Fun at the Pool

George isn’t the best swimmer. He can dog paddle and stuff, but he still needs a lesson or two. We keep an extra eye on him. Yesterday we decided to try out a different pool. George wanted to go off the diving board, but was too afraid to do it without his noodle. He waited in line, got up there, and the lifeguard told him no. I was close enough to watch, but far enough away that I couldn’t hear anything. I saw George pull out some fast tears and wipe at his eyes. He said something to the lifeguard about not wanting to go without it. Then, like something snapped, he spun around, tossed the noodle off the end of the diving board and ran off the end into the water before anyone could say anything to him. Honey went over to get after George and apologize to the lifeguard.

George then moved to the slide. He’d already been down it about 10 times. Luckily, the pool depth at the bottom was shallow enough for him. However, I looked up to see him stomping away from the slide. He’s crying, wiping his eyes, lifting his swim shirt to wipe his face off. And best of all, he’s muttering to himself. I’m thinking, ‘Oh great. Now what?’

Me: “What’s the problem now?”
George: (still crying) “They won’t let me go off the diving board and they won’t let me go down the slide!”
Me: “They won’t let you go down the slide?? Why??”
George: “Because of my shirt.”
Me: “Well then…take your shirt off.”
George: (crying immediately ceases and he looks at me with wide eyes) “Won’t chlorine kill you?”
Me: (trying not to laugh) “George……….it’s all over your arms and your legs. It’s not going to kill you.”
George: “But won’t it burn me?”
Me: “No, George. It won’t.”
George: (bursting into a fresh set of tears) “Link is always lying to me!!!!”
Me: (realizing in it’s pure form, chlorine probably would burn you) “If it were sitting here all by itself and you touched it or something, it probably would hurt your skin. But they take a teeny bit of chlorine and put it in all of this water and it won’t hurt you. Okay?”
George: “Okay.”
Me: “Take off your dang shirt and go down the slide.”

George bravely peeled the shirt off and went down the slide. At the bottom, he stood up, shot both fists into the air in a big ‘y’ and yelled, “Woooohooooooooooo!!!!”

How did I not know that every time we went to the pool, my kid thought the chlorine was going to kill him? He never acted afraid. I guess he thought his swim shirt would save him. The liberation on his face after that slide though, was fantastic.

"You Owe Me BIG......"

We just came off Memorial Day Weekend. All I can think is that it's lame we still have 4 days of school after that. Lame. Honey was gone to NJ for the weekend. I was basically on vacation. We neglected the dishes, we played lot's of Wii, ate Sonic outside in the sunshine for lunch, played in the street with the neighbors, stayed up way too late. We had a swarm of honey bees move into the backyard. The boys got a rash all over their faces and Link got sick in the middle of the night and stayed home from school yesterday. So you can imagine how thrilled I was this morning, as I'm getting ready to run to the airport to pick up Honey, when the phone rings and it's Link from the school.

"Mom. I forgot my invention."
"What??"
"I forgot my invention."
"When is it due?"
"Today."
"What?? ::long pause:: When is the convention?"
"In about 10 minutes. At 8:40."
"What??? Where is it?"
"I think it's under my bed."

This is where I cut away from our lame conversation to tell you that now I'm walking up the stairs holding the phone, to look under Link's bed.

"It's not even put together Link. There are a couple of things here, but I don't see the pulley or anything. Where is that?"
"I don't know."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I don't know. ::very long pause:: I guess I'll have to tell Mr. C that I don't have it."

:: major mom-failed guilt ::

So we hang up and I start digging around in the lego box. After a lot of searching, I finally have his invention put back together, functional and by 9:00 we're headed out the door.

Link's invention is a ramp that runs along the stairs to our back yard with a little cart on it. The cart is attached to a pulley. The point of the cart is so our dogs can go up and down without having to use the stairs because they're old and their little extra long old lady backs can't handle it as well as they used to.

Anyway, I ran his little contraption over to the school and while all the other kids are in the classroom showing off their conventions, Link is sitting in the hall alone, retaking some math test. I gave him his invention and said one thing.

"You owe me Big!"

