Shoulder to Shoulder

We took the boys to a CU game recently. Got there sort of late, left early, napped through the middle, and yet somehow Jack absorbed the fight song. The game was a few weeks ago, and yet it wasn't until this morning that Jack was running around the house saying, "Shoulder to shoulder. Fight! Fight! Fight!" I felt the need to explain it all to the daycare teachers this morning in case all they heard was "Fight!" and all they saw was a fist in the air. The teacher said, "Oh I know. He says, "Go go go Buffaloes!" all the time. Especially when he sees a buffalo. There's one in the sand box.

In other news, we ate a late dinner on the patio and enjoyed a beautiful fall evening as the stars started to come out. Dave said, "I see one, two, three stars. No, four." And then Jack said, "Five." Yes, my little genius knows some numbers. He also said "Seben. And eight, eight, eight." But when I tried to get him to count starting at 1... well, I regretted it. Because when he starts at one, he can't stop himself from following "one" with "two, three, GO!" And then he jumps up and down a bunch of times. Yeah, I know, it's really cute, but when he is standing on your lap it's not that great.

Hmm, what other cuteness? Jack and Luke were kicking the soccer ball in the back yard and Jack fell. Dave was trying to get him to just shake it off and keep going. Jack said, "I tan't. Leg hurt!" But then once he got a kiss from his daddy and big brother, he was just fine.

Speaking of the big brother, he was at the game too!

Soccer Mom, MetaMegan Style

We had soccer practice today. I'm a soccer mom, and the wife of the coach, so I had to bring the balls. Jack wasn't too happy about it!

In continued Luke/bookworm news, Luke turned down a play date today to read instead. And last's nights homework was to find all the compound words in a book about maps. Luke thought compass was a compound word. I said, "What? Comp and ass?" He said, "No, com and pass." I said, "Com isn't a word, use it in a sentence." He replied, "Dot com." Then between the two of us, we couldn't figure out if highway was a compound word or not. So we went to bed and finished the homework in the morning. Yes, I am already stumped by first grade homework!

The Apple and the Tree

Luke was happy to sit in the car cart at the grocery store with Jack last week, possibly because he could read while I was shopping. We went out to breakfast on Sunday and he started reading as soon as he finished his pancakes. And then Luke wanted to leave his bike in the bike rack and ride home in the trailer so he didn't have to put his book down. Ahhh, Luke, you remind me of myself. Of course, I was much, much older when I picked up a book and didn't look up for 7 years until I got my driver's license.

Yes, we have entered the world of chapter books, and it is very exciting.

The World's Saddest Vacation Picture

Poor, poor, poor Dave. Working through his vacation. And by that I mean, my vacation. And by, "poor Dave" I mean, "poor me."
Jack was just about as much fun as his daddy. But he's a baby, so it's OK.

At least Grandmom and Luke were having a good time. I entertained myself by taking pictures of my foot.

In a nutshell, Dave works too much, and I am not only saying that because his business trip, for which he left at 2:00 pm on LABOR DAY has been extended another day. OK, I sound annoyed but really, I came up with the subject of this post when I was thinking about how awesome it is that I filled up Dave's netflix queue with the first season of Gossip Girl and I can watch it without any sarcastic "XOXO's" from the office where Dave would normally be working while I watch TV. (Love you, honey!) It's sort of hard to come up with exactly the right intro for a post about Gossip Girl though. I suppose I could have segued somehow from Sparkly Vampires right into Gossip Girl. Too late now. I need to power through the GG marathon and get this DVD back in the mail before Dave gets home. You may be wondering why I didn't just put GG in my own netflix queue. And for that I have one word. And that word is Twilight. Boo yeah. Did I mention that I put Sleeping Beauty in Luke's queue? Netflix trifecta.

And now I fight the urge to explain that I am watching/reading all this pop culture trash ironically. I am really an intellectual. For reals.

XOXO
MetaMegan

Books Read

I can't just talk about Sparkly Vampires all the time, especially when I am reading a lot of other good stuff too... I did seriously read The Color Purple in between Sparkly I and Sparkly II. So I updated my list of books that I can remember reading in 2009. And by "remember" I mean "look up on my library record, and see on my bookshelf, and maybe remember lending out/giving away."

I didn't rank the books this time because I am lazy, but I can make recommendations. Also, I have this to say about Sparkly IV: It is 700 pages. I finished it about 27 hours after it arrived at my house in the mail. Before I opened the cover, I said, "Good bye family." When I was done, I said, "I just finished my book." And Dave said, "I can tell because you are talking to me."

