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    Butthead

    September 26th, 2014

    S2 (to G): you know why I call you a butthead? Because you have a butt and a head.

    You heard it here folks. Please don’t be offended. As we all have a butt and a head, we are liable to receive this name.


    Great minds

    September 23rd, 2014

    G is playing Fall Ball this season. It’s a whole new ballgame (literally): games and stricter uniform codes. Little man has to wear a cup. After having seen the coaches kid get his nose broken by a flying ball 5 minutes into their first game (ball bounced up on his face?), I can whole-heartedly support the cup mandate. G, on the other hand, has been of different mind. He’s strongly expressing his “It’s MY body, and I say NO! I’m NOT going to wear it, and that’s IT!”

    So… he got a cup.

    I don’t know how S finagled this one, but the boy wore a cup to his first game. Thank you, Husband! G even got to practice with it the night before.

    As I watched S unpack it, I really wanted to urge G to have his brother try to punch him in the crotch. You know… so he can see he’s “invincible” for a change. But, I suppressed my teenager sense of humor, thinking that there might be some longer term reprecussions I wasn’t anticipating, and it’s probably not a good idea to start that trend.

    Turns out, I didn’t have to suggest this to him, because G immediately caught on, and after he put on his new gear, the following event occurred. [yes, you have to watch this 8 second video clip]

    [youtube=http://youtu.be/a0FVHD8FbaQ]

    That’s right — Great minds. He was already there with me.

    Of course, this meant that he also spent his first game banging on his crotch whenever the ball was not in play. Good times! Good times!


    The quarter deal

    September 18th, 2014

    S2 is SO into Lego. To the point he used up ALL his piggy bank on new Lego sets. I may have taken him to the store, where he lost his mind and decided he needed to go back every week-end. It was rough to watch him spend everything, but I had to let him. He was going through my money, so that had to stop and I needed him to realize that money wasn’t infinite, and until he used up his own, he wasn’t going to “get it”.

    That made for a really sad, little boy that was checking in on the state of his piggy bank account all the time. But money didn’t magically show up anymore. He had to earn it. We struck a deal. Be forewarned, I know it has the big potential to bite me in the ass, but it’s worth trying right now…

    In addition to being Lego obsessed, this dude is an extremely picky eater. There are probably no more than 20 food items this child will put in his mouth in total. Most of them are things you see at breakfast. I need him to expand his food dictionary, and the only way I’ve been successfully able to do that is through bribing him… with a quarter. So our deal is: he has to take a bite from every item on MY plate. At the end, if he does everything he qualifies for a quarter. He doesn’t have to like it, but he has to try it. Right now I’m still letting him spit some of the food back out. Hey — just getting it IN his mouth has been monumental, I’m going through baby steps. But pretty soon the ante is going to go to swallowing the bite, to a point where he’s going to eat what we eat. And it’s a quarter at a time. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s doing something.

    He’s discovered that my chicken is just like his chicken nuggets. Passable. So we already have one food item he’s willing to consider. Most veggies are still a no-go, but hey work in progress.


    HE gets it

    September 1st, 2014

    September is pediatric cancer awareness month. I’ve been living this past year very aware of pediatric cancer. But now that Unravel is live, I’m trying to help.

    One of the Unravel fundraising campaigns this month is Fluttering. I received my kit a week or so back, and we set it up in our front-yard (which was tricky by the way, because you can’t set it up on fake grass :-/) The kids were into it, so it got them excited about fluttering other houses this month.

    G and I fluttered our first home together. Honestly, I feel kinda nervous about it: what if the family REALLY doesn’t want it? Will they be pissed off? Should I have asked for permission? But I’ve decided to beg for forgiveness rather than permission in this case, and we’ll see how it goes. G meanwhile enjoyed being sneaky.

    photo 2

    On the drive home G and I had a very unexpected conversation. It began with him asking if we just left Jennifer’s house?

    “No, buddy! That was R’s house!”

    We were here so that R’s mommy and daddy can learn more information about cancer.

    He asked “How do you get cancer?”

    I did the best I could explaining to him that cancer was not contagious, and it was about your body making broken cells. That some cancers get better. And some don’t.

    And then he said “So we need money to make medicine?”

    Yes, buddy, we do. We do because government isn’t giving enough, and pharmaceutical companies are focusing on making medicine for adults. So we need mommies and daddies to help get the money to science so they can find medicine.

    My throat chokes up having to tell him about it, because it hurts that I have to. And HE gets it! My perceptive 6 year old gets it. Damn you, Cancer! He shouldn’t have to!

    So…. if you’re one of those adults that wants to and can help, please support me in my fundraising efforts this month. I have a page here: http://fluttering.causevox.com/ava