How does this happen? Where do you draw the line? He had two or three weeks to work on this thing. Is it my fault because I forgot about it and forgot to remind him? Is it his fault because he forgot about it and his mom never reminded him? Is it his Dad's fault because he's the engineer in the family and I was really really really hoping he would entirely take care of it? Sadly, I see Link's interest in getting good grades the way I was when I was his age. I went to school because I had to. I did the work cause they told me to. I didn't care less what the work looked like, or what my grades were. I just did not care. Heaven help me if he's exactly like that. Heaven help his father, because his father was NEVER like that.

Things I Love and Don't about Summer

Things I Love

• Longer days
• Heat during the day and cool refreshing breezes at night (not humid here in CO you guys...perfect)
• Thunderstorms
• Fresh air and open windows - the sound of crickets and my wind chimes when I'm falling asleep
• The smells of flowers, plants and barbecues in the air
• Digging in the dirt, planting flowers, and watching them grow
  
• Hanging out with neighbors outside
• Kids outside most of the day and constantly busy playing
  
• Popsicles and ice cream
• Plenty of Vitamin D
• Staying up later, sleeping later
• Not having to worry about the kids' school
• Summer trips
• Birds - like the Tree Swallows nesting in my bird house, the Goldfinches that come and go and the Pinyon Jay I saw this morning
  
• Fun insects - like lady bugs, cool non-threatening spiders, butterflies, dragonflies...

Things I Don't

• Too hot to play outside or to leave the windows open. And - the air conditioner cranking way up in the evening when I don't want to be cooled off anymore. Dumb.
  
• Buying, thinking about and applying sunscreen.
• Bees. Especially the huge swarm that's moved into a crevice in my deck right outside my back door.
• Lack of schedule or structure because there's no school
• Packing for and cleaning up after summer trips
• Not so fun insects - like bees, yucky spiders, earwigs and slugs
• Kids super dirty every single night when it's time for bed
• Going to the pool
• Honey doesn't get a summer break from work
• Doggy allergies - I mean, the allergic reactions my dogs suffer from various unknowns outside - fine one minute, covered in big itchy bumps the next. OR, my poor little dog that's limping right now because her foot got stung by one of those stinkin' bees

A Persuasive Letter

"Dear Mom and Dad

I would love a better life because I deserve it. If you give me a better life I will do what you say. We need to take care of some friends. We need to get rid of those friends. If we do that I will get a lot of thinking space. Keep an eye on George. Pleas look for George brining his DSI to bead. If we do that I will be ready and energized in the morning. Allowance should be higher. Could it be at least $10 for chores and babysitting? If we do that you wont have to spend a lot of money on toys for me. Cell phone calling Link's name. Could I pleas have an AT&T back flip? If I get one you can hear more problems more faster. I need some alone time. I would love one hour to my self. If we do that you will not have to deal with a lot of fights. I need a new room to sleep in. Could I sleep in the guest room? I have better sleep in the guest room than my room. Anyone who has a better life I want to join them to.

Sincerely,
Link"

Ooooooooookay............Want the Momdisclaimerexplanation? No really. You do want it. Trust me.
I guess this was an exercise they did for class. They were supposed to write a Persuasion Letter. Wow. He just laid it all out there didn't he?

• I guess the first thing he needs is a better life - and then he'll do what I say?? If I had only known it was that easy.
  
• I do NOT understand the friend thing. I asked him about it and his response made no sense. Just disregard.
  
• The most helpful tip in the entire letter was that George is sneaking his DSI to bed. This is news to me. I'm gonna put the cabosh on that immediately.
  
• Allowance should be higher? Very interesting. Especially since as parents, we are pitiful enough to not even have an established allowance. He should have said that allowance should exist. And why he's telling me that I won't have to spend a lot of money on toys is interesting too. I already don't. So, what's the need for changing now?
• I read the "Cell phone calling Link's name." to him and asked him what that meant. He said that somewhere there is a back flip phone in an AT&T store calling his name. Ahhhh. Ok. He also claims it would be way easier for him to just text me on a Saturday morning than to walk up the stairs to knock on my bedroom door. How can you argue with that air-tight logic?
  
• "I need some alone time." Hello?? I need some alone time. And what are these fights he speaks of? There's some normal sibling bickering that goes on, but there certainly aren't a lot of fights.
• A new room, eh? A new room??? This is what I told him. We started in the room with George and he said he couldn't sleep so we moved him to the guest room and before long he couldn't sleep in there either. So we moved him back to the room with George, but before long, he couldn't sleep again, so we moved him back into the guest room and ... you guesssed it ... before long he couldn't sleep in there again. SO we moved him back to the room with George and now he's asking AGAIN to be moved? Sorry bubba. We just redecorated, painted, new bed, new bedding,. All new. No boys. NO boys will be sleeping in there and boogering up a new room. Tooooooo bad.
  

