Blogging the Boy!

fiberoptic fields

2011-07-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

The fields are alive, with the light of fireflies!

We're at Fundad's brother's house, preparing for the annual family reunions. He lives in the country, surrounded by fields. The fields, tonight, look like a fiberoptic display of lights - they are gorgeous! The firefly lights stretch as far as we can see, making undulating waves of flickering stars. I've never seen so many fireflies, but I suspect that the warm day and the still air, coupled with the corn and soybean fields, are making them congregate. It's awesome!

why must I lose things?

2011-06-20T17:46:00.000-07:00

I'm an avid patron of the public library. And I pride myself on not losing things - like books, for example. I would find it quite embarrassing to own up to such irresponsibility. Thus, you can imagine my chagrin when I checked my record to find that the library showed a DVD set overdue. I would swear that I returned that set. It's not on the bookshelf where we store the library items. I didn't watch it, simply because I decided I didn't have time. And I would SWEAR that I returned it.

SWEAR.

So now I'm contemplating where that DVD set might be. It's possible that it's on the shelf in the library, and never got checked in. It's also possible that I set it down somewhere in the house as I collected items. It's even possible that it slipped behind or next to something at the library. Or that it's under the seat of my car. But I'm extremely chagrined. I don't want to have to pay for it (five DVDs? no thanks.), because I'm feeling very poor. And I'm, of course, very embarrassed. There's really no reason, except that I'm always stretched, which means that I forget things. Last week, there were two books of Stevie's that we had to find under a cabinet in order to avoid a late charge. Arrgggghhhh. So, tomorrow I'll check at the library and maybe, hopefully, I'll find it there. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

it's time

2011-06-16T20:15:00.000-07:00

It's time that I try going to bed after 9 pm, I think. It's been so rare, over the last seven years, that I hardly remember what it's like to go outside after dark. Tonight I went for a jog/walk, and it was weird. Other after-dark joggers appeared from nowhere. Kids on bikes without lights went past me as they went to raise havoc. Stevie was fast asleep by around 9 pm tonight. (I'm glad that he's still too young to go out riding around with his friends.)

Actually when Stevie was an infant, Randy and I would take turns walking our dog, thus getting out after dark. But to be honest, I hardly remember it. It's difficult to believe that I had the energy for it. Optimistically, I'd like to run the July 4th run (5K), realistically, I'm not sure that will happen. We'll see.

We're coming off a really busy but fun weekend. Randy came home from fishing on Wednesday. Thursday night, he and the boy went to a Brewer game in Milwaukee. Friday night we three went to another Brewer game, then stayed overnight at my Aunt's apartment. Saturday we met Randy's nephew & family at the Zoo. We came home, I took a shower, and went to bed. Stevie and I watched a movie until we fell asleep. It was crazy!

swimmin' in the backyard

2011-06-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

We're finishing up our second day of swimming and sunning. The pool still works - with no hitches thus far. Our chlorine levels, ph levels, alkalinity, and... something else... are all good. The chlorine dispenser is working fine, and we've had lots of fun, although Stevie still hasn't put his head underwater without crying.

Oh, to be an drama king and only child. :-)

Stevie has also started his second weapon in karate. He's learning to use nunchuku, or as they're more commonly called, nunchuks. There's nothing relaxing about watching a group of 30 7-12 year olds twirling metal sticks. He seems to like it, although he bopped himself in the head once. Each child is allowed one "ouch" during a class. Otherwise they have to just deal with it.

We went to a great birthday party today at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center. Now I'd like to sign Stevie up for a summer school class there, although many of the classes are full already. Stevie says that he doesn't like classes. But I suspect he really doesn't like anything that I suggest. Sigh.

My mom is staying with us, and kindly watching Harry Potter movies. Yesterday it was number 4, tonight it's number 1. She's being tolerant. I think our neighborhood is too quiet for her - she was marveling at how silent it was. Very relaxing though!

almost there...

2011-06-02T19:30:00.001-07:00

I have only a few hours of work, and then my work week is over! I shouldn't really be this excited, since I had last Monday off - the week wasn't that long. Tomorrow morning I'm working for a few hours, then I'm off. I have to pick up my Mom and bring her to stay for a few days, while Randy is gone. I'm hoping that she'll bring food. Last time she came, she fed us for an entire weekend - breakfast, lunch and dinner. I told her to not bring that much food this time, but she might figure that I'm incapable of putting a meal together.

That's not far wrong.

I've been reading a bit lately. I finished Riordan's Percy Jackson series. I've been re-listening to the Harry Potter books, since Stevie was allowed to watch another of the movies. I like to stay ahead of him, and prep him for things that might be difficult or discussion-worthy. I'm also trying to put together a list of things to do during the summer. Last year I'd hoped to have lots for Stevie's babysitter to do with him, and I kind of failed miserably. She managed without problem, but I'd like some science or craft things for them to do.

We spent the evening at baseball practice, where Stevie and some of his friends were quite obnoxious. :-) But the practice went well. All the kids could hit the ball, and there are a couple parents that seem fairly athletic and willing to help. First game is next Tuesday, and we have another one on Wednesday. Randy should make it back in time for the latter. Wednesday and Thursday are big days at work, and (if I remember correctly) we have have Brewer tickets on Thursday AND Friday night.

Hopefully next Saturday I can stay home and relax. Or maybe I'll be bored if I try that...

fun in the summer

2011-05-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Finally! A day of summer. I was starting to doubt that it would ever come. We tried out the pool, which was wonderful, although cold. It'll warm up eventually, I'm sure. Today the cold felt good, since it was so warm. We swam all day - until about 3:30 or 4 pm. Stevie fell under the water twice, near tears each time. Hopefully by the end of the summer, a trip underwater will not phase him. I'm crossing my fingers.

Our neighbor came over this morning to see the pool and the new garden. Randy finished the garden fence yesterday - he was determined to get it done. This week is going to be busy, and he leaves for fishing this weekend. It marks the start of about a week of increased busyness. (Is that really something new?)

The garden looks awesome, albeit a little crowded and haphazard. We have peas, green & yellow beans, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and swiss chard. (I like greens.) We'll see what actually produces edible veggies. :-)

weekend invitation

2011-05-23T19:01:00.000-07:00

Randy is putting Stevie to bed tonight. They're reading a new book about Harry Potter which Stevie bought at the school book sale. It warms my heart. :-)

We spent the weekend doing outside "getting ready for summer" chores. We moved some plants in the front flower bed, Randy finished the garden and Stevie and I planted it, Randy planted grass in a variety of places, and (most importantly) we put the pool up. Stevie even jumped in today, even though it was pretty chilly. Hopefully we'll get some good swimming time this summer.

On Saturday night, Stevie was quite tired of Randy and I working. He was in and out of the house, and wanted someone to play with him. Finally, after an extended absence, he came out and announced that we were "invited" inside. I was almost done at that point, so I cleaned up and came in. There, on the table, were three place settings, and SIX candles arranged (but not lit). Stevie was sitting proudly at his place.

I was very impressed.

Regrettably he hadn't made dinner, but that's expecting a bit much. We ended up having rice, chicken fries and veggies. Nothing fancy because, let's face it, fancy is beyond me these days. We lit the candles and had dinner together, and then watched Tron: Legacy, a movie that Stevie had started watching on Friday night at karate. (It was pretty good.)

Prior to that moment, Stevie had been a bit of a twerp. He'd had a busy weekend with activities on Friday and Saturday morning. Sunday we washed the cars and put up the pool. He played so hard in the pool as it was filling that he fell asleep on the couch in the sunroom. That doesn't happen often!

the final stretch

2011-05-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

We're heading into the final stretch of first grade, and I have to say that I love it. It's busy and exciting and a bit hectic. We had a spring concert earlier in spring, and the "He and Me" breakfast. Last night was the end-of-year potluck for cub scouts. Tomorrow Stevie is getting his summer haircut, and Friday is the family/school picnic. Friday night is karate fun night, and then fireworks to kick off the Civil War Celebration weekend. Stevie's friend is staying overnight, and on Saturday morning we're going to watch his soccer game. Then we're hoping to visit the Civil War reenactors.

Sunday (if it's warm enough) is garden planting day. Next Monday is the first day of the school book sale, and Tuesday is the end-of-year field trip, which Fundad and I are chaperoning. Next Friday we're going to the Brewer game to kick off Memorial Day weekend. We don't have any plans for Memorial Day, believe it or not. But the following Friday I have to pick up my Mom on Friday afternoon. Randy is leaving for his fishing trip on Saturday, and Stevie has a birthday party.

On Sunday, the karate school is going to go see Kung Fu Panda en masse. That Monday is the last full day of school. Tuesday Stevie has a half-day of school, and Mom and I are going to see his class perform Hansel and Gretel.

Then school is over. Sigh. I think that I'll miss it. :-)

nonstop talking

2011-05-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

My son has lately been talking non-stop. Well, with one exception - he doesn't talk while he's playing on the wii. In fact, no one is allowed to talk at that time lest the child be distracted from some complicated and absorbing scenario in his games. And if one walks between the child and his TV... well, I don't have to tell you that it isn't pretty.

So he really was talking non-stop today - likely because I didn't let him watch TV after some Saturday morning stuff. He was going a little bonkers, which I assume was screen-withdrawal. It's a very good thing that summer is coming. I think we need some motivation to get out and about. If only the weather would cooperate. Stevie is very excited about rollerblading - I'm somewhat resigned and apprehensive. I purchased a set of knee, elbow and wrist pads for myself today. Hopefully I won't break anything.

In addition to non-stop talking, Stevie has also cultivated a habit of singing nonsense songs. Usually the lyrics in this songs are a little sassy, and the tune a bit repetitive. He prefers lyrics like "My dad needs lots of help" or "my mom is so silly" repeated over and over and over.

Tonight I finally told him that he had to stop the singing and talking. I didn't want to hear another thing. We made him study last week's spelling words. They had been more difficult for him, and he staged a rebellion of sorts when studying. Needless to say, this was reflected in his score. Randy explained to him that since these words weren't going away any time soon, he still had to learn them and pass a test at home. Stevie wasn't too thrilled. My enforced silence rule made him even less thrilled. I was surprised when he fell asleep leaning against me on the couch tonight - although his tiredness explains some of his attitude. It was nice to have him curled against me on the couch - and quiet. :-)

dueling holidays

2011-05-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

This time of year is always really busy for us. Not only is it Mother's Day, a time to celebrate with my family and with my mom, it's also my anniversary, and my mother's birthday. One hardly knows where to start with spousal and motherly thoughts. My husband, astonishing me once again with his organizational skills and household vision, provided a lovely, fun, and relaxing weekend.

I'm not sure how he manages it. I barely get through my days, and he plans thoughtful meals and gifts. All I can do is say thank you, and remember how lucky I am.

We spent Friday evening at home. I came home from work to an empty, quiet house with flowers and an anniversary balloon on the table. Fundad and the boy came home shortly after with quick meal fixings - chicken for the grill, rice and frozen veggies - and a six-pack of cold Supper Club. It's become one of our favorite beers. We sat by a nice fire outside for a while, and then the boys surprised me with a 12th anniversary cake. It was a small devils food cake, with white frosting and yellow roses - just the right size. After cake, we came in to watch Despicable Me, which I wasn't expecting much from, but which got steadily more engrossing as the movie progressed.

Saturday morning, we drove to see my mom and spent the day relaxing there - we did a few odd jobs, my mom made us a turkey dinner, and we drove home.

Sunday, I awoke to the enticing smell of pancakes, bacon and eggs - Randy had made breakfast for us all. I opened several wonderful and funny cards, and was given a new statue of birds to put outside. (I'm starting to acquire a funny collection of them.) Post-breakfast, we went shopping for used rollerblades (which we found), pads for Stevie's knees, wrists and elbows (found several sets), and a pool (which we also found). We stopped at DQ for lunch, which the boy loved, and then headed home. Stevie and I strapped on the roller blades and "started" skating... sort of. Randy helped Stevie stay upright on the driveway. I, an experienced skater in my youth, did OK, falling once hard on my knee, and once on my rear. Good thing I have some padding there! We're definitely getting knee, write and elbow guards for me.

Randy worked on the new garden area this afternoon, rototilling the grass into the dirt. I'm not sure when we'll be planting, but it looks good. The nesting robins will be thrilled about the newly turned dirt.

It was a good day - and that's pretty high praise from me. I'm lucky to have married such an accommodating and organized man!

rio!

2011-04-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

We went to see Rio tonight, as a surprise for Stevie. It was really good - we all enjoyed it. However, Stevie is now determined to go to Carnival in Rio for our next big vacation. He loved the parade scenes and the hang gliders in the movie, but I really shudder at the thought of navigating Carnival with the boy. I believe that our next vacation will be somewhere in the contiguous US, although I wouldn't mind Hawaii!

We spent the day at Aunt Vicky's - Fundad rototilled some flower garden areas, and then we borrowed the rototiller for our own garden. We're moving the garden, and making it bigger. We had a great lunch, and some relaxing time. Stevie and I played air baseball - I won - and played with the neighbor's dog. Then Stevie burrowed into a blanket on the couch in the sunroom while we ate.

Tomorrow there are probably a million things that I should do. I don't know exactly how many of those I'll really get to. I'd also like to watch the rest of the Royal Wedding since it's taking a lot of DVR space up. Sooner or later Fundad and the boy are going to complain.

history

2011-04-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

So, between appointments today I visited the Historical Society Library. I had the day off work, because I was running from one side of town to the other. I haven't had a chance to get to the library lately, and I've missed it. I'm not quite organized enough to have a comprehensive list of items to look up, but I do keep a partial list and had quite enough to do. Today I was trying to find my great grandmother's obituary, from some time in 1941. I could probably find the specific date, but I wanted to browse the newpaper and see what was going on at the time. My family surnames are often mentioned in the "Local News" columns and it's interesting to see what was going on. I've had good luck using the column to find sisters and aunts that "disappeared" after taking a married name.

