Mommathon

I read somewhere once that sometimes children, as they start to reach their birthday, start to act out. Their body and mind are going through various changes and sometimes that results in the child acting like another person entirely. I hope that is Colm’s case right now. He has lost so many privileges this week. I kind of feel bad for him because it seems as if the privilege loss doesn’t seem to be working and he is a bit defeated, but how much can you take away from a preschooler? I can’t take away his car, or his iPod or restrict his iChat time. He has lost TV time and his books at bedtime. I have even threatened to not let him go to kindergarten next year if he keeps acting like this because I wouldn’t ask a kindergarten teacher to put up with this kind of behavior all day. He was upset when I said that, but not upset enough to change his ways. (Heavy sigh.) I remember going through something like this last year as Liam’s sixth birthday approached. (He did manage to get through his seventh birthday unscathed.) So, please God, let this be a phase that will soon pass.

I would like to introduce the newest member of our family…JellyBean. Okay, actually she is one of Colm’s class pets, but we are in charge of caring for her over Spring Break. I hate to say it, but I love her already. I want one of my own. Look how cute she is. Did I mention that we already have a dog and two cats? I’ll just have to enjoy the next ten days. Also, the boys are ecstatic that she is with us. Colm is a little too overzealous and I had to reassign JellyBean to the kitchen from Colm’s bedroom. (I wasn’t sure he could be trusted in his room alone with her. After only turning my back long enough to go into the garage to get something out of the car, he had climbed up on the island, taken off the top of her cage and put three toilet paper rolls in there for her to play with. She can have toilet paper rolls, but not three at the same time and he clearly doesn’t get that she needs to stay in her cage and that if she gets out the cats and/or dog will eat her.) Now you see why she has been stationed in the neutral area known as our kitchen.

From March 2009

I never read the prologues in books; I just want to get to the story. I am so glad I did with this one. I don’t know why I did either. Honestly, I think it was because it was short. Anyways, this is such a good story. The first chapter or two may not draw you in, but stick with it…it picks up from there AND it has a fantastic ending. I would have never guessed the ending…ever.

We just finished week five of our ten week Bible Study and it is getting interesting, mainly because of the gals who are in the Bible Study. Everyone in the study is from my neighborhood and the Study is made up women who represent various beliefs…there are a few Catholics, Baptists, a Mormon, a Jew (who was raised Southern Baptist) and several other Protestant denominations. Clearly, we have some differing viewpoints, but we have been able to respectfully disagree so far. Last week we were talking about how you get into heaven…is it by the work you do here on earth, is it because you have been baptized, is it because you have accepted Jesus into your heart or is it a combination of some of the above? Can anyone (rapists, murderers and the like) get into heaven if they confess their sins and truly ask for forgiveness? Today we somehow got on the topic of homosexuals. Again, very differing viewpoints. We may not be staying on topic, but it sure is interesting.

Liam is taking over Colm’s post for this week. I had to boot Colm out for the week because Liam’s interests have swung in another direction and I just had to capture it. Liam has spent the last year or so reading every science fiction book in the children’s section of the library plus many of the other series that are popular with the elementary crowd. He has read all of the A to Z Mysteries, all the Magic Tree Houses, all the of the Beast Quests, all the Secrets of Droon and all of the Jack Stalwart books and the list goes on and on…anyways, the point being that we were getting to the point where the library didn’t have anything for him to read that he was interested in and then (drum roll, please)…he found the section in the library with the books about alien abductions, Bigfoot, UFOs, Atlantis and the like. He is obsessed. I am so glad he has found some other reading interests that also happen to be translating into topics for his weekly reports he has to write for school (which he was starting to have trouble coming up with topics for). I am hoping these topics will at least carry him through the summer and then maybe he will stumble upon something else that interests him.

Sunday- Italian Sausage Tortellini Soup
Monday-Fajitas
Tuesday-Roasted Chicken, Green Beans, Rolls
Wednesday-Rotel Chicken with Rice
Thursday-Lasagna
Friday-Veggie Burgers and Potato Salad
Saturday-Out to Dinner

We had just gone to the library and the boys were looking at their books in the back seat:

C: Why is there a skeleton in that person’s yard?

L: Oh, no, that’s Massachusetts a long time ago.

I have no idea what they were looking at, but the conversation struck me funny.

Liam is having a sleepover tonight and they wanted to watch Return of the Jedi. Sure, no problem, except we told them they had to wait for Colm to go to bed before they watched it. Our kids understand that there are some movies they are not allowed to watch and Colm gets that Star Wars movies are not on his “approved” list yet and he was totally fine with them watching it without him. (Which totally surprised me, by the way.) What was so funny was that as I was giving Colm his vitamins in the kitchen on our way up to bed, Sean was putting the movie in. Colm started freaking out…afraid he was going to see or hear some of this forbidden movie before he got upstairs. He was yelling no and covering his ears trying to get his vitamins out of my hands as quickly as possible so he could run upstairs before it started. I don’t know what he thinks is going to happen if he watches a movie that we haven’t approved for him…maybe he thinks he’ll turn into Chewbacca.

When Liam got up this morning, he asked me if Sean and I had watched a movie last night after he had gone to bed. I told him that we hadn’t and then he proceeded to argue with me about it. He was adamant that we had. Then he dramatically pointed to the inside of the trashcan and said, “Then what’s this?!!!” It was an empty bag of microwave popcorn. Sherlock Liam had determined that where there is popcorn, there MUST be a movie. His whole tone was so funny. He knew he was right, it was just a matter of getting me to “admit” that we had watched a movie and had popcorn without him.

Monday-Spaghetti with Italian Sausage
Tuesday-Mexican Salad
Wednesday-Chicken Enchiladas
Thursday-Salmon, Salad, Sourdough Bread with Honey Butter
Friday-French Toast and Eggs
Saturday-Out to Eat