Tell me, y'all. What are your thoughts?

Mother's Day 2010

Yesterday morning around 3 am, Sassy crawled into bed with me. At first I just moved over, too tired to care very much.
(But my bed and my sleeping time are very, very precious and I do not allow my children to just mozy in and out of my bedroom in the middle of the night. If Sassy shows up after 5:30 or so, I let her stay because she will go back to sleep. If I try to put her back to bed that early in the morning, she won't go back to sleep and be a tired disaster the rest of the day. But yesterday she showed up at 3:00 and that just will not do.)
I laid there wishing Honey would remove her from the bed for me, but he was breathing slow and steady and had no idea she was even there. Then I remembered it was Mother's Day and felt a little pang of dread. "Here we go." I thought. The one day I wish I could just not have to worry about it. So I crawled out of bed and carried Sassy back to her room. I managed to get back to sleep and before I knew it, Honey was kissing me good morning. He wished me a Happy Mother's Day and told me to stay in bed. No problem! A little bit later, he came into the room with homemade waffles, orange juice, bacon and sausage. I ate my breakfast in bed alone, and started watching Notting Hill on the iPad. It was lovely.

Finally, Honey told me that the kids were dying for me to come downstairs. The kids all had their homemade cards waiting. Sassy's was the handprints with the cute little poem that always makes me cry.

"Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small
And always leave my fingerprints
On furniture and walls.
But everyday I'm growing up
And soon I'll be so tall
That all those little handprints
Will be so hard to recall.
So here's a special handprint
Just so that you can say
This is how my fingers looked
When I placed them here today."

::Collective 'Awwwwwwwww.'::
I gave Sassy a hug and told her that the first time I saw her, she looked at me and stuck her little bottom lip out and started to cry - and I could immediately see her sweet little dimples.

George gave me a big card that says:

"HAPPY
MOTH-
er's daY!"
from: COlin
to: mom

My Mom is Special because:
S-weet
P-erfect Personality
E-nergetic
C-ool
I-n a sweet home
A- fine temper
L-inked to me
I do not NOT know why he said perfect personality or energetic. I can only guess that he saw someone else write those words and copied.
I half-laughed when I read 'A fine temper.' But 'Linked to me' made me melt a little. SO cute.
Inside there were paper flowers with things listed that he'll do for me.

I'll go to your favorite resturaunt with the family
I'll do the dishes
I'll make the house peace and quiet (except he wrote the peace sign instead of the word)
I'll seprate the dishes.
I hugged George and told him that when he was a baby I couldn't stop kissing his little lips because they were so pudgy and soft.

Link drew me a picture of some flowers and wrote me a poem.

Mom is awsome for my life.
Mom makes my day marvoles.
Mom made my life posebile.
Mom makes me better at reading.
Mom makes me shine on Mothers Day.
Happy mothers DAY!
My favorite was that when I hugged Link, he really hugged me back tight and didn't try to get away. I told him when he was teeny, he had a patch of dark brown hair on top of his head that stuck straight up and that I LOVED it!

Honey gave me two dozen roses and a pretty card. We got ourselves ready for church and I went running in like a crazy person because I was sub-ing on the organ and got there a little later than I should have. Only had to play 2 1/2 hymns for prelude though. The primary kids sang two little Mother's Day songs, which is always adorable. Especially because my kids were all trying to make eye contact with me and grinning. In Relief Society we got cheesecake. Yum! After church, I had a big diet coke with lime and some popcorn. I laid down to read, but fell asleep and woke up to Brian grilling filets and a plate of fresh watermelon.

Honey told me he felt bad that he didn't get me more for Mother's Day this year, but the man just took me on a fab vacation and got me some very nice things on our trip - so I wasn't disappointed or even concerned about that. My kids were sweet. This was the first year I remember them really 'feeling' Mother's Day, instead of just going through motions because someone told them they should. I think that made all the difference in the world for Mother's Day this year. Mother's Day doesn't have to be perfect. Just the fact that everyone made the effort was so great. I love my kids and I love my husband for making me a mom. He says I had something to do with that too. I agreed. (duh)