What would you do?

I have a little dilemma. Driving Jade to and from Riverton Elementary twice a day five times a week just wouldn't be prudent, so I arranged a carpool. All of last year I drove every morning and the other mom picked up in the afternoons. This worked out perfectly considering my piano lesson schedule. A couple weeks ago we added another mom to the arrangment. She drives two mornings and one afternoon each week. After picking up/dropping off Jade a few times I noticed that her vehicle drips a little oil in our driveway. Nate's extremely particular about this. I have a piano parent who drives several different vehicles to piano lessons... ALL of which drip oil. It makes Nate absolutely crazy. He's told me over and over that I need to do something about it. The problem is, I can't stand the thought of making them feel bad. After all, these are people I care about... and need to maintain a relationship with. Offending them is simply not an option. The first carpool mom told me yesterday that she's going to arrange some after school classes for her kids and won't be carpooling anymore. That means if I don't do something about it, I'll have new oil drips in my driveway every day of the school week! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Here Comes Trouble

It's been just over a month since the occupational therapist came to work with Aeris on her gross motor skills. Normally she'll come twice a month, but she's been on a European vacation. In the mean time, we've been really working with her so we'd have lots to show her when she came back. The progress has been amazing! She's started pulling herself up onto her knees and even climbed up a stair last week! A couple days ago I heard some noise in the kitchen and came in to find this:

It was total deja vu since I have memories of Jade playing in the very same cupboard. In fact, I have a picture of her doing just that! I'd say they look a little bit alike, wouldn't you?

I Love To Laugh...

at myself! This spring we pulled out some struggling bushes from a flower bed in front of our house. The ones we put in their place haven't been thriving either. I decided I needed to be better about watering them. I turned the hose to barely dripping and placed it at the base of one of the bushes. Then I forgot about it. The next morning I was outside when Jade's carpool arrived to pick her up. Waving at her as the van drove down the street, I glanced at the flower bed. This is what I saw:

My hose was still dripping away of course. After confirming that it was really a sinkhole with the bush safely inside, and not a "bush napping" I had a good laugh at my own idiocy.

Then I jumped into action. Frantically, I shut off the hose, grabbed a shovel to dig out my little plant before trying to fill in the hole, all the while crossing my fingers that I haven't created a bigger problem by putting huge amounts of pressure on some sprinkler pipes under the bed. So far so good on that one. The sprinklers have come on twice without any pipes exploding beneath the surface. I'm glad Home Depot offers a guarantee on the survival of their plants within a year. I'm not sure these can be saved, expecially now that I'm afraid to water them.

Firsts

For anyone short on time, here's a bullet list of our recent "firsts." Read on if you're interested in the details!

• Jade's first two weeks of 2nd grade
• Aeris's first tooth
• Our first garage sale
• Logan's first allergic reaction

Jade started 2nd grade July 28. We love her teacher! On Monday Jade brought home a weekly homework page (I can't believe she's planning to send home one of these every week of the school year!) The topic for the week was worms. They measured gummy worms in math, for art they made a worm out of a nylon stocking filled with a stuffing of their choice, wrote in a "Worm Diary" at home as a creative writing assignment, and shared it all on Friday with the rest of the class. In class they made a worm home out of a 2-liter bottle and dirt with a water bottle inside the middle to keep the worms closer to the outer wall. Jade could hardly wait to go back to school Tuesday so she could check on their live little friends and the tunnels they'd made.

Aeris acted more clingy and grumpy than usual this week. I'm glad she actually had a reason this time! I was so excited when I felt a tiny tooth in her bottom gum. It's about time, right! I guess I'd better take some last picture's of that gummy grin before her mouth's all full of teeth!

I've been on a de-cluttering kick lately. We keep aquiring more and more stuff, and I'm terribly sentimental, so a lot of it piles up. Using potential monetary gain as a motivator, I've been working on clearing it out. On Saturday we held a garage sale. Our more valuable items sold, so I'd call it a success! It was fun spending the morning hanging out with our neighbors and my parents (they sold some stuff too!) and giving my stuff new life in new homes! I had the hardest time parting with my Nintendo. I know that probably seems silly, but it was such a part of childhood for me. Super Mario Bros 3 is my all-time favorite video game. I'm not really much of a gamer, but that one stole my heart! I made it to the end, but always ran out of lives before I could reach the finale. It was so frustrating that the console didn't have the capability to save your progress along the way, so you had to spend hours in one sitting to make it to the end. When I dug it out to make sure it still worked so I could price it for the sale, I tried out the game one last time. It was great for nostalgia's sake, but there's no way I have enough time in my day for that anymore! It sure felt good to sell it. The man who bought it also bought Nate's old Sega and our original Playstation with all the games. Apparently he stocks up on garage sale bargains all year then makes an annual trip down to Mexico to give them to the kids there. What a wonderful project!

Tonight we attended a birthday dinner for Nate's dad. *Happy birthday Eddie!* Logan scared us when he threw up then broke out in a rash and swelled. Nate had given him a cashew nut about 5 minutes before. We figure that was the cause, but will have to have some allergy testing to be sure. So far this is the first major allergic reaction for any of our kids. Neither Nate nor I have any food allergies (I have scary allergies to certain medications), so this is new to us. I'm nervous about what this might involve since his reaction was so extreme for having had only one little nut.

Sibling Rivalry

Any parent will attest to the challenges associated with raising kids. Prior to having my own children I'd heard many stories about wild uncontrollable kids. I'd even seen a few of them myself. I, however, was not going to experience any of these struggles because I was going to be the perfect parent. I'd taken psychology courses. I knew how their little minds worked and I'd be prepared to deal with them. I'm sure you already know where I'm going with this. It took me about 6 hours after Jade was born to realize that I did not, in fact, have parenting all figured out.

One of my hugest frustrations is the constant competing that goes on between them. It's not so much that they're competing that surprises me. It's what they're competing for.

First to grab the placemats when they're setting the table.

First down the sidewalk when we're out riding bikes/scooters.

First to tell Dad it's time for prayers at bedtime.

First to grab the baby wipes for Mom.

Etc, etc, etc.

I can always see it coming, but I can't always stop it from happening. I ask Jade to go downstairs to grab a box of cereal from the storage room. Next thing I know, Logan's yelling and thundering after her, Jade's screaming that Logan's hurting her, and I end up with a smashed up box of crushed Cheerios.

Jade loves to sing… loudly. She’s always singing or humming something. A lot of the time it’s a tune she’s made up herself and usually with words that pertain to the moment. Once she’s come up with it she’ll sing it over and over and over again. Logan gets annoyed pretty quickly and yells at her to stop humming/singing. Well instead of stopping, she takes this as a challenge and turns up the volume. He yells louder and louder to be heard and will finally physically attack her. She’ll sometimes stop singing/humming only to start screaming that he’s hurting her.

It's all just so baffling to me. What's the big deal? Why can't we all just get along?

Jade started school last week. This means she's not around to fight with Logan for the majority of the day, which is nice. The problem is, in spite of the fighting, they are the best of friends. Without her he doesn't know what to do with himself half the time. He follows me around wherever I go. Irritated I say, "Logan, why don't you go play with your toys?"

"I just want to be with you Mom. I love you Mom." He says, wrapping his little arms around my legs, giving me a big kiss right on the upper thigh.

Maybe parenting isn't so bad.