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?
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
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...
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
Monday, December 12, 2011
Weirdest Year on Record
I was making the annual Christmas calendar I make for the grandparents and ourselves, and while going through the pictures I determined this has been the weirdest year ever. First, there was the snowpocalypse. Then Aidan fell out of the high chair and landed on his head and had to go to the ER. Then, we had a tornado which took out our power and did some damage to our garage and knocked two large trees on to our front and back lawns. Then we had a storm that left us without power for four days. Then Eric's train got hit by a truck hauling concrete and derailed in a fire-y mess. Then we were hit by a massive storm that wreaked havoc on our basement.
Then Liam started kindergarten and Brendan started preschool, and we started to get into a routine for really the first time ever.
Then Liam got the most awful 72 hour nonstop vomiting illness from which he could not recover, which turned into pneumonia which caused him to miss:
my art presentation to his kindergarten class,
our downtown Brendan's 4th birthday weekend extravaganza,
trick or treating at Orbitz,
the school Halloween party,
the kindergarten Halloween party and parade,
his 4th annual trick or treating at his aunt's work,
Halloween,
his last soccer game and the soccer team party,
the kindergarten field trip to the zoo (which Eric was chaperoning and which would have been his first time on a school bus),
the class dress-up-like-it's-the-1950's day,
and which culminated in a 5 day stay in the hospital for a pleural effusion and a two week post-discharge picc line in his arm.
So, it's really no wonder my nerves are rattled!
Then Liam started kindergarten and Brendan started preschool, and we started to get into a routine for really the first time ever.
Then Liam got the most awful 72 hour nonstop vomiting illness from which he could not recover, which turned into pneumonia which caused him to miss:
my art presentation to his kindergarten class,
our downtown Brendan's 4th birthday weekend extravaganza,
trick or treating at Orbitz,
the school Halloween party,
the kindergarten Halloween party and parade,
his 4th annual trick or treating at his aunt's work,
Halloween,
his last soccer game and the soccer team party,
the kindergarten field trip to the zoo (which Eric was chaperoning and which would have been his first time on a school bus),
the class dress-up-like-it's-the-1950's day,
and which culminated in a 5 day stay in the hospital for a pleural effusion and a two week post-discharge picc line in his arm.
So, it's really no wonder my nerves are rattled!
Monday, November 28, 2011
Statistics and Patting My Back
It occurred to me in the shower today that the past couple weeks are the first time in over six years that I am not pregnant or nursing. Actually there was a period of a few months between weaning Brendan and getting pregnant with Aidan in there, but for all intents and purposes this is a definite departure from the last six and a half years. I was planning on weaning Aidan but my little stint in Lincoln Park with Liam was what finally did it. And now I am very close to having a new-found freedom of another sort as I wrap up my MLS. I turned in my application at midnight, March 2, 2007 and found out I was pregnant with Brendan that afternoon, which was also my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. I started the program 7 months pregnant with Brendan, on campus for two weeks at what they call boot camp. It's in insane 2 credit hour 8 week class rolled into 12 days.
This semester I took a technology class and an AV preservation class, and that one was one of the hardest I've taken throughout my coursework. My final paper was due the Monday after the the week Liam was in the hospital, and the weekend I had allotted for writing the paper was the weekend we were at Children's. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it bedside (haha, no way I later learned) so I wrote my prof and he was really understanding and told me not to worry and just get it in when I could and it wouldn't be counted as late. I turned it in 4 days late, and was wondering if I could pull off a B and not ruin my GPA too much (I know, no one cares about GPA, but still, for all the blood, sweat and tears I put into this non-lucrative degree, I wanted a respectable GPA.) Anyway, the other thing I thought about in my shower today was, "oh, my AVL prof said he would have grades today or tomorrow." So I went down and checked my class, and I had a message from him. He said my paper was worth waiting for, and I got an A on the paper and in the class, and he asked if he could use my paper as an example in a future class. Wow, that was so awesome. I mean it was really a hard class, not an easy A class, and I worked my butt off but definitely wasn't able to do the amount of work I wanted to, and for this super cool prof to give me that kind of praise, well that definitely shined a happy light on a very dismal month.
So Wednesday's the big day we hope to get the all clear for Liam. Keep your fingers crossed and your prayers prayed if you wouldn't mind. I cannot wait for this to be done. Liam does have a cold right now, but hooooopefully it's not much of anything. He's staying home from school just to let him rest and not overdo it, but he and I cannot wait to get him back into his normal life.
