I Was So Tired I Almost Fell Asleep in School Today!

This is not what you want to hear your kid say, first thing off the bus. Yet, it is a direct quote from my son. Today, 3:02pm. Sheesh. Apparently, his near-brush with school-time slumber came at the end of the day, waiting in his classroom for the "bus kids" to have their turn leaving class. So it is not like he was falling asleep during "morning work" or anything, while practicing his Ss today (ironically, they learned to write Ss today....as in, S is for sleep!).

Anyway, before I had a chance to say that Hey buddy, looks like we will definitely go to be bed earlier tonight, he assured me that now, he was no longer tired (Um, yeah. Right.) and that he didn't need to get to bed earlier (Wow - am I that predictable?! They get good at this so fast!).

Tomorrow night is Meet the Teacher night, and so at this point, I'm crossing my fingers that we don't get pulled aside and given a little what's what about proper sleep habits. I'm hoping to keep my parental green card (and not the dreaded yellow or *gasp* red card the kids get for objectinable behavior).

Oh, and last week I asked Quinn to name the best three things about his day. (I'm trying to follow all those how-to-get-your-kids-to-talk tips and not ask yes/no questions.) Here is what he had to say: 1. We had recess; 2. We had corndogs for lunch; and 3. I got to ride the bus.

So there you have it. Kindergarten highlights from the trenches. And nary a mention of reading, writing, or 'rithmetic.

And while I don't have pix of the sleeping prince in action, I thought I'd post a photo of Q and K doing their best Michael P and Natalie C impersonations (a little Olympics withdrawal going on here).

Oh, and lastly, before I forget (hold the age jokes): thanks to all for the various b-day greetings I got today. You all rock. I will reply personally to each heartfelt message (including the helpful tips on aging from my sorta fav BIL) soon. I would've replied to you all earlier today, but, well, I've been going on and on in my blog instead....and before this whole blogging deal I was (are you ready for this?) playing with the awesome new Wii FIT (yes, let me shout that: WII FIT!!!!!!) that I got from my super-awesome super-resourceful hubby! Ladies, hear this: dropping major hints beginning 3 months before your bday is a good thing. Said often enough, it all sinks in.

A Gold Medal Week

The big story around the world this week seems to be the Olympics. We've been getting our fill here...staying up late (the grown-ups anyway) to see the swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, and glimpses of beautiful China.

Our Chinese-American gold medal toddler models her Olympic finery to the left. She was decked out and ready to go for the Opening Ceremonies. I picked out the t-shirt, she picked out her hat. The outfit pretty much sums her up, eh? (Of course, as far as the shirt goes, what was I thinking when I bought that thing back on our adoption trip? I totally overestimated her growth....she'll likely be able to wear that shirt again for the 2012 Games!)

Of course, around here, the Olympics aren't the biggest story around. The big news in our corner of the world is Super-Q's entry into formal education. So far, he gives a double-thumbs up to Days 1 and 2 of Kindergarten. He has safely navigated the bus to and from school, bought his lunch in the cafeteria (even choosing a vegetable as part of today's lunch!), and given me all necessary parent paperwork (intact, no less). On the right, you see the handsome guy decked out for his first day. He picked the shirt and I started to pick out khaki shorts to go with. "Mo-om, I don't need to look like a church man, do I?" No, no, I guess not. Jean-shorts will be just fine.

And notice little sis in her PJs. Not looking very happy. This, however, was nothing compared to her reaction when Q actually got on the bus. And the big door closed. And the loud yellow monster pulled away, taking her brother with it.
She. went. nuts. Crying, screaming, wailing. Gege, come back. Back, gege! Waaaaaah! It was sweet and heart-breaking at the same time.

I explained that the bus was taking him to school, yada yada yada, and home again after her naptime. That seemed to do the trick. Plus a walk around the neighborhood and another 2 bowls of Frosted Flakes. Tony the Tiger makes everything grrrrrreat!

Kindergarten-palooza!

Well, the last few days have been filled with all things kindergarten. Kindergarten "orientation" on Thursday (meet the teacher, see classroom, visit school library and cafeteria, sit on bus....that should've been ride on bus, but it stalled...but that's another story). School ice cream social on Sunday (get bus assignment, buy school T-shirt, desposit money in school lunch account, avoid PTO recruitment). And now, one final day of lounging around and enjoying summer...all the while, me trying not to say stuff like "Hey, this is your last lunch at home before school starts" or "Hey, tomorrow at this time you'll almost be done with your first day of school" and other assorted phrases which apparently annoy my 5-year old.

