An almost-two-year-old's prayer

Hen'ly Fa-dah, tinku a-day. Tinku a Biiig Mess! Jesus Kai, AAAAAAAAAmen!

Or, interpreted:

"Heavenly Father, Thank You For Today. Thank You for The Big mess! Jesus Christ. Amen."

(She's at the stage where she thanks for things that she sees - although she did thank for Grandma's House and Nonna's house the other day!)

Oh, the Idiocy of Bureaucracy!

So. I am about to pull out my hair and then cram it down the District Person's neck. Or would if I didn't think my hair deserves a much better fate than that.

AGAIN I am forced to drastic measures to get Mr. C to talk to me. I had called about setting up an appointment for this assessment that the Dude was supposed to get and was promptly ignored. The next time I call, I suggest that I just contact the principal and set up a time with her and SHE can commune with Mr. C about all the vagueries of red tape that they want to put up around me. AhHa. Mr. C wants to talk with me immediately.

He gives me the same old line: "thelawisthelawisthelaw" and throws in for some sympathy about not having enough space for the children who actually are supposed to be in Kindergarten according to the law. He relates little testimonials about children that are put up a grade too soon and then their parents have them held back. He listens to me explain again why the Dude is quite ready for kindergarten. He explains that they just don't do assessment tests anymore - that was ten years ago when kindergarten was all about playing. (Which doesn't make sense to me - wouldn't it make more sense NOW to do assessment tests if it's all about the academics?)

His suggestion? Put him in private school for kindergarten and then back to public for first grade with no questions about his age. I explain that as we are a student family, spare cash is not really on hand, besides the fact that all the private kindergartens have been filled and won't have space until 2020, which will be a little late for kindergarten.

Synopsis: No assessment test. Probably no kindergarten for the Dude. I need to write a letter to write down for him everything I've already said (which I'm sure won't get "lost" like my phone calls have been answered).

The Spozo pointed out I've been very conflicted over this whole deal - that if I really wanted this to happen, I would be beating down every door to be making it happen. I confess, I don't really think that this particular kindergarten would have been ideal for him. I'm hoping to find one that will be.

Rejoice with me!

Tonight for dinner, we spooned the refried beans on the Dude's plate and gave the usual shpeel about them being super-duper-excellent healthy food for him (which he has much reason to suspect since for the first 3 and 1/2 years of his life we trained him to avoid ANY contact with them at all!) without much hope that they would actually be consumed. But I guess that "put it in front of them 12 [million] times, and they'll eat it" advice has some truth to it because he ate them and kept eating them without our bobble-headed encouragement for every bite!

He has only one condition: he will only eat them with tortillas. And cheese. With sour cream, too is most preferable. I'm sure this negates a lot of that healthfulness, but I figure the Dude needs fattening.

Yegos

I had hidden the Legos well on a high shelf in the usually closed closet that the children are not allowed in for mostly safety reasons (mainly that something might come crashing down on their head or toe or other exposed body part). But the Dude (after not remembering them for a long time) finally remembered them. And asked about them and kept asking about them untilitdrovemealmostcrazy asking about them.

I had forgotten how creative he gets with his Legoing. His new request upon embarking on an art project (and for him, Legos are an ART), is that I do one for him and he does one for me. Today we started with seussian stairways that combined to create spaceships (or something that blasted around the room) and then ended very prosaically with a little red house.

The Dude is so happy free-forming and so stressed out when he's trying to make it Perfect Just Like the Picture, Mommy. Although the little house is charming and his attention to detail is alarming, I find his own creations to be much more interesting and fascinating. Especially since he's starting to come up with stories and reasons for all the kinks here and colors there and tall towers por aquí.

I'll try to remember all those happy creative juices spouting everywhere when I step on the Legos tomorrow. In my bare feet.

