, Pam, Drake, Alara, David, Christopher, Dell, Mary-Ann, Marylyn, Mary, Parker, Joe, Zoe, Jo, Joey, Joseph, Cashi, Idila, Camela, Kev, Kevin, Michael, Gabe, Chandler, Shae, London, Jimmy, and Jim-Bob to have a picknic by the fish, water, trees, grass, birds, vines, swamps, lizards, and snakes. Eventually Chae got bit by; snakes, lizards, birds, and monkeys then she figured out the snake was poisonous so she got knocked out then every one fought for which of ten friends would take her to the hospital for ten hours. Then Zeus came down with all the other gods and tortured Chae.

Later in Minneapolis Odie had exploded from the…. Poodle Factory and stole the fur off the poodle then had a cup of tea (ya know cause he was thirsty) then dies, then burps.

The end.

What a day!!!

2010-11-09T03:31:00.000-08:00

So... it all started with an appointment with m doctor at 9:15am. I got up and did 40 min on the treadmill, showered, talked to the contractor, packed my lunch and was pulling out of the driveway at 9:00am on the dot. I was feeling all kinds of proud of myself - that was exactly when I wanted to leave as my doctor is less than five minutes from my house... perfect. I'm heading down the main street of my neighborhood when a little notification pops up on my phone. I look down and what does it say? Dr. appt - 9:00am. FUCK! Okay, well, as I said I'm only 5 min to her door so I floor it, thinking I'll be a couple of minutes late and oh well... I get to the end of the road, check for cars and accelerate out of the turn out of my neighborhood... except... oops... perhaps I was a little over excited as I hit the curb at about 20 MPH and climbing. "That's gonna leave a mark."

I keep going, waiting for the tire to flatten which doesn't happen. I get there only to realize it was my alarm reminding me 15 min early for my 9:freaking:15 appointment. Ok - well I'm there in plenty of time... I didn't even look to see what I'd done to my car. Appointment goes well, no issues and off I go.

Get to work, get stuff done. Oh wait - idiot boy in the office - the one who thinks he's all that - he sends and email to the President of my company about our AR person who reports to me. Let me first say that this woman was born to collect money. She is flat out brilliant at it. The CEO is more than half in love with her, the President, the CFO, me, and the presidents of all our divisions all think she walks on water. Anyway - idiot boy likes to puff out his chest whenever possible and in this case, instead of asking the AR person to also give her reports to him, he created this long story about this shit and that shit and sent it directly to not her, not her supervisor, not her boss's boss, but the President of our company, cc-ing the President of his division. Jesus God I hate stupid people. Like if you want to make someone look bad, perhaps you should pick someone who isn't brilliant at her job by every measure that counts! Of course the President just forwarded it to me, as he's usually a sane sort, and said please respond to idiot boy (Okay he didn't really say that, but I'm sure that's what he meant). It ended up all fine of course, but jeez it took some stupid time out of my day which I didn't have to give. Did I mention I seriously hate stupid people!

Okay - then I head out in the late afternoon to take the deposit to the bank and guess what??

My tire is flat. Look, you can even see where my rim is messed up there near the bottom on the left. Oops... did I tell you I had a history of incidents with curbs that jump out and get right in my way while driving. No? Well, good, never mind then.

Okay, forget about the bank, someone else can go. Am I fully capable of changing my tire. Yes, absolutely. Am I remotely willing to do so if there is another option. Not so much. This is what I pay AAA for, right? I give them a call, and out they send a very cute, tow truck guy who comes out and puts a little donut on the front of my car and all is well....

Until I get back into my office and my husband calls.

Brad: Teddy is okay

this is never ever a good way to start a conversation.

Me: okay (I can hear they're in a car and I'm thinking they're on the way to the hospital - thank God I have the donut!!)

B: And he wants you to know that it isn't Bandit's fault at all, it's 100% his fault. He was very insistent that I tell you that.

M: OMG, what the hell happened?

B: Bandit bit him. We're on the way back from the doctor and they decided not to give him stitches... yadda, yadda, yadda.

M: what happened.

B: Ted had Bandit in his lap and and was tapping a pencil on the table getting Bandit to pounce on it so they could play tug of war. And eventually Bandit got more than the pencil. There were several chewed up pencils on the table so this "game" had been going on a while.

M: so our brain trust of a son was holding a pencil while teaching the dog to bite said pencil?

B: that about covers it.

M: is it wrong to comment on his stupidity?

B: I hope not.

America's worst finder

2010-09-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

The shoes
Me: Teddy, come on buddy, we've got to go.

Ted: Okay, I've just got to get my shoes, they're up in my room. (He runs up to get them. He runs back down. Looks in the family room. Goes back upstairs. Comes back down and tries the dining room.)

M: Ted! Come on, we're going!

T: (completely annoyed and put upon) I can't find my shoes. (He's pulling pillows off the couch)

Brad (who just now clued into what's going on): I think I put them on the stairs. (Right on the bottom where Ted had just passed four separate times)

Ted walks over to the stairs and then looks up at me sheepishly: I guess this is just another example of being the world's worst finder.

The socks
We're going roller skating for Teddy's birthday and we need to bring longer socks. Jack doesn't own a single pair and the only ones Ted has are his black socks worn when performing in school concerts. But there are plenty of those so we'll be fine.

Me: Ted will you grab a second pair of black socks for Jackson?

Ted: sure

Several minutes and some banging - mo-om I can only find one pair of black socks. we never use them, they should be sitting in his sock drawer, this should be an easy one. Look again! There aren't any. I come upstairs and there are 5 pairs in the top nearly empty drawer.

T: Oh, hmmm, I found this pair on the floor, I didn't think to look in a drawer.

M: uh huh....

The swords
Ted: Mo-om Jack won't tell me where my swords are.

Jack: I just told you they're in my cubby.

Ted: NO THEY'RE NOT (12 is a delightful age for a boy)

Jack: Geesh! I'll show you. (walking towards the mudroom cubbies with arms raised and hands waving spookily) "Look, I'm about to magically teleport them 'oogakajukababa'.

The cubbies are roughly a foot wide and a foot deep and maybe 4 feet tall and Teddy (aka "America's worst finder") couldn't find two 3 foot Nerf swords in one of them.

We're very proud.

65 Questions

2010-09-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

65 Questions You've Probably Never Been Asked...you know the rules. Tag people in this note (including the person who tagged you!) to learn more about people. Also, try to tag people who you've tagged in other notes, sometimes you learn things in new notes that you didn't know before about them...

1. First thing you wash in the shower?

My hair

2. What color is your favorite hoodie?

heather gray

3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

yes

4. Do you plan outfits?

um... not so much

5. How are you feeling RIGHT now?

Tired and annoyed

6. What’s the closest thing to you that's red?

My hair, though my kids would say it's orange. My sheets though I suppose burgundy is the real color. A mini sewing kit that is true red is on my dresser.

7. Tell me about the last dream you remember having?

Man I don't remember the specifics, but I remember after about 10 minutes of being up and about it dawned on me it was just a dream and I was seriously relieved I didn't have to deal with whatever it had been about.

8. Did you meet anybody new today?

No, but I met a nice man at Jackson's football practice yesterday.

9. What are you craving right now?

sleep

10. Do you floss?

rarely

11. What comes to mind when I say cabbage?

icky bad smell

12. Are you emotional?

publicly - nope privately - yup

13. Have you ever counted to 1,000?

Knowing me, probably. But I don't remember doing it.

14. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it?

definitely both.

15. Do you like your hair?

very much so

16. Do you like yourself?

most of the time.

17. Would you go out to eat with George W. Bush?

hmmm, I suppose so, but I can't imagine what we'd have in common.

18. What are you listening to right now?

The muted sounds of the TV from downstairs

19. Are your parents strict?

Not even a little bit.

20. Would you go sky diving?

I don't think so

21. Do you like cottage cheese?

Yes

22. Have you ever met a celebrity?

Yes

23. Do you rent movies often?

Nope

24. Is there anything sparkly in the room you're in?

does my personality count - LOLOL

25. How many countries have you visited?

26. Have you made a prank phone call?

Yes, but not for many, many years

27. Ever been on a train?

Yes

28. Brown or white eggs?

Either but usually white.

29.Do you have a cell phone?

Yes

30. Do you use chapstick?

if forced to, I greatly prefer Blistex or Carmex.

31. Do you own a gun?

32. Can you use chop sticks?

Yes

33. Who are you going to be with tonight?

Man, I hope no one. :)

34. Are you too forgiving?

I don't think anyone has ever accused me of this.

35. Ever been in love?

Yes

36. What is your best friend(s) doing tomorrow?

No idea, hanging out with her kids I'd guess.

37. Ever have cream puffs?

Yes

38. Last time you cried?

A few weeks

39. What was the last question you asked?

Why are you acting this way?

40. Favorite time of the year?

It would be fall, but that brings winter and that's just no good. So I have to say spring.

41. Do you have any tattoos?

Yes and I still love it today as much as I did the day I got it.

42. Are you sarcastic?

Oh yes.

43. Have you ever seen The Butterfly Effect?

Nope

44. Ever walked into a wall?

No doubt

45. Favorite color?

Red or orange

46. Have you ever slapped someone?

I'm sure I have

47. Is your hair curly?

very

48. What was the last CD you bought?

Some old Bruce Springsteen

49. Do looks matter?

sure they do

50. Last text you received?

Cool. Is that a first for him?

51. Is your phone bill sky high?

I don't think so

52. Do you like your life right now?

Parts of it.

53. Do you sleep with the TV on?

No.

54. Can you handle the truth?

Yes.

55. Do you have good vision?

I used to, I'm not sure I can say that so definitively right now

56. Do you hate or dislike more than 3 people?

hmmmm. I'm not sure I hate anyone and as I dislike stupid people intensely I'd say that's way, way more than three.

57. How often do you talk on the phone?

Not too often.

58. The last person you held hands with?

hmmm, probably Jackson. Ted and I walked for quite a ways today with our arms around each other's waist and shoulder - does that count? (and while we were walking that way, I was thinking how lucky am I that my 12 year old son will walk with his arm around my waist)

59. What are you wearing?

tan jeans, a green top, and a pink fleece

60.What is your favorite animal?

Not Bandit....

61. Where was your default picture taken?

On the South River

62. Can you hula hoop?

I doubt it. I'm not too bad on Wii.

63. Do you have a job?

Yup

64. What was the most recent thing you bought?

McDonalds

65. Have you ever crawled through a window?

Yes.

consider yourself tagged. :)

I am not a techno-idiot. I swear, I'm not.

2010-09-09T19:08:00.000-07:00

I am not a techno-idiot. I am also not an IT wiz, but I usually do okay. Maybe something new will take me a couple of tries, but I'll get it - the way I use computers is just not rocket science.

But then Jackson had to finish his "Me Poster". I need to print out some things previously typed in Word and then print out some pictures and we'll do a little pasting and viola we're done. No big deal. I print the Word stuff no problem. Now it's time to print some pictures. I have a Mac - this kind of thing is super easy. I've done it countless times. I grab my cute little HP photo printer and photo paper and hook it up to my laptop in the kitchen.

Hmmm, the printer isn't getting power. It must be that I'm using an extension cord, it must not be getting enough juice or the connection isn't quite right. Okay, no biggie, I'll just move the laptop and the printer to the island so it's all next to each other and next to an outlet. Done.... Wait.. still no power. I fool around with the end that's in the outlet and if I unplug it and plug it back in it gets power for approximately two seconds and then it goes blank. I am fully prepared to hold the plug in a specific place for the length of a couple of pictures, but no matter what I do with the power cord at either end - I can only get the printer to power up for about 2 seconds before it dies. It doesn't seem to have the slightest thing to do with how far in or out any of the connections are, or any other logical kind of thing. 2 seconds and then it's dead. Okay scratch that. I may have let out a few primal screams by this point. Maybe considered throwing the cute little printer across the room. Maybe the kids were mildly afraid of their mom.

I didn't mention that we did the rest of the work yesterday and left the layout for tonight. It was just some quick printing and some gluing. Jackson had flag football practice from 6 to 7, then I stopped and picked up some fast food for him so we'd have enough time to finish the poster and now after the demise of the cute little HP it's close to 8:30 - which is Jackson's bedtime.

But okay, plan B. We'll just print the pictures on regular paper on the main printer (the one I had just used to print the Word document). I've done that lots of times too. I pull up iphoto, highlight the picture I want. Size it as desired. Choose File then Print. I change the printer to the correct one (which took me a minute to figure out, I'll admit) and clicked okay. I got an error message - printer offline. What? You just printed. I went and added more paper - I added paper to a different tray too that I thought the printer might like, and tried again. I then had trouble remembering how to delete a print job from my Mac - as I was thinking if I deleted the job I could start again and narrow the parameters further. A few more screams later. Maybe a bit more fear. eh. Okay, job deleted (it's super easy as I knew it was, but as my friend suggested, I'm just hexed tonight.

I try again. I try with printer paper. No go. With plain paper. Nope. I've examined and tried all possible parameters and in every case, it goes offline. The printer looks fine. Oh wait, it's just spitting out blank paper. I turn it on and off. I reboot my computer. I try again. Offline. Very loud scream. Ok, well I do have a third printer upstairs. I think it came free with a computer at some point. I go get it, hook it up to the laptop. I set about doing teh same thing, only I choose the new (third) printer and the printer starts making printing noises. Woo Hoo! Maybe we'll get somewhere. Jackson and I are staring at it with baited breath, hoping against hope that it will print the 3 pictures we've chosen. According to what we're seeing on the screen, they should all print nicely 3x5" on one piece of paper. Easy peasy. But instead what comes out is basically a screen print of the folder within iphoto that I was choosing the pictures from, including pictures of the edit buttons along the bottom of the program. I get one picture I wanted but the others are cut off.

A picture of the "screen print" that I got to print.

I scream a bit more. It's now 9pm and Jack is very tired. I desperately want to throw some hardware across the room, or maybe off the back deck. Jack's been diligently cutting out all the things he needed to cut out. I keep at it. It's just not working. I'm diligently banging my head against the nearest flat surface. Finally I go back to trying just one picture. If I can just get this one picture we'll be golden. Several more attempts and I'm finally able to get our first choice picture to print. The fact that it took up every bit of an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper is just a bonus - not a problem... right? I tell Jackson I've got some good news and some bad news. I got the picture to print, but it's an entire sheet of paper. My delightful child says.. "We can make that work!" I just need to re-print the Word document because Jack accidentally severed one of the things and then we're done. I go ahead and send it to the main printer as it's already worked for that tonight. It's not a picture. Just words. Nope, the printer is offline and there's no way I can fix that.

I get it to print on printer number 3 and we call it a day. Oh thank to all that's holy! Brad will be home tomorrow and he'll say something totally annoying to me like - Cam if you just turned the paper upside down it would have worked. I swear to God, I'm not an idiot about these things. It's not my strongest suit, but printing pictures is child's play. I've done it dozens and dozens of times on at least two of the printers (the one that actually sort of worked, it may have been the first time for that one). But I swear, Brad's going to come home and say.. you just had to have turned it on, or something equally as obvious. And that's when the printers which are currently littering the kitchen will begin to fly.

So Jack was delightful in his reaction to the HUGE picture of himself that was about to become the center piece of a school project and then at bedtime (which we were now well past) Teddy was delightful as well. "Mom, I'm really sorry the printers were giving you such a hard time tonight." It's nice to be reminded from time to time that they are, in fact, really good people. And despite my behavior and absolute frustration tonight (or maybe because of it) they reminded me they were.

The finished project (HUGE picture and all)

Another typical evening...

2010-09-08T17:22:00.000-07:00

It was a lovely evening. I got home at about a quarter to six where Brad and I were set to do the "tag, you're it" thing as he was heading down to Washington for a two day conference. The evil wonder dog who just hates it when someone (anyone) leaves the house is barking up a storm to show his extreme displeasure. Brad and I have to execute a last minute fantasy football trade so I actually have a QB that's starting this week. The idiot dog keeps barking. The pasta Brad started has to be finished. The dog is stepping up his efforts. The kitchen table that somehow got piled with all manner of non dinner-like things gets cleared. The dog keeps barking. Fights are broken up (that's a bit strong). The dog keeps barking. The dinner is finished and set out. The dog keeps barking. Brad's finally ready to get the Hell out of dodge in the barest of moments before I commit canine-acide. Finally with Brad actually gone and no longer leaving the stupid dog finally shuts the *&%% up.

The boys have been in a mood all evening long. I haven't yet had a chance to change out of my work clothes. They are alternating between playing very loud gags on each other and screaming "MOM, MAKE HIM LEAVE ME ALONE" They are alternating who yells this. It's very fun. I sit down and work with Jackson on his project due Friday, get the kids dessert and the kitchen back in some semblance of order (not clean mind you, that would be far, far too much to ask for tonight). They want me to move my car so they can play basketball and I think hallelujah a minute of peace. I move the car they go outside. They come back within 3 minutes - 'Hey mom, there's a guy outside who wants to talk to you.' Oh, did I mention the dog is barking again - there are humans outside. Maybe they're leaving. It's his civic duty to bark constantly just in case he can convince someone not to leave.

I go outside, I still haven't changed my clothes. Some high school kid wants to sell me something - some version of a coupon book I think, but man he gives me the worst - and I do mean the worst pitch ever. I cut him off and tell him I'm not interested. "Dude, you can't be serious!" "I am, and now it's dark. Boys, it's time to come inside." I think he might have continued to blather on about something, but I was already heading inside. (Parents, teach your kids how to pitch the stupid things they have to sell. Start with an introduction. Something that sounds remotely polite - geesh) Anyway... The boys beg to finish the game they're playing, I give them three more minutes (really more for me than for them).

And then the crying started. In comes Teddy with his hands over his mouth crying hard. I open my arms to take him in, he shifts his hands and there's blood everywhere. I quickly change tactics because there's really no reason to get blood all over my favorite white shirt that I still haven't taken off yet. But alas, as I lead him to the sink to see what we're dealing with I see I wasn't fast enough and my right shoulder is miraculously covered in blood - woo hoo. It's just a small cut from his tooth on his bottom lip. Jackson who ran in right behind him is upset that he hurt his brother. "I'm so so so sorry, I didn't mean to hit him in the face, I was just throwing it back to him." Jack can't stand still. Nor can he shut up. Oh wait - guess what, the dog is barking. There's a lot of commotion going on in the kitchen; Ted crying, Jack apologizing, Mom calming... There's much to bark about.

I got a dish towel on his mouth while I went to get ice. I begged the dog to shut the $@T% up. I tried to calm Jackson and get him to stop talking. But then Ted decides threatening his brother is the best course of action. So every time I turn my back to get ice or kick I mean pet the dog, Ted does something like shake his fist at Jack, or lunge towards him. Jack is near tears, periodically crying out in terror. He already feels guilty and now he's scared too. OKAY - EVERYONE SHUT THE &*&% UP! Okay I didn't really yell that, but I wanted to; really, really wanted to. "Jackson, I know you didn't mean to make him bleed, but go upstairs and read." One down. Kill the dog (why can't I do that? - that would have been two down). Get ice on Teddy's lip and get him cleaned up. Okay Ted, let's go upstairs and get ready for bed. He goes up before me while I close the garage door and close down the first floor.

By the time I get upstairs Jackson is crying and holding a ripped book. "Ted ripped my book on purpose" Well this does go with the threatening behavior downstairs, he doesn't usually go towards book ripping, but he's certainly been known to wreck Jack's Lego projects in the past. "Teddy that wasn't necessary, you know better than that." This is my calm and reasonable facade, the one that hides the raging homicidal lunatic that is begging and pleading to come out. "But it was an accident Mom, I promise." It sounds like he's telling the truth, but of course so does the crying Jackson in the other corner.

Mom: You know what Ted, this is something you'd do. I don't know if you did it this time, but it's the kind of rude and obnoxious behavior that have been your hallmark for the past few months, so it's really hard for me to believe you that this one time you happened to not mess up something of Jackson's, especially after the way you were threatening him downstairs.

Ted: He bloodied my lip.

M: You know perfectly well he would never intend to hurt you like that.
He gives me the look that says "mom, you have got to be kidding".

M: No more than you would try to hurt him that way, would you ever intentionally try to make him bleed.

I was really hoping he'd think about it before he answered vs. just letting his pride answer. He did, phew.

T: ok, no I wouldn't.

M: and neither did he.

He reluctantly agreed with me but is now totally pissed at me because I just won't outright believe ripping the book was an accident. He keeps looking at me with the "my mom is calling me a liar to my face" puppy dog eyes.

Oh well...

Some pictures of Jackson

2010-09-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've done a good enough job of posting pictures of the boys so I'm going to try to rectify that..

Hanging out with his hamsters in the tub.

Jack LOVES him some watermelon. He was hungry and there was half a watermelon... so.. 1+1=2

There's no rule that says you can't just plunk down with a spoon and have at the melon, is there?

It's very serious business

Unless it's not

Concentration is the key to digging out the perfect piece
(look at those lashes, I'm jealous)

Sometimes it takes longer than others

Aaaaahhh! There it is!

Taking back the house and maybe our lives too?

2010-09-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

First of all I was sick and useless for a bit and then immediately on the heels of that (well really right in the middle of that) Brad decided to forget his past neck surgery and all his common sense and try to lift half a HUGE oak dresser and take it from our garage to upstairs. He did this despite the fact that we'd discussed he needed more than two people to lift that thing and despite the fact that it would end up just sitting in the upstairs hallway since we weren't ready for it yet. Anyway he got the dresser upstairs and of course hurt himself in the process. So while I was still barely on the mend I was driving him to the ER... this is so not where I was going with this. (can you tell I'm not over this yet?) The point is - we were both sick (two months later he's still battling the effects and the dresser is still in the hallway leaning up against the railing - it's a good look.) and that was really the start of the downward slide our poor house has taken.

In the two months since then we went on vacation, finished up camp, Brad traveled and his arm continued to heal, hosted a baby shower, school supply shopping, kept up Jackson's counseling appointments (major separation and other anxiety issues), and the general stuff that fills life - but the real time sucker was the Comic-con. As usual Brad helps coordinate the annual convention and I help. For Brad this is like having two full time jobs for the two months prior to the show. And then finally the show happens and we both stay downtown for the duration and my mom brings the kids in for a few hours each day (it's so phenomenal to have such a wonderful mom so close by).

It feels like we've barely managed to keep the kids fed and the laundry clean (certainly not folded or put away). So Comic-con was last weekend. Brad and I got home about about 12:30am on Monday morning and managed to get the kids up and ready for their first day of school and survive the work week and now.... breathe. But.. the house. Oh. My. God. The house. There's stuff everywhere. Piles. In drawers. On tables. On counters. On beds. It seems impossible.

