Mommathon

Let’s just say the lady at Great Clips and I had a miscommunication and Liam ended up with the shortest haircut of his life; he looks like he is ready for the Army. It is not my favorite look on him and he doesn’t like it either. I woke up at about 4:45 this morning and I was terrified that somebody at school was going to say something to Liam about his hair that would be hurtful. I couldn’t get it out of my mind and so I just prayed about it. I was going to go have lunch with him at school today just to touch base with him, make sure he was okay and to give anyone who dared say something to him the evil eye. I decided not to go though. I decided he could handle it on his own. We had talked about what to say to anyone who might say something to him and I had to let him handle it on his own. He had a great day at school and a few kids did comment on his new “look”, but no one said anything hateful and one teacher even complimented him. Thank goodness!!!

Well, it was going to happen sooner or later…Liam has read his first book in which the dog dies and the reader is brought to tears. It’s my fault, too. I suggested he get it at the library this weekend. I remembered reading the book with my fourth graders, but I obviously didn’t remember the storyline. I guess I just thought it was going to be more like Balto, which is one the boys’ favorite stories. So, Liam told me he had finished it and I asked him what it was about. He started getting emotional immediately. As soon as he got past the first few sentences, he was sobbing in my lap and I suddenly remembered the plot. Oh, dear!!! I told him that there are a lot of books out there where the dog dies and they always seem to be books that you read in class. Why do teachers do that to the youth of America? I remember reading Where the Red Fern grows in middle school and crying. Then we watched the movie and I cried again. I had my class read it one year when I taught sixth grade and I cried then, too. Why can’t we read happy books in school?

I had to laugh to myself this week as I was playing hide and seek with the boys. If you play hide and seek and Colm is hiding, he will hide with you. The problem is that Colm is a heavy breather and can be found very easily. Second, if you are hiding, the dog will follow you making you very easy to find. You can shoo the dog away as much as you want, it won’t work. You can tell Colm to breathe more quietly, that doesn’t work either. So, if you are playing hide and seek at our house, prepare to be found.

I have avoided going to Whole Foods in the past months because it is so stinking expensive. The grocery store has their own little “organic” section, but it isn’t getting any cheaper either. Sean had a good idea. He suggested I take my receipt from the grocery store and highlight all the things on it that could also be purchased at Whole Foods and we’ll see which is cheaper. So we went to Whole Foods yesterday with our highlighted receipt and it turns out that many of the things that we buy every week are cheaper at Whole Foods: cereal, eggs, milk, soymilk, yogurt, cereal bars, pasta sauce and bananas. There were probably a few other things as well, but these are the ones that really struck me because we buy them all the time. There were also definitely some thing that were not cheaper. It’s good to know that there are options though.