So, we got a dog. Meet Miss Dixie.

My life as I knew it is temporarily on hold until I am through the stage of chasing her away from the carpeted staircase, spraying Bitter Apple on my bamboo area rug border, twice daily trips to the lake for an extensive game of fetch and chase, a walk around the neighborhood, 8x to the backyard for potty time, waking up before dawn to sit under the moon, my hands becoming chew toys and the process of bonding a boy to his dog.

I am desperate to knit but I have not had time, and besides, Dixie has already found my Louisia Harding Angora and managed to unravel about 1/2 a yard before I caught her and relocated my knit bag to a secret location.

She's a good dog, overall, but being 7 weeks old, she's a HANDFUL. Training is demanding, but I'm determined to try!

In other news, I'm a bit anxious because Judah's Optimus Prime costume is in the mail, but not at my house and he needs it by Tuesday. Our eBay seller dragged her heels on the shipment and so now I'm watching the mailbox faithfully and just praying it arrives tomorrow. His school costume parade is Tuesday!

Filed under "You know you're a parent when..." you spend a full hour with your nose pressed to the glass at Krispy Kreme watching donuts make their way through the conveyor belt, toast in the hot oil and pass through the glaze waterfall. Judah was completely fascinated by the mechanics. A cup of coffee, three donuts later and our little family considered this a terrific Friday night.

Micheal did carpool today (I need to thank him for covering me this week while I get ready for my meeting!) When he and Judah got home, I greeted them at the garage door. Judah looked up at me with wide eyes and asked, "Mama, are you hurt?" I said, "No!" Then he asked, "Do you have a cough?" I didn't understand why he was asking until he pulled out a construction paper "doctor satchel" in which he had pasted a red first aid cross and filled with a tongue depressor, a medicine dispenser, a Q-tip, a piece of gauze, two cotton balls, a latex glove and a Band-aid. I feigned a coughing fit and he grabbed me by the hand saying, "Come on, Mama, you need to lay down on the couch so I can fix you all better." He filled the medicine dispenser with water from the sink and had me prop up on a pillow to drink it. I did feel better! :-) He put the Band-aid on me and then rubbed the cotton balls all over my face and arms. Then, he finished up by wetting the gauze and placing it on my arm. Such a sweet boy.

This is going to be our busiest weekend in a while. I went out with the moms in Jude's PK4 class last night, had a breakfast meeting w/Morgan related to our church volunteer work, got back to my regional board meeting prep (been pulling 11 hour days this week...working whenever I can...miss my family!). I had to bake cookies at the crack of dawn today because I'm a home baker at school and we've got a fall festival tomorrow where baked goods, books, music, etc will be sold. Tomorrow I get a couple hours to myself while the boys go sailing, then it's off to the school festival where I am the class shift coordinator and am working a shift of my own with my friend Tiffany. Sunday is church, seasonal decorating of the church playgrounds and campus, then a birthday party followed by a Cowboys viewing party.

"Getcha popcorn ready!" - T.O.

Next week is going to be my hell week of getting my board meeting locked and loaded (it nearly is, so maybe the remaining bits will be sorted out by Tuesday!), then next weekend is fall break where we're hopefully going to the ranch for a few days of R&R, then back for the meeting, followed by another weekend at another ranch with high school friends of Micheal's and then Halloween carving and trick or treating, capped off by a Rocky Horror party in early November. Whew!

Somehow in the middle of all of this, I'm knitting socks for Socktoberfest, a scarf for Judah, which I have love/hate for the merino it's being knit with (the up side is it's soft and has good drape, the down side is it sucks the moisture out of my hands and I am not fond of the colorway and intense fuzziness now that it's knit up.) It looked prettier when it was wound up in a ball.
I'm busy adding my projects to Ravelry and my books to LibraryThing. And thinking of adding a 5th knit project - Maine Morning Mitts (copyright Clara Parkes) out of the ball of Noro Kureyon that was to be a hat for Judah, but I am repurposing for these fingerless mittens. I'm rereading Harry Potter's Goblet of Fire, rereading Pride and Prejudice (for the millionth time) and also poking through Pat Conroy's The Water is Wide.

