Applesauce kind of a day

My daughter's shirt was covered in applesauce bits. After I told her to quickly change her shirt before school, I thought to myself, "It's going to be one of those kinds of days."

After dropping the kids off at school, I was scrubbing applesauce off the floor thinking to myself, "It's just one of those kinds of days."

While I was wiping applesauce off the cabinets and walls I thought, "Coffee is good for days like this."

As I was shampooing applesauce out of the carpet I sighed to myself, "Oh boy, what a day."

I looked up at the clock. It was 9:30 am. It hadn't been much of a day yet, but I was already beat. I had been defeated by a little pouch of applesauce. Granted, the applesauce had been whimsically jumped on by a 45-pound six-year-old, and managed to explode from the carpet and across 15 feet of the kitchen, all while rushing out the door to get to school.

Applesauce. Sigh.

Just one of those days.

Dragonflies and...

Chipmunk: Mommy! There's a dragonfly! Take a picture.

Me: Um, okay. I'll try.



Chipmunk: Oh! There's another one! Take a picture! Take a picture!



Chipmunk: And that one, too!

Me: (Sighs) Honey, we're here to watch soccer, NOT the dragonflies.

Chipmunk: Okay, okay.

Yup, it's that time of year again...



…a little bit of watching dragonflies, and a little bit of watching soccer.

Summer? What summer?

My last post was about Chipmunk's kindergarten graduation. Today I'm posting about the first day of school. I laugh to myself at the lack of posting all summer long. Let's just imagine that we had this wild summer with all kinds of crazy antics and chock full of activities that there just was not even a moment to put up a new post…

Not the case…but we can still imagine, right?

Anyway, back to the first day of school. I cannot tell you how many happy parents there were at coffee hour this morning after drop-off. There's something about dropping all your kids off that makes your insides squeal a bit. Well, maybe not for the newbies…you know, those dropping their kindergartners off for the first time with a sad look in their eye. The rest of us ran out of there as fast as our middle aged legs could take us.

Also, I kind of envy those parents who prepare ahead of time for those cute and posed first day of school pictures. You know, the ones where the child is holding a sign that says what grade they're going into and what they want to be when they grow up. They make for such nice memories and go great in scrapbooks.

This is what I get for first day of school pictures:



Lovely.

So long, Kindergarten!

Stage fright. It comes in many forms. Apparently for Chipmunk it expresses itself as "anger."



Chipmunk was a bit upset over having to perform in front of parents with his classmates. Just a bit. Can you tell?

As long as the performance was going, Chipmunk had this glower going. Once the performance was over, however, the glower melted away and a smile lit his face.



Congrats, buddy!

Meal Planning Misery

In college, I had a monthly budget. I used it to pay rent, pay utilities, buy food and anything else I chose to pay for that month. I thought I was pretty good at keeping within my budget, especially when it came to buying food. I cooked and bought food that was at lower cost and I managed to have enough for going out on weekends with friends.

So I've been driving myself nuts as I've been meal planning and writing up grocery lists each week trying to figure out how to keep the costs down…

It dawned upon me that when I was in college, I didn't worry too much about my health…so dinners of cereal? Definitely. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all the time? Yup, did that. Skip a meal in order to study? Yup, did that, too. Buy 10 packets of ramen for a $1? Isn't that a staple of young adulthood?

Enter kids. Enter the mom complex. It's the battle between the mom-that-I-think-I'm-supposed-to-be and the-mom-that-I-am-in-order-to-make-it-to-the-next-day.

I would love to be the all-organic mom who bakes cookies for the kids upon their return from school, or whose house is uncluttered and free of dust, but in reality anything I bake becomes charcoal and I'm staring at the piles of stuff on the floor hoping they'll "poof" themselves into their proper places.

So my meal planning misery is thus: I write down my plans every week into my online calendar, I make the lists for grocery shopping onto my online lists, but how often do I really follow it? How often have I just given up and called Matt and asked, "Could you pick something up on the way home?"

Today I planned to make ribs. I didn't have to run to the store to buy anything because the meat is in my freezer. The problem being...the meat is in my freezer. It's still in my freezer. It's hard as a rock.

