wordless wednesday

i received an ipad for my birthday back in december, and while i really like it, i can't say i'm as coocoo-for-cocoa-puffs about it as many of my friends.  "it will change your life!" several gushed to me.  "you won't know how you ever survived without it!" others said.  it is awesome -- don't get me wrong -- but i've been known to go a few days without picking up the thing. 

well, until i installed the "draw something" app.  now that i have that game, there's no way the kids would ever let the ipad go untouched for more than 24 hours.  it's a drawing game (sort of like pictionary) that they play exclusively with their aunt leslie out in california.  they alternate guessing and drawing, and always know whose turn it is.  we've settled into a routine where we play a round (which normally takes about a minute) right before we leave for school in the morning, and then again after we get home from the bus in the afternoon.

so i hereby present to you two examples of drawings that our children have created for leslie's guessing.  one of them i happened to save because i was so impressed.  the other leslie happened to save because she was so bewildered.  one of them was drawn by susanna, and the other by liam.  i'll leave it to you to figure out which one belongs to which artist.

 what's that?  you're wondering what the answer is for the second one that liam artist unknown drew?

HOT SAUCE.  of course.

wordless wednesday

liam flipped for the start of pool season -- literally! -- even with frigid water temperatures and a cool breeze blowing.  chris and i, on the other hand, sat nearby in our tennis clothes and observed.  we have fifteen more weeks to jump in.  i'm sure we'll get our fix soon enough.

by the way -- never in my life have i attempted a flip off the diving board, and neither has chris.  it feels sort of weird to look at my child and realize he can do something that we cannot.  the first of many such accomplishments, to be sure

two hands

susanna turned two hands on friday.  up until now, my baby girl could proudly display her age using only one; today, she becomes the big Six and needs that extra finger.

so, in light of her newly acquired number, here are the six things i love most about our sweet daughter:

1.  she's determined.  she'll plod through a difficult book from start to finish, sometimes faltering on unfamiliar words but insistent on working through it until the last page.  when she got her first pair of lace-up shoes, she asked me to show her how to tie them, and then retreated to her room to practice.  a half-hour later, she proudly called me in to show me a dozen bows made with her grosgrain ribbons -- tied around the doorknobs, the pulls on her dresser, and even her bedpost.  she'll bite her lip in concentration but plow through any task at hand.

she's a master puzzle solver -- she'll sit down with a new one and won't get up until she's finished.  which is usually pretty quickly

 2.  she's still a little shy slow to warm up (a phrase a pediatrician friend of mine suggested), but is gaining confidence every day.  in an unfamiliar situation, she's understandably hesitant.  but i've watched her enough to know that she's just scoping it out and observing.  within a few minutes, she's joining in the fun, making new friends and always hitting it off with anyone she meets.  is she an outspoken leader?  no. and she might never be.  but she's our accommodating, easy-going, agreeable child that everyone loves to be around. and we'll take that any day of the week.

3.  she knows her talents.  she's an excellent artist and has a musical ear, and she flocks to activities that draw on these talents, whether it's laboring over a special drawing for her aunt on her wedding day, or practicing the next song her choir will perform in Big Church.  we're planning on starting piano lessons in the fall, and i have no doubt she will love them.  and, by the same token, she knows where she doesn't excel -- namely sports.  but rather than agreeing to register for teams and then winding up miserable and complaining, she acknowledges that athletics just ain't her bag.  and she's okay with that too.

titled "Aunt Leslie and Uncle Richard's Wedding Day" by susanna atkins mann ~ may 14, 2012

 4.  she's the best sister.  how many times can i mention the amazing relationship our two children have?  she adores her big brother.  liam adores her.  the end.

5.  she's funny.  she has a keen understanding of plays-on-words and often will surprise us with a creative joke that she's made up herself.  today's was, "what is a chick's favorite food?  PEEP-za!"  (all right, that's not going to be on any comedian's set list ... but for age six, i think it's pretty impressive.)

that snaggle tooth hung on for weeks ... and she thought it was hilarious to stick it outside of her top lip and speak reeeeeaaaaal southern-like

6. she's just a big ball of love.  she asks to cuddle; she'll stand on her tippy toes for a kiss; she'll often come up and just hug us for no reason whatsoever.  and every morning, without fail, i wake up to her warm little body climbing into bed to snuggle with me.  with a beginning like that, how could i possibly have a bad day?

six reasons why she's our best girl, and two hands to show off her age.  and, as we say in this house, "infinity squared" to quantify our love.  happy birthday, sweet susanna!

