Friday, September 21, 2012

Braggard

So, I'm going to write this post for posterity.  I don't know if I wrote down the answer to Liam's preschool "What is your child like" essay question, but I believe I at least made a copy of it and have it somewhere.  I hope so anyway because that sweet boy should have some record of himself at age 3/4.  I just had to write an essay for Brendan's preschool class, and I'm going to record it here.  While I'm on the subject of bragging I have to point out that Liam requested I get from the library Brian Greene's DVD The Fabric of the Cosmos.  He's been watching online it since it re-aired on television.  I had to put it on hold since it was out but I was able to get a DVD of The Elegant Universe, which is good because he wanted Eric to read that to him.  I'm not saying he's a 6 year old astrophysicist, but I just think it is so cool that he finds that interesting, especially because it is sooooo far removed from what I found interesting as a child.  Sooooo far. 

Ok, so now I'll commence with the Brendan bragging.  This really is just for me to record somewhere what I wrote, in the very likely event I can't find the sheet for his memory box after I copy it.  I hope I can find what I wrote about Liam because I'd love to compare them.  That thing about not comparing your kids is just hooey.  I mean of course you don't compare in negatives ways, "Oh Joey is so much better than you in this way" or whatever, but the fact that kids from the same parents can be such different people is so interesting.  And as different as they are there are so many ways in which they are the same too.  And they're all awesome in their own ways.

What is your child like?
Brendan is very mature for his age.  He is exuberant, happy, loving, optimistic, inquisitive.  He is strong-willed about things that are important to him, but wants to get along with others, be involved and noticed, and have a fun time.  He is thoughtful and sincere, with a loving heart.  He does not suffer perceived injustices easily.  He is a strong extrovert, but may hang back in situations if he is unsure of his place.  He will stand up for himself.  If he is tired or not feeling well he has little patience for situations that don't go his way.  He is a consummate people person and he has a joyful soul. 

Monday, August 27, 2012

Aidanisms

Aidan's first phrase, repeated many many times throughout the day and basically used like "smurf" was, "Jude bye bye."  It meant a whole host of things, sometimes even that our neighbor Jude was going bye bye.  That's still in his lexicon, but then, for a lovely while, a new phrase, my favorite, overtook "Jude bye bye."  That phrase was "I love Momma" which over time morphed into "I love Mommy."  This was also used like smurf, but certainly mostly to tell me and everyone else how much he loved me.  However, now the phrase that has taken the number one position is "Ew.  Gwoek."  That can refer to many things, most of which really seem to be gwoek to Aidan, including fur balls, lots of things the meows do, drool, a drop of spilled milk, a diaper, a piece of lettuce after happily eating that same piece of lettuce for quite some time, and then resuming eating that piece of lettuce after the "ew gwoek" proclamation, etc.  It's super adorable, but I still prompt him to say I Love Mommy whenever possible.

Friday, August 17, 2012

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Tomorrow Eric comes home!  Yes!  I am so happy and so are the boys.  Yet this week went by quickly, and it was very fun.  The kids were so well behaved and thoughtful and sweet.  Sure, there was some yelling, but that would have been true even with Eric home, because when you have three little boys sometimes you have to be a drill sargent.  But other times you get to swim around a big pool in Lake Geneva or play spies or read books about da Bears.  (Did you know Sid Luckman took a job coaching the Columbia University football team and refused to be paid for it, insisting the money go to deserving students who wouldn't otherwise be able to attend Columbia.  What an incredible guy!  And can you even imagine a college football coach doing something like that today?)  The cutest and saddest part of the week was when we were video chatting with Eric and Aidan reached his arms up to the computer so Eric could pick him up, and then he started crying because Eric didn't pick him up.  If he would start to miss Eric it usually seemed to help if I told him "Daddy's on a big plane up in the sky." And Aidan would reply happily, "Oh wow!"  So in Aidan's mind Eric's been flying since he left.  I guess he sort of thinks of Eric as an astronaut.
Happy trails.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The Stinky Thing in the Air

(from Liam since we still can't access his blog Ghostbusters Chute.)

