Yet Another Milestone...

There have just been so many milestones lately, I feel like I am tripping over them. Today, Micah started school - only preschool, but still a big thing for him. Unfortunately, he didn't sleep very well last night and I don't think he felt 100%, but we went anyway. (By my twisted logic, I figure that he'd be grumpy here or there, and they get paid, so I let him go!) He cried when we left, sadly, but just so you know, Micah (in case you read this some day), I stood outside the door and listened for 20 minutes until you got happy, and I was sad too. You can tell the therapist that if you ever decide that me leaving you crying at preschool traumatized you for life!

The good news was that when I picked him up at noon, I stood in the classroom watching him for a good 5 minutes before he even noticed me there. He had a good time, I think, runny nose and all. I enjoyed the morning - I began a new Bible study with some girls and it's nice to not have to rush through it.

So here are some of the captured moments. (I'm sure Rick will create another podcast with the video he took, in case you are dying to see the live action version!)



The backpack is a little large, but so cute! He likes the "pack pack" part of school!



This is when I should have left! But I just had to say good bye, which is when the tears started. (If anyone is ever at church and wonders what exactly "weeping and knashing of teeth" looks like, you can just imagine the first day of preschool with 10 nearly-2-year-olds leaving their mamma's for the first time!)



His class has 7 boys and 3 girls. I would not be volunteering to be in charge of that mess! But Miss Debbie and Miss Elaine are veteraned 2-year-old teachers, so I will happily let them do their thing!

In other Micah news, we are starting to see 3 and 4 word sentences! It is very cute! Today at lunch he kept saying, "mo chikit muck agin pees." I knew exactly what he wanted. If you can't figure it out, you probably need to come for a visit! Anyway, it is so sweet to listen to his little voice, especially when he sings! He definately got more of the music gene than Katie did and it is so cool to see it develop. We'll try to get that on video - it would make a good podcast, I'm sure! (By the way, if you did download his podcasts from iTunes, thanks for indulging my technologically obesessed husband!)

I hope your day was as exciting as ours!

The Other Child

I have been a little preoccupied with Katie's things this week, but I wanted to let all 4 of my faithful readers know I haven't forgotten the little Mike. Thursday morning, we were all dressed and fed and ready to go and it was only 8:00! What a new scene for us! So we sat on the couch and pondered our new little existance - just him and me. I came to the conclusion that we can finally do what HE wants. He has been packed around to all of his sisters events for 2 years. Now is Micah time. So we sat a little longer with me trying to figure out what he might want to do. I haven't given that much thought!

So we ended up at the park. It was surprisingly cool and there was no one there. An empty park is no fun to Katie but Micah loved it! He had no one to stand in line behind, no one on the swings to kick him when he walked in front, no one to be hit with the rocks he loves to throw. It was great! We stayed 2 hours. He did miss Katie, though. As soon as she got home, she shucked her clothes and he put them on over his own. It was cute.

So here is the little man these days. He is cute beyond words and such a ham. The child plays to the crowd, even wose than Katie did at this age. He has a touch of OCD in that he wants the same song played over and over until he learns it and can sing along. There is nothing more precious than hearing a little child sing "Lord, You're Beautiful".



He has made this week survivable for me. We are both excited for Saturday, though. There is something just-not-right with Katie gone!

I don't know who's brilliant idea it was to give a sweet, defenseless baby to a couple, expect them to love and protect the little creature for 5 or 6 years, while they grow more and more attached to the thing, and then ask them to just hand it off on some arbitrary day in August to a couple of strangers who have a paper on the wall that says they know what they are doing in a room FULL of little people, just one of which you had trouble handling sometimes, and then expect you to go on about your merry day without another word from them for 6 or 7 hours. To make matters worse, they expect you to jerk that sweet sleeping child out of bed at an hour that man was not meant to walk to earth (since it is still DARK) so that later they can try to get the poor child to sleep on a towel, sardined up against kids they've never met, in the bright light, on a concrete floor and with a belly full of greasy popcorn chicken and fries. Why couldn't we have just let them sleep in the morning and skipped the whole nap farce? And what in the heck is popcorn chicken? Did it start out as a dry kernel of chicken before it hit the grease?

Maybe I'm just a little emotional right now, but I miss my kiddo. We did survive the morning. She did great. She was nervous but brave and it was hard to leave her in her chair, waving goodbye, and not go back for another kiss. But I was heartened to see that as I walked away, she was drawing a happy sunshine on her paper. Here are some of the moments...

