School

I'm afraid to bring it up because I might jinx myself, but I've managed not to eat out on school days. Which is 4 days a week by the way. Not even an iced tea. This is money saving stuff right here people. I was going to say it was also calorie saving... but then I would have to ignore the piece of chocolate cake I eat immediately upon walking in the door after school.

Today on the way to school I accidentally drove on the rumble strip for a second. I thought it was my exit... it wasn't. Anyways, Connor said "Hey mom?! I think the bye-byes (that's what he calls the van) just FARTED!!!" and then he laughed a real genuine laugh. Not the fake HA HA laugh we usually get... a sweet bubbly giggle. It was so cute... he's such a boy!

I have to leave a full 30 minutes earlier than I should to get to school because it takes FOREVER to find a parking spot. On Thursday I circled around for 25 minutes looking for a spot. Jeeze. I was getting so frustrated. Connor kept saying "Mommy, just park the car right here! We are going around in circles." Yeah... I know. Whether it's because of the high unemployment rate and people are using this time to take some classes, or because people can't afford ASU so they are coming to community college, or... as I heard today... that people are taking a class at MCC and then taking public transit over to ASU so they don't have to pay for parking over there (grrr) it sucks. If I didn't have Connor I would consider parking at the mall across the street and riding a bike over to class. But I'm stuck at the mercy of parking spaces... and I will go around and around and around looking for a precious spot.

Preschool

Well, we survived our first day. This morning was a little tough because he was ready to go and we had about 3 hours to kill before it was time to leave. Luckily, there was a marathon of Special Agent Oso (Connor's favorite show) on so that saved me.

We still got there a full 30 minutes early because I wasn't sure how long it was going to take me to drive there, or find a parking spot, or say good bye to Connor, or find my class. Turns out everything went perfectly so I found a shady spot outside my class and talked to Larry on the phone.

As far as leaving Connor at school... that went as expected. I hung out with him in his class for about 5 minutes and then I said "Ok, It's for me to go to my own school." He started to cry a little bit and said that he wanted to come with me. I said "No, you are going to stay here with your teachers and all your new friends. I'll be right back." He thought that was fine and that he wanted to play with the trains. I got a hug and a kiss and then off he went. When I left he was choo chooing along with another little boy.

When I went to pick him up they had just come in from playing outside. He was just as any little boy should be... a big sandy sweat ball. lol. His hair was soaked with sweat and his hands and legs had sand stuck to them all over. He didn't want to leave.

I think tomorrow should be fine.

The hand of milk and honey

The other day I was putting Connor down for a nap and he grabbed my hand and smelled it. He then told me that I smell like milk and honey. I laughed and wondered where he learned that saying. I made a mental note to ask Larry about it but quickly forgot about the whole incident.

Then last night Larry told me that Connor was upset because he wouldn't let him wash his hands before bed (Connor had just gotten out of his bath) because his hands didn't smell like milk and honey. I asked Larry what was up with that and told him the story of nap time. Larry said the hand soap in the kids bathroom is milk and honey scent. But the kicker is that neither of us told Connor that. Was Connor able to figure that out just by smell alone?

Milk and honey? Really? I could see if it was strawberry, or orange, or even watermelon. But milk and honey? That's crazy. Someone MUST have told him. I mean, come on.


On a totally unrelated topic:

I got my nails done the other day. As the lady is painting my nails she asks me if I wanted to get my brows done. "Wan Brow!?!" I said "No, I'm fine." and then she stopped painting and looked up at me over the top of her glasses. haha. I now have new brows.

First day of school... again and again.

Connor starts preschool tomorrow... and he couldn't be more excited about it. We went on Thursday to meet the teachers and he got a good look around the class room. He went straight for the piano and had to be dragged away to check out the rest of the room. He was also interested in the fish tank and the slide. Now we are in full count down mode until he can "finish playing the piano and looking at the fishes and going down the slide" (checking off his fingers as he explains).

On Friday I went and got him a backpack. It has all the Marvel superheros on it. He is very proud of it. He put it on at the store and basically hasn't taken it off. It's adorable!

It's also my first day of school tomorrow. Life is about to be very different. Going to school 4 days a week is going to be a drastic change to our routines. Two days a week I don't have to be there till noon, so that is going to be a struggle. In a perfect world I would like to leave the house around 9:30 or 10:00, so I don't know what we are going to do to kill the extra time. We will have to figure something out.

We have homework

Finally. I've been waiting for two years and one week for Maddy to get some regular homework. We finally have some. She has to read for 20 minutes, study her math flash cards, and work on her spelling words.

She hates it.

I sent her upstairs when she got home to work on her spelling words while I cut out the gazillion math flash cards. She came down like 15 minutes later and I thought she was done. Nope. She hadn't even started, she just came down to tell me that she doesn't want to do it.

