Are You Ready for some Football?!

I thought that there wasn't anything cuter than Kindergarten soccer.  I was WRONG.  First grade football is even more adorable!  Particularly when you not only have a first grader playing football, but a fourth grade sister playing cheerleader!

I've been asked to be the "team photographer" for both, so I created a Shutterfly Share site where family and friends can see all the pictures I've taken.  The password is HAWKS, all caps.  Enjoy!

Thinking outside the box

Thinking outside the box is something Ben and Jack do exceptionally well.  Following rules is not their forte... But ask them to think outside the box, and you'll see where they are real talents are!  That was the challenge on this 1st grade assignment Ben brought home last night...

Ben's New Teacher

Ben was an epic bonehead in school on Friday.  Among other things, he got kicked out of Music class and was made to sit in the hallway.  Who gets kicked out of MUSIC????  The tantrums have continued all weekend, and it feels like he is three years old all over again.  This is the email his teacher sent home, after Ben threw away the note she put in his backpack so I wouldn't see it.

"I am so sorry to be the bearer of bad news on a Friday, but my friend Ben had a really rough day.  By 10:00 this morning he moved his clip down to red and needed a note home.  He has been very disrespectful today;  interrupting, talking our of turn, arguing, and not following directions on multiple occasions.  Mr. Duym even had to have him sit in the hallway this afternoon because of his outbursts.  I wrote you a note about it and put it in his folder, but he chose to remove it, and would not tell me where he put it.

I would really appreciate it if you would talk to him over the weekend about being more respectful to his teachers.

We'll start out fresh next week and see how things go!  :)
Thanks so much,
Amy

Wow.  My kid may be a bonehead, but he got a winner of a teacher this year!   His kindergarten teacher was a total nightmare, but this makes me feel that this year the pendulum may swing the other way.  This is the note I sent back...

Mrs. Baumgartner,

First off, I can’t thank you enough for this amazingly kind and empathetic note.  Having two boys who are both socially/emotionally immature, yet stubborn as oxes, I have received a lifetime’s worth of teachers notes and emails home about behavior that does not meet expectations, and this email is should be a benchmark for how teachers let parents know that their kid was behaving badly.

We know Ben has a REALLY hard time managing himself sometimes, and I can only imagine the kind of crash and burn you witnessed.  It’s rarely pretty, and it’s usually disruptive, and many times it’s like a freight train that’s out of control.  He’s melted down twice this weekend already, and the tantrums were epic.  This is what happens when he gets to the end of his rope, and five days in school this past week pushed him to that point.

I wish I could tell you it won’t happen again, but based on history, it probably will.  I can tell you that my husband and I go above and beyond to try and give Ben the tools he needs to succeed in school, and in life, but that in the moment, when the choice is up to him and he doesn’t want to obey a rule, or a teacher, or a policy, he’s obstinate enough to make the wrong choice repeatedly, until he gets it through his thick head that an undesirable consequence is the consistent result.

I have talked with Ben about his choices on Friday and he knows we expect better of him.  That even if he disagrees with something, he still has to be respectful and kind to his teachers and classmates.  That it’s his responsibility to behave himself in school.  And though we’ve let this bad day be a learning experience, he knows that if it happens again, there will be loss of privileges at home as a consequence until he corrects his behavior. 

Thanks so much for following up with me.  I will keep a close eye on his calendar this week to make sure there isn’t a repeat performance. 

Now I will cross my fingers and hope and pray that Ben manages to pull himself together this week, and stops acting like a 3 year old mistakenly stuck in  1st grade.

Peaches

There's something about 18 month olds.  They are like ripe, juicy peaches of cuteness.  It's almost painful to look at them sometimes because your heart nearly stops ticking.  Next to having a newborn fresh from heaven on your chest, or a roly poly six month old who sits contentedly with a bucket of toys for hours, this age is pretty much the ultimate for me.

Which is why I had to take these pictures.

I saw this outfit in Target and hadtohaveit.  It's the very same style Maeve wore a year ago - my most favorite of her outfits from her first summer.  And even though it only went up to a size 6-9 months, I knew little Miss Petite could work with it.

Remember back then?

And this is now... but be warned!  You may need sunglasses, because you may go blind from that 18 month magic I mentioned.

I had to give her a distraction to keep her in one place, so I put some of my costume jewelry in a pretty little box.  

It worked!

The blond piggytails just SLAY me.

I couldn't even crop this, couldn't even retouch it.  Because my face was busy melting off from the cuteness.

And don't ask me how this was created because Picasa did it when I wasn't looking.  Clearly Picasa is also not immune to her charms.

And then she looks up at me and makes this face and yells 

"CHEESE!!"

And I went downstairs to flog the evildoer who ever taught her that awful word!  Three children I've raised before her and not one of them has ever been told to say cheese!  Well at least not by me.  According to Ben, everyone ELSE says cheese, so he taught Maeve to say cheese too.

And that was the end of the session.

Now I get to de-program the baby (and her brother) 

so that no more lovely portraits are tortured and destroyed with a cheese-face.

But truthfully, she's still cuteasabutton even with the darn cheese-face.

Icantevenstandit.

Play Dough Magic

In a desperate ploy to try and buy time to help Molly with her homework tonight, I strapped Maeve into her seat and plopped in front of her a ball of bright blue Play-Do with two little Play-Do toys. 

