Mommathon

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I hate dusting. I told Sean before we got married how much I hate to dust. I will clean toilets, I will do dishes, I will do laundry, but I really don't like dusting. When was the last time you dusted and/or how often do you dust? Be honest, people.

Colm and I went on a field trip today to the downtown library to a program they have right now about fairy tales. It was a great exhibit with LOTS of hands-on things for kids to do.


Outside of parking garage...pretty neat.






Climbing Jack's beanstalk


The giant from Jack and the Beanstalk


Riding in Cinderella's coach


Colm making up his own fairy tale on the computer.


Look, Mom, a secret window.

I know it is a little late for this, but I have decided I need to do something for myself, so here it is...Colm and I always go out on these fun little field trips during the week. Whether it be to storytime at the jazz museum, a play at Union Station, or just going to the park when the weather is nice. I love spending time with Colm, but we always do all of these things by ourselves. We went out yesterday and I saw all of these moms out together with their kids. I need that. I need to spend more time with people over the age of four. We can still do all of our fun stuff, but I need to make a conscious effort to start asking others to come with us. Not only will it be good for me, it will be fun for Colm, too. I know he could use a break from me every now and again, too.

Are there ever things you want to blog about but you can't?

Sean and I had dinner last night with over 3,300 other people. Sean's work had their annual company dinner. There were over 330 tables with ten people at each table. It was crazy. (When Sean first started working there almost ten years ago we used to meet at a dinner theater for the company dinner.) The food was good and they had an awesome group called the Stanford Taiko Drums perform. Everyone in the whole room stopped what they were doing to watch these people. It was really cool to watch that many people stop and pay attention.

Liam's party was a huge success and now I can relax. We had eight kindergarten boys (plus Colm) and it was great...the kids were great, the cupcakes were great and the magician was great. Phew! On a sidenote, I can't believe he is six! Six, people! He has to use both hands to show people how old he is!


Cupcakes in the shape of a magician's hat with rabbits on top.


The magician was so good and so good with the boys...totally into boy humor. They were in stitches.


Liam the assistant (yes, he's holding a Barbie...it was part of the trick).




Checking out the goody bags.

I went to go get my ashes today and as we were going back to our seats Colm wanted to know why I didn't get my "snack".

I was pulling out of the garage yesterday and I turned on the radio. An REM song was on and I had to stop the car. It is amazing how a song can bring back memories. It got me thinking about the music that was so important to me in high school and college. The music that my friends and I danced to, drove around the city to and played in the background while we were going about our lives. REM and the B-52's always bring back memories. Loveshack! I think of the parties that Phil had in his basement. We were always dancing-always! The Red Hot Chili Peppers were a favorite when things got a little crazy. New Order always makes me think of dancing at the Monolith in high school. Whenever I hear Madonna's Vogue it reminds me of a time when Dana and I were driving down the freeway with the windows down at night singing at the top of our lungs or the time I made Matt Livengood listen to it a zillion times in my car as we were driving around because I had it taped back to back the length of an entire tape. He loved it though. :) Whenever I hear Erasure it reminds me of the mornings I drove to the hospital before I went to school to see my mom when she was in a coma. That tape must have been in my car during that time. The Samples and the Indigo Girls always makes me think of the last summer I worked as a camp counselor when I was in college. On the weekends, when the kids were gone and all of the counselors were left alone to gear up for the next busload of kids coming on Monday, those two were staples of our reenergizing. What soundtracks define my life right now? The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything soundtrack, Suzuki Book One listening CD and the Backyardigans CD. My how times have changed. :)

Colm and I went swimming today (inside!) and I look over and he is praying-in the pool! I asked him why he was praying. He says he is praying to God to help him find the pool toy he can't find. I love it!

Liam informed me tonight that he has a crush (his word not mine) on Sarah. I will admit, Sarah is pretty cute. It's her freckles.

Colm has never been a big Sesame Street fan...until last night. My MIL treated Colm and I to a night at Sesame Street Live at the Sprint Center and it was great. It was a much higher quality show than when we used to take Liam. It was about what you want to be when you grow up; it was very cute. Watching Colm's face was priceless. When the show first started he had this look on his face...a little confused mixed with a little bit afraid mixed with a little bit of anticipation. Two seconds into it though and his face lit up...it would have been a gem of a picture, but I was too busy watching him to actually get the shot.

We got this game for Christmas and the boys love it and so do I. There are a few ways you can play it. We have never played by the official rules, but the gist of the game is to sort the squares by attribute in a dominoes sort of way. Different lines have different attributes and if you can't play one of your squares based on what has been played you can try and start a new line with a different characteristic until you have used up all of your squares.

This is our fifth year of preschool, so by now I have several holiday parties under my belt. I always try to sign up to help in some way, whether that be bringing the treats, bringing the drinks, coming up with a game, etc. I have never signed up to bring the take home treat before though. I think these turned out great. I got these cute cellophane bags at Hobby Lobby. In each bag I put a pink plastic Valentine cup, a container of bubbles and some Valentine stickers. I had also bought some Valentine M&M's to put in them, but I figured by the time the party is over they will probably be maxed out in the sugar department, so I saved those for a project Liam is doing at school. Anyways, I think I like these because it is a great excuse to buy something pink and I don't get a chance to do that very often.

