Category Archives: Quotes

>Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You

>Luke was having a play date with Elsa last week, and Luke was playing with one toy while Elsa played with another. Jack got in Elsa’s way, and she said, “No! Jack! No!” The altercation appeared to be over a toy, and I grabbed Jack and moved him away while Luke said over his shoulder, “Yeah. He pinches. And bites.”

>Nice Everything

>I fell asleep in Luke’s bed last night while reading to him, so no time to post. Today I will just reprint some submissions from my good friend Krista:

I vaguely remember this funny fireside scenario…or something to this effect:
Me- “Dave, why don’t you go and check the kids in my van…?”
Dave “I already did! They’re just fooling around in there and talking…I’m sure they’ll put themselves to sleep soon…”
Me “Oh great! Thanks!”
A few minutes pass…
Me “Wait a minute… You didn’t just get up and check them! You have been sitting next to me the whole time!!!”
Dave (laugh, laugh) “Oh great, thanks Krista, now Megan is on to me…”

The non-checked on children:

From s

Also! Krista was riding her bike up Lookout Mountain this week when a suburban full of gigantic men with dark sunglasses tried to flag her down. She was rocking out to her ipod and considered ignoring them. (When you are as beautiful as Krista, men waving at you from a car is an everyday thing. Amy and I once witnessed the following exchange between Krista and a lift operator on a chair lift at Steamboat Springs Resort:
Krista: Nice Eyes
Lift Op: Nice Everything)

Anyway! When asked, “Are you just waving or do you want me to stop?” The gentlemen in the Suburban replied, “No ma’am, you need to turn around, you can’t get through that way. I’m going to need you to turn around and go up a different way.” Apparently she was getting too close to Barack Obama!

>Settling Into the School Year

>Sometimes I don’t really feel like a mom, or like my idea of what a mom is. I remember when Luke was able to stand and play with the tupperware in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, that made me feel like a mom. Probably because I have memories of my sister playing in the bottom drawer in the kitchen. Kid playing in drawer while you work in the kitchen = quintessential mom. I hadn’t had that, “weird I don’t feel like a mom” feeling in a while – possibly because I have two children, and five and half years into the whole thing I am used to it. But last week when I was packing lunches (like the third of 3,960 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I will be making over the next 16 or so years) I had this “wow, I really am a mom” feeling.

The next feeling I had was, “wow, that’s a lot of plastic baggies.”

So I took a sandwich sized tupperware to Luke and said, “Can you open this?”

He tried and wasn’t able to. He said, “Sorry Mom, you’ll need to get Daddy to help you.”

So I am investigating alternatives.

Also, Luke was very concerned about the homework situation before the school year started, and I really had no idea what to tell him to expect. So every day he has come home and said, “No homework!” But it’s almost like he’ll be relieved when he gets homework so the whole thing isn’t a mystery anymore. He did come home with a little piece of paper that was a xerox of the type of paper that you use to practice your letters. His name was written on it in dotted lines. He said, “No homework! But look! I have this!” And I said, “Maybe you are supposed to trace over that with a pencil to practice your letters? Maybe that’s your homework.” He said, “I don’t think so. I think that’s optional.”

Oh, one more thing. We were reading a bedtime story of Scooby Soo and the Alien Invaders and Luke was looking at the pictures. There was some graffiti on a wall and that said, “Aliens go home.” He pointed out the “go” and I asked him how he knew what that word was. He said, “We have a calendar at school and it lists everything we do for the day and it says, “Go Home” at the end.” I said, “What else is on it?” He said, “Recess.” And I said, “What else?” And he said, “That’s all I remember.”

>First Day

>
I had everything perfectly organized. But I should have known it would all go horribly awry when Jack woke up (again) at 5:30. He was supposed to wake up at 6:30: after I had done my knee exercises, but in time to be changed, fed, and dressed before Luke got up. So I made Dave go in and get Jack to sleep again, which he did. (Now if only that would occur to me at 1:30 am.)

