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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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...