Hello!  Today I woke up as early as my new school will start.  I got to play with Maddy while Grandma and Grandpa were here.  I don't know what I'm going to do later.  We tried to attack the big kids with Nerf swords and things.  Right now I am having dessert - it's chocolate covered ice cream.  Bye!

Monday, August 13, 2012

Oh! Something!

(This is Liam's blog for Daddy today, because I can't get into his.)

We're going to Kidsnips today.  I have a very good feeling I am going to go in the alligator again today.  I hope I'll get a treat at the end.  Yesterday, when we went to the party after your airport ride, I was punting some crazy high punts with Brennan.  And I was batting really far with Jon.  And I got more desserts than Mommy thought I would.  I'm not sure which car I will pick today at Kidsnips.  I mean, which toy car.  What are you doing?  I think I'll pick another red car like the one that just broke.  What did you see in London?  What does your room look like?  I think I'll pick Spongebob for the movie at KidSnips.  huh-huhu-huh done!

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Well That's Plain Weird

Eric and I are always discussing where we want to live.  Maybe Colorado, maybe California, maybe Ireland, maybe ???.  While we toss around ideas we just stay right here where we are.  I picked up an ARC of the book Paris in Love a while back and it definitely played straight into my ideas about making some sort of move, but still I don't know where.  So one night Eric and I were watching the Olympics and standing in the midst of all the sleek, shaved heads was this guy Evan Jager and I thought for a second I was looking 20 years into the future and seeing my own Brando out on the track.  And I thought wow, this kid probably grew up running along the beach somewhere and here he is now running in the steeplechase.  So I decided it all then and there.  I said to Eric, wherever this guy is from, that's where we should move.  And I looked him up and...tension mounting...excitement building...he's from Algonquin.  Algonquin, IL.  Yep, so back to studying suggestions from The Weather of the Future.  Darn it.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

American Mom

Since Liam was about 2 I've always though he looked like the quintessential baseball player, straight down to his natural batting pose and old fashioned baseball physique (think Shoeless Joe, not Babe Ruth.)  Anyway, Liam has loved every sport we've signed him up for, and soccer best of all.  The camera man at our local public television station has two athletic (and musical but that hasn't anything to do with this story) older boys and he advised me to skip tball.  He said they're just too little and it's basically just painful for the parents to sit through and not of much use for the kids.  Well this year since we started Liam at a new school and some of his friends were doing tball and had done so last year and liked it, we signed him up.  Long story short he got on a team with one of his good friends from class and really loved the sport just like everything else he's done.  (sidenote: and he really DOES look the part.)  They give them MLB uniforms and it's really well done and I am impressed.  A few weeks ago they asked each kid to nominate 3 kids from the team for the All Star game.  Now the thing is, in these games they don't keep score, no one strikes out, the best you can do is make it to first, and the whole thing is just a way for kids to learn a bit about the game and get out there on the diamond.  Everyone comes home and every team finishes with the same number of points.  And after every game Liam thinks he was totally awesome.  In this sport more than most I would say the ability at the kindergarten level is really very similar across the kids.  In basketball especially and in soccer to a lesser degree you would see some real standouts, but I have never seen that in this sport.  So, I was totally confused by this all star thing and knew Liam wouldn't get nominated because he only knows one person on the team, and that person and most of the rest of the kids know each other.  So, yesterday was already a rough day when Eric gets the email that says which 4 kids made the All Star team.  Liam was not one.  However his friend was (and so it turns out was at least one other friend on another team and of course all three of them played yesterday while I watched feeling a tad sick to my stomach, since for a while the two "all stars" buddied up apart from Liam.  Midway through though they were all playing fine, and Liam just played with other people when his friends were not playing with him.)  I am totally for letting kids deal with disappointments and if it were 4th or 5th grade and it actually meant something, though I think it would be harder on Liam, I think it would at least be more appropriate than telling 4 of 12 kindergartners, "you guys are All Stars" and the other 8, who up to this point felt they were All Stars too, "sorry but you didn't make the team."  What is the logic in that?  I too am sick of the helicopter parent phenomenon, everyone gets a trophy, no one ever loses... And yes I can be too pampering and neurotic at times, but I feel like a pretty reasonable parent and I just don't think this is cool because it's Kindergarten.  If Liam had made it I would have felt relief and really sorry for the other 2/3 of the kids who didn't.  Am I overreacting?  For the record this bothers me far more than it bothers Liam (who I think is just a slight bit bothered that there is another game but he doesn't get to play in it, because he wants the season to keep going.) 
I'm reading a book called Bringing Up Bebe, which is about parenting (well really mothering) in France and what they do better than us.  Usually I hate that kind of crap and I never read parenting rags or blogs because it's mostly fear mongering and worthless, but this book has some points that have left me thinking.  Yet it also reminds me how over involved American parenting has become, whch is why I wish to be able to say "no biggie" but no, I'm American and part of that is being an American parent, for good or bad.  So there.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Kinda True

