The Piano Lesson

Too much pressure on such a little guy?

Well, Dex is completing his first week of daycare and he's already the Teacher's Pet! The kindergarten teacher spends her mornings with the babies, and she has told me two days in a row that he is her favorite baby. She is young and very cute, so I am impressed already with his way with women.

This is the last day of my vacation. Oh oh oh... (I am cursed with always hearing songs in my head.) Yesterday was Dexter's first day at daycare. We were both slightly traumatized by the end of the day, but Joel tells me that we are all going to live through it so I guess I'll believe him. The good news is that I am in school supply heaven, although I have scaled down a bit this year. I am quite proud of my restraint, but I am not sure if Joel thinks this is very "scaled down". This year for school I only bought:
10 packs of markers (.60 a piece. I missed the really good sale at Target. That is second best.)
20 glue sticks
3 packages of pencils
1 pretty notebook
1 planner
5 blank wall charts
1 roll of bulletin board paper
1 stamper
1 bookbag
1 package of 811 stickers
No borders! No fancy pens! No motivational posters that say things like "Hang in there" with a kitty dangling from a tree branch!

I don't know how I'll survive on such meager reserves, but this is the new me. (Insert eyerolling emoticon here.)

Guess who stopped eating sand?

Word weary

Lately I see a lot of people using “can not” as two words instead of “cannot”. I have read some grammar sites excusing this and saying it is for emphasis. I think they’re wrong. I know language evolves, but I hate when it evolves due to laziness or mistakes. Another frustrating example is the misuse of the word “troops”. According to most dictionaries, a "troop" is a group of soldiers or a unit of soldiers. “Troops” are several units of soldiers. The American Heritage Dictionary even states specifically that one definition of troop is “at least five Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts under the guidance of an adult leader”. See? Five! (Well, at least when referring to Scouts.) Yet somewhere along the lines American politicians and journalists began to use “troop” to mean “soldier”. For instance: “Three troops were injured in last night’s attack.” Were fifteen soldiers injured or three? When I hear that usage on the news or radio it is as if a herd of elephants is dancing on a Styrofoam. Broadcasters on NPR and The News Hour have even made this mistake recently. On the other hand, perhaps I should save my ire for the foreign policies and political grandstanding that are keeping us in this war rather than the language used to describe it.

Edited to add: OK, I suppose there are rare and awkward instances of "can not" being correct. ("We just don't have enough money to go out to dinner this weekend." " Well, we can NOT go out to dinner this weekend.") Correct but awkward. I still say stick with cannot.

The FUN of dysfunction...

is the four cakes you get because you celebrate your birthday separately with your mother, father, mother-in-law, and father-in-law.

Another vacation???

So this week our trip was to Holland, Michigan to stay with Joel's Dad at the cottage he rented. On our way down we stopped at Culvers where Joel ordered a "Bacon Butter Burger". Ew.

Then we spent some days lounging on the beach. It was windy, but fun.

32

Although I have spent several years as a consumer and a collector: I have bought gadgets, stored party supplies in the basement, and built a rather extensive collection of placemats and Christmas decorations, I am slowly turning over a new leaf.

I am trying to live more simply. This is a personal choice; just for me. It feels good to let go of things that I don’t need and won’t use. My house is plenty big for three people and yet there are times when our stuff leaves me feeling not just crowded, but frankly claustrophobic. I am taking a variety of steps to improve this. One step, as regular readers will know, was the yard sale in July.

Then I came across this from Suze Ormon:
“Financially speaking, I can't make any sense out of garage sales. You have to invest a lot of time to hold one, when you could simply take all your unwanted stuff down to the local charity (or even ask them to come cart it away for you) and claim the donation as a tax deduction. Do you really want to spend a weekend holding a garage sale-with no guarantee you will clear out everything you don't want-when you can spend an hour or two gathering up your stuff and making a donation whose tax value will likely exceed the value of your garage sale's proceeds?”

I get her point, but for my purposes I respectfully disagree. I couldn’t just immediately pack everything away and take it to St. Vincent DePaul’s. I wanted to get rid of the stuff that I accumulated without a second thought, things that I purchased with hard-earned money that I used once and never again. To pack it up in a car and ship it immediately off to someone else would be perpetuating the exact need for instant gratification that filled up my drawers and closets in the first place. Instead, I put effort into going through the house and making decisions about items that weren’t necessary to a happy, fulfilled existence. Sitting in the yard all day with strangers pawing through my belongings left me with plenty of time to focus on my new goal of removing the chokehold my “stuff” was beginning to have on my life. By the time I finally packed the car to donate the remaining items, I was exhausted! ... but I also felt a sense of freedom and accomplishment. I have spent all summer letting the question “Will this end up in next year’s yard sale?” guide my purchases. However, lest you think this goal is anything less than a work in progress please note that I bought two back issues of Sassy magazine on eBay the same week as the sale.

A perfect day

It has been about a perfect day. First Dexter and I spent the morning with our friends at the pool.

Do you know how hard it is to get five kids to look at the camera at the same time?

Then we went and saw a former student off to school. Afterward Joel and I enjoyed a bit of grown up drinking. Aren't they pretty?


Then Joel played ball with his little boy. I think Dexter enjoyed it. What do you think?

Dexter learns to multi-task

So Dex doesn't really use a pacifier anymore. Instead he sleeps with this baby kangaroo in his mouth. It is the most disgusting & smelly thing ever at this point, but it comforts him so I am not worried about breaking the habit yet.

Recently he figured out that he can crawl and still carry around his favorite toy. We're going to teach him to get the newspaper next.

And before you get on my case about the wife beater t-shirt, keep in mind that we don't have central air. Also, how else is a southside guy supposed to show off his muscles?

Dex is on the move (usually)

So Dex is moving around at a rather brisk pace lately. His crawling gets faster everyday but that isn't enough for him. He wants to stand. Gone are the days of Dexter being cute and mommy running for the camera. He requires constant vigilance or else he will eat a gym shoe, crawl up the side of the stroller or dive head first into the fire place. So I had to catch a snap shot when the opportunity presented itself. Pretty boy.

One fun thing I learned how to do this weekend...

Joel's hypothesis

Joel stands by the theory that the phrases "spank my booty" or "spank my big ol' booty" fit perfectly somewhere into almost any song ever. He tests this theory at least five times a day. If you are shy about trying it for yourself, just spend ten minutes with him and he'll prove it to you.

This one time at yearbook camp...

Wow! I was at yearbook camp this weekend. I learned a whole lot about Adobe indesign, but it was a scary, scary weekend. The scary part was what a glimpse into my own adolescence it was. I was exactly that type of nerdy, extroverted, quirky, insecure girl that were all over the place this weekend. (Except without the ninja graphic design skills that many of these girls had.) There was a whole lot of giggling. There were some cheers. There was a little bit of rewriting movie quotes so they fit the yearbook theme. ("Deadlines? We don't need no stinkin' deadlines." or "As tif" and "Al-write-y then". For real, I am not kidding.) I must say my sense of irony and my propensity for sarcasm have returned, but I tried to set a good example for my students. (Though I didn't make them do cheers.) I was really happy to get home today; I missed the little man. Still, I did learn a lot of super-cool bells and whistles to use in the yearbook and got a lot of sleep and a little planning for school so that's good news.

Fed up with his mamarazzi, Dex takes matters into his own hands.

Uh oh...

The boys are starting to climb.