Reunion

I'm switching between recent and past activities. A few weekends ago, we went to our 15-yr high school reunion. We took the kids to IMSA in the afternoon and they had fun exploring the campus. It seemed to us that fewer things had changed since the last time we were there. The building itself had some fresh paint, but was starting to look like the 25-yr old high school that it was.

Here are the kids:


In the "hamster wheel"


The reunion itself was nice, but not well attended. We got to see some people we were excited to see - but all in all there were only about 40 people there (including spouses). The kids hung out with grandma and grandpa for the night - and had lots of fun doing that. Jacob, in particular, liked the view of the harbor.

Sleep minus 2

Last night we had a BBQ for some of Brian's coworkers. The kids were up late. Do they sleep in? No, of course not (6am). So this was our day with minus two hours of sleep.

First - pottery. The kids are taking a pottery class at the Y. It's for 4-6 year olds, which is perfect because then they can both take it and it fulfills my requirements that Allison be at the older end of the spectrum for age ranges. Last week went pretty well. This week there were more kids and it did not go so well. So I've been requested to stay for the pottery class and help. Bye-bye 45 minutes of quiet book reading time.

Then today was riddled with impulsive behavior from Allison. Like drenching a doll's head in orange juice, throwing a hat and whacking Jacob in the head, and playing a game of Sorry that involved rolling around on the ground in between every turn. What I wish more people understood was that we (as parents) cannot predict nor control behavior on days like this. (trust us - we've tried). There are consequences for her actions that seem appropriate to me - loss of doll and OJ for the day, timeout for 15 minutes in room for hitting, and - well - the last was just a game that went VERY slowly. But not much is really a deterrent. It's more fires and fewer tools in the arsenal.

Today, it wasn't just Allison. Jacob was out of gas by the end of the day, which is his parent/child sports class at the Y. I had to stand in for Brian because I forgot to bring his shoes along. Jacob spent the better part of the class pretending to be a frog. The sport tonight was football. When the teacher asked his favorite football team he said "the blue one." At least he didn't say Packers. He was not as excited about football as he was soccer because he kept trying to kick the football rather than throw it. European football. But it was fun, when it wasn't kindof embarrassing.

Catchup Part 1

Fourth of July - Allison, Chloe, Kellen, and Jacob

Race

The kids ran in their first race last night. It was 1K at the Kimberly Paperfest. They ran the whole way (as did Brian and I along with them), and got a goodie bag and a medal - that they put on again first thing this morning. Yes, Allison went with the broken toe. She had been so excited, we figured if it was bothering her that she would walk. She ran it.

In the goodie bag was a water bottle (nice) an ice cream coupon (nice), a brochure for sports physicals (ok) and coupons for the Mall of America (??). You know, for the next time you're 4 hours away in Minneapolis.

The kids library reading program has also earned them coupons for a meal at Texas Roadhouse and free Cinnistix at Dominos. They are accumulating a wealth of free stuff that will end up costing us in the end. It's more like two free kids meals with two paid adult meals at a restaurant I have zero desire to go to, and free cinnistix with the order of two medium pizzas.

Paperfest, by the way, was the worst excuse for a community fair I remember attending. Granted, it was early Friday night and kindof raining, but it was still bad. The 5K run was separated by the rest of the event by a long and not obvious walking path (there were no event maps anywhere). There were like 5 scary looking rides and several inflatable bouncy things ($1 for one ride down little the inflatable slide). I was given directions to the location for beer bracelets, then decided it wasn't worth the trek across the grounds to some other place and drank a pepsi. Then there was the world's worst karoke. Who messes up Happy Birthday??

Triathlon Pics

This was most of our team - post race. Looking happy. Brian was making fun of my sunglasses.

The Walking (kindof) Wounded

So it's been medical maladies up in WI this week. On Monday Allison dropped a bocce ball on her toe. Actually, she dropped the bocce ball and it bounced on the pavement - then fell on her toe. (yes, put it forever in the records that I let the kids play bocce ball in bare feet - well, Allison does - Jacob would typically rather throw a massive fit than wander outside in bare feet - don't know where that comes from).

The toe turned purple and swelled up and so Tuesday afternoon we were off to the doctor for toe x-rays. Turns out she probably did in fact break the very tip of the very tip of her middle toe. The x-rays are in radiology now, but the pediatrician thought it looked like a break. So right now it's buddy taped to the toe next door and if she's still walking funny next week we can bring her back for a hard soled shoe. If radiology thinks it's not broken, his advice was to burn a little hole in her toenail to relieve the pressure - though the instructions were not more specific than that so I imagine it would not happen. Allison seems to be doing fine - though walking a little gimpy.

Also on Monday, I had a small surgical procedure to remove a thing on my back. Won't go into great details - I think it's yucky. So I actually brought this up with my doctor over a year ago (when it was considerably smaller), and she said it's something that you don't mess with unless you have to. Well, it grew and became painful - so we had to. So I show up and the instructions are eat normally, you can drive yourself, simple thing. Well, I inform the nurse and the doctor that I don't want any information about what they are doing. Just do it. They sound suprised and say that all the research shows that patients feel they don't get enough information. They also mention (precipitiously so) that people who swear during pain can endure that pain for 40 seconds longer than people who don't swear (it had been on the news that morning).

