In England they say “Surname” for “Last name.” This took Eric and I some getting used to. Sort of like when they ask your birthdate and you automatically lead with the month as we were taught in the states instead of the day as they list it here. I’ve had to cross out many a “date” because of this because you’re trained to do it a certain way, it is hard to remember.
Well I ran into Porter’s teacher the other day and she was cracking up as she pulled me aside to tell me this story.
Teach: “I cracked up today when I saw something Porter wrote.”
Me: “Uh oh…”
Teach: “No, no, it’s fine – here let me tell you what happened.”
Me: “Uh oh…”
Teach: (smiling) “So Porter was writing out his name on his spelling test and it says ‘Surname’ so he wrote ‘Porter Bray'”
Me: “Uh oh…”
Teach: (laughing now) “So then for ‘other name’ *meaning first name* he writes… P. MAN!”
So the night before Halloween (Halloween’s Eve) we finally “convinced” Gracie to let Daddy pull her tooth. Even after she’s seen Porter lose six of his teeth, she still – like most kids – freaked out at the idea of a tooth being taken from her. We video taped it, just like we did to Porter and we tried really hard to be nice about it. It was hilarious seeing her get so upset but as you can see at the end, she was really happy! The tooth fairy visited her last night, taking her tooth and leaving her a whopping $5.00! Yes, she’s wearing a Hooters shirt. Now normally I wouldn’t really promote Hooters even though we love the place but we figured it was a nice keepsake to take with us to London. I bet there aren’t any Hooters-eque restaurants there! The best part: the shirt she’s wearing is an adult female small. Wow. Really?!
So I know this blog is lagging, I promise to get back to the normal day to day stuff but with us trying to move from Georgia to London, England, I’m a little bit preoccupied! I hope to get back to normal within a few months during this move but for now I’ll leave you with this.
We’re at Mellow Mushroom the other day where they have a huge Transformer Bumblebee in the corner. It’s busy but not packed. I see the Transformer so I get Porter’s attention and point it out to him and go over with my iPhone to take a picture of it and Gracie goes with me. So we’re standing there, I’m taking a picture and Gracie yells to the huge group of guys sitting next to the sculpture, “LOOK! THE BUMBLEBEE HAS A WIENER!”
Ugh. Luckily that’s the least of my concerns so I chuckled, shrugged my shoulders and ate my pie.
Porter tries to run and grab a wall outside of a restaurant in London when we were visiting. I just though it was cute and his determination was spot on…
Anyone who has children opposite sexes knows what it’s like when a boy sits down to draw and when a girl sits down to draw. I don’t think my children are any different. You might even say they are polar opposites it seems when they sit down to draw for me. Maybe a picture would explain this better…
Typical Porter Piece:
Interesting...
see how the sunlight plays against the shadows of the dog’s poop as it obliterates a flower… Niiiice.
Then there is Gracie’s artwork:
I see...
two obnoxiously ecstatic bunny rabbits on their hind legs high-fiving the world… that’s she and I if you were wondering.
As you can see, completely different points of reference for these two. I’m not saying all of the drawings go this way, just most of them and there is nothing at all wrong with that!
So my brilliant little seven-year old boy was lounging around before we left for school today while I got his little sister lotion-ed up and dressed. He’s in ♥ ((LOVE)) with notebooks and carries about 10 around my house at any given time that I CANNOT THROW AWAY and CANNOT WRITE IN and Gracie CANNOT SEE THEM and the MUST BE PACKED FOR LONDON IMMEDIATELY! In these he makes notes including the family’s farting/pooping behavior, creates diagrams regarding said behavior and laughs uncontrollably about it. He’s been into these “diary’s” since he was about three years old and although most people would call me a minimalist, I have kept all of these books. I even would ask him what it was he drew then write it out for him so we could remember what it was when he got older. We found one the other day and it was two stick figures with unhappy faces and what looked to be circles everywhere:
"this is when I got mad at you and Daddy put you into a whirlpool so you are sad"
Funny, right?! I love this kid… onto my “roke star” point…
So he is writing furiously in this notebook the other morning, reminding me of myself and how much I enjoyed writing and as we are walking out the door he announces, “Ok, MY FIRST SONG IS READY!” He leaps up, grabs his backpack and with no re-write he bursts out the front door, onto the sidewalk and starts belting out his new song for all to hear!
