It's Almost Alice Cooper Time

The countdown to the end of school is in full swing and we are all singing our favorite song: School's Out. Last year Luke was a precious first grader, who loved his teacher, so he was very unhappy about blowing the school to pieces, and teacher's dirty looks. Unfortunately, it's such a catchy tune, that it's really hard not to sing the refrain all morning before the last day of school. We tried to modify it a bit, but I can't remember what we came up with and I am too lazy/multi-taskery to look and see if I blogged about this last year.

But now that Luke is a too cool for school second grader, going on third grader in 5 days, he started the whole thing with a little Alice Cooper sing along before bed. Or maybe I started it. Regardless, I was very interested to hear what he had to say after, "I'll modify this song so it's more appropriate for me."

School's out for summer.
School's out for evah!
School's been blown to pieces.
No more pencils
Lots more books

Sigh. I just love my little bookworm.

On that note, did I mention that I updated the list of books read? (See above re: too lazy to look at yesterday's post.) Hopefully Luke and I will spend the whole summer reading, if I survive this weekend.

Opening Day

Today was opening day, and Coach Dave and his Mets were great! I didn't get to take too many pictures, because my fingers were frozen. But I promise more as the season progresses, and the temperature rises above the point where people are getting their sleeping bags out of the car and huddling together for warmth. Dave was mentioning the other day, that I rarely blog about Luke, who can read, and knows about my blog, but I often blog about Jack. The thing is, Jack turned green today after... wait - this is about Luke. Luke is a great kid, who is easy going, easy to get along with, happy, smart, and fun. He's fun to be around and I am proud of who he is. And I love when Jack does or says something ridiculous, and I can just look at Luke and see him rolling his eyes. Today during the tantrum of the millennium, Luke tried to make Jack laugh. Long story short, Luke is so great, he's not great blog fodder. Plus, I get the distinct impression that he would not be happy if I made fun of him on my blog, by calling him by today's nickname: Ankles. Who knew he would grow 3 inches since last summer? All I know is, if he were Jack he'd be saying, "Who has 2 thumbs and needs bigger cleats and longer baseball pants? This guy!"

Origami Yoda

A month or so ago, Luke spent an afternoon writing to authors of the books he was reading. One was to Tom Angleberger, the author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda. The letter was something like,

Dear Mr. Angleberger,

I really like The Strange Case of Origami Yoda because of all the details.

Sincerely,
Luke

I said, "Do you care to elaborate on that?"
Luke said, "Nope."
I said, "Because, if you really like details...."
Luke, "Please hand me an envelope."

This week, a letter arrived for Luke. I said, "Luke, you got some mail." Luke said, "Who is it from?" while barely turning his head away from his wii game. I sighed, because that sort of question makes me feel a tiny bit like Luke's secretary, but I said, "I don't know, the return address looks like a puzzle piece."

He was across the room, shouting, "Remember when I wrote to the author of Origami Yoda!" and ripping open the envelope. It was pretty darn exciting.

We took a bunch of pictures of Luke with Origami Yoda on his finger, including this one, with my new photobooth app.

Dogs and Babies

Running out of ideas here for blogging into the future, so I am going to go with an old standby. Awww, Bean and Jack!


Aww, Lucy and Jack!
Aww, Luke and Bean!

Lemon Heads

Luke tragically reported to Dave that he "had plenty of time to eat his lunch today. Because it all fell on the floor and had to be thrown away." He was starving and traumatized from the experience. But upon further questioning, it turns out that only the apple fell on the floor, and that 8 people tried to open his lemonheads and no one could. And that I had forgotten to pack a tube of yogurt, and for some reason he didn't drink any milk. When I was trying to get the story straight, I asked why he didn't use the scissors I pack in his lunchbox (for the pesky tubes of yogurt) to open the lemonheads. He signed and said, "I'm only school-smart."

In Jack news, I heard him saying, "Mama" in his room the other morning so I walked in there. He looked up from the stuffed animal in his arms and said, "Oh, I was just talking about you." I thought that was pretty funny, so I was sharing the story with Luke and Dave at dinner that night and they were laughing. Jack said, "I wasn't complaining about you! I was just talking about you." Very reassuring.