Here are various tidbits about Q's cool school: he has twice the number of kindergarteners in his school than I had in mine....and his school is one of about 11 in the district (not the only one, like mine was). His teacher started kindergarten in the exact same year that I started. Started college, I mean. His class is not filled with kids named Jennifer, Michelle, Michael, and Mark, but rather Meade and Callahan and Sofia and Isabelle. He gets to choose one of 3 entrees each day - not Shepherd's Pie, take it or leave it.

He will, however, learn to make his letters the same way and still, 2+2 = 4. So, some things I can help him with.

Now, off to figure out how I can snap a photo of him on the bus tomorrow w/o being noticed....I'd hate to be a totally-embarassing mom. Not on the first day, anyway.

Quit Being Such a Salsa Hog!

I'll take Overheard at Q&K's House for $200, Alex.

Answer: The family member who uttered the title quote.

You, playing along at home: Who is.....the man of the house?

Alex: Correct.

You: I'll take Overheard for $400, Alex.

Alex: The family member to whom the quote was directed.

You: Who is....Quinn?

Alex: Sorry, that's incorrect.

Another player rings in: Who is....the lady of the house?

Alex: Sorry, that is also incorrect. The correct answer is KEIRA.

How can that be, you say? Keira - the salsa hog? You've always been told Keira eats nothing but Goldfish, yogurt, and mac-n-cheese. Nary a fruit or vegetable to pass her lips. How could she be the one who is inhaling mass quantities of salsa, nothing but loads and loads of veggies and spices?

Well, let me set the record straight. She does eat some veggies - if you count zucchini bread, spinach and artichoke dip, and breaded eggplant as vegetables. And yes, she does like salsa. But until tonight, I didn't know just how much.

We had been getting Garden Fresh Salsa by the tub-full at Costco. She liked it alright, enjoying the crispy chips just as much. But tonight, we tried Trader Joe's Fresh Mild Salsa. And she not only liked it, she hogged the container. She kept standing up in her chair to reach across the table for more. She rationed her chips, biting off just the part with salsa and then standing to dip again. (The $600 answer would've been: The family member at the end of the "Hey - you're double-dipping!" accusation.) And, to top it off, by the end of the meal (yes, we were having chips and salsa as part of a Friday night hodge-podge) she was, well, you check it out....

As they say, Good to the last drop!

Wild About Books!

If I were to write a book this minute, it would be titled something like this: Never Let Your Child Wear Flip-Flops to the Library (and Other Parenting Tips No One Ever Told You).

It all started out innocently enough - a trip to our local library. A great place. A place you want your kids to love. But, maybe in our case, the library is too great. They love it too much. They feel too comfortable there. Where are all the old crotchety librarians hissing "Shhhhh" when I need them?

Before we headed out today, I led the kids in a rousing cheer-like recitation of the rules.

Do we yell in the library? Nooooo!
Do we speak quietly in the library? Yessss!

Do we run in the library? Noooo!

Do we walk in the library? Yessss!

Do we jump in the library? Noooo! (I threw this rule in there because I anticipated trouble with those wily flip-flops, but did I listen to that inner voice and make her change into sneakers? noooooo!)

Do we listen and cooperate with mommy? Yessss!

I was fooled into thinking that yelling with me in giddy unison indicated understanding of the rules. Apparently, when a 2 year old yells in unison, she is actually, well, just yelling in unision. Understanding. Cooperating. Doing as you are told. All totally optional in Toddlerville.

Anyway, off we head to the library. As we cross the parking lot, I remind again: no running; no jumping. What a waste of breath.

You see, our library is a big, fabulous building. As big as my high school practically. In fact, when we first moved here I thought it was a school. And, like a school, it has those wonderfully echoing hallways. And, as any 2-year old worth her salt knows, when you run or jump in said hallways in sparkly princess flip-flops it makes a loud, echo-y, slapping noise sure to irritate your mom. It will irritate her once, twice, three times over. It will irritate each and every time. A sure thing. Like death and taxes.

Twenty minutes later, after a few gentle (and a couple not-quite-as-gentle reminders), we head out, books and summer reading program prizes in hand.

And my mom wonders why I often prefer Half-Price Books over the library. Carpet, mom. Carpet. They have a lot of carpet there.

Happy National Ice Cream Day!

I can't believe I wasn't fully aware of the existence of such a day until just now. Apparently, in 1984, President Reagan declared July National Ice Cream month and the 3rd Sunday in July National Ice Cream Day! Republican or Democrat, there's no arguing with the brilliance of this idea!
My first thought about celebrating this fabulous occasion was to head to Handel's the use my buy-one-get-one coupon, but then just a moment later, I had a flash of mommy craftiness. I remembered having read a recipe somewhere about making your own ice cream! In ziplock baggies, no less. Fun and easy. Just our style.

