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I keep trying to post this, but then I wander off, the computer reboots, the post gets erased, and nothing gets posted. *sigh* I suppose that is the universe’s way of telling me to leave certain things unsaid. (Or something.)
So here are the important parts: The kids are alive, well, and hysterically funny. Nick is, too, but maybe not as funny as the kids. He’s taken up bike riding, long distance. We are all happy and well. I’ve quit my mom’s group after 7.5 years of membership and discovered who my friends really are, which in some ways is interesting & amazing and other ways predictable (but lovely nonetheless). Both Nick’s dad and my dad have been in the ER in the last month, nothing really awful, but signs are pointing both of them in the direction of “slow down,” which neither of them intend to do. I’m on yet another medicine for my RA/fibromyalgia, big kids are in school & thriving & the smallest kid starts school next week, and I’m going back to writing in my now-more-copious amounts of spare time. That, really, is all.
🙂
So hey, it’s February, and so therefore we have the Plague. David has this on again off again stomach virus at least one day every week since the end of January. Ben & Nick have been coughing, but seem okay for the most part. Greg has been snotty & feverish and coughing for a solid week now. I got a sinus infection three weeks ago, spent two weeks literally writhing in pain before that started dying off, and am now living in the land of Am I Sick or Not? (Which means one day of feeling good & productive followed by one day of deathly-sinus-headache followed by one day of chills/fever/but otherwise fine followed by one day of sore throat/sinus pain). Greg and I have missed all our MOPS stuff & coffee dates & play dates. It’s making me cranky.
I’ve pretty much watched every movie in the house that is safe to watch in front of Greg and am now starting to watch things like Pretty Woman and wonder why,oh,why anyone thought a movie about a prostitute was acceptable for young people to watch. As a kid watching it, it was AWESOME, but as a mom watching it, I’m thinking about things like Vivienne getting tetanus from getting scratched on the fence and what kind of horrible germs are in that toilet that she just plunged her hand into and whoa, all the dirt! Yeah. I watched Legend & Total Recall last week (after kid hours) and was amazed at all the gore. My brain, it is exploding. I shouldn’t be allowed movies in this state. No, no, no.
In other news, we’ve been on a science kick around the house. David had to do a research paper & model & report on a natural disaster and he, naturally, chose a meteor shower. So we did that. We also made a tsunami, because a meteor strike in water can cause that. Then we made a tornado in a jar. One of the other class mom’s is a biologist of some sort & she brought a bunch of chemicals up to school & did a demonstration, so David wanted to know what kind of chemicals he had access to at home, so we tried to figure that out & then figure out what kind of experiments we could do from here without buying anything special.
Ben’s started doing math at school. He got a 100 on his first paper (BEST IN CLASS, MAMA!!!) and has ever since been making his own math problems to work after school. He’s also been learning about coins and passed that mania on to Greg, who has been playing pirate or shopkeeper, whichever one takes his fancy as long as he gets to count the money. Ben’s been trying to teach him that each coin “costs” a different amount, but Greg just counts number of coins. It’s very funny to watch them argue about it.
I finally got my writing notebook back in the mail, so worked on that a bit yesterday. Progress notes to be posted at dreamwidth.
Nick is obsessed with the Olympics, which has been fun, I guess. He’s the kind of person that will watch any event, so if the Olympics is on at any point, he turns the TV on. I, on the other hand, am mainly just interested in the figure skating (so I went to bed way early last night).
I guess February doesn’t completely suck. I just wish we all would get better finally.
…apparently my new twitter cross-poster is not cross-posting. How sad. I think most of you follow me on Twitter or Facebook though, so I guess it’s not much of a loss.
This week I’ve been obsessing about writing. Update at http://awamiba.dreamwidth.org/
Other than that, there’s been a lot of cleaning/organizing/tidying and kid silliness and playing the Wii (I’m into Super Mario Wii and D&B are into Lego Indiana Jones Wii and Greg is doing Ni Hao Kai Lan Wii game). I read one book last weekend, but the one I’m reading now — some travel memoir — I keep misplacing. I downloaded a bunch of stuff for free for the Kindle iPhone app, so I’ll start reading on that while I wait during pick-up time next week.
I’ve finished watching the first two seasons of Big Bang Theory and loved it. Sadly, I can’t get the first half of the current season anywhere legal, so I’m starting that mid-season when it comes back on. Also watched “Cranford” and “Little Dorrit” on Masterpiece Classic on PBS once again. Wondering why MC can’t be on PBS regularly instead of just at the first of the year.
Finally convinced David to read something not Star Wars related for school reading time for the first time in 3 years. He’s reading 13 Ways to Sink a Sub by Jamie Gilson, which I loved as a child. Not sure why I loved it. Not a clue, but it’s cute. He has to read aloud to us for 20 minutes each night, so I’m lining up my favorite exciting childhood stories for that. Nick reads the kids some Hardy Boys each weekend night & I read all the shorter books the rest of the week. Greg gets his own story time during the day as well. He picked out a book called My Book Box at the store today & we’ve read it four times since 2pm. 🙂
And now it’s time to go pay attention to my husband….
…and yet I don’t feel like we’ve done a lot either. (Edited to add: …and then I read this post and it made me feel tired from all that we’ve been doing…)
Last week? Um. Yeah. Monday we did something during the day, I’m sure, but I don’t remember what. In the evening David had his last regular den meeting for Tiger Cub Scouts. I took the other kids to nursery at church while I attended VBS training (I’m a craft girl this year).