Knock Knock

Luke has two books of knock knock jokes, and he frequently regales us with jokes. I always imagined there would be a time in our lives where the kids were obsessed with jokes and I was sort of annoyed and rolled my eyes all the time. But I pretty much laugh every time I hear a knock joke. So this phase is going much better than anticipated.

Dave picked up the book and told one to Luke:
Dave: Knock knock
Luke: Who's there?
Dave: Tyrone
Luke: Tyrone who?
Dave: Tyrone shoe laces!

Immediately Jack had to retell it.
Jack: Knock knock
Luke: Who's there?
Jack: Tyrome
Luke: Tyrone who?
Jack: Tyrome shoehandsomes.

His version is even better, but this one is my fave:
Jack: Knock knock
Luke: Who's there
Jack: Joke-uh
Luke: Joke-uh who?
Jack: Joke-uh Jack.
Jack (with a sigh): I love that one.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Luke said, "Um, Mama? Jack is playing rock, paper, scissors with himself in the mirror."
I asked, "Who is winning?"
"Um. It's a tie. But I heard him say, "OK, next time, I be rock and you be scissor. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot! NO! I told you to be scissors!""

Luke

From 2010

You know I am a lazy writer when I start off a blog post by asking my husband, "What has Luke done lately that is cute or hilarious?" I mean, it's bad enough that I mine my kids for material, but then I can't even remember the latest and greatest bon mots? Yup. That's how it is.

Oh, here is a hilarious thing my brother did when he was a kid! He and our cousin stuck suction cups to their foreheads. And do you know what happens when you stick a suction cup to your forehead? You get a suction cup shaped hickey. A nice, round target in the middle of your forehead. Rumor has it there is some irresistible force that attracts a suction cup to the forehead of young boys. Or not so young. I laughed and laughed when I went to a friend's house in high school and two of the boys there had big round purplish bruises in the middle of their foreheads.

Because I am a wonderful and caring mom, I have warned Luke not to stick a suction cup to his forehead, but he didn't listen. Poor kid. I had to grab the camera while I was re-warning him of the dangers. Next time I'll make sure to take notes too.

From 2010

Then and Now: First Grade

Last year I posted a picture of Luke on the last day of kindergarten wearing the same shirt as the first day of kindergarten. So I thought, "What a fun tradition! I'll do that again this year."

You may remember the popped collars of the first day of First Grade:
Or maybe not, since I can't find a post about the first day of First Grade anywhere on this blog. Maybe it never happened? Alas, you may remember this picture from facebook.

Well, unfortunately for poor, long suffering Luke, this post is not as much about how he changed over the last school year as it is about how his brother went from cherub to attention seeking tyrant. Allow me to present:

Last Day of First Grade
It's all about Jack
A Photo Essay

From 2010

Ok - the camera is working. Luke, get in the picture!

From 2010

Jack - now one with just Luke. Luke, can you smile normally please? Jack - get out of the picture.

From 2010

OK - that's cute, how about one more?

From 2010

Jack!

From 2010

Just Luke please!

From 2010

From 2010

I give up!

From 2010

At The Park With Jack

The other day, Jack and I walked to the park with Lucy. It was an epic adventure to say the least.

Notable quotes:

About the old Indian lady walking by in a sari: "Is that a princess?"

About the giant white dog with big pointy ears: "A BUNNY!"

When he was looking for the robin we had seen on the way to the park: "WHERE ARE YOU, ROBIN BIRDIE?"

There we a bunch of tiny cones in the grass at the park, perhaps leftover from the middle school gym class that I sometimes see there. One of the cones was laying on it's side. Jack said, "I don't like that cone layin' on it's side." I told him he could go and fix it and he was very happy to do so.

The day before, Jack was repeatedly yelling about how he wanted something. Ice cream, maybe? We were in the car on the way home from work/school so after I told him he could have ice cream after dinner, I just started ignoring his yelling. After a while, he stopped, took a deep breath and said, "I feel impatient."