So now - I'm feeling totally overwhelmed. I just can't live like this. So on the one hand I do truly feel like I can breathe for the first time in too long but on the other - whew it's a lot of work. I need to recreate the peaceful home I live in or I may just implode. Okay so.. I've written a list. I need the list or it will be far too overwhelming. As we cross stuff off, I'm feeling a little better and more confident we can, in fact, take our house back. And maybe our lives too. I doubt there have been 10 weekdays in the last few months that Brad and I have both been home at night.

Wish us luck.

Our arrival home... Shouldn't it be a kind of a happy homecoming thing?

2010-08-21T13:47:00.000-07:00

The Dead Mouse
welcomed us as soon as we opened the garage door. It was just lying there on it's side, sort of waving to us - only not really as it wasn't moving or anything. How delightful.

Fruit Flies
Are just the cutest things, don't you think? It's a good think they're so damn cute or I'd have been really grossed out by the fact that our kitchen was inundated with them when we got home. There was a serious, all hands on deck, fruit fly party going on around my kitchen island. I vaguely remembered Brad buying some peaches from a local farm stand and as I looked at the red basket on the island (I think it was red though there was a brownish fruit fly haze covering the true color) I saw a brown paper bag inside. The same kind of brown paper bag you get from the farm stand. And I couldn't remember seeing the boys eat any peaches the week before we left for a week and I know I didn't have any and Brad doesn't eat fruit (I know, it's a long story). So I quickly took the basket outside and put it on the deck and found the flyswatter and put Jackson on fruit fly killing duty.

Jack's ear
started hurting on Thursday while in the pool. Ted's ear had hurt him the day before but was perfectly fine by Thursday. Now this could be just a bit of water trapped in there or the beginning of an ear infection or swimmer's ear (yes I know that's an infection too) - so we just watched and waited to see what we'd see. Sure enough his symptoms were inconclusive until... the drive home from the Eastern Shore. We made him an appointment for 5:10 pm on Saturday and he headed out with Brad to pick up the demon dog from hell (aka Bandit). I heard Brad tell him he needed to take some ibuprofen before they left and thought that was a good idea.

They got back and were preparing to go to the appointment and he was balking. In a big, big way. Crying. "I don't want them to touch my ears" "no, I'm not going if they are going to touch my ears" "no way". I was calmly and diligently explaining to him how we wanted his ear to stop hurting and he might need medicine for that and the only way to get the medicine would be for them to take a quick peek in there. I tried joking "it's not like they're going to jab a stick in there or anything"... yeah that didn't work at all - he just glared at me and then started crying again before he ran into the other room... Yay me.

Finally it comes out that he didn't actually take any medicine earlier and it all becomes clear. We poured some down his throat and got him in the car and hopefully by the time they get there he'll be human again.

My back
is not quite out, but it's been thinking about it for a couple of days. The bed at the house was really soft and I think that contributed. But so did kayaking even though I only did that once and throwing the boys around in the pool and packing and unpacking, etc, etc, etc. Of course the really bad part is that the Comic-con is next weekend and it'll really suck if my back is really out when I'm supposed to be working all day on a concrete floor.

Here's hoping tomorrow is better.

A week on Hudson Creek - can we say good food...

2010-08-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

We just spent a lovely week on the Hudson Creek just outside of Cambridge with a big family group. My mom and step dad sailed over from Annapolis, My brother-in-law's sister and her friend came in from LA and the rest of us came from our homes in MD.

Sang and Lara bought a boat; a little... hmmm fishing boat kind of thing, not a Boston whaler, but something in that vicinity so that fresh crabs could be caught. On the first evening Sang and company baited two 600 foot trot lines with chicken necks and bull lips. Let me just say - bull lips were a new one on me - they are in fact the lips from bulls - ewwwww. I'm all over the chicken neck as the way to catch some crabs, but bull lips... really? The lips from bulls? Sang said he went into a local butcher shop and asked for 20 lbs of bull lips and the butcher reacted as if he's asked for ground beef. Obviously I'm totally out of it. Perhaps I've been away from Annapolis for too long. On the next morning Sang, Lara, Scott, and Minah headed out and (apparently) after much yelling (the learning curve was especially steep) they came back with more than a bushel of crabs which we had for lunch. I've had some good and fresh crabs in my day - but Oh. My. God. they were some good crabs.

It's still my own personal embarrassment that I can't get my children to eat crabs. (hanging head in shame) I'm hoping this will change some day - I have hope with Jackson, but I think Ted may be a lost cause (much like his father). Brad will eat crab on things and in things, but the idea of sitting down with a beer (he would never drink beer) and picking a bunch of crabs is just not ever going to happen.

Sang's family is Korean and he, his mom, and his sister are all amazing cooks. Every night was filled with something wonderful. We even had plain old ordinary fajitas one night - but I swear they were the best damn fajitas I've ever had. Kyong grilled chicken, pork, and steak to perfection along with a bevy of veggies and put it all together - perfection. The things that Sang's mom would throw together with leftovers and spices - totally amazing. I was trying to convince her to come live with us - I'm not sure she's willing, but it's a nice thought.

The same group went crabbing another day as well and caught another bushel and it was just as amazing as the first... so so so good.

We had three dogs with us; a big huge lanky German shepherd mix named Rico, a teeny, tiny almost cat like thing (I think it's a toy poodle, shitzu mix that has a special name) called Nala, and a Chug (Chihuahua/Pug mix) named Loa. The three of them together was completely delightful, though I kept calling Rico - Nico and Nala - Rala and Loa - Lolo. There were far too many short names going on for my poor little brain.

Overall a great time was had by all - there was a good sized pool in the back yard, several kayaks and canoes for play in Hudson Creek, a nice dock to gaze out off of and plenty of space to spread out and veg (one of my favorite things).

Unfortunately not it's back to the real world.

And finally she posts again...

2010-07-22T16:52:00.000-07:00

So I was thinking I wanted to do a blog post, but I couldn't think of a thing to write and then... I put the boys to bed and they were more than happy to entertain me...

She got up and just walked away
I'm reading one of the Wimpy Kid books to Jackson. He's recently taken to wanting us to read to him again which is cute - and hopefully short lived (I much prefer him reading to me) - but I'm finishing up my last "day" in the book and then he needs to show me how his dolphin silly band can be a dolphin, a fish, and a pig, just by moving it around a bit. Okay, go for it kid.

Jack: Here's the dolphin (fart) oops, excuse me
I just raised my eyebrows at him in question and he shrugged
Jack: and here's (fart) the (fart) fish (fart, fart, fart). Oh man, I'm sorry.
I quietly got up and left the room.
And Jackson totally dissolved into a major fit of laughter. He was howling and kept muttering 'she got up and just walked away' before cackling again. He laughed until he was wiping the tears away.

I finally peaked my head around the corner and asked if it was safe to come back in and he fell over again in another laughing fit. "I can't believe you just stood up, turned around and left" as he lost it again. Why this struck him as so funny, I have no idea, but it certainly brightened my evening.

Sometimes I really worry about you
So I moved on to Teddy. After I pry my iphone and the game of stick golf he's playing away from him he's lying sideways on his bed with his feet up on the wall. He starts to takes one shoe off and pushes his leg away from the wall, past his head so he can kick it directly onto the floor over his head and... you guessed it, it bounced off his forehead and both he and I burst out laughing. Which of course brought Jack in from the other room to see what was going on. I tell Jack what Ted did as I know Jack will get a big kick out of it too and probably give me one of his faces that says "man there's a problem with that kid, but (shrug) what are you gonna do" Jack can say so much in a quick look it's completely entertaining and always spot on point.

Anyway, the brain trust that is Teddy decides he's going to show Jackson what he did only this time instead of the shoe just slightly grazing his head on it's way to the floor, it landed smack dab in the middle of his face and I almost fell off the bed laughing. Of course Ted tried to be mad at me because "That really hurt Mom!" I can't say that stemmed my or Jackson's laughter one bit. "Sometimes I really worry about you kid." And Jackson shrugged and silently said "that one is a piece of work."

Bandit
is insane. Seriously insane. He's always been insane and certainly that's part of why I don't like him, but recently he reached a new level of insanity! It started the night before the earthquake. He wouldn't leave my side and was shaking all over; totally freaking out. I have no idea what the issue was unless it was one of those weird animal things where he knew something was going to happen but the earthquake was still 8 hours away so I can't imagine that was it. Not to mention his behavior hasn't really let up much.

He's mostly hiding under my bed. But if he is out he's walking around the house with his ears back or lying at my or Brad's feet shaking. I feel sorry for him, but there's no reason for this sudden shift in behavior. It's like he was suddenly an abused child and is afraid of the world, but nothing new is going on in his life, so I'm not getting it. Lest you all get worried about him (though if it will get someone to come and take him away I'd be okay with that), he's acting exactly how he acts during a thunderstorm only without the storm. Whenever thunder starts, he starts shaking and wants to hide either in my lap (which is not my favorite) or under my bed. And he's been all but living under my bed for more than a week now. Perhaps the end of the world is near and we just don't know it yet.

Camela

Where the wild things are...

2010-06-29T18:09:00.000-07:00

Camp is back.... and so is the drama
As I'm sure I've mentioned we've totally screwed up our son. Well we certainly knew it was going to happen. We had to come to grips with the fact that any children of ours would certainly need therapy at some point in their lives. Once we fully came to terms with that we decided it was time to have kids.... but I digress.

Against my better judgment I let Jack go to sleep away camp last year. It was Ted's 2nd year and he loves it and Jack was very excited about going, but I knew in my heart of hearts he was too young and too attached to his parents to be okay with it and sure enough he was. He had a great time while he was there, but came home suffering from a profound case of separation anxiety whenever ANY kind of separation is going to happen. He got back from sleep away camp and started back up at his regular day camp which he'd been going to and LOVING for years and worked himself into a frenzy over the idea that we were going to leave him there (he'd been there 8 days earlier) that he threw up on the way there. And on just about every morning after that until finally a monetary bribe worked (but that took a few weeks before he could work himself up to it). Then when school started - he was in the third grade and going to the same school as always, he climbed SOBBING onto the school bus and held his hands out the window to us while he continued SOBBING. There wasn't a dry eye in the neighborhood watching that scene. This continued for the entire first week, though he was finally able to get it together and had a mostly fine year as far as that was concerned.

Now to this summer. His stated reasons for hating the summer camp he previously loved were numerous and inventive; it was rusty, it's hot outside, they don't play football right... things like that and Brad was prepared to send him somewhere else, but believing any place would be tough for him I pushed to keep him there because it's a known entity for him and the staff know and love him and are ready, willing, and able to deal with the fact that he may literally vomit every morning in their bathroom. Today was the first day I got to take him to camp (Brad's in NC) and yes, he managed to vomit in the car on the ride over and was then totally surprised that I was still leaving him there. "but wait, I threw up, now I don't have to go." "uh, honey, you threw up because of your nerves and they know that, you're not sick, you're still going."

Let me stop and say he has a fabulous time while he's there. We get regular updates from his counselors and the camp director and they consistently report that he is having a ball. And if he's talking about camp and not realizing the implications of us knowing how much fun he is having he tells hilarious stories of the wonderful and crazy things they get to do there. But of course being Mr. Manipulative he is very careful not to let his guard down too often as he'd much rather tell us the place is rusty so he shouldn't have to go (read: I don't want you to ever leave my side for any reason whatsoever!)

Anyway - I hadn't intended to really get into all that, but there it is. Camp is back and so is the vomiting drama. We're working on coping mechanisms and I think maybe it's getting a little better. I'm hoping before he goes to high school he'll be able to leave our side more easily.

Teddy and girls
is a fun and painful thing to watch. Recently Teddy was at an end of school beach blast party and there he lost a tooth (the boy has lost 3-4 teeth in the past month). Apparently once the bloody molar was in a baggy he ran around the blacktop shoving it into as many girls' faces as he could. Brad was horrified by this behavior, I've got to say, it just made me laugh.

Then we were at the pool the other day and he kept going up to a group of girls who were minding their own business and splashing them. Brad was completely agitated by this. "We have to make him stop that, I don't think the girls like it." I got him to sit back down. If the girls don't like it, they'll have to figure out how to get him to stop it. I'm confident they can put him in his place if they want to and equally confident Ted will continue to annoy them until they do just that. This is just all part of the ritual - both sides need to learn how to deal with each other. We watched while Brad gripped the sides of his chair hard enough that his knuckles had lost all color, but eventually Ted managed to insinuate himself into a rousing game of keep away with the girls and their fathers.. no harm, no foul. And eventually the feeling came back into Brad's fingers.

Camela

The cause of the big bump on my forehead.....

2010-06-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

At the elementary school where Jackson goes they have a lovely tradition where on the last day of school all the teachers and staff form two lines just outside the exit doors and clap and cheer for all the students as they have officially finished the year and (hopefully) been promoted to the next grade. Every year the sentiment brings tears to my eyes and if I actually get to watch it, I'm toast. (and though I won't admit it officially it's possible there are a few tears in my eyes right now as I think about it).

Anyway, because he goes to aftercare right after school I wasn't 100% sure exactly when school lets out and so I wasn't sure when his half day ended on the last day of school and this year Brad is out of town so I'm going to be there when Jack gets out. So what does a smart and organized mom do when she doesn't know the answer to something (and her husband is not available to give her the answer)??? She calls the school with a quick and easy question.

Me: What time does school let out?

dumbgirlwhoansweredthephone: Three hours earlier.

M: Yes, okay, thanks. What time does school let out?

D: What time does he get home?

M: When I pick him up. He’s in aftercare and I’m going to pick him up from school on Wednesday when it let’s out, but I don’t know when that is. Can you tell me when school let’s out this week?

D: Oh he’s in aftercare?

M: Yes

D: And you’re going to pick him up on Wednesday?

M: Yes

D: So he’ll be a car rider. Because I was going to calculate three hours earlier than when the bus normally drops him off if he was a bus rider.

M: Okay. When does school let out?

D: Well we’ll be all done by 12:15 or so. And the car loop gets pretty full so you might want to be in the loop by about noon or so.

M: I’m planning to park the car and get out; can you please tell me when school let’s out?

D: You’re going to park?

M: Yes.

D: As I said we’ll be all done by 12:15 or so, so you definitely want to be here before then.

(maybe a new question will help get me an answer)

M: When does the bell ring?

D: For car riders, we’ll probably let them out at 12:07 or 12:09.

M: Great, thank you.

(After hanging up, I beat the phone against my head for approximately 15 minutes.)

Camela

More potent quotables

2010-06-04T16:15:00.000-07:00

"What ever happened to Sean Connery, I liked Sean Connery, well I mean that guy who used to play him."

******

(asked to Teddy) "Do you know what the capital of Albany is?" blank stare. "Albany, do you know what the capital of Albany is?"

Me: I think you mean New York, What's the capital of New York.

"Oh that's right" back to Teddy "do you know what's the capital of New York?"

Ted: New York City?

"No, Albany" Then to me "Camla, What is the capital of New York City?"

******

Jackson is doing a project about the founder of Honda and he was writing out the day he was born and the the day he died. "How old was he when he was born?" (blank stare) "Jackson, how old was Honda when he was born? What was that, in 1906? How old was he then? When he was born?" (more blank stares) To me "Does he know how hold he was when he was born?"

Me: When he was born he was zero and a minute later he was a minute old.

"Oh that's right."

The Race

2010-05-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

Teddy and Jackson have been trash-talking with each other about who would win in a footrace. Both boys are fairly athletic, Teddy has 2 years and 4 months on Jack and is bigger and stronger... but Jackson is fast. They haven't raced in a couple of years and Teddy has always won before but between you and me the smart money is on Jackson winning now (and Jack knows it and Teddy suspects it).

Jack finally got Ted to agree to the race and it was scheduled for after dinner tonight. I suspect that if Jack is winning Teddy will quit racing and if Ted is winning Jack will quit racing so they can say the other didn't beat them. So we have a big dinner conversation about that particular topic and both boys agree (Teddy somewhat sheepishly) that they will in fact make it a fair race and give it all they've got until the end. I got Teddy alone and talked again about the very real possiblilty that his younger brother might beat him and made sure he was prepared for that - he said he was and that in fact he thought Jack was going to win, but he'd give it his best shot.

Finally it's time. They decide to race on the wet grass from the sidewalk, around a tree, down the hill, around the swing set, back up the hill, back around the tree and the first person to touch Mommy wins. It's a fair start and Jack has Ted by 3 steps at the tree and is pulling away down the hill until he slips and totally wipes out around the swing set. Teddy passes him but Jack pops back up and digs in to catch up. Jackson made a valiant effort and closed the gap to maybe 10 feet as they rounded the tree and headed towards me.

As soon as Jackson fell, I planned on a rematch (unless Jackson somehow managed to catch back up) because I think it'll be good for Teddy to be beaten by his brother. But what does Jackson do when he decides he's not going to make up the difference. He was only a couple of feet behind Ted with maybe 15 feet to go and he ... guess... this is Jackson I'm talking about... yes you guessed it... he clutched his stomach and started to cry. "IT'S NOT FAIR" he wailed. What's not fair you wonder? Is it that Teddy won when he had so thoroughly wiped out? That's what I expected him to say. Even I was fooled. I thought he'd at least be sane. Nope. "IT'S NOT FAIR, BECAUSE I'M ABOUT TO THROW UP."

Me: OH MY GOD!! YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.

He's crying his eyes out and the horror that is his life and he runs inside to the bathroom. Brad and Ted calmly discuss a redo because they want a fair race; start to finish where the running determines the winner and not the wet grass.

Me: NO WAY IN HELL!!! I WILL NOT ALLOW THAT WHINY LITTLE BOY TO GET A REDO TODAY IF THAT'S HIS REACTION. (yet another great mom moment)

Eventually Jack came out and I told him to go and bring his bike inside.... but did he come right back inside... uh, nope. He did not.

I went out to get him and I explained to him out unacceptable and unsportsmanlike his end of race actions were. I told him how we would have of course re-run the race for the reasons mentioned above but he had to make up that his stomach hurt. Man was he pissed off at me. He stormed into the garage and threw his bike into the corner and prepared to storm out again.

Jack: I'M GOING TO JAKE'S (it was about 8pm on a school night - uh.. not so much)

Me: Get your little butt inside. (He slams the bike again) And up to your room.

He storms in, throws his shoes across the room and storms up the stairs stomping the whole way until he gets to his door which he soundly slams.

Aaaaaah, but now it's blessedly quiet.

There's still no official winner, but it's calm once again our home.

Camela

Flag Football

2010-05-08T20:19:00.002-07:00

Jackson plays flag football. This is his third season and he's loved it since the very first time he played. This is definitely his sport. He throws well, he catches well, but more than anything he's fast as all get out. It's rare to play a team that has a kid faster than Jackson which means if he can get past the defense, he's gone. It also means if the other team thinks they're gone, they should put their head down and run faster because Jackson is hot on their heels.

This year he has a fantastic head coach who is a former football player; I think he even had a season in the pros and he is so great at making sure all the players; no matter their level get turns to play all the positions and everyone is having a great time. The team's record, however isn't fantastic. They've won one or two games and lost several very close games and the losses are killing this lovely, yet obviously very competitive coach. So today after they couldn't score in the first half and had let the other team score twice.... the coach snapped. He couldn't handle losing anymore, I think. Brad, who is also a coach, said you could see the change in his eyes as they came off the field at half time.

So at half time this lovely coach said to the group of 7 - 9 year olds. "Who has seen the movie 300?" (which Brad tells me is an R rated movie about 300 guys who took on a whole army - they somehow formed some sort of shield and held the army at bay for quite a while - they might all have died at the end, but... eh that was not his point) "We are going to be those 300 guys! We are going to form a shield!!!" I'm sure he was more eloquent and went into more of an explanation, but that's the gist of it.

They play 5 against 5 at this age and for every single offensive play of the second half they had Jackson lined up behind the QB who was behind the center and once the ball was snapped the 4 guys fanned out and became the shield with their sole intent to keep the defense away from Jackson who was to read the defense and decide whether he wanted to run right or left.

He scored 3 touchdowns and 3 2 point conversions; scoring all 24 of their points and our team won 24-22. It felt a little awkward by the end - I was sort of hoping someone else would get the ball - I'd hate for any of the other kids or parents to be upset by the how the second half went. Hopefully it'll all be back to normal next week and everyone will just be happy we won.

Camela

Potent quotables

2010-04-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

The following are actual quotes from conversations in my kitchen - the participant(s) shall remain nameless.

"I like that Sharon Falin, but I don't think LaBamba is really that bad"

"you know, when you're older you should eat a banana every day because of the citrus"

"I didn't know that Larry King was a S. E. X. freak, did you?" (sex was spelled out so the kids; ages 11 and 9, wouldn't understand - I got the single raised eyebrow from Jackson for that one)

"I don't listen to Westrick much anymore, but have you heard of Brooks and Dunn? They're breaking up."

Was he conscious? "No, he was awake and talking."

And from Teddy:

Ted: You know what would be great?

Me: No, what?

Ted: If I was on a cruise ship along with the swedish bikini team and the lotion boy got sick and I looked just like him. (looking wistfully skyward) Yeah, that would be really great.

Me: Go to bed

Camela

Jackson's big day

2010-04-27T18:32:00.001-07:00

Little Toot Run
I've mentioned it before at some point, but it's a mile long race at the elementary school one grade at a time. It's only a practice race until 3rd grade and then it's real. I have no idea what the difference is as last year they all lined up and started at the same time and ran a mile and ended up with a winner in 2nd grade - but way back in 2nd grade it was just pretend. But this year, in third grade it's for real.... whatever. In 2nd grade Jackson came in 2nd place and for a year he's been pining away for the real 3rd grade version because he just knew he was going to win. Jackson is a very fast runner, in any sport he plays if he's not the fastest kid on the court or field it's a surprise - but.... we're talking about a basketball court at the shortest and a soccer field at the biggest. It's certainly true that he can almost always outrun any other kid to the ball or pass everyone else on his way to a TD, and that is certainly a wonderful skill, but these are not long distances and the Little Toot Run is a mile long.

For a year and a half (it was postponed from the fall because of bad weather) he's been talking about this race; seemingly hanging much of his self worth on it. Many a day he'll come rushing up to me "Mom, can I go jog around the neighborhood, I need to work on my stamina".... "uh, sure dear, that's a great idea". Brad and I have been working all year long to make this less of a make or break thing for him with extremely limited success. We've also been stressing that a mile is a lot longer than the length of a football field and he can't sprint the whole way - we've had better luck with that one.... So this brings me to this year's Official Little Toot Run. - thank God.