After four months of microfilmed newspapers, I had a headache, so I moved on to another goal - looking up birth records from the early 1700's. And after that, I went into the Civil War records. The town where we live is quite proud of its history and is having a Civil War weekend in honor of the 150th Civil War anniversary. There will be re-enactors, and the chance to train as a Civil War "recruit". There's a Civil War ball with era-appropriate dress. And, of course, a parade with a Civil War era band. It should be a lot of fun.

I've researched three ancestors that fought in the Civil War. My great great grandfather enlisted for about a year, and emerged unscathed. Fundad has a great great uncle that enlisted for 3 years, and received a disability discharge after an injury. And I have another relative (a first cousin 4x removed) that was killed in 1865 at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The latter is a bit of mystery - he had a brother with the same name, and I suspect that one of them might have been adopted from another part of the family, or perhaps just brought along to America to take advantage of the new start.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to this weekend - Stevie asked if we could go to the "big bookstore", so we'll be off to Madison.

back to normal

2011-04-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

Easter's over, and our house is once more full of candy. Candy, candy, candy. My favorites are the Lemonhead jellybeans, and the year-old candy in the Star Wars eggs. (I forgot them last year, but the candy was still ok.) We had a huge egg hunt at home - Stevie, my mom and I filled the eggs with candy, then Stevie and I hid them. We all hunted for them, and I laughed at how surprised Stevie was when he found them. I mean, we'd hid them the day before. I also surprised Stevie by adding the elusive Star Wars eggs to the hunt, which he didn't expect.

The Easter Bunny brought us sand toys for Easter! A big pail/mold that looks like a castle with steps leading to the doors, a smaller tower, and another basic shape. We spend a lot of time in the sand box in summer.

I had a nice weekend with my mom. She came for four days, and it reminded me of how much I miss girl talk. We even indulged ourselves with some royal wedding shows which I'd never be able to watch with Fundad. Mom also managed to bring enough food to feed us all weekend, which is a definite comment on my cooking skills. :-)

Now things are getting back to normal. Mom went home last night, and Stevie went back to school today. He's very unhappy about his short week, because he doesn't get to go to the library until next Monday. That warms my heart!

egg gallery

2011-04-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

The boy had a smashing time dyeing eggs today. It was extremely successful - surprising since I was still looking for egg dye this morning. The local Piggly Wiggly was sold out of Paas. We ended up using food coloring and an off-brand dye kit that worked just fine. I made too many eggs, but Stevie really loves to dye them and it was worth it. After we finished, Stevie got the camera and proceeded to take pictures of every single bag, followed by pictures of each carton of eggs. He was really excited about it. We made one for Grandma, Uncle Steve, Aunt Beth, Uncle Paul, Cousin Jimmy, and friend Owen. And one for his teacher.

This afternoon we went to Hobby Lobby AGAIN and bought some things that we didn't need. I bought myself a coloring poster, and Stevie got a clearance Noah's Ark origami kit. We also got a big sand pail that makes a castle shape. Stevie is getting a bunch of sand toys for Easter (we play in the sand a lot) and some "Smencils" - smelly pencils. Smelly in a good way. :-)

late night

2011-04-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

I watched The Other Boleyn Girl with my mom tonight, which means that I'm getting to bed much later than normal. It was an entertaining movie, although not nearly as good as the book, which I finished last week. I just finished The Constant Princess by the same author, Philippa Gregory. The latter book is about Catherine of Aragon, the queen that was ousted by Anne Boleyn in the former. Both were excellent, and seem especially appropriate with the royal wedding next week. Tonight the Hallmark Channel aired six hours of a made-for-tv movie about the wedding - you'd think their viewers would get bored.

Stevie spent the day with Randy, playing and driving him nuts. I went to work, got my mom, visited Fleet Farm for Easter candy, and then came home. Nice day for me... perhaps not so nice for Randy.

Tomorrow we'll have karate, and then probably Easter dinner tomorrow night since Randy and Stevie will be in Mineral Point. My long weekend is already going wayyy too fast.

hobby lobby

2011-04-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

The boy's current favorite store is Hobby Lobby. He discovered that it has "stuff" for coin collectors, lots of army men, cool containers to hold things, lots of crayons and markers, and generally cool stuff. He has an extremely difficult time leaving without something. I made the mistake of taking the child to Hobby Lobby tonight. He wasn't terrible, but he did attempt a sit-in, where he refused to get up until he got what he wanted. Regrettably, what he wanted was no longer on the shelf so the sit-in was futile. We did buy some really cool flame and camouflage duct tape to put on Stevie's newest karate weapon - a stick. I'm sure it has an official name, but to me it's just the stick.

We also went to a party store to buy Easter napkins and plates. I saw all sorts of neat things for Easter baskets... but Stevie saw the same things. I did get him an assortment of cool erasers (not Easter-ish) and two sleeves of plastic eggs (multi-colored camouflage, and swirly).

When am I going to go shopping for Easter baskets? Suddenly my Friday off doesn't seem like enough time to get ready for anything.

where's spring?

2011-04-19T18:46:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have been busy. It's still not spring (how can that be?) and we had very icy roads today. I left work early, missing the rush hour, and made it home safely. Stevie has had events every night, despite my vow to not be one of "those parents" - the ones that have their kid in every activity possible. Tonight was cub scouts, yesterday was karate. Tomorrow is karate again, because we can't go on Saturday morning. Thursday is football. Friday and Monday the boy has off school. I took Friday off, and plan to go get my mom and bring her to our house for the weekend. I'm looking forward to coloring eggs and hanging out. :-)

Last weekend we had a 50th birthday party for my brother-in-law. Stevie had a blast, and it was lots of fun to see everyone. I played Apples to Apples with the kids! My Aunt Bets gave me a new Packer sweatshirt which is soft and cozy, and makes my husband jealous. Sunday we went to Stevie's karate teacher's 5th degree black belt ceremony. It was really intense and very fun. We'd met to make signs earlier in the day, so the group was pretty vocal - about 1200 people came to watch four men in the ceremony. Stevie's favorite part was "everything", but especially when his teacher broke five cement blocks. Ouch. I was exhausted afterward, and took a nap for a couple hours.

I love naps. Too bad I can't take one until spring comes.

our sickly spring break

2011-03-30T07:53:00.001-07:00

So, after feeling kind of like I was getting sick for a couple weeks, I finally succumbed yesterday. I joined (and possibly surpassed) Fundad and the boy in their congestion/cold thing. I'm miserable.

We're supposed to go up north tomorrow night, and I'm hoping to feel marginally better by then. In the meantime I'm having massive guilt over not being able to enjoy Stevie's spring break.

Sigh.

A few fun things...

Stevie had his spring concert last week. It was very well done. The theme was "A child of the world", and Steven had a short speaking part which he was very good at. Pictures...

From Winter 2011

We've also discovered "forts" and the magical time you can have doing mundane activities as long as you are in your fort. Here's the fort we made in the homework room:

From Winter 2011

And here's Stevie inside the fort playing with his flashlight.

From Winter 2011

I like to build forts. I don't however like to sleep in forts. :-(

my Irish root

2011-03-17T16:13:00.000-07:00

I have one claim to Irish blood, which I take full advantage of all year, not just on St. Patrick's Day. In fact, one of the first conversations that I had with Fundad was about whether or not he was Irish. Randy's strong Irish background comes from his Mother's side of the family (the McKernan/Boyle/Tierney side). My sole Irish connection comes from my great, great grandmother, Mary O'Malley Parker. Mary's parents, Michael and Margaret, came from Ireland before Mary was born in 1850. Mary may have had an elder sister born in New York in 1848, but if so, Sarah died within the first 12 years of her life. Losing children in their early years wasn't uncommon back then.

Michael spelled his name a variety of ways, making it more difficult to research. For example, in Waukesha in 1850, his name is O'Maly. In 1855, in Beaver Dam, his name is O'Mealia. In 1860, it's Michael O. Maily. In 1870, it's O'Maley, in 1880 in Sauk County it's O'Malia, and when he died in 1894 it's O'Malley. He had at least 10 children, starting in 1848 with Sarah, and with the youngest Thomas, born in 1869. In 1860, the 9-member family was living in a shanty in Beaver Dam, so I suspect that they didn't have much. Michael seems to have always farmed, and most of the boys in the family also worked on farms either at home or at neighboring farms. Neither Michael nor Margaret could read, although the children could. The children, both sons and daughters, were sent to school until their early teens. Michael died in 1894 in Woodland Township, Sauk County. His wife Margaret followed within a year. Presumably they were buried in Sauk County, although I haven't located them yet. One of their sons settled their medical debts and life went on.

Mary wed James Levi Parker in 1867, before her youngest brother was born (another not uncommon thing, back in the day). James Levi Parker came from Rhode Island, and his family had been in the States for generations. (He died in Montana years later, making a near-crosscountry trip during his lifetime.) The two seem to have had a very happy marriage, with 10 children living into their teen years. Mary died when she was 37, bearing her stillborn 11th child, named James Levi. Her obituary read, "Mrs. Parker was the mother of ten children, eight of whom survive to mourn her loss. She was the light and heart of her home, indulgent and kind to her children, and the joy of her husband. Her funeral was attended on Wednesday, at one P.M., and her burial at the cemetery near the schoolhouse in District No. 1, Calamus, by the side of her daughter, who died only last June. The child born which caused her death, died with her."

Interestingly, Mary O'Malley Parker appears to now be buried in Oakwood Cemetery in the Parker plot with her daughter Myrtie, other children and her husband. Possibly she was moved there in 1926 when her husband died and his body was sent back to Beaver Dam for burial.

I'd like to learn much more about my O'Malley heritage. The majority of the O'Malley clan was from County Mayo in Northern Ireland, but there were a few families in other counties as well. I've been unable to find the O'Malleys on passenger lists, and Margaret O'Malley's maiden name was never recorded on the birth records of her children. I'm not sure how long the family resided in New York before coming to Wisconsin. Many questions! Thank goodness - it gives me something to do instead of worrying about the "state of the state" here in Wisconsin.

things I'm doing to cope with the state of the state

2011-03-03T19:13:00.000-08:00

I tend to worry. So, in order to keep my sanity, I've devised some methods to keep from dwelling on the state of the state. (I'll just say that I can't believe anyone can undervalue education to the extent of the governor.) I haven't been sleeping well, so many of these activities are happening during the wee hours...

1. Solitaire. Syfy.com has a great solitaire deck with pictures of famous scifi characters.
2. Coloring. Nothing better to get your mind off things.
3. Completing Lego sets. I'm almost done with the medieval village.
4. Genealogy and more genealogy. Give me a name, any name, and I'll research it.
5. Watching dinosaur movies, especially the ones with Nigel Marvin. Prehistoric Park is my favorite.
6. Watching Stargate SG-1. I'm on season 5
7. Playing cards with the boy. Snap & Go Fish tonight.

Oddly enough, I can't read. Tried. Failed. sigh.

my new car!

2011-03-02T17:01:00.000-08:00

Big day...

2010-12-20T20:54:00.000-08:00

Big day today...

Stevie had an appointment with his ear doctor at the children's hospital. It went swimmingly - he flirted with the nurses, who all wished him an early happy birthday and teased him right back. His ear test was extremely successful, and we've decided to put off his ear surgery for at least a year. If we wait a few years, evidently they can do the surgery through the ear, rather than having to make an incision. This sounds like a good idea to me. :-)

We picked up cupcakes from the Pig for a birthday treat at school. Stevie distributed the half-dozen extra cupcakes to some of his favorite teachers, including his kindergarten teacher from last year (she was really great). The cupcakes had green and gold sprinkles and we put little sugar footballs on them as well.

I had a dentist appointment, which also went swimmingly - although it wasn't nearly as much fun as the ear appointment. I was planning to finish up my Xmas shopping tonight, but given the road conditions I decided to drive straight home. That drive took significantly longer than expected, so it was a good call. I'm wondering if the schools will be delayed tomorrow...

After my drive home, I got back in the car and took the boy to karate, where he did quite well, despite the fact that he seemed a bit overzealous in his pair work. I felt sorry for the boy he was sparring with. Stevie was a bit exuberant.

When we got home, Randy had made us some spaghetti and garlic bread. I ordered some last minute Xmas presents over the internet, we watched a bit of the Bears/Vikings game, and then I put the boy to bed. We read a collection of Curious George stories - and odd choice for Stevie, but very enjoyable for me!

on our way

2010-10-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

We've been in San Diego for three days, and I'm just now getting to the computer. We've been having a great time, falling asleep early, and rising early for breakfast & hottubbing. Stevie was utterly unphased by his first plane ride. I expected some anxiety or nervousness, but he took it all in stride. He liked looking out the plane window at night - "It's beautiful!", he breathed. The city lights below were beautiful, and we were able to see the mountains while it was still light, which was also great. Stevie played with Randy's iPod a bit, and looked at some books & mazes I'd brought for a surprise. Toy Story 3 was the in-flight movie so that kept him busy for a while.

We were able to find our way from the airport to the resort without too many problems, but the boy was very tired. We kept him up for pizza and quesadillas from room service and then he crashed on my shoulder. All in all, an awesome journey.

crazy hair day

2010-09-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

I've finally found something that I can do well with hair...

my "sit and relax" night

2010-09-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

Tonight was supposed to be my "sit and relax" night. My "put up your feet" night. My "have a glass of wine night".

But, regrettably, unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, it wasn't.

I say that with a smile.

Fundad spent the evening at the rehearsal for his niece's wedding, which we're attending tomorrow. The boy spent the evening at a karate fun night, where about 30 kids ran, played, watched a movie and ate pizza under the watchful eye of Stevie's karate instructor - an awesome guy, and not just because he managed to amuse my son for the evening. :-)

I was hoping to hang out and catch up on my tv. Instead I ironed - the boy's outfit, with an extra shirt (just in case), and Randy's suit. My outfit didn't need ironing, thank goodness. I'm not exactly sure that I really like the dress I'm wearing - but it's new and I'm wearing it, regardless of how much I like it. After ironing, I did some laundry. Then I wrapped a wedding gift (a large, bulky present that presented a wrapping challenge). About that time I realized that I wasn't feeling well, and that I hadn't had dinner. Well, I'd had an ice cream snack with the boy and some cheese popcorn, but that really wasn't doing it. So I had soup and crackers... and then my mom called. So I talked to her for about 10 minutes, and then it was time to pick up the boy.