So we bought some applegate farms turkey burgers.  Liam and Brendan are pretty great eaters (though Brendan won't eat tomatoes) but when it comes to burgers they are purists.  Surprisingly we haven't had turkey burgers in a long time, but since they've been digging a local restaurant's veggie burgers, and what with the whole 6 degrees of mad cow thing, I thought we should try turkey burgers again.  They each ate a half, but Brendan's comments, with complete sincerity: "These taste like headphones" and "These aren't good, I mean they aren't really bad but they're just not good."  And Liam said, "Seriously, they taste like foam.  No really, why do they taste like this?"
Something to remember.  Aidan, well, Aidan ate the bun and the broccoli.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

In the Middle of Our Street

(this was written yesterday)

Last night Aidan woke up around midnight and was fussing and pulling on his diaper and saying ow. It seemed dry but I figured I'd changed it anyway and then in a solitary lucid moment I grabbed my booklight to take a look and found his legs were covered in hives. No one knows why, but we had the cats bathed and shaved on Thursday and I have a feeling that had something to do with it. I know there are a million seasonal allergens out there right now but I'm still pretty convinced it was this weird powder they put on the cats, which makes me feel itchy just thinking about it. I'm going to go look at pictures of when Brendan broke out in hives once and see if there are pictures of shaved cats from right around that time too. I really should have gotten a master's in detectivery. Anyway cat baths were added to the day today, and I really love extra stuff to do on Crazy Tuesdays (more on that later.) (oh and I just remembered Liam got a bunch of dirt in his hair from working in the garden and he needed a bath but failed to get one. shoot!)


Also, the tv installers called to say they would come between 7:30 and 8:30. Liam and Brendan leave for school at 8 so of course they came at 7:50. And 12 seconds before the rang the doorbell Liam spilled milk all over the floor that leads to the room the TV is going into. Anyway, Liam and Brendan got to walk to school just with each other as I watched from the the porch. Exciting! Equally exciting was when Liam saw the wii box and exclaimed "Mom! This tv plays movies about the Mario Brothers!" We decided to try and downplay the wii instead of making it a big deal as a present or something, but Liam was excited to play an inaugural game on it after school. That was before the installers decided they couldn't instal the tv on the wall we wanted it on ("I've been doing this for 10 years and never came across something like this") (to be fair it was just paneling over a brick wall (which we hope to some day take off) but the studs weren't adequate to hang the tv from.) So the other wall where he wants to put it requires us to have a carpenter come and take out a wall mounted airconditioner (which admittedly were were going to do at some point but not NOW) and patchup the wall and somehow match the paneling and yadayada and what about the siding. Bottom line tv, player and wii returned to sender and once again for every x many thousands of dollars we intend to sink into the house it's multiplied by 5 and that corresponds to an equal and opposite reduction in home value.


Tuesdays are like this: Liam and Brendan have school, Eric works, then I work at 5:00, and Liam and Brendan have Irish dancing at 5:15 and Liam has baseball at 6:00. When means they have to eat dinner at 4:15 or else they have to wait til 7:15 and that's too close to bedtime.


