Wednesday, June 30, 2010

I learn something new every day

Landon got a bat in his happy meal - not the kind I can sue for, but a stuffed toy one.  Also, the mammal kind, not the baseball kind.
 
He asked me if I was afraid of bats.  I said I was afraid of pet bats (mostly because I don't want him thinking he could get a pet bat and I would be fine with it.)  And I mentioned that I didn't particularly care for the bats that are out in the day time since those are the ones who tend to have rabies.
 
He announced that his bat was turnal.  Because if he's not "notturnal" (nocturnal), he must be "turnal." A turnal bat = a day time bat.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Father's Day

In honor of the four fathers in our family, we all gathered at "Big Joshua's House" and made them cook for us.  And I proceeded to only take two pictures of any of the fathers and neither of those came out very good.  But I do have a small glimpse into possibly why this house is referred to as "Big Joshua's" instead of "Aunt Kelly's" or "Uncle Hekker's" even though he doesn't pay the mortgage.
 
 

Sunday, June 06, 2010

I really suck at this

I'm tired of starting all my non-monthly newsletter posts by saying how sorry i am about how long it's been or that I have a new plan. When the reality is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Essentially, I'm overwhelmed. I have entirely too much on my plate right now and the thing that I can put off is this. I don't get paid for it, and no one will take me to jail for not taking care of it. In addition I get fun surprises like a check engine light and a broken pool valve thingy.

So - in conclusion...I will no longer be apologizing for not writing here often enough. I'll do it when I can.

Friday, June 04, 2010

Monthly Newsletter #44

Dear Landon,

This month has been rough. I don’t know what happened specifically, but I know that my work exploded on top of me and I have just enough energy in the evening to come home, take a shower, climb into bed and watch TV until I fall asleep and do it all over again the next day. And I can only guess you’re having a similarly rough month. Early this month you figured out, or maybe I figured out that you figured out, that if you tell me your tummy hurts or your mouth hurts that you can play with Grandma all day instead of going to school. And unfortunately Grandma even told you that as long as it wasn’t Tuesday it was okay with her. Because of the idea that you could go play with Grandma instead of going to school, you have become a holy terror to drop off in the mornings.

Two weeks ago I tried a new system by which you are supposed to let me drop you off with just our routine hugs, smooches, mojos, and secret handshake and also behave at school all day and you would get a prize – that week it was the Zoo. It didn’t work very well for the first half of the week but I let you slide and you did great on Thursday and Friday so we went to the zoo anyway. Last week, I dropped it, because you didn’t seem interested. This week, I made some adjustments to my plan and we now have a chart on the refrigerator, each day has 2 boxes. One if for your behavior at school and one for letting me drop you off without a huge fit. And I let you pick a prize. You picked a toy car – to be bought on Friday evening. And you were doing so well up until this morning. I think I’ll let you slide again, if this was the only blip for the week, but you won’t know until Friday. I figure 87.5% is still a passing grade.

This month you have been working on developing your sense of humor. You find things that are out of their normal context completely hilarious. Eating a road sign like a cracker. HAHAHAHAHA. A shoe for a boat. HAHAHAHA. You also are making up a new language, not that it’s consistent or anything, but at the end of a story you say nonsense words like “kee ka kye.” Or “bula coo” and I have to say “And what does that mean?” And you tell me, but it’s oh so funny to have your own language. Some times your made up words do actually mean something, and it’s a little irritating when you latch on to a work like “porn” I just hope I can stop you from saying it in public, or CPS may be knocking on my door. You also have latched on to a fairly decent joke about why chickens sit on eggs (because they don’t have chairs!) Your timing could use some work, you don’t give the listener any time to think – but I’m glad you have that sense of humor.

A couple weeks ago you were made Star of the Week at school. They gave us the poster on Monday and said I needed to bring it back on Tuesday – you know, as if it wasn’t 6:15 in the evening and I don’t have a job or anything. We went over to Hobby Lobby and picked out a bunch of stickers and paper and stuff. I asked you to pick out ribbon and you picked out a red zigzag and a pink sparkly ribbon. Which is fine with me, but the pink didn’t really go with the whole theme of boyish likes you have (superman, football, school stuff, fishing, and cars.) I went ahead and bought it because you threw a huge fit about it when I tried to get you to pick a different color. And I tried not to use it, but you insisted. I have to admit it didn’t really look all that bad. Of course the picture machine at Walgreens where I sent the pictures to be printed boke down that night and they didn’t bother to tell me, so I sent you to school with an incomplete poster and brought the pictures when I came to pick you up that evening – by Thursday they still hadn’t done anything you’re your poster – must have been truly important to have it there on Tuesday. You’ve now been Star of the Week for like 3 weeks – so I can’t complain too much about the lag, but it’s still irritating.

We went to Dylan’s Birthday party at the beach on Memorial Day weekend. You got bit all over the face by mosquitoes or some weird green bug that didn’t care about Off and certainly wasn’t any kind of bug I’ve ever seen before. On Sunday we woke up and you looked so bad, and your eye was so swollen that I called the nurse line at our insurance company, we also tried not to go anywhere because it looked like I beat the crap out of you.

So in conclusion, it was a rough month. We’ll try to have a better month this month.

Love,
Mama