Stevie had an awesome time. They played karate dodgeball four times and there were lots of tired kids.

I love tired kids.

When we got home, I used a GI Joe video to bribe Stevie to take a shower; he was sweaty and mildly gross. He fell asleep after about 15 minutes. And that was my night. I did some genealogy research on the internet, blogged and now I'm going to pop on my ipod and go to sleep.

I love sleep almost as much as tired kids.

big weekend

2010-09-05T20:17:00.001-07:00

The boy is fast asleep. We're in a lovely hotel in Decorah Iowa. It's really beautiful, and I believe that it's on a historic register of some sort. Stevie is sleeeping next to me, while Fundad finishes socializing with his brothers. The boy was too tired to stay at the wedding reception. The reception is right around the corner from our room, so it wasn't a big deal.

To be fair, the child has had a really busy weekend. Friday night he had a sleepover at a friends, followed by football practice. Then we drove to the Iowa County Fair and spent the afternoon there. I regret to say that the Tilt-A-Whirl got the better of me. I had a jacket and vest on, and was a little too warm. I've never felt so dizzy or awful on a ride. Perhaps I'm showing my age... sigh.

From Iowa County Fair

Then we went to Aunt Elaine's house for a sleepover. Stevie and I went to bed around 10 pm, while Fundad stayed up for the Badger game. (They won by 20 points.)

This morning we drove to Decorah and attended the wedding (beautiful) and reception. Fundad had more fun than is evident in this picture... and Stevie was originally more dressed up.

From Jenny's wedding

Tomorrow we'll drive back home, perhaps with a stop at "Spook Cave" or the Effigy Mound National Monument.

all by myself

2010-09-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

The boy is at a sleepover tonight. It's a nice thing for him. We've known the family for several years, and Randy has coached both of their boys (1st and 2nd graders). He (Stevie) was very excited. He's feeling extremely independent and grown up.

In addition the boy walked home all by himself from school. He's been talking about it since the first day of school (OK, two days ago). He's also very excited about walking to school by himself. Randy was home this afternoon and made sure that he was visible, without appearing to obviously watch Stevie. I guess Stevie walked part way home with the neighbor and her sister, which was also a bit of an adventure.

He's coming home tomorrow morning at about 9:30 am. He laughed at me this morning and said "You're going to miss me!" I wasn't home after school, so I probably will miss him. On the other hand, it'll be really nice to wake up with only two people in our bed, instead of two people and one spinning, energetic little boy. Yes, he's even energetic in his sleep. :-)

just drop me off!

2010-09-02T09:19:00.001-07:00

Heard this morning when Fundad dropped the boy off at school. "Just drop me off Dad."

How will I ever get that nice cozy feeling with his teacher if I can't walk to his room once in a while?

On the other hand, I'll get to work a lot sooner!

Last year the child was convinced that school couldn't start without me. I had to hang on the playground with him, meet his friends, walk in when the bell rang, etc. Sometimes this was a royal pain... but on the other hand, all of his friends knew me by name, which was kind of fun.

I guess he's growing up!

cool things we've done lately

2010-08-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

Visited Noah's Ark at Wisconsin Dells, where we went on a bunch of rides, including at least one (Dark Voyage) that I was quite scared on! The boy was not scared. :-)

Hosted a sleepover with one of the boy's friends. This included a couple football games in the backyard featuring Brian Urlacher (Owen) and Brett Favre/Aaron Rodgers (Stevie). A glow-in-the-dark football was in play. And the boys slept in the camper with Fundad. Lots of fun!

Started football practice - the boy is playing flag football this fall. So far he seems to be enjoying the practices.

Attended the Badger Football Family Fun Day. OK, this was the boy and Fundad. I went shopping. :-)

I went shopping! With the boy and Fundad one day, and all by myself the other. I don't remember the last time I went shopping. I even bought a dress and two skirts.

Went out to eat at Red Robin, which was very good!

Decided that we're going to San Diego at the end of October. We haven't actually booked it yet, but I think we're going. We want to see Legoland, Sea World, USS Midway, and Randy's Uncle Joe.

Fundad and I had hoped to go on a date - haven't had one of those in an especially long time. That hasn't happened - but we'll be able to spend some time together at the upcoming football games. My tickets were moved in the row just below Fundad's, which makes logistics and sharing tickets much much easier!

snoozin' at the zoo

2010-08-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the Milwaukee Zoo and stayed overnight. We pitched a tent and spent the evening with the zoo to ourselves (and a bunch of other families). My sister and her family came along. We had a good time. Stevie and Jimmy slept together in the double airbed and looked incredibly cute together.

Here's the group (except me):

From Snoozin' at the Zoo

High points were, of course, the animals:

From Snoozin' at the Zoo

and the dinosaur exhibit:

From Snoozin' at the Zoo

which included this cool fossil to dig out:

From Snoozin' at the Zoo

toy migrations

2010-08-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

Last week, Stevie and his babysitter decided to move the toyroom to the basement. Fundad helped, and within a few days, the vast majority of the boy's toys migrated downstairs. We have a large finished basement, so this was fine with us. Lots of new toy mashups have developed from the move. The other night, the Lego Coast Guard ship and helicopter crossed the Atlantic to the ice planet of Hoth where an Imperial base and a Rebel base were battling (also Lego). The other afternoon, the Hot Wheels, assorted other vehicles and the army men invaded the Playmobil castle, taking virtually all of the knights and vikings into custody, and eventually moving into the castle itself.

I find this amusing. I like the empty toy room. We'd eventually like to renovate the kitchen, and combine it with the toy room (which was the dining room). For now, we thought we'd look for some sort of work area so that the boy can do his homework. And maybe so I could have some project space for puzzles & my other crafty stuff. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the ability to walk through the room, which was often impossible before.

back to school days

2010-08-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Back-to-School night for the local elementary school. We paid fees, filled out forms, and had the boy's photo taken. I'd not heard of taking school pictures before school started until we moved here. But it really works. The kids are relaxed, the parents are with them, and we get the photos earlier. The boy will be in first grade, and I'm still waiting for the tearful "it's gone so fast" reaction.

Sometimes I think that I must be really odd.

I have noticed that the boy is far more in tune with Fundad than with me. I hope that this passes, and I seem able to not worry about it for now. He likes to make fun of me - a habit which I squelch when necessary. He also likes to try to jump and wrestle with me, which is another thing I try to discourage.

Hopefully, Stevie is looking forward to school; I believe he told someone tonight that he was. He is excited about meeting his new teacher - as are we.

my mom rocks

2010-08-09T19:42:00.000-07:00

A while back, I purchased two t-shirts for the boy. One said "Dad's my All-Star" and the other said "My Mom Rocks!". The boy was thrilled to have the former, but refused to have anything to do with the latter. I laughed at first, but after a while I was dismayed.

I liked the shirt.

And the boy likes rock and roll.

So what was the problem?

He wouldn't tell me, but just laughed and refused to wear the shirt. A couple times I insisted and he threw a fit. A couple times I tried to sneak it on him when he wasn't paying attention, but he noticed.

So I finally gave up, and gifted the shirt to my godson & nephew, Jimmy. He immediately wore it and looked cute as a button. Obviously his mom rocks.

Stevie took one look at the above photo and said "My mom? She does NOT rock!". Urgh. Sometimes little boys are annoying... and sometimes they aren't. While we were on vacation, the two of them had a fantastic time.

From Forest Lake, 2010

back to work

2010-08-04T19:54:00.000-07:00

The only problem with vacations is that one must return from them. I'm fighting the post-vacation blues. I miss taking my time with dinner, and not having to drive, and not having to be somewhere all the time. It is nice to be back in a routine though, I guess. Stevie is happy to be back with his toys!

I'm hitting the busy part of work. And I fear that I don't know the half of it. I have a bunch of website projects to finish up, most of which (but not all) are almost done. I have meetings, meetings and more meetings. I'm helping a colleague set up a new computer lab after the eight-week session of summer courses. And there are just a wide variety of other things... training students, troubleshooting "stuff", etc.

In the meantime, there are head lice at the daycare we normally use. Luckily we left before the little buggers appeared, and I hope to keep the boy out until they are gone. We're good until next Tuesday, thanks to our wonderful babysitter. Today the sitter cleaned up the extensive play area in the basement. The boy says that he didn't help. I hope that he did.

I found a couple photos from at the Brewer game -- first, the boy posing with his favorite sausage:

And this picture is right after we returned from the first aid station at the stadium. A wasp (bee?) bit Stevie just before the game started. He cried and cried, so I took him out of the stands and a helpful employee directed us to the first aid station. The nurse applied salve and gave us an ice pack, which was very effective.

sleepy and fuzzy

2010-07-20T19:45:00.000-07:00

The boy fell asleep on my shoulder just now. We were in the middle of reading a flap book about the states. Each flap displayed the capital and the date of statehood for the state. And the outline of the state which could be matched to a map. It must have bored the boy, although he was the one that picked it out.

Before the state book we read the names of all the 2nd graders in his school yearbook. And we picked out siblings of his classmates, and matched twins (there were several). We also read a Wonders of the World flap book. It seems to have been a non-fiction, reference book sort of night. Stevie read me a John Deere book that we've had for ages. He's coming along with his reading. Every night, he reads me one and I read him three.

I love it when Stevie falls asleep on my shoulder because I can rub his fuzzy head. His crewcut is growing out quickly. Randy told him that he could get another, but I want him to let his hair grow out for the fall. I want a family picture with my cute little boy, not my mini-Marine - although the latter is cute also. His haircut reminds me of when he was a baby. His hair is soft, and it smells good - even though he hates to get it washed!

awesome Thursday night!

2010-07-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

I feel like the weekend is over, but it's just beginning. Last night we went to see Star Wars in Concert, and had a great time. Great. The music was wonderful. We were about 8 rows back, directly in front of the violins. It has been years since I heard a symphony orchestra, and I found it mesmerizing.

The concert features clips from all six movies, accompanied by the music of Star Wars. There was a fantastic light and laser show, and an exhibit of movie props and costumes. The narration was done by Anthony Daniels, the actor that played C3P0. He was awesome - drawing on storytelling abilities to pull even non-fan attendees into the story.

We took the boy and my nephew Matthew - and I think that they really enjoyed themselves. I know that I did!

Happy Fourth!

2010-07-04T20:54:00.000-07:00

We've been having a great fourth of July weekend. We've been able to spend a lot of time together - both in activities and just relaxing. There were lots of high points! We saw TWO excellent fireworks displays. Tonight's was spectacular. We played games, ate lots of good food (which I didn't have to prepare), went for bike rides, saw friends, and just had fun. We had excellent shaved ices (we called them sno-cones) every day in different flavors - rainbow, blue pacific, rock-n-roll, sunrise, citrus something... and more. Thursday night Fundad and I even had a beer at the beer garden. Yesterday we had an adventure on the boat, and this morning the boy and I were in the kid's parade, which preceded the regular parade.

Our town does an EXCELLENT parade.

The boy has been quite good - even with the late nights that we've been having. Last night, we were all exhausted after our boat ride. He was probably the least tired, since his part of the adventure consisted of a 90-minute nap on the floor of the boat. After we came home, he and I decorated the bike & tagalong for the parade - crepe paper in the spokes of the tires, metallic red/white/blue fringes on the bikes, and flags in several places. It looked fantastic! We rode most of the parade route, and then circled back to find Fundad. He had put our chairs along the parade route earlier that morning. Stevie came home from the parade with a huge bag of candy.

Needless to say, we brushed our teeth really well tonight.

Tonight we spent the evening at the park watching baseball, eating, and talking to friends. The fireworks were incredible - we think that they may have started early and sped up the presentation so that everyone was home before the rain. If that's true, I'm just fine with it. It poured just shortly after we went in the house and I wouldn't have wanted to be sitting on our blanket at that moment.

it's just a phase

2010-06-22T04:01:00.001-07:00

The general consensus of parents I know indicates that our children are going through a phase. At least, we hope that's all it is. It seems to be hitting 6-year old boys most, although I don't see a ton of girls. Maybe girls are just better behaved? This phase includes the certainty that said boy is extremely cool, and knows it all. It is often combined with a desire for sunglasses and baseball hats, and is accompanied by a "need" for cool things often associated with sports and electronics. And of course, a need to show that said boy's parents are not the boss of him.

I am quite hopeful that this phase will not continue into pre-teen and adulthood, although other parents profess wariness on this issue. I still believe that somewhere deep inside our child is the sweet boy that ate powdered sugar donut holes in his diaper on the floor.

Despite all of the above, we did have a good weekend for Father's Day. We spent Saturday at Devil's Lake, where we had a nice picnic lunch - although the boy was not hungry and didn't like what we brought. Then we bullied the boy into a hike, which he vehemently did not want to go on... although once we started he had lots of fun. After the hike, we got cold refreshments at the concession stand - but Stevie's popsicle was too big and melted on him. I gave him a towel and reassured him that all stains would come out of clothes and skin. Then we pushed him toward the beach, despite the fact that he was freezing and was not going to go into the water. Luckily he unbent enough to build a great sand castle and walk into the lake up to his waist. After the park, we played mini-golf. That went wonderfully, although we had to restrain the boy from playing ahead and ignoring turns. And then we went to Culvers for dinner and DQ for dessert... where unluckily enough they had run out of chocolate ice cream. A very tired little boy's face crumpled. "But," suggested the nice guy at the window, "I can doubledip a vanilla cone for you!" This was immediately dubbed the Stevie Special, and was greatly enjoyed by the boy... until he handed it off about 2/3 of the way through and fell asleep. We drove home (still sleeping), unpacked the van (still sleeping), brought the boy in (still sleeping), and relaxed for about an hour (still sleeping). Finally we got the boy up to bed and he slept until the next morning.

On Sunday we went to the zoo. But that's a story for another day.

From Devils Lake, June 19,2010

ah yes, it's summer

2010-06-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

The boy and I are decompressing after a full day outside. Well, it wasn't exactly a full day but we did have fun.