Mistaken Identity

The Sita, Dude and I were looking back through pictures of when they were teeny tiny babies (because that is what the Sita loves MOSTest right now). We played "name that family member" and they did pretty good at distinguishing between grandparents and aunts and uncles- until we got to the Dude's baby pictures! Then they both started consistently labeling the pictures of their Daddy as "Unca Maak!" That brotherly resemblance is much stronger when the Spozo is beardless.

I'm so spoiled

I had an awesome Mother's Day.

The Spozo let me sleep in AND he made me breakfast (fruit salad, hashbrowns, and orange juice!). At church, the Dude very charmingly got up in front of everyone and didn't hurt himself by launching himself off the stand (but didn't do much singing), the Stripling Warriors were only mentioned once (the same amount The Incredibles were mentioned) AND we get an all-women extravaganza where I get to hear wonderfully inspiring experiences from wonderful, inspiring women AND they feed us a lunch (with cupcakes! mmmm!) while I get to talk to even more women!

The Spozo got me a wonderful magazine subscription that I am super excited about because it focuses "on the daily interactions taking place at home. Although these exchanges are often seen as mundane or inconsequential, the sum of our daily exchanges is what shapes a family, for better or worse." AND it has no ads AND it is just gloriously beautiful looking. The Sita got me Emma (and helped me open the pretty sparkly paper); the Dude got me a short story collection of Orson Scott Card's. AND (this is a big and) the Spozo ordered me a Nikon D80 and a 50mm lens! (I think this also part anniversary present and half-birthday present and general because-you-deserve-it-and-i-love-you present).

I do the snuggle and sing routine with the Rosita for her nap, and then I get to have a serious conversation with the Dude which is always enjoyable and entertaining to hear his views on the world as he knows it.

I ask you, can it get any better?

Well, it did. The day ended with a scrumptious lemon pound cake with strawberries and whipped cream on top (courtesy The Spozo).

What a wonderful day!

The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks

I mainly picked this book up because I was desperate to read anything, and I had heard that his other book, The Notebook, was really sweet and a successful movie.

I'll admit, I enjoyed reading it, but I can't help wondering if a man would ever read this and enjoy reading it because the story is so girly romantic even though the main character is a man and it's written by a man. Did Mr. Sparks write this hoping to inspire men to stop it with the working all the time and to pay attention to their families? (The whole book was centered around that cliched axiom "no one ever wishes he spent more time at the office") Or at least that they should never, ever forget their 29th wedding anniversary because it might be the death knell for their marriage? Or was it for women to feel understood and wish that their husbands would read it and get a hint?

Some parts resonated with me, and yes, I too wished for some of that romance. But once it was over, I felt no need to reconnect with the characters. Re-reading it would be boring, and my criteria for a great book is that I can reread it over and over and over again and still love it.

If anyone wants it for an evening fling, it's yours!

1 out of 2 ain't bad

We went to Utah for 2 reasons: to see my Dad and s-i-l run in the SLC marathon AND to see my little brother graduate.

You'd think that after waiting for 3 hours at one checkpoint, I'd have seen Dad go by. But I didn't. Whether this was because I was looking for a guy in a tan shirt and black hat (when he was really wearing a red shirt and red hat), or because I had two small children that were fried by the time he might have passed, or because it was right when I realized that the Sita had erased all the pictures I had taken during the vacation so far from the camera, or perhaps a combination of all three, is not certain. What is very certain is that I did not see him go by. And the brother (cheering on his fit and fabulous wife) did not see him at the finish line, either.

I began pestering race officials about how I would find out if my father had collapsed onto the sidelines or twisted an ankle or had a heart attack, but they couldn't help me. Finally, the brother found an official that could help him and discovered that Dad had finished the race.

Forty-five minutes earlier.

We all congregate at the finish line and spread out in a search pattern to find the missing man. We call all the people we think he might've tried calling, but no one is home. When we find someone home, we only know that he called, but didn't leave any message about where he was or where he would be. I get an irate phone call from my aunt asking me where in the heck I was and why I hadn't picked up my father. I rejoice that she has told him to stay where he was to wait for someone to pick him up -

TWO MILES from the finish line!