a mother's day portrait, take 2

no mid-cheek eyebrows; no inflamed ears.  and everything's pretty much drawn to scale.  whew.

of course, i don't seem to have a neck ...

a mother's day portrait

i don't post pictures of myself (or chris) all that often on here -- we haven't changed much over the years other than adding wrinkles (me) and losing hair (him), so there's really no need.  but today i feel compelled to share with you a recent portrait that an esteemed local artist made of yours truly.

titled "My Mommy" by william joseph mann, II ~ may 2012

liam quite proudly presented this to me at my bedside this morning for mother's day, along with other treasures (like a beautiful handmade broach i wore to church, a book, and a poem.)  in case you were wondering ...

• the black lines underneath my eyes are not dark under-eye circles.  they're eyebrows.  ("huh," he said, as he studied my face and then his drawing and then back again.  "i guess eyebrows actually go above the eyes.  oops.")
• the purplish blue item in the bottom left corner is a tennis racket that is obviously not drawn to scale.  unless he thinks i either play with an ant-sized racket, or that my head is enormous.
• "and i made your ears red because you're just coming off the tennis court!" he explained.  until that moment, i had no idea my ears turned such a color.  you learn a lot from your children.

tomorrow i have the pleasure of dining with susanna in her kindergarten classroom for her mother's day celebration -- so surely there will be more to come.  but i'm telling you what ... if i have eyebrows on my cheeks and inflamed mismatched-sized ears on the sides of a gargantuan-sized head, i might just start developing a complex.

but hey!  at least i'm smiling. with big, plump, red lips, no less.  there's always a bright side.

neighbors

i lost susanna for a brief period of time last week.  it was one of our hot afternoons, and she and liam had requested frozen yogurt for their afternoon snack as we walked home from the bus stop.  (unfortunately for them, "frozen yogurt" means just that -- yoplait yogurt in a tube, frozen.  they don't realize that in other worlds it's a treat that tastes like ice cream.)  so i had given them their frozen yogurts and out of the blue, susanna said to me, "i think i'll take a walk around the neighborhood while i eat my snack."

"sounds good," i replied, intent on adjusting the new window treatments in the breakfast room that had finally arrived.  "just don't go past the stop sign."  i was reminded yet again of how blessed we are to live where we do -- at the end of a very long, private cul-de-sac with no traffic whatsoever.

ten minutes or so later, i finished up with the valances and headed outside to join the kids.  i found liam playing tennis with the fourth-grader from two doors down, but, surprisingly, susanna wasn't with him.  "where's your sister?" i asked.

he shrugged his shoulders.  "i haven't seen her," he said, before returning to his game.

i scanned the cul-de-sac up to the crest of the hill, but there was no susanna.  i walked to our back yard, convinced i'd see her on the swing set.  but she wasn't there either.

right around the time that a small glimmer of panic began to creep in, she appeared from our next-door neighbor's front yard.  she sauntered towards me, still holding her frozen yogurt wrapper in hand, with a sticky face and a big smile.

"well there you are!" i said brightly, trying as hard as i could to not convey my worry.  "where have you been?"

"oh, i just went over to mrs. barbara's," susanna answered. barbara and john are our next-door neighbors who are older than my parents.  they often will call the kids over to show them a bird nest, or a project they're working on in their garage, or to see pictures of their grandchildren.

"oh!  great!" i said, stifling a huge sigh of relief.  "did she have something cool to show you today?"

"no ma'am," susanna replied.  "i just wanted to talk to them while i ate my snack.  so i went over and rang their doorbell."

i looked at this child standing in front of me, and wondered if it was indeed my daughter.  you know, the introverted daughter who will give shy smiles to friends' parents when we see them at the grocery without opening her mouth to say hello. she looked the same and sounded the same, so i continued.

"i see.  and what did you talk about?"

