He's so cool

In retrospect, we rushed the baby's first Starbucks holiday cup milestone because he dumped this drink everywhere.  But it bought me a few scream-free minutes at Target.  Until, you know, he emptied it and freaked the freak out.  Then there was much screaming.

This is NOT a Black Friday Target trip, BTW.  Black Friday is so not for me, no matter how much I love a good deal.

We expect a call from the school social worker

Jack's class told their teachers what they are thankful for, and the teachers put their answers in the weekly newsletter.

Jack J is my Jack.

We really love Diane DeGroat's Gilbert books-- they are adorable-- you should check em out.  She writes a book for most holidays-- even April Fool's day-- and major occasions like the first day of school.  Her Thanksgiving book is called We Gather Together Now Please Get Lost, and we have been reading it a lot.  In the book, Gilbert ditches his dorky field trip partner on a day-before-Thanksgiving class trip by hiding in the bathroom, and the door accidentally locks, and he's worried he will spend the holiday locked inside (but the dorky classroom buddy comes to the rescue just in time for pumpkin pie at the school trip picnic-- phew!).  SO THAT'S WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT.

Anyway, hope you are also thankful to not be locked in a bathroom today.

Work work work

And all week I have been bitching about how hard it is to go to work.

Today, I spent 45 minutes at Little Gym*, 45 minutes in Jack's class stuffing folders and filling back packs and making turkey hats**, and an hour in Harry's class talking about my job and reading with my cute little Wednesday morning reading group***.

Then, Ben left to get an oil change and buy some hockey skates and a helmet so he could skate with the boys tonight and hit up Whole Foods for a curried chicken wrap for me and picnic stuff for everyone else so we can eat lunch on our way to my grandma's (AND THEY WERE OUT OF CURRIED CHICKEN WRAPS AND SONOMA CHICKEN SALAD WTF??).

Cooper and Jack and I went for a walk/bike ride and fought our way through the crowds at Target and a specialty grocery store.

At home, Cooper did NOT nap (but he did have crib time) while Jack watched Up and I baked a bajillion cookies.

Ben and Harry came home, and the boys made a math turkey (don't ask) while I baked and Ben and Coop ran another errand.

Ben and the bigs went to hockey and dinner.  I fed Cooper and tried to clean up my baking disaster while he ate but didn't get very far.  Cooper and I cleaned up the toy room and the family room and picked out clothes for the kids to wear on our short Thanksgiving trip, which I get to pack soon.

After he went to bed (at 6, thank goodness and no nap), I finished the kitchen, which was a huge mess-- even had to wipe down all the appliances, cleaned both upstairs bathrooms, and dusted and vacuumed the downstairs.

Ben and the boys came home for showers, and after they were done, I cleaned the downstairs bathroom and finally ate something besides Hershey's kisses and cookie dough.

Ben and I just this minute sat down to watch DVR'ed TV from Monday, and we are EXHAUSTED.  I guess work days are way easier after all.

*It was rookie day at LG, all the nannies replaced with parents who had the day off and didn't know a damn thing about LG.  They wore shoes!  They let their kids start walking on the wrong side of the beam!  They spotted in the hands and arms, not the torso!  It was madness.

** More about this tomorrow. zOMG.

*** Ironically, since I was talking about public speaking, my presentation SUCKED.  But any presentation would be awful because a Big Ten football coach came in last week. How do you follow that?  Not by telling kids they should go to school for 25 years.  Couldn't even impress them by saying I'm a doctor because a REAL doctor also came in last week.  Also, asking a class of 6 y/os to answer your question gets out of hand fast.

Two work days in a row? WTH?

It was as if I just woke up today and realized that the semester is over in a few weeks.

Actually, that's exactly what happened.  I was thumping around my bedroom/bathroom like an angry bear this morning thinking that I only have to come up with a few more semi-pro outfits and set my alarm like 8 more times before the semester is over, and I am off for a month. 