We find him (only blocks from where I had been waiting for him to pass for 3 hours!). He stops feeling like no one loves him when he realizes that we've been worrying about him and where he is for 4 hours. We all agree to laugh about it after we loudly and forcefully explain what had been happening to each other.

The graduation was a much easier affair. Cell phones are a most wondrous invention for coordinating with family at large events with many people to get lost between. We listen to a boring graduation speech. We see the brother and hear his name called in the first 10 minutes of the procession. We wait for the next hour and a half for everyone else to walk and shake and shake and smile and get flashed and walk and sit. We smile and take our own pictures then proceed to enjoy some sensuous sandwiches before heading home to collapse in bed.

Well, that's what I should've done. Instead, I went on a date with the SM to get a milkshake and diapers (so romantic!), and proceeded to come down with strep throat the next day. I can't say I recommend doing this to finish up a vacation, but at least I got lots of sympathy (even if I couldn't hold my darling nephew for the first time!)

A step forward

To recap the saga: I've been trying to see if the school district will let the Dude start kindergarten this fall even though his birthday is after the state-mandated cut-off date. I've called several times and gotten reassurances of responses, but haven't heard back from anyone.... since January.

So after trying AGAIN, and making it very clear that I had called several times before and had not gotten any response, I finally got a call back from the district today! Actually, two calls! First from the secretary this morning to see what exactly I wanted to talk about with Mr. C (during which I relate Again all my reasonings) and basically stating that I was leaning towards homeschooling since I was getting so little support from the school. Voila! Mr. C calls back (when I'm out of the house, darn it!) and leaves a message saying that they'd like to set up an evaluation of the Dude by a kindergarten teacher at the school he would be going to even though the law clearly states that the Dude is past the deadline.

This doesn't mean that the Dude will be kindergartening this fall. He still has to "pass" this "evaluation" (ha,ha), and they still need to convince me that what they can offer the Dude will be worth his while. I'm still leaning towards homeschooling right now, but I'm glad that it looks like that won't be the only option open for us.

Sucked into Sudoku!

Last summer, while camping with all the family, my sister-in-laws introduced me to the wonderful world of Sudoku! They took mercy on me and let me borrow their Sudoku books to do a random puzzle poorly (they are so cool, they were doing them in pen!). I didn't have too much leisure time since I was a single parent that week (and yes, there were lots of people willing to help, but the Sita would scream if anyone other than her Grandpa or I would touch her) and sudoku isn't that easy to do by campfire. Or, more accurately, I'd rather be eating s'mores or those wicked croissant with melted chocolate and marshmallow confections (trust me, they're fifty times better than s'mores).

I got home and quickly got my own Sudoku book, but got rather frustrated with how slow I was at getting them done. While unearthing my bedroom floor, I found it again, and since Sudoku-ing is much more interesting than excavating, I've been trying to achieve Sudoku greatness!

I now share with you my Sudoku lore:

1)Starting with the number 1, fill in as many numbers as you can deduced from the given numbers - if you narrow it down to 2 squares within the smaller square of 9 squares, write the number in the top left corner of both squares.

2)Once you've gone thru the number 9 over the whole puzzle, then start focusing on the small groups of nine squares and fill in what you can.

3)After you've done all nine squares of nine, starting at the top row of 9, try to fill the numbers in by starting at one and going up to nine. Go down all the rows. If you can fill in a number, check to see if that can change anything else and then go back to the next number in that row. If you can narrow it down to 2 square in that row, write the number in the lower right hand corner of the squares.

4)After you've finished the rows, start on the columns. Again, if you narrow a number's potential position down to two sqaures, write the number in the lower left hand corner of the square.

5)If you've been writing the numbers in the corner after you've narrowed it down to 2 squares, you'll find that you hit a point where all you have to do is hop from square to square to finish the puzzle quickly! Plus, with all the corner writing, you won't get so frustrated about not being able to write a number in for a long time!