Too bad.

If anything is going to make her not like school it's homework. Homework and math. I'm making a prediction that she will struggle with math. We have done the addition flash cards every night for a year now and haven't made any progress. It's like she is seeing every problem for the very first time. We do them every night. Every night. And yet, it doesn't sink in. She can't see that if 3+4=7 that it then makes sense that 3+5=8. That doesn't compute. 3+5 is a completely new equation with no relationship to 3+4 whatsoever.

I see math tutors in our future.

But the spelling words are a totally different story. I usually go over them one time with her and she's good. Not that she gets a 100% on every test, she doesn't. She makes a mistake here or there, but she knows how to spell the word when I ask her and she isn't over thinking it.

Second Grade

Well, the first day of school has come and gone with surprisingly little fanfare. Monday was the first day. Sunday night she came home from Shaun's and cried and cried and cried. I guess she was just nervous. Seriously she would not stop crying. He dropped her off at 5:00 and by 6:30 I had put her to bed. She was a disaster.

But she woke up ready to go and, as I predicted, by the time she saw kids at the bus stop she had forgotten all about being nervous.

All of her predictions in her letter came true. She is loving school. LOVING IT!

I on the other hand am having a hard time creating a new routine for us. Today was movie day and there was no summer movie. Thursday is library day. I am going to the library tomorrow to return the last stack of books... but then what. Normally we go get pizza after the library but I got pizza today out of sheer boredom and lack of planning. So I don't know...

Savior

Connor has a favorite shirt. It is a beige button up shirt with a collar. On the front pocket it has a blue lizard logo on it and then that same lizard full size on the back. It's his lizard shirt, and he loves it.

He goes lizard hunting in the back yard when he wears that shirt. He stands over by the tree where all the lizards live and shades his eyes with his hand, like he is looking far off into the distance, and looks for lizards.

So about two weeks ago I'm sitting in the living room and he comes racing in.

"Mommy! I found a little lizard!"
"Oh, really? That's cool." I say not really believing him because he was supposed to be drinking his milk in the kitchen. So I don't see how he found a lizard.
"Yeah! Come see!" He's very insistent and he takes my hand and pulls me into the kitchen. As we walk he says, "I was sitting in my green chair and then I looked over and I found a little lizard!"

We get to the kitchen and he points to a spot on the floor... and sure enough, there is a little lizard sitting there on the floor. See how little it was? Compare his size to the size of the grout line. It's just a tiny little thing.

It was perfectly still. I wasn't even sure it was alive but I tapped on the wall and it moved it's head ever so slightly to get a better listen. I wasn't sure what to do. I had no intention of killing it. Lizards eat crickets. We love lizards. So I just left him alone. It was time for us to go out anyways, so we left. When we came back he was gone.

I was telling this story to Larry and he said that he will probably die in the house. Which then I felt bad. I should have tried to catch him and put him outside. I should have put a glass over the top of him and then slid a piece of paper underneath. Then carefully carry the whole thing outside. That's what I should have done.

Well, a few days later I got my chance. I saw him on the blinds in the kitchen. He had one little hand on the window... like he was mourning the outside. Now that I had a plan, I knew what to do. I got my glass and tried to get him off the blinds so that I could catch him. It wasn't easy. I had to give the blinds a pretty good wiggle to get him to move. Then he fell off the window sill trying to get away from me and I was worried he was hurt. But he seemed fine as he scurried away. I chased him around the kitchen trying to get my glass down in front of him, but at the same time, not squish him. Somehow I managed to do it. He went into his frozen scared lizard state and I was able to get the paper under him and get him outside without further incident. I took him over to the tree where they all seem to hang out. As soon as I took the glass off he ran away into the bushes.

Ever since then the lizards seem more friendly around me. One even came and got a drink right in front of me while I was watering the trees. I think they know I'm lizard friendly. :)

The end of summer vacation

One week left of summer vacation. ONE WEEK! Crazy. Pretty much my only goal of the summer was to get Maddy's room fixed up. Which I did. So can we call it a success? Possibly... But I know my goals weren't very high. Two months to clean one room isn't exactly shooting for the moon.

We also bought and ate tons of strawberries. I learned how to make Strawberry Bread. Which is delish. And we went swimming several times. So that is good. As the kids get older they are more fun to take to the pool.

Maddy has been kind of swimming... in a all systems go, way too much effort for the amount of propulsion kind of way. But it makes me think she is ready to really get something out of swimming lessons. I've looked up some places and there is a place not too far from here that gives lessons year round for only a slightly outrageous amount of money. I think it would be a good idea. Does that mean we will do it? I haven't fully decided yet.