For weeks he's been talking about how he's going to win. There are a lot of kids in 3rd grade; he might win, sure. I don't think it's out of the question, but honey, it's okay if you don't win. Please let him get that! As it approaches he tells us he's getting nervous. I think it's good that he can express that, maybe there will be a release valve yet. The night before he can't sleep because his infamous stomach hurts and he's going to throw up.. of course you are... I quickly put him in my bed to sleep and turn on some boring tv and he finally falls asleep. I have to leave early the next morning and I think there are better than even odds Brad won't be able to get him to go to school as he'll be hunched over his favorite bucket, but when I leave he seems chipper and I keep my fingers crossed. Okay this is going to be a stupid long post.

Brad is volunteering for the day long event at his school, they do it grade by grade; 5th, 4th, then 3rd. Finally it's time and the 3rd grades file out of the school.... only Jackson is not with his class. Brad asks his teacher and she tells him that 5 minutes ago Jackson started crying saying his stomach hurt and is with the nurse... of course he is.... The kids are just coming out to get final instructions and then to start the race, so Brad runs inside and finds Jack hunched over his favorite in-school bucket sobbing. Of course knowing Jack will be beside himself with regret if he doesn't at least try to run this stupid race somehow Brad managed to convince my son, the worlds most stubborn human being, to come out and give it a try. I'm not sure I could have done it, but I'm not nearly as nice as Brad.

Jack clings to Brad sniffling while the rest of the monotonous instructions are given all the while Brad is praying - please hurry up, I'm not sure he's going to last much longer... Finally they're off and he seems to be fine. He's in the middle of the pack for the first couple of laps and on the final straight away before the big up hill finish he starts passing people. When they get to the hill he's in third place. He passes one guy and it's just his friend Niall left in front of him. He passes Niall. Niall passes him. He passes Niall. Niall passes him. They both lunge for the finish line and cross in a dead heat - the race is declared a tie.... Jackson took a sharp right hand turn after crossing the line, dropped to his knees and threw up. Well at least he waited till he was done. I have no idea how he would have handled not winning - clearly something we have to work on - so I'm awfully glad he got a blue ribbon to bring home. And there's no one better to have shared the victory with than Niall - what a great kid he is!

The finger gun
Later that same day.... Jackson is at recess with all the rest of the 8 and 9 year old kids in third grade and he's running around with a bunch of boys and he aims his fingers in a gun like fashion at one of them and they all end up hauled to the vice principal's office. I truly don't know the whole story, maybe it was in fact worse and somehow these kids in their La La school in our ritzy little school district where the biggest offense is mixing plaids with stripes (okay that's not fair or true, but this is a far far cry from anything like a violent place) were actually contemplating real live violence but I'd bet all our salaries combined that it wasn't so. Anyway - it's bad enough that my 9 year old is in the office for pulling his fingers on some other 9 year old boy but then - the VP had the audacity to ask my son if he had access to a gun at home.

Okay, let's review here shall we... guns are legal in this country. Many, many a boy (or girl for that matter) has been hunting by the ripe old age of 9... wait let me review... guns are legal, you nit wit. Though that is so far from the point I can't stand myself. I can only assume that her question was to determine if the offending finger was in fact a substitute for the real thing he was planning to bring in to off the kid with the next day. What is the possible reason for asking a 9 year old in quiet little suburbia this question - because you think there's a real danger out there and you need to cover your bases. Does common sense not come into play here? Jack has never shown the slightest hint towards violence. It was a bunch of friends who all happen to be 8 and 9 year old boys playing on a playground; laughing and having a good time. And yet, she needs to know if he has access to a real gun at home - that must have been some finger.

And then... she calls Brad so he can confirm Jack's answer of 'No, he does not have access to a gun at home.' Because what????? What would the next step have been if the answer happened to have been yes?? Did I mention, guns are legal? So Brad calls me to share how friggin' stupid this whole thing is and I am pissed. I tell him I'm going to call the principal, cuz come on, are you kidding me. I'll give you an extremely generous pass - maybe - for sending the 9 year old boys to the principals office for pulling the deadly finger on the playground - but "Jackson, do you have access to a gun at your house?" "Brad, is it true that Jackson does not have access to a gun in your home?" - that's just gone too damn far for me. I call and leave a message. Brad emails me and asks me to cc him on any email I send to her. I have a history of blistering emails that he does not always fully support (did I mention he's the nice one?).

She finally calls back
Her: I assume you're calling about the lunch time incident
Me: Actually I'm calling for a variety of reasons including that, but let's start there. What do you want me to do, cut off his fingers? He's a 9 year old boy.

The conversation with her actually went very well. She apologized all around; for him coming to the office in the first place, and most specifically for the questions about gun access.

But later when I recounted the conversation with Brad - he was not remotely amused....
Brad: YOU STARTED WITH THAT??? YOU COULDN'T EASE INTO IT? GOOD GOD WOMAN!

We told Jackson when he got home, that it was the stupidest thing in the world and that he did nothing wrong and he was not remotely in trouble, but that he should probably try to avoid aiming his fingers at school anymore as they seem to freak out about it. He readily agreed.

Camela

Saturday

2010-04-18T16:44:00.000-07:00

7:15am - Brad and Ted leave to get to the baseball field in time to warm up before Ted's 8am baseball game. Ted pitches 2 no hit innings, has a few good defensive plays, is walked and ends up stealing 2nd, 3rd, and home. He's wildly excited by how well his sports day is going.

8:45am - Brad and Ted leave baseball do a quick change in the car and head over to the soccer fields for his 9am soccer game. Luckily the soccer fields aren't too far from the baseball fields in our county.

8:50am - Jackson and I head to the soccer fields as well.

9:00am - Soccer starts and Ted has a pretty good game, though it took him some time to get into "soccer mode". I'm thinking he was so pumped about his baseball performance it took a while to get his head onto the soccer field, but it eventually got there and they ended up in a 2-2 tie with one of the best teams in his league.

9:15am - Brad and Jackson head out to Jack's 10am swimming lesson in the next town over.

10:00am - Ted's game ends and he and I make our way home.

11:00am - Jack's lesson ends and he and Brad make their way home.

11:30am - Jack and Brad wolf down some food and do a quick change and head off to his 12N flag football practice.

12:45pm - I head to the football field for the game

1:00pm - Jack's game starts. He has a great game as well - he has a long run for a touch down in the first half, then also ran in the 2 point conversion. And in the 2nd half he caught a interception for a TD.

2:00pm - Brad, Jackson, and I head home in two cars and I promptly fell asleep.

I know, I know - half of you out there had worse schedules this weekend, but I think 4 sports in 4 hours is just too damn much - but the boys had fun and that's all that really matters... right?

Camela

Concert clothes

2010-04-13T18:01:00.001-07:00

Teddy has a band adjudication tomorrow... Great. Should I go, should I skip it? Where's Brad? Well of course he managed to fly out of town so ~~he gets to~~ unfortunately he has to miss it. They leave the school at 3:45pm and need to be picked up at a local high school at 8:30. And he's playing when you ask. Uh... yeah, no idea. So I could sit there with Jack all evening as he'd probably like me to or I could take Jack home and get his homework done and give him some down time and then go pick Ted up. Which do you think I'll pick?

But as I've mentioned elsewhere - first things first. I must find the concert clothes. I've known about this thing for a while - but did it ever once occur to me that he needed his concert clothes? Nope. Did the fact that the band director mentioned it help my poor brain click onto this bit of reality - Nope, not so much. Did it occur to my ever so organized husband? Man I hope not, cuz if it did and he didn't think it was worth mentioning before he headed off down south I might have to kill him - but I digress. If I'd thought about it before - say even yesterday of course I would have Teddy find his own clothes - my God the boy is nearly 12 years old. But as Teddy is the definition of an 'absent minded, easily distracted, can't find the shoes on my own feet' kind of kid I think that with 2 hours to go before they need to be packed up for tomorrow it's significantly safer and more peaceful for all involved if I go and find them.

Of course I disguise this as him looking for them with me helping him and he immediately goes to the bottom of his closet - I hope this is a valuable clue. He paws through a variety of Legos and cars and all manner of things I'm not sure I want to know about and comes up with a single black shoe. Okay, let me look. I went and got a small chair to sit on to save my back from what I suspected would be an arduous process and got to work. I found at least an industrial sized load and a half worth of clothes on the floor of his closet. There were seriously 20 pairs of underwear. Where did he even get 20 pairs of underwear. I do recall buying him some new underwear not that long ago after he complained of no longer having any that fit him.... Oh you gullible woman!

But once all the clothes were thrown into the middle of his room creating a 12 foot tall pile I found the second shoe as well as 2 white dress shirts and a pair of black dress pants. We were so in business!!! Of course the pants were size 10 slim. Teddy is a slim kid. But he'll be 12 in less than 4 months - I was doubtful. He did manage to get them on, but let me tell you this was not a good look - and I can't imagine breathing was much fun for him. He found some Navy pants - he told me he was sure the band director would be fine with it, after all as a percussionist he's in the back and who would notice. I told him not to point it out to anyone and if anyone noticed to tell them - "man, my mom was supposed to send the black pants, she must have gotten confused" he seemed okay with that while I totally sweated whether or not that was an okay thing to say to the kid. (of course he is a kid who has no idea of what tact is or when not to throw the truth into someone's face so maybe a bit of sanctioned plausible deniability isn't such a bad thing for him - if this had been Jack, the best liar in all the land, - I never in a million years would have gone there).

But alas - the blue pants were also a size 10 slim - he could barely get them over his feet - both pairs - where in God's name did we get 2 pairs of navy (go Navy beat Army) pants? but that's beside the point at the moment - Okay back to square one. (no not square one I must remind myself - I have the shoes and the socks and the shirt). I will buy you a pair of pants and bring them to school tomorrow before the bus leaves. (will I manage to work a full day sometime this month I wonder?).. Oh Brad - how do you always manage to miss all this fun?... As a last ditch effort I go through each item of clothing in all the drawers in his dresser, confident I won't find any black pants there and low and behold I find a pair of size 10 (not slim) black pants still with the tags on - we are such efficient people (not). They sort of almost fit him. Too short - but he's a budding geek and likes his pants too short and too tight - but don't in any way hamper breathing and they look almost normal. - We are back to "good to go!" woo hoo.

Now we've had to have a 3 hour long conversation (slight exaggeration) about whether or not it's okay to wear a clearly visible green Philadelphia Eagles shirt on under his white shirt.
Me: Why? I stupidly ask.
Ted: Because when the concert's over I can take off the white shirt and it will feel SO much better.
Me: What if you just go to the bathroom and change your shirt - perhaps you'll actually need to use the rest room at some point and you can take advantage of already being there.
Ted: (indignantly) I won't have to use the rest room
Me: why is that dear - do you have super human powers and don't use the facilities like the rest of us?
Ted: (as if I'm the stupidest person alive for not knowing this) I have never once ever had to go to the bathroom after a concert. (insert eye roll)
Me: okay dear, we're done talking about this - get in bed.

Camela

This and that

2010-04-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

Brad
Has been in Indianapolis since Saturday for the Final 4. He has a friend who gets lots of swag showered on him because of his job and occasionally Brad gets the benefit of that... so fun for him. They watched both games on Saturday and then on Sunday they played golf (Brad said it was the quietest he's ever seen a golf course - I guess Easter Sunday isn't a big golfing day...) then played in a poker tournament. Brad said he must have been placed with a table of professionals... either that or he seriously sucks. Tonight they're at the final game and then he has a 7am flight home tomorrow morning.

Ted and Jack
Are on spring break and attending a sports camp. They came home seriously dragging today. I clearly didn't send enough food with them. I'm thinking I'll triple what I sent them with today when they go tomorrow.

Me
I spent hours this weekend over 2 days cleaning out and reorganizing my closet. I moved lots of things around to make a lot more sense. Created a big pile of give away stuff. Got the shoes under control. Found the entire floor again - not just the path there in the middle. It still wasn't fully done but it was in great shape and I was thrilled. I came home today from work and.... the tallest shelf that was full of out of season stuff and whatnot... had come away from the wall and everything had tumbled to the ground. No more floor anymore. Not even a little path. I got everything picked up - the floor is back, but I still have to rehang the shelf and I'm tired after a long Monday at work and a variety of chores at home... but here I go...

Camela

Mom you're a HOR.. and other inspired tidbits

2010-03-20T17:12:00.000-07:00

This afternoon

Jackson and I were playing HORSE (can you see where this is going?)

I got H

J: ha ha

I got HO

J: ha ha

Jack got H

J: (sarcastically) finally, ha ha

I got HOR

J: HOR HOR HOR. You're a HOR.

I thought it best to ignore this.

J: HOR HOR HOR. You're a HOR.

Me: okay Jackson you can't say that. Hor is a bad word.

J: what does it mean? (Of course he asks)

M: uh... um... it's a woman who doesn't have good morals. (phew ok that's not too bad)

J: What are morals? (shoot)

M: they are how you choose to live. What ethics you have (I'm clearly reaching here), the golden rule (reaching even further), treating people like you want to be treated. (yeah, yeah, that's it, that's what a HOR is)

J: (Long pause) But mom, you really are a HOR.

(great, just great - I'm glad he thinks so)

Tonight at dinner

Ted:dip dip dip
dip dip dip

Jack: why do you keep saying that?

T: what?

J: dip

T: No dip Sherlock

(I laughed out loud - okay that's a good choice for an 11 year old)

Camela

And sometimes they surprise you....

2010-03-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

I got a call a little while ago from the middle school principal. Ut oh, I think, this can't be good. She starts off with "Teddy is fine and not in any kind of trouble"... okay that's a good thing. Then she tells me we had an incident today where another student said that Teddy had a knife.

My mind immediately flashes to the conversation at the dinner table last night - roughly 15 hours ago - where Teddy asked if he could have a pocket knife. Oh Teddy what have you done? I tried to remind myself that she said he wasn't in any trouble.

Okay I say to her. So when that happens, she continues, of course it's a big deal and I went down to him and he had to empty his pockets for me. I'm holding my breath waiting for the shoe to drop. There was nothing in there but some lint and a quarter, just what a boy should have. Okay, well that's good I say.

But I'm calling you because of how he handled himself and the situation. He was quick to defend the other student. He told me they are in after care together and have a bit of a history but that the other kid has some special needs and some times he makes things up but he doesnt' mean anything by it. He's not trying to get me in trouble or anything. He didn't really think it through that saying that would be such a big deal. At one point Teddy went over to Al (she never named him, but there's no doubt who it is) and said to him "I want you to listen to what I'm saying to Ms. Palson because I would never do that. You can't bring weapons to school and I don't want you to be scared." He told me, she continued, it's really not a big deal. He just can't help it and he says stuff sometimes. He thought maybe Al had seen the quarter in his pocket and maybe he even thought it was a knife since the quarter was shiny.

She said that Teddy was calm and collected the entire time doing his best to walk me through it as well as Al; wanting to make sure I understood that Al really didn't mean anything by it, he wasn't trying to be malicious in any way. She said she's never had a kid handle that kind of situation with such maturity and grace. He very carefully walked through what was happening without any panic whatsoever. With any discussion of a weapons there is often panic and there wasn't at all in this case and it was entirely due to Teddy and how he handled himself and the situation as a whole. He spoke clearly and spefically and responded in a way very few kids could or would have; you should be very proud of him.

It's got to be a bit disconcerting to have the principal come down and make you empty your pockets but he was fine and handled himself extrememly well. He is a much, much more balanced and mature child than I'd given him credit for. He's just a neat, neat kid.

I'm not doing justice to all the wonderful things she said about Teddy, but even so it's nice to be reminded that my child is in fact a great person and he won't be 11 forever. Of course, we're proud of him and as Brad said when I told him about it, it's never a bad thing to have a bit of credit in the bank with the principal. I'd have to agree!

Camela

Lame-o

2010-03-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

I've been so lame about posting so I thought I'd at least give a quick update about what's going on with us.

Right now: Brad is making dinner of bar-b-que chicken and grilled marinated shrimp. He made this same shrimp last weekend and let me tell you - it was the flat out best food I've ever had. He made this seemingly simple marinade of basil, olive oil, garlic and some other things.. I think there's some citrus in there of some sort... but man oh man was it good. Cooked perfectly and seasoned perfectly. Frankly I'm not interested in anything else that may be available, though he wants me to make a warm spinach salad, I just want the shrimp!

Teddy, Matthew, Jackson, and Jake are all downstairs playing a video game. I think Teddy actually has the controls but all 4 of them are happily deciding what ridiculous moves Ted will make next. There is a lot of laughter going on and that's one of the best sounds of the world. I truly love when Matt and Jake are over - all 4 boys get along so well; they can mix and match so nicely - so much more calm then just my 2 boys at home.

Teddy
He finally finished his research paper and man, I have no idea how it is. The only comment the teacher gave him on the rough draft was that he needed a stronger conclusion which we'd already talked about. But from where I sit it's not much more than a well written list of quotes from several different sources. Perhaps that's appropriate for his age, I truly have no idea. I look forward to seeing how he does on it. He had a bunch of homework over the weekend and I was pleasantly surprised how he got it down with little or no protesting. (Okay it's a lie to say there was none, but it was minimal so that counts)

Jackson
He and Brad worked on his science fair project this weekend. Science Fair projects have always been a Brad thing for which I am eternally grateful but Brad has this habit of putting it off and as it happens the science fair is on Thursday and Brad will be out of town Monday through Wednesday or Thursday and this timing occurred to Brad late last week. So all that's to say that Brad and Jack have been diligently measuring things and writing things and evaluating things and typing and printing and gluing things on and off all weekend. But it's done and it went just fine.... phew.

Me
I've been working on cleaning out the basement. We're going to have the basement finished in the next couple of months. First step is clean it out. Brad and I have differing views of what this means which is (so far) amusing to both of us. Clearly we need to pick a leader for this job (which if you know anything about us it's what we believe is the secret to a happy marriage). I think it should be me because we both would agree that I'm better at this kind of thing, but most of the stuff down there is his and I think it's too difficult for him to give up control - so he's not suggesting it be me and I'm fearful if I suggest he be the leader we'll still be cleaning out the basement in August so I'm not suggesting it be him. So we're dancing around each other for now. I'm thinking there will be more discussion about this.

Brad
Is busy working on a work project in North Carolina. It's more like the work he used to do when there were production deadlines he was working on instead of just supporting those that have them. He's helping them make their deadlines this time. I think he's enjoying the jazz of it - but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to do it all the time anymore.

So that's what's up around here. When I'm feeling less lame, I'll get back to posting more regularly.

Camela

Another day... more drama - I'm about cooked.

2010-03-04T18:36:00.000-08:00

Teddy is working on his first research paper and I don't think the prince of procrastination is heading in the right direction in a timely enough manner.

I picked him up from school and on the way home......

Camela: When we get home I want you to show me your assignment, I’ve not had the chance to read it yet.

Teddy: Sure, no problem.

C: tell me a bit about the project - there's no wrong answer - just generally, what's it about?

T: (deep breaths, near tears) I just don't want to talk about it!

alrighty then....

927 hours later

C: please show me your assignment

A 3 ring binder is unceremoniously dropped in front of me

C: ok thanks, can you help me find it – where is it specifically?

T: It’s the whole binder

Deep breath

C: Okay but I just want to read the assignment

T: THAT’S MY BINDER

C: Yes dear I see that, but I want to read the assignment for what’s due on Monday.

T: (Pointing dramatically) THAT IS MY WHOLE GT SCIENCE BINDER – IT’S ALL THERE.

C: Teddy don’t be an ass (yes I really said that to him) find me the assignment

T: REALLY THAT'S IT - IT'S THE WHOLE BINDER

C: OMG – okay – sit your butt down, I’m going to read. (I pulled out the first sheet of half-hearted notes from the front pocket and started to read aloud)

T: WAIT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

C: You told me I had to read the whole binder, so I’m starting at the beginning.

T: (He tried to grab it from me) WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?

C: You said I had to read the binder

T: WHAT DO YOU WANT? I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT.

C: (really, really trying not to upend the kitchen table) I know Daddy has read a piece of paper that details this assignment and you won’t tell me where it is so I’m going to read the whole thing as you suggested and you're going to sit there and watch me.

T: OH THAT. YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE SPECIFIC.

C: (everything I have and all that I am kept me from running upstairs so I could leap out of a window from the highest point in the house) OMG – I’ve been asking for the damn assignment since I picked you up, how the hell more specific could I have possibly gotten.

It went downhill from there.....

582 hours later

C: I’m concerned you don’t realize how much work this is and are therefore not taking it seriously enough

T: I am not concerned. I know how much work it is and it’s not very much.

Well thank God for that, clearly I have nothing to worry about.

And then there's Jackson........

My sweet natured (occasionally), delightful (often) child has for two nights in a row thrown the mother of all hissy, whining, crying fits at the mere suggestion that it's homework time.

C: When you're done with dinner, you and I are going to head upstairs and work on your homework. (When Brad got home with Jack from basketball practice he had seen that I was barely hanging on and had taken over Teddy)

J: (dropping his head dejectedly to the table) I don't want to do homework

C: Well that's normal, but it's just one of those things you have to do

J: (crying in earnest now) WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME

C: (looking around at who he's talking to) ..... well you get the picture

I'm thinking of running away permanently... anyone want to join me?

Camela

Fun at our house!

2010-02-22T16:25:00.000-08:00

Jackson
When I got home from work today I discovered he was in his room because of a "disagreement" he'd had with Brad as to the exact moment homework was going to start. Both of my children are far to literal. That has been the highlight with him so far. It's now after dinner and he's still in his room though now doing his homework too. He's not at all happy about it, in that poor, poor pitiful me kind of way that only a 9 year old can truly master.

Teddy
is 11. Is there really any more that needs to be said on the topic? Okay, I'll go on, just for the heck of it. It started with him during dinner when he held his cup straight up in the air very defiantly saying "Mo-om" so as to signal me he needed more milk. Both Brad and I were quick to explain to him the error of his ways commenting specifically on the rudeness of such an act. And what did my charming little 11 year old do? Why he argued of course. That wasn't rude. Not at all, as evidenced by the fact that "I even wrote down a list of 20 things that are rude". Why yes you did dear - you wrote those things down because I gave you that assignment when it seemed you were struggling with which kinds of things were rude things - apparently you missed one!!!!

