From the depths of mommy brain...

Ever since we moved, I've had moments of "mommy brain". It's mostly just small things that I forget. One day I went to the ATM and drove away without my card. When I realized my error, I went back immediately, but of course, the machine had sucked the card back in - gone forever. I had to order a new card which the woman said would be no problem, and then comes the dreaded...."Oh, you're from out of town...", tacking on an extra week or so before I could get my new card.

Then one day, I put Lily in her carseat and was all set to drive home when a little voice calls out, "mommmy, I'm not buuuckled". Not such a small error.

Other times I've gone grocery shopping and come home only to forget what I have just been doing, go about doing other things, and later realize I have not yet taken the groceries in from the car.

Today has to take the cake though, mostly because it was witnessed by at least one other person. I stopped by Schnucks to pick up a few items after working out. I only had two bags, so I gathered them up, put the cart back in the in-store corral, and was on my way, when for no apparent reason, I turned back with outstretched arm and pushed the door lock function on my keys, aimed right at the grocery cart. Unfortunately, a store clerk happened to be standing right there. He looked at me, then at the cart, and then back at me, clearly trying to make sense of what he just witnessed. I hate to tell him, there is just no making sense of that.

Preschoolers Got Talent

Round 1: Raindrops Song

(I'm a little embarrassed that I don't actually know this song. I thought I had a pretty good repertoire of Early Ed songs, but apparently I'm lacking.)

Round 2: The Farmer in the Dell

Lily has her own unique version of this classic. In my favorite rendition (that unfortunately was not captured on video), the horse takes a wife. Really paints quite a picture.

Round 3: 5 Speckled Frogs

Probably my favorite, especially when she's trying to get her fingers to match the number. Instant classic.

"You must be so proud"

This video is from earlier this month, but it makes me smile because it reminds me so much of the movie Parenthood, with the little boy that butts his head into things and spins around until he falls down.

Weekend warriors

Before

My assistant

Painting cutie

After

Terra's bedroom

Terra's "front door" leading to the backyard

Terra's bed

Terra's bedside table

So, the bedroom was not done in one weekend, but we did finish it this weekend. When the previous owners of our house put on the hearth room addition, they also made a basement addition. It was a weird little room that we weren't sure what to do with until Carl had the brilliant idea of turning it into Terra's room. Project time!! The room is probably a little more than Carl had in mind, but it was too fun.

Lily's room

The second half of our warrior weekend included painting Lily's bookshelf, a long-outstanding project. Now the room is pretty much finished, except for filling those picture frames!

Pellerito family picnic

Happy couple #1: Jeff and Susie

Happy couple #2: Tim and Suzanne

Little Katie swinging away

Mary, Abby, Lily and Katie play well into the evening hours


We had a jam-packed day yesterday with a memorial mass for my Grandmother and a Pellerito family picnic in the evening. A great time was had by all. It is amazing to me how much living near family feels like a vacation year round. All the occasions to celebrate add up to many family gatherings that are at the same time invigorating, recharging and relaxing. I think that if I would have taken this for granted if we had never moved away, but I fully appreciate it now!

Birthday bash

The birthday girl with her mommy

Three little girls ready to party

Mary enjoying her birthday cake

Lily gets in on that action

Presents time! Cute sweater from Aunt Angela

Picture frame and lip gloss from Lily

Katie helps Grandma open her birthday gifts


Funny shot of Grandma and Abby


Yesterday we celebrated Mary Mackenzie's 4th birthday and Grandma's (?) birthday. For some reason, many of my pictures turned out blurry, but we had a great time celebrating with everyone in our family (minus Angela who was with us in spirit from Connecticut).

Friday night fun

Tim, Suzanne, me and Carl at the Cards game Friday night

Fun times

Katie and Lily all tuckered out after a fun-filled night

My parents provided me, my sister, and our husbands an awesome night out by getting us Cards tickets and babysitting the little ones for the evening. While we were living it up at the stadium, the girls were having tea parties, going on walks, and playing games at their pajama party with grandma. Thanks mom and dad for a great night out!

Out of nowhere tonight, Lily started calling me "young lady" and Carl "young man" and even better, "young boy". What a character.