The next problem was that Dave set Luke’s alarm to radio instead of beeps. Then Luke bumped his knee, then he became aware that he had a cough. All things that would be cause for angst on a normal day, but today culminated with him pulling up a chair to the toilet and preparing to barf. Poor boy, the thought of school didn’t give me stomachaches until at least 3rd grade.

He didn’t want to eat the pancakes that I made, but he managed to choke one down. Then I remembered about the wee one. Jack! By now it was 7:15 or so and I still needed to get Jack fed, and dressed in his coordinated madras plaid shorts that I had ironed in anticipation of the front porch picture. So I woke Jack up, fed him, took off his pajamas and realized we were within minutes of inaugural arrival of the school bus. Cancel the group shot, hand the baby over to Dad. Run out the door with the shoes and wait on the porch with the camera for Luke to cross the threshold. Snap photo of frowning boy, only to notice later that Dad was in the background, shirtless, in bike shorts. Plan to put photo in baby book anyway.

I was literally dragging Luke down the driveway until it occurred to me to offer a piggy back. We piggy backed down the driveway and turned towards the bus stop where Luke saw all the kids and slid off my back and started walking. We got to the bus stop at 7:29, the exact time the bus was supposed to arrive. I confessed to the parents there that I planned to bike to school to meet Luke when he got off the bus and the other parents said they planned to do the same, or already had a spouse on the way. We waited. And waited. Finally the bus arrived at 7:45. Great, what if we were the last stop? Hopped on bikes and pedaled away hoping to beat the bus, which we did, easily.

From there it was no big deal. Luke got off the bus and got a bracelet that marked him as a bus rider so the teachers would know where to send him at the end of the day, and we walked to the playground. Luke was pretty stoic and he just stood next to me, not letting me take his picture until it was time to go in.

We said our good byes and he walked in the door.

Another mom hugged me and asked how I was doing and I teared up a little, but pulled it together.

After school he was all smiles and full of “You know what? Guess what!” which was good because I quickly wasted two of my five questions:

“How was it?” “Good.”
“Did you eat your lunch?” “Yes.”

Information gleaned:

* We went on a search for the gingerbread man! And we went in the office, to the gym, the music room, the library, and back to our room! And I think the search for the gingerbread man was just a way to give us a tour of the school.
* We went to see Coach L. He’s the teacher of maybe P.T.? Yeah, P.E.
* I had to go to the bathroom and I didn’t say anything, but then the teacher said, “Bathroom time!” And the same thing happened right when I felt thirsty! It was time for a drink of water!
* Everyone colored on the gingerbread man, but I didn’t color anything I just wrote my name.
* Mikey took the rocket I was playing with, and then I started playing with his, and I put a guy in it, but then Mikey took that one back. I guess he wanted a rocket that had a guy in it.
* There is a girl named Clara in my class.
* I had lunch with Kobie and Kaj and I played with Elsa on the playground a little.
* The kids that didn’t bring their lunch had pizza!
* We had nap time, and I took a green mat, but when I laid down on it it was so tiny! Only my body and arms fit. And we didn’t nap, it was just quiet time
* The teacher has a disco ball, but it doesn’t hang from the ceiling, it sits on the floor and that’s the light we use during quiet time
* I rode on the bus!
* When I say “guess what” you always say “what” but you are supposed to guess!

We retook the first day of school picture at the end of the day, and that worked out well.


So we survived, but considering the amount of effort that went into that one day, I’m not quite sure how we’ll pull it off on a daily basis. I supposed I can skip the pancakes, and the photo ops.

>How About 5?

>Alarm is set, clothes are laid out, pancakes are pre-made to be heated up in the morning, lunch is packed, backpack labeled, lunch box labeled.

Still on the to to list: Fill out Parent/Student worksheet, charge camera, get after school care (oops), label shoes?

At bedtime I said, “Try to remember some stuff that happens tomorrow because I am sure I’ll have a million questions.”

Luke replied, “A million? A thousand? A hundred? Ten? Five? Two? How about five? Can you try to only ask me five questions tomorrow?”

