Well…today is my blogging day. The day that I write the 6 posts for this blog and the one for the girls over at Faith Friends and Frappuccinos, and I have the flu. Two of my boys have the flu as well and since we are wandering around the house like disease riddled zombies of the apocalypse…I will not be blogging today. Hopefully I can get a few things up on the blog during the week if we all heal rapidly, but just in case I don’t, I wanted to let you know why. See you when I’m coherent, and God bless.
The Harrowing/Heartwarming Parent Moment of the Week
There was a moment this week when I had a number of things vying for my attention. A poopy diaper, a poopy bathtub, and a screaming boy running around the house cutting his shoelaces with a pair of children’s scissors. The shoelaces on his bran new tennis that I have given to him all of 10 min. earlier. It was…overly exciting.
Sweet Boy#2 and Sweet Boy#3–Spend an enormous amount of effort trying to convince me to let them jump down the stairs using their spiderman capes from Grandma Judy as parachutes. They even staged demonstrations designed to reassure me, wherein they leaped off of the coffee table and shouted things like “See, it slowed me down,” before crashing into heaps on the floor.
Sweet Boy#3–Broke our hanging fruit basket and every single apple in the new bag I just bought is now bruised from the fall.
Sweet Boy#2–Broke the window on our landing trying to put his boots away.
I pick up Sweet Boy#1′s puddle boots and they fall to pieces in my hands. Well loved footwear indeed.
Sweet Boy#2–Dumps dog water onto Sweet Boy#1′s lego creation.
Sweet Boy#1–Dunks Sweet Boy#2′s head into the entire dog water bowl.
But the winners this week…
Sweet Boy#1–Lost his very first tooth. He is halfway through second grade and thought it would never happen.
Sweet Boy#2–Did his first AR test at school and got 100%. He is always waiting for his older brother in the library while he does AR tests on books that he has read. Well this week I picked a simple AR book and had the librarian enter Sweet Boy#2 into the system. He read the book and read the test like a pro.
Sweet Boy#3–Started reading! The Hunky Hubby bought him a WALL-E book that was a beginning reader and we were shocked to hear him reading at least half of the words to himself in bed. Then the next day in school I encorporated some beginning readers into our ABC work and lo and behold he read Fat Cat and Hot Dog!!! I now have 3 readers in my family, ages 4, 6, and 8. Pause to wipe a tear.
Reading Tai-Bo
This week I redeemed the coupon that The Hunky Hubby gave me at Christmas time. What was this coupon for you might ask? The best of gifts, the coupon was for a reading day! And entire day all to myself to simply read (and eat bagels at the bagel shop). And so I bought A long long sleep by Anna Sheehan and headed off to “Jeepers It’s Bagels” where I drank coffee and ate bagels and worked on writing and read read read until it was time to pick up my boy from school. And then I handed my sweet children over to the Hunky Hubby and curled up in the fireside lodge over at camp with a blanky and dinner snacks and read some more!
And I finished the entire book that day and it was wonderful. A kind of post apocalyptic retelling of the Sleeping Beauty legend. With the creepiest badguy I have seen in a long time and a strange intriguing love story.
Then later in the week I re-read The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan. I love these books, love the way they are so smooth and fast and fun that they almost read themselves. It takes a lot of work to write like that, something I aspire to. And so besides being fun…I’m sure it is educational.
It’s Frappuccino Thursday
Breaking News
I actually do have breaking news this week. I just realized that our family has morphed out of what it was and become something new entirely. My youngest is no longer a destroyer, he is a builder!
Let me explain. Ever since our middle boy was born our family has consisted of some building boys and at least one destroyer. The builder or builders would construct something out of train tracks or blocks or dixi cups or legos…or the destroyer or destroyers would stomp through the room leaving catastrophe and screams of horror in his wake. Every single time.