First draft = final draft for this kid!
It was _AMAZING_ and I threw him my iPhone (we were late for school so I couldn’t tape him outside) and had him sing it for me and video it on the way to school. How AWESOME is my boy?!?!
Footnote: When I typed this I kept wanting to spell “favorite” and “behavior” with the added English “u.” Guess London is starting to seep into my brain!
Took the kids to Carvel Ice Cream shop the other day to celebrate a successful first week at school and they were allowed (per Eric) to get three scoops of any ice cream and although he said “THREE TOPPINGS ONLY” I think they ended up with five at least. I cannot get over how happy they look in these pictures!
Driving down the road Porter asks me “If I swallow ink, will it make me sick?”
Uh oh. Whenever Porter asks a question like this it means he’s already done it and get Poison Control on speed dial.
So I tell him that it depends and he says, “Well I was sucking on this marker (non toxic thankfully) to see if there was any more ink in it and it didn’t get into my mouth but I’m sure there is ink.”
Ok – crisis adverted… awesome.
So then he says “You know, I do some DANGEROUS things – like putting things in my mouth that might make me sick… I really need to invent a sucking machine…”
So today I decided that I would finally take Porter and Gracie to the pool today. In my mind it went like this; towel, sunscreen, toys… done. In reality it took quite a bit longer.
First off, my kids wanted to go immediately when I suggested it. Unfortunately it took a good thirty minutes just to round everything up to get there. I had to first undress them, then apply the spray on sunscreen, which if applied in the house on hardwood floors, quickly makes the floors so slippery that you would have thought we had coated them in canola oil. So then I had to mop up the sprayed area and take the kids outside to finish up applying sunscreen. Then it had to soak in all the while listening to the constant whine of “why aren’t we leaving yet?!” Then there were toys to find, flotation devises to summon from last years pool days. Oh wait, just kidding. Because my 2 year old daughter grows at double her rate so the cute little 3T bathing suit/life vest that she worse last year is about the size of her big toe. So scratch that, everyone into the car so we can run up to Target to get a life vest/swimsuit that will fit a 41lb 2 year old.
Check that and we’re back home. Now time to put on our bathing suits… remember my daughter who grows so fast? Back to target because the 3T bathing suits from last year, still don’t fit. Now check that again and we’re back home. Time to reapply the sunscreen and wait for it to soak in….cue the whine.
NOW that we successfully sunscreened and suited up, time to pack the toys bag with goggles, masks, toys, water and snacks. Alright kids, get in the car…we are ready! Here we go, we’re driving to the pool…. oh shit, turn around (sorry kids – please stop whining) because I didn’t even have towels. That’s right – I forgot the towels. So back home, grab the towels and head back out the door. Drive to the pool feeling pretty good that I had remembered everything… get there and WHOOPS! Still need the key to get in. (Insert cuss word here). Back into the car. Now the kids are beyond whining and actually crying at this point. Back home to search every drawer, cabinet and beach bag to find the key from last summer to get into the pool only to have Porter walk up to me and go, “isn’t the key attached to your bag that’s in the car on the keychain?” (insert worse cuss word here). Back into the car, drive to the pool, get there, unlock door, set things down…. and…… OH…(insert worst cuss word you know here) because it’s way past Gracie’s nap time and no one’s even eaten lunch. Awesome.
PS. I did let them swim for an hour – they deserved it!
it started out with being woken up several times in the night by Porter who apparently was having some bad dreams but not really waking up. This is okay, it just meant that I had to get up quite a bit and go into his room to comfort him which equals less sleep for me. Then, of course, bouncing Porter was up at 6am and ready to go. I get up, take my shower and make breakfast. Gracie’s been having trouble eating lately so I’ve been trying to get her to try at least one bite of whatever I make. This morning it was simply cereal with milk and she refused to eat it. So we had a great little power struggle where I ask her to try ONE bite and she pitches a huge fit, cries and ultimately throws up because she’s trying so hard to make herself cry harder. That was about five seconds before I walk out the door.