Kiss the Girls

We are completely settled into our fall schedule, though I feel like I am busier and needing to stay more focused on my calendar than ever before. Between work responsibilities (a board meeting, and two conferences in Sydney, Australia and San Juan, Puerto Rico), school (Annual Fund Grade Level Sponsor, Fall Festival Shift Coordinator), personal (PK4 soccer, social engagements) and church (Parent Leader for 4/5 year olds)...whew...there's never much down time and though I do fantasize about just "sitting down", when I do, I feel guilty and restless like I should be doing something and just go around cleaning things.

Judah has been thriving at school this year. He's pre-reading and very interested in books. He speaks a smattering of Spanish quite frequently and seems comfortable switching between the two languages. He gets to play with schoolmates just about every single weekend.

An amusing development is a friendship with a little girl in his class who for the past few weeks, according to her parents, has become very interested in Judah. We had dinner at their house last night and they told us that she kissed Judah at school. Sometime later that night, Judah called me into the living room and said that she was trying to kiss him again. He, being a boy, was reacting by tactical diversion. Trains, TV, jumping off the sofa, wrestling, anything to avoid THE KISS. He **absolutely adores** her, but I think he's entering the very beginning stages of "girls, gross!"

A funny comment by Judah this week while playing with pretend cheese. He was grating it and told me, "Mama, I'm cheddaring the cheese."

Any discussion about people behaving badly, such as when I told him that Marion Jones might be stripped of her Olympic medal because she cheated (my reason for explaining this was because he saw her TV admission of guilt and wanted to know why she was crying and I thought it was a good lesson in honesty), Judah turned into, "Well, if they take her medal away, I will punch them!" Sigh. Boys.

We took Judah roller skating (old school style) this weekend. Tons of fun and something we will likely do more often now as it took about two turns around the rink for me to get the hang of it again and Jude is pretty keen to **try** it...although he played air hockey most of the time that he was there.

This pretty much sums up how Judah felt at the end of the second day of school:

So far school seems to be fun for him, although when I picked him up at carpool yesterday he informed me that one of the new girls poked him in the eye, pinched his cheek and bit his knee. I wrote his teacher a letter since I am only hearing half the story and don't know what led up to this, but I have to say that I'm pretty unhappy about it because he had a rash on his knee where he'd been bitten when he woke up today. His "pinch" was a scratch down the left side of his cheek.

Funny story. We have been digitizing all of our CDs -- we had around 2,000 and have been slowly getting through the stash, burning and selling for cash. We went to a certain very popular used bookstore in town and turned in about 200 CDs. A couple hours passed and they still had not called our name to pick up our cash offer and Judah was starting to get really antsy, so we investigated to see what was up. Turns out they had given our cash offer to another customer, completely by accident, who had just turned in a stack of books. $355 offer. For used books. That guy hit the jackpot! Of course, they had to then give us our $355, so according to the gossip mill of other waiting customers who knew what happened, that guy made off with about $300 more than he should have gotten. He was walking toward the cash register exclaiming, "Man! I usually only get $20 when I come here!"

We're anxious to finish burning the rest of our CDs...it's a slow and deliberate process as we never really have a lot of downtime to sit around loading up music and deciding which of the approximately 12 songs on a CD we really can't part with -- the filler doesn't make it to my hard drive.

My mom is coming for a visit over Labor Day, so I have set my sights on gardening this weekend. After traveling for a month this summer, the 50 days of rain and then 100F+ weather, my garden looks horrible and I'm trying to regenerate some plants that have gone south on us. My wildflowers are still "eh" but not dead, my ferns are pleading for cooler weather, the fuschia did not make it past June, unfortunately. I don't even know why nurseries sell fuschias in Texas. But, my tomatoes and beans are producing and starting to grow new stems, so it's not all bad.

First Day of School

Judah started PK4 this morning. Going cold turkey on early bedtime and waking up at 6am was HARD. He has been staying up 'til 11pm sometimes and waking up around 8am.

This was Judah when he first woke up, poor thing:

Once we reminded him that friends would be at school:

We had a quick costume change into his uniform, "nametag banana" included, and he was ready for school. The class theme is Curious George and with half the class being new kids, they have to wear their bananas this week. Ha!

As soon as we joined the carpool queue (which went very smoothly....shock!), he was THRILLED. He really missed his friends so much and I'm sure will have a blast today. And although I miss him like crazy since he's been my little sidekick all summer, I know he's having tons more fun and I can actually get some work done.

As Time Goes By

Having had some type of online journal for years and at some point always dropping off for months or even a year at a time, I am back again as I always regret not keeping a written record of the day to day experiences with a little boy in our household.

