We changed preschools, and holy schmoley did we change worlds.  In the one week my daughter has been attending the new preschool, she’s received four birthday party invitations.  Four.

Okay, great, except her birthday falls right in the middle of all these other birthdays, which means I had to scramble and organize a party!  Tomorrow I’ll be filling out invites.  Yowza.

And they seem to take these parties seriously.  Okay mama, time to step up your game!

The boy was supposed to have his school pictures taken yesterday, but the photographer was sick and so they were rescheduled.  A proactive dad decided to step up and take class pictures since the kids were already all dressed up and jazzed about having their pictures taken.

Asher is in the center back, in a handknit sweater of course.

This is what came home in my 3 year old’s backpack today from her first day at the new preschool.  This is a huge change from the single worksheets we would get from the old preschool.  What really pleases me is that in all of the notes for parents, there isn’t a single typo, spelling, or grammatical error.

I’m so glad we changed schools.

Oh, and she already has an invitation to a birthday party.  Uh oh.

My darling husband and I were cleaning up the front room, and thought the kids were playing in their play kitchen.  They were supposed to be putting away toys, but seriously, so long as they aren’t underfoot during pick-up time we are better off.

So, we finally finish picking up 7,231 legos, 113 puzzle pieces, and an ungodly number of unmatched socks and assorted pieces of toy sets.  And we are planning on buying these kids more presents for birthdays and Hanukkah?  I need to have my head examined, but I digress.

We finally finish and DH goes into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and I hear him holler for me. Always a great way to get my attention.  So, I get up having just sat down with a magazine and go into the kitchen, where there is, once again, flour all over my floor.  Everywhere.  The boy again got into the flour canister and this time, did a thorough job.  The floor, a paper bag, all over everything on the bottom of the open shelves, and of course filling one of his gym shoes to the top, all with bread flour.

Okay, well we did leave him for 37 seconds unsupervised, so this is not unexpected.  We get to work cleaning this new mess.  DH has the brilliant idea to use his shop-vac.  Hooray!  He doesn’t need my help if he’s going to shop-vac it all up, so I get to go back to my magazine.

Color me a happy mama.

He forgot one thing though.  There was no filter on the shop-vac.

My kitchen finely dusted in bread flour, and the cute culprit #1

Guess who now has a completely scrubbed down kitchen?  At least we got a good laugh out of it.

Cupcake Thief

My beautiful, brave, brilliant boy isn’t a talker.  In fact, he doesn’t talk.  He has about 8 words, which he uses along with grunts and pointing, pulling and showing, to get what he wants.  He communicates rather well, but is also very frustrated.  A vocabulary of “hi, carcar, up, mama, nana (daddy), khiiii (cat), hoo (more like blowing hard – dog), and the newly discovered bu (bubby)” just doesn’t get him very far.

The problem is that he is 27 months old.  He has the expressive speech development of a 12 month old.  I know.  We had him tested.

He starts speech therapy next week, but in the meantime, in the month since he was tested and we met with some experts, we’ve been working on teaching him sign language.  He’s been picking it up faster than we have, so the only thing slowing him down at this point is the adults lack of knowledge of the language he can communicate in.

Okay, so that’s a lot of preface but I haven’t talked at all about his speech delay on the blog before so I needed to bring everyone up to speed.  Caught up?  Good.

Last week we went to a Peter Yarrow concert at the Rialto Theatre in Joliet, IL.  Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary.  Both Peter and Noel Paul Stukey were there, and the concert was amazing.  We loved introducing the kids to the music we both grew up with, although they already know most of the songs from my constant singing.

Well, they had a special guest at this concert, a young man named Seth.  Seth came out onstage and signed several of the songs as the were performed.  It was amazing.  And my little boy, who can hear just fine, but can’t get his voice to make the words he needs to communicate, recognized a kindred spirit in this young man signing on stage.

My boy stood up as tall as he could in daddy’s lap and started signing back up to the stage with all his might.  I don’t know what all he was trying to say, and I don’t think they could see him from the stage, but I had so many tears in my eyes and running down my face that I couldn’t tell you anyway.

My little boy knew the man on stage was talking with his hands, and my boy was going to communicate back with him if it took everything he had!

Well, he fell asleep before the end of the concert, so we didn’t get to try to find Seth at the book signing afterwords, but let me put this out for the world.  Seth, you are a hero, thank you.

My daughter goes to preschool through the park district.  Her class meets twice a week from 9:15-11:45 a.m.  There is another preschool program (for slightly older kids) that meets from nine to noon.  These programs run all school year, on the same days.  Easy to predict, right?

The park district also runs programs for Seniors during the day.  Not a problem.

Except today they scheduled the Seniors New Years Party (don’t even get me started on that silliness) to begin at noon.  It’s a free party.  Hooray!  So, over 250 seniors signed up.  They all drive themselves.  The party is scheduled to start at noon, so they all arrive early to get signed in.  Early as in they start arriving at 11 am and fill the entire parking lot, park illegally, fills all the side streets, etc.