Immediately after this thought, I realized that I have a ton of prep work to do in the next few weeks, so that I can spend my break the way it should be: on the couch in front of the TV while the kids are in school and Cooper naps.  Not hunched over my desk making syllabi and course schedules.

So I spent the whole damn day working on either my reproductive rights class or the new course I am proposing.  Then I had to go home and be on solo kid duty all night while Ben had class. Yikes.

Tomorrow, I have a full day of Little Gym, volunteering in the kids' classrooms, baking, and packing to look forward to.

And hey, isn't global warming neat?  It was like 50 degrees this afternoon, so we played outside until it got dark (at like 4:45, which SUCKS)

Harry is totally sure that a beaver has built a dam in this pond

Jack cannot ride downhill because he can't use the breaks on his bike, and Harry cannot ride uphill because he is lazy.  They are quite a pair.

When we came home from our walk, we were disturbed to see that the bubbles we blew thirty minutes earlier were on the driveway, unpopped.  Weird.

My long day's journey into night

You guys, I have such a long day.

Last night when I put on my pajamas, I was horrified to discover that the Old Navy pajama bottoms I bought right after I had Cooper in an extra size up so they'd be comfy are TIGHT in the ASS.  So I set my alarm for 5:30, so I could work out before going to campus.  Where I planned to go early, so that I could get a bunch of shit done before a morning meeting.

Instead, Ben and I dealt with Assorted Life Bullshit via email before the kids went to school.

I also encountered the children on my way up from working out and got tangled up in making their breakfast, and this unexpected duty and the email chain I stumbled into did not make for a tidy morning.

 I ended up racing to campus with wet hair and barely enough time to go to Whole Foods for a curried chicken wrap on my way in (but I made time for that stop because I am obsessed with those things right now-- so good).

Then, you guys, after my meeting at 9:30, I worked straight until 6:30.  I did eat my chicken wrap-- in my office while I worked on the online classes I teach adjunct at a career college.

I met with colleagues.  Met with undegrads.  Met with grad students.  Wrote a course proposal that took most of my afternoon. Conducted a staff meeting.  Went back to my office afterwards and prepped tomorrow's class. 

SUCH a long day.

And I didn't even have time to blog, write my NanoWriMo book, or work on my Dear Baby journal which does not have a snowball's chance in hell of being full if I keep going at this rate.

It's like I am a grown up.  Blech.

Sunday

Saddest thing ever at breakfast today.

I used my new coffee mug that has the kids' hockey picture on it.  Underneath their picture it says Harrison.  Ben and I cracked up when we saw it because it's SUCH a middle kid thing, right?  Doesn't even get his own name on the picture.  The pictures of them together were on Harry's order form, and even though Ben purposefully left the caption box blank on the mug order, the company defaulted to putting just Harry's name under the picture.  Oops.  No big deal, right?

Both kids noticed, and we explained that it was a mistake.  They didn't say anything else for a few minutes.  Then Jack said, "Maybe it's because Harry's smiling bigger."

"What," we asked.

"Maybe that's why only his name is on the cup."

We felt terrible and explained AGAIN that it was a simple mistake.  He said okay and went back to his cereal.  A few minutes passed, and he said, "Maybe it's because Harry is taller."

At that point I dumped my coffee in the sink and put the offending mug in the dishwasher. Ben is calling first thing in the morning to order another mug that says Jack and to make sure their pictures don't just have Harry's name on the bottom.

Getting a little big for the Bjorn

Cooper scavenges the big boys' breakfasts when they are all done

Harry loved his pumpkin crunch pie sample at the grocery store so much that he ate part of the spoon, which cracked him up

The only way Coop can shop without screaming

Alarmingly, we happened upon Ben like this in the afternoon.

Harry's nighttime reading materials.  Ha!

Mama

The baby whom I carried for 41 weeks, birthed without any drugs, and nursed for over a year has been saying words like "Dada" and "Cheese" for months.  But today-- the sweetest day-- he finally said Mama.  Since he says Mmmm when he wants milk and Mmm mmmm mmm when he is eating something he likes, I gotta tell you, I was starting to take it personally.