As a side note on that list: I made him come up with that list of things he does that are rude... I'm guessing a year ago maybe a bit more than that - and that is very depressing. But for the sake of my future amusement - I'm going to share what my then 10 year old wrote as 20 things that are rude:
1. samantics 2. rolling eyes 3. not talking 4. not looking 5. attitute 6. yelling 7. tone 9. speaking loudly 10. not being nice 11. saying: I hate you 12. ignoring 13. bothering 14. saying: yo! 15. saying: what! 16. saying: word! 17. making fun of people 18. calling people: peeps! 19. saying: sup! 20. always thinking your the awsomest.

okay - I swear I never saw 11-20 until tonight - though this little list on two tiny pieces of paper has been hanging in my bathroom this whole time. When we had the conversation tonight in the kitchen he said there were 20 and I said I thought there had only been 10. He was right, but this was totally news to me. 20 is such a suck up and such a Teddy thing to do. He gets As in spelling though you'd never know it from this list.

Then I was upstairs monitoring Jackson's homework while Ted was downstairs doing his with Brad when I hear....

Brad: Ted come back here, you can't do that with your foot.
Ted: NOT IF YOU'RE GOING TO THROW STUFF AT ME
(note: Brad would never throw something at Teddy, though perhaps this is a different avenue to explore)
B: There's a proper way to clean this stuff up - not with your foot.
T: NOT IF YOU'RE GOING TO THROW STUFF AND FLING IT AT MY HEAD (a one note wonder - my boy is)
Then there was a little more back and forth; increasingly quiet - they've seemingly worked it out.
T: OH NOW YOU'RE LAUGHING AT ME!!! (a lot of stomping)
B: I thought you were joking
T: SHUT UP!!!!!
B: Teddy come back here
It's a vicious cycle - such fun to be had by all!

Oh and for the comic relief..... That would be Jackson by way of Teddy

T: Mo-om, Jackson has renamed Firefox
Camela: Ok thanks, please do your homework
T: Fine but I think you want to know the new name
(based on Ted's tone I think he's probably right but I still hesitate to reward tattling with my time and energy - but I break down...)
C: okay what is it?
T: nakedwoman
C: (burst out laughing).... uh... okay thanks, I'll take care of it.

A bit later Ted and I head downstairs for computer help from Brad.
C: honey, Ted needs your help getting a connection to the internet and Jackson changed the name of Firefox to nakedwoman
B: (burst out laughing) Then looking at Ted. I guess I'm not supposed to laugh at that am I.
C: (still laughing...) No. No you're not

okay - that's our evening between 6 and 8 tonight. Just another typical evening here.

Camela

Another day... another blizzard

2010-02-10T16:29:00.000-08:00

Okay - I'm seriously done with this whole major snow storm thing.

We had a huge snowstorm right before Christmas and even though the storm happened on a Saturday the boys missed the last three days of school before the Christmas break. I really don't even remember how much snow we got in that one, but I remember thinking - wow this is a lot of snow for a MD snowstorm..... uh... yeah, not so much.

Then starting last Friday night and lasting through Saturday it snowed over 30 inches. 30 inches! I don't live in the mountains, or in the mid-west, or any other place where 30 inches of snow doesn't seem like the apocalypse. (In fact people around here are calling it the snowpocalypse or the snownami). As of Tuesday morning our neighborhood had yet to be visited by the county plows. Someone finally got a guy to come in here and help us out. It was absolutely wonderful that we got some help but the problem about him was that it was just a guy with a little pickup truck that has a stationary plow thingy on the front. For a normal MD snowstorm this would be perfect, but for this much snow - uh... this is not a good thing - it's just not nearly powerful enough. He did manage to create a single lane on each road and with cooperation people can get in and out of the neighborhood.

I finally got out and made it to work on Tuesday..... which was just in time for the blizzard. Seriously, are you kidding me? It started snowing on Tuesday afternoon and right now it's 8pm on Wednesday night and it's still snowing. We've had driving snow and intense wind all day long. My office closed for the first time in the 15 years I've been there. Baltimore City has declared it a 'Phase 3' emergency which means that except for official vehicles (fire, police, utilities) no cars are allowed on the roads - period. You will get a huge fine and possible jail time if you drive on a city road today.

Depending on where you are in MD you'll get between 10-30 additional inches on top of the roughly 30 inches from 3 days ago. That's right I said 3 days ago. Come on now, this is just silly. So we hadn't yet gotten plowed from the first storm and now we have these HUGE snow drifts - up to our windows (with snow inside the screens), our mailbox is all but covered, people have been shoveling throughout the day only to come back and find the wind erased all their hard work. Really imagine the wind blown snowdrifts that you've seen in your life and now put them on top of a base of 30 inches of snow that was already there and wet and heavy and not going anywhere. The State and County officials are begging people to stay off the roads for the next 48 hours at least.

I didn't mention that on Tuesday they canceled schools for the rest of the week. And while on some level I think this is ridiculous (the fact that they called the whole week so early) - the reality is - until a snowplow actually comes into our neighborhood there is no possibility of a bus actually making it through the neighborhood to pick them up so I guess it makes total sense. Frankly, while my office might be opened tomorrow I already know I'm not going to make it in. The only road into my neighborhood sits smack dab in the middle of a 2 mile long narrow, twisty, hill. A hill where I've encountered the worst driving conditions of my entire life - twice now. There is just no way it will be passable for my sedan or Brad's van tomorrow.... We'll have to wait and see what Friday brings.

Camela

Lots and lots of snow

2010-02-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

IT SNOWED
A lot

The town closest to us; about seven minutes from here, reported 33.8 inches of snow. That's more snow then I've ever seen at one time in my life... (okay well except on a mountain while skiing)

Jackson is totally loving this and quickly throws on his snow clothes - well there's usually some whining when we get to the fleece lining part of his coat, but that's quickly overcome - and is ready to go. Whether it's building a fort or shoveling he's game and just loves throwing himself into large piles of snow whenever possible.

Teddy has totally surprised me with his willingness to help - I always knew I could get him to do it, I just thought it would be more painful for one or both of us - and he's also shocked the heck out of me by staying outside and playing for hours and hours on end. This is a boy who likes his creature comforts. He has not remotely surprised me with just how difficult it is to get him dressed for the elements.... Let's just say that it is a long and painful process for all concerned.

Brad and the boys shoveled off about half of the deck and made a huge pile of snow on the ground below and then all three of them decided to jump from the deck into the newly made pile. Unfortunately no one told me so I wasn't able to get it on film but since we are supposed to get 10-20 more inches tomorrow night I think we'll have no problem having a do-over

Here are some pictures in no particular order of the snow.....

Jackson shoveling on the back deck.

Brad and Teddy on the deck.

Sorry for the lousy picture - This is taken in the driveway. It says roughly 27.5" and was measured once the snow had stopped but Brad had shoveled several inches away the night before.

Our mailbox.

Jackson continues to like to hide from the camera.

More of Jackson hiding....

The grill

Deck chairs and table

Bandit can just see over the snow on two legs.

But not so much on four...

The next morning.... and the next

2010-02-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

Let me preface with - other than the very unusual two hour nap Jack took during the day there was no indication whatsoever that he was remotely under the weather.

Jack: Can I call Jake to play?
Me: No
Jack: Why?
Me: You stayed home sick today; you can't play with your friends

Jack: Can I have more (a 2nd huge helping of) mac n cheese
Me: No
Jack: Why?
Me: You stayed home sick with an upset stomach. We'll see how that does in your stomach for a while then if you still want more food in a while we'll talk about it.
Jack: how long? 5 minutes?

Anyway, the next morning I go downstairs and find him moping around with his bucket at his side while watching TV.

Me: Jackson, you need socks and shoes
Jack: I'm not feeling well
Me: uh huh Sorry to hear that, put on your socks and shoes
Jack: (shocked) Do I have to go to school?
Me: Yes.

He whined and moaned and crawled his way upstairs while I got stuff ready. After about 15 minutes he came up to me, fully dressed including his coat...
Jack: Mom! Is it okay if I go outside and run around the driveway since it's all shoveled? You know how if I don't feel good I just need to run around so I can get more energy.
Me: uh, sure, kid.

Now for this morning.....
I go into Jackson's room first thing this morning so I can get him into the shower. He's sitting all mopey on his bed; bucket at his side.

Me: Okay Jackson time for your shower
Jack: I'm not feeling well
Me: (feeling very sarcastic) Perhaps you should get up and jog in place; you know how running around gives you more energy and makes you feel better
Jack: (with a totally straight face) I already tried that

Camela

My morning....

2010-02-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

Let me start with... Brad's away.

I probably went to bed around 11:30. I was trying to catch the last weather report as it was snowing and I wanted to know the likelihood of school being canceled.

4:30am - Bandit is losing his mind barking right outside of my bedroom door. At first I assumed he was barking at some deer out the window but I swear he was too close to my door to even see out a window - maybe he just wanted some company? More likely he just wanted to harrass me and figured the best way to do that would be to wake me from a dead sleep at 4:30 in the morning. I got up and invited him into my room and after a few minutes he calmed down and curled up to sleep - on my chest - but still calm and quiet and I could go back to sleep. I wrestled with him so I could get the covers pulled back over onto me, rolled over, closed my eyes, and...

4:45 - Jackson's tapping my arm. "Mom, mom, my stomach really hurts." Internally I roll my eyes and think - yes of course it does because far be it for me to want to get more than five hours of sleep. (side note: Jack has a long history of saying his stomach hurts-sometimes he's sick, sometimes he's had a bad dream, sometimes he's nervous about something - whatever isn't going just as he wants it to; his stomach hurts) He's standing there with his favorite barf bucket looking pitiful. Do you want to climb in bed with me? (shakes his head) shit Do you want to lay down somewhere else? (shakes his head) damn it Do you want me to get up with you? (nods head) yes of course that's what you want.

So like the good mother I am I get up and watch him while he kneels down on my floor hanging his head over said bucket. Perhaps I can distract him out of this, I think. "okay baby do you want me to turn on the TV?" First I turn on the news to see if school is canceled. Channel 11 says it is. I'm thrilled and turn off my alarm clock while thanking God then look for a DIY show which he'll usually fall asleep to but of course it's too early for any of those to be on so I end up settling for ESPN hoping for the same results. Eventually I lure him onto my bed, thinking there's no immediate danger and succumb to the two weights sitting on the tops of my eyelids and close my eyes. After a few minutes I hear him snoring and think hallelujah and I drift off behind him.

5:15 - "Mom, mom, my stomach really hurts" shit f%@# damn "oh baby, I'm so sorry" Quickly I turn on cartoons for him. I'm at that horrible stage in the sleep cycle when my brain and body just will not engage and we're pushing an hour of trying to be awake during it. I'm still hoping the stomach thing is code for restless sleep or something equally benign. Sure enough he plops over on his stomach and starts watching in earnest but I notice on a scroll along the bottom that schools have a 2 hour delay - wait - that's not right - Ch 11 said closed. I turn back to 11 and phew it still says closed. I get up and check the internet - okay I was stupid and went to ch11 online - it's where we always look - and yes it's closed. I check the other channels and they all say 2 hour delay. Come on, really? I log onto my yahoo account to find the email from school - it's not there. Please God I just want to go back to sleep. I find my iphone and look at my work email to see if the email made it through to there - it did; 2 hour delay. I reset my alarm and almost fall asleep until Jack starts kicking his feet to the tune in his head. OMG We resolve that, I beg for calm and sleep and get his promise to wake me if he feels badly again and fall asleep.

5:45 - "Hey mom" he's all kinds of chipper now "can I go downstairs and watch there instead? You know how sometimes I just need to get some extra energy and then I feel fine?" (he's our early riser and generally we have a rule he can't go downstairs until 6am). "Absolutely!!!!!!!... um... I mean... as long as you're feeling up to it." I sleep.

7:45 - 9:15 Teddy comes in and the morning officially begins... I get him up and ready, myself up and ready - breakfasts made, lunches packed, backpack on, Teddy out the door to the bus. "Baby, how're you feeling? Do you want to stay home or are you up for school?" "No I'm good now. I want to go." Great! finish getting ready and wait the hour to take him to school so I can got to work.

10:20 Jack's in the car, happy as a clam and off we go. We're in line at the school. In the next batch of cars that will fill 'the circle' where lots of nice teachers will open the car doors and help the kids out of the cars quickly. "MOM!! MOM! I'M GOING TO BE SICK!!! PULL OVER NOW!!! OH NO! MOM!!!" The line starts moving, I'm barely able to skip the circle and head for the lot. "MOM! HURRY HURRY!" I pull to a stop just in time.

Now it's noon and I've shoveled the driveway, talked to work, written a blog post and contemplated my day.... but I'm thinking a nap might be in order.

Camela

2010-01-26T15:17:00.001-08:00

Jack and I walk into the house. Teddy is playing a video game.

Me: hi babe, how was your day?
T: Jackson I'm really sorry to tell you this, but Bandit ate that cool plane you got at Aunt Lara's house.
J: What? where?
Ted never looked up
T: over under the tree in the other room
(Yes there are still trees up in our house, but I haven't been home long enough to get them down. In our defense, the lights haven't been on in weeks.)
Jack runs to see for himself - finds the remnants and immediately starts sobbing

And now for the second minute home.....

Teddy hands me a piece of paper while I was I was getting the Chinese food I brought home out on plates.
Me: What's that babe?
T: Something for you
M: Yes I got that, what is it?
T: It says what it is right on top

Lord give me strength.

Those were about par for the course this evening. Did I mention Brad was away...

Camela

Jackson's speed - No longer a good thing

2010-01-23T09:45:00.001-08:00

Jackson is seriously fast. He's pretty small, but super speedy. This is why he excels in football; he can just flat out run past anyone else on the field - or while on defense, given enough room he can catch up to just about anybody. In basketball, Brad just got him more interested in the flow of the game by equating a fast break to a race and well Jackson hasn't lost sight of his 'man' since. At the end of soccer practice they run laps around the field and during the eight laps they'd run he'd lap half of the team (more than once for a few of them) and then just keep running the laps until the last kid finished the original quantity.

Starting in third grade at his school they have an annual race called the "little toot run" which is a mile long. Last year when he was in second grade they had a practice race of the same distance and he came in second and he's still very, very unhappy about that. When they had to postpone the race this year from the fall to the spring due to weather he was beside himself annoyed. He wants to redeem himself. He NEEDS to redeem himself. He regularly says to me... "hey mom, is it okay if I go for a jog around the neighborhood?" Uh.. sure honey. That's a great idea. (insane child) Really he jogs around the neighborhood so he'll be ready for the distance of the Little Toot Run. (as a side note - if that boy doesn't win this race in April, he's going to be impossible to live with)

This little story about my very fast boy is just background to our latest .... um.... "issue" with him.

It all started when Brad told him he had to brush his teeth. Certainly, I fully understand how unreasonable such a request is, but still Brad's a stickler about such things and tell him he did. Jackson did not react well to this and much dramatic bellowing ensued. Once the teeth incident was behind them Brad had the nerve to remind Jack that he had to go to Teddy's basketball game since I was at work. Well this was more than one little boy could possible handle so he did what any dramatic and fast little boy would do. He opened the door and ran.

Yup. Ran.

At top speed.

Away from the house.

Brad finished getting the basketball stuff together and packed Teddy in the car in search of Jackson. He found him down one of the cul-de-sacs and told him to get in the car. Jackson thought about it, but then turned and ran.

Yup. Ran.

At top speed.

Away from his father who was out looking for him. (CAN YOU IMAGINE???)

Brad drove to the next cul-de-sac and parked. He sent Teddy in one direction and he went in another. Eventually Brad found him and I'm sure expressed his displeasure and explained to him how things were going to be and told him to get in the car. You guessed it...

He ran.

At top speed.

Away from his father - who was standing right there in front of him.

Well, this time Brad gave chase and managed to catch him. (Not that Brad isn't fast, but I'm thinking all that running must have tired Jackson out.) He managed to haul his little butt into the car and get Teddy to the game before tip off.

So far.... he's still alive.

Camela

A Dance? Is that really allowed?

2010-01-22T15:23:00.001-08:00

Teddy is going to his first dance tonight.

Oh. My. God.

I mean seriously, the boy is going to a dance. When I ask him who will be going that I know he consistently only mentions his friend Robin. Robin is a girl. I think she's absolutley wonderful, but still... she's a girl.

I'm working late... again... so I'm not there to guage whether he's just excited for the new experience and the clear sign of his growing independence he believes it to be (which, duh yes I get that it is in fact a clear sign) or if he's excited to be at a dance with Robin (the girl). I think I'm glad I'm not there.

Did I mention he's going to a dance.

Camela

Not thinking ahead - a man's problem?.....

2010-01-21T20:51:00.000-08:00

Brad was meeting Marc and John for dinner...

First a little background.
John lives roughly an hour or so SOUTH of us. Marc lives just under half an our NORTH of us. The plan was to meet for dinner about 15 minutes SOUTH of us; presumably to make John's trip home a little easier. Before the 'dinner meeting' John went up to visit Marc at the store he owns and I'm sure they had a nice visit.

So now for the ...... stupid... uh.. I mean.. um... not as well planned out as it could have been part.
So for some reason not apparent to the rest of us, John and Marc thought it would be a good idea for Marc to drive down to dinner with John which I'll remind you is about 40 minutes-ish SOUTH of where Marc lives. Then oddly enough when dinner was over at 10:30pm John didn't want to drive 40 minutes NORTH of the restaurant so he could then turn around and drive nearly two hours SOUTH back to his home.

So guess who got to drive Marc home????? No wait, you'll never guess. Let's just say that it's after midnight and my husband is still not home.

Camela

The missing fabric...

2010-01-14T18:19:00.000-08:00

Me: Teddy can you explain this rectangular shaped piece of missing fabric in your new bedspread?
Teddy: No
Me: (raises eyebrows (man I wish I could raise only one))
Ted: (big annoyed sigh) Look (points to scissors on top of dresser)
Me: And???
Ted: I cut it.
Me: Good night (I turned and left thinking that was the safest thing for both of us right then)
Ted: ON ACCIDENT
Me: You did not cut out that shape by accident

Then I high tailed it out of there before more damage was done.

Jeez!!!

Our life right now

2010-01-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

Brad and Camela
I'm into my busy time at work which means Brad takes on the brunt of our home life. It's so blissful to have a marriage where the ebb and flow of life's outside committments just means the inside committments ebb and flow as well - it's not the end of the world when he has to pick up more stuff at home or when he's out of town for half the week for several weeks in a row and I have to pick up more stuff. I feel very lucky.

Jackson
While we were at Teddy's recent band concert, I asked Jackson what instrument he was going to play next year and he informed me he has just decided he doesn't want to play an instrument. This is a major problem for me. He doesn't have to grow up and be a band geek but he has to, absolutely has to, play some sort of instrument for a few years at least. I think music appreciation is a vital component of a well rounded person not to mention the other more brainiac ways music is good for the brain - music is just plain good for the soul - this just will not do! And of the two kids, I'd say Jackson is more likely to really get into playing music - maybe as a guitarist in a punk band with purple hair, but still...

I really think this is about living in Teddy's shadow and he just doesn't want to do something that Ted already does which I can understand but I need to nip this in the bud. I told him last night it was time to start private lessons. That the first things that popped into my head were the piano, guitar, or drums since we have all those in the house, which made total sense to him, but that he could choose anything he wanted. I'm hoping if I just make this part of a non-school related thing - it won't be too hard to get him started and then he can continue in school.

Teddy
He's still 11. He's actually not been that bad in the last week or so but I don't want to say that too loudly in case I jinx it. Brad and I have seriously stepped up our efforts in tracking his every detail in school. We tried to let him do it himself as everyone suggested but man was that not working. He just does not have that skillset - the one that let's him keep track of multiple things. He's just too easily distracted by anything and everything. Since Brad really laid it all out for him, much to his chagrin, and we've both been going over and over and over it all with him and reminding him and reminding him it seems to be going better for him. And really, he's very proud of himself when he sees the results of actually remembering to turn in the homework he already did in his grades. Hopefully things will keep going well. (I don't want to be more optomistic than that).

The Hampsters
Are very cute - all four of them. Teddy is constantly building new homes and tunnels out of legos for his two little guys, it's cute - but pretty soon his cage will be totally full and you'll only be able to see the little guys in the small gaps between the stuff.

Jackson is madly in love with his two. It's very, very cute. We let them out in the bathtub at least once a week to walk all over each boy (it's supposed to continue to help them get used to their owners) and Jackson is just so gleeful about it. It's an interesting thing for Ted, but for him the whole hampster thing is really just a new reason to build cool lego things.

Bandit
is still wildly annoying. He so wants to eat the hampsters. I can't blame him really I'm sure they look nice and tasty, but it's really funny to see him standing at full alert just watching the cages. The real downside is that he can no longer sleep with Teddy because he can't relax and he eventually starts whining while longingly watching at the cage which keeps Teddy awake which means I feel sorry for him and am more likely to let the beast sleep with us. sigh.

Camela

A Christmas picture

2010-01-11T06:21:00.000-08:00

Seeking advice....

2010-01-08T06:49:00.000-08:00

Why this one thing is bugging me so intensely I have no idea, but perhaps some of you can give me a suggestion as to how to deal with it....

So the 11 year old was told to take a shower this morning during the kids' two hour snow delay. He is flat out filthy, but our schedule just kept him from getting one last night when he should have taken one. He seemed perfectly fine with this plan; didn't seem to be remotely a big deal to him and off I went to work.

Brad calls me a little later and among other things tells me that Ted totally lied about showering. He told Brad he had taken one, pointed to his still damp hair as proof and completely stuck to the lie when pressed. When in reality he had gone up and slightly dampened his hair with the specific intent of deceiving Brad. The kid doesn't even mind taking showers. I'm thinking he did it just to see if he could, though I wasn't there.

My quick gut reaction was to bring down the wrath of thunder (whatever that is) upon his head. How dare he set out to do such a bone headed thing - and yes I know it's a stupid little thing which of course he's tried in the past with wetting his toothbrush too - but I swear I'm so wildly annoyed about this I don't know what to do.

Any thoughts?

a few Christmas pictures

2009-12-29T19:33:00.001-08:00

I'll have to find one of me but here are the rest of us from this weekend at my mom's.

My baby Jackson, age 9, I can never get a picture of him smiling right into the camera - how did she do that!

Teddy - age 11. Look at those eyes. They really are that green in real life, though it's not always quite this obvious.

What a wonderfully sweet picture of Teddy and Brad! I love this.

I don't think Dr. Spock would approve

2009-12-29T18:29:00.000-08:00

The boys are in MAJOR fighting and constant bickering mode - 24/7. It's driving Brad and I to drink. While if you were to drop in on any given day you might conclude that Jackson is doing more than his fair share of starting it all, I really think it's all starts with Teddy and puberty. He's just so often disagreeable or mean or argumentative that I think Jackson is protecting himself by lashing out first. This is not really the point of this story but there it is.