"oh, lots of stuff.  i showed her my lost teeth.  and we talked about my  birthday party coming up.  and did you know they're going to the mountains this weekend?"  she prattled on about this conversation as if it were one she'd had with her best friend in kindergarten.  and i couldn't help but smile.

i'll admit that i've often wished we had more children around us.  out of the twelve houses on our street, there's only one other kid in elementary school.  but seeing liam and susanna forge relationships with all of our neighbors, some of whom are up to twelve times as old as they are -- chatting with them on our way home from the bus stop about what they learned that day at school, or playing an impromptu game of baseball with them with the mailboxes as the bases, or fetching their mail and newspapers while they're out of town as a favor with nothing expected in return -- these things all matter.

mrs. barbara, susanna, and mrs. shirley enjoying an american girl tea party last spring

i think it gives them a sense of family beyond just relatives.  i think it teaches them that a home extends past the exterior walls of a house.  and, in a world where it's very easy to become self-absorbed, i think that becoming friends with people with seven decades' worth of life experience helps give our children a healthy dose of perspective.

i think i'll send susanna on her merry way more often.  with a frozen yogurt in hand, of course.  or maybe two.

slightly off-base

liam had his first baseball game of the season last week and unfortunately i had to miss it.  halfway through the first quarter inning chris texted me.

note to self: must. learn. baseball.

i married a rock star

have you seen the reality show "the voice"?  we hadn't.  until we started hearing from all sorts of people about a certain contestant -- who's apparently now one of the finalists.  so naturally we DVRed it to check it out.  here's the description of the recording:

the autograph line forms to the left.

all in a day's work

if i wasn't already in dire need of botox, i thought to myself, surely i need it now.   i was crouched under the coffee table in our family room, flashlight in one hand, my brow furrowed in concentration.  i could almost feel the crevices in the center of my forehead deepening as i peered at the rug.  susanna knelt next to me, still teary, searching the soft wool with her small hands, while liam stood a few feet away with a set of binoculars (yes, binoculars) focused on the floor below.

we were looking for a tooth.  and if there's any job on the planet more unpredictable than parenting, i'd like to know what it is.

this is susanna a mere five minutes prior:

she had bounded off the bus that afternoon, grinning widely, proudly displaying her new front-and-center gap.  that loose tooth of hers that had hounded us for weeks -- we'd packed her tooth fairy pillow as far back as our trip to DC at the end of march -- had finally bid a fond farewell.  she reported that she was walking back from lunch, wiggling it with her tongue, when it just "popped out".  she brought it home in a plastic baggie, eager to get started on writing the tooth fairy another question, as has become her tradition.

so without even pausing for an after-school snack, she sat in the family room while liam and i went through his homework on the couch, composing her letter on an index card.  i suddenly heard a small whimper, and looked up to see her silently crying.  "what in the world is wrong, honey?" i asked.

she inhaled shakily.  "i -- i lost my tooth," she said, her little-girl voice faltering.

"yes, honey, i know that," i replied.  "that's why you're writing the tooth fairy."

"no!  i mean i JUST lost it."  she held up an empty baggie in her right hand.  "it was just here but now ... now it's gone ..." and dissolved in a fresh round of tears.

"oh!  well, it can't have gotten very far," i said, trying to lighten the mood.  "we'll find it in no time.  let's look!"

which brings us back to botox, the flashlight, and the binoculars.  we must have spent a half-hour scouring that thick shag rug, and came up with all sorts of treasures -- a few sequins from an old princess dress and a penny -- but that little white tooth never did show up.  (i'm telling you, this rug is thick.  i promise that it does get vacuumed.)

and this is the part of the post that i will surely have to delete before i print out our 2012 book, knowing that little eyes will read these words ... but that tooth DID show up a few hours later.  or, at least, a replica did.  it occurred to me that for some strange reason, i had kept each child's first lost tooth in the bottom of my jewelry box.  (i know!  me, with the weird hang-up with teeth, actually kept two of them among my jewelry!  i have no explanation.)

anyway,  i held up one of them for a brief second, deemed it an acceptable replacement, and excitedly entered susanna's room.  i found her arranging her tooth fairy pillow next to her amended letter, in which she had described what had happened so the tooth fairy would understand why her pillow was empty. 

but it was not to be empty much longer, thanks to my impressive problem-solving skills.  i really had to pat myself on the back for this one.   "i found it!" i exclaimed.  "here it is!  it was underneath the coffee table!"

i expected elation.  excitement.  joy.  instead, i got skepticism.  "really?  you found it?"  and then, she had the audacity to scrutinize the  dadgum thing.  "um, well, it doesn't really look like my tooth," susanna ventured, after giving it a quite serious study.

seriously?!  "well, i found it underneath the coffee table, right where you had dropped it.  if it's not your tooth, whose is it?"

she shrugged.  "okay, i guess it's mine."  she gave me a big, holey smile.  "thanks, mommy."

all in a day's work.  not an honest day's work, mind you.  but a day's work. 

wordless wednesday: DC style, part 3

i probably should title this "wordless wednesday: UR style" but i'm trying to keep with the theme of our spring break adventure.  alas, this is the final installment.  after this post, i'm going to actually have to come up with something interesting to say.  (or, in the words of the two old guys of the muppet show, "why start now?")

