wordless wednesday

this past sunday, we joined 15,000 other participants in the american heart association's Heart Walk. (contrary to the rather serious faces in the picture, we did enjoy ourselves.) while susanna relaxed in the stroller, liam walked most of the one-mile route with us in the blazing heat. about three minutes after we started, he paused to take a swig from his water bottle. "jeez," he sighed, "it sure is taking us a long time to find our car."

the blame game

liam's recently adopted the annoying habit of assigning blame to anyone or anything besides himself. during the rare squabbles while playing with susanna, it's always her fault. if he forgot to wash his hands, it's my fault for not reminding him. if he slipped off the tire swing at school with a classmate, it was his friend's fault for not giving him enough room. it extends to inanimate objects too -- did he stumble while walking to the front door? it was the driveway's fault. drop a utensil at dinner? the fork's fault. dribble a glob of colgate on his pajamas? the toothpaste's fault. you get the idea. so yesterday afternoon, i was preparing lunch for him and susanna and a playmate while all three ran around on the back porch. and all of a sudden, i look through the glass door to see my five-year old son standing in the middle of the floor, his legs apart and his shorts still on, peeing. he hasn't had a full-blown incident like that in over two years. yet there he was, giggling while urinating, finding the whole thing comical. when i reprimanded him, he had only one response. quite calmly, he explained, "it was my [insert male body part]'s fault." i know that guys joke that it has a mind of its own, but really, this is too much.

wordless wednesday

susanna, ever the fashionista, loves wet mornings so she can don her flowered raincoat and sassy boots. meanwhile, liam seems quite reflective about all the precipitation ...

sunny days are here again

one of my favorite parts of the newspaper are the letters to the editor. i skip the sports section completely, and give only a passing glance at the obituaries and comics, but i always make sure to turn to the end of section A and spend some time reading those letters. i learn a lot by reading them -- how there are almost always two sides to every story; how an article that i barely skimmed can so personally affect someone else; and how many people really never did master sixth grade grammar. (you can blame my mother for that one.) but as much as i enjoy reading them, i have to admit that i've never expected the letters to the editor to effect real change. it's always been my belief that they're mainly just a convenient way for people to blow off steam -- they want to complain, they want to rant about something that's been done or not been done, and that's their place to do it. even when i wrote the editors regarding my unhappiness with the changes in the weather page, i didn't honestly think anything would come of it. i just wanted my voice (well -- my son's voice) heard. knowing how strapped the paper is financially, i never in a million years thought they would return the weather page to its former glory, with its large maps and columns of data that soak up space that could otherwise be used by paying advertisers. so you could've knocked me over with a feather the morning that i opened the paper to read a letter of apology from the editors to the hundreds of faithful readers who had joined me in complaining about the changes. not only parents, like myself, but also fishermen, statisticians, travelers, hunters, immigrants ... the arguments made were heartfelt, and, more importantly, valid. and for once, the editors read all the letters that flooded their inboxes, realized their error, and righted their wrong. i wish i could expound at this point about how this has been such a valuable lesson to liam: that voicing your opinion does make a difference; that, by sharing your thoughts on a matter with a convincing argument, you can often help others see your point-of-view. but, really, it was over his head. he was just happy to be have things back the way they ought to be, poring over the list of world cities' high temperatures as he ate his breakfast. so the lesson turns out to be one for me. and it's one i now remember each morning as i read the letters to the editor. it's not just that people want to blow off steam; it's often that they are really hoping that they can change things. and no matter what those things might be -- whether it's health care reform, or the size of the weather map -- we are fortunate to live in a country where we can.

wordless wednesday

it takes a village to raise a child. or, it takes four different cars, two packed lunches and a basketball uniform, and three transfer of carseats to get two preschoolers where they need to be while i headed off to a full day of job training. oh, and a schedule to coordinate all the pieces of the puzzle. whew.

nighttime confessions

i have mommy guilt about a few things, so i thought, what better way to get them off my chest than to spell them out on my blog for all the world to see? here are a few ... 1) susanna is finally catching on that i often skip pages when reading super-long books at bedtime. liam's been on to me for years -- can't slip anything past an early reader -- but i'd been successfully turning ten-minute books into five-minute books with susanna for three years now. (those disney princess books, where they tell the ENTIRE plot of the movie in excruciating detail, are painful.) when she catches me, i just pretend like i didn't realize i turned multiple pages at the same time, and then try it again later in the story. 2) sometimes, if one of the kids is calling for us in the middle of the night, i pretend like i haven't woken up so chris has to deal with it. and then i feign ignorance in the morning ... "oh, wow. didn't hear a thing! i don't know how i slept through that." 3) on nights when we're really running late -- like when we've been out at a party with the kids and get home an hour past their bedtime -- we do the quickest run-through of prayers you've ever seen. we still say the Lord's prayer in its entirety, but i've been known to severely cap the God Blesses. as in, "all righty, kids. each of you can God Bless only three people tonight. so choose wisely." i often don't make the list. i wonder why.

