School programs and other things that make the Bronco Baby Mom cry

It's that time of year, spring preschool programs and end of school celebrations for the kindergartner, even though we still have six more actual school days.  Last week, Reina had her spring program and it was delightful, as usual.  She knew all of the songs by heart and took her job very seriously.  She's the stern looking yellow flower in the middle. 

Taking a break while the big kids take a turn. 

She looks so serious but she did crack a smile here and there. 

There's the smile!  And a cookie to match the dress and the headdress. 

Yesterday was Will's kindergarten graduation and end-of-school-year program.  First up was the graduation which was nicely low-key and held in their classroom.  The teacher had "Pomp & Circumstance" playing but luckily she turned it off before I completely lost it.  Wailing and gnashing of teeth "MY BABY!  MY BABY IS GROWING UP" would've been unsightly.  I was too worried about missing the photo opportunity and accidentally turned my camera off and barely had time to snap him walking away with his DIPLOMA so this wide shot of the room is all you get.  On a somewhat serious note, it was so neat to see how much all of the kiddos have grown up since September.  They were shy, quiet little kids on the first day of school and at graduation, they knew the rules, they clapped for each other and acted like well, first-graders.  

That's our big boy! 

Sob.  He had another 'graduation' certificate that he filled out on his own.  Favorite color?  Green.  Favorite book?  Magic Tree House.  When I grow up, I want to be:  Plees  (Police).  Huh.  That's a new one and at least it's not Pirate. 

Will and Mrs. Jackson.  She's moving to second grade so we're hopeful we'll see her again in another year.  What a great start to his public education.

In between the graduation festivities and the program, the parents got to go outside for recess.  How fun! 

Recess time.  A million kindergartners who've just eaten a bowl full of chocolate trail mix (mini snickers, mini marshmallows, m&m's and pretzels) and punch go outside for 15 minutes to burn it off.  And calorie-counting wise?  They probably did.  There was so much running and jumping and screaming and tag and please-don't-break-an-arm (that was me) that everyone was sufficiently exercised in time for the program.  (A side note:  I can never ever ever be a recess patrol person.  I'd need a Xanax or some over tranquilizing drug.  I'm pretty used to rough and tumble and I-can't-believe-you-just-did-that with Will in the house, but all of them combined?  Seriously amazing there isn't more bloodshed.)

So back inside, the parents found seats and the kindergartners put on their costumes.  For the record, I tried to convince Will that he might want to dress up today but he would have none of it and it wasn't a battle worth fighting that morning.  He was Spring. 

There were a lot of arm movements and clapping and snapping and hip shaking. I wished I would've had a video camera instead.

When it was Spring's turn to be showcased, there was an interpretive dance to Vivaldi that involved scarves and serious marching and a mom who was almost crying (from mirth).

 

God bless the elementary school teachers who spend the time to teach our little monsters. 

Fashion forward

I came home from my jog Saturday morning to find everybody playing outside while Glenn cleaned his truck.  As I came around the corner, Reina greeted me in all of her morning glory.  My first thought was "Mercy!" but instead of yelping, I just asked "Did you get dressed all by yourself this morning? What a big girl!"  She later added two hot pink sandals - on the wrong feet of course- to the ensemble and we ran a morning's worth of errands around town.  Yesterday she and I went for a walk with the dogs. I wore sweatpants and a tshirt. Reina wore a swimming suit (naturally), snowboots and an American flag stuck through the top of her suit.  I asked if she just wanted to carry the flag but she preferred wearing it.  Everybody gets to be patriotic in their own way, I guess.  While we were eating dinner last night, she said "Mom,  I have to tell you a story.  A long, long time ago, there was a ghel named Lucy. And Lucy liked to wear boys' shirts."  She tells me this parable with a wicked gleam in her eye.  That was all there was to the story, by the way. I expected slobby Lucy to be eaten by a dragon or something else cautionary, but that was it. 