(This was written today)
Also, usually Eric walks the kids to school but this morning I walked Liam. When we were just about there Liam said in his sweet small voice, "In music we're learning our last song." "Is it the song you'll sing at the end of the year kindergarten celebration?" "Yes, it's the very last song we'll sing and it's an echo song." AHHHH! I am so sad. This is going by too fast and there is NO WAY I am going to be able to sit through something like that. I will seriously sneak out if I can do it undetected and go back in at the end because really there is no way I could be there. heart breaking...

Friday, March 9, 2012

Aidan in Translation

For those of you who want a primer:


Down
1. Down
2. Up 

There it is
1. There it is
2. Thank you

Aye
1. Yes

No no no
1. No
2. Absolutely not
3. No Yes No Yes No

Momma
1. Mommy
2. Daddy

Mommy
1. Mommy
2. Daddy

Dad
1. Daddy
2. Liam
3. Brendan
4. Mommy

Ow
1. Ouch
2. Get away from me
3. No I cannot share this with you

Vrrrrrr
1. Vacuum
2. Car noise

Guck
1. Stuck (usually in reference to himself, a ball or Roomba)

More
1. More

All done
1. All done
2. Not really all done because I forgot I still want to eat more

Ruck
1. Truck

Beebo
1. Belly Button

Eye
1. This is your eye right here where I am pressing my finger

Nose
1. Nose

Ball
1. Ball
2. Round object that I want to throw that is not a ball

Wow
1. Wow, that's cool
2. Wow I'm amazing you should be clapping for how amazing I am

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The List Is In!

Liam, Brendan and I have made our Vacation List.  As you'll see it's unlikely we'll hit all these places this year, but we'd rather have too big a list than too small a list.  We had hoped to go with Eric on his first week-long trip to CA, but unfortunately he had to make his travel plans while I was super sick and I just couldn't muster arranging plans for us as well and switching my work hours and whatnot, so we won't be joining him when he flies out next week.  But he'll be going to CA for his new job at least a couple times a year so we'll definitely catch a ride out there on a regular basis and hopefully at least once this year.  Ok, drumroll please:
- Champaign (the boys LOVE going there, and actually I do plan on Marching in May so we most likely will be going)
- Alaska (Brendan's addition)
- Indianapolis ( we were supposed to go last week to see the Butler / UIC game, but sickness thwarted those plans.  I was able to give our bball tickets to my old college roommate and she has a 4 year old so it worked out reasonably well.  We'll go visit my prof either this Spring/ Summer or for a football game in the Fall.  Most important of all is that we see Blue II (and maybe Blue III)!
- California (Eric's new job is in Mountain View, so we'll do San Fran and Muir Woods, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium)
- New York City (but Brendan specifies that we will NOT ride in a cash cab)
- Baltimore (we plan to go here to visit my aunt this summer)
- Florida (we may go here in November to visit Eric's cousin in Clearwater Beach and as he is a marine biologist Liam may get some face time with his work in Tampa Bay.  Also the boys have a strong attachment to him even though they've only met a few times, and he has a little girl just about Aidan's age)
- Tennessee (my brother and his family want to go here to because they like the Smokey Mountains, and while we're there we want to check out the firefoxes Eric's new company has at the Knoxville Zoo)
- Water Park (I added this, and we are going to a water park to kick off Spring Break since I am working a lot that week and I want the boys to feel they have some memories from the break.)
- Hawaii (Liam's addition)
- Italy (we have all been wanting to go here for years, and I think we are getting close.  There's a song we sing, "Senor Don Gato" and while it may be Spanish Liam and I decided long ago we will go to Italy and look for Don Gato up on the rooftops.  Also Italy has agriturismo so we will check that out.  As an added bonus Liam and Brendan are learning Italian in school!  !molto bene!)
- Ireland (obviously)
- Africa (Liam & Brendan's addition.  Liam thinks when he is 9 and Brendan is 7, I thought much older than that)
- Asia (Liam & Brendan's addition.  They are more exotic than I am.  Also, I spelled Asia wrong when I first wrote it on our list and it gave me a headache trying to figure out what was wrong with it.  I plan to stick with Little Saigon and Chinatown, but they have to dream.)

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Stop! Growing Up So Damn Fast!!!

