My schedule

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.