The first day of school and the Mother of the Year award for me

Everyone survived the first day of school! Of course, the day was not uneventful. I mixed up the time that school starts and ends, so I was 10 minutes late to pick them up. And 10 minutes on the first day is not okay. The kids weren't in their classrooms and neither were the teachers, so I went to the office just in time to find Mister and his teacher, who was calling me to tell me to come pick up my child. But no signs of Sweetie. So we ran back to Sweetie's class, but nobody was there, so we ran back to the office again, where we saw Sweetie and her teacher waiting outside in the 110 degree heat, looking tired and frazzled (both of them!) I apologized profusely and handed her teacher the sheet that said I would love to help in the classroom. The poor teacher probably doesn't want me to help in the classroom--a woman who forgets to pick up her own kids on the first day of school cannot be counted on for classroom help, right?

At least I managed to make the traditional back-to-school cakes this year. Not a book, like before, but pencil cakes for each of them. Hopefully the cake-making act negates the lateness. Mister and Sweetie, please remember that your mother made you cakes, not that your mother didn't pick you up on time.

Saying good-bye to summer (vacation, that is)

I shouldn't be blogging. I should be making lunches--peanut butter & honey sandwiches cut in dinosaur shapes was the request. Plus, Sweetie wants raspberries with sugar in her square container while Mister never deviates from the standard grapes. I need to write names on backpacks and fill out forms from meet-the-teacher night tonight. I need to be getting ready to kiss my kids good-bye and send them off to school in the morning.

I'm feeling emotional at the thought, though. Last year I expected to be emotional, with Mister going all day for the first time. But H was a newborn and life was busy and sleep was a rarity and I didn't have much time or energy for extra emotions. Plus I still had Sweetie at home. But tomorrow it will be just H and I. And, yes, there will be bonuses--naptime free to do what I want rather than play legos or mediate sibling arguments, a shower free of knocks on the door to tattle-tell, and only 1 child to cart around on errands--a child who still sits in the seat of the shopping cart so I know exactly where he'll be at all times. But I think I will be a little lonely. I think I will miss Mister telling me about Star Wars and Batman and Sweetie telling me jokes and singing and recapping the morning's adventures for me. I think I will miss playing "I Spy" while eating lunch. I will miss having someone prattling on about this or that. H only shrieks and says "Whoa!"

So I have tried to slow down this past week and enjoy having these two great little souls home with me. Because who knows if next summer they'll want to build forts in the basement or beg me to play Atlantis legos with them. Who knows if they'll still snuggle up next to me and share their caramel popcorn when we have a read-a-thon. I know that some day they won't and I will wonder why not and what happened.

Here are some pictures from this last week of summer vacation. We also visited the new children's museum downtown, which was a lot of fun. The kids climbed, pretended to shop and bake, painted the castle, and ran through the noodle forest (H and I joined them in some games of hide and seek before I got claustrophobic):

My new source of power

As I'm sure you know, I'm a firm believer in the power of moms. But let's face it, that power is really cumulative. In everyday life, it seems more like I have no power at all--my "please pick that up"s have to be said multiple times and usually need to be accompanied by threats of no video games for a week before anything gets done. My "don't fight with your sister/brother" and "get out of H's face" are usually blatantly ignored. And what I muster up the energy to do around the house just gets undone in a matter of minutes.

But luckily, J gave me a new source of power for Mother's Day. Lookee here:

I'm now convinced that all moms need a really good knife set. It's oh-so-satisfying to cut that watermelon in half with one clean swipe. And the fat on the chicken seems to fall off with one effortless flick of my wrist. If I have to make dinner every night, then I might as well wield some power while I'm at it.

And here's the meal I made tonight that got me remembering how nice it is to have some power around the house these days:

Kabobs with chicken, onions, red and yellow peppers, mushrooms.

Corn on the cob

Fruit salad

Marinade for Kabobs (I did chicken, which I actually like better with this marinade, but steak is good too)

1/3 c soy sauce

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

1 Tbsp brown sugar

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp seasoned salt

Fruit salad

Mix:

6 oz light cool whip

1 c buttermilk

1/2 of a lg box vanilla instant pudding

Fold in:

1 can pineapple chunks or tidbits, drained

grapes, apples, banana, strawberries, blueberries

This is a little thin at first. It thickens in the fridge.

"Camp Here" over the 4th of July

Well, alright, if you insist.

But we only ended up staying 2 days and 1 night because J got strep and Sweetie got the stomach flu:

Despite the sickies, we still had fun. We stayed by this lake where the kids caught disgusting-looking crawfish with self-fashioned fishing poles.

The kids played "fort," played with playdoh, played spoons, went geocaching, and did a candy hunt. H found a few pieces himself and promptly bit through the wrappers to taste the sugary goodness.

It was so nice to get out of the heat and into the mountains and the pines, especially when we could go with such great friends! Hopefully next year we'll leave the bacteria/viruses at home and have an even better time.

My baby is one today

It's 11:20 pm and the house is quiet. Everyone else is in bed, where I should be. But, while I am feeling extremely tired, I am also feeling extremely grateful. My baby turned one day, and I am grateful for his life, for his health, for the opportunities of the past year to love and to grow.

The first birthday celebration is the party that the child could do without. But the mother, never. I need to celebrate this wonderfully hard, wonderfully joyful year of adjusting to a new spirit in our home, a spirit that came with his own agenda and his own personality, and of adjusting to a new body in our home, a body that came with demands that I must meet, often before meeting my own. I need the first birthday celebration to reflect on how we have grown together, this little guy and me, this little guy and us as a family. I am grateful tonight for the chance I was given, one year ago today, to love yet another person with such breadth and depth.

Because we're in Utah (and have been for 2 weeks now), we had a big shin-dig: We went swimming all afternoon. J cooked us up some of his famous pasta, meatballs, sausage. H had 2 servings. We played memory with pics of H throughout the past year. H (with help from all of his cousins and siblings!) opened presents. I made H an egg-free cake and the rest of the hooligans egg-full cupcakes. H thoroughly enjoyed his cake, and after a quick bath for H, we capped it all off with sparklers. Happy Birthday, to our favorite little H, who is really not-so-little any longer!

My 4 favorite things about H:

(1) His hugs and kisses, especially after he wakes up

(2) His "Whoa!" when he sees any interesting food or contraption

(3) His smile--he smiles with his whole face/body

(4) His love of books. He'll tear anything and everything apart, but not books. He sits and flips through them. A boy after my own heart.