The requisite "First-Day-of-School-in-front-of-the-house" picture. I have the one of Darrell and I waiting by the mailbox for the bus on my first day of kindergarten, framed on a shelf.



This one kills me. She didn't even need to hold my hand. She didn't know that I needed to hold hers...



Katie finding her own little piece of real estate - the illustrious cubby - with Mrs. Roberts (who is quickly emerging as the favored of the 2 teachers.)



And the final farewells. I don't think Micah has realized that anything is different today!



So there it is. Now I only have a couple more hours to wait to hear what I missed. And I just can't wait!

The Final Day...

We had classroom orientation today at Katie's school. Can I just say that I need to rent the saddest movie tonight and just get these tears out! I feel like I have been choking on them for a week - they feel like such a weight! I'm thinking "Stepmom" or "My Life" or something like that is in order for tonight.

So anyway, back to the orientation. Katie flat out refused to enter the classroom! All of you who can't imagine that she is ever shy - you should have been there. So we waited a couple minutes in the hall. I finally told her I was ready so she hid behind me and we went in. It really took her a few minutes to warm up! I am praying she gets a good night sleep tonight because if she is tired tomorrow, she might pull the same stunt and I'm not sure I can leave her there crying.

Here are some pics of the morning.

This is the front of the school. There are 1045 students this year, which includes 9 kindergarten classes! I think there were fewer than 9 classes in the entire elementary school that I went to!



Katie could not be bothered with drawing a picture of her family! She only sat still for a couple minutes!



She did immediately get excited about the books!




This car is in the library. What is up with her reading the paper? I don't even read the paper!



So that is the latest. I'll hopefully get some pictures tomorrow. Thanks for indulging me as I take this agonizing journey back to elementary school! We are really excited for Katie and totally at ease with everything - just mournful of the leaving of a phase of her life and all too aware of how quickly the days are passing us by!

Wow - the clock is SOOO ticking!

A day and a half until my preschooler enters the world of her next 13 years.

A day and a half until I have to start planning around a school schedule and quit going to theme parks when no one else is there.

A day and a half until I start waiting anxiously to hear how her day spent with other people went, and hope I didn't miss too much.

A day and a half until Katie has to wait until 2:30 to get a hug if she gets hurt or gets her feelings hurt.

A day and a half until I get to start running errands with only one child. Okay - that's a good part!

It'll be a big day and a half!

Shifting gears (and avoiding tears) I have to share the latest funny thing. Today, Katie finally wanted to work on her preschool workbook that she has been against working on all summer. So she was determined to do all of it! Anyway, on one page we were graphing the number of legs each farm animal has. I had to call each animal a "her". She said, "They are all girls mom, unless they poop. If they poop, they are boys!" Hopefully, she'll keep to the theory that boys stink for at least another 13 years.

1.5 days...and no longer counting.

Funny Katie Quote of The Day

Today, Katie was washing out a pair of panties that she had messed in. She hollered at me, "You know mom, a long time ago, if a kid had an accident, they'd have to wash their panties out down at the river!" That's about right, I guess.

I guess that means she's ready for school! Good thing, because there's 4 days and counting.....

Our new favorite place

We are getting ready for a renovation on our master bath and have been plotting and planning our method of attack. I have driven by this store several times, called the Restore, run and managed by Habitat for Humanity, and always wanted to stop in. So today, we went to scope it out. It was awesome! There were dozens and dozens of windows and doors, shutters, bathroom fixtures, cabinets, furniture, bricks, light fixtures, etc. The window assortment was the most amazing. There were all sorts of custom shapes and styles, many of them still in their original packaging. The worker folks old us that the stock came from a variety of places - some was recycled and was not new, other stuff was slightly damaged and a lot of it was new overstocked items from home imrprovement stores. There was also some cool old stuff - one door was like the old doors in the middle school I went to, with windows on the top half and made of old, heavy wood. It was $20 - if 'd had a place to keep it, I would've bought it for sentimental value. There were some cool, angled-type windows and some really neat french door ensembles.

We ended up buying a window for the bathroom that matches the other windows in the bedroom - it was brand new - for $40! Then, we got a new marble vanity top with 2 underneath-mounted sinks for $99! (It is still in the truck - we will need some big friends to help us get it out!) We also got a solid cherry kitchen table with the leaf that folds down into the table for $65 - granted, it doesn't have any legs, but Rick is already remedying that in the garage! We cut a lot off our bathroom budget and everything in the store is tax-free too, with the proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity, so it was a winner all around. We will definately be hitting that store again frequently.