This morning we were inside - I wasn't feeling well and the boy was content to be inside. We played army guys, I did laundry, we played Wii, and I worked out. Then we hopped on the bike to visit the library, where I picked up a book. Off to the sub shop for subs and ice cream. Then we went toward home. On the way we went past four of his friend's houses... but no one was available. One was at a movie, one was sick, one was eating lunch, and one was taking a nap with his sister. So we headed home and called another friend, who was gone. Stevie left him a message and sounded sad. (This is where I berate myself for not being more fertile.)

Then I suggested playing baseball, which was a huge hit. Stevie has a brand-new equipment to try - a pair of ball pants, cleats, a batting helmet and even some new balls. I pitched to him and it was fun. Then we put up the tent, which he's been wanting to do for ages. By the time we were done, we were exhausted and the sun had come out. It was hot. So we laid down in the tent and nibbled on snacks and drank water.

Finally we decided it was time to go in, where it was wonderfully cool and refreshing. We're eating dinner. Stevie has mac & cheese, cukes, green beans and chicken nuggets. He's eaten the cukes and green beans, and is ignoring everything else. He has a request in for carrots. (He's a good vegetable eater.)

The boy is hoping to sleep in the tent tonight. I'm not against this in theory, but we'll have to see how the evening goes. I think that he's really tired and I'm not 100% yet. It might still be fun though.

sleeper

2010-06-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

So... Fundad is home from a successful fishing trip. The boy missed him terribly. He called Fundad one night and left a quiet "good night Dad" on the voice mail. Last night he talked to Fundad, then he called Grandma. Then, seemingly still needing to talk, he called Uncle Mike on two different numbers. Eventually he did get to talk to Aunt Eileen. This morning the boy was in a foul mood. Funtime with Mom had worn thin, and he wasn't happy about anything. It was his first day at summer daycare and he wasn't happy about that either!

This afternoon though, Fundad was back. Stevie saw him as he chased after a big ball in the school gym, and instantaneously changed his trajectory to barrel into Fundad. He was so so so happy to see him (or so I hear). It must have really tired him out, because shortly after the two got home, Stevie sacked out on the couch. He's been sleeping for well over two hours now. Sigh. It's summer, right?

his first library card

2010-06-07T17:05:00.000-07:00

Today Stevie and I went to the library and picked up Stevie's first library card.

It was very exciting.

He wandered around looking for the perfect books, and ended up with The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, The 1999 Guinness Book of World Records, and The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers movie. Then he wandered around and kept lookin for the most perfect, more interesting book. He didn't seem to find it, but was happy enough with the books he did find.

We also picked up a sheet to record the books that we read. Reading is recorded in 15-minute segments, and the time can be spent with him reading to me or me reading to him. I may not tell the boy that - I'd like to see him practice reading. He doesn't have a ton of confidence yet.

how does he do it?

2010-05-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

I attended another karate class tonight. It's still May so I can go free. Really this was my first class - the one prior to tonight was an introduction for any of the women that were interested in the free trial.

It was exhausting. At one point I thought I was going to faint - my head was buzzing, but I got over it. It was really a work out. I knew it was, but I didn't quite realize how much of a workout it was. I'm wondering how Stevie manages it twice a week. Certainly he has the energy of youth, but still.

I haven't decided if I'll actually take karate. If I do it'll certainly get me into better shape. It'll be quite a challenge.

summertime is coming

2010-05-17T19:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, the boy may be able to read, but he'd still rather be read to. I find that comforting and disappointing at the same time.

I've been up since 4:30 am or so, so it's not surprising that I'm confused. Stevie woke up in the wee hours with a bad headache. He did make it to school this morning, albeit after gym and half of music. Tonight his head hurt when he moved it sharply - not a good sign. I suspect a sinus infection.

Hopefully we'll get back to a routine tomorrow. I'm feeling a little apprehensive about things. Nothing in particular but just a general anxiety. It may just be summer approaching. We've been doing a lot of planning for Stevie's care and activities, and I hope it all pans out. I always feel a little guilty about summer. I wish I could give him an unplanned, relaxing vacation, but I can't. He loves his afterschool program, which is what he'll be in all day for the summer. But it feels wrong to me. Me and many other mommies, I suspect. Perhaps it's less that I don't want him in after school, and more that I wish I could have the summertime to be with him and do fun things.

It should feel like summer this week - the temperature is suppose to reach 78 degrees. That'll be a nice change.

he's reading!

2010-05-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

Tonight the boy sat down next to me with a book. I was watching a recording of America, off of the History Channel. "Read me a story," I said whimsically, wondering if I'd be able to postpone book reading until after the show finished. To my surprise, he opened the book and...

began reading.

Yup. Moving right along through the words and sentences. It was a Level 2, Beginning to Read book from Lego called Troll Attack. It was great! He was great! I helped with maybe a half-dozen words - appeared was one, mysterious was another. But he was marvelous.

I knew that he knew a lot of words, but he hasn't wanted to read at home, and I was OK with that. I figured it would come with time, and I still like to read to him anyway. But I was so pleased to hear him go through the sentences. He'll gain a larger vocabulary, and become more confident with time. I just purchased two summer reading packs that were recommended for incoming first graders, so we're ready for summer reading - hopefully we can fit it in between Little League and karate, and everything else.

I missed a work gathering tonight. I rarely go to them because I can't justify missing time at home. Between the commute and the boy's bedtime, there isn't time to fit everything in. If I'd been out this evening, I wouldn't have been home to hear Stevie's first spontaneous reading. It's well worth it.

no... you can't help paint

2010-05-05T19:03:00.000-07:00

We're still working on our upstairs bathroom. We ordered a cabinet about 3 weeks ago, which should be in soon. Fundad still has to match the existing stain and stain the piece. The countertop came in, I believe, and we still have to pick out faucets and hardware.

There's also the question of color. The countertop is "moss" - a soft variable green with flecks of color in a natural palette. Stevie came up with a brilliant suggestion - inspired even, to his way of thinking. Yesterday while in the bathtub he said, "Mom!!!!!! I know how we should paint the bathroom!!"

I of course, came in, giving this all-important topic the attention it deserved. "Green!" he said. "Well," I replied, "green is good. The countertop will be green, and the floor tiles are green with grey grouting."

"Yeah!!! We'll have green and gold for the Packers, and green and black for the Army!"

I looked at him, wondering if I dared laugh. I like it when the boy has opinions about things like decorating. It amuses me. This color choice amused me a lot. I have visions of camouflage on one wall, and a big "G" on another. Maybe we could move the steel Lambeau Field G from the garage to the bathroom!

Not.

The idea does make me giggle though. I wish that the boy had his own bathroom that I could decorate in camouflage - it would be a lot of fun. I'll bet they even make camo shower curtains. Alas, it is not to be.

fruitful and fruitless searching

2010-04-28T21:01:00.000-07:00

Before I came home to help my mom out, I spent some time with a microfilm holding church records from Ottenbach Germany. This is the area that I suspected my great great grandfather emigrated from. Although I haven't been able to trace his arrival here, there is another Sonnentag family living nearby that was easy to trace. So I took a chance that they were related. The microfilm held ledgers from the early-mid 1800s. Since I know a bit of German and have done keying (in English) from the late 1800s, I thought that this would be tough but do-able.

Ha.

As it turned out, I needed a crash course in Old German script and handwriting. I've attended to that need since my initial visit, so the next microfilm (I have 2) should be easier.

When I looked at the first pages of my microfilm, I almost laughed out loud. I had no idea what it said - no idea at all. The layout wasn't much help. There were pages with tables on facing pages and pages with tables stretching across pages. There were paragraphs of script to decipher. There were notes here and there in the margins and the header. Some pages looked like family documentation, but it was really really hard to tell.

I started paging through, reminding myself that this was a Learning Opportunity. If nothing else, I'd have a better idea what to expect next time. At the top of page four, I noticed the name Michael. "Huh, I should look at that," I thought, wryly imagining the probability of it actually being a record of my great great grandfather.

Ha, again. It was he. Michael Sonnentag, written in Old German script, with a not-so-neat hand, as seen below:

Eventually, although I know I missed some things, I found birth, baptism and confirmation records. I also found out that the nearby Sonnentag was indeed a brother to my g-g-grandfather. I found a wealth of information about the many many siblings in the family, many of whom died young. It was a bonanza of information.

I still have to go through the rest of that microfilm, and another. I can't wait until I can get there, although time is in short supply. I am putting it to good use though. Mom and I are searching for some old family photographs from my father's side. The pictures are, according to my mom, in a white envelope, which is in a manila envelope, which is in a drawer. Now, to figure out which one!

post-op blues

2010-04-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

I've just finished my third day here at my mom's. Today was the first of her outpatient therapy appointments and the first of her post-op doctor appointments. I feel like we've reached a small goal, although not perhaps with the progress that my mom would have hoped. As the therapist said, "the surgery is the easy part". We have 9 more therapy appointments scheduled and I think that Mom will be marking off each day.

I'm trying to be useful and I'm doing lots of organizing - making lists of medications, shopping, suggesting things that might be helpful, etc. Tomorrow I'm reading the manual for the thermostat so that I can set the time for daylight savings, and make some adjustments in the schedule. And I have a list of other things to do as well. My husband will not believe this, but I do have some organizing genes. My goal is, by Friday, to have a list of exercises that Mom can do twice a day, with time set aside for icing her knee and using the compressors. And of course, to convince Mom to do them. I don't think that she can quite believe the amount of work left before that knee is usable. I also think that she's skeptical of their claims that in 4-6 weeks, she'll be walking much much better. So hopefully she sees some progress soon - and less pain.

Stevie and Fundad are doing great. Last night we had a videochat - Stevie was busy admiring his image on the screen. He danced around and told us a little about his day. I think that my mom found it interesting. The sound was a little off - we all sounded like we'd been breathing helium - but we were understandable. I didn't call home tonight. I actually thought of it after 9 pm, but figured that Stevie was in the middle of falling asleep. I wondered out loud if that made me a bad mom/wife, and my mom laughed at me. So hopefully not.

I found some fun things for the boy today - two books from How to Train your Dragon, and a Prince Valiant animated video series.

So tomorrow, one doctor appointment, hopefully at least one good therapy session at home, a call to the guys tomorrow night to see how things are going, and fixing the thermostat. Oh yeah, and working. Today I only got in 1.25 hours - yesterday it was 3. Tomorrow I'd like to get 3 to 4 in. I feel like my plans are pretty ambitious. Hopefully I can get everything done.

long days...

2010-04-23T05:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, which was supposed to be a simple check on my mom, discussion with her physical therapist, and survey of her home in preparation for her return from the hospital, turned into a marathon. Did you ever have one of those days?

My mom had knee replacement surgery. It went well, her knee was really bad inside, and now she has some weeks of recovery. The nurses say that she's doing well, although there is more pain and swelling than she expected. She comes home on Saturday, and I'm spending next week at the family home, where I'll ferry her to doctor and therapist appointments, establish a regimen of therapy exercises, and work in between.

But I digress. Yesterday I went to visit my mom. I was on track to be there by 10 am, about 15 minutes out of my destination, when without warning all the dials on my dashboard went to zero, followed by the airbag light displaying with a gentle chime to remind me that something had gone awry. The radio died, and I sat in the car, my chief thought being... "I wonder if the engine is still running." It wasn't a pleasant feeling, and I tapped the brake to establish yes, the engine was still running, and no, things weren't working right. The brake tap caused all of the dials to wildly swing back and forth from zero to maximum. Luckily I was near an exit and I eased the car off the highway, down the exit, into town and to a gas station. At this point I could hear the engine coughing and felt lucky to have made it off the street. Right around this point, I also discovered that I'd left my cell phone at home. Sigh. I didn't know my husband's work number, my son's after school phone number (which would have my husband's cell) or really, any number that could be helpful. These numbers were all conveniently programmed into my cell/home phones so I didn't have to memorize them. (Time to put a phone list in my purse.)

So this was the beginning of my day. I let the car rest, restarted it, and after some test drives continued the final 15 minutes to home. I made it to the hospital, lunched with my mom, talked to her therapist, and conversed with a friend of hers that dropped in. Then I stopped at my mom's house to borrow her cell phone (which she really doesn't use) and started home.

And I almost made it.

About half-way through, 10 miles before Sun Prairie, the car died. I let it rest for about 15 minutes, restarted it and proceeded about a mile when it died again. Then it didn't start. That's not a good feeling. So I called Fundad, who picked up the boy and drove the hour to where I was. He tried a few things and eventually decided to charge the battery. Success! (Note to self: battery fails suddenly and completely in this car. No warning signs will be present.)

So Fundad drove the car about 10 miles, at which point it died. We recharged and Fundad decided to just fix this problem... and we headed to Walmart. And it died partway there. Luckily we were able to park, headed off to Walmart in the van, purchased a battery and returned.

Stevie and I walked a block to DQ for dinner while Fundad fixed the car. DQ was mobbed, evidently they're having a Blizzard special. We eventually made it home, using the backroads. I left the hospital at 3 pm and returned home at 8 pm. Sigh. Thank goodness for Fundad, and the fact that my mom doesn't use her cell phone.

Nebuchadnezzar or Zeke?

2010-04-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

My son wants to change his name. He's undecided between Nebuchadnezzar and Zeke. Fundad told him that Zeke was short for Ezekiel, which he wasn't thrilled about. He really likes Nebuchadnezzar, except that he has problems saying it. He's inquired about how one goes about changing their name, and suggested that I fill out the forms, since he wasn't sure how to spell Nebuchadnezzar. He's been practicing it... neb ook a nezzar.

He can say and spell Zeke.

He started getting giddy over this topic, wondering if he could change his name to "Ilostmyhead" and other even less memorable names. I told him that a judge would have to approve the name, and that names couldn't be naughty words. That led to an interesting conversation filled with naughty word exemptions... "Mom, I'm going to say this word, but it won't be naughty 'cuz I'm only saying it right now because I know that it's naughty."