I was hoping for five minutes of peace.  

Fifteen minutes later when I went over to make sure she hadn't eaten all the Play-Do, I was amazed at what I found.

She'd figured out how to roll shapes between her palms and was making little Play-Do worms.

When she tired of that, she'd switch to pressing the tools into the dough to make shapes.

(We only caught her with it in her mouth twice.)

Then she'd dig some dough out of the shaper and start rolling worms again.  

In complete SILENCE.  

Not a peep.  

Not even HALF a peep!

Forty minutes later, I had to take the dough away from her so that we could get the kids to their evening activities.  

FORTY MINUTES!!!  

To get an active 20 month old to focus and play with one toy for forty minutes??  At least in my house that is unheard of!  It was some serious Play-Do magic.  Maybe even a Play-Do miracle.  I don't know who the patron saint of Play-Do is, but he or she was working hard tonight.

Takeaway lesson: you bet your bippy I'll be including Play-Do as an essential part of our regular evening routine.

(Because I'm a geek and I looked it up, St. Claude is the patron saint of sculptors according to AmericanCatholic.org.)

And AWAY They GO!!

It's days like today when all I need is John Ritter and Suzanne Summers to burst through my door to convince me that I'm living inside of Three's Company, where there's a calamity a minute and no one knows who's on first.

I thought I was pretty well prepared for the first day of school.  School supplies were in order, lunches, snacks and water were all pre-packed and chilled waiting to be loaded into backpacks, clothes were laid out, everyone got to bed at a reasonable time.  Therefore, the morning should TOTALLY have run smoothly, right?  Well, not according to Murphy's Law, which seems to govern this place!

Jack inadvertently drank caffeine in a large root beer float he had with dinnner last night.  A noise woke him up at 3am and that was it - he never got back to sleep all. night. long.  I think he watched 713 episodes of his favorite Star Wars cartoon in his own personal insomnia marathon.  

Maeve, sensing a disturbance in the force, was also up half the night, screaming like a loon, forcing Molly into MY bed and me, by default, into hers.  It was the only way Maeve would stop shrieking.

Still, Jack managed to get out the door on time this morning and with a full breakfast of hash browns, fried eggs and bacon in his belly (I know, I really patted myself on the back for that one...too soon though, I should have known better!).  Once he was out the door we had 45 minutes to get dressed and out the door for first day donuts at a neighbor's house.  45 minutes?  No PROBLEM!  I can even manage a quick shower in that time frame!

Two minutes into my shower, Ben comes strolling into the bathroom and hollers "Jack's home!"

Wait, WHAT?????  Cue Mr. Roper.  Apparently the school bus DID come by, but because it was going in a direction the children didn't expect, they assumed he had the wrong stop and told him to keep going, they'd wait for their REAL bus....only to find out afterward that it WAS their real bus!  At this point Jack realized he'd left all his school supplies at home, wop wop. (Mind you, he had to MOVE them to get to his backpack, but he managed to not grab them on the way out the door) so he came running back while all the other kids scrambled for rides to school.

This led off a rapidfire collapse in the morning's plan and due to the ripple effect we

- Had to drive Jack to school LATE with my soaking wet head wrapped in a TOWEL and granola bars thrown at the heads of the other children in lieu of breakfast

- Were late for donuts with the neighbors and rushed out the door, though I managed to get the towel off my head and my hair dried and presentable.

- Because I never went back into the kitchen I forgot (FORGOT??!!!) to put Molly and Ben's waters, snacks and lunches in their backpacks (what the what?)

- Walked the kids to school and then on the way home the skies opened up and Maeve and I looked like we'd gone swimming by the time we got home

- Had to then get in the car and drive BACK to school to deliver everything I forgot.

And now Maeve is down for a nap and I can process the zany adventures of the morning.  A lot of good things DID happen despite the calamities.  

- Thankfully because I'd prepped well, we could navigate a few bumps in the road without completely derailing and ruining the day.

- We did manage to get the obligatory front door back to school photos of everyone

- Everyone got a donut, score!

- Got my exercise in what with all that running in the rain to get home.

And for the first time in a long time, I can actually BLOG ABOUT THIS WHEN IT HAPPENED instead of seven months later.  It's the little victories, you know?

Back to School Prep

In getting the kids ready for school, I also need to get me ready for school! Since Maeve was born I have found that my old way of keeping things organized on my desk is no longer working.  The problem is that I never get out of the kitchen and laundry room long enough to visit my desk, so I it ends up a dumping ground and I continually steal my calendar away to the kitchen and never quite get caught up properly.

So this year, I racked my brain to find a spot for a command center in the desk-less kitchen with no wall space (where on earth do you hang a calendar in that situation, eh?  Just more evidence that a man designed my kitchen!)

I finally found a spot on the side of my oven, but it was too small for my current calendar.  In order to maximize the space, and solve a few other problems at the same time , I decided to make my own.  It's a 16x20" calendar modeled on some designs I saw and liked online.  I'll frame in an old frame I already have and use as a dry erase perpetual calendar.  I think it's super cute - I just hope it's functional as well!

In case you have a need for one of your own, you can download it by clicking on the link below!

16X20" JOY IN THE JOURNEY PERPETUAL CALENDAR