34 posts tagged “jesse”
The alarm goes off at 6:30am and inevitably I am in the middle of a vivid and dramatic dream. My first thought, without fail, is that nobody should ever be required to wake up during a dream; dreaming means I am in the REM stage of sleep and that means I am not ready to get up. I hit the alarm clock before it wakes up Todd, (presuming he is in town), and Libby (who will always be in our bed by morning. This won't be the last time I will thank all that is good and holy for California King sized beds.)
Bathroom, downstairs to weigh myself (the scales are in the exercise room for some reason), to my desk, quickly check e-mail, upstairs to take antibiotics with a drink of water, and to wake Jesse - the order of events never changes.
The next hour belongs to me and Jesse. Jesse gets dressed and breakfasted; I usually go back downstairs and check Vox and Flickr while he is doing this. I make packed lunches for Jesse and Libby unless it is Friday, and therefore pizza day at school, or I am taking either one of them to lunch that day.
Jesse and I check his homework every morning. It is the ritual that will drive us apart and destroy our relationship, yet if I allowed him to hand in his homework as it is before I check it...well, he would get D's and F's and Todd would have a stroke. Jesse is a bright boy and all it takes is for me to point out the mistakes; he corrects them with no help from me. What I don't understand is the need to keep pointing out the exact. same. mistakes. every day.
Me: I see two things wrong with this sentence. Can you tell me what they are?
Jesse: No capital letter and no period.
Me: That's right. You're ten now Jesse. At ten years old you're old enough to remember capital letters and periods.
Jesse: Right. I'll remember.
The very next day...
Me: I see two things wrong with this sentence...etc etc. Repeat ad nauseam.
(I am convinced that when Jesse ends up in therapy (Oh yes, that's a when, not an if), these checking homework sessions at the dining room table will provide enough therapy fodder for at least a few months. I can see him now describing to his counselor how his mother always ended up with her head in her hands, primitive rocking back and forth, flecks of foam at the corners of her lips.)
Once Jesse has run for his bus, (and made it just in the nick of time), I have to rouse Libby by snuggling her until she wakes. She gets herself dressed, backpack loaded with folders and books, and hair brushed. I put her hair in bunches while she eats breakfast, complaining of the "pain" with every brush stroke. Libby does her homework in the evening so I am spared two rounds of "I'm failing as a parent" in the morning, and get to space them out throughout the day (which is the best way, I'm sure you'll agree.)
Libby has book club on Fridays; she shares three passages of a book with her class. Usually this means that on Friday, about five minutes before her bus is due, I do an incredibly loud GASP and say, "Book Club!" And Libby does a GASP too and echoes, "Book Club!" She runs to find a book and I run to find Post-It notes with which she will mark her three passages. She usually wants to take in a book that she's previously shared, but I'm not sure that this is kosher, so I tell her to pick something else.
"Here! What about this lovely book that you got for Christmas, Pirateology?"
"But MOOOOOOM! We haven't even read it!"
"That's okay, just pick three pages that look interesting...here, look, look at this lovely bag of gold..." said while slapping the first Post-It note at the top of the page and thumbing rapidly through the rest of the book...
Choosing the pages that she will share for book club
Show us something you did, made, saw or bought this past weekend.
Did
We went on a walk on Sunday afternoon. The weather is just getting to the place where you'd rather be outside than in. We drove to the tiny town of Battle Ground, about seven miles from here, and learned a few things about the clashes between the Native Americans and the white settlers. Mostly I learned that although the weather looked awesome, it was still a little chilly and I should have dressed more warmly.
Todd and I made a little girl very happy by taking her out for a date on Friday evening while Jesse was sleeping over at a friend's house. Libby chose the itinerary from start to finish and told us, "This is turning out to be a GREAT evening!" First stop was Chuck-e-cheese, followed by a visit to the bookstore for everyone to chose a book. By this point I was starving and believe me, you just don't want to get between me and my empty stomach. My hunger rules my mood, and I needed to eat. By this time it was about eleven and the only place open nearby was Starbucks, so Starbucks it was. At least they had espresso brownies! The evening was wrapped up by watching Shanghai Knights together.
I also made these delicious burgers, found over at Canarygirl's, and this pasta when we had friends over for dinner on Saturday evening.
Saw
This weekend I saw this absolutely fabulous photo of my niece and nephews on Esther's Vox.
My brother-in-law Damian got it in one shot!
I tried to get a shot of my kids jumping....ha ha ha.