And that led to a conversation about how sometimes naughty words are used in sports (example given: "You still suck" after a hockey goal), at which point I tossed in a short lesson about sportsmanship. One of the boy's friends plays league hockey and has provided a number of colorful expressions for our enjoyment. Said friend's sister has pointed out that many of these expressions are not nice in other situations. (Hoorah for the older sister.)

mommy days

2010-03-31T18:08:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm forgetting the little things again. We had off today, the boy & I, and I was remembering how fleeting these times are. This was a mommy day - a day when I feel like a mom, and not a working mom.

There's a huge difference.

I think that the five days off (with four more to go) is certainly the reason that I was feeling so free. With Fundad at work, Stevie and I had an eventful day. We played hard this morning - army, star wars, lego, and wii. We rode the tagalong to the local store, and visited with neighbors. We went to Stevie's all-time favorite toy store, where the new Playmobil catalog was finally in (we've been calling weekly), and made a long-awaited Playmobil purchase. Then we went to Dairy Queen (Stevie - chocolate ice cream dipped in chocolate, me - vanilla) and the playground. Most of the time at the playground was spent putting the Playmobil set together.

We met Fundad to see How to Train your Dragon, which we LOVED. All of us. It's a great movie with a great message for kids. Stevie was so caught up in it that he was exclaiming out loud in the theater, and talking back to the characters. We had to shush him. This was the boy's second 3D movie (we saw 3D Dinosaurs Live at the Field Museum yesterday) and he was in seventh heaven. I was thrilled to see him so engaged, and I thoroughly enjoyed my day.

impressions from a quick vacation...

2010-03-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

We came back this afternoon from a few days in Chicago. It was the first time that we'd tried to do something like this since the boy was born. By "like this", I mean that we planned on going places and even purchased tickets ahead of time. Normally when we've gone somewhere, we've intentionally left our plans very loose, and close to the place that we stayed at. Stevie tends to get sick very quickly. Too many times we've had things not work out because we had to come home early. But his health seems to be getting better - despite the fact that we've hit the official limit of "days off" allowed by his school. (We were told to not worry about it.)

But this time, he was OK. He claims that his favorite activity, despite the many things we did, was hottub-ing at the hotel (which we did only once, for about 20 minutes). The long list of activities includes going up the Sears Tower, eating at the Rain Forest Cafe, visiting the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium, purchasing fun things at the Lego Store, eating at a pretty good microbrewery, and visiting the Field Museum. I'd love to go back to the same area - the restaurants and shopping were diverse and within walking distance.

My favorite things were the Lego Store and the Field Museum. My least favorite thing was the Shedd - it was a mad house. I think (?) that the boy would pick the same if he could get over the hottub. The Lego Store had GREAT Lego sculptures, like this one...

From Chicago - Day 1

and this one...

From Chicago - Day 2

Happy Friday Eve!

2010-03-25T20:50:00.000-07:00

Only two more days until we go on our jaunt down to Chicago. I'm excited to go! I hope that it isn't too too busy - hopefully all of the spring break people won't decide to go to the Shedd and the Field Museum. There's a ton of things that I want to see - including the Planetarium - and Randy wants to take the boy to the Sears Tower.

I've found that living outside of town and commuting is terrible for my adventurous spirit. Probably having a child contributed to that as well - I've become far more protective of him and our home. Randy doesn't have that problem - it takes more than parenthood to slow him down... and his stamina is far better than my own. I suspect he gets tired of my need to sleep.

I just get tired. Although not as tired as I used to get.

I've had an awful time at work this week - even though my concentration is OK, everything I touch seems to break. My officemate laughed at me when I said that, and assured me that it wasn't so - but it sure felt that way. I shouldn't need a vacation - I've taken enough time of this year, but I must admit that I'm looking forward to one.

bathroom renovations

2010-03-24T20:33:00.000-07:00

We went shopping tonight! Fundad and I, that is, leaving the boy with a sitter at home. We used this very exciting opportunity to purchase the cabinetry and countertop for our bathroom update. Fundad always has the vision for our renovations, and I let him. I'm a good helper, but really don't have the time to ponder all of the pieces... and I don't like making all of the decisions.

We've been working on this renovation for a while. We had to replace the tub a couple of months ago because the old one cracked. We already have the radiant flooring and tiles ready to install. The floor tiles are a beautiful dark green stone, with grey veining. The countertop is "cactus", which is a soft mossy green with a glossy finish. Randy is going to stain the cabinetry to match the other cabinet in the bathroom. We've purchased one new lighting fixture, but we need another. And we also have to pick a color for the walls. Right now they're a great color, devised from a combination of leftover paint. I think that there was a lot of "Crisp Cracker" and "Light linen" in it. I love the color, but we'll never match it.

I wish that I had more time to devote to this project - I hate to put it all on Fundad and Uncle Steve. Although, they are the best at this sort of thing. :-)

St. Patricks Day at school

2010-03-17T17:04:00.000-07:00

So, when I took Stevie into his room this morning, there was a strange hush over the crowd. And when I got inside the room, I could see why.

The leprechauns had visited!

The room was trashed. I kid you not, trashed. It was on purpose - although at first glance you'd have thought it was vandals. Boxes everywhere were dumped out, magnets were taken off their boards, posters were off the walls, calendars were dismantled, little green footprints were everywhere... and even the toilet water was green.

It was hilarious.

The boy's teacher professed to know nothing about the chaos, but she had a funny smile on her face. I admire the lengths that the teachers go through to give the kindergartners a fun holiday. It really was a mess. Stevie said that it took only about 10 minutes to clean up, but it had to be longer. There was green glitter on the floor, green paint smeared on the bathroom stall doors, and more.

I so appreciate the teachers' willingness to take this extra step to engage the kids. It was really going "above and beyond" and I know that it makes Stevie look forward to school more each day.

bedtime stories & reflections

2010-03-10T20:30:00.000-08:00

Tonight the boy asked for a Putter story. Occasionally he still asks, and less often I oblige him. When he was younger, it was easier to make the stories up, and I seemed to take more pleasure in it. I think that now, since Stevie's older, I feel more responsibility for devising intriguing plots, contiguous characters, etc.

I probably shouldn't worry so much.

The boy also started correcting the story when I wasn't telling it the way he wanted. At that point I told him he should be telling the story, not me! Tonight he fell asleep after about 2 minutes into the tale, so the corrections never started. :-) It was nice to tell him a story again. It's been quite a while.

I think that when I look back on my life, these days will be among the most treasured. I just had a minor health scare that ended up being just that - only a scare. But it's reminded me of how precious this time is, when our child is still so dependent on Randy and I, and still thinks that we (his parents) are the center of the world.

I've been very lucky thus far in my life. I have a great husband who is helpful, supportive and a wonderful father. I have a beautiful, intelligent child who is confident and laughs a lot. I've had opportunities for travel and hobbies. I have family and in-laws that I enjoy, and (thank goodness) a job & health insurance. Despite all that, it can be easy to fall into worry - about what I could be doing better, or more, or extra. Maybe this has been a reality check about recognizing what is real, and important, and enough.

improvements

2010-02-21T17:40:00.000-08:00

Today was an odd day. More about that later.

I'm recovering from a short, severe version of what the boy had last week. I started coming down with it on Friday and felt miserable. So I slept a lot, took Nyquil at night, and today I'm not feeling half-bad. The boy sounds great... except that he's still coughing. His energy is back though, and we're able to confidently tuck him in at night without fearing that he'll choke to death.

So I'm still trying to figure out why things were odd. Maybe because tomorrow I go back to work for the first time since last Wednesday. I was a little worried about the weather, but it seems that the snow forecast has been drastically lessened. I was worried about the boy, but he is improving. I'm disappointed that we didn't all get to do the things we'd hoped to this weekend - the hockey game, birthday party, JV bball game here in Eville, the circus, or even Menards. And I think I'm a little tired of being in this house.

We've watched a lot of the Olympics. And I rented Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as a treat for the boy. He's been dying to see another Harry Potter. Hopefully all of the oddities will fade as we get back into normal life again next week. I have two medical appointments that I'm taking off for, but other than that things should be very routine. Hoorah!

sick AGAIN!

2010-02-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

The boy is sick again. Horrible cough, congestion, and now a fever. Last night we were up most of the night, for the second night in a row. The on-call physician suggested that we take the boy into Emergency (he was coughing so hard he couldn't breath), but it was midnight. By the time we'd get there, get help and get home it would likely have been around 4 am. And I don't think that the added stress of the trip and visit would have improved the boy's condition.

So we sat up on the recliners, alternated ibuprofen and sudafed, turned on the vaporizer, and waited. And eventually he stopped coughing so hard. He woke up with a fever, but we've knocked it down with more ibuprofen. He has an annual physical appointment today and I'm wondering if it's kosher to show up and say, "by the way, he's pretty ill and I'd like a strep test and ear check done...".

Tomorrow he's supposed to go to the men's Badger hockey game for a birthday party. He'll be terribly disappointed to miss it, although I don't really think he should go. I'll be terribly disappointed to not have a night off with Fundad, although our plans were only to go to Menards and look at bathroom renovation supplies.

Sigh.

I was hoping that our sick days were over.

100th day of school

2010-02-12T18:15:00.000-08:00

At the risk of aging myself, I'll confess that I'd never heard of celebrating the 100th day of school. Evidently this is well-known to those with more elementary school experience than myself. The boy came home with a crown that was decorated. They played number games that ended up with 100. And they colored 100-day hearts.

This is all very interesting to me. I wonder why it developed? I'd suspect that someone was trying to liven up the winter months... except that the 100th day falls right next to Valentine's Day and Lincoln's Birthday which are fairly exciting for elementary school kids.

I taught a "learning station" about Abraham Lincoln last week as a volunteer. I had three groups of about six kindergarteners. I followed a lesson plan that included reading a book about Lincoln and looking at pennies with magnifying glasses. I think the book was a bit too advanced for this age - just my opinion. It didn't hold their interest, and was a bit long for a half-hour lesson. The kids loved the pennies and magnifying glasses. I think one girl really needed glasses, she had an awful time reading the dates on the pennies. (I have personal experience with needing glasses at age five!)

I was really glad to be able to contribute by volunteering - I hope that I get to do it again. Stevie was thrilled about it - of course, you wouldn't know it by his behavior. :-) I hadn't volunteered in fall because we were all sick and work was so busy. Early in November Stevie asked me when I was coming for Learning Stations, and when I told him I hadn't signed up he burst into tears. So I made sure to sign up for Spring.

wee... and wii obsessions

2010-02-06T06:48:00.000-08:00

The boy is slightly obsessed these days with the Wii. Specifically with "Lego Star Wars Wii", as he pedantically recites it. He's finished going through the episodes and is now in "free play" where the sole goal is to collect all of the various studs/lives/lego pieces/minikits/etc. You can mix characters from different movies, you can purchase new characters and abilities at the cantina in Mos Eisley, and you can try to attain the coveted "100% Jedi" rating.

We're going to the Weier February birthday party this afternoon, so the boy was intent on getting some Wii time in before we leave. At 8 am, after watching the new Clone Wars from last night, he headed to the basement. As he went, he said, "Hey! I want someone downstairs with me!". Fundad and I were reclining on the couch and not terribly willing to move. "Why?" we asked. "Because," he said, "I want you to see how good I am." followed by the unspoken "duh." I think he wants to have Wii groupies.

waiting for the fire to die

2010-02-05T20:33:00.000-08:00

I'm lying in bed, wondering if I should go down and check the fire. I am comfortable, my eyes are tired, and I just did my obligatory quick surf before bed. I think that the fire probably died down.

Normally Fundad goes back down to make sure that the flames fade away, but I believe that he might have fallen asleep with the boy tonight. And so I wonder... will our house catch on fire? Would we make it out? Why didn't we have fire rehearsals like the boy suggested last year? I realize that the chances of us actually having a fire are slim. The fire should be almost out, we have the curtain across the fireplace, and Fundad takes care to stack the logs to the rear of the fireplace. I do have a tendency however, to expect the worse. If there are flurries, the roads will be awful and I'll have an accident. If I'm doing more than five miles over the posted speed limit, I will get caught. If I don't check and doublecheck my work, some horrible thing will happen.

So far I've avoided these scenarios.

Nevertheless, I think I'll go lay down on the couch and watch the fire go out. Definitively, absolutely, frigidly out.

my teeny tiny thoughts

2010-02-04T19:43:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things to do - don't laugh - is to go to book sales. I prefer library book sales, or the big community booksale held in my hometown. In the latter, a large building at the fairground is filled with tables, and the tables are covered with books. The books are normally arranged in rough order - a bunch of tables of fiction, divided in categories like Classics, Romance, Sci-fi, etc. Non-fiction in groups of Geography, Cooking, Textbooks and more. I love to browse tables of fiction. Usually I'm looking for old favorites rather than books I haven't read. Often I'm just filling out a collection by a favorite author.

I dragged the boy along to a library sale downtown last week. He was less than thrilled, which surprised me since he's usually excited about the prospect of getting something new. Perhaps the fact that we'd just purchased the unforgettable Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary made all of the used books fade away. :-) Anyway, there I found The Teeny-Tiny Woman. I remember reading this book as a child, and Stevie seems to really like it. Everything is "teeny-tiny" after we read it. Teeny-tiny Steve and teeny-tiny mom, reading the teeny-tiny book until they are just a teeny-tiny bit tired. Then they brush their teeny-tiny teeth, climb into the teeny-tiny bed, and lay their teeny-tiny heads down on the teeny-tiny pillow.

Tomorrow teeny-tiny mom is going to do volunteer teaching for four teeny-tiny kindergarten classes. I have teeny-tiny lesson plans to look at. I'm a teeny-tiny bit excited!

quite a day

2010-02-01T20:43:00.000-08:00

I'm having quite a day.

