Engineer, a normally slow to dress himself child, bounded into my room this morning around 7:45 and exclaimed, "It’s the first day of kindergarten!"  By the time I rolled myself out of bed he was fully dressed and asked if we could get in the car.  For the next hour and a half all I heard from the child was, "Is it time to go yet?"

Kindergarten is going to so totally rock.

He met with his teacher today for 20 minutes and he couldn’t understand why he had to leave so soon.  He had a hard time answering the teacher’s questions because he was so distracted by all the letters and numbers around the room.  He kept looking around and making observations.  "Where’s the Z?  Oh, it fell down?  The U is going to fall down too…"  The child was in his element.  I don’t think he would have had a bigger high if he’d eaten cotton candy for breakfast.

While I was in the hall, another mom (realizing this was my first to go to school) asked me how I was doing.  I said I was great.  No qualms, no issues.  Feeling fine.  It wasn’t until (like Kathyrn) I was filling out some paperwork that I got a little fazed by it all.  The last question on the page was somewhat to the effect of, "what makes your child a special person?"  And how do you answer that?  I mean, he’s special because he’s mine?  He special because he’s my first born, chubby cheeked baby boy?  I wanted to write all about his sweetness and his brilliance.  How he calls me into his room when he can’t sleep and says, "Mommy, will you just talk to me?"  How he still gives me random hugs.  How even though his knowledge has increased, that nearly everything his teacher quizzed him on today he could have answered when he was still this boy: 

I can hardly believe my drinking milk from a straw cup, sleeping with his letters j & k, baby boy is entering the public school system.   Am I a little emotional?  No.  Nope, not really.  No.  Not at all.

Okay.  A bit.  Just a little bit. 

My sweet little Spider,

In my prayers last night I told Heavenly Father how thankful I am for you.  You are our little act of faith– an unexpected blessing.  You are the child that brings balance to our family.  My little snug a bug and my source of endless smiles and laughter.  You just continue to become more of a delight the older you get, and that makes me glad.

I can’t believe that you are two!  I love watching you grow and hearing you learn to talk. You are so teachable and a quick learner.  Yesterday we got to put all my eyeshadows and cheek colors away and I found joy in hearing you repeat all the color names with me.  How many other people get to hear their two year olds say "sunny spice", "sweet plum", or "ivory 1"?

I love your love of animals both real and inanimate.  If I could give you a real dog, I would, because I know you would be best friends.  As it is, watching you tote around all your pluffies makes me smile.  I love that you need them to sleep.

I love your general cuteness.  You are going to be the end of me!  It is so hard to resist when you pull me hand and say "Come wis ME!" and lead me to the fridge where you tenderly ask for a "pockle" (popsicle.)  It’s so hard to say no to you!  And even when you get mad you are cute. I could just give you kisses all day long.

And I love that on your birthday, you and me had some special time.  You sat and played with me and my sunglasses (and my earrings and necklace…) and we got to take crazy pictures together.  I love you, Spider.  I am so glad Heavenly Father gave me you and that I get to be your mommy.

Happy Birthday baby! 

So while on our Pennsylvania vacation we were lucky enough to get funned out at a couple of theme parks– Dutch Wonderland and Hershey Park.  (This post is full of pictures, by the way).  Both have waterpark features.  While at Hershey Park the boy (Engineer) lost his underwear in between changing from his regular clothes to his swimsuit, etc…  So for the latter half of the day he freestyled it.  He did pretty well– not much complaining or anything– and I was impressed.  At 11 pm as we are leaving the park, he casually says, "I sure do miss my underwear."

And we are now all laughing.

And now, the photo journal of Dutch Wonderland and Hershey Park!

Spider loves the carousel with an excessive passion.  Everytime she would see one, it was "Ah! Ponies!  Ah! Ah! Ah!"  It was her birthday the day we went to Dutch Wonderland, and we indulged the little princess I don’t know how many times.

I just love this picture of Sugar:

And then there’s the Boy, the endless bench rider.  He is like an extreme mini me when it comes to his ride "chicken-ness."  It’s just a little ol’ carousel!

Oh the Dutchness:

At least someone is smiling at the camera:

This ride (Hershey Park) ticked me off.  It has these tiny ponies on it, but they won’t let toddlers ride (they could fall off because mom and dad can’t ride either.)  Spider had a total meltdown when the ride guy said she was too short.  Soooo many kids walked away from this ride crying for the same reason.  But lucky for us, before the ride started an old man took over and he said she could ride as long as I was sure she wouldn’t fall off.  I was ever so grateful that the sadness was over.

This ride was cute: 

And also lame as shown by this girl I don’t know.  She did this the whole ride and I thought it was funny.Clearly she was trying to tell her parents her disapproval of this dopey ride.