So when the yelling started the next day on the way home...
Me: Are you feeling impatient?
Jack:No
Me: Angry?
Jack: No
Me:Upset?
Jack:No.
Me: Crabby?
Jack: Yes.

Oh, and here is a Luke quote for you.
Dave and I were discussing the Grand Canyon, and I said I didn't want to go there until everyone was at least 12 or something because I was afraid of someone falling to their death. Dave said we wouldn't have to worry about that if we all rode mules, and that Jack was old enough to ride a mule. I disagreed, since I had seen him fall of a tricycle twice the day before. Luke said, "Why can't Jack ride a jack ass?"

No One Wants To Hear About Your Little Genius

I doubt someone who blogged all the time about their little genius would have a large following outside of the grandparent contingent. I don't blog about how my kids are little geniuses for that reason, and because I have a really hard time spelling genius. I really want to spell it like this: genious. But I do have to share these two little stories about how my darling, precocious two year old can read and spell.

Last week, I was changing Jack's diaper after the usual exchange:

Jack (apropo of nothing): Momma, I'm fine.
Me: What?
Jack: I'm fine.
Me: What does that mean? You just pooped?
Jack: NO! I'M FINE!
Luke: He just said he was pooping a few minutes ago.
Jack: I'm just wet! I don't need a diaper change.

So off we went to change his diaper, and Jack said: I pooped. P-o-p. Poop.

Yeah, I get that he spelled it wrong, but it's pretty close right? He isn't even two and a half! Little potty-mouthed genius.

AND - we went to my favorite place to take the kids that makes them really happy and doesn't involve me putting on a bathing suit. Yes, Chuck E Cheese. (Or Chuckie Cheese, as Luke still insists on calling it.)

Dave worked about 20 hours straight, and fell asleep around 5am last Saturday. The boys woke up at 6:30. By 8:45 we really needed to get out of the house so I said, "I am taking you somewhere as a surprise. So get your shoes on."
Luke: Can we guess?
Me: Yes
Luke: But don't tell us if we guess right.
Me: Ok, I'll just say, "Interesting suggestion"
Luke: But make sure to say that after every suggestion. Because if you just say, "No, No, No, No, Interesting suggestion" then we will know if we guessed right.
Me:.... OK

ANYWAY - You have to pass Chuck E Cheese and drive all the way around before you get there, and as we drove past, Jack said, "Hmm. Chuck E Cheese's."
Me: Can you read? Interesting suggestion.
Luke: He can either read or he can read minds because I was just thinking "Chuck E Cheese" right when he said it.

So, long story short, Jack can almost spell poop, and he can read Chuck E Cheese. If that doesn't make him a genius, then I don't even know what a genius is.

And if you are even thinking he recognized it from the mascot, let me share this detail. When he saw the singing and dancing Chuck E Cheese inside, he said, "Stomper!" And here is where I wish I could link to the hilarious story of how last August Jack was scared of/drawn to the mouse/rat mascot of the Lake Erie Crushers: Stomper. But I never got around to blogging about that. Trust me it was a good story.

When we got home from our adventure, Dave was awake, and Jack ran up to him and said, "We saw Stomper!"

So smart, that one.

Hair Cuts

You may have noticed last week that Jack's hair was getting a little Chase Crawfordy again. And I do love that look, but it was starting to get in his eyes, and half the sandbox was stored in that mop every day when I picked Jack up from daycare. Luke's hair was also on the extremely shaggy side so Dave had a boys day out to the barber shop.

Bring on some hot weather!

Call the Wah-mbulance, I am Sick Again

For the second time in less than a month, I have a fever, along with some sort of cold.

Yesterday, I was taking my temperature (100.4) and Jack was cracking up. "Dat doesn't go der! Dat doesn't go der!"

Dave and Luke were looking at each other quizzically because they had no idea what he was saying. I took the thermometer out of my mouth to say, "He is saying, That doesn't go there. About the thermometer"

Luke asked, "Where does it go?"

Jack replied with a huge smile, not able to believe the collective silliness of his family members. Who doesn't know where a thermometer goes? "It goes in your ELBOW!"

More Luke

Yesterday I received a request for more Luke stories, so I'll share this one, even though my facebook friends already know it.