First, I was up with Stevie for most of the night. He had a cough, so we curled up in the recliner with a blanket. About 4:30 am, he wanted to move back to bed, at which point he started to talk and talk and talk. Fundad woke up and took him the boy downstairs, so that I could sleep. I woke up later - about three hours later. Stevie and I went to school... and realized that we forgot his backpack. So we drove home to pick up the backpack (we're only a block away). Then we went back to school and I walked Stevie inside. As he got settled and put everything away in his cubby, I realized that we didn't have his snowpants. So I ran out, drove home, got his snowpants, and drove back to school. He laughed at me when I came in with them. I said good-bye and started driving to work. I was about 30 minutes into my commute, when I looked at the passenger seat and saw Stevie's hat - a spiderman balaclava that he received for Christmas, and which he wears everyday. He LOVES his balaclava. So I called Fundad to verify that there wasn't another hat in his backpack - and there wasn't - and thinking of all of the coughing, I turned around and headed back to school. I walked in, waved the hat at the secretary and continued to Stevie's room. He was just coming back from gym when I found him outside his room. He took the hat, laughed at me, and I went back to the car.

At this point, I was REALLY in need of coffee. I went to the gas station, got coffee and a breakfast sandwich and started off to work once more. My trips back and forth would have been more enjoyable if I had a good audiobook to listen to. The one that I have now, The Furies of Calderon, is so-so. The author is Jim Butcher, author of the Harry Dresden mysteries, which make far better listening. Sorry Jim.

Now, it's 10:40pm. I'm working on two websites. One is done, I think. The other has too many people on it for me to make the changes I need to make. I can't believe that I'm still up.

'night Jimmy

2010-01-30T20:29:00.000-08:00

I just finished putting my nephew to bed. He was very good - he's almost always very good for me. He did have a tantrum with Fundad once, but all kids have tantrums periodically. It's a fact of life.

Jimmy was tired and quiet, and I wanted to cuddle him. He was tolerant of it, as if to say "OK, Aunt Sue, if you really have to rub my back, it's ok for a while... but when I move away you have to STOP." I hate to trespass on the dignity of a five-year old. :-) Jimmer and I read a Phineas and Ferb book. I was not familiar with the phenomenon that is Phineas and Ferb. (How have I missed this important piece of popular culture?) I may have to let Stevie watch the tv - the book was OK, fairly well-written and the characters were somewhat robust. For a five-year old's book, anyway.

We also read Dr. Seuss' "Did I ever tell you how lucky you are?", and a very old Star Wars mystery called the "The Maverick Moon". Both of those go back to my childhood (or early teen years) and were well-read at that time. It was really nice to spend the time with Jimmy. I think it's really important for children to know that there are other people - beside their parents - that love them and will support them.

funny stuff about boys

2010-01-23T20:44:00.000-08:00

There's lots of funny stuff that happens when you get a couple kindergarten-age boys together.

1. Lots of physical humor. jokes about farts, toots, burps. actually more forced burps and belches than I've heard since college.

2. Injuries. Stevie was smacked in the head by a wii bat. Luckily it's light plastic, but we gave him a bag of frozen mixed vegetables for his head. He looked at them and said, "Can we eat these tomorrow?" I thought Braedan was down for the count when he jumped from the bed to the airbed... and missed. But he bounced back up.

3. Warrior roleplaying. First the were spies, then they were shooters, then they were knights, and finally they were ninja kings.

4. Fighting. Steve's good sportsmanship flew out the window when he starting losing at wii boxing and bowling. Braedan flatly refused to play Playmobil even though, as Stevie said, "Playmobil's better because you get to kill people." (Sigh. And here I thought I was doing some educational historical roleplaying.)

Braedan started bouncing off the walls once it became bedtime. and I can hear him now, sneaking into the hallway. I wonder if he'll come into my room. Yup. He's taking his sword and shield into the potty. I told him we don't have any villains, but he seems to not believe me. At least one of them is asleep. I'd better go chase the other into bed.

days off

2010-01-22T06:16:00.000-08:00

I'm home with the boy today. He doesn't have school, and I've taken off. I will probably have do a couple things today for work - it's still quite busy with the start of the semester, but not too much. We have a book to pick up from the bookstore in Madison - Lego Starwars - how cool is that? The boy is downstairs playing (coincidentally) with Lego Starwars on the wii. I have the timer set, so it won't be too too long.

I sometimes get flack about taking off work to manage the boy's schedule. I've been lucky that Randy can usually make arrangements to cover. I think that it's important to give kids the ups and downs of the school schedule. So when he has off, I try to let him be off, stay home, play, hang out with mom. or dad. Stevie tends to get wound up in things, so down time is important at our house. The boy, like myself, can be very intense about things.

Like the wii, for example. Hence, the timer.

I'm watching the Vampire Diaries, so it's good that he's downstairs. He'd love the show but it's not really appropriate for children. :-)

I was mulling over parenthood last night in the wee hours. Once you have a child, compromises in lifestyle are non-negotiable.

it's the middle of the night

2010-01-20T00:14:00.001-08:00

It's 2:14 am. I'm upgrading a database. It's not difficult, but it will inconvenience users if I do it during the day. I think that I'll have to go in a little late tomorrow morning, since I've been up for 2 1/2 hours. Sigh.

At least I'm not up with a sick boy. :-)

the occasional moment of freetime

2010-01-11T18:50:00.000-08:00

Tonight, the boys spent the evening together. I was obviously no fun. :-)

We've decided that Monday nights are leftover night, so after I finally made it home from work, we dined on a sophisticated meal of tator tot casserole, leftover stirfry, and old pizza. It all tasted fairly good, actually, and the boy even tried some of the casserole which is a first. Hot lunch must be lessening his pickiness.

Then Fundad and the boy went off on their own male-dominated adventures. First they went downstairs to play Lego Star Wars on the WII. The WII and the game were a Christmas present. Stevie loves them, and is surprisingly good at the Star Wars game, despite its complexity. I stayed upstairs to do some genealogy research and work on my new Lego model. Then the boys came upstairs to check on my progress before they went off to watch SpongeBob while I took a bath.

I wonder if this will be the pattern as the boy grows older? I suspect it will, and for now having the occasional moment of free time is a good thing.

reflections on a year ago

2009-11-29T18:28:00.000-08:00

Last year at this time, Fundad and the boy both had strep infections. I was heavily stressed just thinking about the holidays. And we'd dashed around for Thanksgiving, trying to make everyone happy. And failing miserably.

I remember decorating our Christmas tree last year, and being completely exhausted and wondering how long our lives would be like this? I threw lights on - only two sets - and was just happy to have it done.

Last year, the MINEs (most inconsiderate neighbors ever) had a wild party for Thanksgiving. Now they're gone, and we have far more considerate neighbors.

This year, only the boy is sick. I believe his sinus/ear infection is back, but I know that the clinic won't want to see him for a couple more days.

Thanksgiving was spent here at our house, where I made a fairly successful turkey dinner. It's the first time that I've ever made a turkey by myself. Let alone the entire meal. My sister, mom, nephew and aunt came, bless them all. If it weren't for the fact that Stevie's breathing went downhill so quickly, the day would have been perfect.

We decorated our Packer tree on Thanksgiving night, and our regular tree today. This is early for us, but the next three weekends are busy. And we're trying to stay unstressed. The tree great - I love the place that we get our trees from. It's a family farm that does trees on the side. Stevie and I did the decorating. He specializes in garland. The Packer tree has traditional gold garland, and he picked out gold and burgundy ribbon for the family tree. It was relaxing and fun. And a huge difference from last year.

vacation days

2009-10-28T17:14:00.000-07:00

We're on vacation! OK, I wish it was somewhere warm or exotic, but I'll take just not being at work or in school. Tomorrow Stevie & I will go visit Grandma and hang out with family. I'm hoping to visit The Little Farmer for apples & pumpkins. Maybe we'll even carve another pumpkin. Friday night, Stevie is graduating to a gold belt, and Saturday, of course, is Halloween! Last night, the boy & Fundad carved the boy's first pumpkin. It turned out quite well. Stevie helped pick out the kind of face, but Fundad did the carving. We have an excellent pumpkin carving kit that makes it so easy to carve good designs. Before the boy came along, we would carve cool designs from templates... now we're happy to just have pumpkins.

On Monday, we (Fundad and I) went to our first parent-teacher conference. It went just fine. Stevie is "all boy" but listens well and works hard. What more could one ask? He's doing well at school, and his teacher thinks that he is grasping math quickly.

Today was the Halloween party - here's a picture of the boy's class. Although he's going to be Darth Vader for Halloween, we decided to go with the Prince Peter of Narnia for school.

our army base

2009-10-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

The boy has been very excited about school, and in particular, about projects and art. His coloring has improved immensely. He stays in the lines and is creative with color. I've been amazed, because generally we're not terribly artistic in our house. He's also done any number of projects. We've made treasure maps following instructions in a pirate craft book. And tonight we made a girl and boy project, and a boy project. Tomorrow, he told me, we'll make a girl project.

The girl and boy project was a jack o'lantern. I made the pumpkin and the stem. Stevie made the eyes, nose and mouth. First we had to cut a shape out of a piece of paper and put our name on it, along with whatever we were making. Then we cut out the pieces and glued everything together.

The boy project was an army base. I had trepidations about this. We started out with trees and clouds in the sky. Then we made tents (even I can draw tents). Some were triangle tents and some were flat topped tents. From tents we went to flags - Stevie was the United States and I was... someone else. Then I drew a river and we both made a bunch of canoes. Finally, I laughingly made a porta-potty. The boy thought that was great, and went on to make about 30 more. We figured that at 10 people per tent, he had about 180 people. He needed lots of porta-potties. We finished up with some stick people in the trees and lookng out of the tents, a fence around his base, and some barrels and crates.

We were very proud.

naptime - NOT!

2009-10-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

The boy has been napping after kindergarten. Yesterday it was on the way to karate. Today it was on our way home from the doctor.

It's not a good thing.

When the boy falls asleep, he's extremely difficult to wake. He has a hard time breaking out of his dreams, and is grumpy to the point of taking a swing at the individual that dares to disturb his rest. Sometimes it's funny. But when it's 7:30 pm and your child has been sleeping for two or three hours, it's not so much. I'm falling asleep, and the boy is jumping and laughing and feeling hugely mischievous. Fundad generally has more energy than I do, and finds the entire situation amusing.

Tonight I managed to get into my bed, leaving Fundad and the boy reading books. Stevie refused to say good night to me. He left giggling and (no doubt) picturing me lonely and sad in bed, while he and Fundad enjoyed guy time. Ha!

my boys

2009-10-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

Every Father's Day, I get Fundad and the boy matching gifts. This year it was binoculars, but most years I get them matching t-shirts. It started with my mom - she found "Big Guy" and "Little Guy" shirts when Stevie was young. Two years ago I found Nasa Rocket Scientist shirts, which we all loved (The Spacestore). So this morning when Fundad got dressed in his t-shirt, Stevie decided he had to match... they were both SO cute.

From Fun Fall, 2009

.coms

2009-10-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

The boy and I just wrapped a beautiful birthday present. One part is pink with white daisies, the other part is pink with purple polka pots. Stevie picked out the paper. It has lime green, yellow and purple ribbon. The recipient is a little girl up the street. She's very fun, and she likes horses a lot. We're going to her birthday party this afternoon.

Right now the boy is playing with scissors and tape, and lots and lots of leftover oddly shaped pieces of wrapping paper. I can see superman, scooby-doo, flowers, robots, and various types of birthday paper. He's making "something beautiful", he told me.

His next adventure is to go to "plastic army guys.com". He has a habit of looking for "anythingdescriptive.com". Plastic army guys really is a website, believe it or not. We've also explored vikings.com (guess where that goes), knights.com (boring), indians.com (baseball), and - my idea - nativeamericans.com, which oddly enough doesn't exist. It's fun to see how his mind works.

christmas lists

2009-10-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

The Young Explorers Christmas catalog came in the mail yesterday. So today the boy, armed with a nice black marker, is starting his Christmas list. So far he's very interested in building toys, sports games, and gadgets... to the tune of two or three items per page. It's a bit much. I suppose that I'll weed out anything not age-appropriate and then look at what's left. It's always interesting to see what appeals to him. Right now he's circling Rock'em Sock'em Robots, and a remote control landspeeder. He also circled a guitar, metal detector, and at least two different banks (the kind that do cool things when you insert the coin). My personal favorite is the "Build your own V8 Engine" toy. I know that Fundad will be very supportive of that one.

The boy has a tendency to overestimate his abilities at this point. I did see interesting toys though. Toys for Funmom, not for the boy. :-)

books, books, and more books...

2009-09-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

I realized recently that my sister writes a blog about books she's read. My sister is a librarian, so this shouldn't surprise me. But I was surprised that I didn't know. She and I have always had very different reading habits, despite our similar degrees. That's probably because of the different career paths we've taken. She has been a middle school librarian for many years, and much of her reading was for work. Now, due to district and budgetary changes, she's starting her first year as a high school librarian.

She seems to like it, and I think she's surprised by that.

As I said, we've never had similar reading habits. I don't read much reality fiction - I get enough of that in everyday life, thank you very much. I read lots of science-fiction, fantasy, alternative reality, adventure, and mystery. The paranormal genre so popular in young adult (and adult) fiction today dovetails nicely with my interests. So I've been reading lots of young adult fiction... and so has my sister. It started with Twilight, then the Uglies - which we both loved. I've gone through the Charlie Bone books - all except the very newest- which are really more middle-school than high, but still very good. I, of course, loved Harry Potter, which I think she also enjoyed.

It's a nice change, to be able to talk about books with my sister. I like to talk about books with anyone that will listen, honestly. I'm lucky that I have a neighbor who also enjoys reading as much as I do. (She was the one that told me about the Uglies.) Stevie likes reading a lot, so far. I realize that he might lose some of that interest as he grows up, but I hope now. Tonight we stopped at the library and found Scooby Doo and the Werewolf, a new Mercer Mayer called The Best Teacher Ever, and some older books that we've had home several times. Just before we left the library we spotted a new Clone Wars graphic novel on the shelf that I'll try to get next time. It looked like it might be simple enough for the boy... or else just for me!

super new car smell

2009-09-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

Last week we had the ducts cleaned in our home. The air ducts - both cold and hot. Our reasoning was that we'd never had it done, and since we're constantly sick... well, we're grasping at straws. Maybe our immune systems are just too old to adjust to having a five-year old's germ pool around. Except that the boy is sick as often as us.

