Vehicles are a huge freakin' money pit

In the two months that Adam's been without a job, we've spent more money on our cars than we have in the at least the past two years. First we had to replace all the tires on the Odyssey because they were bald--to the tune of almost $600. Then a rock cracked the windshield of the Civic. Another $100 gone. And yesterday the Civic's check engine light came on. Did you know that replacing an O2 sensor costs almost $600? Well we sure know now. :(  Maybe Adam needs to switch careers or take up a car repair hobby in his spare time because OMG.

And of course this all happens right before Christmas. Seriously?!

Dear Santa...

Full of stress

Ok, so...um? Yeah. I got nothin' but a bunch of complaints. Here goes. And I'm sorry.

I've never been so consistently busy at work where I don't feel like there's enough time in the day to get everything done. For pretty much the past week, I've been in the office for 9 hours working all the way through lunch, and then logging back in at night when I get home to check emails and pull reports.

But at least i still have a job. There were layoffs at my company this week and a really great guy got let go, which was very unsettling for a lot of us. That night, I had a dream that I was the one laid off, yikes. Which leads me to...

Dude. I'm exhausted. I haven't been sleeping well because there's too much on my brain--work and otherwise. Can't shut it off to fall asleep. In fact, I started writing this on my phone at 11:15 at night to get these thoughts out of my head so I can sleep! It only sort of worked.

We're supposed to go to the beach this weekend and I can't even get my brain to comprehend all that we need to pack. And I'm worried I'll get stuck at work on Friday and not have time to actually do any packing.

Aidan and Lorelai have birthdays coming up with very few presents bought and no real parties planned. Well, Aidan will have his "party" at the beach, but with what presents? I DON'T KNOW! And I guess we'll have family over for dinner for Lorelai's birthday, but I DON'T KNOW! Lame.

And to top it all off, Adam had to travel for work this week, and now his flight is delayed and won't be home until after 11.

Whew. There's more, but that's plenty of negativity for one post.

****

So now I'll just leave you with this funny clip of Lorelai "reading" to me in the tub. I can usually understand almost everything she says, so I can assure you she was speaking legit gibberish for half of this. I hope that's not what she hears when I read to her. ;) I definitely heard something about a spider and a frog, and then advice on how to put your face in the water. "Yep! You did it." "Oh. Wrong page." Silly girl.
 

And now, with a smile on my face courtesy of my funny girl, I'm going to attempt to go to sleep. Wish me luck!

Never a dull moment

Given the perspective that Saturday gave me, I'm not really complaining, believe me. But it just seems like there's a lot more crazy and not as much lazy going on over here. And what happened last week, on top of the school issue we've been stressing about + the scare with Lorelai, just adds to the list of crazy.

With the stress from the parent/teacher conference on Thursday, I was in no mood to cook (reality check—I've just been plain old terrible about meal planning lately), so we took the kids out to Chick-fil-a for a celebratory "We're proud of you, Aidan" and "Yay for the end of the school quarter" meal. Good times.



Then we headed over to Sweet Frog for some FroYo to continue to celebration and family fun. More good times. And for the record, I'm still kind of dreaming about my mango/original tart swirl with strawberry and mango poppers, white chocolate chips, coconut sprinkles and mochi (what is that stuff anyway?!) despite what happened next.



We got the kids bathed and in bed, and relaxed on the couch watching tv for a while. Then we went to bed, and before I could even fully fall asleep, Lorelai cried out. Adam got her and yelled for me to help when he realized that she had thrown up all over herself and her bed. Whomp whomp.

Adam got her bed changed and I got her all cleaned up as best as I could—she wouldn't get in the tub so I did what I could with a soapy washcloth and shampoo in the ends of her hair over the sink (a huge PITA, btw). Got her all dressed and back in bed, but she didn't stay asleep. She called out to me so I came in her room to rock her some more. And that's when she threw up all.over.me. I had a small blanket that I tried to use to um...contain it, but I already had it all over the side of my face, neck, shirt and hands. Decidedly NOT good times.

Another massive cleanup ensued and she finally laid down and was good for the rest of the night. She never had a fever and was perfectly fine in the morning, so it must have been something she ate that her stomach disagreed with. But suffice it to say that Chick-fil-a and Sweet Frog definitely lost some of their appeal the minute it was thrown up onto my face. (You're welcome for that image. "You know you're a mom when"...amiright?)

Anyway, I'm just sayin'...I could totally use a bit of down time in between some of these more "intense" events (I know, perspective. Things could be so much worse, and for that I'm thankful). A few dull moments might be nice. ☺ But then again, I'm a parent, what can I expect?! Ha!