One of the things my darling Teddy will do is give Jackson a wedgie. Now this is all good and well except for the fact that Teddy is much bigger and stronger than Jackson, not to mention that Teddy has no sense of when to stop - no upper limit. And occasionally he has bursts of anger that if mixed with wedgie giving could be really bad.

So on this particular day they were outside my room while I was laying down with a bad head cold trying to take a nap and they were bickering and fighting and I was doing my best to ignore them and fall asleep..... Until Jackson was screaming; blood curdling screams. I came out and found Jackson writhing around on the ground gasping for air he was crying so hard. I finally got that this pain was caused by a wedgie. I'd had enough. I walked to Teddy told him to turn around which he did though he didn't suspect what I wanted. I reached in and pulled him up and off the ground by his underwear and gave him a solid shake before putting him down again. He was shocked and horrified. (I might have been too - somewhere in there I was thinking... am I really giving my 11 year old a wedgie?)

It hurt him. He yelled and slammed the door and yelled a certain four letter word (for the first time I might add). I told him to watch his mouth. After about five minutes I came out and told him I was sorry that I had hurt him and much to my shock and awe he sheepishly apologized for hurting Jackson. I told him I didn't think he understood just how much it hurts when a bigger and stronger person gives you a wedgie - I think he gets it now.

I think it may have worked out exactly as I intended for it to though I can assure you I was absolutely not thinking clearly at the time because if I had been there's no way I would have done that. Can you imagine? Geez.

Camela

Christmas 2009

2009-12-25T16:07:00.000-08:00

Last night Jackson said he was going to set his alarm to 5:10 am. I think we convinced him not too, knowing his internal alarm clock would wake him before 6 anyway. We told the boys they couldn't wake us until 7:15 am. Brad and I went to bed somewhere around 1:30, though I don't think I feel asleep until nearly two. Not too long after 4am I hear kids running around the house (curse these mommy ears of mine!!!). I go to get them back into bed only to run into bleary eyed Jackson in the hall.

Me: Baby it's way too early to be up
Jack: Teddy woke me, he's downstairs
I'm shocked as Teddy is a sleep-a-holic though he is very excited about Santa visiting. I head downstairs.
M: Teddy honey, it's waaaay too early to be up.
Ted: YOU SAID 4:10 am.
M: There is no universe in which I would ever say 4:10 am is an okay time to get up.
T: BUT THAT'S WHAT YOU SAID!!!
M: Sweetie, it's really not. You need to go back to bed.

I got back to bed though I could clearly hear the kids moving around. I just didn't have the energy to get back out of bed. I rolled over to get Brad to tell them to get back into bed. I gently rubbed his arm (the safest way to wake him). That didn't work. I pulled the covers down and rubbed a little harder. Nada. I pulled the covers back more (he HATES to be cold and often sleeps with his electric blanket on 10) and rubbed harder still. Nope. Finally I just shook him. "Brad." Not a thing. I gave up, rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. I saw it hit five but that was it.

Until..... At about 6:15 when Jackson came in.

Jack: Mom. Mom. (They know it's much safer to wake me) what time can we wake you up?
Me: You've got to be kidding me Jackson. You just woke me to ask when you can wake me?
J: Yeah, what time?
M: 7:15 now go away (I was not feeling very Christmasy)

And that was it.... until 7:13 when our door burst open as did my eyes. but they didn't come in. After about 10 seconds little feet run away and then back again.
Jack: It's still 7:13 we can't go in (they need to work a bit on their whispering skills)
Ted: Let's go wake them
J: We can't. Not until 7:15.
silence for about 15 seconds or so before feet go running away then back again
J: Ted! It's 7:14, only one more minute.
Mom: OMG I can hear you. I'm right here. We'll get up if you go away right now.

Merry Christmas everyone,
Camela

My baby turns 9 today

2009-12-11T07:35:00.000-08:00

I'm not at all sure how this is possible. It seems as though he should still be four or so. He's still so much my baby; in fact I call him 'baby' which a few years ago he questioned but totally seemed fine with once I explained that he would always be my baby - long after he was bigger than me. I think he shrugged his shoulders and said - eh, okay.

Jackson is hilarious. He has no idea what the concept of comic timing is - but I tell you he has it in spades; the dramatic pause, the single eyebrow raise, the perfectly timed witty come back. He makes us laugh out loud every day.

Unfortunately he's able to make his peers laugh as well - which means he pays more attention to being the unofficial entertainment then to getting his work done in school. This has been an ongoing issue since birth and I imagine it isn't going away any time soon.

He has a tremendous amount of common sense and overall awareness of how the world works and how things are connected. Often he chooses to use this knowledge to amuse himself or others by starting a chain of events where he's confident of the outcome. It's hilarious and rather scary to watch, though of course we do our best not to fall down laughing and instead to point out the good and not so good times to use this power of his.

The other side of him is this lovely and wonderfully helpful little guy. He's matured so much over the past year, it's been really lovely to see. If I need him to do something - anything - he'll happily help out well unless he's in an ornery, stubborn mood which happens with some frequency.

He has been known to slam his door to great effect and follow that with throwing thing repeatedly against his door. He's full of drama. I have no idea whatsoever where he gets that side of him. (Brad you be quiet!)

This is a picture of him that captures his sweetness.

Odds and ends

2009-12-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

Before and After

We have spent a lot of time trying to find the right color for the hallways in our house. We've got a lot of color in our house so the color for these common areas had to compliment all the colors and also work on both floors as we have a two story foyer so the color will travel up there as well. I wanted a light brown or dark tan kind of color and tried out lots of choices; going so far as painting the common areas only to determine I didn't like it. So we tried again and by the time our 2008 Christmas party got here we'd actually chosen the final color after narrowing it down to two choices; coffee and oatmeal (oatmeal won.) The problem was that we'd only had time to do some of the painting and still had one wall that had both choices painted there in big ugly squares. It didn't really bother me at the time - it was sort of one of those... 'it is what it is' kinds of things.... But..

When the party rolled around for 2009 A WHOLE YEAR LATER and the wall looked exactly the same... well I thought that was not a good thing so two days before the party I was on a ladder painting the more obviously unfinished sections; including the wall across from the front door with the two big splotches - phew. All the walls aren't done, but at least it's no longer so dead obvious.

it's the top square of paint that is the winner; oatmeal

This little noel sign on the newly painted wall is maybe my favorite addition to the Christmas decorations this year.

The window that Bandit broke

I talked about it in an earlier post, but here are the before and after pictures.

I guess I should be happy that the window was double paned so Bandit didn't go all the way through... but because I don't love this dog at all it's hard to be that happy.... oops did I say that out loud?

Really? you have an extra window in the basement... yay!

The magical, wonderful, expanding table

Again I talked about this wonderful table in an earlier post but then decided to take some pictures. It folds down into a biggish hallway table and then expands to a card table size and then has two leaves and gets big enough to sit eight - it's the perfect table for an apartment short on size.

At it's smallest - in our last house this sat under a nice pretty mirror except for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

Brad is showing the progress of opening it up to card table size

We've played games and made puzzles on it while this size.

This has both leaves in it (I think) and will sit eight.

Camela

a few things.....

2009-12-06T11:59:00.000-08:00

Something you don't expect your husband to say....

"Jack! Licking food off the table is never appropriate."

The great books...

In high school I took several literature classes (I don't know what they were really called but I read a great many great books in them) and I've always been grateful for having been forced to read all those wonderful books; Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, A Tale of Two Cities, Babbit, Canterbury Tales, Catcher in the Rye (one of my all time favorites)... you get the idea. Though through those classes I never once read Moby Dick and I've always felt a little secret guilt about that. A couple of years ago I ordered it through Amazon with the best of intentions. I cracked it as soon as I got it home and ... I couldn't do it. A few months later I tried again but... nope. It's still on the list. I am going to read that book! But so far it hasn't happened. Frankly it hasn't even made it to my "next in line to be read" shelf or the "next group of books I need to read" drawer - but I do know where it is and I. Will. Read. It.

So fast forward to this morning and Teddy tells me he's reading Moby Dick. Wow, I think. That's great! He's 11 and he's reading Moby Dick, I'm impressed. I tell him how I've always wanted to read it, how I recently bought it, but hadn't quite gotten to it yet. I tell him what a great book it is, what a wonderful story it is (totally trying to encourage him to keep reading it as I've found it too dry to capture me and am afraid he'll find the same thing). And really I am in all honesty impressed that he'd be reading it in 6th grade. (That may be perfectly normal; after all he got it from school, but it sort of feels early to me) He is appropriately proud of himself given my reaction and all is well. Then Jackson leaves the room.

T: You know mom, I'm only reading it because of the last name. You know... Dick.

It was all I could do not to fall over laughing at him. Why I didn't see that coming I have no idea. Boy is he going to be sorely disappointed. I was told a Star Trek Next Generation episode was loosely based on the book which I told Ted when I picked him up from school today - I hope that connection will keep him interested when he realizes it's not exciting in exactly the way he was hoping for.

Camela

Jack's birthday

2009-11-30T05:59:00.000-08:00

I'm just bad at this NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) stuff, I missed another day... or two.... Oh well.

But boy did we have a busy day yesterday.... that's my only excuse. We had Jackson's birthday party which was at a movie theater from 12 to 5. That's 5 long hours with 15ish eight to eleven year olds. We saw Planet 51 and the kids all loved it. The adults thought it was just okay (or at least I did). The best part as far as the kids were concerned.... while the aliens were seeing the human man naked for the first (and only) time one of them cocked his head and said... "uh that's an odd place to put your antenna." Brad and I were a little surprised the movie went 'there'. But there was much high pitched giggling from the little girls sitting in front of us and when polled later boys and girls alike cited that as their favorite part.

Before and after the movie we were in a party room that was actually situated on a balcony of sorts overlooking the main lobby of the movie theater. It had several games for the kids to enjoy; a basketball shot game, Foosball, ping pong, and air hockey along with a chalkboard the length of the room. The downside to all these games with balls was that occassionally the balls ended up down on the lobby floor. Luckily there were no serious injuries. Here are a few pictures....

Jackson looking sweetly at his brother (ok maybe he was looking at him with that know it all, I'm in charge today look - but from a distance it looks kind of sweet, wouldn't you agree?)

One of my favorite kids in the world (and Jackson's too) Jake.

Josh's ice cream cup exploded on him... oops.

Jack was in kindergarten with Niall and they've been friends ever since.

Teddy was in kindergarten with Niall's brother Devlin and they've been friends ever since. (it's nice how that's worked out so well!)

Teddy's best friend Matthew

Teddy

Chae, Sophie, and LaLia (Sophie and Jackson have been in class together since preschool and are known to carry on like an old married couple)

That's the card Sophie made for Jackson that includes a picture of them at the end of second grade - how cute is that.

Jack opening presents with Brad and the kids looking on.

At one point a bunch of the boys started an impromptu game of telephone...

While the girls played basketball and air hockey.

Then we took some group shots.....

Isn't this a handsome looking group!

Okay, perhaps they are a bit crazy at times

This is their movie star pose

Here they are very, very mad. Jack's so mad he's hiding.

Jackson couldn't believe that everyone was so surprised by my antics.

I think they've all had enough... well maybe not Jackson and Matthew.

Camela

Two little stories from today

2009-11-28T20:19:00.000-08:00

1.) Whenever you leave the house (really it could be anyone leaving - we could have just met you) Bandit GOES BALLISTIC. He barks and jumps and runs and barks and runs back and forth across the house and more than anything he barks and a close second is he runs to whatever window he can see you from best (he travels around the house as the car drives away) and runs up to it as if he could go through it. Well..... we went and got our Christmas tree today and when we got back we were thrilled to discover Bandit had broken one of the windows and there was glass all over the dining room. Luckily the glass is double paned and even more luckily somehow Bandit didn't get hurt. AND even more, more luckily Brad had an extra window just hanging around in the basement. Seriously who has an extra window in the basement. Do you think there's any chance Bandit will learn not to slam the windows so hard?

2) We got back from seeing the Blind Side to drop off my MIL and then Brad and I were heading back out to go on a dinner date. I walked Ricky to drop some things off and was told that Jackson had inadvertently hit the Christmas clock with a tennis ball he was throwing for Bandit and it shattered the glass front. Then - not realizing it was actually glass, thinking it was just plastic, he through some of the pieces at Teddy's face. OMG. Jackson felt awful. (of course only awful that it was glass and could have actually hurt Teddy, not that he'd thrown something at his face - oh and he felt awful about the clock to begin with as well.) Luckily no one was injured and our extremely wonderful babysitter had it all cleaned up and out of the way lickity split. She said Jack was a model boy after that.

Camela

Decorating progress pictures

2009-11-27T20:42:00.000-08:00

One of the fake trees; it's in the living room. I found a note in each of the two boxes of Christmas tree ornaments that I had written to myself last year. (I crack myself up) It says: CHRISTMAS TREE PLANS (1) Real tree in fam rm - Red & Gold ornaments w/a few others special ones (2) Fake Tree in Piano Rm - red, white, silver ornaments (3) Tree up high above door Tie securely left over gold OR silver shiny snowflake ornaments. We put the tree up high before I read the note so I didn't put the ornaments on it. I'll have to put them on when we take it down... oh well.

The newest tree. It's in the kitchen and perfectly sized because it's so narrow. It is where I'm putting up all the ornaments the kids have made over the years. I've been wanting to do this for a few years and thrilled I finally got around to getting it done.

The garland on the stairs that you see right as you walk in the front door.

The only real hallway on the first floor. The tree and garland can be seen from the street as you drive up to the house.

The snowflakes that are opposite the front door. A few years ago they were lighted stars which is really what I wanted. But then they died because we sort of ended up using them as a night light on the first floor until they burned out somewhere in the spring (oops). So the next year we went to get a replacement (cuz we couldn't get them lit again to save our lives), but they only had snowflakes. Then the same thing happened again last year and now this is the third string of odd lights we hang there. (and each year I like the strand less). But it's part of my grand plan to be able to turn off all the normal lights and only light the house with Christmas lights and candles for the party. Hopefully this will be the year. No lights - woo hoo!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T19:44:00.001-08:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful day, spent with family and friends.

Our dinner was wonderful and I'm very thankful for my family. My parents divorced 25 years ago and I am very thankful that I was able to have both my parents and in this case my Dad's extended family along with my MIL all sitting down together for a nice, peaceful and fun Thanksgiving dinner. It's nice to be related to adults.

We had my grandfather who is 93 years old (I think) who still bowls every week and drives. He lives with one of my cousins who unfortunately had to work and wasn't able to be here. My Mom and step Dad and my Dad and step Mom and Brad's mom. My Dad's brother Gary and his wife Carol, his sister Marla and her husband Keith along with their two high school age kids; Sarah and Kevin. And my sister and her husband and my two wonderful nieces along with their Colombian born au pair, Angelica. My sister's girls and my boys ran around like crazy people as they often do and totally and dramatically destroyed my relatively straight bedroom. The boys did a reasonable job cleaning it though so it ended up being okay.

Teddy was in a good mood and overall very lovely and helpful all day long. It's so nice when I get glimpses of my wonderful boy. (another thing to be thankful for this year)

Camela

I'm sensing a theme

2009-11-24T19:02:00.000-08:00

We went to some parent teacher conferences today for Teddy; four to be exact. One was band and we learned from him that Teddy is not as organized as he could be and often forgets his sticks and music book - Brad and I were shocked speechless... Our Teddy!!? Not organized? No. Not prepared? It can't be. Okay I'm done with band, now for the other classes.

Challenge Reading: Teddy is a really great kid, I really like him but he's consistently rushing through his classwork to get to whatever book he's reading instead of working more carefully on what he should be working on. He's getting a B but should easily be getting an A in my class. He's just not putting forth his best effort or really much effort as all. He's really smart and is basically skating by on smarts alone. With just a little bit of effort he'd have an A.

English: Teddy's a good kid; funny. He really rushes though his work during class, doing the bare minimum so he can pull out a book to read. Uh, he, um, well, he's really not putting forth much effort in here. He's getting a B but with just a tiny bit of effort, really just using the class time for what it's for; reviewing his work alone and with peers, he'd be getting an A. He is very smart and really should have a high A in here.

Social Studies: (very matter of fact) Teddy is getting an B. The place he could really bring up his grade would be in tests and quizzes, well except the county assessment. He's one of only 3 kids to have gotten 100% on the multiple choice part of the test and he got a perfect score on one of the written sections and only 2 points off of the other, so he did really well on that. He's really smart but he usually rushes through his classwork so he can pull out a book to read. Though even with that sometimes I'll call on him after he's been clearly reading for a while; head down, clearly engrossed in his book. I'll call on him to sort of point it out to him that he needs to be paying attention and he always gets the right answer so it's hard for me to even say anything about it. (Brad suggested she take the book away from him as soon as she sees it). He is really smart and is skating by on it. He's not putting forth any effort in here and with just a little effort on his part; even a quick review of the material before a test, he'd be getting an A.

Camela

Thanksgiving countdown - 3 days to go

2009-11-23T16:11:00.000-08:00

On today's Thanksgiving agenda is;

- Grocery shopping for all the supplies. Brad did this earlier today and woo hoo, we have most of what we need - CHECK

- making the cornbread for the new cornbread stuffing recipe that I am going to make this year. It's a whim but man did it look good when I saw Michael Symon make it on Food Network. I'm not going so crazy as to make it from scratch or anything crazy like that, but I'm making the Jiffy Brand that several people I know like. I've made a part of what I need because Brad totally ignored the list I gave him and decided I said I needed 2 cups of cornbread instead of the 8 I actually need (he's at the store again right now).

- moving the tables around. I've decided to put several tables end to end and have one long table for the 21-22 people we have coming and I'm going to put it starting in the dining room and crossing the foyer and ending in the living room. I'll put a sign on the front door that tells people to come in through our garage - we're a casual bunch so that doesn't bother me at all. (As an aside to the number of people - we knew we were having 16 or 17 people coming (not sure about my BIL's mom yet) but hadn't heard from either my dad & step mom OR my mom and step dad. I think it's kind of funny that I managed to get answers from everyone except my parents. But today we learned that they are coming as well which is absolutely wonderful, I'm thrilled everyone can make it.)

So the table move though is going to require quite a bit of rearranging. First we need to move the drum set (in the LR also known as the music room) to the basement. I'm afraid I'm going to have to move the Xmas tree I already assembled in the LR as well and I'm not yet sure where it's going to go. Then the kitchen table moves to the dining room and the round "puzzle" table goes to the kitchen for our meals till after thanksgiving. Then the fold out dining room table from the sun room moves to the living room and the leaves for it need to be brought up from the basement. (I have this super cool folding table that has 2 leaves and expands to seat 10 I think, certainly 8. But without the leaves you push it together to card table size and then the top folds back onto itself and ends up half the size of a card table and has worked as a hall or foyer table in the various places we've lived for many years.

The best part about this table arrangement is that I can totally get everything set up now, or maybe tomorrow and it'll be out of the main traffic patter of our normal lives - so it won't bother our normal routine. And we'll then be able to use the round puzzle table as a serving table and people can fill their plates in the kitchen and then bring it to the table. I think it's a stroke of brilliance.

On tomorrow's agenda - making the stock for the stuffing, finding the table cloths, setting the table.

Camela

A couple of things

2009-11-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

- I was struggling for a blog post tonight and Brad said I should write... "My husband's home, my husband's home" and let that be it. I almost went with that.

- When Teddy got home he was delightful and I saw a glimpse of my wonderful sweet kid - the one I know still hides inside his current surly exterior..... for about 10 minutes and then he ripped the foam finger Jackson was playing with and made Jack cry. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

- While cutting in around the baseboards today Bandit stood roughly three feet from me and barked and barked and barked and barked. I asked Jackson to throw a ball for him or something and he refused. I told him I was going to get rid of the dog if he didn't help me out (he knows full well I want to get rid of the dog but won't as long as the kids really, really don't want us to) and so he said - ... "weeeeell if you put it that way, I'd be happy to"

Okay, I'm all tapped out now.
Camela

My fun day with Jackson

2009-11-21T19:02:00.000-08:00

It started first thing this morning - well if you don't count the little battle of wills that went on getting him into the shower first - and we went to his favorite restaurant Bob Evans for breakfast where he just about died and went to heaven with the ability to dip his french toast into whipped cream.

We headed from there downtown while he continued to quiz me with his Wimpy kid book questions to the aquarium. I tried and tried to get some nice pictures of him at these places but my camera shy little boy made that darn near impossible. We started almost immediately in the 4D Polar Express experience. It was fantastic though I have no idea what it has to do with aquatic things you expect to find in an aquarium!!! If you've not seen a 4D movie they are great fun; in addition to the 3D thing going on with the glasses you get poked in the back when the big pole comes towards you and water squirts you in the face if someone on screen sneezes and you smell chocolate if someone's drinking hot chocolate - so fun. The whole theater was just having fits of laughter (well except the really little kids who were screaming in terror but they were quickly removed so all was well).

We moved from there and explored "Australia" which Jackson particularly loved - lots of cool snakes and lizards in addition to all the fish. Then we went into the normal aquarium exhibits and saw lots of sharks and a big huge turtle we named Hugh to make it easier for us to talk about him. You can see the main tank from a lot of different places so we were always tracking Hugh. (as a side note: my dad can't say Hugh - he can't say the H sound when it's followed by a U sound so it comes out as "you" - it always makes me laugh. He can say "H" and "YOU" but not "HUGH" - he clearly didn't watch enough Sesame Street).

Once the Dolphin show was over we hit the souvenir shop and picked up Bailey (named after one of the dolphins) he's a monkey with a National Aquarium sweatshirt on.. (of course he is). Jackson was done with the fish and wanted desperately to paint pottery which was definitely on the weekend agenda, though I was thinking we'd do it on Sunday. But no, we headed over there and he made two penguins one in Steelers' colors with a 7 on the back named Ben and one with Redskins' colors with number 17 on the back named Jason - he did a great job and I totally forgot to take any pictures.

Finally done with the pottery (my little vase which will be a gravy boat of sorts took much longer than Jack's things) Jackson begged me to go back to Bob Evans for a repeat of his breakfast. He wore me down and back we went. Throughout the day I tried to take pictures of Jackson but he thwarted me at every turn. I caught him once, and finally at the end I convinced him to pose with his new friend Bailey. Here are some pictures of our day.

I love this kissy fish but I swear I've seen him before - can someone tell me where. I'm thinking he's maybe the narrator of a Disney cartoon my kids used to watch or something like that.

This is Hugh; our friend the turtle - or probably more correctly a tortoise (oh and he only has 3 fins/feet so I'm glad he's found a home here.)