One of my patrons at work told me possibly the worst thing I could ever hear, just before Liam started kindergarten.  She said "once they start kindergarten, it's over.  They will be in college in the blink of an eye."  Now why she told me such a horrible thing, I have no idea.  But I'm sure it was just a week or two ago when I was crying over Liam's too-fast-approaching first day of kindergarten, and now he only has THREE MONTHS LEFT!!!!  What?!?! How did this happen?  I know we lost about a month with the pneumonia, but still this just can't be.  I am totally sick about it.

 And you mean to tell me this was over a year and a half ago?!?!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

About Last Night

What can I say?  We survived.  That was our first time with three sick kids at once.  Fortunately Brendan's at the tail end of this illness, Liam in the middle, and Aidan just got hit (and as of this morning seems to be on the mend already.)    Liam slept literally all day and all night yesterday, with just bathroom breaks in between..  He wouldn't let us give him any meds, and since he slept through the doctors' hours and then the Immediate Care Center hours (the docs said we should go get him tested for strep) we decided to let him sleep and watched him like a hawk.  With no medical knowledge at all we didn't really think it was strep, just cause he did have a bad cold and didn't have trouble swallowing and had a cough and didn't have a particularly sore throat and from what I could see of his throat it didn't look red or white or weird.  And also Brendan seemed to be one step ahead of Liam in this illness and was doing much better.  And the doctor said you need to catch strep in the first 9 days, so we decided to give him the rest he wanted and long story short today he seems better this morning and is fever free.  I'm still going to be watching all three of them and will take them in the second it seems necessary.  But I'm trying really hard to be the right mix of cautious without being neurotic.  It's an uphill battle.  :o)

Eric has to go to CA for two weeks in mid March, and I am trying to decide if we should go with for the first week.  That could entail me flying in at least one direction with three kids by myself.  yowzers!  And my germaphobia will be in full swing at an airport in March.  And the boys would miss a week of school.  On the other hand we would be in California in March, so that would be awesome.  And I really don't see L, B & A being too comfortable with not seeing Eric for so long.  Ah, decisions, decisions.  Ok, back to laundry!!


Here's a pic of the boys playing either Angry Birds or Shoot the Apple.  Aidan really likes to be in  on everything...


And here's a cute pic from the Liam and Brendan's joint birthday party in January with their friends from school...  (realllly hope we can get the thank you cards sent out today.  You know, just a month late.)

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The Thursday That Wasn't

What was supposed to happen:


Wednesday, Eric works in the day, I work in the night

Thursday, Eric works in the day, Brendan doesn't have school so his friend comes over to play, I work in the day, Eric takes the boys to the dentist in the afternoon and we take the boys to Grandma's and have a night out on our own, the first in quite a while.



What did happen:

Wednesday, Eric works in the day, the boys and I clean up the house for the playdate. Good day. Eric comes home, I go to work, Eric has a good night with the boys, baths, dinner, and then Brendan starts feeling sick, throws up a bunch of times, Liam starts crying that his ears hurt, I get stuck by a freight train in the rain on my walk home from work sans umbrella, we do 6.2 million loads of laundry, Aidan wakes up too early Thursday morning, I go to work, Eric misses an important meeting, we have to cancel the dentist and the babysitting with grandma.



I can't be too bitter though because FORTUNATELY Liam and Brendan got to go to their class Valentine's Day parties, which were super cute and they had a lot of fun, and I was supposed to work tomorrow night but someone switched with me at the last minute so now I have the night off. And Eric has a 5 day weekend coming up, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everyone will start getting healthier.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Casual Conversations