Anyway, that was the cool thing for the day! We will have to post some before and after pics of the bathroom whenever we get started. There are some details we are still working out but we hope to get started in the next few weeks. If you have nothing else to do, you are welcome to come demo with us! It should be fun...

It's all fun and games until someone pukes in the playland!

So it's 480 degrees (roughly) and we are running out of money and things to fill the day! If someone wants me to do their back to school shopping (and foot the bill of course), I'd be glad to because I am bored out of my gourd today. That doesn't mean I don't have anything to do - just nothing that is appealing to do with 2 whiny kids and a car that feels like an oven, on less than $5.00.

So we have been hitting the "fun" (term used loosely) restaurants this week for lunch and a bit of energy exertion (theirs, not mine). Today it was Burger King. Apparently, most of the other moms in town thought it was a good idea too, so it was packed...

...until the worker-man said kindly, "We need to clear the playland for just a few minutes while we clean some vomit out of the little car thingy." Wow. What a way to empty Burger King of about 75 people in less than a minute. I think the lake dropped a couple inches too, shortly after that, as about 30 moms scrubbed their kids from head to toe (Katie is still soaking as we speak). I think the only thing that could make these last, hot, grumpy days of summer any longer is a stomach virus!

But on a lighter note, Micah is becoming a little quirky in his old age. In a stroke of brilliance (I thought at the time), I got him eating his vegetables one night with a toothpick (we said "on a steeek", like the jalepeno on a stick guy). Unfotunately, he has now abandoned all other forms of self feeding and will only eat stuff off of a "steeek". It's a little tedious. We haven't tried rice since this started. Or soup. I'll keep you posted about that.

Only 2 weeks left until school. We are getting nervous about the morning times. Currently, we are weening Katie off of the 10 am waking schedule. Shooting for 9:30 by the end of the week. We need to get to 6:45. Not sure how that will go. But she is ready - she's been wearing jeans and a SWEATER all week. DId I mention that it's nearly 800 degrees outside? Just checking. She cracked me up again the other night. We were eating chicken soup (I know - bad idea in August but I couldn't come up with anything else) and Rick got a little bone in his. Katie commented, "I wonder why they put bones in the chicken? What good is that?" Maybe I'd be that smart if I could sleep until 10:00 every morning.

The kids are playing together a little more these days. That is usually a good thing, although 2 conniving little minds are truly scarier than one. Yesterday, they played that they were cops and arrested the vaccuum cleaner. The vaccuum has been the source of much delight these past couple weeks. Once again I ask myself why I buy toys when the hard plastic vaccuum attachments are what they play with all day. Describing the arrest of the vaccum on the phone to my friend Holly resulted in a suggestion that they need a little "respect of the household appliances" crash course. I think I probably need the "it's not always good in the long run to let kids do whatever it takes to keep them from whining" crash course instead. But it's a little too hot for that today! Besides, at least I didn't let them eat cookies or doritos for breakfast, like I know some moms are prone to do.

Yet.

13 days and counting...

I think I might miss her...

It struck me this week as the three of us (me, K and M) were driving through town, and I was watching them in the backseat through my rear-view as they shared a book and Katie "read" to Micah, that - OH MY GOODNESS - SHE IS LEAVING ME! I really thought that kindergarten was going to be great and that I wouldn't miss her a bit, but now I think I will. Granted, she is climbing the walls and making me crazy these days and she is bored and annoying and all that. But she is also sweet and good to her brother (most of the time) and she is so loving and snuggly, and she is helpful (most of the time) and funny. Today, there is a guy pressure washing the house - she asked me if he was done with the bathrooms and could she go potty! If only... And earlier this week, she pulled a hard boiled egg out of the fridge, who's shell had cracked while it was cooking, and she freaked out - "Mom - this one is hatching!" She keeps me in stitches.

Anyway, I just had to share that epiphany. It's not the going that makes me sad - she'll love it and grow up so much at school. It's just the leaving me behind that makes me sad. I guess I better get used to it. Loving and leaving is pretty much what kids do.

In the meantime, I have a lot to do. Micah is so confused - too much female influence. At the shoe store today, he pulled off the cool tennis shoes I had him try on and put on some sparkly pink flip-flops instead. Then he shed his baseball cap to put on a Hello-Kitty hat instead. (At least he can match his accessories.) Katie going to kindergarten will probably be good for him - help him get his blues and pinks straight!

17 days and counting...