When You "Can Burp at the Table"

As parents we make up rules and consequences we never thought we'd have to establish. Our latest rule is: You owe us 50 cents if you burp at the dinner table.

Last night, our first night of the 50 cent rule enforcement, JO lost a dollar. Since he was the child the rule was primarily targeting, I was pleased to have a zero loss dinner tonight. But what I wasn't expecting was CO, our not-quite three year-old, who announced tonight:

"I don't have money. So I burp."

We're in trouble with that one!

An Uploaded Picture For Your Viewing Pleasure

I haven't taken very many pictures lately. And I clearly haven't been uploading or taking proper care of my blog. Arah, who is a photography maven, emailed Halloween 2009 pictures she'd taken. I'm aware that it's April, but I stand firmly behind the old adage: "BETTER LATE THAN NEVER."

Themed Halloweens are my favorite kinds. 2009 was The Year of the Critter. I made a big list of creeping things I had patterns for and we each picked a bug or creeping thing from the list:

CO was a SNAIL

(Old Navy jammies, a rolled up beach towel, and thrift store eyeballs)

SO was a BUTTERFLY PRINCESS

(one of her princess dresses, pipe cleaner antennae, and Auntie Kiki's wings--thanks, Steve!)

JO was a ROACH

(butcher paper-covered cardboard shell, hands and feet sewn from brown fabric)

RO was a SPIDER

(googley eyes glued to a winter cap and, you can't his costume very well, it but his black sweater was edged with stuffed black socks on fishing line that moved whenever his arms moved)

I was a FIREFLY

(sequins glued to painted foam ball for the eyes, wings borrowed from SO's fairy dress-up dress, and a flashlight attached to the bottom of the wings)

BEN was a PRAYING MANTIS

(foam egg painted and glued to mask with both mask and claws sewn from felt pieces)

and

the dog was a BUMBLEBEE. . . for about two and a half seconds.

(not pictured)

A Post for March

Blogging isn't holding my interest lately, so I'm not promising more than this for March. But thank you for your love and concern for JO. He is feeling much better. In a few hours he can say that he's been home from the hospital for exactly one week. JO took his last dose of antibiotics this morning and tossed the empty bottle into the garbage with a "YES!" before heading out the door to school.

Well, I knew it would happen eventually, but I thought it would happen in middle school. Is fourth grade the new middle school? RO spends a lot of time combing his hair and looking in the mirror. Up until a few weeks ago he never wanted to get a hair cut, but now he has a faux-hawk (but not for church). ~I interrupt this paragraph about faux-hawks to bring you some cuteness. CO is dancing around the house singing "Mah moo moo moo mee, let's call the whole thing off, laaaaah dee dee dee da dah."~ Okay, where was I? When RO was a baby his hair grew in as a perfect mohawk. His baby mohawk was in full swing when Mrs. Kammerer told the Kahuku football team "If you beat St. Louis, you can shave my head into a mohawk." And Ben's students asked us if RO's mohawk was part of the celebration. This is where digitizing my old photos would have come in handy. He was a chubby one, that RO. Too bad babies grow out of super-adorable stage while their parents are too sleep deprived to properly enjoy it.

Band Nerds Unite

My son, the cello player, told his dad that he was going to switch to the saxophone. I think he said it more because the sax is what daddy plays (er, played). His dad told him to stick to the cello for a few years. He seemed satisfied with this advice until this morning's conversation over breakfast about good and bad bus behavior. I told the boys that Uncle Andrew got to open the back emergency door of the bus ALL THE TIME to fetch his tuba before football games. I saw a glimmer in RO's eye. Now he either wants to switch to the tuba or be a bus driver when he grows up.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no. They didn't approve of my answer when they asked if I ever opened the back door to get my instrument. Flutes are small. Sorry, kids. Hindsight is twenty twenty. On the first day of beginning band, I should have made sure I would earn open-the-emergency-door-on-the-bus privileges with my instrument selection.