Once I got the new list posted, I noticed that my recent series of videos is sort of blobbing over into that side panel. Then I thought about trying to fix that, but then I realized that it's 1:29 am and if the technology gods had been smiling on me, I would have been in bed a few hours ago.

I Do Not Like Hard Boiled Eggs

"Hard boiled eggs seem like the perfect food, and every time I go on a diet I try to make myself like them. But I just don't like them. I try, but yuck. It's the yolk, I just can't stand it."

I said something along those lines once, on a drive from Reno to Lake Tahoe, while my friend Jill was videotaping the scenery. When she played back the video, I was horrified. It was like a terribly boring time capsule from 5 minutes ago.

I had that in mind when I was recording the boys hiding from the "tiger" in their "house" at our campsite in Yellowstone. So I said, "I am about to run the video camera, don't say anything boring." Long story short, you won't miss anything if you keep the volume down for this one. Love you, family! :)

Awww. Just... Just... Aww.

Sometimes the daycare posts the song of the day, and sometimes we look to see what it is. And on those rare occasions, a little magic happens.

One day Dave noticed that the song of the day was Ring Around the Rosie. So when he got home with Jack he started singing it. Jack was so excited, he just gave a look that said, "Holy Cow! You know that song too?!"

So it's been a popular song this summer. Of course, this version is more like, "Ring Around the Rose."



It was popular with our recent guests too:

Mr. Noonle

I spent a good part of Friday complaining to various people that Jack was suddenly afraid of Mr. Noodle and how this was a huge problem because I count on an hour of Sesame Street on Fridays to get through my work from home day. Probably, if I had spent that time working, instead of complaining, I wouldn't be procrastinating working right now on this sunny end of summer holiday weekend. But then I wouldn't be blogging as a way of procrastinating, and not everyone would get to hear/read about Mr. Noodle.

Did I just blow your mind?

So it used to be that as soon as Mr. Noodle came on, during Elmo's world, in the last 15 minutes of Sesame Street, I had to turn off the TV. No big deal. But Friday, I turned on the TV at the very beginning of Sesame Street, and as soon as the first non muppet appeared on screen, Jack said, "No! No Noonle. T.B. OFF!" Sigh. I turned off the T.V. and started complaining.

I was still complaining 9 hours later when we sat down to dinner and had this conversation.

Me: Luke, Jack is afraid of Mr. Noodle.
Jack: No Noonle!
Luke: Who's Mr. Noodle?
Me: You know Mr. Noodle, he's sort of a vaudeville type of old fashioned clown? He's on Elmo's world.
Luke: Never heard of him. Jack, do you like Mr. Noodle?
Jack: Yesh.
Me: Argh! I know you know who he is!
Luke: Nope.
Jack: T.B. Off. No Noonle.
Dave: Luke, you know Mr. Noodle. He's the one who has the brother, Mr. Noodle
Luke: (Lightbulb!) Oh yeaaaaaah.

Then and Now - Pop Jet Style

Jack had his first trip through the pop jet fountain on Pearl Street this summer when Grandmom and Grandad were here. If only I had my camera with me then! Jack would run straight for the shooting water, only to have it disappear before he got there. Then he would stare down the hole and wait and wait, and just when you thought he was going to get a face full of water he would give up and run away as the water shot up into the air behind him. Then he'd run straight for another water spout only to have the same thing happen again and again. The suspense was killing us all. A cheer would explode with each narrow miss. On and on, as a crowd gathered, he remained dry and warm as the russian fountain roulette continued. I say dry and warm because it was about 7:30 pm and 60 degrees. More than once I considered putting a hat out to fund his college education, because he had a bigger crowd than the zip code guy. But he did finally end up cold and wet as his luck ran out. And I had nothing in the diaper bag but a spare diaper and an old bib. Grandmom took the opportunity to get Sweet Jack a new shirt.

He has as much fun as Luke did the first time he hit the pop jets, and I had a camera for that trip, as you can see above. But Dave brought the camera with him on the next trip to Pearl Street:

The Long Awaited Pedicure Photo Essay

As promised, I am working through the items on my list of things to blog about, starting with what people will probably find least interesting: my Yellowstone Vacation Pedicure. I decided to try something new this summer, bee-you. It turns out that I am a little addicted to the color, because I just had to get it redone this weekend. Funny story, after my pedicure, I was sitting at the little counter with the uv lights drying my little piggies and reading a book. And then I heard this:

"HelllOOOOOO!"

