Mostly-Mommy

Friday my mom got called to a birth so I went with my little bro (he’s almost 20) to get some wisdom teeth yanked out. Had to bring the kids which was interesting, especially while we waited with him in recovery. At one point Karsen pulled his phone out of his pocket and was trying to text while in a state of delicate consciousness. I shut him down so he mimed that he needed to write a desperate message. Here it is:

Did you get that? Yeah, me neither but it was really hard to stifle my giggling while he was very seriously writing it.

Saturday morning began with this:

Thank goodness it wasn’t permanent marker! We got him cleaned up and headed over to Lowe’s with some friends to build a firetruck.

Had some fun, came back home for a nice brunch and let the kiddos play for a while. While someone was supposed to be watching Zoey (certainly not ME) I discovered her looking like this:

SOMEBODY PICK UP THAT DAMN MARKER ALREADY!

Later Nick and I took a looooong trip to Target while the little one napped and we got her a backpack. I figured it was time so she’d have something to put her jammies in when she sleeps at her Grandma Sarah’s house (HINT, HINT).

She likes it. A lot.

Then Saturday night my mom and I made dinner for the whole lot of us. It was miso soup, Thai basil chicken with rice, edamame, and the main attraction was homemade CRAB RANGOON! Nice dinner huh? I didn’t get any pictures because dinner was promptly scarfed up by a pack of starving hyenas. We need to learn to shut our doors.

Nick spent the night with the Grandparents and we watched Zodiac. That was a weird movie because it was simultaneously interesting and BO-ring because it was about an hour too long.

Monday was Mike and I’s sixth anniversary so we celebrated by pawning off the spawn and going out to dinner, then over to the Uptown to see Beck! MGMT opened — they did a few great songs, a few fine songs, and a few frickin’ annoying songs that felt like a cheese grater going at the base of my skull. Fun though. And Beck was AWESOME! They were really interactive with the crowd and for one song they brought out “KC’s best tambourine player” to do a song with them. That guy was hilarious! Plus there was this old dude sitting across the aisle that would play air guitar and spontaineously throw a vigorous double THUMBS UP THUMBS UP THUMBS UP!!! Dude cracked us up. Great show, great company, and home by 11:00pm. Super. No pics though, not allowed, meh.

And that was the (long) weekend. How was yours?

As both my babies are growing up I am realizing just how very different life is now from those wonderful, quiet newborn days.

With Nicholas I was shell-shocked and completely whacked out by the hormone crash. His birth was so difficult that for the first week all I did was cry, and the second week was not much better. That’s why after Zoey was born I was shocked to discover that I felt good — great even! How was it possible? I assumed it would be more difficult dealing with all the post-birth nonsense plus having an older child to care for but I was pleasantly surprised to find that was not the case.

It is so hard to remember those early newborn days. With Zoey’s birth I feel like we really got to relax and enjoy that time as a family. Mike took off two whole weeks and we spent our time playing games, walking, snuggling, laughing… getting to know our new addition. I love when a baby is new and they sleep almost all the time! You can hold them and smell them and kiss them and they are too young yet to refuse your kisses and tell you that you smell like a monkey.

Both of my kids are now solidly out of their baby times and as more time passes I miss those tiny babies that relied on me completely. That time is so short and sweet (mostly). I don’t know if we’ll have another baby someday but at least I have my memories, and I can live vicariously through the other moms out there. I see their pictures of their pregnant bellies and I can remember when that was me anxiously awaiting the day I would get to meet my own new baby.

So congratulations Kristen and Rebecca! I hope you both enjoy your tiny ones as much as I did. And I hope their siblings are as sweet and adorable as Nick was when they meet them for the first time. It won’t be until later that they realize the baby is going to puke on all their toys, but that’s another post…

First let me tell you about my day today:

* While I was getting breakfast made Nick left his door open so Zoey went in and dumped pee from his potty everywhere and got all wet.
* I took Nick to school with his runny nose and his teacher thought it was ok for him to stay.
* Zo and I made a quick trip to Wal-Mart for lots of junk food for the guys coming to visit this weekend (hi guys!).
* Good thing it was a quick trip because the school had me come back to pick Nick up.
* Karsen (my little bro) is back from school so he came over for a while.
* Roscoe stole Nick’s lunch and ate it. Jerk dog.
* I don’t feel too spiffy. I’m tired, I have a headache and I feel things that I shouldn’t like my eyeballs, eardrums, sinuses, and lungs. I think our whole family has this now. Meh.