A dolphin mid-air. I tried to get a lot of those but only managed to get a few

Another midair dolphin

A dolphin playing with a ball

And now for many of my pictures of Jackson for the day!

Jackson lying on a huge anchor in the Inner Harbor

As much of his face as he was willing to share with me

Jackson with the lizard lady

Jackson in the 4D movie

Jackson with a dolphin swimming by

I caught him - woo hoo!!!

Jackson at Bob Evans the second time

Finally my baby granted me with a nice picture with his new buddy Bailey.

A few things

2009-11-20T18:29:00.000-08:00

Teddy and Brad are in VA. Teddy called me from a Japanese restaurant where he is clearly feeling very grown up; away with his dad. They went for a swim, watched a bit of TV and then headed out to eat. Tomorrow they're going to the comic book convention and I'm sure they're both very excited about it.

Jackson and I started our weekend at the book fair where he chose a few a few books and a really cool, very large, pen (nearly 2 feet long) that has a rubber replica of a foam finger - I really like it. Then we went to Uno's and had a lovely time as he quizzed me with the Wimpy Kid Do it Yourself book. He humored me by going into Target that was right next to Uno's. I'm on the lookout for a few more snowmen for a little collection I'm putting together on top of a cabinet and have been wanting to buy a small tree for the kitchen to hang all the kids hand made ornaments in one place, so I knew they might have something that I liked for that too.

In the tree section I found this small lighted tree that is already in a pot and I thought 2 of them would look great on the front porch so I looked closer and discovered they were on sale and came in a package of 2 for $40 - can you say sold. Then I looked for the tree for my kitchen and I narrowed it down to a short fat little tree that was really cute and a tall thin tree that was also wonderful. I had originally been looking for a short tree, but decided on the taller one (it's only 7.5 feet which is a normal size, but in the 11' high kitchen it'll look pretty small so that's still good). I picked it because of how narrow it is. Its overall footprint is just not that big and I think that'll be perfect for where I want to put it.

Brad will probably find out that I bought three more trees by reading this blog post while he's away (Hi honey) - and he'll shake his head and think what am I going to do with her (or at least that's what I hope he thinks). I'm hoping to have them put together and roughly in place, if not decorated before Brad gets home. (My family coming for Thanksgiving are going to think I'm confused about which holiday is happening since I believe we'll have 6 trees up in the house - though the two little ones will eventually go outside and the big, live one won't be bought until after thanksgiving).

Tomorrow Jack and I are heading to the aquarium and maybe a movie too, though he doesn't know about that possibility at the moment.

Camela

Some more random things

2009-11-19T17:19:00.000-08:00

My new nativity set

I've been wanting a new nativity scene for quite some time. Actually it's only the figures that I wanted to replace because I like my manger. So this year I decided to actually find one and it took approximately half an hour and someone else's idea.

I was IMing with my friend Camille and surfing the web for choices and she so nonchalantly through out there - this is the one I want, I just haven't gotten around to getting it and she sent me the link to the Willow tree nativity set.

Well and ... I loved it. But of course my first reaction was I can't have the same one as her - I don't want to steal her idea. And certainly there have to be others out there that I'd like just as much, right?

And I'd need to stop using my manger because it wouldn't fit with these figures, so I kept looking, but I kept coming back to it. I especially liked how Mary is holding Jesus, I don't think I've seen that before; he's always nestled in with some hay, which is certainly fine but I just loved the love of the Jesus in her arms. I also loved, loved, loved the stars; I have a real thing for stars. And well then there's the camel. My name is Camela so it's not surprising that I have a warm place in my heart for camels (which, by the way, is what my college roommate called me; Camels)

I narrowed it down to a few and showed them all to Brad and he didn't hesitate when he saw it - "That's the one. It's so you... the whole sun and the moon and the stars thing, that's it!" and he walked away. (I say to the kids - I love you more than the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky - which is what my mom used to say to me).

Anyway, it came today!!! I'm so excited. I've set it up and I love it.

Go Green compressed bamboo towels

The nativity set shipped from a place called ThinkBamboo and it comes with a 10 pack of Go Green compressed bamboo towels. I've got no idea why. Maybe I should use the towels to keep the nativity set clean. Maybe they're just so jazzed about how teeny tiny they can pack the towels they want me to be wowed by it too? I have no idea, but I will say they do manage to package them very, very small and the towel itself is a good sized towel that I'm sure I could poke my finger threw if I so desired. The kids thought they were cool, so that's something.

My CPA calculator

In 1995 I passed the three day CPA test and got to put cute little letters after my name (which I never do). It took me 6 months to accomplish this, but I got it done nonetheless. For a part of the test you are allowed to use a basic calculator that they provide. It just has the very basic of functions but we were all thrilled to have it. It's more than 14 years later and darn if that thing doesn't still work. It's never had its battery changed, in fact it's screwed shut with no intention of it ever being opened. I just think it's amazing that it still works. A little aside about calculators... I was an economics, accounting and finance major where math was used in varying degrees in most of my classes and I was not allowed to use a calculator until my senior year in college, before that there were often pages worth of calculations to figure out an answer. And now today, my 11 year old son in 6th grade GT math was asked to buy this seriously intense scientific calculator for school. We won't let him use it at home, which used to really piss him off.

Speaking of 11 year olds

He was so in a mood tonight. So darn ornery it was difficult to speak civilly to him. He borrowed a book from the library but it's a bit different; it's called a book swap (I may have already mentioned that in an earlier post) and he's supposed to go to a website and talk about where he is and what book it is and some other things and then pass it on to someone else who will do the same thing once they've read it. Brad found the book on the floor in the corner near the bathroom.
B: Ted what's the deal with this book
T: it's a book (so full of attitude)
B: are you done with it?
T: yes (he didn't say but you could certainly hear in his tone "you idiot")
B: don't you need to do something with it?
T: No, I'm done (same tone)
B: it's a book swap book you need to do the stuff it says to do
T: (yelling from upstairs) OPEN THE FRONT COVER. READ WHAT IT SAYS. DO WHAT IT SAYS
Me to Brad: Beat him
B: TED, GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW
They go back and forth for a minute until Ted reluctantly apologizes and heads upstairs book in hand
T: I'm just going to put it on my bookshelf (the tone was back)
me: beat him

Then later he is packing for his trip with Brad this weekend which OMG has been one stupid ordeal after another and finally - finally - I'm able to get him up to bed. But right before he's going to get in bed he runs out of the room and down the stairs while I take calming deep breaths to keep myself from doing something I'll regret (at some point). He runs back (after a reminder) with my old MP3 player which I never fully understood how to use.
T: Mom, teach me how this works.
M: I'm not sure I know
T: it's yours and you don't know? (please hear the mocking tone there)
M: I'm sure I could figure it out, but I'm not going to try, it's way past your bedtime and you're going to bed right now.
T: I just put fresh batteries in it
M: that's good to know
T: I can't find my sansa shaker, I need music this weekend
M: that's a darn shame you didn't think of this before right now. (I got up to leave)
T: you've totally ruined my life

Camela

My schedule

2009-11-18T19:49:00.002-08:00

Brad left on Sunday night and came home tonight in time to meet me in the parking lot of Teddy's 8pm basketball practice. Tomorrow night Brad will take Jackson to his basketball practice while I get Ted. On Friday Brad is picking Teddy up from school early and the two of them are heading down to VA to go to a comic book convention (cuz there hasn't been enough of that in our lives) and won't be back until Sunday. Jackson and I have a fun Mother/son weekend planned including trips to the Aquarium and to a paint your own pottery studio - he's ever so excited.

Then on Monday Brad's mom will show up for about 10 days. We have parent teacher conferences on Tuesday night and basketball practice on Wednesday night and then of course Thursday is Thanksgiving and we are hosting for 16-17 people, which we love to do, but of course it doesn't happen all by itself. Sometime between now and Thanksgiving, all the Christmas junk that is in the middle of the rooms (read boxes of artificial trees and other assorted decorations and piles of normal non Christmas stuff that needs to be taken out of the house) needs to find a home and the house needs to be cleaned, food shopping needs to happen, and a whole bunch of food needs to be made for people to begin arriving at 12:30 to watch football with dinner to be served at 3:00.

Then of course we will have 9 days until our Christmas party. So the rest of the decorating will have to happen and at some point we'll need to do more shopping (after we actually sit down and decide what to serve) and lots more food will need to be prepared, and I'll have to figure out what to wear (last year that never made it on the list and I was running around getting stuff ready till the bitter end and ended up just leaving my jeans on all night long - which I guess is better than taking them off at some point.) Of course there will also be lots of MIL entertaining happening in there as well; at least a movie or two, some shopping, hair appointments...

There's just lots of stuff
Camela

More fun with the 6th grader

2009-11-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

Teddy: hum hum hum (the same three notes over and over from a Jonas Brothers show)
Jackson: Teddy stop
T: hum hum hum
J: Teddy!!!
T: hum hum hum
J: would you just stop it!
T: hum hum hum
J: TEDDY STOP IT!!!
Mom: Teddy would you please stop
T: STOP WHAT?
M: humming
T: but he's being SO annoying
M: silence
T: He is!!!
M: silence
T: he's totally annoying me
M: silence
T: he's over there telling me to stop humming and I want to sing!!! (He was totally serious and completely annoyed)
M: Ted, I think you're annoying him
T: HUMPH!!! OH FINE!!! GREAT, JUST GREAT!!!!
M: Ted
T: JUST FINE!!!! FORGET IT!!!!!
M: Ted, why don't you go upstairs and finish your homework there.

My darling Teddy - let's try again

2009-11-16T17:29:00.000-08:00

I just reread (is that how you spell that?) my NaBloPoMo posts and see I've been mostly ignoring my darling eldest son and well we can't have that now can we.

He's in shall we say a difficult stage. He's 11 going on 48, smart as a whip (and he knows it too which is not necessarily a good thing - can you say EGO), in 6th grade, he has my looks only done just perfectly but he is Brad. If ever on this planet there were two people who were the same exact individual it's these two.

Brad has conned the poor unsuspecting Teddy into liking the original Star Trek, which is extremely upsetting to me. But it's so true that Teddy and Brad will randomly have conversations in the middle of the mall about which episode this or that reminds them of. Unfortunately more and more it's Ted who brings this up. "Wow Dad that's just like Trouble with Tribbles" (that's the only actual title I know). Jack and I slink to the other side of the aisle when this happens.

Brad's an engineer and I'm a CPA; we're both very good at math and so far it looks like both boys are also going to be very good in this area as well... but when first learning math it was very difficult for Teddy and I to have meaningful conversations about it. Brad and Teddy process things in exactly the same way which is starkly foreign to my very logical brain. Brad could explain things to him in what I consider this odd, random, a$$ backwards way - really using only 1/2 sentences because immediately Teddy would totally and completely follow what he was saying. Whereas I'd try to go over things in a logical step by step method and Teddy would run screaming from the room beyond frustrated. For quite a while he didn't believe I knew a damn thing about math until he finally literally tested me; absolutely sure I would get all his problems wrong. When I got them all immediately correct he accepted that we get to the answer differently but if he'd be patient I could in fact help him completely understand something - and now we do just fine. The funny thing about this math thing is that Jackson and I process things the same way and the opposite thing is proving true with Jackson - he can more easily follow what I'm telling him than Brad.

As for the difficult stage thing - here's a bit of our interaction last night (of course Brad’s out of town)

We moved a small love seat that had been in our room into Jackson ’s room a while back and he’s taken to sleeping in it every night. Last night I put Jackson to bed on the couch and was waiting while Ted got out of the shower. I went down and put out the recycling only to find them fighting and Jackson near tears when I came back upstairs. Teddy had decided that the memory card in the Sansa Shaker that Jackson had been listening to all day long belonged to him and that it was imperative he retrieve it right that moment complete with threats of memory card and Sansa destruction. I got Jackson calmed down and back in bed and went in to talk to Teddy.

M: what were you thinking, he was already in bed

T: he was not in bed

M: yes he was

T: no he wasn’t

M: Jeez Teddy, I put him there, of course he was… lights out, door closed, past bedtime, these are clues.

T: he was not in bed! He was on the couch.

(oh for the love of God – please give me strength)

M: That’s where he sleeps, it’s where he has been sleeping and it’s not the point. It’s past his bedtime, you knew I was putting him to bed, his lights were out, his door was closed. If you have an issue to discuss with him it can wait until the morning, you cannot disturb him after he’s gone to bed!

T: he wasn’t in bed!

(I get up and leave the room so as not to rain all my icky parts all over him while I explode)

Camela

Random thoughts

2009-11-15T18:24:00.000-08:00

I'm totally stealing this idea from another friend's blog.

The Wizard of Oz part 2
I was totally looking forward to watching the rest of the movie with Jackson to hear what he had to say next about it. I was particularly looking forward to the flying monkeys - I mean how was he going to explain that one. But no-oooo. My darling husband let me sleep in this morning which was delightful, but they finished watching it without me while I was still in bed. And I didn't even find this out until after Brad was on a plane to FL this evening so I couldn't even ask him what Jackson said.

Flag Football
Jackson's last game was today and they shut out their opponent. Jackson scored at least one TD (I missed the beginning of the game so I don't know what happened then). It's totally fun to watch him turn on the afterburners and just flat out out run everyone else on the field. Though next year he'll be playing in the 9-12 year old group as a 9 year old and I'm guessing he won't be the fastest anymore. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Disliking people
Hi my name is Camela and I dislike people. It's a problem for me. And really more than disliking them, I don't do them well at all. I've tried to get over it, but I swear I just can't - though I guess it's possible I just don't want to at this point. Most people who know me think I'm this loud, very personable, "people-person", but oh jeez is that not the truth. Thankfully Brad likes people and they like him so he smooths things out for me.

Being funny
Sometimes I can manage it and clearly like now, sometimes I just can't. Oh well. I don't know why sometimes the amusing little anecdotes just fall out of me and other times I'm as dry as the desert.

Camela

The Wizard of Oz - from Jackson's perspective

2009-11-14T17:36:00.000-08:00

Jackson is watching the Wizard of Oz for the first time. He's less than a month from turning 9.

First let me say that I know that lots kids watch this movie over and over and over again when they are little and it's just not a big deal - too young to really be scared of it. But I loved the ritual of it - watching it once a year and being scared and being excited to be scared and whatnot. BUT, I didn't want my kids to be scarred by it like some adults I know (you know who you are) so I wanted them to be old enough to watch it before I let them see it. When Teddy was about 6ish he and I watched it together and it was fun, but then I guess I forgot about Jackson - so here we are tonight.

So we're all sitting here watching it and it's just not going according to plan....

Teddy is playing on the computer and Jackson is half watching him and half watching the movie. And Jackson is doing a running commentary of the movie's special effects. It started off with "Mom, is this whole thing in black and white"

Then while watching the Wicked Witch of the West show up in Muchkin Land he's yelling at the TV "Hey she just showed up through a trap door. See! See! It's right below her!"

Then my personal favorite.... Glenda the good which is leaving Munchkin Land and if you remember she does that in a bubble that gently floats away getting smaller and smaller until you can't see it anymore. Jack just looked back to us and said... "That bubble is staying the same size." Brad was not following him and said "No bud, it's getting smaller what do you mean?" "Da-ad, it's just moving to a greater distance away so it looks smaller. Look" and he held his hand palm out towards Brad and slowly pulled it away and with a total know-it-all attitude he said "is my hand getting smaller?"

Brad and I both just totally cracked up.

The Wicked Witch zooms off after the snow wakes Dorothy and friends up from the poppy field and says "Fly, get there as fast as lightening" (or something along those lines) to which Jack responded "it's not as fast as lightening - you'd be there already"

They walk into Emerald City for the first time; Jackson jumps up and says "out of nowhere guess - I think they like green" (he thinks he's so funny)

I'm enjoying things from his perspective; it's given a whole new twist to the old movie.

Jackson's new robe

2009-11-12T17:16:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I got the boys bathrobes which they were excited about and wore a couple of times until they realized the ties came out and then it was way more fun to tie things up then wear a stupid old robe. Well, about two or three months ago Jackson started wearing his robe again. It still has the little tie thing inside of it but he's been mostly holding it shut while wearing it. He started by wearing it after he got out of the shower but then it evolved into putting it on when he's just going to watch TV in the mornings on the weekend.

Not too long ago he came and very politely asked if he could have a new robe; one that had a tie that worked. Now of course I could have just fashioned a tie out of something (even a tie), but the robe was also a little small for him by this point so I told him we could probably work something out. Well today, I was at Target and came across the cutest robe that had Jackson's name all over it..... Okay it really had skulls all over it, but I knew that Jackson would absolutely LOVE it. I thought about hanging onto it to give it to him for his birthday or Christmas, but I decided a robe was something I could just give him so I did. And he was so gleefully delighted he jumped up and down and said thank you a million times. He immediately put it on and I'm fairly sure he's going to want to wear it for the whole weekend.

I went down to take a picture of him for this post and being Jackson, who hates pictures with a passion that took some work. He finally agreed if I let him put on sunglasses... uh sure. Then I took a bunch of pictures and thought several were very cute so I decided to include them here. Thank you to Camille for this blog post idea - I was totally stuck.

Even Bandit the evil wonder dog thinks he's a little scary.

He knows he's cool.

I totally tricked him into smiling. He was so mad when he saw the picture.

My Hometown - Annapolis

2009-11-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

In trying to find a way not to miss any more days of posting in November I am stealing an idea from my friend Camille's blog. Apparently she has some sort of journal jar that has little pieces of paper in it with questions on them and one of the questions was: Describe the main street of your hometown.... And well that's a great one for me.

I grew up in Annapolis, Maryland and I believe in my heart of hearts it's the very best place in the world. If you've never been there you should book a trip as soon as you can - the warmer months are the best.

Annapolis is a quaint historic town at the mouth of the Severn River right where it opens up to the Chesapeake Bay. You sail under the Bay Bridge heading towards the Severn River at the last minute you bear left (port since we're on the water) and head down Ego Alley; so named because many a person takes their boat both sail and power down this narrow strip of water sitting smack dab in the middle of Annapolis to show off. And there you sit sipping a cold beer taking in the beauty that is Annapolis.

The main street of Annapolis is in fact called Main Street and it's one of the prettiest streets in the world. It's a one way up hill brick paved street starting at Ego Alley and ending at Church Circle. It was originally paved in big beautiful cobble stones. Sometime well before I was born the cobbles were replaced by brick and the old cobbles somehow became the retaining wall in the back yard of my grandparents house who lived a bunch of blocks from Main Street. Church circle is as you guessed a circular street that surrounds a church; St. Anne's Episcopal Church to be exact. This is the church I grew up in. It's the church my mom went to when she was a kid. It was the church my grandpa went to when he was a kid. The little cemetery within the wrought iron fence that surrounds the church has headstones that date back to the 1600s.

The street itself is lined with quaint little shops full of old Annapolis Charm. A delightful mix of homemade ice cream, wonderful baked goods, nautical shops, and plenty of preppy clothing stores. If you need a bright pink belt with green trim and a whale buckle there's no doubt you can find it here. Main Street is the place to go for all kinds of things; Docksiders or espadrilles or flouncy church hats, ropes, lines, canvas bags, a bushel of crabs, a cold beer, a night out, an afternoon stroll, a nice time with old friends, amazing people watching, history, beauty... peace.

Can you tell I love and miss Annapolis - we may have to figure out how move back there.

My little Steeler's fan

2009-11-09T17:41:00.000-08:00

Jackson started playing flag football last year and through that he is finally developing his "fan" nature which is just a must in our house! The problem is that my contrary child has decided that he's a Steelers' fan.

We are a Redskins' family first and foremost, but the Ravens are our 2nd favorite team. (Yes there are people, primarily from Baltimore, who think liking both of those teams is against nature but they just need to get over it). So being a Steelers' fan is a bit of a problem for us. Not as much as being a Cowboys' fan would be mind you, but it's not a welcome development.

I have told him that if he ever cheered for the Cowboys I would kick him to the curb and so far that's working, though he does keep asking... "Mom, why are we Redskins' fans again?" In the past couple of seasons I guess I can't blame him for that.

But here we are tonight with Monday Night Football with the Broncos playing the Steelers and Jackson can't keep his mouth shut for even a second. Every single play or movement of any kind he's talking non stop to the TV.

"34 28 17 hike hike hike" "get him, get him, get him - what are you crazy" "THROW IT!" "How do you let him do that?" "Oh My Go-od" "Sack!"

I don't think I've ever seen him so insanely excited about anything in his life. I'm kind of sad I have to put him to bed so he can get enough sleep for school tomorrow.

Camela

A few Christmas decorating pictures

2009-11-08T10:41:00.000-08:00

Brad pulled down all the Christmas stuff when he pulled down all the Halloween stuff a couple of weeks ago and our garage is filled with lots of green and red boxes - most of which are actually in the front yard or in the kitchen.

It's 70 degrees and outrageously beautiful today. A perfect day to put up Christmas lights. I thought this juxtaposition of Christmas lights around the window, the remaining color of the burning bush, and the blue sky was fun.

Can you see that the window is open to let the beautiful day in. I looks like we had the lights up in the middle of summer - I swear we didn't.

I started pulling stuff out of the boxes inside the house but for the moment I was just gathering everything on the high counter in the kitchen and a table in the sun room. It's always so fun at this stage because I always buy some new things at the end of the season that just get packed up and put in the boxes so each year I find some new things that I had totally forgotten I'd bought the previous year.

Camela

Stinkin' pilgrims

2009-11-07T18:07:00.000-08:00

My favorite time of year.... sort of

Today we undecorated from Halloween. It's sad for me because I love Halloween so much but.... if we don't pull them down now... well.. I might lose my mind. Thanksgiving is only 19 days away and we're hosting for my father's side of the family (we haven't actually invited anyone yet, but it's on the list for tomorrow) - that's roughly 20-25 people depending on who comes. We love hosting big family holiday dinners but of course it's a lot of work. And then right on the heels of Thanksgiving dinner, our annual Christmas party is always the first Saturday in December (the very next weekend) which is.... oh holy Hell... 28 days from today.

A few years ago we also hosted Thanksgiving and we didn't start decorating for Christmas until the next day because we didn't want to have the house all decked out for Christmas when it should be crawling with pilgrims - but alas that mad rush in the following eight days while we were both working full time nearly caused a divorce..... so...

From that point forward we decided to skip right over the pilgrims. Who likes pilgrims anyway. Stinkin' pilgrims. (okay I'll admit to a little guilt about this. My paternal grandma who was an amazing woman and an amazing cook held Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner each year and her house was totally decked out in pilgrims and cornucopias and all other appropriate type Thanksgiving stuff for Thanksgiving and tons of Christmas stuff for Christmas (she even hung different pictures on the walls for each event) but... I just can't live up to her example and I've decided I just have to get over it.)