All clean and ready for bed

*As a funny side note, Lily and I were discussing the pajama party that she is going to have with her cousins on Friday night. I asked her what pajamas she wanted to bring, and she said her "princess pajamas". Then she pulled out the ensemble you see above: a purple top with pink elephants and some pink pants. (I think the key is that they are silky.) I guess "princess" is what you define it to be. If the definition includes being loved, admired...and spoiled, then I guess she qualifies. :) She certainly looks like she rules the roost, doesn't she?

Nighttime reading with daddy

We got some new books from the library today, and Lily picked one that she wanted to read. Of course, we had never read this book before so she went to town making up her own story. I like how she turns the book around to show her imaginary class, even laying down in bed.

Mealtime adventures

As most know, I have an adventurous spirit when it comes to home-cooked meals. I love to try new recipes, and fortunately, the internet allows an endless supply of new recipes to try. I stumbled upon a new website (for me) that I really like. Cooking Light is my favorite cooking magazine, but since my subscription expired, I no longer have access to their website. But, lo and behold, the website myrecipes.com, has Cooking Light recipes! So, the subscription is no longer required which is awesome. Some recent menu items that we've had lately from this website are:

• Chickpeas with Spinach - This is an old favorite of ours. This is originally from Cooking Light, and it is much better than it might seem at first glance. A very delicious vegetarian meal - there are never leftovers with this at our house and that says a lot with carnivore Carl.
• Five-Spice Pork Lo Mein - Awesome, awesome, awesome. There's really nothing more to say. Loved it!
• Green Bean Casserole - This was okay. I think I will stick with the original in the future. However, with a little extra swiss cheese added, the sauce would be PERFECT for fondue.

The Mayo Clinic also has a good website for recipes and a great cookbook that I checked out from the library.

• Broccoli, garlic and rigatoni - This is very simple, but a good reminder of easy, healthy recipes that can be made in a pinch any night of the week.
• Grilled Flank Steak Salad with Roasted Corn Vinaigrette - Add corn, black beans, and red onions to anything, and I'm there. I love this flavor combination. This recipe has a homemade vinaigrette that is sweet and a perfect compliment to the salad. Thumbs up from the whole family!
• Mahi-mahi with Macadamia Nut Crust - Very tasty. We had this with brown rice and edamame, two of Lily's favorites. We snuck in a couple of bites of fish, but the mahi-mahi was definitely more appreciated by the adults in the house.
• Caramelized Pear Bread Pudding - Nice but not the best. I'm not a big fan of bread pudding in general, so I may not be the best judge, but I thought it could be better.

There are many more recipes I want to try from the Mayo Clinic, including Spaghetti with Summer Squash and Peppers which we are probably going to try this afternoon.

Beyond the internet, I have discovered a great resource in getting cookbooks from the library. I have so many cookbooks that I love, but truthfully, I tend to use the same 3 or 4 recipes from each book. By checking out cookbooks from the library, I can try them out and then just copy the recipes that I like from each of them. Beautiful really.

One cookbook that I found to be surprisingly good is Recipes for IBS. It has good, healthy recipes for anyone. My favorite was the Mediterranean Meat Loaf. The Pork-Tendered for Better Digestion (pork tenderloin with green beans and lentils) was pretty good too. We are trying the Root Vegetable-Chicken-Apple Sausage Stew later this week. One recipe from the cookbook, however, was a big bomb. The now infamous (in our household) Polenta-Broccoli-Pesto Pizza, pictured below. I made the grave mistake of telling Lily that we were having a type of pizza for dinner. Obviously, she had a different idea in mind, and truthfully, I did too. We were both hugely disappointed. This was one of the worst dinners we have had in quite some time. With any experimenting, you are bound to come across some real losers every once in a while, and this one really takes the cake. Carl and I each managed to choke down half of a pizza (the recipe unfortunately made eight personal pizzas), before we opted for a quick stand-in: spaghetti with red sauce, always the reliable back-up. Just take my word on this one; you don't want to try it. Lily actually cried when she tasted it.

