Demasiado

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Zaya stays at school until three. Mim, however, is still half-day, because none of us were willing to put up with the drama required to keep her in school all day.

As a consequence, Mim has two afternoons a week to wander around W'ville with Mommy, and she enjoys it very much. Today we went to lunch with Art at our favorite little hole-in-the-wall Chinese place, and then shopped and read books at the library. I always feel a little bad for Zaya, because I know he would rather be with me than in school. (Although, now that I think about it, he does hate shopping...)

Anyway, today I bought Zaya a bottle of Sprite at the Dollar store, because Mim still had her Sprite from lunch, and I didn't want her to flaunt her drink status. As we were leaving the school, I explained to the kids why Zaya had a bottle of Sprite. (Because, oh yes, there were questions)

Mommy: Mim, you got to eat lunch with Mommy and Daddy and run errands with Mommy today, and Zaya was in school all during that time. Also you still have some Sprite right there in your cup. Since you got something special, I wanted Zaya to have something special too.

Zaya: Mom, you're just too much.

Mommy: Too much?! What do you mean?

Zaya: (with a sigh) Mommy, you don't have to reward me for being at school all day, you know.

Where do they come up with this stuff? And why are my kids telling me what to do already?

There He Goes

Guess who learned to ride his bike with no training wheels! Ok, ok, so he's six, but still. We really haven't worked on it at all, because we didn't want to make it a Thing, but it turns out that our approach worked well. Last night, we finally pulled the bike out and Art pushed Zaya all over the street, wearing himself out and gaining no ground- or so we thought.

This afternoon, though, I told Zaya that he should work on riding his bike by himself while Mim rode hers. I'd like to take credit for deep parental perception and ability; I have to honestly say that I was being lazy. I wanted to read my book and not chase around a six year old on a tiny bike. As usual, I stood in the middle of the road reading, so that any car would see me and slow down in time for me to yell at the kids.

Anyway, after telling my son to start coasting without touching the pedals and get a feel for the bike, I buried my nose in the aforementioned escapist literature. The next thing I knew he was pedaling past me at a good clip, with a slightly dazed, frightened, exhilarated expression on his face.

Ahh..the good life. We have arrived.

Birthday Boys

This is my one and only nephew, Jack. Isn't he a doll? He is now one year old.



We celebrated a big joint birthday for Zaya and Jack this year at Grandma Teeson's house. Birthdays so far have been all cousin events, and these kids love it. They're all great at sharing, really, so it's like birthdays five times a year for each kid. They open each other's presents, blow out each other's candles, and generally seize as much joy as they can from each opportunity.



The front row is (l to r) me, Zaya, Mim, Jaida and Grandma T, with little Addy in the back. And no, Addy doesn't have a black eye. (Although she's one tough cookie, and it's only a matter of time.) She found a tube of her mommy's "all-day" lipstick, and they weren't kidding. My sister-in-law scrubbed with everything she could think of that was safe to use around a two-year-old's eye, and no luck. If you're looking for a good, long-wearing lipstick, I can recommend some for you. Just don't get it on your skin.

Anyway, everyone had a good time. Zaya got a Hot Wheels race track (previously mentioned), a DIY robot (which has been assembled and crashed several times) and a series of science models/toys.



The top shelf are the plush microbes from Christmas. The bottom are (l to r) A cross-section of skin, a virus, a bacterium, an animal cell, and a plant cell. They're very cool, and come apart in the middle and you can mess with their little mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum. And no, they aren't from ThinkGeek, although they ought to be. These are from amazon.

He saved up his birthday money and bought a plush bookworm, a transforming plush (the Squalodon unzips and turns into a Pakicetus when you turn him inside out) (or vice versa), and an electronic snap circuit board. All have been thoroughly enjoyed.

Birthday gifts are more fun when the kids grow up a bit. We didn't get pictures of the party at my parent's house, but that was a good time too, and the kids both received coloring books and crayons and markers and stickers and a generally amazing variety of art options. Art and I bought Zaya Endless Ocean: Blue World. (He has the first one, and loves it. I highly recommend it for those who have a Wii.)

There you go. Way more details than you ever wanted to know about my son's sixth birthday. This will aid my memory more than anything. Sorry.

This Is It!

I found my dream car! Now if it just had room for car-seats and juice boxes...

(Thanks to You Drive What for the picture.)

Mild Injustice

I was reminded by the post of a blogfriend of a little incident in the Dallas mall.

While we were waiting for the escalators to start up for the day, I took the kids over to one of those little playground areas where they have large, colorful foam shapes. The kids were very excited, until we saw that there was a height limit. Zaya was just barely too tall, so I wouldn't let him come inside.