Bought
Far too much! One of the best things about planning for a long trip is stocking up on reading material for that trip, which I did...in abundance. This weekend I bought:
(Bought this one x2, one copy for my kids, one copy for my niece and nephews. We started reading it last night and LOVE it.)
(Haven't read this since I was a 17 year-old sitting on a flight to America with a six-month visa in hand!)
I also bought three more books that will be gifted to people who read this so I'll have to keep mum for now. Speaking of Keeping Mum, I also saw that this weekend and advise that you do the same. It's hilarious.
Or: Why Does Everything I Want to Write About Revolve Around Food?
Or: Drinking Three Diet Cokes at Dinner Will Keep You Up Thinking About How Shallow and Greedy You Are.
So, here we are. Spring break. Wisconsin Dells. WHOOOOOOOOO... (Haven't we been here before?)
First things first. Best. Indoor Waterpark. EVER. Ever. This hotel/waterpark is so frakking awesome. I hope we can make this a tradition and come here at least once a year.
2. The drive up here, although only five hours, was quite torturous. We stopped to eat a restaurant that Todd swears serves the best New York strip steak in the world. He makes a point of eating there whenever he's up that way on business. I've been hearing about this strip steak for quite some time. So when I took one bite of my steak and proclaimed that Outback's steak was better...Todd practically divorced me right there at the table!
3. Everything in Wisconsin seems to be served with cheese. Way to perpetuate that stereotype, Wisconsin. But cheese is delicious, so all is forgiven.
4. This hotel is in close proximity to an outlet mall that has crazy good deals. I spent more there today than the cost of the hotel, but did I mention good deals? We saved more in the long run Todd, I promise!
5. We had such a delicious meal in the hotel restaurant tonight. I swear no family shares food in a restaurant like we share food. By the end of the meal, everyone has tried something from everyone else's plate. It must appear, to the other diners, that we are a family of ill-mannered primates, snatching food from each other and generally behaving like we shouldn't be allowed out in public. So, an accurate assessment then.
The dessert...words cannot do justice. I didn't have my camera with me (for once!) so in this instance a picture cannot be worth a thousand words either.
7.Todd and Jesse's relationship is built almost entirely upon mutual teasing and ridicule. If they talked to me the way they talk to each other I would dissolve into a pool of tears. When I protest that the things they're saying are hurtful, I hear that "[they're] just playing with each other".
Tonight at dinner I heard the following:
Todd: Is it SO much fun?
Jesse: Eh.
Todd: What?! When I was a kid this would have been the greatest day of the year for me!
Jesse: Wow. I would feel sorry for you, but you're not worth feeling sorry for.
I might worry that they're so mean to each other but as I write this they're snuggled on the bed in the hotel room watching Happily N'ever After, a picture of daddy-son contentment.
And I am never going to be able to sleep due to those afore-mentioned diet cokes and also I feel disgusted with myself for eating all that midnight mint torte for dessert. Ugh.
Or Squee! Or Yee-haw! Pick an exclamation, or feel free to use one of your own.
Some people have accused me of "baiting" by writing this post and then not writing a follow-up. To which I can only respond to that person, AS IF! And also, next time I'm in town? Lunch! :)
Seriously though folks, here's what I was "squee"-ing about the other day....
1) Trip to England at Easter
Sometimes a girl just needs to see her family. And sometimes that results in her buying a transatlantic plane ticket to do just that. And sometimes even, when the stars are aligned, her lovely mother-in-law will agree to fly half-way across the country to watch her children for her while she is off gallivanting around the British Isles.
I will get to meet my new little niece, Ellie, that my sister Beth so effortlessly gave birth to last month. I will get to meet my not-so-new-niece, my brother Seth's little girl, who I haven't seen yet. I will get to take a girls' trip to Edinburgh with Esther and hopefully (fingers crossed!) stalk Alexander McCall Smith. I will get to eat fish and chips and all other manner of fattening and delicious food stuffs. I will get to delight in the company of the whole fam damily on Easter Sunday. Yay!
2. Summer plans
I love planning ahead and my summer is shaping up to be busy and entertaining.
A week in a lakefront house with these lovely ladies and their delightful offspring, this 178-mile relay race with Todd's family, and various other plans that are in the works and shaping up nicely.