wordless wednesday

this is the picture i sent out to family and posted to facebook chronicling the excitement surrounding liam's first lost tooth:

and this is the picture of his initial reaction, five minutes earlier. (apparently he wasn't aware there might be blood involved.)

northern exposure

if i didn't know any better, i'd swear our daughter is being raised in the bronx. or boston. or one of those northern cities with less-than-appealing accents. (my apologies to any yankee readers ... i know that there are many wonderful aspects of living where you do. but your way of talking isn't one of them.) susanna has recently aquired the habit of prefacing most of what she says by the word "hey." and i'm not talking a sweet, drawn out southern hey (pronounced "hayyyyyyeeee") -- i'm talking a short, choppy, masculine-sounding HEY. when added to the fact that she cannot pronounce the "r" sound at all, this is what my three-year old southern belle sounds like on any given day: "HEY. please pass the play-doh. i need some moe-wuh." (translation: i need some more.) or, "HEY. i know i left cindewella in my baby cwib. i'm shoe-wuh." (translation: i'm sure.) or, "HEY. i only have thwee cookies, but i weally want foe-wuh." (translation: i really want four.) and trying to correct her? my strong-willed, headstrong susanna? fuhgeddaboudit.

losing it

"how old do you have to be to lose your teeth?" liam asked me as we snuggled in my bed tuesday morning. i inwardly groaned. EVERYTHING these days is about ages -- not only the easily-answerable ones, like how old do you have to be to drive a car, but the ridiculous ones, like how old do you have to be to hang a picture on the wall. or use a hairdryer. or purchase a dadgum wii. while a few friends' kids have lost their first teeth at age five, i knew that if i responded with that number, a litany of questions would follow because liam IS five. so i naturally told him that most kids are six years old. that seemed to end the conversation.

then, a few hours later, as i was getting ready for my first job interview in seven years (more on that in a future post -- suffice it to say i am re-entering the working world after a half-decade hiatus), i heard liam discussing loose teeth with my father, who had come over to babysit. and a few moments after that, i heard my dad yell upstairs, "i didn't know liam had a loose tooth!"

i froze. maybe it was my dad's voice that did it, but i was instantly transported to my own childhood and the days of loose teeth -- scrutinizing my mouth in the mirror, running my tongue over the rough edges of the tooth in question, prodding it with my finger to feel the gummy hole beneath. i remembered the drama that unfolded around each loose tooth, with my exasperated father finally threatening to grab his pliers to put me out out of my misery. (it never came to that. daddy's more bark than bite, i quickly learned.) as i conjured up these memories, i began to become queasy.

i have always known that i would struggle with the teeth thing when it came time. i'm not sure why; i've been able to deal with other body maladies of my children so far with little trouble. vomit? no problem. poop, rashes, oozing eyes, chunks of ear wax -- none of it bothers me. but one mention of a loose tooth sends me over the edge. however, motherly love trumps queasiness, and, shocked at my dad's announcement, i ran down the stairs to see things for myself.

sure enough, liam opened wide to show me his bottom tooth, rocking in its socket, clearly on its way to falling out. and all of a sudden, i felt nauseous. i made it to the kitchen sink in time to dry heave. twice.

once i re-gained my composure, i began to wonder what had triggered it. i couldn't recall him hitting his mouth, or catching a ball with his chin, or anything else that could explain it. (he just turned five two weeks ago -- it seems awfully early to me.) so i asked him when he first felt it moving around. "it was this morning, when we were snuggling," he replied. "remember? when i rolled over and bonked your knee?" i did remember. that's when the whole initial conversation had begun. it all made sense.

i'll keep you posted on the comings and goings (literally) in the dental world of liam mann -- if i can stomach it. which makes me wonder ... do you think the tooth fairy might be adept with blogging and a digital camera? i'll pay overtime.

wordless wednesday

hi ho, hi ho, it's back to school they go! and while i'm not quite ready for the carefree summer days to end, i AM thankful that yesterday went a whole lot more smoothly than the first day of school last year ...