So the ducts weren't terribly dirty, but the guy cleaned them and added an antiseptic to keep theem clean. It smelled like new-car smell - the kind that you get when you have the full-service carwash. Only it wasn't just new car smell - it was SUPER new car smell. Like they dumped the entire bottle into your car vents. It was a little nauseating. Sleeping in the house was not an option for me. Fundad and the boy didn't seem too mind, but my stomach is always a little more sensitive than theirs.

Luckily, it was a nice weekend so we took the opportunity to sleep in the camper. We popped it up in the backyard and closed the fence. As Fundad says, it was almost like camping but without all the work. We had a fire outside and watched the Witch Mountain movie that came out recently. It was pretty cool late, so the boy and I snuggled all night under my extremely warm sleeping bag. (Normally he isn't a cuddler, but the cold air must have encouraged it.) It went so well - and the house took a long time to air out - so we did it again on Saturday night. I was exhausted from the Badger game so we had another good night's sleeep.

I can still catch a whiff of the scent tonight, but just a whiff. I'm watching the Packer game (they're winning), and the boy is in bed. We read "The Runaway Mummy", which is a hilarious parody of "The Runaway Bunny". (We also have "Goodnight Goon", a parody of "Goodnight Moon"). And then the boy conked, as I probably will shortly.

boing, boing, boing

2009-09-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

That's the sound of my sometimes-insane son, bouncing off of the walls. Kindergarten has definitely cut into his energy level, but he's still crazily buoyant, flying between pieces of furniture and careening from parent to parent as he blazes a trail to... somewhere. I don't think that the destination matters.

Tonight while I way lying down with the boy he asked, "Why do neighbors have to leave?" We live next door to a duplex. Our first neighbors were great. The next set was OK. The third set was TERRIBLE. And the fourth set is nice again. Actually the third set just moved out, leaving an empty side. I hope that someone else nice moves in. But this is why the boy is wondering about neighbors. I explained the difference between renting and owning. And I explained that sometimes families get too big. And that sometimes people move for different reasons. And that people move a lot before they settle down. He had a difficult time believing this. So we went through lots of people we know that have moved. For example, his cousin Matthew made two interstate moves before he was five. Grandma moved three times while my siblings and I under 10. "What!" he cried - as if Grandmas aren't allowed to move.

I would sometimes love to move - but it probably won't happen anytime soon. The boy was very worried about this. I told him that if we moved it would be an adventure. That gave him pause - he likes the idea of an adventure.

We read a fun book tonight - actually we read it twice. It was The Bookstore Ghost, a fun tale with cats, ghost books of all types, and mice. The boy was devastated when I returned his library books last night. Several have been renewed, and several he'd even forgotten we had. But of course, picking them up to return caused a minor breakdown! I've been reading the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld - an excellent young adult futuristic series.

the great golden digger wasp

2009-09-06T20:46:00.000-07:00

The boy had an awesome day at the fair with Fundad and Cameron. Cam is Stevie's cousin, who went to the fair with his mom and baby sister. I hope that he had as much fun as the boy. The huge slide was a big hit, as I understand it. I did not go to the fair - it was a father-son expedition, combined with a trip to Uncle Steve's house (the boy's namesake). I stayed home to rest and recuperate. My cold is not improving much. But I did get a four-hour nap in, which was greatly refreshing!

Before the boy left, we saw a very large bug in the yard. I've noticed it before and found it pretty creepy. It's over an inch long with an orange body and wings. And it digs in our front flower bed. We finally were able to eradicate the monster ant hill in the flowerbed, only to get hit with this bug. It makes tunnels in the ground, and is pretty persistent. So... I was finally able to identify this bug - it's the Great Golden Digger Wasp. Take a look here - http://www.cirrusimage.com/hymenoptera_Great_Golden_Digger_Wasp.htm - for some really accurate pictures.

The good news is that this is considered a beneficial bug. It rarely stings, so I don't have to worry too much about avoiding it. It's so large that it's kind of fascinating to watch.

I also found a monster spider making a web outside our front windows. I just pointed that one out to Fundad and asked him to take care of it. Hopefully he will!

badgering the boy

2009-09-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

And no, that's not a reference to the upcoming UW football season.

Every night, without fail, either Fundad or I badger the boy to get ready for bed. We badger him to get out of the bathtub, to dry off, to put his clothes on, to pick out books, to brush his teeth, to nose hose (nasal irrigation for his allergies) and to puff (inhaler for his allergies). And to take his claritin and his vitamins. Actually the last two generally go pretty well.

But I'm really tired of it. Shouldn't a five-year old be able to get himself ready for bed? Shouldn't he embrace the routine? He used to love routines. I suppose that part of this might be because we're in a highly transitional time. Part might be because the boy is sick again. This morning, the boy's teacher mentioned that his nose was really runny, with an expectant look. I wonder if I was supposed to take him home, or if she just wondered if I'd realized he was sick. It's hard to miss it, trust me.

Don't get me wrong, I really like his teacher and so does he. But I've heard pandemic awareness until it's coming out of my ears. I normally don't send him to school, but it's his first week of school, and it's the first week of school at work also. There's only one more day. Saturday night Fundad and I get to go out, and the boy has a new babysitter. Sunday we'll go to the fair, if the boy feels ok, and Monday we hang out. That sounds like heaven.

geeks

2009-08-28T18:26:00.001-07:00

Fundad and I consider ourselves geeks. I've always felt a little beyond the pale socially, although I try to keep that quiet. We're both fairly technology oriented both in career and at home. We have every episode of Star Trek Classic, TNG, and DS9 on DVD, as well as Stargate SG-1 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The boy was weaned on the animated versions of Star Trek and knows the seven Star Wars movies better than I do. We use the word "geek" a lot at home, usually as a teasing endearment. The other day though, the boy came in from the toy room and gleefully announced that he had geeks.

It came out oddly, like an announcement that one has chicken pox.

"Come and see", he said, with an admonition to close our eyes and "not peek". In the toyroom, he had dismantled his Playmobil knights - hair, head, body - and was mixing them up. He also did it with his Lego guys. Now we have Anakin's head on a Separatist pilot, and viking hair on the Playmobil king. It's not obvious, unless you are familiar with the toys, which we are.

I was most interested in the way the boy visually defined a geek. A geek (to him anyway) is someone that isn't exactly as expected, but also isn't obviously "wrong". I wonder how Fundad and I fulfill this? What part of us isn't exactly as expected? And how obvious is it? Fundad will say that I'm the geek. I'd say that, well, he's probably right. He has the whole sports thing going for him. Being able to talk about sports intelligently (which Fundad can) automatically guarantees you a degree of social acceptance. This might not be true everywhere, but in Wisconsin, and especially around Madison it's very valid.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in a few years - will the boy follow us into geekdom? And will it be as cool as we think it is?

friday for me

2009-08-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

No work tomorrow! It's the last day of my leave. After tomorrow, I'm fulltime. Sigh. We'll have to see how it goes.

And we have a busy, fun weekend planned. Tonight was open house at school. We unpacked the boy's school supplies, found his chair and cubby, received a new book from his teacher, and borrowed a book from her shelf (The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss - why doesn't the boy like any short Seuss books?). It was wonderful.

Tomorrow the boy and I have the day off. I'm thinking about a movie. Maybe Ice Age or Ponyo. We have to buy a new pair of tennis shoes for school and some cards for the daycare teachers. Tomorrow night the boy has a karate ceremony to move to the next belt (yellow with a white stripe, a step up from his current white with a yellow stripe). Saturday we'll be at my niece's bday party (3 years old) and spending time with the family. Stevie is looking forward to seeing his "godbrother" (my godson), and his other cousins.

Stevie seems really ready for kindergarten. I hope that his first days go smoothly. His teacher seems very nice. She called last night to ask more about his allergies & various health conditions. She was relieved to hear that there was nothing terribly serious. I'd love to find time to do some volunteering in her room - assuming that there are such opportunities. I'm not sure how I'd manage that with work, but if I get the chance I'll try. Stevie's only in kindergarten once, after all.

finding funmom

2009-08-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

It strikes me that at some point, this blog will have to stop being about the boy. Once he can read, I suspect he will resent the fun stories that I relate. Nostalgia will be forbidden, and no mention of silliness will be tolerated. At that point perhaps the blog will have to be about me. I could call it "Finding Funmom". I'm not really looking forward to that. It's far easier to talk about someone other than myself.

But I'm safe for about a year - I assume that by the end of the year the boy will be reading simple words. And judging by his adeptness at other websites, he'll soon find his way here.

I spent the evening looking at the boy's kindergarten supplies. I always loved getting ready for school to start. I have been told that this is a "girl thing" by my husband, but I don't know that thats true. Who doesn't like new crayons, sharp colored pencils with nice tips, and brand new paint sets? I did indulge myself in a new bottle of glue and a set of colored pencils. A couple of years ago my aunt gave me a nice media set - oil crayons, watercolors, crayons and colored pencils, but I haven't had much new since then. I recently purchased a cool coloring book for myself from amazon.com - mandalas! I can't wait to start on it.

cowboys and indians

2009-08-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

The boy has discovered a throwback toy, which I never expected him to play with: Cowboys and Indians. While at our annual cottage vacation, we took advantage of a rainy day to explore the games chest. In it we found some vintage 1940/50-era games. One was a game about the US that only included 48 states. And another was a cowboy and Indian playset. It included fences, tepees, a covered wagon, horses, trees, casks of gunpowder, and of course cowboys and indians the size of Stevie's little army menu.

He loved it. He played with it a lot, making elaborate layouts for each camp, and wild storylines. He was always on the side of the Indians, and spent a lot of time capturing and converting the cowboys to the Indians' viewpoint.

This coincided with a short phase of intense Indian curiosity that started a couple months ago. We'd watched Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron about the expansion of the railroads into Indian territory. We've also watched two excellent Time Warp Trios about life in the Old West. In an effort to fuel this new-found interest, I looked at the library for some good books, but discovered nothing. There is a real dearth of non-fiction Indian books for the pre-school/kindergarten age group. I wanted something that had good images, and a very basic description of Indian life. A neighbor brought us some excellent books, albeit for a slightly older child. The text is excellent but I'd like more images.

So I've been telling the boy about the Indians (after brushing up on my history). We talked about the railroad and the pioneers (which coincided well with my genealogy research). I don't think that kindergarten is going to provide the boy with the historical knowledge he seems to enjoy. :-)

cousins

2009-08-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

Today I saw lots of my cousins - cousins that I don't often see. Most of them I'm seeing on a... hmmm... 10-year interval. Maybe. As I remarked to one of my uncles, it's always at weddings and funerals. And lately it's just funerals. There are many cousins that I don't recognize by face, although if I know their name I can generally figure out what family they're from. My sister was talking to a cousin about having a family reunion so that we could all get acquainted. It's a good idea. Fundad's family has a reunion every summer and each year I get to know a few more of them. I suggested this year that each family bring a picture to post on a bulletin board. Then we could match the faces to the pictures and figure out who's who. Fundad and I both feel strongly that family should be an asset. Families should support and encourage each other. That sounds very obvious, but it doesn't always happen. Competitiveness, distance, stresses - many things can make familial relationships difficult rather than delightful.

We saw my cousins at my Aunt Ethlyn's funeral. I've always felt very close to my Aunt Ethlyn, although we saw her infrequently. I don't really know if she felt it too, but I really enjoyed her. She had a vivacious nature and seemed eternally optimistic. She was always happy to see me, with a hug and a sparkle in her eye. I could count on Aunt Ethlyn to say what she thought and to ask questions that others might be thinking about. I respect people that speak their mind - and she did. Most of all, she seemed to have such fun in life. I sometimes have a hard time with that. :-) She was my father's youngest sister, and was taken far before her time.

We ended our day with a visit to a small circus with the boy. Our town used to be a winter home for the circus. There's an elephant buried somewhere in town. Really. The circus was a little old-fashioned but very entertaining. The clown was wonderful - and I don't even like clowns. I enjoyed the trapeze artist, and all of the pageantry in the performances. The boy enjoyed it. Now we're home, watching a Badger game from 2005 and warming up with soup and sandwiches.

clever and unusual

2009-08-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

"Introduction to kindergarten" seems to have brought a pile of new words with it. Tonight, the boy informed me that he was a "clever knight". He won several tournaments, awarding himself some gold chains, a new sword (the sword of truth), and a helmet. He also informed me just before book time that he was saving the money in his bank for something unusual - "maybe army guys or Playmobil".

We spent the evening going to Parent's night at karate, where I practiced kicks, stretches, and throws with the boy - and then participated in a rousing game of dodgeball. It was quite fun, and makes me think yet again about joining the adult karate classes. Then we went to the library, where I thought (erroneously as it turned out) that the boy's requested Star Wars book had arrived. Instead we found about eight other books, including a different Star Wars title.

T minus 3 days

2009-08-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

Ah. Three days until our next little vacation jaunt. I hope that it goes well... it has potential for being a good time. My goal is to make it a relaxing and worry-free time as well. We're going to be doing a bit of travelling, seeing lots of things, and hopefully having fun.

I've been working on a vacation list. And I have some of the bedding/toiletries together. That's about it so far though. What we have, we have. What we don't have we'll do without or buy. No worries.

The boy seemed to enjoy his first week of "Intro to Kindergarten". I've been fairly impressed with the way that our school district transitions to kindergarten. Stevie is having fun and meeting people. I'm a little bummed that three of his good friends (boys) are in another class together, although he does have at least two kids from his daycare class in his kindergarten class. The silver lining is that he'll get to meet other children. Someone told me recently that they think Stevie is very secure - I think this will be put to the test this fall.

yesterday, today, and tomorrow

2009-08-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

Day two of "Introduction to kindergarten" went fine today. The boy seems to be enjoying himself, and today he recognized one of the children from his t-ball team. I was hoping that he'd find one or two kids that he knew outside of daycare. We found two kids from daycare that will be in his kindergarten class, which makes me thrilled.