This semester I took a technology class and an AV preservation class, and that one was one of the hardest I've taken throughout my coursework. My final paper was due the Monday after the the week Liam was in the hospital, and the weekend I had allotted for writing the paper was the weekend we were at Children's. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it bedside (haha, no way I later learned) so I wrote my prof and he was really understanding and told me not to worry and just get it in when I could and it wouldn't be counted as late. I turned it in 4 days late, and was wondering if I could pull off a B and not ruin my GPA too much (I know, no one cares about GPA, but still, for all the blood, sweat and tears I put into this non-lucrative degree, I wanted a respectable GPA.) Anyway, the other thing I thought about in my shower today was, "oh, my AVL prof said he would have grades today or tomorrow." So I went down and checked my class, and I had a message from him. He said my paper was worth waiting for, and I got an A on the paper and in the class, and he asked if he could use my paper as an example in a future class. Wow, that was so awesome. I mean it was really a hard class, not an easy A class, and I worked my butt off but definitely wasn't able to do the amount of work I wanted to, and for this super cool prof to give me that kind of praise, well that definitely shined a happy light on a very dismal month.
So Wednesday's the big day we hope to get the all clear for Liam. Keep your fingers crossed and your prayers prayed if you wouldn't mind. I cannot wait for this to be done. Liam does have a cold right now, but hooooopefully it's not much of anything. He's staying home from school just to let him rest and not overdo it, but he and I cannot wait to get him back into his normal life.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Also
If Liam gets the a-ok on his appointment on the 30th he will get the picc line out, which will be so so awesome. It will also be the 32nd day of his illness. That is truly insane. We're starting the 10 day count-down. I don't even want to mention how excited I am for December, lest I jinx that. And if you don't believe in jinxing, let me tell you this story. The week before he got sick we were at a friend's house and the kids were learning to ride their bikes without training wheels. (We were at Liam's friend Meghan's house learning, because she had just learned over the weekend so Liam, Brendan and her little bro who is 4 were all learning together.) I was talking with their mom Peggy about another of Liam's classmates whose little sister had just been hospitalized for pneumonia. I told Peggy, "Knock on wood my kids have never had any weird illnesses, the worst has been a 24 hour stomach bug and an ear infection." Yep, not 5 days later Liam got the plague.
Today, I am hoping to finish my very last essay for grad school. I started it yesterday but didn't make too much progress, though starting it is often the hardest part for me. But it's in my Audiovisual Preservation class and I really have been out of my element in that class. They lost me at vinegar syndrome. My professor is super awesome. He's young and works at the Library of Congress, and his boss is...the Librarian of Congress. You pretty much can't get any cooler than that, right? Also he reminds me of my supervisor at work, and I think they both went through the cinema studies program at UIUC so it makes a lot of sense. And both of them have been so kind to me throughout the whole ordeal of the last month. I feel so lucky to have such an awesome job and awesome colleagues, not to mention the best family and friends.
One positive and unintended consequence of this whole thing is that since I didn't sleep at home for 4 (or was it 5? I'm already repressing) nights Aidan got weaned and is a much better sleeper. Always look on the bright side of life...when you're chewing on life's gristle, don't grumble give a whistle...
Did I mention Brendan and Aidan came down with colds the night before Liam came home from the hospital, and have passed it on to me?
Today, I am hoping to finish my very last essay for grad school. I started it yesterday but didn't make too much progress, though starting it is often the hardest part for me. But it's in my Audiovisual Preservation class and I really have been out of my element in that class. They lost me at vinegar syndrome. My professor is super awesome. He's young and works at the Library of Congress, and his boss is...the Librarian of Congress. You pretty much can't get any cooler than that, right? Also he reminds me of my supervisor at work, and I think they both went through the cinema studies program at UIUC so it makes a lot of sense. And both of them have been so kind to me throughout the whole ordeal of the last month. I feel so lucky to have such an awesome job and awesome colleagues, not to mention the best family and friends.
One positive and unintended consequence of this whole thing is that since I didn't sleep at home for 4 (or was it 5? I'm already repressing) nights Aidan got weaned and is a much better sleeper. Always look on the bright side of life...when you're chewing on life's gristle, don't grumble give a whistle...
Did I mention Brendan and Aidan came down with colds the night before Liam came home from the hospital, and have passed it on to me?
Friday, November 18, 2011
Things I've Learned This Past Week
1. Morphine withdrawal is not pretty.
2. When it rains it pours.
3. Lots of people are really, really nice.
2. When it rains it pours.
3. Lots of people are really, really nice.
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