I guess I should be lucky he was so generous. I may have ended up only being allowed two questions.

>Grandma Takes a Fall

>
My mom plays hard. I think she and Luke were playing non-stop for 3 days in our basement. They played pickle in the middle with Jack, some wii bowling, pretend restaurant, and I really have no idea what else. Since I was working and missing out on all the fun, I decided to take Wednesday afternoon off to play, and to take them to the pool. And not just any pool, but the fed-by-artesian-springs, since 1905, Eldorado Springs Pool. Here is the thing, my mom does not come to Colorado for the scenery, she comes to see her grandchildren. She doesn’t even pretend that she is here to see me, so the fact that I was making Luke and Grandma stop playing and go to the pool was really just something they tolerated.

Luke and Jack and Grandma and I put on our swimsuits and headed to the pool while Grandpa settled down for a nice summer’s nap. It was a hot day, but brrr, that water was cold. Way too cold for baby Jack. So I took one for the team and sat in the shade and held baby Jack while Grandma got in the pool with Luke. In the shallow end there is a little corner with a little metal fence around it. They call that the baby pool. On the other side of the fence is a ledge for sitting or jumping into the slightly deeper water. Apparently, the baby pool side is a different depth than the ledge side. At least that is what Grandma said after she tried to go from the ledge to the baby pool, and tripped and fell, landing with an “AAAAAHHHH!” and a little splash. A mom and dad were trying to help her out while Luke and I stared with our mouths gaping open, and the life guard was saying, “NO Splashing IN THE BABY POOL.” And my mother was laughing and telling the bystanders that she was OK, and turning the life guard and saying, “Are you talking to me? I wasn’t splashing, I fell in! I’m a grandma!” He was not, in fact, talking to her.

I finally decided to be a good daughter and let her get out and hold the baby and warm up while I got in. I’m not a “just jump in” type of person. More of a “eeeh” “oooh” “brrr” “eeek” person who gets in 1 inch at a time, suffering all the while. But that day, I thought, “what the heck? I’ll do a cannonball off the diving board.” As I was walking to the diving board I was thinking, “Huh, how long since I’ve been on a diving board? 19 years? 20?” I almost chickened out until I noticed the kid in front of me in line had only one leg. OK, I can do this. And at the end of the board as I was jumping, I sort of remembered that I have a knee injury, shoulder pain, back issues, and various and sundry other problems that maybe make the quick cannonball movement, and powerful cannonball landing an ill advised maneuver. But I was already in the air, so I did a half-hearted attempt at a cannon ball and then swam to the side to confer with the judge. And Luke said, “That was the worst cannonball I have ever seen.” (Ironically, I am watching Olympic Swimming as I type this.)

After a while, we left, and crossed the little bridge over the tiny creek from the pool to the parking lot. Grandma declared the view magnificent and if I had just agreed and walked to the car, I would be $7.00 richer, and Grandma wouldn’t have those two new gray hairs. But I thought, “Hey! Let’s drive through Eldorado Canyon State Park! And maybe go for a hike!” My mom doesn’t like heights, or curvy roads, so what could be better than a canyon? You are at bottom, so no heights to worry about! The road through the park is about a mile long, so no time to get car sick! The speed limit is 15 mph. I drove 5 mph, which apparently still made it seem like we were careening towards the little creek. Let’s just say we didn’t make it to the visitors center. As soon as I could turn around I did, because Grandma was curled into the fetal position saying, “No, go on! I’m fine! You just spent $7.00! I’m fineohmygodanothercariscominghowwillitevergetpastusturnaroundturnaround. No, I’m fine. Keep going.” I turned around without crashing into the creek. Of course, on the way back, I did make everyone go on a little hike with me. And everyone was happy when I went to work the next day.

Sorry Mom!

I shouldn’t tease, but I can’t help it. That is how I was raised. In fact, before my parents showed up, Luke said to me, “Mom, when Grandma and Grandpa are here, I don’t want you to tease me. Because Grandpa is going to be teasing me a lot. So I don’t want you to tease me. But it’s OK if Grandpa teases me.” So, basically, I was forced to tease my mom. So blame Grandpa!

