Homework

I've discovered something very interesting about my boy. It seems that he loves his homework. It's gotten to the point now where we went and got him a ginormous workbook from Costco which has about 700+ pages of worksheets for him to do. These range from the simple letter tracing to the more complex word sounds and such.

His teacher gives him a packet of homework on Monday to turn back in on Friday, but these four or five sheets simply can't hold him over. So he'll ask if he can do more homework. We, of course, allow this as we want to encourage the doing of homework. It has gotten to the point now where we're starting to use the doing of homework as a way to get him to behave. Like it's candy or something. So when he starts throwing his fits, I now get to say, "Stop that, or no homework." And I actually get to say that seriously. It's very odd. And yet, somehow, satisfying. One thing to remember is that this is only Kindergarten, and honestly, I don't know anyone who didn't like Kindergarten. I'd love to be back in that class. But instead, I'm all grown up and having alternators replaced in the minivan I drive. Yup, it's pretty sweet. The bonus of that is it should take care of the battery issues I've been having lately.

Of course all this pales in comparison of the problem that we may be having in a couple days as it may be raining on Halloween. This has the potential to be one of the largest disasters in the history of my young boys life. He's been counting down the days for over three weeks now and we're going to be going one way or the other, the only question is now, will the weather hold out. I'm hoping so, because I don't want to carry Little E around while holding an umbrella. I also don't want to walk the mall again. We did that a few years ago and it wasn't pretty.

Sleepwalk

A new phenomena is happening at my house. My children no longer go to sleep at night. I believe that it's mostly being caused by my 2-year-old daughter who, a few weeks after getting her Big Girl Bed, discovered that she could get out of it on her own and wander around the house. So now, when we put her down at around 7:30ish, she'll have her candy (Flintstone vitamin), her milk and stories read and lay there for around 25-30 minutes. Then, she starts a-wandering. She'll usually come out first down the hall into the toy room and explain that she needs some random toy. We'll usher her back down the hallway and put her back in bed. About 5 minutes later, she comes out to say she can't find something. Most of the time it's one of her plethora of animals or dolls she sleeps with. We'll put her back to bed. Another five minutes or so later, she'll come out and by now, T's noticed that his little sister is out wandering and will come join her. They don't really want anything at this point, so T comes up with some type of story to explain why he's out there. Last night it was because he wanted to make sure that he'd get his Transformer fruit snacks in his lunch for Kindergarten the next day. And back to bed they go. Last night, she started something new. She pushed her little stepstool out to the hallway light switch and just stood there flipping the light on and off, waiting for someone to come and get her, because by 8:45 or so, it's just a fun game. By 9, she's out of excuses and reasons to get out of bed, so she'll just wander out into the living room and stare at us until we come put her back to bed. She will eventually fall asleep. Around 9:30-10.

She can then get up at about 2 in the morning and come into our room and very quietly say, Mommy? over and over, then she'll come over to my side and say Daddy? I'm awake. until I tell her to go back to bed. Then at about 5 in the morning, she'll come back in and let us know she can't find her sucker. So we'll tell her it's in her bed and she needs to go there and lay down some more. Then at about 6ish, she'll come find me to let me know she's awake. And at this point we'll put her in our bed and turn on Pooh, or Mickey or Ses or something so she'll lie there and be still.

Of course, if I got to take a nap between 11 and 3 in the afternoon, I guess I'd be able to stay up later and wake up early too. But I can't sleep at work. Not really, anyway. Thank God for DVRs.

Pretty Picture

You may be asking where I've been lately. But more likely, you're not. We had our last game on Friday and it went well enough. The other team only had 5 player show up, so we took those 5 kids and brought them over to our dugout and combined the teams and I got to pitch the whole game. Of course, since there were only 5 kids, they didn't have either one of their two main coaches either. Another reason I'm not coaching next year.

And so to make up for the lack of typing here, I'm just going to put some pictures up. Enjoy!

