Sunday, March 28, 2010

While Driving Down The Freeway...

Tizzy: Mom? Did you have an imaginary friend when you were a kid?

Me: I wanted one, but one never showed up.

Tizzy: I had one once but then he got called home for dinner and he never came back...

Oh look! There he is! He's running down the freeway but that's dangerous, so I'm just going to go brlrlrlrlr-up, and zip him back up into my head.

Phew! Sometimes my imaginary friend makes me very uncomfortable.


Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

O'Shaughnessy's Gold


About a week and a half ago Tizzy and I were talking and he asked me if I believed in Leprechauns. I was caught off guard and I replied that I did not, but that they were fun to imagine. There was a long pause in which he thought about this and I knew that I'd given him the wrong answer.
"Do you believe in Leprechauns?" I asked him.
"Well, I'm not sure." He replied doubtfully.
I quickly came back that I personally had never seen one, but as they primarily live in Ireland I couldn't say for sure that they don't exist, just that I'd never seen one.

The next day as we were driving to school he piped up from the back seat that they'd been making shamrocks at school and were asked to outline them with gold glitter if they believed in Leprechauns and silver glitter if they did not. I asked him which color he'd used, and he told me he hadn't done his yet.

That evening we all went to his school for the Ice-cream Social and Book Fair. Part of the Book Fair took place in his classroom so Brad and I had a chance to look at his work on the wall. There on the wall were the shamrocks and Tizzy's was lined with gold.
"Tizzy!" I exclaimed. "What a beautiful shamrock. Looks to me like you do believe in Leprechauns!"
His eyes welled up with tears and his lips began to tremble. "I didn't use gold glitter! Someone else must have put that there!"

Two days later, all of the children were holding green pieces of paper in the pick-up line and there was lot's of excited chattering. As I approached Tizzy, he ran toward me and thrust the paper into my hands shouting, "There's a Leprechaun named O'Malley and it lives in the Kindergarten playground. It sent everybody letters in their mailboxes and said that Rm. 5 has it's favorite Kindergartners!"

There has been no more doubt as to the existence of Leprechauns, but there has been lot's of discussion as to how to catch them. Yesterday, Tizzy set out a trap made with black construction paper, lots of tape and a cookie. When he went back to check on it, the trap was on the floor the tape had been unwrapped and the cookie was gone!

Last night as the boys lay in bed getting ready to sleep I overheard this discussion –

Tizzy: I think the Leprechaun ate the cookie in one little bit. Poor man can't eat a cookie in one bite, just a bit – Poor little fella. Hey Zip, I saw that the Leprechaun ate the cookie!

Zip: Maybe he was hungry.

Tizzy: No you silly! The cookie was too big for his belly - Poor little fella!

Zip: Did you see him?

Tizzy: No. Did you?

Zip: I didn't see him, but I heard him. I heard little steps just come in the door and tiptoe across the floor.

Tizzy runs out to me and says: Hey Mom! Zip heard the Leprechaun sneak into our house! By the way – What's a poor little fella?

They finally fell asleep after much discussion about how a Leprechaun could be best caught and what they would do with the gold if they caught it.

This morning Tizzy climbed into bed with me, peered into my eye and said, "There are a couple of chocolate frogs on the table."

"What?" I exclaimed.

"I said, there are a couple of green chocolate frogs on the table."

"Where did they come from?" I asked.

"I don't know. They're by the traps."

"Maybe a Leprechaun brought them." I said.

"Let's go see!"

We walked into the living room and sure enough on the table were two green foil covered chocolate frogs. Underneath them was a letter from a Leprechaun named O'Shaughnessy who's apparently friends with O'Malley from the Kindergarten playground. He said that he's not easily trapped, but enjoys cookies very much and thought that Zip and Tizzy might enjoy a treat of their own for all of their hard work.

Tizzy could not wait to tell his friends.

Apparently, when he tried, nobody would pay any attention.

That, however, did not stop him from setting more traps when he got home.

Friday, March 12, 2010

The Big Questions

The "Why's" came slowly to our house.
Tizzy was a very active, not so verbal two year old, and for years we wondered if we'd missed the stage completely. But as you know, what your child skips in one stage, they'll make up for in another.
Now that he's six the questions have been flooding in and I have to admit, they've been fascinating.

The Standard:
  • What was the first day of the earth?
  • When the earth was molten lava what did they eat?
  • Were you alive Millions and Millions of years ago?
  • Were you alive in the Olden Days?
  • What does it feel like when you die and where do you go?
And the not so Standard:
  • Can a lightening bolt knock your teeth out?
  • If the days of the week were alive, what would they look like?
  • Why is cold invisible?

He walked into the kitchen the other day and said, " I was wondering if zippers were magical. When you pull your zipper slides up, it takes both sides of the zipper and slides it all together and that holds your clothes on. That seems pretty magical to me."