So we skip the pilgrims and move straight from skeletons and graves to trees and wreaths and lights. The family will have to adjust to a Christmasy Thanksgiving dinner. I promise I won't play a single Christmas carol during dinner. So today Brad took down our graveyard and eyeball lights and started to put up our house lights for Christmas, while I did similar things inside. The Christmas decorating process in this house takes a very, very long time because frankly I'm a little insane about it.... but I do love how my house looks all decked out for Christmas.

Camela

They've all been debleated

2009-11-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

A quick movie review of Men who Stare at Goats.

uh.

um.

I'm not sure what to say about this.

Okay. I liked it. I think. It was very "Cohen Brothers"-ish". I was totally and fully engrossed in the story the entire time. Though I think 'story' is a bit of a stretch. I laughed out loud plenty - though it was often more of a 'laugh at you' than 'laugh with you' kind of thing. The two best lines that had Brad and I falling out of our seats laughing were "They've all been debleated" and "Silence of the Goats". I'm still laughing while I type this - total hilarity. It was full of very smart, dry, need-to-pay-attention-to dialog. I recommend it, but can't really tell you why. Brad says it's a movie about redemption - I think that's a big huge stretch. it's sort of in there, but like a hint at the end and even then you're not really sure it isn't a big joke.

Oh and I think I should get a pass on skipping yesterday of NaBloPoMo cuz it was my anniversary. Has anyone noticed that some people say NaBloPoMo which stands for National Blog Posting Month and others say NaNoBloMo which stands for something else maybe National November Blog Month? Any thoughts?

Bedtime in our house

2009-11-05T18:29:00.000-08:00

First let me say this NaBloPoMo thing is very hard and it's only the 5th. To top it off I just linked the blog with Facebook and so now my FB pages are filled with these inane things - I may have to sever this link yet... we'll see.

When Brad's in town we trade off on who puts which boy to bed each night and how the actual bedtime ritual unfolds seems to change and evolve for each parent and each kid over time - I'm sure this is true everywhere. For the first six years or so of Jackson's life he was a royal PITA going to bed; everything about it was hard. In fact let's start at the beginning shall we..... Brad and I believed in the cold turkey method of getting your kids to sleep through the night when they were babies. We consulted books and friends and doctors and decided between 4 and 5 months was the right age. So the first night for Teddy we put him down and closed all the doors between him and us and turned on the TV and radio and kept the monitor off only checking it periodically and on the first night he cried for 12 minutes and on the 2nd night he cried for 7 minutes and then we never heard from him again and we thought - okay wow the books and friends and doctors were right. That was easy.

Then along came Jackson.... (it's a good thing he's cute)... So being the 2nd child we still closed the doors and we still went into a different part of the house but eh.... I just wasn't as worried about this one, I knew he'd figure it out eventually. So the first night after 45 minutes of progressively louder crying he hit that high pitched screaming stage where he was beginning to lose his voice. And well that was where my limit had been met. So I went and got him. This same pattern of him sobbing for 45 minutes until he moved to the screaming stage lasted EVERY SINGLE NIGHT until he was 13 or 14 months old. Did I mention - every single night. (I maintain he's the single most stubborn human that's ever lived - Brad thinks that's me, but I just can't believe I can compete with that kind of stuff).

So at some point a couple of years ago Jackson got EASY to put to bed and I've done my best not to mess with that. He just wants his back rubbed for a few minutes and that's pretty much it. Though I do find it amusing how specific he is in his directions of just how he wants his back rubbed. "Mom, can you get my whole back? A little lighter please. Can you get my shoulders too. Will you use your fingernails. No, like this (where he'll demonstrate exactly what he wants on my arm). I think this bodes well for his ability to communicate his wants in the future.

And now there's Teddy. I love putting Ted to bed. We have these loud raucous battles where he's trying to best me. Trying to keep me from tickling him or trying to throw me off the bed. I often say "One day you'll be stronger than me, but that day isn't today." And so when it's my turn to put Ted down the battle's on. I still win every time, but he is definitely getting stronger, and that day will be here soon enough. More often then not Brad has to come in from putting Jack down to tell us to quiet down because we are both laughing so hard. It's the time where we are both silly and being purely kids - it's totally fun and one day when it's gone, I'll miss it.

Camela

I almost forgot

2009-11-04T19:14:00.001-08:00

I swear this does not bode well for my NaBloPoMo. So just a bit about today.....

Teddy had his first basketball practice even though he still has at least one more soccer game. Jackson's first practice is tomorrow night. I have cramps that would kill a horse and am really thinking this whole being a woman thing is for the birds! I actually left work early because of them which happens once a year or so. I find the most interesting thing about this for me is that my brain stops working in direct relation to how much pain I'm in. Brad's trying to talk to me and tell me his upcoming travel schedule. At some point I have to stop him because all I'm really hearing is the Peanut's teacher talking Mwa Mwa Mwa Mwa Mwa Mwa. I'm sure he was telling me something interesting or maybe even important but yeah... my brain is just not capable of processing anything right now.

Jackson's crazy soccer pictures

2009-11-03T18:07:00.000-08:00

This first picture is him alone with the soccer ball. Of course he picked picture day to wear his shin guards outside of his socks - a soccer no no - and of course neither of his parents noticed. But besides the ridiculous hair this is a pretty good picture of my kid who normally shies away from actually smiling for a camera. He usually either runs away, turns his back or makes a ridiculous face.

And this is his team picture and a perfect example of his normal picture persona. In case you can't tell, that's him in the front row 2nd from the left - even his body posture is whacked.. that's my kid!

More differences about the boys

2009-11-02T17:22:00.000-08:00

It came time to carve the pumpkins this year and as is usually the case this falls under my list of to-dos. If there is the slightest craft element to it Brad quickly says - this is ALL you Camela, I couldn't possibly do it.

I've been using those carving templates for years now and often end up doing 2 or more pumpkins one night working late into the night because I couldn't start until the boys went to bed otherwise it would take 5 times as long and there would always be fighting and crying but last year Teddy did a lot of his and I was excited for him to do the whole thing this year.

So I give him the books to flip through so he can pick what he wants and he quickly picks a ghost in a graveyard. Great! Unfortunately I mention that he'll need to go slowly and be careful which spooks him into thinking he'll totally mess it up - and it would be awful for him if he were to create something that wasn't FANTASTIC - he's ultra worried about what others think of him. I was able to talk him into doing some of it and if I hadn't actually waited until Halloween day to carve them I easily could have gotten him to do it and to be happy and proud about it too, but... oh well maybe next year. Here's his choice.

And then there's Jackson. I gave him the books to look through and he finally looked up and said... "I'd rather do an original design." Yeah okay. So we worked back and forth and came up with this which is maybe my favorite pumpkin of all times because it came with sound effects. Whenever Jackson or I would see the pumpkin we would belt out an awful operatic soprano note. Then fall over laughing.

NaBloPoMo - ok so I'm late

2009-11-02T17:11:00.000-08:00

I want to get rid of my spurty blogging nature so I thought participating in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month where you add a blog post each day for the month of November) would help me along with that.... of course then I forgot. oops.

So already I've failed, I figure that takes some of the pressure off, right? Let's consider this little blog post-lette my replacement for yesterday and I'll pretend it happened on the right day. A friend suggested I could change the date and make it seem as though I got it right, but eh - I am what I am.

The tournament is over

2009-10-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

Both boys had games tonight at 6:00 two fields apart. It was going to be Jackson's last game no matter what, but if Teddy's team won they would move on to the championship game. Truth be told, I didn't really care about Jackson's game. I'm a bad mom, but the under 9 age group is not yet that fun to watch. There are a few players on the team who have a sense of the game, but mostly they are still running around following the ball or waiting for the ball to come to them and it's frustrating to watch. And Jackson, the most energetic kid in America, spends a lot of time dancing - cuz he can.

Whereas Teddy's under 11 league (I think he makes it into the U11 league by virtue of his birthday, but it could be U12 for all I know - remember I'm a bad mom) is actually competitive. Both teams play soccer well - fairly consistently so it's fun and exciting to watch - not to mention his game actually mattered. So Brad and I split the games and switched at half time.

Jack's team won 3-1. Teddy's team played one of their best games all season but unfortunately lost 1-0. Ted re-aggravated his knee which he first hurt on Friday in his first of 3 in a row games in a hard knee to knee hit and was really bummed by the loss, but oh well. They have a regular season game on Saturday and hopefully they'll be able to shake it off by then.

Camela

My empathetic Teddy

2009-10-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

On Saturday Teddy had the first of three soccer games in three days. I arrived at the beginning of the second half and they were losing 0 - 1. I later learned that one of our players, Michael, had inadvertently scored a goal for the other team - he was trying to clear a corner kick but it went off his leg and into the goal. I was thrilled for Michael's sake when our team tied it up and it was even better when we scored again. The game ended with us winning 2 - 1 and you could see Michael was visibly relieved.

So then today I get to Ted's game and Michael's mom comes over to me and says... I just wanted to tell you that after Michael scored the other team's goal yesterday Teddy went over to him and gave him a pat on the back and told him to shake it off. That we all learn from our mistakes, but he shouldn't let it effect him for the rest of the game. She said that Michael told her Teddy is such a nice guy and that was such a nice thing to say to me right then.

When we got home I told Teddy what she'd said and told him how proud I was of him. He said "I was so frustrated with him right then, but I knew that yelling at my own team mate would not serve any good purpose." Clearly I agreed with him. I didn't tell him this, but I was maybe more proud of him for that sentiment than for what he'd said in the first place. There's hope for him yet.

Camela

2009-10-24T18:34:00.000-07:00

It started with sleeping in - now that would be a great thing except we were wrong about the time Teddy had to be at the soccer field in order to get pictures taken before his game. It was about 9:50 and we realized he needed to be there at 10:15. It takes about 15 minutes to get there. Teddy was asleep. I went to wake him and I couldn't stop laughing - "sweetie you need to get up, cuz you need to leave in 6 minutes." Brad took him and they made it.

Then it continued with shaving. Well actually I was using a hair removal cream, a new one, and - I can't even describe what a disaster it was - I nearly killed myself cuz everything got so slippery and then it only sort of worked so I'm thinking I now look like a cheetah. And it took way longer than it should have so I was late to Teddy's game. Which was sort of okay since it was happening during a torrential downpour. The kind of rain where the wind is so intense that it shoved the rain through the vent that is about a third of the way down on the big golf umbrella I was under so I was being rained on INSIDE my umbrella.

Teddy's team won, Jackson's team tied then we were home and working on book reports. No construction paper, no poster board - wonderful. Brad volunteers to go and get it - great but I'm a little worried - will he get the right stuff? I ask him to get a variety of poster board and 2 packs of construction paper. I send him to a craft store where I know they'll have a good selection of poster board. It took forever. While he was gone I managed to alienate both children and have them both crying - it was a great time. He gets back and with no poster board. He bought a multi colored pack of I'm guessing 11x17 paper. It's great, just not what I'd finally convinced Teddy he needed as I didn't like his original choice. No problem, this is good since the kids and I needed a break from each other so out I go back into the rain.

Brad is worried that I'm still stressed, but seems ... lost with what to do about it. Maybe as if he expects me to just get over it and is not amused that I'm not.

Hopefully most of our to-do list for this weekend

2009-10-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

*2 soccer games on Saturday
*a soccer game and a football game on Sunday
*2 book reports to start and finish
*Buy pumpkins
*Carve pumpkins
*Figure out what the kids are going to be for Halloween and make that happen
*Do laundry – fold and put away (man I hate this one)
*Hang Ted’s new roman shades
*Clean our bedroom - cuz it's a holy disaster
*Clean our bathroom - ditto
*Work on the basement - there's just so much to do
*Put up whatever Halloween decorations we’re going to - I swear this is my favorite holiday but it so often gets pushed by the way side between the sports and school work and just life in general not to mention thinking ahead to what we need to do to host Thanksgiving for a million people and then our Christmas party the following week - that is 43 frickin' days from now (I really shouldn't have just looked at that - but since I'm a glutton for punishment I'll throw in that Thanksgiving is 34 days from today as well.)

Only 4 more hours of work and then I can start.
Camela

It's on the list.... soccer tournament

2009-10-22T18:22:00.001-07:00

So - I find I'm really spurty at this whole blogging thing - why is that I wonder? I'll have all these ideas for blog posts all on one day and I'll be able to keep them in my mind for a day or two - cuz I try to do no more than 1 in a day. But then - it's gone. And I know, you can schedule posts to happen in the future, but I'd have to spend time to figure that out and well... it's on the list. (other blog things on the list - I signed up months and months ago to be able to use this site to make cool slide shows of pictures, but the first time I tried it it was taking too much time to figure out how to choose a song to go with the pictures and how to determine the order of them.... so.. forget it, I just posted some pictures that day and haven't been back - but.. I swear it's on the list.)

So there's been nothing crazy going on here like crazy animals in the back yard so nothing so obviously blogworthy has cropped up - so I'm going to try to just throw up some stuff about what's going on in the boring normal life we live.

A couple of weeks ago was the comic book convention again and we had the boys take pictures of all the people in the costume contest - It's on the list (really high, I swear) to download the pictures and maybe I'll even learn how to do the slide show thingy for it, we'll see.

Right now both boys are in a soccer tournament which is fun, but it's a lot of time added to the already swamped schedule. This past week, both of the boys soccer games and Jackson's football game were all canceled due to cold and rainy weather - phew, cuz then the week started. Monday Jack had a game at 6 and Teddy had one a 7. Tuesday Teddy had basketball evaluations (Jackson's had been on this past Saturday). Wednesday Jackson had a soccer game and tonight (Thursday) Teddy had a soccer game. This weekend both boys have soccer games on Saturday. On Sunday Jack has flag football and Ted has a soccer game and on Monday the tourney continues and they both have soccer games.... geez.

In Jackson's first game a quarter of his team was down with a fever so not there, they were able to get two 6 year old younger brothers to play with Jackson's under 9 team.... they lost 3 - 0. In his second game they didn't need the 6 year olds but didn't have many subs if any. They played a good game and were tied at 3-3 about 3/4 of the way through the game, but then they just ran out of gas and the other team scored at least 2 more goals on them so they lost again.

Teddy was in the most exciting kid soccer game I've seen yet in his first game. His team is a rec level team - they're good players, but none of them are going to be the next Pele. In the tourney you can play against any level team and in their first game they played against a travel team (this is where the future Pele's are playing in this age group). From the beginning all the parents from our team were just hoping and praying that the loss wouldn't be too devastating for them. The other team's players were bigger and stronger and at a whole different level then Ted's team, if they hadn't been playing against Teddy they would have been really fun to watch. Extremely good ball handling skills, routinely passing the ball to where they knew their team mate would be, which is just not something Teddy's team does regularly if at all. And boy did they kick it hard; every pass, every kick, every shot on goal was hard and intense and extremely purposeful. I'd say 90% of the entire game was spent right in front of our goal, but somehow we managed to limit them to only 2 goals (our defense has always been the strongest part of the team) - and miraculously we somehow managed to score 2 goals on them as well - so the game ended in a tie - which I tell you was better than any win they've ever had.

At the end of the game Teddy got a little teary - the whole team was extremely emotional at their hard fought tie. They all knew they'd played one of their best defensive games ever and that it was a real feat that they hadn't been totally destroyed by that team. Ted said - "I feel all emotional" - it was so cute - I was very proud of the whole team.

OH and... early in the second half one of the other team's players took an incredibly hard shot on goal and it landed.... right on Teddy's face - the shot heard 'round the field.

The sidelines reaction (both sides) a collective - "Gasp" Oh. My. God.
My reaction - Holy shit. Oh man, he's going to be so embarrassed by that to begin with and then he can't not cry over that kind of hit and that's going to make it worse, poor kid.
The Ref's reaction - stopped the game immediately and ran towards Teddy.
Teddy's reaction - Bent at the waist holding his face. Slowly stood up shaking his head (I can only assume trying to gather his wits which most certainly were thrown a few yards away). Crouched into a good ready position scanning for the ball (after all he was playing defense and that had been a shot on goal - the ball had to be somewhere nearby).

It wasn't until the ref got to him and physically had to stop him from moving as he continued to look for the ball (I think he was a bit dazed) did Teddy understand the game had been stopped. The ref examined him and called "blood" and sent him to the sidelines. The hit ripped his lip and I think he bit his tongue too cuz it was bleeding as well. I jogged over to him expecting him to need a little love, but when I got to him, he had napkins on his lips and was completely fine. The bleeding was just about stopped and after a very amusing time spent getting the napkin that got stuck to his lips and tongue off he was back in the game.

His second game tonight was against another rec team - very well matched with his team. It was a great game, they continued to play better then they've played throughout the rest of the season and they won 1-0.

We'll see if I can continue this .... this is our life posts.

Camela

Things that frighten me

2009-09-15T12:31:00.001-07:00

Teddy: Last year I liked Robin, but this year there are just so many more choices. This year I like Beth - she's just SO cute!

This is the kind of line I would expect from Jackson when he gets to middle school - not at all from Teddy. I'm pretty sure I'm not happy about this, though it was very funny when he said it.

A possible alien abduction

2009-09-10T05:53:00.000-07:00

Teddy just got a new alarm clock and we haven't yet fully figured it out - we need to be able to let him go to sleep to music but wake up to the beeping alarm - I'm sure the instructions will shed light on our issues, but anyway I am still going in there to wake him up and then a few minutes later to act as his snooze alarm. I walked in there as the snooze alarm that I am and said Sweetie it's time to get up now and he rolled over and said. I can do this, trust me to get up. Okay baby, I'll let you getup. I left fully intending he'd be zoncksville again in no time. I went back in there several minutes later and he was just putting his shirt on.

When I reminded him to brush his teeth there was no eye rolling. Then he picked up a tennis ball and started playing with the dog, perfectly happily. Teddy is as far from a morning person as say... uh... cough.. uh Brad and that's saying something. I just shook my head and accepted the unexpected gift of his mood. I finished getting ready and headed downstairs to find him... not the zombie boy sitting in front of the TV I expected but sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal that he fixed. (I know - you're saying it's just a bowl of cereal let's not alert the media - but no, this is Teddy we're talking about. It's quite possible that this is the very first time in his 11 years that he's fixed his own bowl of cereal without Brad or me standing over him pointing to first where the bowls are, then the spoons, then the cereal, then suggesting he open the box and actually pour some out - all while his eyes are rolling so far back in his head I'm afraid he'll make himself blind).

But okay, I can go with this extremely startling event this morning, no problem. Until.... he stands up, puts his bowl in the sink and annouces he wants to head down to the bus stop early again so he can read some more. Well, how lovely of him I think but come on, this is Teddy. I'm sure it hasn't occured to him to put his homework in his back pack and I'm thinking - should I let him go off to school without a lunch in hopes that it will help him remember things like that in the future - but no, I decide to remind him - smuggly. Don't you want some lunch? (I've got that I know better than you do look on my face). Now I get the eye roll. I already made it, he says, it's in my back pack. uh. uh. uh. Do you want some snack money? Na, I've got $0.50 and I just want to get a cookie. uh uh uh uh.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY SON????? He gave me the biggest grin he has, the one that will melt women's hearts (I'm fairly sure he won't know he has this power until at least college and probably later - thank God). Gave me a big hug, kissed me and left..... I'm still confused. Who do you call for such a body snatching?

Camela

Mom of the year moment

2009-09-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

I started off in a bad mood to begin with. Brad's away. I'm working with both boys trying to get their homework done. I'm walking from the foyer so I can call up to Teddy in his room to answer questions and then back to the kitchen to encourage Jackson to finish his writing homework. And what, do you ask, is Bandit doing? Well I'm glad you asked because this is surprising. He was barking. At me. Just barking his friggin' head off for no earthly reason until I finally just couldn't take it any more and I snapped.

And yelled.

At the top of my lungs.

I mean really, really loudly.

GOD DAMN IT! WOULD YOU SHUT THE F#@K UP AND STOP BARKING!!!!!

oops.

Then I looked over at Jackson who was staring at me with the most priceless face ever. The face that said - we-ell now, wasn't that interesting, I think we'd better move right along from here. But then he deadpanned as only Jackson can deadpan - "uh mom, I'm not sure Bandit understands all those words"... and just like that, all the tension was gone. Sometimes Jackson is just the most perfect little guy.

Camela

Finally - my long parental nightmare is over

2009-09-07T05:52:00.000-07:00

My two very active, fairly athletic boys, ages 11 and 8 1/2 really didn't know how to ride their bikes till this week. To be fair I taught my very cautious son Teddy (over his very strident protests) a couple of years ago when he was 8ish so he's been capable of it for a while - but every single time I've convinced him to actually get on the bike it has taken every bit of his concentration to stay upright and make it from here to there and back so it's never been remotely fun for him. It's just hard and stupid - end of story.

And then there's Jackson who is so much more physically self aware - for whom biking should be second nature - but sadly believes in his heart of hearts that he is not capable of doing anything until 2 years after his brother does it, since he's 2 years younger. It's like a law of nature or physics or something - it's just true. So I couldn't get Jack to even sit on a bike - not even one with training wheels (which we took off a few years ago). Brad still says I'm more stubborn than Jackson, but I find that hard to believe.

It's been in the back of my mind that this fall was not going to pass without Jackson learning how at least as well as Ted. It's been two years and frankly it's embarrassing that my kids don't have this skill. I always figured they'd want to ride with their friends and that would push them on, but .. eh Ted's too lazy to be spurred on by a potentially physically taxing version of peer pressure and Jack's just not familiar with the concept (bonus for him). Our neighborhood is really not good for learning - it's all hills. The only place remotely flat is from our house to the end of the cul-de-sac but even that is a slight hill and not a huge distance - on every other inch of street in our neighborhood you are either going up or down at a fairly steep grade. So again to be fair to them - I've not pushed it as hard as I should have and not taken them up to the school or whatever to help them out and Brad's not been at all interested in getting involved with this project over the years - I was the only one horrified by their lack of ability here.

Now cut to this weekend

Ted comes in and says: "hey I'm really good at riding my bike"
Me: ... duh.. what.. uh... wow honey that's great! Can I see?
T: yeah come on out and see - he was really excited
And there he is - on the bike he learned on, his old bike, the one that's too small for Jackson, but sure enough he's riding up and down the street just like he knows what he's doing. He's actually enjoying himself, not to mention thinking he's the bomb (he didn't notice he looked like one of those clowns riding on a tiny little bike.) I'm thinking - BRILLIANT!!! If he will just keep playing around on that little bike we can easily translate that onto his bigger bike.