But I just looked into the living room and lo and behold, all 3 boys were building with legos. No one was destroying, no one was stomping or screaming or flinging their body on top of the lego creations with wild abandon…just building…all three of them.
Amazing!!!
Writing News
This week I revised chapters 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25 according to my lovely sister’s critique. I also reached a personal milestone. After four revisions I finally had an acceptable final version of my short story for the Miracles and Moments of Grace series by Nancy Kennedy. I mailed it to her and barring unforseen difficulties the book with my story in it will come out in March of next year! At that point I could actually call myself an Author instead of just a Writer…of course being an Author of only 4 pages of text I might hold off on that for awhile. Still, it is nice to have written something that is publishable, even if it is only 4 pages long.
Boy Quotes
Sweet Boy#1–After a big fight with his brother’s he muses–”Tom and Jerry have to say sorry to each other a lot.” Perhaps it is encouraging to realize that although you have to apologize, you do not have to apologize nearly as much as Tom and Jerry.
Sweet Boy#3–The dog shuffles over and lays down on his blanky–”You mutten head.”
Daddy–”What is a mutton head?”
Sweet Boy#3–”A dog who lays on someone’s blanket.”
Sweet Boy#3–While snuggling Daddy–”I love him as much as 100 universes and I love you that much too. Isn’t that a lot?”
Sweet Boy#3–Has hiccups–”Momma, on some days my Adam’s apple is weird.”
Sweet Boy#3–”When I was born, I gone crazy…” pauses to think and crunch on a carrot, “Crazy doesn’t mean you don’t have a brain.”
Sweet Boy#3–”Mommy Mommy Mommy, I’m growing a bubble doughnut!”
After finishing How to be a Pirate with the boys, they all choose pirate names for themselves, Like Stoick the Vast or Alvin the Trecherous.
Sweet Boy#1–The Hammer Destroyer
Sweet Boy#2–The Sword Crusher or The Mountain Blower
Sweet Boy#3–The Lettuce Eater Forever or The Family Lover
The Harrowing/Heartwarming Parent Moment of the Week
Sweet Boy#3 tries to blow his nose on Sweet Boy#2′s back.
Sweet Boy#3–Screaming.
Sweet Boy#1–”It’s ok little guy”, as he pats him desperately trying to get him to settle down.
Sweet Boy#1–leaves his brother screaming to explain to me.
Sweet Boy#1–”He asked me to carry him, and it did, but we ran into the table.”
Sweet Boy#3–Screaming “My heel, my back, Aaaahhhh!”
I was taking the Christmas balls off our tree and one of them felt unusually heavy. I shook it experimentally…it was full of water. Someone had taken it down, filled it in the sink, and craftily returned it to our tree.
Sweet Boy#3–Attempts to hit Sweet Boy#2 but misses and punches the wall instead. He rushes to me crying with Sweet Boy#2 hot on his heels explaining how “It’s not my fault.”
Reading Tai-Bo
This week I read Page, Squire, and Lady Knight by Tamora Pierce. As I said last week, these are fun books with a strong female protagonist making her dream of knighthood a reality against all odds. But they are not all glorious battles and fancy fighting. The author also looks a bit into the tragety and heartbreak of war. Good books.
It’s Frappuccino Thursday.
http://www.faithchats.blogspot.com
Breaking News
This week saw two wonderful events. A four day snowstorm, and “Dad’s Night”. Our snowfall has been terribly minimal this year, just enough to go tubing on. But on Tuesday it began to snow. It snowed all day and all night and all day on Wednesday. There was a little break on Thursday with just a bit of snowfall, but another brash of big beautiful flakes hit us on Friday. Georgous georgous georgous. I love the snow. So the boys were of course thrilled with this. And then on Friday it was the long awaited “Dad’s Night”. Wherein all kids from my boys school are invited to attend a movie with their Dad. They eat snacks in the gym and wear their jammies and slippers and sit on blankies and sleeping bags. It is super fun and my boys love to do anything with their Daddy.