chris has heard me say that the university of richmond has been named the most beautiful college campus in the country enough times that i've come to expect an exaggerated eye roll whenever i remind him.  but there really is no place like it on earth.  shortly after feeding the ducks by the lake that's in the middle of campus, liam turned to me and said, unsolicited, "this place is BEAUTIFUL, mommy."  sweet vindication!  i think chris probably rolled his eyes at that too

we popped into the chapel and were treated to an organ rehearsal.  the kids were more interested in the stained glass shadows on the floor

no trip to one's alma mater would be complete without a visit to the bookstore.  liam came away with a spider-themed tennis bag, and susanna is now the proud owner of a pink UR water bottle.  (and, seriously.  look at that background.  it's truly unbelievable)

just the four of us: liam, me, susanna, and one of the gazillion inch worms hanging from the trees that landed on liam's finger.  i thought raleigh was inundated but it has nothing on richmond

on our way out, we stopped by the brand new stadium.  the kids ran a lap around the track and our non-athletic daughter's legs were just a blur ... perhaps we've found her calling?

mid-cheer underneath the sign celebrating the big football win -- this one's for my uncle (who was the star cornerback of the team)

our final stop of our journey was by my college best friend's house, where susanna bonded with alison's three daughters and about 52 dolls.  it's a little funny when you think about it -- out of all the super fun things we did, we started and ended with american girl

wordless wednesday: DC style, part 2

riding the metro -- the same line, coincidentally, that chris used to ride every single day to and from work during the years we lived there

seriously -- why is liam hunched over?  does he think he's going to block the washington monument?

i, on the other hand, am hunched over for a reason.  the back brace wasn't cutting it by this point.  but i survived the zoo somehow

the kids' favorite animal at the zoo: the 11-day old monkey, who clung to his mama's chest while the fiercely protective papa (pictured) shot nasty looks at the audience gathered around

after the zoo, we walked a few miles to our friend bill and cheryl's place for an amazing dinner, and another one of chris's fraternity brothers, brett joined us.  brett and bill also happened to be with us the night chris and i met, at a bar not far from their current home ... it all sort of comes full circle, doesn't it?

par for the course: liam manages to get his dessert all over himself, while susanna looks on, amused

the kids have been asked by several people what the best part of our trip was.  the soccer game?  american girl place?  zoo?  museums?  metro rides?  playing with their cousins?  seeing the most beautiful college campus in the country (pictures to come in a future post)?  nope.  without a second's thought, their response: the hotel pool

wordless wednesday: DC style, part 1

a few pictures from our first two days of our family trip to DC ...

true story: i was in chicago in 2006, hugely pregnant,  and happened to walk into the american girl place.  it was then and there, standing in what just might be the most over-the-top feminine place in the country, that i decided that i just had to have a girl.  luckily it all worked out, because one of my most favorite memories so far as a mom was experiencing the american girl place with susanna (and kit, of course). 

what are the odds that one of susanna's best friends, lily, and her mom were going up on the same day?  i took this picture while susanna mulled over her many options of what to purchase, before she ultimately decided on a cheerleading outfit for kit.  pom-poms included.

tracy was not only a dear college friend, but also my roommate when we moved to DC after graduation AND was with me the night i met chris.  if you look closely you can see the puffy edges of the back brace i had on underneath my top.  not exactly the most flattering piece of equipment, but ohmygoodness i was still in so much pain.  which was probably exacerbated by the fact that they're currently remodeling their house (hence the crazy ceiling behind us) ... i think i was having flashbacks to the dust and grime of our renovation last summer

tracy's kids john robert (8) and cassady (6) became fast friends with our two.  it's funny how we always just assume our kids will hit it off with other kids they've never met based simply on their ages ... we would never expect that of adults ... but for whatever reason, it always works.  i have a feeling they'd all be BFFs if we lived closer

on friday night chris took liam to a DC united game (professional soccer).  DC scored 4 goals and won the game, so liam was in heaven.  chris wasn't so much; after a few weeks of 80-degree temperatures in raleigh, it didn't occur to us that we might need to pack for cooler weather.  they warmed up with hot chocolate at the stadium

on saturday, while i went up to maryland for my sister-in-law's baby shower, chris took the kids to the air & space museum with their second-cousin reilly

in the observation tower at air & space.  their poses are reminding me of all the award shows where celebrity presenters stoop down to get their mouths near the microphones, even though it's not necessary, and wind up looking ridiculous.  in every picture chris took, they're all hunched over and i have no idea why

an inauspicious beginning

we've just returned from a most amazing trip up to DC, i'm happy to report.  had you asked me four days ago , i might have predicted otherwise.   you know you might have yourself a bit of a problem when your spouse is remarking to a neighbor that our adventure was looking a lot like the "griswold family vacation" BEFORE YOU EVEN HAVE PULLED OUT OF THE DRIVEWAY.