Luke, what did you learn at school today?
Nothing.
Nothing?
Nothing.
You didn't learn one new thing today?
No, they haven't teached me anything.

I posted that on facebook, and I was trying to get the dialog right, so I asked Luke for clarification.

Was it, "they don't teach me anything or they haven't teached me anything?"
He said, It's "they haven't teached" me anything. Because they still could teach me something in the future.

So there you have the conjugation of the past imperfect verb: teached.

(Luke's school of 268 students, will have between $30,000 and $113,000 cut from their budget for next year.)

Now, I could tell another story about how Luke had a friend over, which is very stressful for me these days because most kids don't like a puppy jumping on them, but I told Luke that after I yelled at him for what happened, I wouldn't talk about it anymore. So, I should stop there with the story.

See, I either have to have kids in the yard, and puppy in the house, but then the puppy whines to go outside, or kids in the basement and puppy upstairs, which is perfect for me, but kids don't necessarily like to be in the basement on 70 degree March days. We had tried some of both, which occasional jumpiness during the transition between one set up and another. Then the kids were outside and Lucy was on my lap when Luke walked through the house alone. I asked where he was going and what he was doing, and he didn't answer. I got suspicious as he went into the basement, and still didn't answer me. Why did he leave his friend in the yard? What was he getting in the basement? Then I heard 2 voices down there and as I was trying to figure out how the friend had gotten past me, Luke came upstairs and asked me to replace the screen in his window that had come out when he let his friend in through the window well/egress window. Oops! I talked about it. Well, I wrote about it - so I suppose that's a loophole.

We've agreed to use the door from now on.

Winter Sports

This is Luke, rocking the half pipe in Sean White Snowboarding. To make it more challenging, I quizzed him on his spelling words while he played, and he did surprisingly well. Of course he had to spell "property" 3 times because I wasn't actually capable of taking a picture and listening to him spell at the same time.

In other news, for non facebook friends: Jack was playing ball in the basement and when he got the football stuck in the basketball hoop, he said, "Oh no! Strike!"

7

Luke's birthday celebration began a few weeks ago at the Monster Truck Jam. And if you ask him about it, make sure not to call it a Monster Truck Extravaganza, or a Monster Truck Rally. It's a MONSTER TRUCK JAM!!!

From 2010February

On the actual day of Luke's birth, we started off at Lucille's

From 2010February

for a beignets, followed by granola:

From 2010February

From 2010February

Then poor Luke had to begin the extremely long process of waiting for his presents to be wrapped. (Note to people who send unwrapped gifts and then ask me to wrap them... I don't do the best job sometimes.)

From 2010February

It took a really long time, and Jack had a major meltdown when he found out he wasn't going to be opening anything. So I had to wrap a box of hot chocolate so he'd have something to open. Luke got very tired of waiting. Lucy tried to make off with a gift.

From 2010February

There were lots of awesome presents.

From 2010February

After that, Luke pretty much played with his presents for the rest of the day while I was in a baking frenzy. I baked a cake for his birthday dessert, cupcakes for his school party and pizzas for dinner.

From 2010February

More about the triple layer fudge cake later - but do I look like the mother of a 7 year old? No, I didn't think so.

And the cupcakes were "orange cream soda with chocolate straws."



He had a pretty good day, I think. I told him now that he is 7, I am just going to start calling him "Seven". You see, John Elway was under consideration as a name for Luke when I was pregnant, and we were going to use 7 as a nickname. If you know Luke, you will know that he did not find that story amusing at all.

Happy Belated Birthday Luke!

Coming soon:
The 2 week long birthday celebration continues...
The Cake
"Nuthin..."

Happy Valentine's Day. Duh.

Exciting! I just used the new search feature here on MetaMegan to see if I had written about the Valentine Tragedy of 2007. (Or whenever if was.) And I did write about it! Twice!

So you can imagine I had a lot to think about this year when it came to Valentines. I decided to do a paper airplane from Family Fun, but what if kids started making the planes immediately and throwing them and it was pandemonium and his teacher got really angry and blamed Luke? Ok, that probably wasn't going to happen.