You are henceforth Sudoku masters! Go forth and enumerate!

"With a Hearing Accent"

Last night, I went to a discussion headed by Susan Schaller, who champions the languageless, and author of our book group's book this month,A Man Without Words.

I would never have guessed that a good number of people - even in the United States! - grow up without symbolic language to express themselves! Most of them are deaf children born to hearing parents, and some parents are guided by doctors and therapists to deprive their children of visual communication. I'm assuming this is to encourage (or force) their hearing senses to develop, but it seems so... contrary to what babies are about!Babies seem pre-programmed to like smiles - they recognize facial expressions very early and even know what faces to make when something is sweet or bitter before they can even see all that well! To repeat something from last night: Isn't it ironic that we encourage hearing children to learn "baby sign" so that they can communicate before they can talk, but that parents of deaf children are told to never sign to their babies? That seems like such a no-brainer!

Another interesting thing we talked about is how children seem to have a natural expressiveness that they grow out of around the age of six or seven and become more reserved with displaying emotions. I think a lot of this is because we learn to fear what other people think about us, so we show less and less. I didn't realize that part of Deaf communication is what we "hearing folk" would consider overly-expressive. Every emotion is expressed much more visually than we would do. Just knowing that helps me understand some of my experiences with the Deaf community a lot better. Our more stoic faces are part of the "hearing accent" we have - even when communicating with good sign language. One girl who had taken several semesters of ASL said that she was told that when she got more fluent in sign, she wouldn't even look at the hand signs, she would look at the face of the person signing - and she did!

I'm glad that smiles are still universal for happiness! I can always communicate at least that much! (At least, I hope so - are there any cultures that don't like smiles?)

Easter in Progress

I'm still getting used to the idea that I'm the adult making sure holidays are holidays-y. My parents still did a gianormous Easter egg hunt for my brothers and their wives and kids at their house. Congratulations to the Romgi for winning the hunt with over 40 eggs!

I had a lot of good ideas for making Easter Easter-y, but only followed through on a couple of them. Here's the most shocking of them: We did not dye eggs. We did not even boil eggs. We did not do our own egg hunt (but the one we went to was lots of fun). We did not have Easter baskets filled with toys and jellybeans and chocolate and bunnies and chocolate. Some of this is because I didn't get around to it. Some of it was by choice.

We had backpacks filled with plastic eggs with yummy chocolate and jelly-ish things. And a chocolate bunny. I can't do without the chocolate bunnies! I chose backpacks instead of baskets because: The Sita has been wanting a backpack for a long time and I found her the perfect one, and I wanted to give it to her now. (and) I wanted something that would be useful for a bit longer than one weekend.

We did have a dinner with foods Jesus might've eaten on a special occasion. I went for simple because I knew Easter was going to be exhausting for the first half of the day and didn't want the Spozo to mop me off the floor at the end of the day. We had lamb (oh deliciousness!), lentils, flatbread, cucumbers, apricots (dried), yogurt cheese, feta cheese (which the kids LOVE), olives, and almonds. I think the entire feast was a la Trader Joe's. The Sita decided that the way to eat was to take one bite of everything, chew it for a few seconds, and then spit it back out. Except the cheese. And the flatbread.

We also watched the Lamb of God, which I was kind of hesitant to do because those last few hours of Christ's life were so violent. One thing I didn't forsee was the Dude's laughing reflex for whenever anyone speaks in a different language (which really isn't appropriate when there is hitting and spitting going on). By the end (and with continuous commentary), the Dude got something out of it and the Sita was still upset that we hadn't watched the Baby Jesus movie.

I think I'm going to declare Easter a success because we emphasized the most important aspects of the holiday: Jesus and Chocolate (in that order).

My favorite time of day

My favorite time of day is the mornings. My favorite time of morning is right after waking up but before actually getting up - snuggle time!

