Grateful Heart

I have been participating in the 30 days of a grateful heart challenge posed by the wonderful, Jote.  Today is day 6.

Today, I am grateful for my beautiful girl.  She is growing into such an amazing, compassionate and generous human being.

Today was the first day of her school Holiday Shoppe.  She is scheduled to shop on Thursday, but I know the inventory will be iffy by then, at best, so I took her this afternoon after school.  She wandered through and found gifts for her grandparents, her brother, Chrys and me.  Not once did she ask to buy something for herself.  All day long, I had seen other kids come through and buy things for other people and always they set aside something for themselves.

She admired the ice cream erasers, but when the time came, walked away and bought only for others.  I am constantly in awe of her generosity.  I am truly honored and eternally grateful that she chose me to be her mom.

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This year has been a struggle for her with regards to Christmas.  This is the first year she really hasn't wanted anything.  Sure, there are things that she would like from others, but nothing that she wants so much that it has made it to a request from Santa.  Chrys and I are trying to come up with anything and the Santas that she's talked to have promised to come up with a wonderful surprise for her.  I fear disappointing her, even though I don't think she really cares.

Maybe a charm for the bracelet she bought herself at the Girl Scout store.  Definitely some ice cream erasers in her stocking.

1st place

Ryanne just scored first place in Mario Kart for the 1st time! She was so excited.

She also won an award for a photo she submitted to the PTA Reflections contest. She titled it "Together We Can Play". The theme was "Together We Can...".

Conversations with the tired

From the bath...
Where's dad?
Going potty.
Why?
Do you really want to know why dad's going potty?
Uhhh. Nevermind.


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On punctuation

"Our way beats their way. If you don't agree, it's Free."

Mommy, there should be an exclamation point at the end of that. It's exciting. "It's free!" This way, it looks sad. There's no excitement. It's boring. "It's free. *sigh*"

I have to agree.


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Another exciting meal

Ryanne is now down a 5th tooth. Go Macaroni Grill croutons! - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sheltered

Weekends mean that the kids get to watch TV while we sleep just a bit longer. This is a huge treat for Ryanne because school means she doesn't get to watch much, if any, during the week.

We recently got a new television so Chrys and I have actually started watching some broadcast channels again. This means it doesn't stay tuned to PBS all the time.

This morning, Corin asked what she was watching when he went downstairs. "Some sort of news."

She knows PBS doesn't broadcast news this early. This happened to be weather so she was captivated.

I told her she could push the ch button up or down to get back to channel 18, which is PBS.

She does. She gasps. "I had NO idea this thing would do that."

First she didn't realize our TV had commercials like hotel TVs and now she figures out that we get more that one channel. Somehow I feel we have wronged her.

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The 4th tooth or Why Ryanne had the greatest Kindergarten teacher in the world

I realized that I never posted about the 4th tooth so I'm going to put in the story and back date it so it's in the right place.

Corin and I were walking through the grocery store waiting to go get Ryanne. My phone rang. I didn't recognize the number.

The person says, "Hello, Mrs. Gordon, do you know who this is?" It sounded a lot like Ryanne's kindergarten teacher and I said so. I was very apprehensive. She quickly assured me that everything was just fine, but that Ryanne had some exciting news for me.

She put Ryanne on the phone.

She had lost a tooth at lunch. Such a treat. She bit into some veggie booty and it popped out into her yogurt. She got to go to the nurse and get a treasure chest to bring it home. She told me how excited she was.

I got Mrs. Hunter back. She said that she sometimes lets the kids call home when there's exciting news that they can't wait to share. I told her how much I appreciated the call. I truly did. It was the highlight of my day getting to hear the news before I picked her up.

We bought her a special treat to celebrate. We bought Mrs. Hunter a card to say thank you. It truly is the little things that bring light to our days.

Exciting breakfast

With a bite of bagel, we are another tooth shy. This was the bottom left incisor.

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Love notes

Chrys has taken over making Ryanne's lunches. He's also taken over leaving her little notes on the top of the box. He would save the one from the day before and reuse it until the sticky was gone.

A while ago, I saw her coaching her brother to hide his note on the underside of the cabinet. I assumed Chrys knew about it.

Last week, he commented that she was throwing the notes away. He thought she didn't like them being reused.

I laughed and showed him the cabinet.






I asked her why. Apparently his notes take away from her brain's ability to read other things. It sounds like she assumes she has a finite limit of things she can read in a day's time and doesn't want to spend it on notes from daddy.

He now strives harder to create unique notes.

She still hides them under the cabinet.

I apologize to whoever buys this house next. I'm certain I won't remember to remove them all.