AND THEN..... I am outside doing something else and Jackson hops on the little bike and starts gliding down the little hill to the cul-de-sac. He's got the balance thing down with no problem. I sneak up behind him and give him some pointers and push while he gets peddling and pretty soon he's doing it on his own. And on the next day he wants to go out again and Brad actually went out with him. He said he did better with Brad - whatever! He spent 10-15 minutes each day and then on day three he just went out and practiced on his own. All Brad could say was... "he is SO not his brother".

But now, Ted's riding Ted's bike and Jack's riding Jack's bike and we can't get either of them off of them which is just exactly how it's supposed to be.

phew!
Camela

A mini Brad's away story

2009-08-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

Picture this... It's two days before vacation. It's packing day. Tomorrow is pack the car day. It's a long story, but both kids are at home this week with Brad who is trying to also work. There's intermittent help, but mostly he's dealing with them and well... you can just imagine how sweet and loving his mood is.

So I come home from work where I've been running around like a lunatic trying to get ready to be gone for a week and Brad's being all sweet and loving as I described above, but luckily he's on his way out to take the kids over to a friend's house where they're going to spend some time while we pack. They leave, I go upstairs to change my clothes and no sooner than I get my shorts on do I hear Bandit going absolutely ballistic in the back yard. This is not the ordinary ballistic state the Bandit is almost always in, this is serious I'm going to rip you limb from limb ballistic. I'm assuming there's either some deer in the field behind the house or much more likely a turtle in the yard. I grab a shirt and run down the stairs and outside so I can bring Bandit in.

I make it down to the landing of the deck stairs before I find out what Bandit's barking at. Deer? nope. Turtle? not so much. It's a badger. A badger who's the same size as Bandit. The poor badger, I'll call Fred, is backed into the corner of the fence and Bandit is about 8 inches from him barking his head off and periodically lunging for him. Shit! Of course Brad just left. Of course I just saw my neighbor who might have been alerted by Bandit's barking just driving away. I'm screaming my head off at Bandit who has no idea anything in the world except poor old Fred exists.

At every opportunity he can find Fred tries to duck under the fence to freedom but Bandit's not having any of that and takes that same opportunity to pounce on poor old Fred. Fred turns back and hisses and bears his huge teeth but mostly he's just sitting there with the fence to his back and ballistic Bandit to his front.

There's no way I'm going down there getting near a wild animal.... let alone the badger... ba dum bum... I decide to get the hose and spray water on Bandit hoping to distract him long enough to let Fred escape. I get the hose and start spraying and it doesn't exactly distract him, but it does bring an extra layer of chaos to the scene until they are literally rolling around in the mud I've just created - one big pile of paws and claws and teeth and barking (because let's not kid ourselves, Bandit never once stopped barking - even while he was biting Fred he managed to keep the barking up).

They look like a small fury version of a street fight where two people are rolling around trying to get the upper hand. Holy Shit what have I just done. Now they're both going to end up some awful bloody mess and there's still no way I'm going near them. Maybe Fred will kill Bandit:) What will I tell the kids? When will Brad be back? What should I do now? But then Fred makes a break for it; diving under the fence (a side note here - if Fred can fit under the fence so can Bandit, but luckily he doesn't know that).

Fred gets about half way to freedom before Bandit clamps onto his ... uh.. shall we say.. posterior.. and is not planning on letting go any time soon. So now the tug of war is on. Fred gains a few inches. Bandit pulls him back. Back and forth, back and forth. I'm still screaming and so pissed off I can't begin to tell you. I'm trying to get the water in Bandit's eyes. The seconds tick by, oh how I wish it was caught on film. Finally Fred breaks free and darts into the forest. I saw no blood on his retreating butt or anywhere on Bandit. Bandit is a nice shade of brown instead of his normal white, but luckily he's heading to the country club for pets tomorrow where they can deal with him.

Okay, now I'm really going to go pack now.
Camela

2 cute pictures of the boys

2009-08-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

Our friend Kevin turns 11 on Thursday; 8 days after Teddy turned 11. Teddy and Kevin met for the first time the day Kevin was born. The hospital where Kevin was born assumed Teddy was just on his way home and didn't bat an eye at us walking around with such a little infant. Kevin had a Lego themed party and here are pictures of my boys showing off their creations - and they are so cute I just had to show them off.

Teddy and his fire truck

Jackson and his space police hovercraft

Holy Canoli my baby's getting older

2009-08-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

Teddy turns 11 tomorrow!!!!

I can't stand it. It's too much. How in God's name did this happen. He's heart stoppingly beautiful (at this moment especially when his mouth is shut) and just keeps getting more grown up every day. There are still things he's working on - like remembering to use utensils, and being able to find the shoes on his feet - but I figure he'll get them some day, or maybe he won't but he won't be living with me any more so I just won't care as much.

This is one of my favorite pictures, taken a year ago in the Outer Banks.

The Carolla lighthouse is in the background if you look closely.

He's lovely and sweeet and very empathetic to everyone except his brother. He's very responsible with things outside of the home, extremely assertive, yet also shy and unsure (this he get's from his mother). He's wildly analytical and extremely curious; asking thoughtful and thought provoking questions of just about everyone on just about any topic (he gets this from his father). He spends a great deal of time trying to figure out how to make or build the next cool and intricate thing or on trying to figure out how things work. He is a consumate debater. He will debate with anyone on anything at anytime; happy to take whichever side you didn't. His teachers think he's amazing, his parents are not as certain this is a good quality - though certainly think he'll follow in his grandpa's and aunt's and uncle's footsteps and be a lawyer - really anything else would be wasting some serious innate talent.

He is a wonderful son and brother though this pre-teen time has not been my favorite. I'm guessing I've got a few more years of this less than wonderful time with him, but am confident it'll all be worth it in the end. We are very lucky to have him in our lives; they are richer every day for his existance.

Camela

The mystery date

2009-07-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

Brad asked if he could take me on a mystery date the day before we went to pick up the kids - the catch was I had to leave work early on Thursday afternoon.... uh... Oh the hardship - yeah I think I can arrange that.

He wouldn't tell me where we were going only that I had to wear a dress and he had to approve it. I truly like just following his lead, it's such a calm and oddly close place to be, so I left work at the appointed time and found out what he was going to wear... a suit (his big boy clothes as he calls them). I went through a few choices before settling on a nice summer dress and before long we were off. He drove south and at some point I guessed we were headed to DC (I'm not mentioning the many other guesses that I had along the way - we didn't stop in Columbia, nor did we head to the Olney Ale House).

I expected to be sort of antsy not knowing where we were going, but instead I felt completely relaxed - I knew just hanging out with him would be fun so it just didn't matter where we were headed. But then after a while I saw a sign for The Kennedy Center. I got a little chill of excitement. I've lived here all my life, within an hour of DC and all it has to offer and I've never been to The Kennedy Center - so this was going to be extra fun. We were going to dinner first and on the way there I got him to tell me what we were going to see.... The Color Purple.

I almost teared up right there. The Color Purple is my all time favorite movie not to mention one of the best books I've ever read. A few years ago when it first came to Broadway he got me tickets for Christmas. We were going to to to NYC for the weekend, watch the show and play a bit. Unfortunately that's when Brad hurt his neck and started the long odyssey that ended with his successful neck surgery. Of course it was not an issue that we were unable to go back then, I was disappointed but never gave it a second thought and really had put it totally out of my mind. I had no idea the show was traveling, much less that it was close by. What a truly wonderful surprise.

We started with dinner at Sequoia a restaurant with an amazing view a short walk from The Kennedy Center. Brad asked the waitress what dish they were known for... this question totally stumped her. Um... we're not known for anything in particular - I guess we're known for the view. It was a great view, right on a bend in the Potomac River. But being known for the view and not for any particular dish spoke volumes about the food and we both adjusted our choices to things it's harder to screw up and even with that the food wasn't anything to write home about - but... the view really was wonderful and the company wasn't bad either.

On the way there I updated my FB status that I was on a mystery date asking for guesses to where we were headed and once we got to the restaurant I posted a few pictures; first of the view, then of the Hall of Nations in the Kennedy Center (and someone totally recognized all the flags - I was impressed) and then of a souvenir stand selling stuff from The Color Purple. I got a few guesses ranging from Taco Bell (thanks Sue) to the UN. It was a little side note that totally amused me and reminded me again that I LOVE MY IPHONE!

The show was absolutely fabulous! I wasn't sure how it would translate to musical, but it was done exceptionally well. The lead was played by the former American Idol winner Fantasia and I was skeptical at how well she'd do, but she was absolutely wonderful. I can no longer watch the movie because ever single scene is leading to one of the two climactic points in the movie that just either rip my heart out or put it back together and so I end up sobbing for the whole movie and well... I sobbed (though silently) for the whole play too - it was just so good. When it was over, I went into the bathroom to get myself together and I don't think I've ever seen my eyes to completely red. I put on my sunglasses at eleven o'clock at night so as not to scare anyone.

It was the best surprise I've ever had. I love my husband!

Camela

Kidless for nearly a week!

2009-07-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

Well... we sent Jackson off to camp for the first time yesterday. We'll pick him up along with Teddy on Friday afternoon. I'm not sure which one of us was more nervous as the time got closer for him to leave, but he handled it well enough and I'm here waiting anxiously for them to post some pictures of his activities on their website so I can see how he looks.

Brad and I had a lovely dinner out last night - we went to Bonefish which we love if anyone gets the chance - with no thoughts of ... quick we've got to get home to relieve the babysitter. Tomorrow morning at the butt crack of dawn Brad is heading down to NC, his second home, for a short trip. At first I was not too amused by this trip, but upon further reflection, the idea of some time at home totally alone doesn't sound too bad!

The pictures we've been able to see of Teddy at camp have been wonderful, particularly their morning meeting times at "the flagpole". Each morning it's a differnt theme, Geek Monday was one, Topless Tuesday was another. It's the first thing the campers do each morning and I'm sure it's designed to get them up and out and energized; ready for the day ahead. My two favorite pictures have been flagpole pictures. From Topless Tuesday was a picture of his entire cabin of boys and counselors sans shirts flexing their muscles (what there are of them at age 10/11). But the funny part was they all had abs drawn in and it was hilarious. But by far the best picture was from another morning where again his whole cabin is featured and they are all wearing dresses - 10ish 10 year old boys and a counselor all in dresses. No idea what the theme was, and it seems as though only their cabin was in dresses, but OMG it is hysterical... seriously funny. Teddy is front and center (as he somehow manages to be for everything) in a blue, knee length, sleeveless dress, posing with hands on hips, looking right at the camera with a serious "I dare you" face. His best friend Matthew is right next to him in a more prarie style white dress with both hands framing his face and his mouth open as if he's making a girly scream. We'll be ordering some of these pictures when all is said and done and I am so completely looking forward to showing that picture to his future girlfriends (especially the ones I don't like).

Once we get the pictures, I'll post some here, but that won't be for a couple of weeks. Wish me luck not fretting too much about Jackson this week!

Camela

What's going on with us

2009-07-05T19:14:00.000-07:00

We've already had a busy July and it's only the 5th. On the 2nd we had a lovely evening at our friend Doug and Angel's house with their brand new adorable baby Charlotte and their 4 Yorkshire terriers (also very adorable). Doug cooked which always means fantastic food, though really it's Angel's guacamole that's to die for. I don't like guacamole or avocados at all and yet, I can't seem to stay away from her guac - go figure.

On the 3rd we went to an annual event at our friends Sherry and Gregory's house. They live on the water and right across the river from their house is an annual July 3rd fireworks display - it's our yearly fireworks without the crowds. We got to hang out with Doug, Angel, and Charlotte there as well and this year there were something like 25 kids so our kids had an absolute blast. Of course I didn't think to take pictures at any of these things, but oh well.

Then on the 4th we went to our neighbor's house (his name is Ted Jackson - isn't that funny) for their annual event and he's an amazing cook as well - so the moral to the weekend was WAY WAY WAY too much food. Also tons of kids at this event and they all had a wild crazy fun time playing some sort of football game led by Jackson and an old neighbor Cameron (both flag football players) - though this game had 2 balls and I just couldn't figure it out - but they all had fun and that's all that matters.

We were supposed to have a swim meet on July 4th as well for Teddy, where we were to leave the house at 6am. Unfortunately for Teddy the events of the 2nd and 3rd kept him out way too late and he was fighting exhaustion on some level. He was shaking when we put him to bed at 11 on the 3rd and so so so upset about the prospect of another night of not enough sleep and he was about to head off to camp so Brad and I decided to not go to the swim meet (well it was only going to me and Teddy that went, but Brad was in on the decision not to go)... our worst fear was that Teddy would get sick and not be able to go to camp.

So that brings us to today (the 5th) - and Teddy heading off to camp for two weeks. Last year he went for one week and had a great time, this year it's for two and during the middle weekend they go roller skating and bowling and to an amusement park - he's so excited!

Brad took Ted up to camp and from there continued north up to visit his mom to buy her a new bed and clean out her room to make room and ... boy oh boy do I not envy him that job. Luckily his sister Dawn has agreed to help with that. It's lovely of him to help her like that and she'll really appreciate it but I'm going to miss him until he gets back on Wednesday night. But Jack and I will have a nice mommy son time.

Next Sunday Jackson will join him Teddy the same camp for one week. I'm totally worried that he's too young so I'm not going to say much about it until he comes home - hopefully it'll go just fine. I will say that the day before we go and get both boys, which is a week from Friday, Brad has planned something for us to do, but I'm not allowed to know what it is - only that I have to leave work about an hour early - how fun.

And of course the day after they get back Teddy has his final swim meet - maybe forever. I required him to do swim team for 3 years so he could become a strong swimmer and well this is his third year and he is a strong swimmer. I need to work to convince him how much he likes it so he'll do it again next year, but I won't make him and I think he'll be thrilled he survived all three years and be totally done. I need to make it his idea to continue - we'll see how that goes.

Okay so that's our July - I can't think about August yet, it's just too far away.

Common sense - some people have it and well....

2009-07-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

So we're eating breakfast today. Teddy got to pick what he wanted as he heads off to camp for two weeks today.... so of course he wants a meat fest so we have sausage and bacon and then he added pancakes and I made eggs for Brad, Jack, and I as well - all was very yummy and a nice breakfast was had by all.

Then Teddy decides he wants another piece of sausage, so he grabs one off the plate and puts it in the microwave for 10 seconds (now just the fact that he was self sufficient enough to think that whole thing through is impressive, I kid you not but that's not the story here). The timer beeps and he reaches in and grabs the piece that he'd just laid down right inside the microwave, no plate, no paper towel, no nothing, and he starts to jump a bit and say ... "Ouch, Oooh, Ow, hot, hot, hot" He walks the long way around to the sink (no idea why) and still with the "ouch, ow, this hurts" he's bouncing the sausage in his hand so it's not sitting there at any one time for too long. Then he walks to the table "Ow, IT'S HOT!, ouch", then back to the island "ow, ouch, oooh, hot". Finally back to the table, still bouncing the sausage in his hand, still complaining that it hurts and finally he plops it down on the table.

Brad and I just burst out laughing, we'd been trying to contain during his whole trip around the kitchen, but finally it just came bubbling out until we were both laughing uncontrolably. On the up side, Teddy has no idea what we were laughing at. It's a clear case of the absent minded professor.....

My own little Calvin

2009-06-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Jackson was reading Calvin and Hobbs to me at bedtime and it occurred to me that Jackson is Calvin. He's such a goof ball, so full of life and fun and mischief. I asked him if I could call him Calvin and without skipping a beat he said "No!" and kept reading. A minute later he said "but Calvy is ok." Calvy? (I have no idea how one might spell that)

You're okay with Calvy, but not Calvin? I ask skeptically. Of course, he tells me as if that was a stupid question and keeps reading.

Later after way, way, way too much frivolity with both boys before finally getting him into bed, Jackson pulls the covers up and rolls over on his side and totally deadpans the words... snore blow... snore blow... snore blow... snore blow. It takes me a minute, cuz well you know, usually if someone is going to fake snoring they make the noise and ha ha, it's funny, but no, not good ol' Calvy... snore blow... snore blow. I fell on the floor laughing. I was totally done. I swear if I ever get a new pet I'm going to name him snoreblow... I dont' know what we'll call him for short, but that's definitely his name.

Camela

My son the book smuggler

2009-06-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

Teddy is a very avid reader. Since he learned to read actual books we've had to fight with him every single night at bedtime to put the book down and go to bed. Every night one of us puts him to bed only to go and check on him several minutes later to find him reading. We totally get that this is a good problem to have, it's sort of nonsensical to be mad at your child for reading too much, but still, the boy needs his sleep.

Of course we take his current book of choice out of his room each night, but his room is full of books and comic books and there is always something of interest he'll want to read somewhere within reach. If he thinks we'll notice him turning on his light (or the flashlight under the covers) he'll just quietly go into the bathroom and read away until we notice he's no longer in his room. When I say this goes on every night, I'm not remotely exaggerating... every single night for... I don't know.. I guess four and a half years we've had this little battle. The only times it doesn't happen is due to pure exhaustion or illness.

Recently what's been working if I'm the one who puts him down is I just station myself in the hallway where I can see his feet in the bed. He'll wait a minute or two to be sure the coast is clear and then he'll sit up, on his way to find a book and a light source, only to see me standing there. He'll get a cute and goofy grin on his face and lay back down. I'll make some noises suggesting I've gone into my bedroom and he'll get up again, see me, grin, lay down. Each time he'll wait a bit longer and so far my patience has outlasted his will.

Then we come to last night. Brad's putting him to bed. Teddy says he's got to go to the bathroom so of course Brad suspects it is so that he can read and tells him so. Teddy stands in front of Brad with his arms extended and says "Look. Check me out. I've got no books, I've really got to go to the bathroom." After first checking the bathroom for hidden books Brad reluctantly lets him pass. But something was nagging at him... he just didn't trust Teddy... Wait, I know, he thinks, he was walking sort of stiffly. Brad barges back into the bathroom less than 10 seconds later and says "You have a book under your shirt, don't you?"

Brazenly Teddy looks his father in the eye and lifts his shirt... no book. But, he moves his feet just enough for Brad to see the book he'd already taken from under the shirt and placed on the floor next to the toilet. Pointedly Brad looks at it and then at him... The sheepish grin returned and Ted handed the book to Bradford.

Camela

Not the best day

2009-06-11T09:24:00.001-07:00

Brad's mom was due to arrive on Tuesday afternoon at 4:55 and he was going to drop Teddy at a neighbor's so they could take him to swim team practice and then go and get his mom while I got Jackson from school a bit later... great, no big deal. But then Monday night, what we thought had been an annoying cold - generally not feeling well and the mother of all coughs - took a turn and Brad was down for the count. As Brad was the first man on the face of the earth to ever have actually suffered with a bad cough you can imagine he'd already been a particular joy to live with, but now, well now he was just out of the picture and asleep, completely incapable of getting out of bed for the next two days. His fever spiked, the chills set in, he had himself a nice case of the flu.

Okay so plans changed I can certainly handle this, right? I have to leave work early to get his mom. The timing of the flight make me doubt my ability to get the kids from school after 4ish when school lets out and before 6 when aftercare ends. So I call my friend Lida and asked her to pick up my kids from school and take them to swim practice where her son is also scheduled to be so I can get my MIL from the airport. Of course Lida will help me, but she tells me she has to run an errand that can't wait so I tell her to leave Jackson at the pool while Teddy and Brian are swimming. I think, no problem, I have to stop at home anyway to put Ted's swim stuff in a bag so I can easily add a gameboy that will keep Jack moderately occupied for the hour or so of practice.

As I continue to think about it, I just don't like the idea of Jackson being unattended at the pool so I decide to change plans and get the kids from school myself, I'm thinking if I'm there right when the let out, I'll have enough time. I call the school to find out exactly when school let's out (yeah, yeah, yeah so what if Teddy has been going to this school for six years, I didn't know the answer to that question) and hey guess what it's 3:15ish and not 4ish (so I'm stupid but have more time in my plan). I'll drop Ted at home and get Lida to pick him up from there and I'll take Jack with me to get grandma... perfect. Call Lida. Change plans. No problem. I leave work with just enough time (leaving early had not been in my plans in the morning), run home, pack a bag for Teddy, put it on the kitchen table, run to school, grab Jack.... where's Ted? Jack has no idea. Anyone? the clock's ticking people. Someone remembers he's in rocketry club. Oh sure, I knew that. It's almost 4:15 and I think somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind it lets out at 4:15 so we head down to where it's held to get him... yeah not so much, they're right in the middle of some experiment. Okay, new plan.

Jack - let's go! Call Lida... and she's not home.. shoot shoot shoot. Wait, I have her cell. Call Lida, please get Teddy at school, I'll stop at the house and drop his bag at your house and we can maybe almost make it to the airport in time. Run home. Get bag. Drop bag. Fly. The whole time we're heading there the sky looks pretty ominous in my rear view mirror. I tell Jackson I hope her flight is delayed by a few minutes because I don't want her to worry if we're not there when she lands. We get there at 5:02. She walks very slowly so I'm thinking we still have a shot. We find a board to check where she'll be arriving and thankfully she's delayed by 25 minutes; not due to land until 5:20, phew! Jack and I hang out. 5:20 comes and goes, as does 5:40, and 6pm. The sky is now full of the wrath of God, someone has seriously pissed off the big guy. I'm thinking maybe they diverted the plane because of the storms, but all the information I and all my new friends waiting for the same flight can get say it's still due to land 40 minutes ago... until finally we're updated, it's due to land at 7:20.

This was taken looking out the airport window with my iphone. While I

was telling Jackson how amazing it looked, I was thinking about where
I was going to take him if a funnel dropped out of those swirling clouds

Drive home. Get pizza along the way. Call babysitter to keep kids from waking Brad (I'll be home in time to put them to bed and for babysitter to get back home to finish their homework). Get home. Check flight status. Now it's 7:40. Kids and sitter are eating. Check again.... 8:00. She calls they're in Long Island. They flew from Albany to Long Island - long flight. Check again... 8:40. Find out they are actually taking off from Long Island. Wake Brad.. honey, you have to put the kids to bed (that's really just Jackson), I'll be back too late. He grunts and nods that he can handle it. Jack's distraught that he won't get his normal bedtime routine... far more whiney than normal for him, great! just what we need. suck it up boy!

Take unneeded sitter home. Drive to airport. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Reconnect with my old friends from a few hours ago. Wait. Finally they landed and finally she walks down the ramp. Get her some food and get home just before 10pm.

I get up early only to have Jackson running, crying to me.... "mommy, mommy, I'm going to be sick!" and sure enough, I now understand why he was so whiney the night before.

Camela