Yesterday when Stevie came home from daycare, he beelined for the toy room and started looking for his workbooks. He told me that he wanted to practice his letters and numbers. I wonder if the kindergarten teacher told them to go home and practice? Or if he was just inspired? He also wanted to go to daycare early today so he could play with his friends. He went outside between 6:30 and 7 am, when several of his daycare friends were dropped off. Then he came in and asked if he could get dressed right away and go over. Normally, it's difficult to get him going, but not this morning! We went over about 20 minutes before normal and I hung out and played. I actually got to work on time (well, almost) - a welcome change since we're hitting our pre-semester insanity time.

Tomorrow is Fundad's birthday! We had a small celebration during the campout, and we'll have another family celebration tomorrow night. Stevie would like to have another party, but it'll probably be just us. I'd like to make something yummy for supper, and have Randy open his presents. I have the day off, so the boy and I will probably go shopping after lunch. He has his kindergarten class in the morning, and then a special pizza lunch because it's his teacher's birthday.

sitting on laps

2009-08-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

The boy did a lot of family networking this weekend. He is very proud of his family and loves to tell his teachers and classmates about them. And he enjoys going over them, asking who is related and how.

He really out-did himself this weekend though. The boy is always thrilled about seeing his uncles (all 14 of them), but this weekend he had a wonderful time bonding with some cousins and aunts that we don't see as often. At times, he seemed to be more interested in talking to the adults than playing with the other kids! (That ended when his cousin Brody, the Lego king, appeared on Saturday.) There was a horde of "next generation" Weiers - Hunter, Cameron, Elle, Brody, Taylor, Molly and Nolen. They all played quite well together, amazingly enough.

Anyway, he sat and had long conversation on Aunt Betty's lap. He told Aunt Judy that he was really glad she was there. He followed Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Jim around. Aunt Terri comforted him when he fell down. He had extensive bonding time with his cousin Chris. He even talked to his cousin Karen, which I don't know if he's ever done. (He really wanted her permission to practice playing bean bags on the dragon boards.) And to top things off, he was given a loaf of one of his all-time favorite foods - Galen's extra special garlic bread (which I'll make for dinner tomorrow).

The weekend included a great time playing at the beach - Stevie was thrilled to be in the water. And I was thrilled to see him thrilled! We played lots of beanbags - and Fundad & Nick achieved the much-envied status of campout champs (which comes with a plaque & monogrammed t-shirt). And we took a slightly longer-than-expected hike that Stevie and I really enjoyed.

I find it difficult at times to slow down enough to enjoy some of these days. It's go-go-go all week, and then we have the chance to sit and relax... and it's kind of hard at first. I think that this weekend, we managed it.

swimming success

2009-07-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

The boy has successfully completed Preschool 2 swimming!!

I realize that this doesn't sound like much, but considering that he'd only been in a pool about 3 times before this summer he did quite well.

Today was a make-up day, and he was the only one (of five) that came to class. So essentially he had a private lesson, culminating in a quick bob of his head underwater. That's not something he does willingly. So Fundad and I are really proud of him!

I think that Fundad is lining up a new Army set as a congratulatory gift. It'll also be something to play with for the weekend when we go camping. We're setting up a play tent for Stevie and the other little boys, with some army guys/trucks/etc.

these days

2009-05-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Despite an extended absence, There isn't really anything wrong. thank goodness. Instead, we've just been busy. Fundad and I had our 10-year anniversary. The boy started karate. We signed him up for swimming and t-ball (Fundad is coaching). The woman who was taking my 10 hours off has quit, moving on to a summer job at Middlebury Language School, and so it's getting a wee bit stressful at work again.

We spent Easter and Mother's Day at my moms, both of which were pretty congenial. And early in June the boy and I are going back for a few days. I hope that isn't too much togetherness. Fundad is going fishing with his brothers and nephews.

The boy has been really quite fun. A little bit obstinate, but very enjoyable. He had an ear infection, which bums me out a lot. He did get over it, but only with the use of antibiotics. I hope that we don't get back on that roller-coaster.

Otherwise, things have been good. Our fence is up, and the MINEs haven't been loud. I think it's only a matter of time until it starts up again, but in the meantime I'm really trying to appreciate what we have. I can honestly say that I'm feeling pretty good about where we are as a family - home, work, etc. It's been awhile since I've reached that comfort level, and it's definitely something to treasure.

hi ya!

2009-04-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

He did it!

Stevie made it through his karate class, and received his white belt. That's the first belt, and you receive it when you go through two classes.

Sounds easy, but trust me, it was no sure thing.

We signed Stevie up for a trial karate lesson when we were at the local Family Fun night. He wanted to do it - especially after he broke a board at the Karate America booth. But the first class didn't go so well. Even though the trial lesson only had three students (including him and a little boy he knew), he was really nervous. He crouched down on the mat and sucked his finger - a sure sign that he's very upset. He clung to Randy - I left the room because I knew that he'd really cling to me. But Fundad coaxed him out onto the mat about half-way through the lesson, and then he seemed to slowly, slowly loosen up.

I was afraid that the same thing would happen tonight. He sat in the corner of the family room at home, dressed in his new karate uniform. He sucked his finger and told me that he was scared. Now, Fundad and I have been taking special pains lately to reward effort over result - the boy is already a perfectionist (much like myself) and gets upset when things aren't just right. And I think part of the "scared" feeling is that he doesn't want to mess things up. So I talked to Stevie about trying hard and about having fun, rather than being worried about the other kids. And eventually we got him in the car. He was pretty clingy still.

When we walked in, the two children from his trial class were there, along with about five others. One was a boy in his daycare class that Stevie periodically clashes with. But one... thankfully... was a dear sweet girl in his daycare class named Sydney. Bless Sydney. Stevie went and sat by her, and stood next to her on the mat, and followed everything she did. And she was REALLY good. Sydney is a little bit of a thing - blond, short, quiet - but was really focused on her karate. She was adorable in her karate uniform with her bright yellow belt.

And with Sydney next to him, I think Stevie had fun. It still took a bit for him to feel comfortable, but he participated more than I thought possible. And at the end of the lesson, he did receive his white belt.

I was proud of him for being brave, and trying hard. And I think he was very proud of himself. He wouldn't let me take his picture, but I'm hoping to get one soon.

a full saturday

2009-04-18T19:21:00.000-07:00

What a day. The boy woke at, hmmm... 3:30 am, when he fell out of my bed. He had been deep asleep and was scared when he hit the floor. I was a little freaked also. Nothing like a loud thump to wake mom up from a deep sleep. He was fine, but it took a while to settle back down. In the process, we woke up Fundad, who was occupying the boy's bed since ours was full.

Nothing like children to completely hose up sleeping arrangements.

This morning we went to the open house at the local, brand-new fire station. It was really nice - all the trucks were wide open, there were great snacks and drinks, and it turned out that we know the fire captain's daughter. Stevie now wants to be a fireman on the pumper truck.

After the open house, we met up with neighbors at the Midwest Horse Show. I could have spent a lot of time shopping here, but Fundad was not very supportive. We did see a couple of shows, and walk through lots of barns. The boy's favorites were the equestrian team that rode with American flags. My favorite was the Andalusian stallion ridden by a woman in traditional Spanish dress. We also really liked the Superhero Stallions, each named after a superhero, with stalls decorated with superhero "stuff".

family fun night

2009-04-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the annual Family Fun night here in town. It culminates a week of fun-filled events to celebrate the Week of the Young Child. Wednesday was a bubble show at the elementary school. Thursday was the parade. And today was Family Fun night. I signed Stevie up for swimming lessons. (gulp.) And for a trial karate lesson. We've talked about karate before, but haven't quite made it to a trial class. But Stevie learned to kick a board tonight, and seemed interested in the class.

Stevie also had a grand time dancing to a local musician that specializes in performances for children. He danced with Mallory - they also walked together in the parade yesterday. After the parade they told me they were getting married. Mallory is decorating and Stevie is blowing up balloons and getting streamers.

My new computer arrived, but it's having some issues. I don't think that it's a hardware problem. It seems to have something to do with our network - but I'm not sure why it would be affecting only this computer, and not all of them. Urrrggghhhh.

I've still got it

2009-04-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

For the second time in as many days, I've sung a child to sleep.

I love to sing. But Fundad got mightily tired of my singing when the boy was younger. I'm not awful, but I'm definitely not what you'd call trained either.

Anyway, on Saturday my niece Tessa was exhausted and crying. Tessa is developing quite a mind of her own at 3 (?), and wasn't allowing her father to have anything to do with her. But she did struggle to her feet and hold her arms out to me. :-)

I held her, and swayed back and forth, and sang a song to her. I think it was "Hush Little Baby". And she put her head on my shoulder and slept. My mother looked me and said, "I'll bet it's been a while since thats happened!" And she was certainly correct. I can't remember the last time that the boy fell asleep on my shoulder. Probably because I can't hold him for that long anymore.

And tonight, the boy was lying in bed and asked me to sing him a lullaby. He got "Rockabye Baby", and "Michael Row the Boat". And he was asleep.

It's nice to know I've still got it.

Bricin and the boy

2009-04-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

The boy has a brand-new cousin named Bricin. Bricin is tiny and just a couple weeks old.

Stevie loves him.

He held him for a long time, with Bricin's mom making sure that everything was OK. And he talked and talked to him. He carefully petted Bricin's head, as he would do with a kitten or puppy. He held him again later after I tried to burp the baby for a bit. Stevie sang Bricin lullabies, and alerted us every time Bricin moved during dinner.

I was amazed at how interested the boy was. I knew he liked babies, but we haven't seen one in a while. He's already talking about the next time that we go to Grandma's and he can hold Bricin again.

From Easter at Grandmas

Stevie also had lots of fun playing Playmobil knights with Ross, and teasing his cousin Tessa. And he sang Grandma the "Grandma and Grandpa songs" that he's learning at daycare. Overall, a successful weekend!

castle games

2009-04-04T19:51:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon a wonderful site recently - http://www.highlightskids.com - while searching for castle building plans. It's ironic, because I've been receiving, and ignoring, emails from Highlights every month for the last two years.

I get a lot of emails.

Stevie has had a subscription to the "little kid" Highlights, called High Five. He's outgrown it now, but I don't think is quite ready for the regular Highlights. But we've been exploring the site, and it has wonderful things on it. You can build robots and aliens, castles and tree forts. You can do online seek-and-finds, as well as printable ones. Below is the castle that Stevie made in the Build-a-Castle game- along with a family of dragons.

it's all about drama

2009-04-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

Lately the boy seems to delight in ordering us around. He wants me to do everything. Absolutely everything.

"Help me get my shirt on."

"Go get me some chocolate syrup."

"Put the movie in."

"My leg hurts. Rub it for me."

"Read me this book."

"Read me my Lego catalog."

You get the idea. He also is still very dramatic. Yesterday he cried because Fundad left his lunch bag at daycare. Never mind that it was right next door, and we could go get it. He and Jolie (a little girl at daycare) have taken turns driving each other to tears this week.

I thik that they all got a taste of warm weather, and can't wait to have more! Unfortunately we're supposed to have snow this weekend again.

castle pictures

2009-03-29T11:22:00.000-07:00

Here are the promised pictures of the new castle. Stevie played with it all morning, until we made him go to church. We brought up our wood blocks, which blend in nicely with the walls. Stevie parked his battering ram inside and made a weapons room and dungeon. I'm hoping to create some banners (based on the Playmobil knights' shields) and hang them on the front. The boy also requested some flags for atop the towers.

castles and toys

2009-03-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

The boy is going through a whiny phase. It's not terribly pleasant. He was also very tired which made everything worse. Despite that, we managed to have a pretty nice couple of days. We've been playing a lot of Ants in the Pants. I had this game as a child, and Stevie received it for Christmas. We really didn't have a serious game, but launched ants everywhere just for fun. We also played with Stevie's Playmobil knights. This morning, Fundad and the boy made a new castle. It's made of wood and is just perfect. It has two towers, a drawbridge, and a ledge along the top that's exactly the right size and height for Playmobil knights. I'll post a picture soon.

I was at a Discovery Toys home party when they were working on the castle. It was interesting. I wonder if I'm doing enough to prepare Stevie for Kindergarten? I'm coming to realize that I emphasize a lot of very open, imaginative play at our house - role playing, storytelling, scenario-based play. I wonder if that sort of play is adequate preparation for school? We were doing a lot of workbooks for a while, but since the boy has become enamored with Playmobil, we've cut back. The Discovery Toys were very cool. One developed test taking skills, another worked on differentiating upper and lower-case letters. The woman hosting the party was using a lot of the Discovery toys for her daughter. They were interesting. I did buy some things for us and as gifts, but I wasn't quite ready to purchase some of the more focused skill development toys. I'm not sure why I was so reluctant. Possibly because he's not even in kindergarten yet? We haven't seen any real problems with his development. He'll have focused skill development soon enough, I think.

birthday bowling

2009-03-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

The boy went bowling this weekend! It was for his friend's birthday party. He got a strike, and two spares. He was not happy at the start of this grand event. In fact, I think that we're having a bit of an issue with new situations. Hopefully it's a passing phase. But once the boy settled down, he loved bowling. LOVED it. It really made me laugh - especially considering how miserable he was initially. Stevie kept insisting that he won, and that he was really good at bowling. All the kids did great, I thought, especially since none of them had bowled before. The party had a a great cake that looked like a John Deere tractor, and the kids had a lots of fun.

Fundad and I spent the evening at the Fireside, where we saw a musical - it wasn't quite up Fundad's alley, but it was interesting and different. And I got to wear a new outfit and my favorite black dressy sandals. The food was super - easily the best meal I've had in quite a while. We had a reuben pate with pastry cups, french onion soup, mixed salad with mango dressing, salmon/chateaubriand, and macadamia nut tart. It was really good.

Today Stevie and I went to the zoo. He played in the children's playground for a long time - I lost him twice, and started to feel a little panicky. I know that it would be difficult for a child to leave the play area, but when I didn't see him for an extended period of time, I started looking. I think he was just sitting inside the tree trunk both times. I wonder at parents that seem nonchalant about their children (although I'm sure they really aren't). I envy them that freedom from worry - I wonder if it just comes from experience.

So, we had an interesting weekend. It was nice for a change. :-)