>Halfway There

>It’s Wednesday! Halfway through the week, halfway through Dave’s business trip to Dayton (miss you honey), but most importantly, halfway through my Deadwood fast. With Dave out of town, I’m not watching any episodes until his return (because I am nice). Attempts at work to strike up a conversation about Deadwood has led to dead ends. (And not because the show went off the air some time ago.) Conversations have gone like this: “never heard of it.” and “I like westerns as much as I like outer space”. Which, on the surface, seems to mean, “I’ve never experienced it, please tell me all about it, I bet it’s fascinating. But really, it means, stop talking to me about Deadwood. So it was very exciting to have this dinnertime discussion with Luke. (Names have been changed to protect the, the, well, innocent doesn’t seem quite right.)
******************************************************
Luke: Montgomery said he has seen every movie.
Me: Really?
Luke: Yes, Montgomery said he has seen Return to the Jedi. And I asked him if he had seen the Pod Races and he said, “Yup!” and I asked him if he had seen the Clone Wars and he said, “Yup.” and I asked him if he had seen some other movies and he said, “Yup.”
Me: Well, sounds like he has seem a lot of movies.
Luke: Then I asked him if he had seen Deadwood and he said, “Yup. There’s a giant in it.” Is there a giant in Deadwood?
Me: Nope, no giant. And I guarantee you that Montgomery has not seen Deadwood.
*****************************************************

So yea! I got to discuss Deadwood. AND I was able finally prove that Montgomery makes up stories. This has been a battle since Luke’s first loose tooth, when Montgomery said, “Oh. I have 10 loose teeth.” And “The tooth fairy isn’t real.” Darn that Montgomery!!!

>Stop Making Sense

>
Dad: Goodbye Luke! I love you have a nice day.

Luke: Bye Daddy!

– Door closes –

Luke: Daddy left without giving me a kiss and a hug and that makes me feel sad.

Mom: Luke, you need to say that before he leaves, not just as soon as the door closes. (This issue is not new.)

– Silence –

Luke: Mommy, if I said “Daddy left without giving me a kiss and a hug and that makes me feel sad” before he left it would not make sense.

>Thank You Notes

>Emily Post says you have a year to write your wedding thank you notes. Does anyone know the policy for your fifth birthday? We did a big push to get the thank yous out for the kids who attended the party, but the family thank you notes have been a long time coming. I had been writing it in my planner every week, and then I don’t know what happened, but tonight we were back in business.

Our strategy is this:
1.) I write everyone’s name on a list
2.) Luke writes the person’s name at the top and his name at the bottom and then tells me something to write in the middle.
It seems simple, but there are so many ways it can go wrong. First of all, I have terrible handwriting. My r looks like a v. Luke read back the letters in Scott to me as “S – O – O – H”. So there is that. And Luke is also a perfectionist, so that leads to other problems. Many tears were shed on Valentine’s Day over an “A” that looked like “It’s pants were falling down.”
So today, Luke was writing while I was making chicken, pineapple, red pepper skewers for dinner. I needed to spell out every name, and the list was only useful in creating a sense of satisfaction when a name could be crossed off. Chicken, pineapple, red pepper skewers are sort of labor intensive for a week night so I didn’t always know where I was in the spelling of a name. This led to an Anthony with two Os. Tragedy. Luke was also trying to write in block letters and had trouble with an N. I had a huge internal debate about showing him how to do it. Because all prior Ns had been written backwards. Do I show him the correct way and risk having to redo all the thank you notes? Do I dare contemplate making a backwards block letter N? Rest assured I did the right thing. And I was rewarded with a resigned sigh, “If you are right, then all the other Ns I have made are backwards.” Sigh.
Such a relief! Thank you notes are finished!
* Please allow another 1-2 weeks for me to find stamps, envelopes, addresses, etc.