with Real Intent

I've been working on a new project with a group of people that have me in awe. Its' a place to talk about faith, to talk about action, to talk about being a Latter-day Saint intelligently and intentionally and faithfully. Come check us out.

with Real Intent

Look Out World! This girlie is going to SCHOOL!

Finally school time has arrived for Miss M. She's going in the afternoon this year, since she is four. And that may kill us. It very nearly did today. The rest of the family is completely gone by 8:20. M doesn't leave until 11:55 for a noon start time. Every few minutes she wanted to know if we could have lunch and get ready for school now. She was fairly certain it would never come, but all things come to preschoolers who wait and she did finally make her way to preschool as taught by Miss Jeannette. Hopefully we can get into a groove of morning things so that afternoon doesn't take so infernally long to arrive.

M loves Miss Jeannette. She loves her class full of friends. She loves learning and school and snack and playtime and everything, well except coming home at the end of the day. Mom is boring you see, really boring. Such is the life of the last in the family. How did she get so big?

Finally!

Bam's been wiggling his front tooth for weeks now. Z's lost at least one tooth (or more) effortlessly in the same amount of time. But Bam kept wiggling. All of a sudden tonight he asked me to try the dental floss for one good twist and see if it would come out. This never works for my children. They want the tooth out but they are fearful and we spend fruitless and frustrating hours with my hands in their mouth as they hem and haw and ask me to pull and then pull away before I can and I eventually vow never to have anything to do with their mouths and that they must let the teeth fall out on their own and hopefully it won't happen in the middle of the night and choke them to death. (never macabre or hyperbolic around here, never).

So, imagine my surprise when Bam, my most fearful of all children, sits patiently and lets me give his tooth one tug, one blissfully successful tug. And this is now his mouth:



Finally! He is over the moon. The tooth fairy is coming tonight!

Eleven times the fun

This is the cake Z wanted. He saw the idea in a cooking magazine his grandparents get. He's taken to reading these magazines late at night and then asking my opinions on diced fresh rosemary and garlic mayo and whether we have a deep fryer to make onion straws for his school lunch (no and NO). Chocolate frosted cake with m&m garnish as applied by Z is pretty easy (the candies apparently are "11" on top and his name on the sides, not that anyone could actually tell). The real novelty was in the fact that Z wanted a white cake because that's how the magazine did it. I never make white cakes. I love chocolate. My children love chocolate. But because I love Z and it was his birthday, I made him a white cake (five egg whites and all!) and everyone inhaled it on birthday party day, so we may have future white birthday cakes to celebrate (woe is me!)



Z's birthday will require a lot of patience on his part. DH is in town for just a minute; the trial isn't done yet. That means that the bike Z got for his birthday sits in a box waiting to be put together. He got a new watch with a metal band and that must wait too, because the jeweler is closed for Labor Day weekend and I don't have tools small enough to adjust it. He did get to put together the obligatory legos (the White House) and carry his new scripture case to church. But by and large, he is entering a new age of birthday gifts, where they're smaller, fewer (more expensive) and not always out-of-the-box accessible. He is trying to be mature about it; he is eleven. But even though he is a mammoth manchild (5' tall and feet as big as mine!), he is still my boy, my little boy at heart. How did my little boy get so big?