Judah is almost four and a half years old and begins his PK4 school year in two days. He remains a sweet and fairly easygoing little boy temperament-wise although his "boy energy" level has kicked into high gear and we have to engage in a lot of discussions about why it's absolutely not OK for him to hurl Tinkertoys at me even if they are "arrow pointers".

He loves to sing and his current favorites are "the Shrek song" (All Star from SmashMouth), Tutti-Frutti from Little Richard, the theme song from Jimmy Neutron and Kids in America from Kim Wilde.

Another "note to self" that I often find on scraps of paper when I don't have time to post to the blog at that particular moment...

6/9/2006 - peanups, flamingo (flamenco), potty - 5 (6?) times, poop - in big potty, my bed / my house, ooooo, that's pretty

Translated -- Judah was calling peanuts "peanups" and flamingoes "flamencos", we were toward the end of potty training and he was doing a super job. He was establishing his territory with "this is my house, this is my bed, this is my mommy & daddy, these are my toys, etc" and everything he picked up caused him to exclaim, "ooooo, that's pretty!".

I think my favorite phrase as he was learning to discuss his bodily functions was, "Poo Poot" or "I Poo Poot!"

I was cleaning up some old files on my laptop and came across this little blog note:

1/30/2004 - Judah is crawling (backward), trying to stand, screams at the top of his lungs just to hear his own voice, loves looking at himself in mirrors, doesn’t like naps anymore, likes banging on things and eating pureed bananas.

That really took me way back considering that Judah is now making his own social engagements. He rode home with a classmate yesterday to play at his house and has informed me that he asked another classmate to come over to play on Tuesday.

We are gearing up for the holiday season. Tonight, we will go downtown to see the lighting of the Neiman-Marcus Christmas Tree and also the lighting of the city tree. There will be street vendors (hot cocoa! hot apple cider!), horse-driven carriages and live entertainment (Trout Fishing in America, eh). Should be a great time and a tradition we have decided to repeat every year. I am putting up our own trees (we do two) this weekend -- never have done this before Thanksgiving, but I just **feel** like doing it and as somebody in Highland Park has already beat me to the punch, I think it's OK for me to break a few rules.

My mom was in the hospital earlier this week in N.C. for vertigo. Pretty scary as they had to run many diagnostic tests to rule out neurological or other nefarious causes. She followed up with her ENT and turns out she has an inner ear infection. She's on the mend and I can sleep at night again. 1,000 miles distance feels like a million when your mama is sick!

How's this for organization? A colleague officially finished her Christmas shopping yesterday and brought the loot for faraway relatives to the office today, all wrapped and ready for shipping. Gosh, I'm so far behind. I'll probably be shopping on 24 December.

Judah has been quite dramatic this past week. He dropped a quarter on the floor of the car and exclaimed (think Scarlett O'Hara), "I'll never see that quarter again!" or when I drove the carpool yesterday..."Where is my father? I'll never see him again!" or when I washed off his spider tattoo from his hand b/c of the no-tattoo rule at school, "I'll never have that spider tattoo again!" He also makes dramatic statements when he wants to get out of doing something. That's usually not a big deal until...

At the YMCA yesterday, I had to change out of my jeans into shorts to exercise. He was in the ladies dressing room with me and one lady was at the sink washing her hands. I asked Judah to come into the dressing room with me while I changed into my shorts and he exclaimed, "I can't! I'm afraid of you!" (it's Halloween season and he's been maximizing his usage of things to be afraid of this month, including a plate of roasted chicken because he didn't want to eat it.) But, I swear, that lady nearly broke her neck whipping her head around to stare at us and I thought how bad that must sound to someone who doesn't know my son's habit of hyperbole. I mean, two seconds later we were chatting about cupcakes that he had at school, but I think she had left by then (probably to call CPS!)

Judah's extended day teacher brought him out to carpool a couple weeks ago to tell us he is not minding and he's talking during rest time. We have been working with him on making good choices and he told me that these past couple days he has been quiet and following the rules. He's the youngest (or at least one of) in his class, so I think he's testing boundaries that the older kids tested before school started. I hope he continues to mind his teachers -- I sure don't want him to be the disruptive kid in class, but at the same time, it's hard for me to see his free spirit get squelched due to social norms.