Oh, and many of them (not all, but enough that my toddler and I almost got hit walking into the building) drive like IDIOTS!

I had to park 3 blocks away, in January in Chicago, to pick up my daughter from school.

The preschool director was so concerned about the safety of kids today, that she decided to shorten the preschool day and have the parents pick the kids up 15 minutes early.  But the only notice of this was a sign on the classroom door this morning.

Would it be too much to ask that they schedule the adult party to start AFTER preschool lets out?  It takes time to bundle these little kids up and get them out the door, buckled into the cars, and go.  They could have arranged for the Seniors party to start at 1. Which would have given a nice buffer.  But no.

Instead, it is scheduled to start at noon, which gives the 2 year old classroom 15 minutes to get out the door and parking lot before the party officially starts, and the 3-4 year olds no time at all.

Not that it mattered anyway because everyone arrived early for the party and was milling around in all of the hallways leaving no space to actually put the kids coats on, or look at their artwork that they made today, or any of the usual “pick up routine”.

Give me a break!  A little prior planning isn’t too much to ask for!

I can’t wait to talk to the scheduling person for the park district tomorrow.  She is of course busy today with the party.

Grrrr.

Self Rescuing Princess

Happy Birthday to my little girl.  I can’t believe that you only came into our world 3 years ago, and at the same time, I can’t believe you are 3 already.  You were such a teeny tiny thing.  You fit in your Uncle Nate’s hand when you were born.  Now, you are a big girl.

You are sitting next to me resting your head on my arm, which makes it hard to type I must admit, wearing a birthday crown and Mardi Gras bead necklace.

We just finished frosting your birthday cake, and you were so helpful.  Shaking the sprinkles was your second favorite part.  You preferred licking the frosting off your fingers, the spatula, the plate, and out of the container.

You are smart as a whip, and so helpful it sometimes hurts.  You are my miracle and my wonder, forever and always.

I love you.

Miriam's birthday cake

Happy birthday big girl!

Kids helping daddy with his work

Woke up feeling much better this morning.  If I were to ignore the marching band and cannons in my head, and the sniffles, I could even go so far as to say I feel good.  I decided that with this new found “well” feeling, and energy, I’d do something nice for my family.  I pulled out two heavy frying pans, and set to work making French Toast from the leftover Challah, and cooking up some turkey bacon.  We’d use cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving on the french toast, and have a really good, hearty breakfast before we planned our day.

So, there I am in my sushi pajamas cooking away, in a good mood.  My little helper, the dude, pulled a chair over to the counter and climbed up.  He loves to watch me cook, and be helpful.  He’s very good at handing mommy a spoon, or throwing away a paper towel.  I don’t know that I could cook without his help any more.

Well, today his chair was a wee bit off from where he normally puts it.  So, I’m cooking, and everything is fine.  Then he decided to reach out and touch the pan.  Yeah.

He grabbed the edge of the non-stick pan that the french toast was frying in.  Luckily, there was no oil or anything where he grabbed, and it wasn’t the cast-iron pan.  He yelped and pulled his hand away quickly.  I managed to catch the pan by the handle, steady it, and at the same time catch the dude as he fell off his chair.  I ran him to Jason, who was already in the bathroom helping our princess, and he ran A’s hand under cold water while I turned everything off in the kitchen and fetched the first aid kit.

It turns out the dude’s hand is okay.  He has a very minor burn along his index finger and thumb.  No blister or anything.  Within 10 minutes he was back playing and using his hand as if nothing was wrong with it.

I’m not sure I’m going to recover though.

Oh, breakfast turned out to be wonderful by the way.  Just slightly delayed and tasting of fear.

I’m sick, I’ve been battling a cold for several days and now the cold meds seem to have declared war on my digestive system.  My body is not a fun place to be right now.

Little man also seems under the weather.  He was running a fever of 101.0 last night, but woke up fever free.  He’s been throwing up occasionally, but then playing and being active.

Given all of this though, I’ve decided to back off on his potty training for now.  We had a couple of days where it looked really good, but since Thanksgiving, it’s just been an exercise in frustration and tears for both boy and mommy.  Daddy was working hard with him still, but having no success.

So, we put the little man back in a diaper and everything seemed good.

Then I walked by the bathroom after grabbing a fresh box of tissues from the garage, and there was little man with his pants off, and the toilet lid up, trying to take off his diaper and climb up onto the potty at the same time.

If I weren’t so dizzy I would have helped him.  As it was, I hollered for the Daddy person, who came and helped the dude get up there, sit for a minute or so, and earn his M&M.

We’ll try again once the momma is feeling better.

I promise, the potty training updates will end soon.  I just had to share this observation about the difference between boys and girls.

When you potty train a girl and she “gets it”, the puddles are pretty much over.  When you potty train a boy, and he “gets it”, now instead of having to wash a diaper, you have to wash the floor, the wall, the sink, the book you were reading to him, and shower and change your clothes.  Girls aim down.  Boys aim everywhere.