We also went to all 10 weeks of the summer movie program. I learned that it's better to skip the big giant drinks and just bring lolipops for the kids. It really saves lots of bathroom trips during the movie. Of course I didn't figure this out until week 10. But now I know for next year. (Next year when I'm talking about how fun the movies are going to be over the summer please remind me of this little tip. Thanks.)

We also had a good library schedule going for the last few weeks. This is something I need to start earlier in the summer. I had been nervous about the library because before when I used to go there Connor was so little and he would get lost in the bookcases. But once I got my nerve up and went I found out it's not so bad. He's bigger now and doesn't get lost as easily. I only lost him once in the 3 or 4 times we went. And that was because he was very concerned about a just-learned-how-to-walk baby that was wandering away from his daddy. It was super cute. Connor stayed right with the baby and was all worried about the fact that it was walking away and no one seemed to watching him.

So one week from today Maddy will get on the bus and go to second grade. Wow. Who's life am I living? Cause I certainly don't have a second grader!

There goes the neighborhood... part two

So yesterday we talked about the drama with our next door neighbor... aka "the dish guy". Unfortunately, he is not even our least favorite neighbor. If you read this blog with any regularity then you already know that. If you don't read it regularly and you want to catch up on our actual least favorite neighbors, you can check out the following posts:

Here is when their pit bull was aggressive towards Larry
Here is when they hit Larry's car (allegedly)
Here is when they hit the van

And I didn't even write about things like when they were driving their 4 wheelers back and forth in front of our house. Or when they had an unsecured trailer (for said 4 wheelers) parked in front of our house for two months. Or how they knock over our trash cans. Or drive in our driveway and on our grass every single day.

We have dubbed them "the truck house" if we are talking about them in general, or "the truck guy" if we are talking about the driver of the white truck.

Ever since they hit the van we have been doing our best to block the parking spots across the street from our house so that the big truck can't park there. We do no feel comfortable with it parked across the street from our house since it isn't safe and already has cost us quite a bit of money and drama.

A normal person would understand this. But apparently "the truck house" doesn't. Because not only does the truck guy continue to park there every chance he gets, the other members of "the truck house" also park in such a way as to block the spaces. They even have "the dish guy" parking over there to block the spaces. Which totally cracks me up because I guess they are trying to keep us from parking over there. Which is funny because I don't WANT to park over there. I'm only doing it to keep the dangerous truck away from my house. They think they are being mean to us... but really they are just helping us. I pretend to be mad just so they will keep doing it.

But even with half the cul-de-sac trying to keep those spots blocked the white truck does manage to park there on occasion. Tuesday night at about 4:30 pm he managed to get a spot. But this time he left the truck running. He has a freezer in the back of the truck. I'm assuming he had stuff in the freezer that he was trying to keep frozen. I don't know that for fact, but it's the only thing that makes sense.

It was still sitting out there running at 9:45 when I was getting ready to go to bed. Now I want to make clear that it is not parked very far from my house at all. You might read "across the street" and think it's kinda far. It's not. I'm terrible at guessing distances but I would say it's about 30 feet from the front of my house to the back of the truck.

When I woke up in the morning it was still over there and running! I couldn't believe it. I can't believe he would leave his truck running in front of my house all night! Anyways, not surprisingly, I also had a killer headache. I almost called the cops right then, but I had to leave and I wanted to be around when they showed up so I decided to call when I got back.

I left and within 15 minutes my killer headache was completely gone. Coincidence?

When I got home the truck was gone. So I missed my chance to call the police. I did look up the law and you are only allowed to let your car idle for 5 minutes. Passenger buses are allowed to let the bus idle for 30 minutes to keep the air on for passenger comfort. That's it. So it is against the law to let your truck idle for 20 hours.

It also didn't go unnoticed that my headache returned within 15 minutes of being home. But luckily it wasn't as bad as it had been when the truck was actually parked there emitting noxious fumes directly towards my house.

So now that he has damaged both our vehicles (one documented, one allegedly) and caused me to suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning (allegedly) I'm really doing my best to stop that truck from parking there. We parked both our cars over there and blocked all three spaces with them. We left them there and took the truck when we went out.

When we came home and there was a note on Larry's car but it didn't say who is was from. So we go inside and watch the video (cause we have our cameras up now) to see who left the note. Turns out it was "the dish guy's" baby mama and "the truck guy's" son. They pulled up (together in the same car), saw our cars, and then "the truck guy's" son came and knocked on the door. We weren't home so obviously we didn't answer the door. Then "the dish guy's" baby mama came and did a little dance for the camera and gave it the middle finger. (Must be a family trait.) Then "the truck guy's" son walked over and put something on Larry's car.

Despite our best efforts the white truck is parked across the street from my house currently. Which greatly annoys me.