Liam told me before lunch today that the Dalai Lama's favorite animal is monkeys.  (for the record we rarely have talked about the Dalai Lama, and not at all in recent memory, so this just came straight out of the blue.)  I said "Oh, did you learn this at school?"  He looked at me, furrowed his brow, darted his eyes around pensively and said, "No, I think I just knew this ever since I was born."  See, I TOLD you!!  No one ever believes me!!!
Things here are going well, even in spite of winter (which has been scarily mild KNOCKONWOOD)  Aidan is babbling up a storm and I'm starting to decipher more and more words in there.  (So far this week 2 new ones - "stuck" and "roomba."  And he was right!)  He is so adorable, and man does he have a funny range of facial expressions.  "Implausible!"  "Puh-lease" "I cannot believe you are even suggesting that" "I am smiling so hard no one will ever see my eyes" and the list goes on.  Brendan slid perfectly right into the preschool where Liam is in kindergarten (there were many adjustments made After Pneumonia.)  Both the big boys had amazingly excellent parents teacher conferences and I am so proud of their awesomeness.  And Brendan had a performance in his classroom for Valentine's Day and he sang the loudest and the most on-key.  A Star Is Born!  :o)  Were heading off to Indy soon to catch a Butler game, and life these days is generally full of:
school (for Liam and Brendan - not me!  yay!) 
basketball (Liam)
Irish Dance (Liam & Brendan)
playdates (Liam & Brendan)
work (Me & Eric)
new words and demands to get toenail polish and have his shoes put on when anyone else does (Aidan) (and also Liam & Brendan actually)
a reemergence of exercise (me)
Roomba (Aidan)
Harry Potter (me, Liam, Brendan and sometimes Aidan)
finally watching some new on DVD movies (me & Eric)

Ok, I think I am going to go take a quick rest while the boys play downstairs.  Any guesses how long til the yelling starts?

Monday, January 23, 2012

Growing Up

(Three unrelated things first.
One, today I was reading a Cars 2 encyclopedia of characters to Brendan.  Yes.  Anyway, I'm reading about one car, Carla something, and Brendan got so excited and said, "What?!  That car's my favorite car and she's a GIRL?!  She's my favorite car and girls are my favorite persons!"  He is adorable and has a huge crush on Liam's classmate Meghan, and seriously don't let him near an advertisment with scantily clad women or a swimsuit issue or something - yikes!  As hard as I try I can't get the image out of my head of him wearing a shell necklace and shorts and Adidas flip flops hanging out with his rugby teammates.  How many years will I have of three teenage boys?  :o) 
Two, Liam is consistently  amazing me with his passion for science.  He begs and pleads to watch movies about the Cern Center with the Large Hadron Collider.  like this and this and it's just crazy.  I wonder how much of this will relate to his adult life.  I know that childhood tendancies don't always correlate to adult interests, but I'm am eager to watch how it progresses.  I wish we could afford to send him to the science school, but at something like 17k a year it's probably not going to happen.  Fortunately there's lots of other things he can do, including taking classes there in the summer.  And like Eric says it's important to keep him well rounded.  At the ages of six and four Liam seems to have a mind for science and Brendan is more people-oriented with a good sense of numbers and languages, and I could see him going down a business path.  I'm trying to teach them that hard work is very important, no matter what the subject, which is something I didn't know as a child.  An aside, at point it doesn't seem like basketball is Liam's sport, but then again he's only in kindergarten and it's suuuuper funny to watch their game.  Suuuper funny.
Three, I might possibly eat Aidan, he is so soft and adorable.)

Ok, so since the boys continue to grow up with alarming speed, I'm going to try my best to accept it and look forward to the future.   We had a big all-class birthday party for Liam last night, (and invited a few of Brendan's friends too because he actual birthday was pretty lousy since we had to cancel most of our plans when Liam got sick.)  It was crazy, crazy, fun, and it turned out Liam thought he was now going to turn seven pretty soon, since this party was a month after he turned six.  That made me happy because it shows he's still a kid, and sad because no Good Lord my baby is not turning seven any time soon!  Ahh!  Anyway, back to my earlier part, here are some movies I'm looking forward to watching with or recommending to, my boys when they get older:
Schindler's List
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Ghostbusters
The Godfather
The Blues Brothers
Indiana Jones
Star Wars, especially the original three
Braveheart
Life is Beautiful
Brokeback Mountain
It's a Wonderful Life
Reservoir Dogs
To Kill a Mockingbird
Miller's Crossing
Back to the Future
hmm...and what else...

Friday, January 13, 2012

New Bloggers

I'm following two new blogs; check 'em out.
Ghostbusters Chute
Six Little Tigers