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The conference.

(...the saga continues)

I shouldn't have been so hopeful. The conference didn't go well. And I cried.

Basically, she fully believed that Aidan deserved a D, from the simple fact that he didn't do well on his oral presentation. Completely despite the fact that his visual presentation was "excellent." Unreasonable? I think so.

She insisted that the whole point of the project was the presentation, which wasn't at all clear based simply on the criteria in the rubric. Only the last criteria mentions the oral presentation, so there was no way to know how heavily it would be weighted. She said if we had questions about the rubric, we should have asked. But I didn't know to ask, since the rubric was clear in my mind! Would anyone else have known based on the rubric or the project information sheet that the whole point was the oral presentation?




Apparently, she docked extra points on his rubric on what I assumed to be the criteria for the written component for lack of facts and lack of organization just because he didn't communicate those facts orally from memory (she kept saying he had to look at his slides). And she didn't believe he spent time on rehearsing, even though she admitted the facts were there in the written work, and it was very organized.

Aside from that, I tried to reason with her that the overall score he got on his rubric of a 3 out of 4 is NOT the same as a 75%/D, so the way she applied the rubric was incorrect (thanks to some helpful advice from a teacher friend on the dangers of applying letter grades to 4-point rubrics: http://www.phschool.com/eteach/professional_development/four-point_rubric_score/essay.html, FYI). On a 4-point scale, a 3 indicates an acceptable level of achievement, whereas a 75%/D does not.

But she wouldn't even consider it. I truly wonder if she believes students who got a 3 on every single criteria, including their oral presentation, all deserve a D as well.

Adam got mad and I got all flustered and upset, and didn't get the answers I wanted or expected. She didn't tell me the class average or show me any example of A quality work...but I guess comparing written presentations wouldn't have mattered since she didn't care about them much. I'm now kicking myself that I couldn't go see him and his classmates present to compare for myself.

So I guess that's that. Nothing I can do about it now, except explain to Aidan that I'm proud of his work, and we'll help him practice even harder for his next presentation.

Tough lesson learned, I guess...but we'll move on.

 

It's ok buddy, only 9 more weeks of school until 4th
grade...um, where things will be even harder. Yikes... 


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A school issue and a second opinion

Aidan's big 3rd grade project for this quarter was a report on a famous African-American inventor. He chose Lonnie Johnson, and using the template provided by his teacher, he created a mock Facebook page with lots of information, after lots of research on Aidan's part. He spent a lot of time googling and reading and then (with some guidance and prompting from me, but not a ton) came up with various pieces of information to put into the template. It's actually a really cool project idea, although at first glance it seemed a little advanced for 3rd grade--what happened to a simple poster?! Here's what he came up with.







I was really proud of the work he did--summarizing what he read, paraphrasing, figuring out what he could put where, choosing images all on his own, doing the vast majority of cutting/pasting/re-sizing/formatting (he's now well-versed in the right-click/copy/paste special, ctrl-c, ctrl-v and ctrl-z!). I did help with some of the more complicated formatting issues and I helped some by typing the words he dictated to me. But in large, the work is his.

Maybe I'm biased (ok, I am, but still...), maybe I'm out of touch with expectations of freaking 3rd graders, but I'm PISSED that he got a 75 on this project. Please, someone give me a second opinion.


"...but little information on Lonnie himself" What?!?!?

Does this project look like it:

• Shows very few details about the inventor or his/her discovery. Does not go beyond basic information. (2 out of 4 on the rubric)
• Shows little organization. Very little time was spent on the project. Very few details are mentioned. Some difficulty interpreting information. (also 2 out of 4)

He also got a 1 out of 4 on his Oral presentation. I don't know otherwise because I wasn't there, but the criteria for a 1 on the rubric says "No understanding of written information. Unable to hear or understand information."

Aidan prepared notecards and practiced several times over the weekend before his presentation so I have a hard time swallowing that 1. Maybe he did mumble or read a bit too much from his slides, but I know he had a good grasp on who Lonnie Johnson is and what he's famous for. He did way too much research for that not to show at all. For this one, I'm mostly just sad that none of the practice Aidan did at home translated to his actual presentation. Maybe he got nervous, I don't know. He thought he did well, but his teacher said he couldn't answer many of the questions she asked without looking at his presentation. Is it really realistic to expect an 8-year-old to recite an entire presentation of facts from memory? That's a real question. Are most 3rd graders capable of that?