This is my problem with meal planning…I can't plan for things like defrosting meat. Or side dishes. I just realized that we can't just eat ribs, can we? Does this mean I need to put a salad together? I don't have anything for a salad. Plus, the kids have to be somewhere at 6:30 pm, so I don't have time for this! What's the point of having a meal plan if I have to plan to defrost, make side dishes, have stuff for side dishes, and fit it all in before leaving for something else?

Okay. Meal planning rant over. Mac n' cheese it is. Thank God for mac n' cheese.

Three Hours

…or how I spent my afternoon with my kindergartner.

Three hours. Three hours of listening to my son's ramblings about Pokemon. Three hours of me, trying to show my interest, nodding, and working hard to timely place those "uh-huh"s into the conversation. Three hours of being asked about my opinions on the effectiveness of each Pokemon and how they would do in battle with other Pokemon. Three hours of being asked quiz questions that were made up on the fly asking obscure facts about Pokemon. Three hours of musings and thoughts about how Pokemon do their business (bathroom business) while stuck in a Poke-ball. Three hours attempting to feed my kindergartner lunch and getting him to finish his homework amidst conversations analyzing the pros and cons of Pokemon trainers or guessing where each Pokemon resides.

I'm a bit Poke'd out.

Things I haven't written about...

It's been rather quiet here on the blog front. Mostly because writing posts require my actual thought and attention, and as I don't like writing things just to fill space, many bloggable moments get passed over. So for those four of you who still like to read up what's going on with us, here's a few things that I haven't written about…



Our kids are part nerd (guess from which part!), so since the Star Wars exhibit was going on, we visited the Tech Museum in San Jose.

Chipmunk has a fascination with learning how to build things with movable parts, so he was overjoyed at the chance to program robots.





All in all, a neat and highly interactive museum.

I went on a women's retreat with our church and was refreshed at the sight of beautiful sights like these:





Of course, I was happy to come home to this:



There was a dance that Bear got to attend with her dad. It was a "Masquerade Ball," hence the mask.



Chipmunk spent his night bowling instead.



There was a "Retro" themed night for MOPs. Yes, I crimped my hair. No, there aren't any pictures. There was however, a disco ball and a mashed potato bar. Yum.



And last but not least, the Awana Grand Prix.





Hopefully this catches you up…at least until March. The rest will just have to come later.

Saving the whales

Conversation between Chipmunk and his uncle, my younger brother.

Pointing to a Lego shaped like a fish…

"What's that?"

"Oh, it's a fish," responded Chipmunk.

"What kind of fish is it?"

"Dolphin friendly tuna," Chipmunk said without a pause.

Yup. That's my son, saving the whales, one Lego at a time.

Mommy, tell me another story...

Mommy, tell me another story. Will you tell me another story about when I was little?

What kind of a story do you want to hear?

Tell me a funny story, Mommy.

Okay. Did I ever tell you about the time you were obsessed with monsters? You loved talking about monsters so much that at a restaurant you called our server a monster.

Tell me another story, Mommy.

Did I ever tell you about the time when we went to see the doctor and while we were waiting in the waiting room, you and your sister baked an imaginary cake and then fought over who got to cut the cake with the invisible knife?

Tell me a story about my sister, Mommy.

Did I ever you tell about how your sister got scared because her hands and feet got all pruney in the bathtub and she thought it wouldn't go away?

That is funny. How about a story about me and my sister, Mommy?

Well, there's the time you were two and your sister was four, and I would sit outside your door and listen to you tell each other goodnight. Even at the age of two you would get your sister giggling over something.

I really like these stories, Mommy. They make me happy listening to them.

Well, I love telling them to you. Also, thank you for giving me so many stories to tell.

My daughter's palate

Oysters + Mignonette = Bear's most recent taste adventure.

Bear's response? She loved it. She also loves mussels, clams, scallops, shrimp, caviar, sea urchin, crab, lobster, various kinds of mushrooms, umeboshi, sashimi, kimchi, brie, other forms of interesting cheeses, artichokes, asparagus, Greek dolmas, sauerkraut, various pickles, all olives including the more bitter ones...

This is not a normal 8-year-old palate, right?