so let me just describe how it all went down.  wednesday night i stood up from my computer chair -- my expensive ergonomic computer chair, mind you -- and immediately froze.  in pain.  stabbing pain that i've experienced before that will often take me out of commission for days.  chris was already asleep so i hobbled up the stairs as best i could, attempted to brush my teeth for two minutes like my electric toothbrush wants me to (but couldn't stand for that long), took a painkiller that my orthopedist prescribed the last time i threw out my back, and crept gingerly into bed.  i fell into a drug-induced slumber, trying hard to convince myself that i was going to miraculously awake to a new spine and be able to chaperone susanna's kindergarten field trip to the farm like i had promised that i would.

alas, it was not to be.  chris's amazing mother pinch-hit for me (that is the correct sports term, right?) and i remained in bed on an ice pack for most of thursday.  and all the while, i'm wondering how in the world i'm going to sit in a car for 5+ hours the next morning on our long-planned spring break family trip.

i determined that the only way i could possibly make it was lying in the back of our SUV on an ice pack, surrounded by pillows.  which meant that chris's plan of taking his much more fuel-efficient sedan was no longer an option.  he smiled a tight smile at me, very likely grumbled under his breath as he returned to the driveway to rearrange what he had already done, and that was that.

until i hobbled out to the driveway on friday morning and realized that i had neglected to explain my need for the SUV.  i figured he would have somehow understood my plan to lie in the back on an ice pack.  he, on the other hand, had assumed i wanted the captains chair and the legroom, and had instead stuffed the back of the SUV with all of our luggage.

so once more, he had to undo all that he had done.  while this is all taking place, the lights were on, the music was playing, the GPS was running, and the battery was depleting.  which we realized, as soon as we were all in place, ready to go ... and the car wouldn't start.

so he grabbed his jumper cables and assured the kids that we'd be going in no time -- until he realized that the cables were just not quite long enough to reach his car.  and remember, i was of absolutely no help at this point, as i was lying on my back on an ice pack.  (not that i really would've been much help under normal circumstances, but i could have at least gone around the cul-de-sac to hunt down longer cables.  or offered moral support.  or something.)

at this point, i suggested to the kids that they get out of the car and move around a little bit, and asked them to open the back door for me to maybe roll out (or at least get some fresh air.)  and it was then that we realized that i was actually locked in.  the only way to open the back door is with the power buttons, which were, of course, all non-functional because we had no battery.  and i couldn't clamber over the back row to exit through the side doors because i was lying on my back on an ice pack.

by now, we were being inundated with questions from the kids.  most notably, "are we ever going to get to the american girl place by 12:30 for our lunch reservations?" (which had already crossed my mind.)  chris was pounding the steering wheel in frustration, and i was lying on my back on an ice pack laughing at the absurdity of it all.

we wound up borrowing some longer cables from a neighbor, successfully jump-started our car, and got off without a hitch.  until we ran into an hour-long delay on I-95 because of road construction, but that's not nearly as interesting.  i was able to call the american girl place as i lay on my back on an ice pack and pushed back susanna's and my lunch reservation by 90 minutes, and even then, we barely made it.

but we did make it.  we survived, i'm actually somewhat mobile by now, and all's well that ends well.  but for a little while there on friday morning, it was looking a little dicey. 

pictures to come -- none of which, thankfully, were taken from the back of the SUV while lying on an ice pack.

the moral of the story? don't mess with susanna mann

wednesdays might just be my favorite afternoon of the week.  for one, we're not racing out the door to get to an activity like tennis or baseball or soccer.  (we do have choir, but that's not until 6 pm.  which makes dinner a little tricky, but that's another issue entirely.)  and it's a day that i don't volunteer at the kids' school, so it always has been at least seven hours since i've last seen them.

but the biggest reason i love wednesdays is that susanna comes home with her backpack stuffed with all the goodies she's worked on from the previous week.  we'll sit side-by-side on the family room couch and go through each and every item.  she even helps me sort them into two piles: the wow-isn't-that-great-now-let's-chuck-it pile, and the this-really-is-awesome-so-let's-keep-it pile.  (the former almost always doubles the latter in volume.)