They put on the local anaestetic and start to go to work. Let's just say that it DID NOT work. It was not totally numb, and I considered a lot of swearing - but opted for just a lot of yelping. (yes, they did try to numb it again, but it was apparently too big). I tell them again to stop the play-by-play and they're like "you really don't want to know?" and I'm thinking "yeah - why do you think I said that at the beginning?" Perhaps it's difficult for doctors to realize that everyone is not fascinated by medical things. That some of us would prefer to be completely knocked out before giving a blood sample. That we tend to get queasy when other people talk about accidents and broken bones. This can't be that odd.

Future tatoo artist

This morning has been interesting. Jacob decided he wanted to take a shower when I was done, and so I was sitting in the bathroom while he played around in the water and I started to wonder if Brian thought it was still me in there (thus preventing him from leaving and going to work). So I go downstairs to tell his it's Jacob in the shower and Brian is sitting at the table reading the newspaper in work pants, but no shirt, and he has a huge blue heart and polka dots markered all over his back.

I'm a little stunned that Brian would let Allison "tatoo" up his back right before he leaves for work, so I'm like "nice back," and Brian is like "what??" and I think the next word out of my mouth might have been "seriously??"

So as I pouring my coffee I realize he really doesn't know he has a mural on his back. So he goes into the bathroom to look and is like "when did she do that?" Now, perhaps the Post Crescent would be thrilled to know that their paper is so engrossing that your daughter can draw a full-sized picture on you and you don't even notice.

I, of course, am laughing so hard I can't manage to explain to Allison why she wasn't supposed to do it in the first place. Fortunately, we've managed to hide the Sharpies to the extent that I can't even find them anymore - so the marker she used was washable. Given that - it was pretty hilarious.

(Brian does have an explanation - which involves a comment I made earlier this morning about a red mark on his back and the fact that Allison was playing around with a brush and he didn't know she'd switched to marker when she was dotting his back - so unfortunately for Gannett Media - the Post Crescent isn't THAT riveting).

Notable Differences

Everyone says that the second child is nothing like the first. I was definitely thinking that today. We went grocery shopping and because neither is all that wonderfully behaved in the grocery store (I guess they have that in common) - I took along an "incentive." The bribe for following Mom's Rules of Public Behavior (which trust me, are pretty basic) was two suckers that I'd found while cleaning the other day (they were from St. Patrick's Day - so not too bad). At the checkout line, they earned their treats. Allison's was consumed before a single grocery item was even scanned. Jacob's was finished approximately 3 hours later - after many careful licks, and a break while he ate lunch. On the way home from IL, I believe Jacob might have answered the age old question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. I lost count.

After lunch we met a friend at the park. I took pop-ices to share and told the kids that we would have them in a half an hour. Jacob (the more patient one) went off to play, while Allison hung on my arm watching the minute hand of the clock go around asking every 2 minutes if it was time to eat the snacks.

On the way home we decided to turn on the sprinkler and invited two neighbor boys over to play too. While Allison, Jack (in Allison's class) and Alex (Jacob's age) ran headlong through the sprinkler - tossing around the ball - "drinking" the water - and getting thoroughly soaked - one hour later and Jacob had barely gotten his feet wet. He seemed to be enjoying himself, just from the sidelines. He prefers the quieter activities of life, while his sister is in constant motion.

Now, the real question is which traits did they inherit from me.....

Week

It's been an interesting week. Jacob has been spending time down in Springfield with Grandma Sue and Grandpa Bruce. I was pretty excited to be down to one kid at home - thinking we'd spend some quality 1-1 time, and have a relaxing week. What actually keeps popping into my head is the week - several years ago - when we didn't have the dog. I don't even remember why the dog was gone, but what I do remember is picking up lots of food off the floor that I didn't even realize fell from the table during each meal.

A week sans Jacob has been much the same - though there is not significantly more food on the floor. But I didn't realize how much time the kids played with each other until I was requested to fill in the slack. I can usually count on 20-30 minutes of morning time to read the paper and eat breakfast, about 45 minutes - 1 hour around mid-day to check e-mail, contemplate my next Wordscraper move or read a chapter of whatever cheese-filled summer novel I got from the library that week.

However, this week, it isn't so. Breakfasts are filled with a girl dancing around the table asking what we're going to do today. Secret sneaks onto the computer are twarted by attempts to spin my chair around or kitchen timers buzzing in my ear, an attempt to sit on the couch this morning was greeted with a presentation of books that Allison picked out from the library and the request to read them (how can you turn that down?). Brian is bombarded as soon as he gets home with endless games of Go Fish, Crazy 8s, and Old Maid. I'm even followed into the bathroom (ok, well, that happens all the time, so I suppose it doesn't count).

I think she's lonely without her brother. (and yes, I only have time to write this because right now she's over playing with her friend Melanie).