My momma bear instinct is raging right now, and I cried along with him when he came home today with this grade. Granted, I'm an overachiever by nature and rarely got bad grades myself (nerd alert!) so I cringe when I see grades like this. But if I thought Aidan truly did subpar work and deserved this grade, I wouldn't be nearly as worked up. Well I would, but for a different reason. I'd be more disappointed in myself that I didn't provide enough oversight or guidance to make sure he did well. But I did this time. And he really tried. And learned. And it looks good, damnit!

I really do welcome any and all opinions. If my mom-bias has clouded my judgement, please let me know. I want to go into the conference with his teacher next week with a clear head and realistic expectations.

Blah and ugh with a side of seriously?!

This basically sums up how I feel right now.



Work is craaaazy this week. I've got a cold that won't go away, so I just feel exhausted, run down, blah, and ugh. And to top it all of, I got freakin' pink eye again. Just me, not the kids. Seriously?!? (On the positive side, I had a refill on my drops from the last time I had it, so I didn't have to go to the doctor.)

I'm just ready for this week to be over. Hold me. Or "hold you" as Lorelai would say.

On the bright side...

Today was one of those days that just went wrong right from the beginning. Starting with the realization that I'm getting sick (ouch, my sinuses!), almost being late to the bus stop, scrambling to get stuff done at work... blah blah blah one annoying thing after another...and ending with one of Lorelai's most epic meltdowns to date (oh hello, terrible twos).

But in an effort to practice what I've been trying to preach to the boys, I'm going to stop dwelling on the negative and look at the bright side:

• Adam is home now after a work trip.
• The weather was really nice today.
• I got positive feedback on some information I presented during a meeting today (which almost made up for a slight dig about something else at work).
• There's pumpkin spice coffee at work.
• The week is more than halfway over.
• The kids are in bed and Survivor is on, so I can totally veg on the couch from now until bedtime.

 I'm hoping a good night sleep is all I need to wake up on the right side of the bed tomorrow.


“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.” ~John Wayne

Some of my patience flew to Tampa

If there's one thing I've realized with Adam's more frequent traveling, it's that he must be the source of some of my patience, because when he's gone my fuse is much shorter with the kids.

All the pressure is on me to get everything done--going in 3 different directions all at once, with no backup, and I guess I'm just no good under pressure.

I know I shouldn't complain because moms do this all the time. And really, it's not that big of a deal for a few days at a time, but when you're so used to parenting as a team and having that backup, it's difficult when your teammate has to bail. Because apparently Aidan and Logan only do something after both Adam and I have asked them...more than once.

I have a sneaking suspicion though, that if Aidan and Logan would just LISTEN to me and do something the FIRST time I ask, I would have patience to spare! And if they would just quit riling each other up while I'm tending to Lorelai (and quit riling her up while I'm tending to the house), maybe they would actually be able to hear me without me having to yell. A novel concept that they clearly don't understand yet. They also apparently don't understand that they have to shower, brush teeth, pick out their clothes and pick up their toys EVERY NIGHT. OMG.

Sigh, we all miss him. And my patience.




(But I'm really going to work on developing that patience to spare.)

Seriously??

Pardon me while I vent for a bit, because sometimes it's just good to let things out and (hopefully) move on...

• Adam has to be out of town on Logan's birthday and the day after for a last-minute work trip, so we had to reschedule his party and cross our fingers that Logan doesn't get too upset that his dad can't be there for his special day. :(

• On weekdays, Lorelai almost always sleeps (or stays happily quiet) until 7:15ish, when it's time to get her ready for daycare. But of course both days last weekend, she was wide awake and screaming for me at 6:45.

• PowerPoint "smart art" is totally NOT. How does dragging a shape bigger actually make it smaller?

• My walk tracker app's interval mode doesn't have any kind of alert when the interval changes. What good does that do me?!

•  Why do people close the bathroom stall door behind them when they're done so no one else knows if someone is in there? Do they think they're so special that they get their own private bathroom at work?

• I was doing so great with my nightly workouts and then TWC got rid of the only On Demand programs I was using!

• 
  

  I'm pretty sure there was a parent cheating at our elementary school fundraiser last Friday. The kids get pledges for the number of laps they run, and as they complete each lap, they get a mark on their shirt. There was this one girl (bless her heart) who didn't/couldn't run any part of it, yet 5 minutes before the race was done, she magically had marks for all 35 laps. In the grand scheme of things, I guess it's not the biggest deal ever. The end result of more laps is more money for the school, but what does that teach her, or the other kids who weren't "fortunate" enough to have a parent/volunteer cheat for them (and there were several others I saw who only had 18-20 laps marked since they were walking as well)?

 

(Aidan and Logan worked hard to run the max of 35 laps all on their own, thankyouverymuch!)

