Canandaigua Montessori School Graduation - 5.31.2012

Success!  Luke made it through 2 years of preschool and we couldn't have asked for a better experience for him.  CMS was good to Luke, his skills improved dramatically from when he started until the end.  I'm just astounded that Luke is walking out of preschool with reading skills under his belt.   Now Graduation was an experience.  The only way to describe it was that Luke was totally "Luke."  His class sang 3 songs on stage.  During the first song, Luke had to go to the bathroom and was thus escorted off and back on stage.  During the second song, Luke swayed side to side and held up his shirt for the audience to see his belly.  He may have been doing some lip syncing in there at some point.  During the 3rd song, Luke was supposed to give to title of the song to the audience via microphone.  Well, he decided he didn't really want to do that.  Next, was the crossing over the bridge ceremony.  Luke was the first one in his class to go.  He hesitated, then finally ran across the bridge and dove into the arms of his teacher for a goodbye hug.  What can I say, at least he adds some flare.

We are sad to be leaving Canandaigua Montessori school behind but it is Luke's time for his rite of passage.  Of the 9 children in Luke's class, all but one are heading off to Kindergarten next year.  It's a scary thought but Luke is more than ready for the next step - Council Rock Primary School!

Struggle, I mean Stroll for Strong Kids

On June 2, 2012, we participated in a fund raiser for Strong Memorial Hospital's Children's Center.  We "walked" for a co-worker of Matt's who lost his five year old daughter to Leukemia about a year ago.  While our team was walking in memoriam, there were so many teams there walking for successful miracle stories as well.  I noticed a lot of families walking for preemies and their t-shirts had pictures of their babies with all the NICU gear on and then a saying such as "Proud NICU Graduate."  While most of those families had their itty bitty babies in strollers, our own NICU graduate was racing through the crowds on his scooter, cutting off people left and right.  If only those parents of the itty bitties knew...

And so our "stroll," turned out to be more of a "struggle."  Matt and I took turns reminding Luke to put his helmet on and yelling "slow down, watch out, stop!"  In the mean time, big girl was relentlessly attempting to evade the grasp of the stroller, pretending to be tortured.  Ok, so we let little miss out to walk and she goes about 10 yards and then, stops.  Allowing the rest of the crowd to just miss running her over.  Repeat 10 more times.  You get the idea.  On and off, Luke would ride the scooter, ride the skateboard attachment to the stroller or walk.  At one point we thought we had both minions happy and even grabbed them each an apple to snack on.  And thus, our next challenge presented itself.  No more than one chomp into the apple, Luke loses his first tooth.  Impeccable timing.  You can imagine the drama than ensued. "Am I bleeding?"  "Can I see the tooth?"  "Let me try to get another one out."  Ok, so we settle the tooth drama and then the stars aligned (j.o.k.i.n.g) and both kids started alternating melt downs.  We had to "pull over" at least six times.  At this point, I start questioning wether I should have ever attempted parenthood as my blood pressure spikes through the roof of my head.  And then I remembered.  That there were parents there who would give their own lives to have their child there throwing a fit.  And so we finished the "stroll," if you will, and headed to the car, bypassing all the bounce houses, face painters and balloons.  Maybe next year, we'll have a different experience but at least we got to experience it with our NICU grad and his crazy baby sister.

On another note, I'm happy to report that the tooth fairy came through for Luke.  He pocketed $2 and the best part is, the money gave him a taste for wanting to earn more.  He's started offering to make our bed for payment.  We'll just ignore those child labor laws.

Lukey Turns 5

As Luke's birthdays go, this one was full of activities and special treats as usual!  A day of fun riding his new scooter with the neighborhood kids, sports in the yard, Friendly's dinner AND huge sundae, bowling with cousins, Kids Night at the Y and presents!  The big mile stone was certainly celebrated with enthusiasm by all.  Kindergarten, here we come!

Moving = Torture

So the big move finally happened.  We will not be moving again barring any drastic circumstance changes for a very very long time.  I simply don't have it in me to move again because the process for moving is torturous!  But, but! we are almost done - just one more room with boxes in it, and that's the master bedroom where the kids spend the least amount of time.  Well, except for when they are chasing Chubbies as our room is as close to a sanctuary as the cat can find. We are definitely loving the neighborhood and it is so kid friendly that it's only mildly embarrassing when Adrienne has a screaming fit in the middle of the sidewalk.  That's good, since the fits seem to be a daily occurrence.

The thing about moving into a new house is that the amount of work to do is seemingly never ending.  I've just spent the last hour of my life looking at light fixtures and the hour before that, rugs.  Don't get me wrong, I love doing these kind of things, but they are time consuming and quite pricey!  I'm surprised the credit card company hasn't called yet to notify us of the huge amount of spending activity on our account. And I forgot to mention the fact that I rarely have 2 hours to do such internet searching with my little lovelies around because, ya know, they don't love it when I don't have ALL of my attention on them.  And as I just finished that sentence, little Ade just woke up from he nap.

I have a few more seconds to write so I'll update you all on Adrienne's developing vocabulary...new words:

Stinky
Eeewww
Gross
Park
Drink
Pee yew
Big girl
I got it!
tickle tickle tickle
peas (please)

and also, because I wasn't sure how to spell it...I found this out r3egarding pee yew from another blog:

1) "It's a shortened term for puteo, which is Latin for 'to stink, be redolent, or smell bad.'"