in that latter pile are her "stories".  several times a week, her teacher gives the students a writing prompt of some sort, and susanna gets to wax poetic on the subject at hand.  there's space at the top of the paper for a drawing, and the kids are expected to do the best they can at stretching out the words to spell them themselves.  i've loved to see the progression of her "stories" from the beginning of the year until now.  i honestly have difficulty wrapping my mind around how much she has learned and grown in this relatively short amount of time. in august, she could barely write her full name.  and now she's stapling pages together because she has so  much she wants to share.

she takes great pride in reading these to me and liam (and then again to chris when he gets home), and we ooh and  aah at the appropriate times to let her know how impressive her literary talents are.  i'm thinking of making a book of some sort in june when we close the door on her kindergarten year.  the stories are often excellent documentation of what has been going on in our lives, from holidays to sleepovers to random events that she deems worth describing.

but today's was a first.  asked to write a story about the cat and the hat in honor of dr.seuss's birthday, she sort of went off on a tangent.  a surprisingly violent tangent.  is it bad to say that i laughed outloud?

click on the picture to launch the video

madness

this whole NCAA basketball pool thing was a bad, bad idea.

for years, chris and i have participated in a pool with my extended family.  there are around 30 participants, and at $5 and winner-takes-all, it can be a nice chunk of change if you're the victor.  (not that i would know anything about that.)

with liam being such an avid reader of the sports section each morning and an absolute sports freak, it seemed only natural that he would join the family pool.  add the fact that he's a numbers guy (and the bracket is chock-full of numbers), i just knew he'd be ecstatic to participate.

i should have known better.

"no thank you," he replied when i first suggested the idea.  "i don't know who will win."

"that's the whole point," i explained.  "you DON'T know.  it's incredibly hard to predict.  but that's the fun of it -- getting lucky!"

he shook his head.  "i don't think so.  i like to be right.  and i'm not sure i'll be right."

i looked at him, incredulously.  and it all sort of started to click.  he took a series of tests last month at school for academic placement, and the area where he faltered consisted of problems that challenged him to think outside the box.  when we met with the psychologist to go over the results, she told us that he had explained to her that he would rather not answer at all than to answer and be wrong.

i won't go into the long conversation we had about THAT, but apparently it had fallen on deaf ears, because here he was, presented with the opportunity to win $150 just by being lucky, and he was flat-out refusing.

so what does a mom do?  i forced him to play, of course.  i thought it would be a good experience to persuade my young son to get into gambling see what can happen when you take a chance and do something for fun. 

so he studied his blank bracket.  he made a lot of smart choices based on seeds, and he made a few emotional ones (namely, picking davidson, chris's alma mater, to go to the sweet sixteen.)  and then he made a fatal decision.  he chose missouri to win the entire thing.

and, as anyone in the world knows who follows one iota of sports, missouri became only the fifth team in the history of the NCAA tournament to go out in the first round as a #2 seed.  (interesting fact:  the first #15 seed to ever win was none other than my beloved richmond spiders, in 1991 against syracuse.  U of R is also the only team who can say that they've won as a 15th, 14th, 13th, AND 12th seed.  and i am hereby redeeming myself for my total airheaded post about football, thank you very much.)

but back to the story at hand.  after submitting his entry online, liam became a bit obsessed on the first day of the tournament, asking constantly if he could get on the website and track the standings.  he'd periodically report his ranking, excited to see his bracket in the top three at one point.  he started to ponder what he was going to do with all his winnings, despite my warnings that things can change quickly.

and then the world came to an end.  chris and i were at the club on friday night and happened to see the final minutes of the missouri game, both of us ecstatic to witness such an upset. you've always got to root for the underdog, right?  until it hit us what this meant for liam. when we picked him up from the kids room, we decided not to say anything, but somehow he already knew.  and all the way home, he wailed from the back seat, inconsolable.  (think of a three-year old temper tantrum, but in a seven-year old body.  NOT FUN.)

as we finished brushing his teeth that night, he looked up at me with bloodshot eyes with one more thought.  "maybe when i wake up tomorrow morning," he said, "the paper will say that norfolk state got charged with violations and they'll put missouri back into the tournament.  think that can happen?"

when i told him not to get his hopes up, he muttered something about this being the dumbest idea ever and how he's never going to enter a pool again, before stomping off to bed. 

sort of gives the term march MADNESS a whole new meaning.