I can't go through this again

Three years ago, we went through a really rough time with Logan. So rough that we took him to a child psychologist a couple of times because I thought he was emotionally unstable and we needed help dealing with it. He would freak out and throw tantrums over the littlest of issues, and would become completely irrational and unreasonable and physically violent. He would tell us "I want to hurt you" and become physically violent with us and sometimes try to hurt himself. It was terrifying and horribly difficult to live through. And this went on for probably close to 6 months. Without a doubt, this was the most difficult parenting challenge I've ever had to face.

Then we got through it, I chalked it up to a phase that he grew out of, blocked out some of the most horrible encounters from my memory, and moved on. He still had some outbursts, but nothing like he used to have. Until last week. And then again last night.

It all started with a simple mistake in the way he wrote the number 3 on one of his papers from school. When I helpfully corrected him, he became angry and insisted that the way he wrote it was right, and that every other number 3 in the world was wrong. He insisted, despite me and Aidan calmly pointing out other examples throughout the house. He tried to rip up his paper, and when I refused to let him by putting the paper where he couldn't reach it, he launched into a fit of rage.

He kicked me, punched me in my arms, my throat and my head, pinched me, pushed me, screamed at me. All despite my calm, but firm voice (which I'm impressed I was able to mostly maintain) begging and pleading with him to stop, and my insistence that I loved him and wanted to help him get through it. He was relentless and very difficult for me to physically restrain.

At the point where I got punched in the throat and had to pin Logan on the ground to protect myself, I couldn't help but cry, which then really upset Aidan and made him cry. On his birthday, of all days. It was a terrible ordeal that didn't end until Adam got home to talk some sense into him. And then he was fine and we went to Moe's for Aidan's birthday as planned. It's like he's two different people.

Later that night at bedtime, he told me he doesn't like being wrong, and was mad that I told him he was wrong. This is really scary to me, because what if he reacts that way when his teacher tries to help him when he's wrong? How do we prevent that?

I'm literally sitting here crying right now and sick to my stomach with worry, because I can't go through this again. I can't watch as my child screams that I don't love him and he doesn't love me, and he would rather die than do what I want him to do. I can't physically handle his force now that he's bigger. And there's so much more at stake now that he's in public school.

The physical bruises hurt, but the pain in my heart and the fear of what's to come and what this means about the person he's going to become is too much to bear. Where did my sweet Logan go and how can I get him back?

iPhone photo dump {week 23}

Tons of photos here to make up for the lack of posts this week while I was just enjoying our day off on Wednesday and the strange work week. I could get used to having a day off in the middle of every week!

Let's start in the middle of the week with July 4th. In the morning, we strolled around Target, birthday present shopping for cousin Shaun. Then we we just hung out at the house while Lorelai napped, until it was time to head to our friend's house for a cookout/birthday party. I guess the Target shopping tired her out, because we had to wake her up (the only upside to waking a sleeping beauty is that I was able to get a rare picture of her sleeping, awwww). At the party, the kids played on an awesome blow up water slide while the adults chatted, drank beer and ate our faces off. No fireworks for us this year, I think Lorelai is too young for all that noise. Happy birthday America, and happy birthday, Katherine.



And here's what the rest of the week looked like:


Highlights:

• Lorelai snuggles are always a highlight. Always.
• The boys have been doing so much better playing Star Wars Wii and not getting frustrated and mad at each other. 
• Lorelai has been really into her baby doll since last week. We named her "Emmy" (after a friend named Emily in Lorelai's class who she mentions all the time). Emmy likes to eat bananas and kiwi, and doesn't even care if they're shoved forcefully in her face :)
• We had a family game night and played several rounds of UNO. I won the first game, oh yeah!
• As soon as we pulled into the Chick fil a parking lot, Lorelai took off her shoes and kept saying something about a doctor. Once we got inside, I realized she was talking about the helicopter in the play area, and had already taken off her shoes so she could go play. The child has only been into that play area once, and she remembered it all. Amazing! But it was really hard to convince her to eat when the helicopter was so close...

Lowlights:

• What a convenient time, during a record hot streak, to discover that our upstairs a/c unit is not working right (the fan is running backwards or something?!). We already knew we had duct work issues, but now it's no wonder why my bedroom has been 85 degrees until the sun goes down. 
• On Friday, we had a neighborhood-wide power outage. Thank goodness for a mostly charged 3DS to entertain the kids until Adam got home. It went out at about 5pm, and since I couldn't make dinner, we headed to Chick fil a for food and play area fun. Thankfully, it was on by the time we got home.
• Random vent: no wonder I've gained weight, I eat like crap. I have no will power at all. After a particularly depressing moment on the scale after a July 4th binge, I've resolved (again) to lay off the junk food, especially at work. At least the lean cuisines and apples I've been eating are tasty, but I've been freaking hungry all week! And for me, hungry=grumpy. I really really miss my breastfeeding metabolism.

