Watching a DVD of Nick Jr. shows:

A: I wonder what's next? Maybe it's Blue's Clues!

Ben: Maybe it's Blue's Penis!

(and if you arrived here via a google search for that very phrase, I don't wanna know).

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Ben has always been a major mimic. He repeats everything. Sometimes A. will be telling me a story and it will really tax my listening skills because Ben is on the other side of me repeating everything A. says with about a 3 second delay.

A.'s been listening to folk tales at school - of course, all of them have the repeating phrase theme. Ben made up his own folk tale: "The first tree said pssssh, then the second tree said pssshhhh, the third tree said psssssh and the last tree said psssssh. And that's it."

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It's the most wonderful time of the year.....Halloween crafts!



These are glue ghosts. According to A., Master Ghost Designer, and Ben, Master Repeater of Everything A. Says, each ghost has a penis AND a bladder.

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Here's our dining room window. Oh, did I forget to tell you about this? Yeah, well.....



A week ago, I was going after one of those big ol' horseflies on the window. I smacked it with a rolled up magazine, shattering the whole damn thing. Not cracking, no, shattering. And it ain't safety glass. I have the cut right there on my thumb underneath the SpongeBob band-aid to prove it.

I swept up the glass and G. boarded up the window quickly and with ease. I admit I was surprised at his boarding-up abilities. In fact, it was a little suspicious, if you ask me.

Long Overdue

Scrapped this week for the first time since the laptop died. Here's the one for the infamous Mud Day. (Kit is Tenacious J by Lauren Reid).

After just two weeks of kindergarten, A. already has so many new words in his vocabulary.

Like: "crybaby, copycat, sweeeeet," and my favorite "piggy girl."

Anyway. So I did the whole lecture of "not everything you hear kids say will be nice, you get to choose not to repeat it...blah blah blah" of which I assure you he heard, "blah blah blah."

Auuugh! I'm losing him!

Sidenote: I'm watching the Emmys - didn't both Ben Vereen and John Amos die? I would swear they did. Yet there they are on stage. The magic of television, I tell ya. Seriously, I'm sure Ben Vereen died. Oh no, wait, it was Gregory Hines. Never mind.

Evolution

So we made these dinosaur eggs for the party. First we squeezed plastic dinosaurs into deflated balloons (the most difficult part - we finally figured out that you roll the narrow neck of the balloon like a condom on your two thumbs, hold it wide open and have someone else put the dino in). Then we blew the balloons up and covered them with papier mache.



I'd read somewhere that making the last layer with white paper makes it easier to paint, so we did newspaper and then cheap computer paper. Then we popped the balloon inside and painted them.


We buryed the eggs in the sandbox


and let the kids find and "hatch" them and find the dinos inside.


You have to look at these pictures because it took a total of about 5 hours to make the eggs, and about 5 minutes for them to be hatched and disposed of. They were fun, though.

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Yesterday morning, the jumpy house was set up about 3 hours before the party started. Now, here is where you see the big difference between me and my son. As a kid, I would've loved nothing more than having the whole thing to myself. A., on the other hand, really really wanted other people to jump with him. Ben was not interested in going anywhere near the suddenly huge dinosaur in our backyard, so G and I took turns in it, but we had to set up for the party.

So a while later, A. ran up to me outside the jumpy house and said, "Mama, did you know I have an imaginary friend?"

"Oh? Is it a he or a she?"

"It's a he."

"And what's his name?"

"Um, I don't know."

"Oh, well, maybe next time you play with him you can ask him."

(staring at me) "Mama, you know, I'm just talking to air."

The big dinosaur birthday party is over. I'll have more pics later, but for now, this was our super-cheapo dinosaur pinata. I think it's funny that it has x's over the eyes - just in case anyone might think it was a live dinosaur pinata.

Madeleine McCann's Mother Becomes a Suspect

And from the Land of Unbelievably Positive Spins, this quote from the missing girl's uncle:

'I think they have to tell you more as soon as you become the suspect. So in some ways, that's a positive development in that my brother and Kate will get more information from the police and hopefully we'll be able to move forward to go back to the initial information about the day that Madeleine went missing," he told NBC's "Today" show.'

So the first day went well, according to A.

There are lots of rules and one of them is that you can't talk to each other during class, and he admits that rule is kind of hard. And you have to remember where your desk is because you have to keep returning to it. "You have to keep the same desk forever. Until next month." But he didn't get even one time-out, he reports proudly!

And the worst part is that he has to wear "blank clothes" every day, i.e. a uniform. "Blank clothes" is a perfect way to describe it.

First Day of Kindergarten

I forgot to tell him not to throw away the plastic containers in his lunch.

I forgot to tell his teacher that he just learned how to do the clasp thing on his new shorts and might need help.

I forgot to fix his hair.

I forgot to leave his non-uniform jacket with him in case it's cold at recess.

I forgot to tell his teacher about his allergies and that he needs to be reminded to grab kleenex.

I forgot to tell him to make sure he doesn't have peanut butter all over his face after lunch.

I completely forgot about his brother, over to the side in the stroller, while I got Aidan in line and took pictures and told him how exciting this was. Fortunately, Ben was still sitting there when I remembered his existence.

I did tell him I loved him. I did tell him he was going to have fun and that I would be excited to hear about his day. I reminded him to use kleenex. And I did give him his lunch.

And on the way home, Ben and I saw this:


I swear that yellow bird has never been in our neighborhood before. I hope he doesn't feel odd with all the brown birds. I hope he makes friends at recess. I hope he feels comfortable going potty when he needs to and doesn't try to hold it. Oh, wait, it's a bird. Little chance of that.

I am posting this, finally, from my laptop.

The Geek Squad didn't exactly lose my laptop, they just stuck it on a shelf in the back where it sat for 2 weeks. There was some computer glitch the day I came in and it was "waiting" for some number from corporate so it could be shipped out. Apparently the glitch was fixed the following day, so why it wasn't shipped out the next day is a mystery to me and the two sincerely sorry guys working the day I stomped back in and told them, "Just give the damn thing back to me. And refund the diagnosis fee."

Then I took it over to Data Recovery Group, which is fortunately near my home. They were much more professional and expensive. Dude there got everything off my hard drive (I think - I haven't been able to load Quickbooks so I don't know if I have up-to-date data). I gave him my left arm and leg. Backup, people. Often. Seriously. I'm like a reformed smoker - "Don't you realize what can happen??? Tragedy!"

Anyway, now I have it back, reinstalled Windows XP and whatever necessary drivers I could figure out were necessary (they really should make that part easier - and why, when I bought this computer, was I given a CD to reinstall Roxio-something-or-other when what I really needed were video, graphics and ethernet drivers that I had to find and download on my other computer from Dell?).

Anyway, it' s nice to be back up and running. I'm going to be a lot more careful about what I put on here - I know I had a hard drive failure because I kept the thing plugged in and turned on too much. But it boots up soooo quickly now that it doesn't have all those stupid little programs on it.

And tomorrow is A's first day of kindergarten. He told us tonight, "You are going to miss me soooo much!" You have no idea, buddy.