This past weekend, Judah was extremely wiggly when I was trying to get him to sit still long enough for me to put his shoes and socks on. Here was our conversation:

Me: Judah, my goodness, you've got ants in your pants today.
Judah: Get them out! It hurts!
Me: Oh! No, son, "ants in your pants" is not literal. It is another way to say that your body is very wiggly and you aren't being still.
Judah: Take the ants out!
Me: Hmmm...maybe we should pull down your pants to see if they are still there. Maybe they have left now.
Judah: OK!
Me (pulling pants down): Well, it looks like they have gone back to their anthill because they aren't in your pants anymore.

So, I picked Judah up from school today at 3:00 o'clock and as soon as he was buckled he informed me that "Mrs. Marks told me lots of things today." I asked him what she told him. He replied, "She told me there are NOT ants in my pants."

I need to remember that three year old boys don't understand idioms.

I have just gotten the required summer reading list for Judah’s school teachers and a couple books caught my attention.

o Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

o Einstein Never Used Flash Cards : How Our Children Really Learn -- And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Diane Eyer, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

I am reading the first book (Last Child in the Woods) now. Though it’s definitely not in the “summer reading/beach book” category, it is holding my interest and making me feel guilty as hell for not taking Judah outside more often. It is all about how my generation is the last to spend time outdoors (think about that for a minute!!!). Kids in college today grew up in the MTV/videogame generation and as one kid in the book put it (this is sad), “I like to play indoors because that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

I had a bit of a come to Jesus with myself over the fact that I am terrified of Judah ever going to play in the woods alone (not that I know where the woods are in my city). The mental picture I have of him in the woods is some pervie snatching him up never to be seen again, rather than him climbing trees and catching toads. I thought back to my own childhood and how my friends and I mucked about in the woods down by the Cape Fear River until nightfall all summer long where with nothing more then hedge clippers to clear the path in front of us, where we encountered everything from waterfalls to water moccasins. I spent so much time at the ocean, too. My childhood was very idyllic and most of my really wonderful memories were always outside on bicycles, in the woods, painting with mashed up tree berries, building forts and swinging from “tarzan vines”.

Now, it’s not like we don’t go hiking and take Judah to parks, because we do, but I think even then, we coddle him too much and worry that he might step in a patch of poison ivy or get chiggers, so we’re always like, “Oooo, Judah, be careful walking there!” etc…so, it really got me thinking about raising kids today in an urban environment where trees were planned by landscapers and what are the ramifications of how they will feel about nature. If I want Judah to be environmentally conscious at an action level and not just an intellectual awareness level, how can he become more experienced when he knows more about the natural world through Wild Kingdom on the Discovery Channel rather than having experienced nature as part of his every day life?

Another motivation to read this book came from my friend taking her son to her mom’s house in Arkansas. Her mom is a scientist with Greenpeace and lives “off the grid”. They spent a solid month walking in the woods, discovering nature together, with no TV, no radio, just in the middle of the woods, hearing birds and crickets and frogs. They saw frogs mating and then watched as the eggs became tadpoles. They brought a bunch of tadpoles home and are raising frogs in a little terrarium on the back porch…feeding them fruit flies and watching the tadpoles’ tails disappear as they grow. Very cool Biology 101 for a three year old.

I probably read too many of these kinds of books and should just go pick up the Kite Runner and enjoy my summer.

Potty Potty, Part Trois (l'acte final)

Armed with a potty chart and a super pack of stickers, we tackled potty training once more. Going cold turkey ended up being the best way to get things going. Judah had been using the potty at daycare but would refuse at home and in our efforts to not force him into it before he was ready, we obliged. But, the fact that school will start soon and he must be potty-ready to attend, we had to speed things up enough to get him to at least practice.

Of course, the true test is going poop in a public restroom. Filing this under "you know you're a mom when..." I had to squat in front of the toilet facing him, with his arms around my neck and feet on my knees for traction while I held him up by his armpits over the public potty. I'm sure the conversation as overheard by the woman in the stall next door was pretty graphic, but I was so focused on him not feeling like he was going to fall in and swim to the ocean that I just went with it and coached him all the way through. Gosh, I love that kid!

I dove into the CD closet today to digitize some of our 2,000+ CDs and am listening to Depeche Mode's The Singles 86>98 and drinking a Shiner. While Judah takes a nap, Micheal & I cleaned our downstairs office. I mopped the floor with too much bleach in the water and now my eyes are cloudy and I think I may have burned out all of my nose hairs. Happy Memorial Day!

