School, Shmool

Yea, quit bragging.  I know a lot of you have already sent your kids back to school.  My kids have two more weeks.  Go ahead and feel sorry for me.  I cannot wait for school to start.  I am not one of those moms that will cry as I drop them off.  Though I love the lazy days of summer (a.k.a. sleeping-in), they are usually accompanied by a lot of fighting, whining and "what are we going to do today?" I so desperately want to say "YOU ARE GOING TO SCHOOL TODAY."  So with that being said, for my monthly stint on BlissfullyDomestic.com, I shared my strategy, or lack of it, for Back to School Basics.  Please head over there and share some comment love.


ALSO don't forget to enter my 1st Giveaway to celebrate my 100th post!



Linda

Cupcake...denied.

It was field trip day with my preschooler, JarBear.  I am one of those horrible moms that don't love field trips.  I send them to school for many reasons and my sanity is the top of that list.  And since my kids are in private school I pay for that sanity.  With my older kids I always had the excuse of have little ones at home, but now my excuses have run dry.

My kid loves it when I go. And as I discovered today, it's so he can get in more time to hang on me and whine.  Yea, that's fun.

I noticed as we arrived at the Natural History museum, that a mom was toting cupcakes share for her daughter's birthday.  Okay, that could be some motivation to get me through the museum with 20, three to five year olds.  As we were guided by our 90 year old docent who actually wanted the kids to be quiet and listen, my mind kept wandering to the cupcakes.

JarBear enjoyed the museum and we both tolerated the smell of old, dead, dusty animal fur.

"Mommy it smells funny and hurts my eyes." (we are still working on differentiating our five senses).

JarBear finding Nemo from the inside out.

Looking at old, dead, stinky fur animals.

After  1 1/2 hours of enlightenment we walked to the adjacent park.  Cupcake time!  The kids were sitting at two different picnic tables where cupcakes were handed out along with napkins and water. All of the kids were served and there were almost a dozen leftover. There they sat and not one mom partook.  Seriously?  You can't tell me I am the only one who wanted a cupcake.  It was 11:00 am and I was starving.  If I had been home I would have been on snack #4 by now.  All the mom's stood around and pretended to enjoy watching their kids devour their treats.  JarBear was licking his like a lollipop.  I wandered nonchalantly to the end of the table with the leftover cupcakes.  I just knew any second there would be a mad dash for them and I wanted to be the first one in line. 

The mom who brought the cupcakes started gathering them up in a box.  Really?  Are we all pretending to be on diets?  I heard her say something about saving them for the afternoon class.  My stomach was growling and I was denied a cupcake.  

I blame her for my stop at the Sonic drive-thru window on the way home.  I blame her for the mouthfuls of frozen cookie dough since I've been home.  This could have all been easily avoided with one cupcake.  

JarBear enjoying his cupcake.  Whatever.

Linda

100 times...

Today my kids celebrate (lament) their 100th day of school.  So usually the younger classes do something to commemorate this day, like bringing in 100 of something.  Colton's 2nd grade class were all supposed to bring in 100 pieces of cereal and then they are going to combine them all to make the greatest monster bowl of cereal of all time.  So when I awoke he had already counted and bagged his choice of cereal, Rice Krispies.  This probably would not have been my first choice.  Have you ever actually seen 100 pieces of Rice Krispies counted out and in a baggie? 100 pieces equals roughly a teaspoon.  One teaspoon of cereal.  Any kid could fit about 300 pieces of this cereal in his mouth at once.  Who knew?... Let us hope the rest of the class brings some shredded wheat or they are going to be hungry.

So when driving the kids to school today I thought "wow, I feel like I have done this 100 times."
Then I got to thinking (yes that is a lot of thinking before 8:30am)... What I have I done 100 times this school year?  Not a glamorous look into the past...

100 times I have set my alarm for 7:00 am knowing that I would hit the snooze until 7:20.

100  times I have have had to make someone a lunch and find something that resembles one of the four food groups to put in it.

100 times I have asked Jared and Colton where their glasses are only to get blank looks on their glassless faces.

100 times I have told the boys they can't wear the same socks two (or three, if it got past me on day two) days in a row.

100 times I have had to slick down cow licks, rooster tails and any other little boy morning hair disasters named after  farm animals.

100 times I have stopped at the same red light.

100 times I  have hid in my car at the kids school, under my sunglasses, uncombed hair and stained sweats hoping no one will see me.

100  times I have prayed for no phone call from the school office about one of my angels not being angelic.

100 times I have come home and thought, I should go to the gym, and then facebooked the feeling away.

100 times at 3:30 pm I have greeted my tired, dirty faced, happy boys with hugs and kisses and breathed in their little boys smells and said "how was  your day?"



And I will do it all (at least) 100 more times.  And 100 more times I will be truly blessed.

The Librarian's daughter...

 I proclaimed my ignorance recently in a blog,  in not knowing the differnce between  lay, lie, laid, lain and every form thereof.   So, leave it to my dad to set me straight.  Not in an obnoxious way, but in a dad way and in a reference librarian way, that I am sooo used to and have come to expect.   I got the following email under the title of "a little help."

I loved your blog.


Lay or Lie?

Lay means "to place something down." It is something you do to something else. It is a transitive verb.

Incorrect: Lie the book on the table.Correct: Lay the book on the table.
(It is being done to something else.)

Lie means "to recline" or "be placed." It does not act on anything or anyone else. It is an intransitive verb.

Incorrect: Lay down on the couch.Correct: Lie down on the couch.
(It is not being done to anything else.)

The reason lay and lie are confusing is their past tenses.
The past tense of lay is laid.
The past tense of lie is lay.

Incorrect: I lay it down here yesterday.Correct: I laid it down here yesterday.
(It is being done to something else.)
Incorrect: Last night I laid awake in bed.
Correct: Last night I lay awake in bed.
(It is not being done to anything else.)

The past participle of lie is lain. The past participle of lay is like the past tense, laid.

Examples: I could have lain in bed all day.They have laid an average of 500 feet of sewer line a day.

Layed is a misspelling and does not exist. Use laid.




So I read it and thought, thanks for the little bit of help Dad.   Those definitions are clear as mud and are why English is the hardest language to learn, apparently even for English speakers like moi.

And that email is one of the reasons I love my dad.  He is a retired college reference librarian (Fresno State-Go Bulldogs!) and an avid reader.   He knows everything and always has.  And if does not know it, he knows where to find it.

From my earliest memories, my favorite thing to do with my dad was go  to the library.  He would check out his dozen books, that he could read in a week (no exaggeration). The fun trips were to the college libray after hours and my brothers and I would run through the stacks.  Dark, scary, creepy.  A little sisters worst nightmare which my brothers took full advantage of.

It was  in about Jr High I really discovered how to take advantage of my dad's  job.

Hey dad, I have this report due... and I would have a dozen books on the kitchen table by dinnertime.

Then there was watching Jeopardy with him or playing Trivial Pursuit.


How do you know that?  
I just do.


 He could have made us millions on Jeopardy and today everyone would be saying Ken Jennings who?
But he said he would be too nervous to push the clicker.  Which, if you have seen Jeopordy, can be a real issue for even the smartest person.

And now in 2010 he has easily brought his skills into the digital age.  He is now a  Mac, iPhone, techno geek.  So now he can get the same info, just way faster.

And it is a joy to see the system being worked, in the next generation.
Mom, I have this report...
Call your Grandpa.