All I want for Christmas

Matthew cuddled up to me last night and said “Mommy, I want to be the best kid in the whole world”.  I said to him “aww honey, I already think you’re the best kid in the world” and snuggled him and thought it was just going to be a sweet moment between Mommy and son. 

Well, he went a bit further.

“Mommy, you know what else I want for Christmas?  I want you to be the best Mommy in the whole world and buy me all the Transformers and not get mad”. 

I nearly died laughing!  My darling little boy understands that I don’t think he needs to have every toy he ever wants whenever he wants it.  Unfortunately he also knows who to go to whenever he wants something, and it ain’t me!

Excuses excuses

How can you be mean to your sister and justify it?

Maya was pretending to be a kitty cat, meowing and rubbing up against Matthew’s leg.  He told her to get lost, and when I reprimanded him he said “But Mommy, I’m allergic to kitties”!!!

Oops! Bad (non) blogger!

OK it’s been a busy few months around here. Matthew’s doing very well in school, although he’s in a special group of 2-3 kids to help get his reading up to snuff, but he’s much better than he was last year. Personally I think schools are expecting way too much from kids these days but I can’t stop it so I have to deal with what they’re throwing at us.

Maya’s loving her “school”, except she occasionally complains she wants to go back to her old one (aka Rec Centre) and I think it’s just cuz she wants to watch the hockey. I don’t think she has a love for the game, just the players. Ugh! Am I getting a glimpse of my future? I don’t want her to be a sports groupie. She’s learning tons in school and even tries to do Matthew’s homework for him! LOL. So it looks like I’ll have to make photocopies of his papers so she can do it too.

We had our first ever Hallowe’en party and it turned out pretty good according to the kids. I spent way too much money and time and effort making mini-pizzas for the kids and turning them into mummies, and making crackers & cheese look like ghosts when all the kids ate were the chips, cheesies, and candy. Duh! Kinda obvious isn’t it? I’ll know better for next year . We had a little Hallowe’en Hunt in the house where we hid toys and candy and the kids had to go searching for it, then we played the Mummy game where you wrap one another up in toilet paper and the first team to wrap their teammate up head to toe wins. My house was trashed with toilet paper, but it was cute watching the kids pretend to be zombies walking with their arms stretched out saying “ooooh”.

Chris got a new job, and a new car, and he’s been busy with that so Mommy and kids have been on our own much of the time while we adjust to that. I think we’re getting there, but it’s very tiring.

Now for the controversial part of the blog, the H1N1 shot. Since this particular strain of the flu pounces on and attacks the respiratory system and since Matthew has asthma and is so susceptible to every little bug out there, we decided to get him the shot. And because we don’t know how strong Maya’s immune system is yet, being that she’s only 3, we opted to get her one too. They each received the half dose and we go back in 21 days for the next one, assuming there will be any left by that point. Their arms hurt today where they got the needles and Maya is knocked right on her little arse sleeping, but apparently that’s to be expected.

Now that Thanksgiving and Hallowe’en are done, let’s get on with Christmas!!!

First day of school! :D

After a long, arduous summer where the two kids were bored out of their skulls despite many day trips and special events, Matthew has finally gone off to school for his first day of Senior Kindergarten (aka “SK”). 

Yesterday we started the prep which went beyond the normal making lunch, packing the backpack and picking out clothes; we made and decorated a box for his cubby.  The kids are supposed to bring a shoebox to house their indoor shoes and a change of clothes should they jump into a mud puddle but since we didn’t have one, we made a special one instead.  We took the box from our case of Pepsi, taped up the ends and made a lid for the top, and decorated it with pics of Transformers we printed off the ‘net.  After we glued down all the pictures, I went over everything with a coat of Mod Podge to help seal it, and we packed up his shoes and extra clothes.  He’s so proud of it that he had to hold it while eating his breakfast, and carry it the whole way to school so everyone could see it.  I must say, it’s the coolest cubby box I’ve ever seen. 

He got dressed rather quickly and without argument this morning, barely ate any breakfast (partly from excitement I suppose, but he also came down with some sort of bug the other day so he’s still a tad under the weather), brushed his teeth, and insisted we leave early.  School starts at 8:45am and we live roughly a block from school.  Know what time we left to walk to school?  7:50am!!!  It did give me lots of time to snap some pictures of his first day though, and we played at the park on our route for about 30 minutes too.

We walk to the school yard and see that they’ve painted little games, like hopscotch and four-corners, on the asphalt.  Yay!  And they even added a sandbox to the Kindergarten area.  Of course all the kids jump right in, much to the dismay of the other parents who dressed their kids in their finest first-day-of-school clothes.   LOL.  I personally didn’t give a hoot so I let him go.  He started making sand castles at first, but then took it a step further, laid down in the sandbox and started making sand angels!  Weirdo!  So yeah, a little bit of dirt turned into utter filth.  Oh well, that’s why they have sinks inside so he can wash his hands.  Don’t know how he’ll get all that sand off his pants and shirt though, considering the morning dew made it a little stickier than normal and it clung to him.

I can’t wait to hear the stories about his day. 

Never judge a book by its cover

Chris bought a new DVD the other day, The Mutant Chronicles, and he left the case upstairs on the table.  Matthew picked it up and studied it.

Matthew:  “Ooh a new movie.”.  Tilts head, studies cover of DVD for a second or two.  “And it’s about Michael Jackson”.

 

RIP MJ!