Then I drop Porter off at preschool, late of course, and head over to ALDI to do some grocery shopping. Aldi, in trying to keep costs down has a quarter return cart system. You stick the quarter in, you get a cart, you return the cart, you get your quarter back. I always keep a few quarters in my car so that I never have the issue of being cart-less with a toddler in tow. However, my son has recently gotten very interested in money, what each coin is worth and the history behind the faces on the coins. In getting into this, he’s also decided that any money left unattended is his. So I get to Aldi and sure enough, all of the money in my car has been confiscated by Porter and is probably residing in some secret place where he keeps his stash. I figured I’d wing it and go in anyways. I carry in a few reusable bags and start filling them with milk, bread, eggs….. then do a myriad of sprints and dashes as I chase Gracie all over the store while lugging the bags behind me.
After that we decided to go to Walgreens to get the pictures developed that I have been taking of my son’s baseball team. I decided to do a scrapbook as a gift to the coach and wanted to have enough pictures that I could fill in any missing spaces. I had taken about 114 pictures and instead of going through them all, decided it would be easier to transfer them to my card and take them in to get them developed. I really didn’t want to have to come back later with both kids so I waited for them to finish. Gracie has really been loving her independence and when it isn’t necessary to strap her in a cart, I enjoy letting her wander the stores while I follow behind and see what interests her. This worked up until about the last 15 minutes when she ran up to a plate of syran wrapped brownies and started taking gigantic bites out of them while I run up and try to grab them away from her. The store manager was less then pleased and made me pay for all of them. I didn’t want her eating this food so I took it away from her, placed her in a cart so that I could keep her from opening anything else and then she started her 2nd meltdown of the day. For the last 10 minutes of trying to check out and pay, she is screaming and crying and won’t let me console her at all. We walk out of the store, my nerves are shot, I’m frazzled and I’m ready to get in the car and get Porter picked up from school. I pick up the huge box of 114 pictures and realize that the developer forgot to seal the box. It promptly bursts open from the bottom and 114 pictures are picked up by gusts of wind that are around 25 miles per hour and scatter the pictures across three parking lots. I start frantically grabbing the pictures, running after them and dragging Gracie behind me. The best part was that not ONE person stopped, for even a second, to help me, offer to help or simply grab the pictures gathering around their feet before the wind blew them off again. Not only that, but after seeing me rushing after said pictures, several people had no problem simply driving OVER the pictures and ignoring the fact that I was trying to save them.
I picked up Porter from school and decided to hide at home for the rest of the day as clearly yesterday was DEFINITELY not my day.
So today I decided that I would finally take Porter and Gracie to the pool today. In my mind it went like this; towel, sunscreen, toys… done. In reality it took quite a bit longer.
NOW that we successfully sunscreened and suited up, time to pack the toys bag with goggles, masks, toys, water and snacks. Alright kids, get in the car…we are ready! Here we go, we’re driving to the pool…. oh shit, turn around (sorry kids – please stop whining) because I didn’t even have towels. That’s right – I forgot the towels. So back home, grab the towels and head back out the door. Drive to the pool feeling pretty good that I had remembered everything… get there and WHOOPS! Still need the key to get in. (Insert cuss word here). Back into the car. Now the kids are beyond whining and actually crying at this point. Back home to search every drawer, cabinet and beach bag to find the key from last summer to get into the pool only to have Porter walk up to me and go, “isn’t the key attached to your bag that’s in the car on the keychain?” (insert worse cuss word here). Back into the car, drive to the pool, get there, unlock door, set things down…. and…… OH…(insert worst cuss word you know here) because it’s way past Gracie’s nap time and no one’s even eaten lunch. Awesome.
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