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Deep Thoughts

Ryanne likes to make up songs. Most of these are stream of consciousness things; she sings what she's thinking. She was doing it tonight before bed. By the time I went to record it, she was down to, "Oh English. Oh English. Oh English. Oh English." after about 20s of that, she said, "Ok," and I heard her bed rustling as she settled in.

As she was cleaning up the water mess in the bathroom this afternoon, I asked if she was done. She said, "Almost. Is almost good enough today?" Unfortunately, it wasn't. Mostly because they had both slipped on the floor already.


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Another one down

Sometime overnight, the tooth (bottom right looking at her) finally came out. She's not one to pull so this was as loose as the last one. No clue where the tooth is, but we will write a note to the Tooth Fairy explaining what happened. Hopefully she will be willing to reward even without the tooth.

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Monkey girl

Pretty much from the time that she's been able to grasp things, Ryanne has loved monkey bars. She's been getting closer to be able to do to the ones at the park by herself, but the spacing was really wide.

We went to the park yesterday and she went nuts. She went the full length once or twice. She more enjoyed going about half way and then sliding down the support poles. The ones in the middle don't have bars at the bottom so are less risk for injuring yourself. (Though they do have screws that stick out and she tagged herself at one point. When I went to go check on her she said, "I'M fine. I'm FINE." When I started to walk away, she yelled, "But my vulva is NOT fine" so I went back.)

Most impressive to me is that she's really figured out how the inertia works. She was working her legs to help her get more distance. She would get tired and hang for a bit and then swing until she got the momentum to move again. It was really impressive.

Plus, she was giggling like a fiend, which always makes mama's heart happy.

Negotiations

For dinner tonight we had chicken sautéed with broccoli and marinade served with mac and cheese. You can guess which part of that was my choice and which was the kids'.

Ryanne plowed through her mac and cheese. She declared she was still hungry. I suggested the chicken and broccoli. She insisted that she needed mac and cheese to eat with it. I told her how sorry I was that she was out but that if she was really still hungry there was plenty of food left on her plate.

We had the typical dialogues on how people need a variety of foods, how mean I am, how hungry she is, how her mouth doesn't like lemon marinade anymore, etc.

Finally she looks at me.
"Mommy, do you want this to stop?"

I smell a trap.
"Yes, I do. I find this really frustrating."

She sniffles.
"Then you should just give me more mac and cheese. Then I will stop crying and eat my protein and be full."

As you can guess, it didn't stop.

Car sick

Pretty sure she gets motion sickness on windy, bumpy roads. She was ill last year on a bumpy road from CT and again on the bumpy NY/VT roads today. She does ok in the car but the minute we hit land it's not pretty. So much for getting my iron stomach.





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Awkward parenting moment of the week

Ryanne was scoping out the drawing of us from our honeymoon. The last 0 in 2000 is a bit open. She was confused about it being 2006.

I explained that it was 2000 and that we were married in 2000.

She asked when she was born. 2003. She corrected me to her birthdate.

"When did you do penis to vulva?"

I told her that took 9 months but couldn't correct her to vagina.

Can I change my answers on the TAG for for the science question? I forgot about biology.


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Impatient

Today, I met up with some Girl Scout people at a Walgreen's. It was pouring. It had been a long day. I had to get our registration for spring campout turned in.

I left the kids in the car with the heater running. I was all of two feet away.

I got distracted talking cookies with our mentor mama.

I saw something in my dash and turned to see this


perched in the window.

The other mom asked what ages our girls were. She seemed surprised that my kindergartener wrote that. She laughed and said she best let me go. I could only nod and agree.

Story teller

Ryanne loves role playing and general story telling. They can be pretty elaborate.

Today's involved Miss J and Christmas and stilts and...

At one point she addressed the person as "mama" in her story Ryanne voice. Corin looks at her and reprimands, "Miss Jowi is not your mom."

Ryanne matter of factly states, "In the story she is."

In the car

Driving down the road in 5 o'clock traffic, I tried to distract the kids by asking what they recognized. Ryanne starts reading.

Target, Party City, Arby's

Then we moved out of the strip mall area.

Flowers for dead people...

And where they are buried...

Interesting interpretation of the cemetery.

First ball drop

When Ryanne asked me today if she could stay up late tonight, I never thought she would make it. Thus, I agreed that she could hang out with us for the evening.

That girl wins the stubborn award.

She made it through 2 episodes of Chuck and watched the delayed ball drop from NYC at midnight central. We introduced her to Dick Clark. We watched a few fireworks. Daddy put her in bed.

She is one tired girl, but she made it through the evening awake.

Happy New Year!