Sean and the boys have been playing a knights game on the computer after dinner for the past few weeks. They love it and look forward to Daddy getting home each night so they can play. Well, on Friday night, they absolutely refused to eat their dinner. (I don’t even remember what it was now, but they acted as if they might die trying to eat it.) So, Sean told them if they didn’t eat it then they couldn’t play knights that night after dinner. Colm still wouldn’t eat. Liam tried, but he was picking and poking at his food and I was not going to sit there with him all night. So Sean told them that they wouldn’t be playing knights that night and got up from the table. (oh, dear, you should have heard the wailing). But it got worse…Sean went and played without them. He went in his office, shut the door and played for a good half hour. Their little world collapsed. The tears. The howling. I think there were some pint-sized insults thrown in Sean’s direction. You should see these kids eat now though. Not only are they eating things they would never have eaten five days ago, but they know they have to eat it in a reasonable amount of time, too. They were literally scarfing down their pasta last night. I love it! I could serve them pigs ears with garlic sauce now and I think they would find a way to choke it down.
Archive for January 2008
This afternoon Colm found his new favorite book in Liam’s room. He brought it to me to read to him, but he didn’t shut Liam’s door and the dog was going to go in his room. This is a big deal and Colm knows it. The dog is not allowed into their rooms because he eats their stuffed animals. I told Colm he needed to go back and shut Liam’s door and then I would read him the book. He wouldn’t shut the door, so I shut it. He then realized that I really wasn’t going to read him the book now because he didn’t follow directions and shut the door like I had asked. So he went back and opened the door so he could then shut it so that I could then read him the book.
We stopped at Costco to get gas today and there was an elderly couple there gassing up their bright red VW bug. These people were AT LEAST 80. They were so cute. She was in the driver’s seat with her bright white, fresh from the beauty parlor curls. He was putting in the gas. He had on a cute little fisherman hat. If I would have had my phone with me I would have tried to sneak a picture of them.
Before Sean and I even had kids we always said we wanted them to go to school A (we’ll call it that for anonymity-I have no idea who is reading this blog). My brothers went there and since they are 13 years younger than me we got to see what a great school it was. We had Liam enrolled there last year for kinder, but with our house not selling and moving and all of that jazz we forfeited our deposit and decided not to send him. I am SO glad we made that decision. There is NO WAY we could have packed, moved and done everything that had to be done to build this house and still gotten him to school and picked up each day. I am also glad we sent him to the school he went to this year. It was a great way for him to meet the neighborhood kids, he has a great teacher and the school is wonderful, too. We are in a position now, however, to send both Liam and Colm to school A now. I called them on Tuesday, the boys had their evaluations at the school on Thursday, we got the paperwork for next school year on Friday and we sent it back in on Saturday. There was only one spot left in first grade next year so we snapped it up. They are a private Catholic school in an urban setting that goes from Montessori (preschool) through Grade 8. It is a small school with only two sections of each grade with a policy of twenty or fewer kids per class. They have an indoor pool (which is ancient!) where the kids take weekly swim lessons, they begin learning French at the Montessori level, since it is in the city it is both racially and economically diverse (which is very important to us considering the reputation our county has for its affluence and whiteness), all students are evaluated before being offered a spot at the school (you don’t have to be a genius, but a certain level of smarts and behavior are expected), we love the history (our kids will be there for the school’s 100th anniversary) and it is Catholic. Another thing I noticed when we were walking around that is in the middle school level, their lockers didn’t have locks and most of them were ajar. I love it! They don’t need locks because that kind of crap doesn’t happen around there. I also love how they combine subjects for the little guys. For example, their P.E. class is conducted in French. There is one downside. It is not close, but there are several families around here who go there and the school is very good about helping families set up carpools since people drive from all over the metro to get to the school. I am so excited, but more importantly…so are the boys!
I think Colm has a future as a librarian or a book reviewer or something of the sort. He has come up with a system to classify his books. Since we usually read in his bed, the system goes like this: books he likes get dropped on the floor to the left of his bed when he is done with them, books he doesn’t like get dropped on the right and books he kind of likes go at the foot of his bed. Most books make it to the “like” pile, very few make it to the “kind of” pile and I have noticed that most of the books that make it to the “don’t like” pile are non-fiction books. At least he knows what he likes!
There are going to be some big changes around here come August, one of them being me being employed. Someone is going to actually pay me money to do something. See, the tricky part is though, I have to actually get a job. With the boys gone at school for a large chunk of the day I would like to do something productive. There are a few catches, however. I need a job that would allow me to be home with the boys on breaks, during the summer, and when they are sick. Additionally, I would like to go with them on their field trips and be at their holiday parties. I would also like to be able to volunteer at their school and eat lunch with them every once in a while before they get to be too old and too cool to have their mom do that. I also only want to work during the hours they are at school. Also, I would like to get a job near their school to minimize the driving. I have a job in mind, but someone already has that job. She has mentioned that she has thought about quitting though. Would it be rude of me to remind her that she had mentioned in the past that she might leave her position? Just a gentle nudge. I will wait and see how the whole getting everyone to school and getting everyone picked up thing goes and see what happens from there. I have a feeling I am not going to find my dream job. I am not in a rush, but it would be nice to receive a paycheck.
Does it bother anyone else? What I understand from this is that the FDA has approved beef and milk that has come from cloned animals to be sold as food. That bothers me. What is also troubling is that they don’t have to label it. It’s already been decided that such products are not kosher. I think I’ll either convert, go back to being a vegetarian or start raising my own animals.
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Finished a book tonight…it is a story of a family who loses two family members in one night, how the family’s truths are revealed to them over the course of a weekend and how forgiveness can heal all things. Good and fast read.
On Sunday night I was cooking dinner when out of the corner of my eye I saw a large flash come out of my oven and then there was a loud pop. Not good. Whatever happened, it tripped the circuit brakers. We didn’t turn them back on either. We felt like there was something major enough wrong that we should probably let an electrician handle it. So, finally, today an electrician was able to come to our house. It took him quite a while to figure out what was wrong, but he kept at it and finally figured it out. Our stove and cooktop are only supposed to be pulling a certain amount of amps, but the cooktop alone pulls almost as much as both of them together are supposed to pull. How did that happen? Well, I guess we didn’t get the cooktop we were supposed to get when we built the house, but they didn’t take that into consideration when they wired our house. So now they have to rewire that part of our house or something like that. So, we have been eating out the past few nights. Tonight I got out the crockpot. I hope they get it fixed by tomorrow. I like to eat out as much as the next person, but it does get old after a while.
I am so excited! We are getting a Whole Foods less than ten minutes away from my house. I hate trekking all the way up to the other one. I don’t know when it will be done, but hopefully it won’t take too long since the building used to be a grocery store…all they have to do is fill it with yummy food.