2) "The normal spelling is "piu," but is often pronounced as "pee-yew". It's root is the Indo-European word "pu," meaning to rot or decay."

I'm not making these up

Phrases I've recently heard of which I will refrain from naming who said them and also my response to them.

"I can't eat any meatloaf because my thumb hurts and I have to go lay it on the couch!"

"My belly only has room for dessert left."

"Mommy, I have to tell you somethin'..."

"Why does Adrienne poop so much?"

"Ohmygoddamnit."

"Spank my booty" ... "where did you hear that?"... "Karis."

"Stop talking to me like that."

"Daddy, I lost my gum...it's somewhere in your bed!"

"I'm such a great artist, right?"

"Can we [insert request] for my five birthday party?"

"Daddy, you da man."


And here are some pics of my lovelies getting into and using and entire jar of cream, not lotion, cream.  This project took them less than a minute to complete as I was busy cooking dinner.   As you can see from this post, we have a lot of fun in this household!

And one of our cat, Chubs, who is also having fun by way of having Dora stickers applied to him.

Interview With an Almost Five Year Old

I stole this idea from someone else but thought it was cute enough to take...an interview with Luke on February 24, 2012.

Favorite TV show: Wow Wow Wubbzy

Favorite activity/thing to do: I like to do everything

Favorite Colors: Pink and blue

Favorite Food: Spaghetti and meatballs

Favorite Drink: Chocolate milk

Favorite Dessert: Candy

Favorite Sister: Adrienne (thank God!)

Favorite Book:  Thomas the Train short stories

Favorite Song: ABC's

Favorite Toy: CD player/ CARS!

Favorite Sport:  All the sports

Favorite Store: Walmart - where you get toys

Favorite Vacation: Florida

Favorite Thing to Make:  Pictures

Favorite Thing to do at School:  Painting, but I like to do all of the things at school

Favorite Thing to do Outside: Ride my gator

Favorite Shirt: "Future Fisherman" shirt

What do you want to be when you grow up:  A dentist so I can fix peoples' teeth

Artist in Residence

We have a mini Picasso in our presence.  Luke loves his painting and his work is just as abstract as Picasso's!    We have many, many masterpieces in his collection already and sometimes we even set up gallery exhibits right in our very own hallway.  Aren't we lucky to have an artist in residence with us?  Mrs. Robinson, Luke's  teacher at Canandaigua Montessori School even sent us a note one day with something along the lines of: It isn't a day if there isn't a "Luke" painting done.

It is very hard for our artist to make his creations in the presences of his unappointed protoge though.  Sometimes she attempts to make additions to his works that he finds all wrong.  Sometimes she spills his paint.  Sometimes she adds a little color to the walls of his studio.  The artist (formally known as Luke) usually likes to wait to paint until said protoge is taking a nap.

Earlier in the school year, Luke was asked what "work" he liked best at school - this is his response:

And this little gem is not a painting but rather a drawing of people from our young artist:

Here are two more paintings but these had some help by the young artist's mentors (see if you can pick out who the subjects are):

Island climbing

I'm about to remove all of the kitchen table's chairs and banish them to the basement.  We'll just eat dinner standing up - not like I actually sit for all that long when I eat my meals anyway.  They are chairs, they are not ladders for the kitchen island, they are not monkey bars, they are not step stools, they are chairs.  For behinds.  Not for feet.

Little miss monkey is giving me daily drills on how to quickly remove your hands from the raw chicken you are working with, race around the island,  and save a small human before it has a chance to use the counter top as a high dive.  I promise you, Dawn dish soap from the dispenser is not a liquid form of candy nor is it body lotion.  Leave it alone.  Get out of the sink.  Get off the counter.  Put that chair back!

Rinse. Repeat.

I'm sort of afraid to enroll her in gymnastics.  I'm afraid the climbing will be further encouraged but this time with the flair of an attempted back tuck (good ol' back flip in layman's terms).

I hope this stage passes quickly or we might be ordering a helmet.  Or perhaps a straight jacket.

Christmas 2011

Christmas was a little over 3 weeks ago and I am just now recovering!  We had so much fun with all the holiday excitement and gatherings and meals and family and friends and gifts and gifts and gifts and gifts...

This year's festivities were particularly exciting because it seemed to be the first year that Luke "got it." He was very into Santa - and very concerned about his status on Santa's list.  Each day, who am I kidding, let me rephrase, each hour we were discussing which kind of behaviors Santa liked and ways to get back on to the "good" list.  Luke was also very concerned about which list Adrienne was on and strangely enough, was always informing me that she was on the naughty list.  Hmmm.  Santa will continue to keep a close eye on Luke.

But Santa was very good to us all this year.  And aunts and uncles and grandparents and friends were very good to us this year, too.  But as sad as I am that the season is over, I sure am glad to have the space back in my living room where the tree was.  And I'm glad that I don't have to pick up the ornament fatalities anymore but I'll miss the daily homemade ones. 

Because I'd be writing forever, I won't list out all the fun things we were lucky to receive this year but look for some new photos displaying some our new toys!