3. Lunch Buddies
Two months ago I started picking Jesse and Libby up at school lunch time one day a week and taking them out for lunch at the restaurant of their choice. They alternate weeks so that I get to have one-on-one time with them. They converse much more openly when it is just the two of us and there are no distractions. I've learned more about their schooling and lessons, teachers and classmates, from these lunch dates than I ever do when they come home from school worn-out and hungry and answer, "How was your day?" with "Good", and "What did you get up to?" with, "Nothing much."
Jesse likes to pick restaurants we've never tried before and is proud of how adventurous (for him) he is being. Libby tends to pick whichever eating establishment Jesse picked the week before!
4. The Good Life
A friend told me that The Good Life was her favourite English TV show. I told her I had never heard of it. She lent me every season on DVD. I thought it might be a little awkward if I watched it and thought it was a load of old rubbish, but figured the experience would at least give me an insight into her sense of humour. I am loving it. It is so quintessentially seventies, so quintessentially English. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.
5. Brownies
My brother Seth gave me a recipe for chocolate chip brownies with fudge sauce that I had requested. He gave it to me in January 2005, (so says my trusty e-mail). I got around to making them yesterday. (There I go with that procrastination thing again. Although I think a more apt word to describe myself might be lazy.)
Anyway, the brownies! Best. brownies. ever.
The best part of the recipe was Seth's tip, "NOTE: If you're on a diet, you can replace the white chocolate chips with shredded lettuce", followed by this advice, "At this point you may wish to try and forget about the detrimental effects these brownies will have on your health, and instead think salady thoughts. They are dee-licious, but very rich. You don't need more than one at a time. I find that a 2-minute wait between each one helps the body to recover."
6. The Real HUMDINGER!!!!
As much as I am loathe to do it, I will have to write a neighbourhood only entry about the real thing that made me nearly explode with excitement on Monday. I know I have friends and family that read this (or at least pretend to, when I ask) that aren't on Vox. And to them I say, well, you should just sign up, shouldn't you?
Seriously, some things you can't risk certain people seeing, can you? So, come into my parlour, I mean, my neighbourhood, said the spider...er, the Hannah -- yeah, that's not working is it.
Show us the best beach you have visited.
Submitted by Marko.
This question gave me an excuse to leisurely thumb through the photo albums that cover the four years that we lived in Hawaii. Because my favourite beaches are definitely in Hawaii, one huge reason being that they are so familiar to me, another reason being that they are utterly fantastic and there's a reason that people come from all over the world to lie on them. I don't think there's many beaches on Oahu that we haven't explored. I don't have one particular favourite; several sprang to mind, but all these picks focus on the fact that they're good family beaches.
Waikiki Beach
This is a great beach for families. It doesn't matter what the weather is like elsewhere, it's nearly always nice on Waikiki. When the kids were small they loved to stay by the man-made wall that acts as a surf break and creates a kind of huge swimming pool. As they got older they would venture into the waves with their boogie boards, or let themselves get thrown around in the shallows with the tail-end of the waves breaking over them.
While we were living there they started a Movie on the Beach program every Saturday and Sunday evening, with food vendors and live bands before the movie. We went nearly every weekend, mostly because it was free and we were broke students, but it was also a ton of fun and you could meet groups of friends down there and enjoy dinner and a movie, family style.
Turtle Beach
I don't know the real name of this beach; everyone just called it Turtle beach, for obvious reasons. It was up on the North Shore somewhere and was pretty obscure and tricky to find (for me anyway, but then any one who knows me understands my famous sense of direction and lack thereof.)
Anyway, there would nearly always be big old green sea turtles sunning themselves on the sand.
Makapuu and Baby Makapuu
Makapuu is a good beach, but Baby Makapuu, a little further on, is a kid's dream beach. I can't count the number of hours my kids and nieces and nephews spent scrambling over rocks, collecting sea creatures from rock pools and generally having a whale of a time. It's not the cleanest beach, (sometimes while the kids played I would pick up beer cans and broken glass - great advertisment, eh?), but it's also not a tourist destination so the beach was never particularly crowed.
I'm not entirely sure how I could have managed to position my photos less how I want them, but there it is.
A few more shots...
Oh, and just as a comparsion...here is an English beach in June or July vs. a Hawaiian beach in November.
I'm just saying.
Show us a photobooth photo.
Okay, one more.
Todd, his sister Kiely, and brother Tyler in the front.
Jesse and me behind.
I like how in the top right picture, the okay-now-everyone-pick-your-nose picture, Todd is having Jesse pick his (Todd's) nose. Jesse looks so tiny and innocent!