We have been very low-key all weekend, spending Saturday hiking again where we encountered some geocachers who asked if they could explore the park bench where we were sitting, eating some potato chips and taking in the scenic beauty of Texas wildflowers and butterflies. I had never heard of geocaching before, but now that I looked it up, I totally want to do this sometime. It sounds like a lot of fun and Judah loves to look for hidden treasure.

Yesterday, we went to White Rock Lake and some Korean Baptists had parked themselves right under a shady tree beside the playground. They had a boom box and some song sheets and were singing along to really annoying white people gospel songs. One lady was doing this offbeat whirling dervish and singing loudly with a throat warble. It was such high entertainment that we sat on a stone wall nearby to observe. One thing I have never understood is why people put their hands up in the air, palms up when they're full of the spirit. Micheal said it's so they can be closer to the Lord. I just don't put my religion out there in such a public way...never have. I'm very supportive of freedom of expression, so I wasn't overtly annoyed other than the fact that for me, gospel is more along the lines of Mahalia Jackson and Kirk Franklin. I was pretty happy once they wrapped it up and started the BBQ portion of their picnic.

I've been knitting a little here and there this weekend and am somewhat hopeful that I'll finish my pink kid mohair poncho by 2010. It is finally 25" long, so only 30" to go. Ha!

Yesterday when I picked Judah up from school, I parked right by a Chevy Tahoe which had the motor running. As soon as I got out, I noticed that the driver was revving the engine while it was in park. It was then that I saw that there were two little boys, around 7 years old, and a baby in the car and no adult was in sight. It was in the 90s outside. When Judah's teacher greeted me at the door, I asked her if she knew where the parents were and she went to the car to try to handle the situation. It took me about five minutes to get my son's gear and when I went back out, the kids were still sitting in the car, revving the engine. Still no parents. The teacher had gone inside for a minute (I suppose to find the parents). When she came back out, and as I was putting Judah in my car, I saw the little boy pulling on the gear shift to go in reverse. We finally got them to open up the door (they'd refused the first time) and the teacher pulled all three of them out and took them inside.

I called the director of the school (my sister-in-law's mother) and told her what happened. She said she was aware of it, that it was not parental neglect, and that the mother had been trapped on the playground alone when the door locked behind her. She had to scale a fence to get back out and was hysterically crying.

I'm still confused about this sequence of events, such as how the kids got the keys, how they got in the car before she did, etc. Maybe she has more than 3 kids and was looking for her 4th or 5th? I have no idea. It seems incredibly irresponsible, even if unintended. I was positive that at any second, those kids were going to kick the Tahoe into gear and mow down all the pedestrians that cross the street there.

I'm sure she freaked right on out when she finally scaled the fence, got to her Tahoe, only to find her three children were no longer sitting in it.

There is no way in hell I would leave Judah alone in a car, with or without keys. I know he would drive away or someone would snatch him. Not to mention it's Texas. It's May. It's one block from an interstate highway. The whole situation had me feeling anxious for hours afterward.

Mother's Day 2006

Yeah, I'm a sucker. Wowie withdrawal lasted about two more hours after I posted here and then I caved. There's only so much crying and pleading that I can take when I'm simultaneously caring for a sick child who is demanding I produce the sacred wowie and read a white paper and four case studies before posting opinions on our intranet BBS to a rather large group of senior managers and colleagues.

Queen for a Day, I requested that we pack up our little family and head out to Cedar Ridge Preserve for a morning of leisurely hiking. We chose a moderate trail, hoping to get to Fossil Valley, but Judah got hungry about a half mile in, so we headed back for a picnic lunch of sandwiches, fresh fruit and veggie chips. It was a really nice way to spend time with my two men.

I was also anxious to get Judah out of the house. He had strep all last week, after already being home with me the prior week for what I thought was a simple sinusitis (little did I know a big, bad bug was lurking). While I was able to make my escape out of the house on Friday with a business trip to Tulsa, he was just about completely fed up with the situation of being trapped indoors. Micheal took him to Union Station to see trains and to play at a large fountain where he chased pigeons. He was starting to be very grumpy by Thursday...everything was "NO!" and he was put in time-out at least five times within a few days for dumping every single toy out and spreading it all over the living room, then refusing to clean up afterward or pitching violent fits where he hit me or pushed me when he didn't want to eat or sleep. Yesterday, he had a meltdown at the grocery store because he couldn't sit in the main basket part of the cart. This lasted at least six aisles and only when I finally tickled him to death did he straighten up. At one point, I told him, "Judah, I love you even when you're not nice to me." He replied, "Don't say me that!"