Would I switch instruments, given the chance? I don't know if I'm as easily swayed as my fourth grader. Is my instrument too tied to my identity in high school? I never wanted to switch to tuba, especially during marching season. I have no upper body strength (Carrying a baby in a car seat is too big a struggle for me). The largest instrument I ever wanted to switch to would be the trombone. Hey kids, trombones are wiggly AND spit-filled! When you put it like that, they're waaaaaay better than flutes.

But still not a tuba.

Like, No Like, Lah Dat

The kids (and I) have two weeks off from school (and childcare).

I like it because:

1. I can sleep in until 8:00am instead of waking up at 6:15am.
2. No one needs to scurry around gathering their school stuff before heading out the door.
3. RO, JO, and SO generate much less laundry. When they aren't in school I don't follow standard societal protocol which suggests new outfits must be worn daily. (CO generates plenty of laundry on her own though because she is in the midst of potty training. And she strips down every time she needs to tinkle.)
4. The kids have loads of time to learn new responsibilities. I have this program I follow that breaks down into age groups all the practical things a child needs to learn before they hit 18. They have one-on-one training sessions with me before the task lands on their growing arsenal of mastered jobs that I can then make them do whenever the mood strikes.
5. The kids got some new games for Christmas that we've been playing and playing. Perfection and Hungry Hungry Hippos are my favorites, Yahtzee is stressful, and Wheel of Fortune is nifty, but loud. See #3 below.

I don't like it because:

1. CO won't take naps. And she still needs a daily nap. Now instead of noticing that she's "sweepie," sucking her thumb, and falling asleep, she routinely screams and throws a fit at 11:00am.
2. Toys are everywhere. If it wasn't for RO and JO's love for turning on their beloved Roomba (which belongs to the kids, we'reevilgeniuses!) nobody would ever pick anything up.
3. It's loud downstairs. There's a lot of playing and running around. They do go outside to play, but I don't make anyone go outside. It's cold out there.
4. RO is always telling me he's hungry.
5. I'm feeling lots of guilt because my grant deadline is only two weeks away. I'm writing a 35K federal grant for the high school (cuz I'm nice lah dat) which will help fund a farm to school program. It'll be cool because K-12 will learn about agri-science, 9-12 will maintain a garden in the now-empty space between the high school and the middle school, and eventually, hopefully they'll all eat lots of home-grown food in their school lunches. They also have plans to both sell produce to community members (in lieu of door-to-door fundraisers) and donate excess produce to charity. Cool program, long grant-writing process. I keep telling myself it's not nearly as bad as the successful 50K grant that my friend, Eva, and I wrote in '99. Maybe it's not as bad because now I know what I'm doing. . . I hope! ;)

Babies!

I'm blogging less these days because of these guys:

I'm providing childcare for Ben's co-worker's twins. It's a sweet gig. Along with the four month-old twins, I've been enjoying the adorable new babies in our ward. And this morning I got to see a photo shoot slideshow of my brand new niece (Steve's) who is a tiny miracle. I never did a professional photo shoot of my newborns, no, Sears does NOT count ;), but this makes me wish I had: http://amylynnsmith.com/photocart/slide_show.php?viewGallery=1035 (this link also takes you to my sister in-law's cool photography website). Yay for babies!

Talk About It

When I was student teaching sixth graders, my cooperating teacher told me to be very careful not to say negative things about a student during parent-teacher conferences because she had an experience where a child came to school with bruises the day after parent-teacher conferences. She felt sorrowful knowing that her words prompted someone to harm a child.

"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea" ~St. Matthew 18:6

Growing up, remember listening to my peers talk to each other about getting "lickings" from their parents. I know parenting is hard. I know children can be exasperating. I think we all spent some time being exasperating as a children. Physically and/or verbally harming children is wrong. Have you been witness to child abuse? Have you said something that caused a parent to angrily react toward their child and even hurt him or her? As a mom and as a Christian, I feel like staying silent when I know a child is being hurt is wrong. I do empathize with my cooperating teacher's experience. But what can I do or say that may help someone's child in this situation?