Cartoons and Rest

Today is the first time Clare has missed school. She had a fever yesterday of 102, and the school likes them to be fever free for 24 hours before returning.

So today (even though she is feeling somewhat better and doesn't have a fever) we are watching cartoons in our pajamas, and probably will for most of the day.

Yesterday at nap time - everyone took a nap - unusual for Clare and I, but I guess her body needed the sleep.

Skill Conquest

Clare's latest achievement - riding a bike.

She's a trooper, getting back on every time she falls. And she usually rides for about 2 miles when we go out. That much farther than she's usually willing to walk.

Adventures in Shopping

My mom needed a few items while she's here in the States, and Gregory and I went with her. It's sometimes fun to watch someone else shop when you're not planning on buying anything Gregory explored every inch of the Chicco's we were in. The ladies were really nice to him and he even got a handful of candy corn from them
I'm posing because I'm so cute.
I've called this meeting to discuss the importance of retail in our economy - get out there and shop.
I'm all done, please take me home...no more shopping for now.

Pretty Quiet

There has been lack of posting as we get into the routine of Clare's school and a myriad of events that seem to herald the beginning of a new school year, both for Clare and for John.

Clare is loving school - she's excited to go every day. And at this point I think it is a better option than homeschooling. That girl loves people, and has more words to use up in a day than John and I combined.

John is deep in the law school trenches again. He's in the middle of a cite check for a journal and has had a couple of crazy weeks. I hoping that soon it lightens up - he was at the law school most of the weekend, and there are only so many nights where I don't want to see him at all. (Are there any nights where we don't even want to see our husband's faces...not generally.)

Gregory is enjoying Clare being at school, he loves the time to himself. Unfortunately, I also want to use the time to clean house, so he tolerates it while I mop, or clean bathrooms, or whatever else I need to do.

And lastly, my mom is here for a week. This is a real treat for me and the kids. We're not doing anything exciting though - just going to all the things we would normally do. I'm glad that she's so flexible, and it's just nice to see her.

1400 AD

Your result for The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test...

The Prioress

You scored 5% Cardinal, 74% Monk, 53% Lady, and 35% Knight!

You are a moral person and are also highly intellectual. You like your solitude but are also kind and helpful to those around you. Guided by a belief in the goodness of mankind you will likely be christened a saint after your life is over.

You scored high as both the Lady and the Monk. You can try again to get a more precise description of either the Monk or the lady, or you can be happy that you're an individual.

Take The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test at http://www.okcupid.com/tests/the-who-would-you-be-in-1400-ad-test

Book Geek

Stephanie and Maria both posted this meme. And as the title of my post says it all, I have to do this meme. And what I haven't read is now going to go on a list to read I think.

Update: My bold and italics don't show up so - I'll have to come up with something else

Bold--I've read it (black).
Italics--I started it (gray).
Gold --I want to.
Nuttin'--I don't care and (probably will read at some point).
Red -- Have no interest and will never have an interest.
Green -- Seen the movie.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (most of it, anyway)
7. Wuthering Heights -Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman
10. Great Expectations -Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read quite a bit, and I've tried to like Shakespeare, but I don't, maybe one day I will.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife -
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (Clare and I are reading this now)
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (many many times. We're reading these to Clare too.)
34. Emma - Jane Austen I just can't get into this one compared to her others
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (I have read most of Steinbeck just not this)
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Again I tried, no interest
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery in English and in French (in highschool)
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams many times, I love this book
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (3/4 of it and then it was due back at the library after several renewals
99. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
100.The Outsiders -S. E. Hinton

And here's my pride (such ridiculous pride) - 52 of the titles - yea! I'm such a geek.

Anyone else interested? It's kind of fun.

Shocking!

Shocked is the new phrase that Clare brought home from school, and there's a face that goes along with it. She happily modeled it for me above.

Yesterday I asked her what she did at school - and she told me that she had made friends with everyone.

"How?" I asked.

"I told everyone there was going to be a flood at playtime and we all climbed up onto the monkey bars (Clare's generic word, for playground equipment) and waited for it."

I can just see my daughter convincing (at least as a game) all of the other kids in her class that a flood is coming. If we don't watch out, maybe one day she'll be the one saying - Change is coming!

Football - Part 2

Gregory is now the proud (literally) owner of 2 Redskins onesies - all because of his love of football.

The other day he didn't run to the playground at a local park - why? Because he was too interested in the Redskins flag on top of a nearby van.

Then we went to Walmart, and happened to pass a car with a magnetic Broncos helmet decal on the back of it. He about leaped out of my arms to get to it.

Finally, while I was looking at women's clearance items, he tried to climb out of the cart to get to the women's Redskins jerseys hanging on a rank.