Sean and the boys have been playing a knights game on the computer after dinner for the past few weeks. They love it and look forward to Daddy getting home each night so they can play. Well, on Friday night, they absolutely refused to eat their dinner. (I don't even remember what it was now, but they acted as if they might die trying to eat it.) So, Sean told them if they didn't eat it then they couldn't play knights that night after dinner. Colm still wouldn't eat. Liam tried, but he was picking and poking at his food and I was not going to sit there with him all night. So Sean told them that they wouldn't be playing knights that night and got up from the table. (oh, dear, you should have heard the wailing). But it got worse...Sean went and played without them. He went in his office, shut the door and played for a good half hour. Their little world collapsed. The tears. The howling. I think there were some pint-sized insults thrown in Sean's direction. You should see these kids eat now though. Not only are they eating things they would never have eaten five days ago, but they know they have to eat it in a reasonable amount of time, too. They were literally scarfing down their pasta last night. I love it! I could serve them pigs ears with garlic sauce now and I think they would find a way to choke it down.

This afternoon Colm found his new favorite book in Liam's room. He brought it to me to read to him, but he didn't shut Liam's door and the dog was going to go in his room. This is a big deal and Colm knows it. The dog is not allowed into their rooms because he eats their stuffed animals. I told Colm he needed to go back and shut Liam's door and then I would read him the book. He wouldn't shut the door, so I shut it. He then realized that I really wasn't going to read him the book now because he didn't follow directions and shut the door like I had asked. So he went back and opened the door so he could then shut it so that I could then read him the book.

We stopped at Costco to get gas today and there was an elderly couple there gassing up their bright red VW bug. These people were AT LEAST 80. They were so cute. She was in the driver's seat with her bright white, fresh from the beauty parlor curls. He was putting in the gas. He had on a cute little fisherman hat. If I would have had my phone with me I would have tried to sneak a picture of them.

Before Sean and I even had kids we always said we wanted them to go to school A (we'll call it that for anonymity-I have no idea who is reading this blog). My brothers went there and since they are 13 years younger than me we got to see what a great school it was. We had Liam enrolled there last year for kinder, but with our house not selling and moving and all of that jazz we forfeited our deposit and decided not to send him. I am SO glad we made that decision. There is NO WAY we could have packed, moved and done everything that had to be done to build this house and still gotten him to school and picked up each day. I am also glad we sent him to the school he went to this year. It was a great way for him to meet the neighborhood kids, he has a great teacher and the school is wonderful, too. We are in a position now, however, to send both Liam and Colm to school A now. I called them on Tuesday, the boys had their evaluations at the school on Thursday, we got the paperwork for next school year on Friday and we sent it back in on Saturday. There was only one spot left in first grade next year so we snapped it up. They are a private Catholic school in an urban setting that goes from Montessori (preschool) through Grade 8. It is a small school with only two sections of each grade with a policy of twenty or fewer kids per class. They have an indoor pool (which is ancient!) where the kids take weekly swim lessons, they begin learning French at the Montessori level, since it is in the city it is both racially and economically diverse (which is very important to us considering the reputation our county has for its affluence and whiteness), all students are evaluated before being offered a spot at the school (you don't have to be a genius, but a certain level of smarts and behavior are expected), we love the history (our kids will be there for the school's 100th anniversary) and it is Catholic. Another thing I noticed when we were walking around that is in the middle school level, their lockers didn't have locks and most of them were ajar. I love it! They don't need locks because that kind of crap doesn't happen around there. I also love how they combine subjects for the little guys. For example, their P.E. class is conducted in French. There is one downside. It is not close, but there are several families around here who go there and the school is very good about helping families set up carpools since people drive from all over the metro to get to the school. I am so excited, but more importantly...so are the boys!

I think Colm has a future as a librarian or a book reviewer or something of the sort. He has come up with a system to classify his books. Since we usually read in his bed, the system goes like this: books he likes get dropped on the floor to the left of his bed when he is done with them, books he doesn't like get dropped on the right and books he kind of likes go at the foot of his bed. Most books make it to the "like" pile, very few make it to the "kind of" pile and I have noticed that most of the books that make it to the "don't like" pile are non-fiction books. At least he knows what he likes!

There are going to be some big changes around here come August, one of them being me being employed. Someone is going to actually pay me money to do something. See, the tricky part is though, I have to actually get a job. With the boys gone at school for a large chunk of the day I would like to do something productive. There are a few catches, however. I need a job that would allow me to be home with the boys on breaks, during the summer, and when they are sick. Additionally, I would like to go with them on their field trips and be at their holiday parties. I would also like to be able to volunteer at their school and eat lunch with them every once in a while before they get to be too old and too cool to have their mom do that. I also only want to work during the hours they are at school. Also, I would like to get a job near their school to minimize the driving. I have a job in mind, but someone already has that job. She has mentioned that she has thought about quitting though. Would it be rude of me to remind her that she had mentioned in the past that she might leave her position? Just a gentle nudge. I will wait and see how the whole getting everyone to school and getting everyone picked up thing goes and see what happens from there. I have a feeling I am not going to find my dream job. I am not in a rush, but it would be nice to receive a paycheck.

Does it bother anyone else? What I understand from this is that the FDA has approved beef and milk that has come from cloned animals to be sold as food. That bothers me. What is also troubling is that they don't have to label it. It's already been decided that such products are not kosher. I think I'll either convert, go back to being a vegetarian or start raising my own animals.

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