The video below shows Lily with her favorite, edamame. She is definitely a bean-loving girl. But, edamame is particularly fun because she can pop out the beans. They are slippery little suckers though. (Tori, I hope you got the Pretty Woman reference.) You can also see Lily's animated story-telling at dinner time. Here, Carl and Lily are discussing the game of Red Rover her class had played earlier that day.

Wonderful Wednesday

All ready for school!

After school, it's playtime with Grandma and Papa!

Grandma and Papa went to see a play at a nearby theater this afternoon (retired life is tough), so they stopped by our house for dinner tonight. Lily loves the opportunity to spend time with her grandparents, which is exactly the purpose of living close to family!

The Deetz Olympic Weekend

OPENING CEREMONY

The blank scroll

The artist paints (slightly less high-tech than the production in Beijing)


DAY 1 EVENTS

Swimming

Soccer

Basketball


DAY 2 EVENTS

Gymnastics gets started off on the rings

And then continues with the floor exercises

A good round of wrestling caps off the day

Observation #2

I observed Lily in class again today, this time during Exploration Time which is just some unstructured play time in the class. This is really what I wanted to see to determine how she is interacting with the other children and what things interest her the most in the classroom. I also had the opportunity to talk to the Teacher Assistant who was absolutely wonderful and so helpful in giving me a good overall picture of Lily at school.

Because Lily was so taken with Riley, I wanted to make sure that she wasn't clinging to her or playing solely with her. But I saw that Lily played well with a variety of children in the class (more girls than boys) and didn't even seem to particularly favor playing with Riley over the others. She played independently and cooperatively, and I saw her join in a group play in progress in a very appropriate way (which is a highly underrated skill). I was also happy to see that she ventured off and chose her own activity as well (writing in the Writing Workshop area). Overall, I got to see all the things that I wanted to see first-hand.

The TA, Ms. Kelly, said that Lily has been doing a great job in the class, especially since she is the youngest one. She said that she participates in all the activities and gets along well with the children and is getting to know the routine. She said that Lily has been shy and not very talkative so far, so they were working on bringing her out of her shell. This was completely unsurprising to me. Lily and I (and maybe even Carl) are classic "slow-to-warm-up" personalities. In new and unfamiliar situations, we tend to lay low first, take everything in, and then gradually interact when we feel more comfortable. I have tried hard to overcome my initial shyness/reservation when in new situations, but you can only do so much to overcome what is inherent in you. I'm never going to be one to "work a room", and I have a feeling Lily will continue along the same path, but you never know.

Lily particularly clams up at their "Bucks Time". This is when the children earn classroom "bucks" for following classroom rules, participating, etc. They then use these bucks to participate in special activities. They earn many bucks throughout the day, and when bucks are distributed, the children say whether or not they think that they earned one for that particular time period and why. Lily has been the only one who won't say a word during this time until today when she finally said "yes", that she did deserve one (although she still would not say why). Step by step, she'll get there.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the whole bucks system overall. I do believe that there should be some system for children to monitor their own behavior and be accountable, I just don't know if I like it having such a capitalist bent. I know, I overthink these things way too much. But I also think that children should learn to behave appropriately because it is the right thing to do, not because someone is going to reward you for it. I guess it is just a process getting children to that level of thinking. We'll see how this all plays out.

Overall, she seems happy at the school, so I'm happy.

More lines from Lily

I'm not sure why I'm so amused by Lily's antics, but I just feel the need to share some of my comedic relief lately:

• The other night, Lily called from another room, "Grown-ups....where are you?"
• I was asking Lily about her friends at school, and she seems to be taken with a girl in her class named Riley. When I asked why she liked Riley so much, she responded, "Because she's cute." After laughing to myself, I tried to prompt her by saying, "And is she nice and fun to play with..." Lily wasn't so much interested in all that stuff, but she did tell me and others later that she loves Riley. So, she's become a stalker after 3 days, sweet.
• You can learn so much about the climate of a school when kids play "school" at home. So far, I'm very happy. All comments that she makes to her pretend class at home are very positive. It has, however, led to her telling herself on many occasions, "Great idea!" As if she didn't think that she knew it all already.