By the way, this is my second bout of so-called craftiness this month! A personal best! I'm not one to often do "special' projects with the kids, but I have moments every now and then. And the other week, I decided we'd go on a nature walk and make nature collages with our findings. You can see the photo evidence here. Note that Q's collage is all done in rows, and Keira's is totally random. If that isn't a good insight into their personalities, I don't know what is. And the fact that I nearly went bonkers after letting K use a glue stick for 10 minutes is a fair insight into my personality...hence the reason we don't break out the craft supplies all too often. But anyway. Back to the ice cream.

After a lame dinner of leftovers, we got ready to make our ice cream dessert. The leftovers were really part of my master plan - after such a meal, the ice cream was bound to be a hit, no matter how it turned out, right?

There are really only 3 ingredients for this ice-cream-in-a-bag: half-and-half, sugar, and vanilla. Only 2 ingredients for our chocolate ice cream variation: chocolate milk and sugar.

You put it all into a quart ziplock bag. Put that quart bag into a gallon ziplock, which is filled with ice cubes and salt.
Then shake. Shake. And shake. For 5 minutes, according to the recipe. We shook it for almost 10 minutes the second time around, and it got a bit firmer. Either way, it was yummy.

The kids enjoyed the shaking. Well, for the first minute or so anyway. The bags get really really cold, so we put towels around them to make it easier on the kids. And us, too.
And of course, they enjoyed the eating. Keira kept singing "Happy Birthday to me!" And when I got to thinking about it, I realized that she pretty much only gets ice cream at birthday parties. Poor child....first a craft-less mom and now a mom who deprives her of ice cream! Sheesh.

Anyway, it was a fun project - fun to do and fun to eat.

So hip-hip-hooray for National Ice Cream Day! One of Reagan's greatest ideas. I'm not sure Obama or McCain could top this. Unless of course they declare a Free McDonald's French Fries and Diet Coke Day.

I Never Thought I'd Say This

I like Michigan.

There. I said it. My Ohio family is cringing this very moment. You see, being born and raised in Ohio - Buckeye style - no one, I mean no one (except a few crazies here and there, some of whom I am related to), claims to like Michigan. They stink. It stinks. Boo-hiss to the maize and blue. You get the idea. Of course, since my formative years, I've moved to the Hoosier state, gotten an advanced degree from Purdue, cheer for the black and gold on Saturdays, and well, have been generally ridiculued since. But that's for another time.

Back to Michigan.
It's nice up there. Seriously.
For the second summer in a row, we made a quick trip up north with the kiddies in tow. All for a little Lake Michigan beach time. South Haven style. And it has been much fun.

So, to borrow shamelessly from a well-known series of commercials, here's a quick run-down on our 3-day excursion.

Sand toys from Target: $4.99

Book to read on beach while hubby plays with kids: $11.20

Stale bread to feed the ducks: $0.59

New Wonder Pets video to help pass time on a rainy morning: $7.99

Making lots of memories: Priceless!

Blog, Schmog

Now that summer is basically half over, I think it's time for a look at just what in the heck has been going on here. We know what hasn't been going here, and that's blogging. My record so far during these summer days is about as dismal as that of the Reds. Sigh. But before getting too depressed, let me just move on to the excuses and the photos. Here we go.
I haven't been blogging because we've been.....

...at Disney.
OK - you all already knew this. It's been over a month now, so I've got to wipe that off my excuses list.
....busy telling the kids we aren't going back to Disney just yet. As you can see below, Keira is more than ready. The morning after we got back from sunny Florida, K put on her "Pin-cess hat" and "pack-pack" and declared herself "All set, mama! Kiki go tea cups! Kiki see Paw-paw!"

....touching sharks! At our zoo here in Indy, you can touch sharks. And Quinn did it a few weeks ago. About 10 times, no less. He would've gone for more, but his nervous mother ushered him and his increasingly brave sister from the Oceans exhibit before a certain little Asian delicacy flipped herself into the tank!

...celebrating Keira's half-birthday! We try to make it a little something special, since her actual b-day is amidst the hub-bub of Christmas. Of course, this year, our idea of something special was letting her eat all the "Fench Fies" (Rs optional in K-speak) she wanted at Red Robin (yumm-ola!) and then coming home and disguising leftover Quinn bday ice cream cake as a little slice of heaven for a 2.5 year old. With Spiderman sliced off and long ago eaten, this well-preserved piece of Oreo ice cream cake was just the ticket.

....at the movies! With a few rainy weekend days around here, I've had the chance to take Quinn to see a couple of movies. We saw Kung Fu Panda (just a mommy-son outing), and we also got to see WALL-E with friends the week after. In a head-to-head match-up between the panda and the robot, Q gives the edge to Wall-e, but I have to go with the panda. But you can't lose with either. I have a feeling both DVDs will end up on somebody's X-mas list.