Tuesday was MDO and I had lunch at Olive Garden with my friend JG. I also hit Hobby Lobby and used my mother’s day gift card to get a couple really cute shelf brackets, some kids apron & oven mitt sets, and a little camera & phone case. In the afternoon we got to meet my parents new neighbors (here in my town)– a family of three (their son is 7 months old). (A funny story: the wife was trying to drive into the garage for the first time and her SUV’s antenna got stuck in the garage door and pulled it off the track. Ok, maybe that’s not funny, but we got to meet her and chatted while she waited for help to arrive.)
Wednesday we skipped library day in favor of having coffee with some neighborhood moms. One of them (the new one to the neighborhood) didn’t show up, but it was fun to have the other one over. She has a little 6 month old girl that is just too cute. We went out to dinner at the local chinese “super” buffet (there’s sushi & mexican & chinese & a really weird salad bar & ice cream). Afterwards Nick helped the new neighbors move some stuff into their house (another funny story: they got locked out of their house that time. The babysitter had to bring the spare keys over.).
Thursday I spent all day baking. Seriously. We’d been told that we were going to be low on scouts from our den for the end of the year Pack Meeting/Awards Ceremony/Potluck, so we’d need to bring a bit extra dessert. Then my parents and Nick’s mom decided to attend, too. So I ended up bringing four desserts and an extra entree. And a good thing I did, too. There was only one dessert besides mine there (a small plate of brownies) and not too much other dinner food either. The meeting was utter chaos, in part because the pack leader was stuck in another state. But mostly because the kids were just SOO HYPER. Not my kids so much, or my friend JB’s, but all the other ones. One kid drop-kicked another one in the hallway. The other parents totally ignored the chaos. We were appalled. Nick’s mom thanked us for being such good parents and raising such great children and also suggested we find another pack to join.
Friday we went to my friend BB’s for a playdate. She’d told us to bring a picnic lunch, but we were out of everything sandwich related & we were totally running late (my parents were still here and my mom wanted to show me “just one more thing” in the yard. *sigh*) so we stopped and picked up chicken biscuits (it was still breakfast serving time when we got to the drive-thru) to go with our leftovers from the pack meeting. The kids had a lot of fun and we got to meet some new people, so that was good. The kids all played in the mini-pool. We have a mini-pool, too, and I’m astounded at how we could fit 5 small kids in it without a fight, because at my house the same size pool is not big enough for 3 kids (although I have to admit that David takes up a ton more space than the small kids). Anyways, when it came time for lunch I felt like I maybe fed my kids too much food or something, cause BB just fed hers cheese & crackers & fruit and mine didn’t finish their food (which had they been home, they would have finished most of it). *shakes head*
Saturday I had a coffee date with my long lost friend JB. See we live in the same part of town, have kids approximately the same age, and were in a mom’s group together, but with one thing and another we manage to never see each other. Her kid left something at the pack meeting the other night so I called about returning it and we ended up at Starbucks (where neither of us had been in more than a year) for a three-hour-chatfest. Her house has also been in chaos with a kitchen remodel (they’re doing their own stuff though). Her family is also leaving the cub scout pack for next year (but for a different one than we’re going to). And we decided that we can’t ever let our meetings go this far in between because we get along really well. (And since I forgot to bring her pictures from the pack meeting, we have a perfect excuse to get together again soon!) Once I got home, I spent two frustrating hours installing a coat rack & a shelf in the front hallway. Due to my arthritis, I’m no longer strong enough to nail stuff into the wall using a regular hammer, but I’m really really stubborn and tried it anyway. Eventually it was done and it all looks good.
In the evening, Nick went to prom with his mother. Yes, you read that right. Nick’s dad is not the dancing/chaperoning type, so Nick’s mom asked if he could come and dance with her a few times (she’s been watching swing dancing videos & he’s gone over to practice with her a bit). Nick’s brother was the DJ (and it was the brother’s birthday that night, too). Apparently it was all good. I stayed home and watched “The Wedding Date,” which was unintentionally hilarious at times.
Sunday we….umm….really I should remember, but I don’t. Nick did a lot of yard work. The kids and I went to church. And….I don’t remember what else. Monday we made the rounds of Nick’s family: first to Mandy & Mark’s house to pick up some pecan wood (and a chain to bring to Nick’s dad) and the kids played & saw baby puppies & kittens & stuff and then off to his parents house to pick up our extension cord (which I’d taken over to the prom on Saturday morning). The kids played there for a while, too. We went back home & Nick went up to work to study some more for his PE. The kids and I started reading The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, which I love. They didn’t know what a tollbooth was, so we made one out of an old computer box. We painted half of it purple (like in the book) and the other half blue (because David wanted it blue). We made the signs “Slow Down Approaching Tollbooth” and “Have Your Destination in Mind.” And then we picked out boxes for them to make cars out of, but didn’t get them painted, as Nick needed to get to the grill by then to make supper. Once back inside and once the allure of the tollbooth wore off, David turned it on it’s end, blue end out, and made decorations so that that side of it looked like the Tardis. So then there were Adventures! In! Time! And then we ate dinner.
…and yes…there are photos at flickr.com….and they’re terribly out of order, but flickr doesn’t let you fix that…
Lisa Holcomb 