The best mornings go something like this:

The alarm goes off at 6:30, I turn it off and nestle my head on the Spozo's shoulder until he escapes to the shower. The Dude exits his room soon after the water is turned on and hops onto my bed. He snuggles with me and then tells me about how he slept and reports on whether the Cita is still asleep. We talk about what type of day it is and what we are going to do and his many virtues and maybe discuss a serious question or two. The Spozo appears wreathed in steam and the Dude starts chatting about when Daddy will play with him. The Cita wakes up about now and the Spozo brings her to me for more snuggling while we wait for the BaBa to be warmed. The Dude has breakfast with his Daddy while the Cita drinks her milk and I admire what a darling girl I have and ask her questions about what she'd like to do which she responds to by widening her eyes and nodding while sucking. Spozo dashes out the door to catch his bus and the Dude returns to the bed for even more snuggling and laughing and hiding and tickling.

I know I should probably be getting more done in that first while in the morning, and sometimes I feel a teensy little tiny bit guilty for being so languorous. This morning, which was one of those deemed most excellent, I was just grateful to be able to simply enjoy Being with my children...

And that the Cita hadn't soaked through her pajamas and bedclothes last night.

"Yucky Poo!"

is the Sita's favorite descriptive phrase right now.

Lovely.

A place of love and beauty

I love going to the temple.

I always feel so refreshed and renewed afterwards. I feel like I've been seeing through a glass darkly and then I get complete vision back with added illumination. And then my lenses get blurred with all those worldly cares and woes and I'm feeling blundering and hesitant about where to go and then Whoosh! I go back to the temple and all that lovely perspective is restored.

I love going to the temple.

Mr. Generosity

The 'Sita Bonita is recalcitrant about getting her nails trimmed, so in the spirit of bribery, she gets Jelly Bellies (jei-BEAN) after the ordeal if she has stayed (mostly) still. Yesterday, as she hopped down to go get her treat, the Dude handed her one of his Jelly Bellies that he had gotten as his potty treats earlier to her and said, "Here, ['Sita], here's a treat for you!"

Then today, the Dude shared his party loot with her! Of his own free will! After already having shared his Smarties with her, I expected him to say, "Oh, there's only one chocolate left - it's MINE!" But he hesitated, and when I suggested that I cut it in half, his face lit up as he exclaimed, "Yes!" and he and the Sita pealed laughter while I chopped and distributed the spoils (I slipped him the bigger half - he deserved it!).

I am so glad he has learned so young the joys of sharing - well, unless it's that unicorn finger puppet during Sacrament Meeting.....

Ok, so honestly, now...

I'd like to know what you mothers do with your kids to help the time pass away. After the house is (relatively) clean and it isn't that pretty out and you don't have any spare cash.

I am probably a very boring mommy because I figure it's time to teach them something! Letters, colors, numbers, songs... I guess I'd have to admit I don't just play with my kids because... well.... it's boring. I can only pretend to drink fruit soup so many times. My attention span for going around and around and around a train track is extremely limited. After the fifth rereading of the same book in a row, I'm done.

What do you do to keep their abundant energy focused on something other than destruction?

Minutes!

When your child exclaims, "Minutes!" what would you think she was talking about?

It took me a while, but I found out that the 'Sita affectionately calls our microwave "minutes." She knows it makes things warm also and usually calls it "warm!" when it's warming. I haven't figured out why the "minutes" is so fascinating. Is it something as innocent as liking the beeping noises when you push the buttons? Is it something more sinister like the fact that her brother is usually in trouble when the "minutes" is getting used?

Either way, it is now her favorite kitchen appliance.

Beep!

A Moral Moment

While explaining about how we know good actions from bad actions, I said, "..like when you want to push your sister..."

"...Or throw a rock at her!" he interjects with relish.

"Ummm.... yes. Or want to throw a rock at her..."

How you know when you've been playing too much Super Mario Galaxy

While watching her Daddy play, the 'Sita distinctly states, "Bowza, messy! Nonono!"