Big news at our house -- Micheal won a black 60GB video iPod at his office. I have loaded up nearly 1800 songs and every episode of my favorite podcast Tiki Bar TV. This show is hilarious! Highly recommended for people with a sense of humor.

Wowie Withdrawal, Day One

It's time. Judah has to ditch the "wowies". He is so severely addicted that I already know that we'll have to bust open a bottle of tequila just to sustain ourselves through the next few days (weeks? months?) of his imploring us to give him his wowie back. I told him that if he can go the whole day today without one, that we will go shop tonight to buy a new toy. I can't bribe him on a daily basis, so I really need to figure out something else to motivate him. This is going to be rough -- he can be very demanding and I'm not good with constant begging just because after the 100th time of asking, I'm about to come unglued and just want silence.

Judah's 3rd birthday was a blast. Mom and Kitty flew in on Thursday. We shopped, dined, played and got ready for the big party on Sunday. Fifteen kids, pizza, cake, balloons, gymnasium filled with balls, bubbles, bounce raft and balance beam. Lots of music, running around and laughter. A three-year old's slice of heaven.

The best part was when he opened gifts and the room was filled with all the things that he loves to play with -- art supplies, dinosaurs, Tonka trucks, Lincoln Logs and trains to name a few. He loves the guitar from his Aunt Kitty. Check out the Iggy Pop "no pants" punk rock swagger. He's a natural.

breathless

breathless
Originally uploaded by Farl.

I came across this photo on Flickr. It speaks a thousand words of why I love children so much. Their ability to find joy in the simplest things never ceases to amaze me.

I woke up at 4am after getting pushed to the edge of the bed numerous times by Judah, who was spread-eagled between Micheal and me. He is now officially too big to co-sleep, so this morning we had a chat about him needing to sleep in his own bed from now on.

I feel like such a tyrannical mom this week. Yesterday at the grocery store, Judah asked for a bottle of Dasani water. I gave it to him and told him to hold on to it with both hands. Since we got home from our trip, he has been going through a "spit" and "spill" stage, fascinated with the physics behind both. We had one of those shopping carts with the little Flinstone-mobile attachment and he got back in happily sipping his Dasani. I started unloading the cart when all of a sudden, I heard, "Uh oh! Mommy, Daddy, I spilled! I made a mess!" Micheal saw the whole thing and said he had deliberately turned the bottle upside down. In one of those frazzled mother moments, being embarrassed with people looking at the big puddle in the checkout lane and Judah now trying to climb out and on top of a nearby rail to swing like a monkey in sock feet because he tossed his shoes into the bottom of the Flinstone car, I hoped the earth would swallow me up. Once I retrieved the shoes and picked him up, he thought it would be super fun to pull big chunks of my hair as hard as he could. I immediately told him he was in "time out", took him to the car and moved all toys and his wowie away from his reach telling him, "No toys, no wowie because you're in time out. You cannot turn your drink upside down in the store like that because now some nice person has to clean up *your* mess." I don't think he cared about the mess part at all, but was distressed over the fact that I cut off access to his toys and pacifier. All the way home he repeated in the backseat between sobs, "No toys, no wowie? Boo hoo hoo. Whaaaa!"

So, this morning at breakfast, he spent a good five minutes spitting yogurt into his glass of milk.

I must remember to be a patient and consistent mommy and teach my otherwise extremely civilized child that it is really gross to spit and really unkind to deliberately spill things in the grocery store.

I honestly think he's mad at us for leaving him for 10 days and is acting out for that reason alone. He knows he's doing something he's not supposed to do, because he gives me that sly sidelong look when I call him on it.

In all the excitement of the big Africa trip, I forgot to post about Judah's acceptance into private school. He got accepted at the #1 school of our choice. He was also accepted at another school, but just for their three day program and waitlisted at the "hard as heck to get into" school. The fourth school still hasn't sent letters out, and we had to reply to #1 by the 24th. We turned in our contract and paid the tuition deposit and new student fee, so he is now bonafide! We are already picking out some fun summer classes that he can take there to transition in. One is butterflies & bugs...perfect for our little zoology lover.