On to my next problem. Do I print out one copy, bring it home, have him write "Happy Valentine's Day, Love Luke" on it and then take it back to work and make 25 copies? The advantage to that is that it would be less work for Luke, and the chances for something to go wrong and induce a meltdown were really low. Disadvantage - I don't have access to a color copier at work so they would all be in black and white and gray, and that is lame. The other option is that I could print off 25 color copies, but then he'd have to write "Happy Valentine's Day! Love, Luke." 25 times. That sounded like a recipe for disaster, but the Valentine's would be a lot cuter. Maybe I could go to Michael's and get a stamp that just says, "Happy Valentine's Day!" Hmm. Trip to Michaels: Unlikely. (Missing van key.) Dave suggested printing it in color, having Luke write his message and then taking the paper to Kinko's to have it scanned and then make 25 color copies there. Trip to Kinkos: Not just no, but hell no. When do I have time for this?! I barely have time to obsess about it all week long, much less do anything about it.

Well, time ran out and I printed the color copies. I told Luke I would write Happy Valentine's Day if he wrote, Love (or From) Luke. He said sure. And when he made mistakes, he just said, "If you see any more mistakes like that, can you just correct them for me?" Yeah, sure. I suppose that is better than a meltdown. Then he rolled them up with the instructions and I tied a bow around them. The whole thing took about 45 minutes. Am I insane? Why yes, I am.

BUT! I had a good time working on the Valentine's with Luke. It was fun and we chatted. I said, "I heard Max kissed Alex(andra)." Luke said, "Yeah. He's been in a kissing mood lately." I said, "Are you ever in a kissing mood?" He said "No. Well sometimes." (Shocked breath in!) "When I am kissing you goodnight. DUH!"

Aww, my sweet, sweet boy. I ignored the duh.

The Elmo Song

Jack is really into the Elmo song night now. (That's right now in Jack speak.) My favorite part is "H, I, J, KAI, ELMO, P." It seems like he randomly says, "Bird!" at the end of the video, but he is reading an alphabet book, and there is a bird in it. Note to self, tell Kai's mom about Jack's homage to him in the alphabet song.



P.S. That is Luke snorting in the background - not me.

P.P.S. Obligatory puppy photo:

Thanks

Still easing into 2010 here. I know it's probably sort of lame that I always wait until after my birthday to write thank you notes, so I just have to do it once a year. But how bad is it that I am going to have to include thanks from Jack's birthday too? Pretty bad I guess.

Did I ever write about the time Luke had a complete meltdown because he didn't write the letter "A" perfectly and it "looked like it's pants were falling down"? I don't know because the search function on this blog is not that great. I think it was at least 2 Valentine's Days ago. We had a similar incident today because he spelled Science incorrectly during FTYNWT. (Family thank you note writing time.) He started to spell it phonetically, and then I wrote it out for him. (Meltdown number 1.) And I spelled it wrong. (sciene, if you must know.) So when I corrected him, we had meltdown number 2. I told him just to scratch it out, because I don't like to end up with an uneven number of note cards and envelopes, so I wasn't giving him another card. It's one of the 1000 weird things about me. Of course, I later screwed up someone's last name on an envelope so theoretically, it would have worked out OK. He didn't want to scratch it out though, so it was straight to bath and bedtime.

I am just going to go on and on for a while about thank you notes and then all the blog readers who are expecting a thank you note will sort of remember this somewhat boring post and think they actually did get one.

Or, I could add another Jack anecdote...

Dave took care of making sure Luke got in the shower while I gave Jack a bath. Jack likes to randomly talk about things from the past that you think he would never remember. After the 100th mention of the same subject, it's less amazing though.

This week, he has been talking a lot about the airplane ride he took the weekend before Christmas.

Example:
Me: Here's a coupon for Einstein's bagels.
Jack: I ate a bagel on the airplane.

Amazing, right?

In the tub today he put a washcloth across his lap and said, "Dis my airplane blanket. 'Cept cleaner." Then he took the loofah and said, "I buckle my seat belk."

I'll stop there. But Jack is very funny these days.