Okay, now that I’m done whining about TODAY let me tell you about Tuesday, which was Nick’s first day of preschool. There will be a lot less whining I promise. From ME, anyway.

Isn’t he cute? Always with that face.

I think his favorite thing was getting to use his backpack for something other than just an overnight bag. And he enjoyed the school quite a bit. It is always interesting to try and get factual information out of a toddler (is he still a toddler?!?) but he says they played outside, read a story, ate pineapple, and that his teacher painted his feet. Hmph.

We had a celebratory post-Preschool dinner at Chick-Fil-A. Nick was pretty happy about that too. Especially the ice cream.

Tomorrow is the big day, the day Nick starts PRESCHOOL. We’re pretty excited. More on that later.

Today I’ve felt so scatterbrained and tired, totally zapped of energy. I think it is because we were deluged with rain this past week and now it has been really cool outside — my body thinks it is fall now I guess. The changing of seasons is always weird for me.

*****

So there has been something on my mind that I need to share and any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. This preschool I found is very close to our house (easily within walking distance) and is substantially cheaper than ANYTHING else I could find, like a quarter as much. I visited it and thought it seemed safe, fun, and like the teacher will be good with him. I have to bring a snack for the class once a month and participate in a calling tree for things like snow days but that is the only parental participation required. I’m okay with the philosophy which is theme-based learning through play, meaning that they aren’t heavy on academics but I’m cool with that because he is THREE. He doesn’t need to be sitting there working on worksheets, he needs to be having fun learning social skills and how to not be the lunatic that he is here at home (oy what a day we had today).

All sounds pretty good right? Here’s the thing. It’s a Lutheran school. A large part of their schooling revolves around Jesus and his teachings and what not. There are bible stories every day, there is the “worship corner,” and they go up to the temple (?) once a week to pray or something and donate money to the projects the church has going (feeding the homeless, etc).

I have absolutely no problems with religious schools or going to church or anything like that and I do not judge anyone for their religious beliefs. The question I am facing is that as a non-religious, not even particularly spiritual family, what kind of issues is this schooling going to raise for us? Do we just go along with everything his teacher and peers are telling him? Do we tell him these are all just “stories” some people believe are true? If he decides to become religious (ANY religion) later on we will fully support him in that but at the tender age of 3 1/2 I just don’t know how best to handle all this. Obviously if I thought it was a serious problem I would’ve sucked it up and shelled out the extra $100-200 a month to put him somewhere not bible-based. It isn’t a deal breaker but it leaves me at a bit of a loss as to what to say about it. Anyone else ever face this kind of situation?

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures. These show how I see “god” in the world around me.

SOMEONE is looking out for Nick seeing as how he made it through today alive with what a little shit he was being. This picture helped.

As you may have noticed some things are looking a little different around here. I’d like to hope for the better! New theme (yes, I know it doesn’t have the best code but I like the design), a bit of reorganization, and what’s that over there? And down there? Wha… ADS? I thought I would give it a try and see if I can make enough to afford a lottery ticket habit because I’m sure that’s about the best I can ask for. But we’ll see, maybe I’ll become fabulously popular — spread the word! Tell your friends! And I know at least one of you has been (I’m looking at you mom) because I was nominated for “Hottest Mommyblogger” in the Blogger’s Choice Awards. Sweet! Now is that “hot” like hip or “hot” like smokin’ hot? I choose to believe it is both. Either way you should go vote for me because apparently I am HOT!

And while we’re on the topic of the new design, how to you like it? Do you hate the ads? Are you impressed by the wonderful work my wonderful husband did to make all these wonderful changes to my wonderful blog? (Thanks, honey!)

In other news, my children are cute. You can see this for youself over at Karrmedia where the new pictures are up for the month. I was actually only a week late getting them up this time but then I forgot to post about it here… c’est la vie I guess.

Put her to work, Lowe’s!

He thinks this face is charming. Or something. I don’t get three-year-olds.

I swear, kids grow up so fast these days.

See? Cute. I would never lie to you.