....playing dress-up! Here is the lovely Princess Keira, still in post-Disney euphoria. (Don't worry Cousin M - we are taking good care of your Cinderella costume and will return it soon! Thanks for the loan!)

But mostly this summer, we are just plain ol' hanging out.

Hope you all are having just as much fun as we are.
I can't wait to see what's in store for the second half.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

OK - she wasn't quite born on the 4th of July, but she is a dandy of a friend. The she I refer to in this case is a wonderful and faithful friend, fabulous mom to 3, superwife (the girl can cook!), recent blog-reading addict ;-) and just one of the all-around best people on the planet.
My kids call her Aunt M. My hubby calls her "Martha" (see above note on kitchen skills!).
And I am happy to call her anytime I need to.
So without further adieu.....HAPPY BIRTHDAY, M! We hope your day is filled with all the goodness you deserve.

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

Sorry Aunt M, I think I ate all your cake!

Yup, I did. All gone. It was yummy, too!

Have a super sunny day! We love you!!!

The Friendly Skies

I'm going to ignore the fact that I've been such a slacker at blogging (and at life in general) because, well, these are the lazy days of summer. I'm just moving on to a long-overdue Disney download....

Here are 2 of my basic rules of motherhood:
1. There is nothing so attractive as a mom on the phone or on the computer or in the bathroom.
And,
2. Kids who otherwise fight will play nicely when a) the threat of bedtime looms overhead and/or b) they think they are "getting away" with something (like jumping on the bed).
And now, I have something to add to rule #2: kids will also play nicely... when on a plane to DISNEY!! (The flight back home does not fall under this rule, by the way, but I'm sure you could've surmised that on your own.)
Yup, the kids were so thrilled to be headed to Mouseville that they were willing to share juice, share iPod headphones, the whole kit-and-kaboodle. Apparently though, Keira draws the line at sharing princess stickers.
Anyway, the flight down went better than I thought. This was Quinn's first flight and he was just wide-eyed and full of wonder. I could hear the businessmen behind us getting a chuckle out of his awe....."Mom - we are backing up!.....Oh my gosh, we are going faster.....We're flying! We're flying! This is it!....[calmer voice, head tilted] Aw mom, this is better than I even imagined!" I thought I had my cuteness overload right there and then. And we weren't even out of Indiana farmland yet!

I won't give you the blow by blow of our 8 day vacation. At least not all at one time. But I will share this tidbit: Downtown Disney is not necessarily a good idea on Day 1. See, we got down there Friday afternoon and the rest of the clan wasn't coming until the next day. We weren't going to start using our park pass until everyone arrived, so we headed to DTDisney to eat (Rainforest Cafe "too loud too loud" per Keira....of course, she'd go on to say that same phrase another 1,289 times during the stay, but that's another story) and to look around. Well, if you've ever been to DTD, you'll know that next to eating, pretty much to only other thing to do there is shop. Of course, there is Cirque du Soleil and Pleasure Island and stuff, but we have little ones. Anyway, the shopping. Oh, the shopping. Everything Disney. Everything supremely appealing to the preschool set. And, if you are like us (and another 28 sets of parents I heard along the way), you probably were telling your kids that "We're just looking...there's so much to see...you can look it over and decide what you want and we'll buy something at the end of the trip....blahblahblah..." In preschoolese, this translates to no-no-no-no....which results is whining. Begging. And other assorted undesirable actions.

Of course, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. But I was already tired of saying "Not yet, sweetie; we'll buy something later"...and we hadn't even slept once in Florida! On the upside, it was good practice for the rest of the week, especially since, as I found, Dis seems to love love love having you exit rides smack-dab into the middle of a store. Marketing geniuses they are.

Anyway, the trip was a whole lot of fun. My kiddos were in heaven, which seems to have this formula: grandparents + cousins + sunny Florida + Mickey and friends. Mix well. Enjoy daily.

Oh, and just as Quinn loved flying, Keira loved Disney transportation....no car seat! That was part of her heavenly equation. She always tried to position herself by grandpa and a shiny silver pole. "Kiki hold tight" she'd say, grinning like the Cheshire cat all the while.

And for now, we close with these photos........

Prince Charming with my princess (one of the few characters she'd let get close).

And Cinderella with my prince charming.

If only we could bottle the magic and bring it home. Maybe then I'd have more than 3 things to list under rule #2!

Where in the World...?

Miss us? Wonder what we've been up to?
Here are a few clues. More on the festivities later this week....

(By the way, K really did love the teacups, despite looking dazed and confused here!)