I love Reina's independence and zany sense of style.   As long as all of the appropriate parts are covered up, we'll be good to go. 

Mi Familia, by Reina

Reina loves to draw right now but frankly what 4-yr old doesn't?  She fills sheet after sheet with random squiggles, complicated scenes and unintentional comedy.  Tonight while I cleaned up the kitchen, she produced a complete collection of our family.  Starting with:

 

Her brother Will, or in her words "llWi."  Close enough kiddo. I think she captured his hair perfectly. 

Reina and her mom.  I look so thin.  I've been thinking about cutting my hair shorter, perhaps I should follow Reina's lead? 

This is my favorite and I'm so frustrated that I can't rotate it for full effect.  This is (from top to bottom) Trigger, Tootsie and Daddy.  I love that the dogs look like a squid and octopus respectively.  But Tootsie does have a long tail which accounts for her fifth leg and Trigger, well... his long ears appear squid-like maybe?  And Glenn.  He's the only one who has a nose so that counts for something. 

Well we don't have a pet ladybug but I had to throw this in as a bonus.  I love all the detail and the writing at the top.  Perhaps Mr. Ladybug's name is Hoontitiie?

"Mom, what's this song about?"

We are in the midst of a pop music immersion over here.  Thanks to his brief time on a bus everyday from school to the after school program, Will has developed a deep, deep love for all things pop music even (gasp!) girl singers.  So whenever we are in the car for any length of time, he asks for a certain station and we all bop along as we go to the grocery store, Target, whatever.  Reina already has her favorites and she knows a lot of the words.  They both have delightful singing voices and it does wonders for my mental health to hear my sweet little 6-yr old singing an earnest falsetto and telling whoever to call him maybe. 

Reina likes to ask what every single song is about and I realized that within my answers is a concise breakdown of every single pop music song on the radio today. 

1.  "A girl likes a boy but she doesn't know if he likes her."
2.  "A boy likes a girl but he doesn't know if she likes him."
3.  "A boy liked a girl but she doesn't like him anymore and he's sad."
4.  Same as above just switch genders.
5.  "A boy really likes a girl and she likes him and he's very happy about it."
6.  See number 4.
7.  "A girl is mad at a boy."
7.  "It's just a song about going to a party." 
8.  "I don't know" (and I really don't)
9.  "I don't know" (and I really do but it's too mature of a theme and I don't want to talk about it and why am I letting you listen to this song anyway?  Let's see if the baseball game is on yet.) 

Reason #3,942 why I don't understand the male brain

I've written about this before but I didn't have a brother and while I had my share of babysitting little boys and rec camp and guest ranches and such, I still find myself at a loss when it comes to guessing what's going on in the Will Pauley brain at times.  This week, we'd all been outside shooting baskets and enjoying the springtime weather. I went inside to finish chores and Glenn was fixing a piece of our fence, while the kids giggled and shrieked. I looked outside while washing dishes and saw the following tableau. I had to take pictures of it for posterity, naturally. 

 

Step 1:  You take your sister's Cinderella doll and place her on one end of a leftover piece of fencing.  You carefully measure the fulcrum and contemplate the amount of force you'll need to stomp hard enough to shoot Cinderella into the air.  (Thankfully your sister finds this game as delightful as you do.)

Step 2:  You pause to have your picture taken and to make sure that your mom endorses this game.  (Mom's note:  Okay, let's face it, he's really not that concerned about my 'endorsement.'  He's satisfied with a "don't get hurt and don't put your sister on the other end of that catapult." 

Step 3:  You find an empty, brand-new flower pot that is thankfully made out of plastic and decide to up the ante by sticking Cinderella into said flowerpot, stomping on the catapult and then ducking out of the way as the flower pot comes whizzing towards your head.  Mom does interfere at this point and says "Alright, enough!  Find something else to do before someone has to go to the emergency room."  She's such a buzzkill. 

I think it's going to be a great summer. 