Little E's new bed. Which she enjoys and shares with all her little animal friends. Like Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. Or Cinderella, or Snow White, or Giselle. Hmmm, they just keep coming along, eh? This was taken back when she first got the bed also. Now? She's got two more dogs, Snow White, Cinderella, and a Care Bear.

Remember that black eye he got by jumping into the windowsill? There it is. This is the eye that caused his teacher to ask if he was okay and what had happened to his eye.

Cookies at the Pumpkin Patch. I like this pic, because it proves that they love each other. At least right at this particular moment. We'll see how it goes in another 10 years or so.

Family Coach

Two games to go. One tonight, and the last one on Friday. I had one of my players at the last game tell me something interesting, but before I get to that, some important information. I have as many parents as I can help me out during these games, and a couple have helped every game, which I appreciate very much. They are the mother and father of one of the players. Their son is a Junior. It seems to me as though the father is a bit to preoccupied with the direction of his sons baseball career. Towards the beginning of the season, I'd asked if anyone wanted to play with the other team, as they were short players. Junior volunteered and then had a talking to by his dad, after which he came back to the dugout and told me that he "wanted to play with his teammates and not desert them." I don't know any five-year-olds who would ever say that they don't want to desert something, or even that they don't want dessert. So anyway, Junior's dad is always trying to get the kids to do drills that are a bit to advanced for their skill level. He's also got this habit of trying to run infield before the games. And during these little pre-game warm-ups, he's got Junior at shortstop each and every time. So apparently, he feels that his boy will be a shortstop when he grows up. Which is fine, but kids that small can't make the throw from short to first. This always seems to discourage his dad who then tells him to get more on his throws. As if just yelling at him will somehow make him throw the ball farther. So he's a bit of an overinvolved, living through his son type of father. This little preamble will make the next part of this story a bit more interesting.

His son told me at the last game that he doesn't have to listen to me because I'm not really the manager. I asked him who the manager was and he pointed to his dad and said, "He is. He signed up to be manager and wanted it, so he should be manager. And since he wanted to be the manager, I don't have to listen to you because you're not really the manager." I found all this very interesting as I was told by the VP of the league that there weren't any managers for this particular team, which is why I was called the day before the first meeting to sign up my son and run this team. So either he didn't really sign up, or they decided that they'd go outside of the kids who were actually signed up and ask me back. I'm going to go with both of those options. That being that they didn't want him running a team (for reasons I totally understand), and with the requests for me as a manager, they asked me instead. This also helps inflate my little ego. But really, it's not that little. Anyhoo, I didn't bring this up with the parents of this particular kid, as there's only two games left. One more after tonight. One more game and we're not playing fall ball ever again. It's going to be time next year to branch out into other sports. Perhaps basketball. Maybe there's a nice 6 and under lacrosse league out here somewhere. Or if he doesn't want to play sports, he can try soccer. Two more games.

This is an Advertisement

We went to the Western Railway Museum on Saturday to visit the pumpkin patch they have. The pumpkin patch was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time playing in the hay fort and running around playing the games. The main reason we went to this particular patch is you take an old electric train from the 30's into and out of the patch. You get unlimited train rides for the day and these trains have authentic ads from the 30's up along the top of the car. This is where I saw what has to be the greatest ad ever. EVER! And here it is:


You may have to view the enlarged version, but the product is called Hexol. Along the top of the ad, it shows your typical 30's housewife cleaning her bathroom and pouring some Hexol down her toilet for cleaning. The third panel at the top shows her cleaning her kitchen counters with it. The text on the bottle says, and I quote:

For Cuts, Burns, Skin Irritations, Feminine Hygiene, Tired Feet as indicated.
A pleasant Germicide, Disinfectant, Deodorant for Bathroom and Sickroom use.

At the bottom in fine print is says that it's "Non-poisonous if used as directed." It also has "a distinctly pleasant odor." So really this thing can do it all. It sounds spectacular to me and the best part is, you can still buy it. Although now they've taken some of the claims away. It may not be so good for feminine hygiene anymore.