And it was a very impatient hello.

I looked up, slowly, over the top of my glasses. And I slowly tried to figure out if I knew the man who was impatiently saying hello to me. The bearded man, who looked like he had just finished a run, and was maybe going to go home and mow the lawn, or scold his kids. I didn't know him, so I didn't say anything. He was sort of leaning over and looking at me with a bit of hostility. I was really enjoying my book, though, and I was not thrilled that he had torn me away.

Then he said, "Do you WORK HERE?"

Still looking over the top of my glasses I said, "No." And then I continued reading. And that was it. No apology, no embarrassment. He just got his nails done and then stormed out to his subaru and drove off.

Anyway - on to my pedicure photo essay.

Here we are just a few days into our trip, and the polish appears to already be a bit chipped, like our windshield. We were following the RV from Cody to Yellowstone, and we had been in the car for a very short time when Jack started saying, "Down Mommy. Down. Mommy, Down!"

I was pretending I didn't understand him, because we had been in the car for less than an hour and there was no way he was getting down. It turns out I didn't have to pretend that hard at all because I actually didn't understand what he meant. Until he elaborated. "Mommy! FOOT DOWN!"

When we were at Old Faithful, we spent a bunch of time entertaining ourselves at the picnic area while Dave worked. That is the subject of another post, but one of the things I did to pass the time was to take a picture of my foot.

Then on the way out of the park, we stopped at one last geologic feature, and I took a picture of my foot over a bacterial mat.

Possibly coming soon... Pictures of geologic features that do not feature one of my feet.

Technical Difficulties

I've been trying to work closer to 40 hours than 60, so this week I haven't opened my laptop after work. Yea me! Of course that means I am still way way way behind on all the witty and hilarious blog posts that I owe my loyal readers. (Hi Cindy!)

I also tried to do a post for William's blog, and then accidentally posted it here. (William is doing well, but this month he starts the next round of chemo and it is going to be a really intense month.) When I realized what happened with the blog, I tried to fix it, but google wouldn't let me log in for about 5 hours. Coincidentally, I got a lot of work done that day. (I almost never post from work - but that was a quicky and then I screwed it up and then I ended up being really productive for the rest of the day so I think it's OK.)

In other news, a few weeks ago, I realized that some of Jack's friends know their colors and I was like, "OMG! Jack doesn't know his colors! He'll never get into Harvard now!" OK, it was more like, "Oh yeah. Colors. Maybe we should talk about colors." And talking about colors is really fun. It always goes like this:

Me: What colors is this? (Points to something.)
Jack: Bee-you?
Me: Nope. (Unless it is blue, which it rarely is.)

Other colors that Jack will sometimes guess if bee-you is not the right answer: Goo-een? Yea-yo? Wed?

Also cute, but tragic: When I dropped Jack off this morning I asked for a kiss and he said "No." Actually, it was not just, "No." It was, "No. No tiss. No tiss. No." But then he gave me a tiss anyway.

Glasses Update: I tried on 50 pairs of glasses. They can be viewed here. But I think I am just going to get prescription sunglasses and wear the glasses I already have for a while and continue to shop for glasses and then never buy them. But feel free to vote for your favorite pair!

Health Update: It hasn't been exactly a month since my last monthly tragedy, so it's a little early to have something else going on, but yesterday an email went out that we have our first potential case of H1N1 flu in our building. And I had spent the entire day before in this guys office working with him so I think we can guess where this is going to end up. Maybe if I get too sick to blog, (again) instead of taking another extended absence, (again) I'll just sign up for twitter and tweet my swine flu experience. Keep your fingers crossed, readers!

Team Will's Light the Night Walk

Light The Night Walk is The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's evening walk and fund raising event. It is the nation's night to pay tribute and bring hope to thousands of people battling blood cancers and to commemorate loved ones lost.

This year there will be teams in two cities walking to support William!

• On Oct 1st, 2009 Team Will OHIO is participating in Light the Night walk. . We will leave Fraze Pavilion in Dayton and walk 2 miles starting at 7:30pm.
• On Oct 10th, 2009 Team Will California is participating in Light the Night walk. We will leave Palo Alto High School and walk 2 miles starting at 7:30pm.
  

To support Team Will, please go to http://www.giveforward.org/TeamWill/!

Thank you for your continued support!