Another day we were sitting in the car and he started addressing reincarnation with me, a concept he'd been discussing with my mother. "Prisha says that when you die, your body falls apart, but you come back as a different body. I'm not sure if that's true, because Daddy's Mom died and I've never seen her, and Martin Luther King died and he hasn't come back yet either!"

Of course like any kid, he pulls out all the stops at bedtime. Last week we'd gotten him tucked into bed and answered multiple questions before putting our foot down and saying that any new questions would have to wait until morning. "Wait!" He called out urgently from his bedroom, "I have one more important question! How do children get inside their mother's bellies?!" He forgot to ask me again the next morning and instead waited until the moment we were about to enter Fairyland.

"Mom, you never told me how children get inside their mother's bellies."

While I'm all for answering questions as they come up, I was not going to get into details as we were entering a children's theme park.

"There's an egg inside the mother's belly," I said, " and when it gets fertilized the baby grows in there."

"Mom's have an egg in there belly?!" He laughed. " That's Aquarius!"

Zip has his own share of questions, but most of them pretty straight up and standard. However, being four, there are still some things that are completely over his head.
My favorite?

"What?! Darth Vader's a Bad Guy?!"



Monday, March 1, 2010

Spring Cleaning - Or Spring Training... You Decide

It's hard to jump back on the horse after not blogging for a month and a half.
There's a lot of self imposed pressure to come up with something REALLY interesting to say.
So, what do I have for you today?
Chores.
Interesting, Eh?

When I started blogging, I was so overwhelmed by parenting babies that I felt I could barely keep up. I went through most of my day in a fog and then in the middle of the night when the boys were finally down, I couldn't sleep. I found solace in other peoples blogs and I could catch up with you all at four in the morning if counting sheep had left me in the dark.

There were so many things on my to do list, but after nursing babies, changing diapers, washing laundry, and laundry and laundry, I felt I could barely brush my teeth much less clean out the garage. So, while I gritted my teeth at the clutter, I found solace in reading that the rest of you were going through it too. While I wondered if I'd ever get my energy back, I did find that sitting down at the computer at the end of the day and typing left me feeling like I'd accomplished something for myself which was gratifying and helped remind me that I hadn't completely lost my mind.

A couple of weeks ago, we watched our neighbors kids while they went out. They're two and four. It's been easy for Brad and I to think that we're getting better at the parenting thing as the boys have gotten older, but when that two year old went zooming through our house, dumping out toy boxes, splashing in the toilet and screaming when we finally told him it was time for bed, we recognized that our parenting isn't getting better, our boys are just getting older.

Phew!

With that has come more energy and also more sanity. I'm beginning to feel like myself again and trying to cross more off my to do list. After six years, my to-do list is not small. So, after the lengthy job of painting the kitchen, which I still need to update you about, I have been taking on more manageable tasks and trying to incorporate more of a schedule so that my to-do list doesn't rule my days.

In the past Brad would take the boys out during the weekend and I would clean the house. I would like to reclaim my weekends. So last spring I came up with a list. It details all the chores I'd like to get done in the month and has a check off spot for the number of times I'd like to complete that chore. My hope was that by doing at least one of those chores, twenty minutes each day, I'd have a pretty clean house. So far I have yet to follow through. Today, the first of March, I've decided to take on the Spring Cleaning challenge and complete the full list by the end of this month, the first month of Spring.

Don't get me wrong, my house is not a disaster, but I find that while I have type A desires, I have a distractible mind. I'd like to create a healthy medium, and know that my house is running smoothly so my distractions have more room to play.

Here's my list:

Vacuum: Living Room ___ ___ ___ ___ Dusting: L.R. ___ ___ ___ ___

Bedroom ___ ___ ___ ___ Bed ___ ___ ___ ___

Boys Room ___ ___ ___ ___ B.R. ___ ___ ___ ___

Office ___ ___ ___ ___ O ___ ___ ___ ___


Mop: Kitchen ___ ___ ___ ___ Dust ceiling fans: Bed ___

Bath ___ ___ ___ ___ L.R. ___


Scrub K. counters/sinks: ___ ___ ___ ___ Dust sills and baseboards: ___


Clean Bath: ___ ___ ___ ___ Dust and vacuum cobwebs: ___

Wipe down Kitchen appliances: toaster ___ Microwave ___ Brita ___ ___

Fridge ___ Dishwasher ___ Oven/ stove ___ ___ ___ ___


Wipe down walls: Hall ___ L.R ___ B.R. ___ Bath___ O ___ Kitchen ___

Kitchen Cabinets: ___ ___

Clean Fridge: ___

Yard

Mow Lawn: ____ ____ ____ ____

Weeds: ___ ___ ___ ___

Laundry: every day

Extras this month: ____________________________________

____________________________________

____________________________________


Want to play along?