Mommathon

My grandma is 90-years old today! Quite an accomplishment!

I have made room in my life for another show. If you are not watching Heroes you are missing out. Quite frankly, if you haven’t been watching it, you are too late. The story line is very complex and Sean had to give me the Cliff’s Notes version so I could catch up. It is so good though. Very smart writing…too bad they’re on strike.

1. I don’t understand why everyone seems to be holding their kids (especially boys) back a year in school if they were born anytime after April 30. I have had moms say they are holding their child back because they can’t read yet. What?! You aren’t supposed to be able to read before kinder. It is definitely not a prerequisite to kinder. There are kids who are turning seven in kindergarten. When I was seven I was in second grade. I also don’t understand (along the same lines) the parents who put their kids in public school for kinder (because they aren’t ready for kinder) and then put them in parochial school for kinder again. If they aren’t ready for kinder why are you putting them in kinder at all? That said, with everything I am typing or about to type, I have never been in this situation, so I am not passing judgement. I truly don’t understand. I know that some people have some legit reasons for holding their kids back, but at some point I think some people are doing it just because everyone else is. Any insight?

2. The whole three kids thing. This is another trend in parenting I don’t get. Purses and jeans should be trendy, not humans. I especially don’t get why it is trendy to have them all as close together as humanly possible. If you can have all three before the oldest is four, that is super trendy. I had a mom tell me once that she was having a third because the second one was going to school and she was going to be lonely. What?! Get a dog or get a job or get a hobby. Babies are not companions, they are people that will grow up. You can’t keep having kids because you are lonely. Again, not passing judgement (okay, maybe a little) but I truly don’t understand how the number of kids you have can be trendy. I just don’t see people as objects or notches in a belt. There was a whole article in Time magazine a while back about this trend, so I know I am not making it up. Let me also say, that doesn’t mean that we won’t ever have another child. I certainly wouldn’t have one because everyone else was doing it though.

3. One more thing…housekeepers. I don’t understand why seemingly everyone has a housekeeper nowadays. I totally understand it if you work outside the home. If you work full-time, the last thing you want to do is come home and clean. There are also a million special circumstances that would warrant a housekeeper. I have had one before. Shortly after Colm was born my dear, dear, MIL paid to have someone come clean our house before Colm’s baptism party which was being held at our house. With a newborn and a two-year old I just didn’t have it in me to do the amount of cleaning that needed to be done for company. What I don’t understand is when SAHMs have a housekeeper on a regular basis. I see it as kind of part of the job description. I also kind of think it sends a bad message to the kids. We can get it messy, but we don’t have to clean it up. We can just pay someone to clean up after us. Lastly, who knows how many other people’s houses they have cleaned before yours. If they are using the same mops, sponges, rags, etc. to clean your house as they did the five other people before you…YUCK!

Now that I have managed to piss off a large segment of the population, especially those with three kids, who have a housekeeper and held their kid back a year…enlighten me. Help me to understand.

Sean got a Wii for his birthday. I think Colm thinks it is his. He loves the golfing. It’s too cute.

Okay, I have one more class left until I am finished with the degree I have been working on, but I MUST have this degree. Around 1999, I started looking for a children’s lit degree. There was one that was available somewhere in the east or south and it was only during the summer and you had to live there during the summer. Sean was not real hip on the idea of his new wife being gone for the entire summer for two or three summers in a row. I looked into a librarian degree…I figured that would be close but it’s not. You have to take all kinds of classes to be a librarian that were not relevant to what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a school librarian, but there are many different types of librarians (like a law librarian, for example) so you have to take classes so that you can be any type of librarian when you graduate. I guess that is how I got into the reading specialist program. It had to do with reading and kids, but it still wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. This program, is, however. I am going to call them on Monday and see how it works and if I could do it from home or with a minimal amount of driving. I looked on their website and it isn’t part of their distance learning program (not a good sign). Maybe I could even use some of the classes I took for the first master’s degree and apply them to this one. That would be nice. (Oh, by the way, I haven’t talked to Sean about this yet. So, honey, if you are reading this and we haven’t talked about it yet, we have something to talk about.)

I read this book in three days! It was SO good. The laundry was neglected and the house was not cleaned, but I got the book read. It was one of those books that you can not put down because you have to know what it going to happen. The main character kills her mother (I didn’t give anything away, it is the first sentence of the book). The story goes back and forth from the past (giving the reader background and the motive for the murder) to the present. This is the part that makes you keep reading. Is she going to get caught is she not? Will they arrest someone else? It is definitely not a happy book (obviously, she kills her mom…there are clearly some issues) but it is a good one.

Also, I have read two of this authors other books. She is such a good writer, but she always writes about some fairly serious topics. I would highly recommend The Lovely Bones and Lucky, also.

The boys had a real babysitter last night. We have always had the grandparents watch the kids, but we decided the kids were old enough and we felt comfortable leaving them with a teenager. I must also say that said teenager is also a relative and the daughter of Colm’s godfather. She did a great job and the boys had a great time. We will definitely have her back again. The only downside is that we have to pay this babysitter. Grandparents are willing to do it for free…teenagers are not.

New season started tonight. This is just about the only show I make time to watch besides the 10 o’clock news, so I am glad it is back.

Another book that took me forever to read…This book was recommended to me by a friend. It is a collection of autobiographical short stories where the writers relate some aspect to their life to one of Judy Blume’s many novels, including: Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, Superfuge, Deenie, Forever...etc. I have another book on hold from the library. It is about Sassy magazine. If you never read this magazine as a high school/college student you missed out. If was Seventeen magazine only a zillion times better. So good, in fact, that my mom wouldn’t let me read it. I think there might have been a lot of moms like mine because the zine didn’t last more than maybe six or seven years…but it was a good run.

Sean’s parents gave us a very nice (and big) bottle of beer about two years ago. They got it while traveling somewhere and Sean and I decided we would save it for something special. So, we have sold our house, settled into this one and everyone is finally healthy again. (Knock on wood.) So we decided to break it open tonight. We shouldn’t have waited. This beer has been sitting around for so long, we had put so much pressure on this beer to be really good, that we were a bit disappointed. It was okay, but it was REALLY bubbly and was a bit like beer mixed with a wine cooler…not necessarily a good combo.