He was very sad, but I didn't really know what else to do, because he could clearly read the directions and see that he reached a little higher than the line. We teach our kids to obey authority, not circumvent it if they think they can get away with it.

We were just going to all leave, but Art noticed a set of escalators that had just started working, so he took Zaya over there and I let Mim play in the play area. As soon as I took off her shoes and let her run off to play, three very large children came over, read the sign, discussed it a little bit, and then came in and started playing a very rowdy game of hide and seek tag, knocking over the little ones and generally intimidating all and sundry. Their own mother was walking around the area shopping, and totally ignoring her children.

After about ten minutes of this, Zaya came back over with Art, and looked very confused. I could see it in his eyes. "Why do those kids get to play, but I don't?"

I made Mim come put on her shoes, and we left. I tried to explain to Zaya that we don't follow the rules just because we might get in trouble, or just because other people are also doing it, but because that's the right thing to do. I think he got it, but it was frustrating anyway.

It was one of those times when I wanted to bend the rules, just a bit, and say that it would be fine. I can't do that, though. There are entirely too many adults in this world who allow their children's integrity to disintegrate before it's even fully formed. When our kids hear us lie on the phone to avoid an obligation, or park where we know we shouldn't, or tell them that they don't have to follow rules that are 'silly', then we undermine the men and women that they will become.

Vroom! Vroom!

I don't have any photographic proof, since my camera is in W'ville in Art's car, but my children are actually playing with cars and a race track! I know this doesn't seem like a big deal, but let me just tell you, it's pretty unusual around here.

We all stayed home today because Mim had a stomach bug until late this morning. She appears to be fully recovered (Please, God!) and so now we're just enjoying being together and playing. We've already watched several videos, played video games and board games together and read stories. Then I suddenly remembered Zaya's Hot Wheels track that his Aunt C got him for his birthday. I told her I thought he might like it because he enjoyed watching his friend play with one the other day.

They've actually been playing with it for 10 minutes now, which might be a record for the Teeson children and cars. We just aren't really a cars kind of family. I've tried, goodness knows. "Look Zaya, a cool car. Do you want to play with it?"

"Not really, Mom, but thanks."

I don't know if it'll ever be used again, but for right now they're having fun, and it almost feels like I have a normal family. Ha ha!

Quacks and Sparks

This is Mim's painting from this morning. As she explained to her father, "This is a picture of a duck, but some ducks messed it up!"

See the little duck prints? When she was making it she would squash the paintbrush down and say, "Quack, Quack, Quack!"

And yes. She does have a blue Gatorade mustache. She drank one today while we watched her big brother at Sparks-A-Rama. (A Church thing) Zaya's team got second place. He doesn't like second, because he says silver is not a real color. He would prefer bronze or gold. He doesn't really care about the place, just the color. Luckily, no medals were given out, so there was no silver to deal with.



This is Zay with his friend M from church. These little guys have grown up together, since they were born only a few days apart and their mommies are friends.

Listen for the Beep

About a month ago I began to notice that Mim wasn't hearing me very well. At first, I thought she was just ignoring me, and I'm sorry to say that I got very annoyed with her. But then it kept happening, and I started to realize that she literally couldn't hear me.

I told Art about it, and we've both watched her, but we thought that surely it would go away when her cold did. I made an appointment with a hearing specialist finally, because the cold and the hearing issue were both refusing to dissolve on their own. They scheduled us for next week, but had a sudden opening today, which was wonderful.

I took her in, and sure enough, she has "moderate" hearing loss. The doctor told us that it was because her ears had fluid in them, and probably an infection. I feel like a terrible mother. Not only because it's been like this, presumably, for weeks, but also because I didn't realize that her ears were infected. Of course, she has no fever and hasn't complained of any pain...but still.

Anyway, after a trip to the clinic, we now have prescriptions for anitbiotics, antihistamines and corticosteroids. Ugh. It's good news though, really, because it means this is all temporary and will be cleared up in a matter of time.

I'm so grateful that she had her appointment today, because she just happened to be hearing particularly badly today, and also that we we're able to get a clear, optimistic diagnosis.

Now I just have to remember all those prescriptions, and I'm terrible about that. One teaspoon of the pink stuff twice a day, One teaspoon of the nasty reddish stuff once a day, one teaspoon of the clear stuff once a day. And the anithistamine for Zaya too, because the doctor thinks that this "cold" we've all been complaining about for the last few weeks is really an allergy. Who knew?