At that point I broke down - I headed back to the the toddler boys section and found the only thing Walmart had in his side that screamed NFL - 2 Redskins onesies. Every time we mention football - he pulls on his onesie and points out the emblems to us.

I think these onesies are going to get plenty of action.

Happy Birthday Mary!

Today is a fun feast for kids in the Catholic Church. It's the feast of the birth of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. There are only 3 feasts where the Church celebrates the birth of someone - Jesus (Christmas), John the Baptist, and Mary.

Clare gets really excited because she knows birthdays mean cake. So we made cupcakes, and sang Happy Birthday and Immaculate Mary, and Clare said a Hail Mary. Clare also told her Pre-K teachers all about it. Gregory was really just excited that we got cupcakes.

Our cupcakes had a little surprize, in honor of Our Lady, they have blue and white swirled batter.

May the Blessed Mother intercede for us, and draw us ever closer to her Son Jesus.

Nature, not Nuture

Gregory's love of football is nature, not nuture. Especially since he spends most of his time with me, and I don't really watch football...as in ever.

But whenever football is on TV Gregory gets really excited - more excited than John even. He points to the screen and shrieks - ball, ball! ball! BALL!

Tonight, John mentioned that there was a game on. Gregory started crying and pointing to the TV.

John turned on the TV, Gregory whimpered and pointed again. Hold on Gregory, Daddy needs to find the right channel.

Football! Gregory dances for joy and starts shrieking BALL!

A commercial comes on Gregory starts crying again. Sigh.

His attention span to the games doesn't last long, but every time he realizes it's on again, he gets just as excited. And Mama sighs - now there are 2 guys who want to watch football - any game, any time, - in my house.

I need 5 more girls. :)

Careful what you play

This morning John got the kids and let me stay in bed. Shortly after this both kids were on the bed, and John had come back into the room.

Gregory picked up the phone and was pretending to talk on it

Me: Look he's ordering pizza.

John: Does that mean you want to do pizza for dinner (talking to me)?

Gregory: Please!

John: It's like he understands completely. Gregory do you want pizza?

Gregory: Smacks lips

Guess we'll be ordering pizza tonight.

Oh the drama - Pre-K style

Clare: Mama, I saw Alan today

Mama: That's great, Clare. (Alan is a friend of Clare's from VLF. Alan's mama and I are friends)

Clare: Yeah...I saw him on the playground and Carrie got frustrated with me, since I was talking to my boyfriend and then she walked away.

Mama: Oh! (trying hard not to let my amusement show through my voice)

Clare: So I ran after her, and left Alan there.

As the world turns in Clare's school - the hard choices - your guy or your best friend. ;)

A Week In

So I've been getting up early for about a week - the alarm goes off, and I'm actually getting up.

I'm excited that it's working for me. John's not because my alarm is waking him up.

Today when I awoke, I heard Clare's door open - both kids were up before 6:10. I whispered that to John, who said it was my fault and I was teaching them to get up earlier. (He was sleepy at this point and unhappy to be having a conversation)

Is that true, do those of you with experience of early rising find that your kids get up earlier?

They do occasionally wake up early - so this isn't unheard of, but still, I don't think I can handle 6:10 with the kids everyday - I might go back to not getting up until after 7.

Fake Friends?

Yesterday I asked Clare if she made any friends and I quickly became confused.

Clare: Mama - when we were playing outside I met a girl.

Me: Great - what's her name?

Clare: Cherry

Me: Cherry!? Are you sure? (I'm thinking to myself, I saw the class lists, there's no Cherry, I would remember that name.)

Clare: Yeah, I'm sure.

Me: I'm not sure. (Now I'm thinking...gracious did my daughter not make friends with anyone? Was it so bad that she had to come up with an imaginary friend?)

Clare: Mama, sometimes I get words wrong, I think I used a rhyme. Her name is Mary.

Me: Big sigh of relief - Mary sounds right. (It's a Catholic school, there's a really good chance there's a Mary in her room.)

Today I walked Clare to her class room and scanned the names on the cubbies, and the sign-in board. Mary, Mary....There's no Mary....Yikes, there's a Meghan....maybe....or my daughter really just has an imaginary friend.

Suddenly a little girl with her mom runs up to Clare and grabs her hand. And her mom says: Carrie, so this is Clare!

Ahhh - CARRIE! -Cherry sounds pretty close to Carrie. :)

School Days

Clare had her first day of school yesterday. This picture conveys her excitement before she headed out the door. I'm not sure what face she's making here, but she's infront of her school.
And I don't have a picture of her heading into her classroom, because she practically ran through that door and didn't look back.

After day 1, she was still running through that door.