- I started running again this week after giving myself a month off for sheer laziness. It was difficult to motivate myself but, child that I am, resorting to self-bribery worked.
- Jesse was off from school on Monday because he was unwell. I knew he could have gone and probably survived the day, but really, doesn't everyone need a day off now and again? Apparently Libby thought so because on Tuesday suddenly she was "sick" and needed a day off from school too! See? Can't you see how sick she is - the way she just jumped on the treadmill and walked a mile while singing along to Panic! At The Disco ? Poor sick little thing.
- Oh, the weather outside is frightful. Really. It nearly brought me to tears. But then I remembered what my mama always told me - when life gives you winter, book tickets to Cancun. So that's what I did! Okay, my mama never did say that, the voice in my head said that, but it all comes down to the same thing. Even though Esther and I won't go until September, just buying the tickets cheered me up this week.
- But who can wait until September before they go on vacation? Not I. So I planned our spring break vacation to the Wisconsin Dells, (it's the water park capital of the world!) and an Easter trip to Nashville. When I lamented to the lovely Sarah that I didn't know what there was to do in Nashville, she sprung into super-travel-agent-event-planner mode, did some research, and presented me with a list of all that Nashville has to offer. I am excited to explore some of the places that we are within driving distance from. We want our kids to see new places, but always think further afield instead of enjoying what's right on our doorstep.
- Dinner last night was at Outback. Oh, how I needed that. As Todd pointed out, when you live entirely off Balance bars, (as he does, not me though!), you need real food once in a while. And by "real food", I think Todd means....
Because I get to go to Mexico, and Todd, well, Todd gets to stay home and pay for my trips, I reasoned that Todd needs something to be excited about too. And now he does - 50 whole inches of HD goodness.
- I had a lunch date with my boy today, picking him up from school and returning him (nearly) on time at the end of his lunch break. He wanted pizza so we went to Puccini's, despite my disappointment with it last time we ate there. Today it did not disappoint however. My calzone, stuffed with artichoke hearts, was heavenly.
Why is it that for every, say, ten pairs of underwear that come through the laundry for the rest of the family, I only see two or three pairs of Jesse's?
Actually, I don't think I want to give this any more thought.
Right, well my morning's work is done.
One thing I miss about being a kid, (and there's not much), is feeling really passionate about something. Remember when the world was simple and your sense of what was just and what was fair was so clear? And your convictions seemed stronger than they do now, because it meant so much more to you. Remember? No? Oh well, it's just me then.
Recently Esther and I took the kids to Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. Before I go further I should preface this by saying that the kids had been playing an ongoing game over the previous few days in which they were all police officers and/or detectives, plus newspaper reporters apparently, as reams of stapled together printer paper were to be found all over the house with such lofty titles as The Truth of the World.
Lincoln Park zoo is a good zoo, as zoos go. It's free for a start, and it's not so huge that you feel like you haven't seen everything, but it has pretty much any animal you would want to see too. Esther and I had a great time.
The kids, however, (especially Evan and Jesse at 10 years old), have reached an age where they are starting to feel indignant, even heated, about things. No longer will they float through life just accepting the way things are. (Well, they may again one day, but we have to wait until they're teenagers for that.)
The issue that really got their goat was the captivity of the animals. At the zoo. Quite what they expected upon going to a zoo I don't know.
A few days after the zoo trip I found this "newspaper" report, penned by Jesse.
Zoo. Is there room?
We have been in a zoo, and what the first thing you feel is the sad tingle in the air. The first thing you see is sad animals pacing back and forth. The Detective H.D.J.M is who is telling us information. When asks if captivity is fair he said no.* We at the paper think that it might be a good idea to get the opinion of another police squad member. So the opinion of PC Officer E. Mitchell was asked. We asked her if she thinks it is fair. At this she said no. Then we asked what people might do to make it better. At this she said "Well, give them more room and if they're not endangered let them free." So what is your opinion on the matter? Please contact us at 911-999-761 with your opinion.
*What he actually said was a well-balanced and extremely mature argument on the pros and cons of captivity depending on the animal and threats to its survival in the wild etc. To which Jesse demanded, "Yes or no? Just say Yes or No!" Just like a lawyer in a court-room drama, "It's an easy question Mr. Smith! Just answer the question, yes or no? Yes or no?"
"Well..."
"Just answer yes or no! Yes or no! It's an easy question! Yes or no! Yes or no!"