Blast from the past

After I observed at Lily's school today (she did great, by the way), I picked up Lily a little early, and we went swimming with Grandma, Courtney, Nick and Abby as a last hurrah before their school starts on Monday. Since my mom actually got her hair wet during swimming today, it was a free-for-all hairstyling event after dinner. When I was younger, I used to do this quite often to my mother, sometimes with extreme make-up as well, and then my mom would always go to my dad when I was finished and ask him if he wanted to go on a date. It is so fun to be able to relive some childhood memories with my fun-loving mom! Mom was a great sport, as always.

School Days

Some uncertainty on the first day of school

All smiles for Day 2!

I couldn't get great pictures of Lily's first days of school because I didn't want to offset her by barraging her with picture-taking on top of dealing with going to a new school. I would have updated earlier, but 1) I've been busier than expected and 2) I was exhausted last night. I'm pretty sure that I fell asleep before she did! So here's a little report from her first day of school:

I dropped her off during their breakfast-time, and, of course, she wanted me to stay. I tried to make my getaway (because I know that lingering often makes goodbyes much worse), but she ran after me. Then she wanted to leave with me. Luckily, breakfast is short and was ending, and the kids were going outside to play with the dog. Of course, she took to that right away and followed him around with all the other children doing the same. Her teacher said that she had a really good day overall and did just fine. I think that a lot of children in her class are going to school for the first time, so she has a leg-up in that arena.

Her teacher said that the only problem she had was when a class meeting was called (class meetings can be called by the children or the teachers when their is a problem in the classroom, usually rules being broken or a dispute, etc, so that the class can discuss what action should be taken). Lily apparently did not want to stop playing to deal with such trivial manners, so she had a bit of a rough time. But, the teacher said that she recovered well. On their parent questionnaire, parents are asked to list their goals for their child for this school year, and one of my goals was for her to handle frustration more appropriately when she can't do something that she really wants to do (or vice versa). So, I guess that's one that she will get to work on right from the start! One of Carl's goals for her, by the way, was to have her be ultimate fighting champion of their class.

In other news of the day, the teacher also said that she napped - hooray!!! Although you would have never known it because she was practically falling asleep in the car on the way home at 4:00. I also had to wake her up this morning at 7:20. New experiences are definitely tiring, and I know that she is feeling the effects.

Of course, I didn't get much information from her about the day after school but gained some information by listening to her play last night. Apparently, Ms. Lauren (her teacher) is "a nice teacher". Also, "Riley can put it together". There's something that "we shouldn't touch" and some little girl had an accident but not the girl sitting across from her. Also, she was dressed just the same as another little girl, "with curly hair and everything". ...Clearly hard to get a good picture of the day. So, I'm going to observe her class this afternoon to see her in action, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how she's interacting with the other children. (They have a room with 1-way window so parents can observe without being seen - very cool!)

But, she seemed happy to be going back to school today and didn't even say good-bye to me this morning when she joined her class. So I guess that's a good sign. She is an incredibly adaptable child, and I'm so thankful that this transition hasn't seemed to cause her too much stress.

As a side note, I had told some people that I was a little concerned about the school having uniforms. As it turns out, their "uniform" is just a school t-shirt (that comes in four different colors) with any non-character shorts/capris/skirt/pants. I was relieved to find that out because I was concerned about the school taking themselves too seriously, if that makes any sense. Carl is absolutely elated about this school policy because it means considerably less money will be spent on Lily's clothes! :)

Saturday at the Science Center

Lily had such a good time at the Science Center today; we had to drag her kicking and screaming out of there because she didn't want to leave. She was clawing and kicking, and while I was waiting for her head to spin around, Carl chants to her, "The power of Christ compels you" (in true Carl fashion). It truly was a sight to be seen. I've been trying to determine whether her behavior is typical for the age or if she goes above and beyond. I believe that her behavior is typical for the age...but amplified. She has an intensity of emotion, both good and bad. I had to laugh when my friend, Mary, asked me last week, "Is she always like that?", referring to her exuberant behavior. Carl claims that she is our little John McEnroe - a left-handed, curly-haired hot head. As the video below shows, she has a constant high energy level, even by herself.