Linking up with Amy @ a good life.

Change of plans

So a funny thing happened today when I went to go get my eyeballs sliced: I didn't. Yep, I'm just as nearsighted as I was when I made the hour plus drive to the laser eye center this morning, shaking like a leaf.

Turns out, my eyes are too dry today to ensure a good outcome, so the doctor recommended I wait. He said if it was his wife or sister, he wouldn't do the surgery and strongly recommended against it. Of course, hearing that made me totally agree, despite being in near tears over not being able to get it done as planned. He's not sure why they're so dry all of a sudden, but it could be effects from the pink eye last week, or the drops, or a combo of the drops. Who knows. But basically, all that anxiety and anticipation, not to mention the drive...all for nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. He put plugs in my tear ducts gave me a crap ton of drops that I'm basically supposed to flood my eyes with until next Friday when they were able to reschedule me. I'm hoping to get an pre-op appointment at the office near me next Wednesday so the doctor can re-check my eyes to see how they're doing before mom and I trek all the way back out to the other center. Fingers crossed I'll be good to go by then!

I do have to say that as much as it sucked to walk away today, I totally appreciate that the doctor had my best interests in mind and was willing to do the right thing instead of the easy thing. I'm also so appreciative of my mom who's willing to chauffeur me back and forth and didn't get upset that she has to do it all over again next week.

Dear glasses, I'm so sick of you. XOXO, Becky

PS: To clarify about the whole two different places thing, I'm getting my LASIK done by TLC and had my initial consultation at their office in Raleigh. They have a sister office in Greensboro and the same doctor operates in both locations, the only difference is the lasers they use. The one in Greensboro will work better for my eye, leaving more cornea left over in the event that I need any future enhancements. Hence the drive.

Jinx

Quick, someone say my name 3 times fast and maybe the sleep issues we've been having for the past few days will magically disappear. Wait, that's not how it works?! Crap.

See, I knew I shouldn't have said anything about sleep, because all of a sudden, Lorelai has started waking up at the butt crack of dawn in a bad mood. Normally, during the week I go in to her room to get her at 6:45 and she's usually still laying down (though not always asleep). On the weekends, she's been known to sleep (or stay quiet in her bed) until as late as 8:30!

Not lately though. Since Saturday, the latest she's slept is 6am. On Monday she was crying at 4am so I tried to rock her back to sleep. She wasn't having any of that so I brought her into bed with me. She was restless, so Adam decided to take her downstairs and try to get her to fall asleep on the couch with him like she sometimes does.



Sleeping on the couch isn't ideal, but it's better than not sleeping at all!


No such luck. He said she maybe dozed off and on for about 30 minutes, but was wide awake and restless the whole time. Same thing this morning, starting at 5am. I'm thinking it must be a growth spurt, but of course I worry that she's having some sort of reaction to the whole milk we've started gradually adding to her breast milk (hopefully not, but It's just in my nature to worry about things like this).

Whatever it is, I'm ready for this phase to be over! Aside from me being tired, she's more tired and cranky, which is making her transition to the toddler room at daycare this week a bit rocky so far, and her evenings full of tears. I really do like to think of Lorelai as a generally happy baby, but lately that image is becoming a little tarnished...

Cranky baby girl

I want my sweet, smiley, good sleeper back...pretty please?

Things that go bump in the night

I have no idea what our neighbor is up to, but he gets random visitors pulling up to his house day and night. Of course I'm nosy and want to know what in the world he's got going on. I mean, he's a middle aged man, how popular could he really be at 2:30 in the morning?

Granted, I don't know much about him at all besides the fact that his previous house got foreclosed so now he's renting in our neighborhood, he does carpentry in his garage all the time, and he's got a son in college. In my mind he's totally a drug dealer, but that's just me being a complete drama queen and rumormonger. I don't really think that. At least not all the time...

Well last night at like 2:30 or something, one of his visitors pulled up with the bass bumping loud enough to wake me up. This inconsiderate jackass sat there in his car for at least a half an hour with the music on while I tried to sleep. Seriously!?! Who in the world thinks that's ok???

Since Adam and I weren't going to confront them in person, I've got to take it out passive-aggressively here.

crappy phone pic of the cutest bird flipping ever ;)

So there! Vent over, I feel better. As long as it doesn't happen again!