Maya goes to “school”

Since Matthew’s first day at Junior Kindergarten last year, Maya’s been dying to go too and would even pitch a fit as we dropped off her brother and I brought her home with me.  Because it’s been so difficult to find other Moms in the area with kids Maya’s age to play with and she needs the stimulation and socialization (and I could use a break from 2 argumentative children by day, and a job nights/weekends) we’ve put her with Matthew’s old babysitter Karen.  Here she has other kids roughly her own age and a little younger to play with, and there are planned activities much like a preschool.  In order to make it more appealing to Little Miss Maya, we refer to it as her “school” rather than daycare.  And this has been given two thumbs up for our little girl.  We even took a picture of her on her first day the other day, and hopefully Chris will attach it below in a day or two.

Redecorating

Matthew got his first pet a few weeks ago, a Beta fish he named Waspinator (after his newest Transformer acquisition.  Why do kids have to come up with the dumbest names for their pets?).  Anyhoo, Waspinator’s fish bowl has a pineapple house from the SpongeBob show and a SpongeBob figurine.  Matthew took out the figurine a few days ago and put it in another (empty) fishbowl we have.  I don’t think there was really a good reason for it; he just felt like doing it.  This morning after he fed the fish, he showed me that he moved the pineapple house from one end and brought it up towards the front and positioned it in the middle of the bowl.

Mommy:  “Why would you move the pineapple house?”

Matthew:  “To make more room so he can play in his backyard”

ABC’s, per Maya

Oh my God this is so darn cute! I think we all know that nearly ever kid initially has problems singing the alphabet once you get to the letter “L”, but this is a new version I’ve never heard from a little kid. Here’s how Maya sings it:

ABCDEFGHIJK “animal pee”…

Matthew tried to teach her the proper way to say it but I told him it’s OK and that she’s just little. Yeah yeah I know she should learn it the correct way, but I want this on video first before it’s gone forever.

Spider-Maya

My daughter learned to climb chain-link fences today. Ugh!

It started at Grampa’s house, where she was trying to get the attention of the neighbour’s dog and was repeatedly ignored. Not one to let things slide, Maya stuck her feet in the holes of the fence and worked her way to the top and was about to swing a leg over when I bellowed at full volume to GET DOWN RIGHT NOW! She got down and tried to explain that the doggie not talking a her ‘n’ she only wanna give da doggie a stick but doggie no answer her. I reiterated that she is to never climb up a fence again, and thought that was the end of that.

Then after school the kids and I went to the neighbourhood park which is boardered by a Catholic school, which also has a chain link fence. I thought nothing of it, fully confident in my parenting abilities and the rules I had set out earlier in the day regarding fences. I saw her playing near the fence with a bunch of kids and everything seemed good, so I continued to talk with some of the other Moms at the park. Mid-conversation I glance across the park to see this little blonde haired, blue t-shirted, orange Croc’d Spiderman-impersonating menace scaling the bloody fence to get to the schoolyard. Seeing as how I’m stiff and sore from back troubles, dog-tired and not moving very fast, and wearing Crocs myself which prevent me from chasing even a turtle, I shouted out loud enough so EVERYONE in the park heard “MAYA GET OFF THAT FENCE NOW!” as I’m speed-walking as fast as my tree-trunk legs and feet in Crocs would allow me to go without falling (fat) ass-over-apple-cart in front of everyone and embarrassing myself. She got off the fence and I thought I made my point, so I headed back to the Moms section. For whatever reason halfway back I turned my head to look at Maya, who had decided that she’ll do what she’s told and not climb the fence but cleverly came up with another tactic I hadn’t thought of: crawling UNDER the fence. I called out to her to get out of there but by the time I got to her she had already crawled beneath the fence like a damn puppy and was on the other side so I couldn’t get to her. I was so pissed I growled “you get back over to this side of the fence right now or so-help-me-God…”. “But I can’t Mommy. I can’t get under der again”. I said “You managed to get yourself over there and you get your butt back over here right now even if it means you have to tear your shirt and scrape your back in the process”. Umm, yeah I was pretty pissed by now. That seemed to inspire her to find the will and the way and she quite easily snuck back under the fence and back to me, where I asked her “What on Earth would make you think it was a good idea to leave the park and go into a schoolyard that’s fenced off so I can’t get to you?”. Her answer? “I yooking for cadderpiyyers Mommy. Der’s no more at da park an I yooking over der for dem and dat girl over der did it an she ahready gotted some cadderpiyyers and dey’re gonna be all gone Mommy an I just wanna pay wiff dem too Mommy.”. She had a very good point there. So after I did the whole “just because someone does something doesn’t mean you get to do it because you already knew it was wrong” speech (I’m saving the if-your-friend-jumped-off-a-bridge-would-you-think-it’s-a-good-idea-and-jump-off-too speech for later), took her by the hand and made the Walk-of-Shame back to the other mothers, who watched me every step of the way and didn’t say a word.

The whole time, Matthew and his (girl) friends were playing near the sewer grate.

Spider-Maya, Spider-Maya, does whatever a Spider-Maya does. Can she swing, from a web? Probably but hasn’t thought of it yet. Look out, cuz here comes Spider-Maya!

Maya’s Fairytale

Maya wanted me to tell her a story today, but not read one from a book; I had to think of the darn thing myself!  This is a talent I just do not have.  Here’s the best that I could do:

Once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl named Maya.  She had ketchup all over her face from her hot dog, peed on the potty two times that day and really liked to jump on beds.  She had a big brother named Matthew and a very strong, secure sense-of-self.  She loved kisses and hugs from her Mommy, being tossed in the air by her Daddy, and playing with her brother’s Transformers.  And we all loved her very much.  The End.

See?  Not the most creative story in the world but she was a big fan