We ate lemons!  And rode a little train! 

And yet again… (Good thing I look so good after a day at the waterpark.  Eew.)

And the day is done.  Spider with Daddy’s new t-shirt.

Or at least that’s how she percieves it.  Always on the go– with lots of carseats and small kids.  I can relate.

 P.S.  There is but one carseat.  All the rest of the "babies" are secured with the orange "string."  That is how they are kept safe.

My freshman roommates in played their music loud and late because they didn’t have any classes at 8:00 am.  I neither shared their taste in "music" nor their non-morning class schedule so many a night I would stumble into the kitchen squinty eyed and sour faced and request a volume adjustment.  I met with much resistance and it was later brought to my attention that if I just asked nicer, than they would be more accomadating. 

So the next time it happened, I fluffed my hair, opened my eyes and with a smile on my face said to them, "dear roommates, as much as I enjoy the sounds coming from the kitchen at this late hour, and as much as I desire for you to have as enjoyable a study session as possible, the volume is a bit much for my tender ears.  Do you think it would be possible, do you think you could maybe please turn down the sound so that I may be rested for my early classes tomorrow?  Oh please oh please, it would mean so much to me."

Fine.  Not that exactly, but I did say please.  And I did try to smile. 

And despite my best efforts I was told that I was still not very nice about that way I asked for them to turn their music down.  (I have since concluded that most people just don’t like being told what to do no matter how pleasant you are about it, but that is a topic for another time.)  So I continued to try to improve, and they continued to shut me down.  And I continue to experience this kind of thing in my life, because I am unfortunately cursed with the I-will-offend-you-no-matter-how-hard-I-try-to-say-it-nicer-if-there-is-even-a-remote-chance-that-you-could -be-offended-by-the-content-of-my-comment disease.  Sad but true.

And it is apparently genetic. 

The other day I asked Engineer ever so nicely to please clean up his toys (okay, I TOLD him to with a snotty tone) and he in return told me to ‘GO AWAY’.  I reminded him that he should not speak to me that way and that it made me sad when he talked to me like that.  He paused, put a sweet, if not slightly whiny, tone in his voice and said, "Mommy, will you please leave because we are just so sick of you." 

I laughed.  And then I grounded him for life. 

And then I wished I had not passed him this particular legacy. 

…because all they need is a big piece of foam that they can make into a slide or a "hole."

We are just having so much fun with our chicks.  We finally took them outside to play!

Aren’t they adorable?  The kids just love them. 

Rosie loves them too.  We took this picture a couple of days ago, but today I caught her sitting in the brooder with them. 

Chicks are fun!  And so far, really easy.  We just got the four, two rhode island reds and two black australorps.  They all should be layers of brown eggs.  That is if one isn’t a rooster… We can’t keep a rooster where we live, and I don’t know what we’ll do if one ends up a boy (we have 90% odds of all females).  I told Charming, I couldn’t eat one of my own chickens.  They are my babies! 

So for Earth Day today, we decided to do a fun little craft that I found on the internet. (Though I will tell you now, all I did was decorate the cans and put dirt in them, none of that drilling they called for over there.)  We rinsed out cans and containers (recycling!) and used fun scrapbook paper to decorate them.  Then we filled them with dirt and herb seeds.

The lovely Laylee and Magoo (oh yeah, and their mom too) came for some Earth Day festivities and we had a fantabulous time playing outside (yay, sunshine!) and then herbing away.

To do the craft the kids first drew a picture and wrote the name of the herb they were going to plant on a little paper.  Engineer and Laylee’s handwriting was quite impressive, while Magoo’s was quite Kathryn’s.  Both Magoo and Sugar were sort of helpless about the drawing part– Magoo insisted that he simply COULD NOT do it himself and to his mom said, "you DO IT," and Sugar just begged for assistance. I wrote and illustrated the label that Sugar quickly turned into "blueberry oregano" by using a blue crayon to fill it all in.

It was very fun, and very naptime.

And after it was all over, I received a special package in the mail.  Some plants I had ordered online.  (On Earth Day, how appropriate.)  As I was looking at the packing slip, I read something really funny– down near the bottom it said, "You are going to rock this gardening experience."  And I laughed and thought, "I SO am."  No really I was thinking, "they are so humorous over there.  What a funny thing to put on a packing slip."  And then I laughed even harder as I remembered my online ordering experience had allowed me to input some notes.

Yeah, it was a message I had sent myself.  I’m still chuckling about it.  

And here is our finished project:

I overheard Sugar last night singing a little ditty to her baby doll. My first thought was, “what kind of garbage has she been listening to on the radio?” because her song definitely had a funky, rapperesque, hip-hop feel to it. When I found out what the words were, I had to laugh, and this video continues to crack me up. She has come up with her own hip-hop, primary song fusion.