Hit Me Baby One More Time

We played our last game in the horrible scary field last night. Thankfully the last three games of our season are being played on our own field. We did manage to get in three innings last night, which allowed everybody to get three at-bats. I also brought out the tee so that the kids who have been having trouble hitting would get a chance to. For my boy, however, all this meant was a chance to hit off the tee, which he really enjoys. So instead of hitting the pitches I threw in, he just slowly moved the bat around until the predetmined amount of pitches had passed and then took his whacks off the tee. Before his last at-bat I asked him to hit one of the pitches instead of hitting it off the tee. He said fine, and then whacked the first pitch right back at me and I wasn't quite nimble enough to get out of the way in time, and it got me on the foot. T apparently found this hilarious, as while he started running down to first, he pointed at me and laughed. Hard. And with that, I provided the humorous moment of the night.

Then last night before he went to sleep (but after he went to bed) he came out and asked if he could come to work with me again. So this morning, for the second day in a row, he came here before his Kindergarten day. I think this will be the last day for quite some time, as he only has two levels of voice, really loud or not speaking. So it's fairly loud and hard for me to be as productive as I'd like. Plus, if he starts coming every day, it won't be special anymore, and I'd hate for that to happen.

Headbanger's Ball

Well, my son is at it again. He was jumping on the couch on Saturday, which he knows he's not supposed to do. And he should remember this because the last time he did it, he cranked his head on the window sill and got a decent gash on the top of his head. But my little man didn't learn. And so on Saturday, he gave himself a black eye doing the same thing. It's a really good shiner, and as soon as I get the pics off the camera, I'll post one. None of this seems to affect his memory any, which is good, however, it seems to be slowing down his thought process some. I brought him to work with me this morning, which he loved. And before we left the house, he did his usual lunchbox check to take an inventory of what he'd be getting later that day at Kindergarten. We'd left the house and were about 20 minutes into our 45 minute drive to my work, when he asked me why he didn't have any fruit snacks in his lunch. I assured him that I'd brought some along separately, which I had, and that he'd be able to have them for his snack. I'm not sure why it took him a half hour to think of asking about that or what was running through his mind when he blurted that out, but I think that's mostly the ill effects of his constant head bumpings.

But he enjoyed going to work with me today. Of course, he spent his time eating cereal and watching Curious George while coloring and waiting for Kindergarten to start. So I suppose if my days at work were spent in the same manner, I'd be happy all day also. He may get to be happy the rest of the week, we're not sure yet. But the best part of the whole experience is the meeting that I missed most of because I had to take him to school at 9:30. So that was nice. And since you're all here, my little bro has decided to start his own little graphic design company. There's not much to the website yet, as he just purchased it today, but go check it out, bookmark it and spread the joy.

Almost Doesn't Count

Well with four games to go the season is almost over. I'm hoping for a couple rainouts in the next couple weeks to prevent some of these games from happening. I had a managers meeting last night at which the opposing manager attended. He said that this was the best season of fall ball that he'd ever been apart of in his 12 years of Little League service. That was a very disheartening thing to hear, as I think it's disorganized and pointless. We're totally signing up T for basketball next year. Or if there's no sports happening, I'll let him play soccer. The bonus there is I don't know anything about soccer, other than it's boring and also sucks. So I'll just get to sit there in a camping chair and enjoy some delicious hot chocolate while I watch 20 six-year-olds chase a ball around the grass.

On another note, I'm no longer parking in the garage. It has become obvious that it's causing to much clutter in there and I'm unable to do much of anything in there. So I've been spending the past week slowly going through everything out there and trying to gain some space to have a mini-gym in there. This process has made me tired and causes me to fight sleep off on the drive home from work. It's a dangerous thing for me to be trying to stay awake on the long boring ride home and nodding off at each stop light. I need nap time at work. That's what I need. It would help the most. But to bring this back around, I want to finish that project but can only really work on it during the weekends, as with baseball and travel time between home and all my other destinations, there's not any time during the week. It's also supposed to start raining next week, so we'll see how that goes. I haven't had to put the kids in the van in rainy weather for a while now. I need to get an umbrella.