Mother's Day 2013

We had one of those weekends where I'm not sure we could've crammed one more thing into either day.  We held our annual garage sale on Saturday morning and made some money and cleaned out more stuff.  Saturday afternoon involved a long nap for most of us and yard work, although Glenn did the bulk of the heavy labor.  Saturday night we had an early Mother's Day celebration with some of the grandparents and then went off to sleep thinking about a busy Sunday.  

 

Still waiting on that pony.

However, Mother's Day started shortly before midnight by waking up to the sound of Reina crying, me offering Glenn $10 if he'll go check on her, Glenn yelling, "Honey, come in here!" from Reina's room and hearing that briefly terrifing noise of a 4-yr old gasping for air and then recognizing the barking seal stridor cough that is croup.  Since this wasn't our first croup rodeo (although it was the first one with our little cowgirl), I tried sitting with Reina outside and having her breath in the cooler air.  That only resulted in both of us shivering but it did calm her down.  At that point she told me, "Mommy, I think I should go to the doctor."  Not wanting to rely completely on the advice of a barking 4-yr old, Glenn and I debated for a few more minutes before deciding that I would take her to the ER.  Better safe then sorry.  I was also thinking hey, it's midnight, I'm up might as well go now instead of three hours from now.  The ER on a Saturday night is an interesting place.  Thankfully, the doctors don't mess around with respiratory issues and pretty quickly, Reina was in an exam room getting a breathing treatment and feeling much better.  While checking on us, one of the nurses asked Reina if she could bring her anything?  Reina answered, "I'd like a pony."  A little while later, we listened to every excruciating detail of a guy in the room next to us getting a catheter.  Reina said, "Mommy, why is that man saying AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH?"  He was also saying a lot more, but I'm happy she only heard the yelling. 

Reina and I rolled home at 3:30 a.m. with a clean-ish bill of health and slept until almost 11:00 the next morning.  I felt like I was in haze all day and Reina was just out of sorts.  Reina on steroids is like well... Reina on steroids.  When she woke up at 11:00, Glenn fixed her scrambled eggs and cereal for lunch.  However, that just threw her off and she couldn't understand why she wasn't eating lunch at 3:00 p.m.  She really could've cared less for my irritating reasoning and my insistence on pointing out that we slept through breakfast. 

The rest of the day was a blur of laundry, jogging with the dogs, and getting ready for a big work week.  Hopefully this is our one trip to the ER for 2013.  And hey - it wasn't beta hemolytic strep.  Whoo!! 

Well, I said I'd post more pictures of me this year

But this is probably not what I had in mind.  Yesterday, I ran a race in Fort Carson, CO.  It was one of those obstacle course things that I swore I'd never do.  Just like last year's, it was cold and wet and muddy and bizarre.  But I finished with my bones and dignity intact.  Vicky took a few pictures of me along the way which I'm glad she did because I think I earned some points with Will.  "Wow Mom, you are muddy."  High praise from a 6-yr old. 

 

My least favorite obstacle involved crawling under barbed wire for what felt like 50 miles but was probably more like 50 feet.  Still, it was cold and wet.  I think I'm taking a coffee break here. 

Almost at the end.  I look like I'm about to barf.  I'll probably regret sharing this picture with the world but here I am in all my obstacle course glory.  Isn't mud supposed to be a beauty treatment? 

Right at the end you have to climb a big rope net, crawl across another net and then come down the other side.  Sidenote:  I'm a little scared of heights but I just kept telling myself that my butt was too big to fall through those square.  I'm the last one coming up in this picture. I'll spare you the shot from underneath the net as I gracefully roll across the top. 

The finish line!  I had to jump a little wall of fire and then strapping young men with paddles greet you right before the finish line and try to whack you as you run through.  I held my hands up and yelled, "Just let me go through, I'm 40!" 

So to wrap-up.  I feel like I was hit by a truck today and I'm snacking on ibuprofen like they are M&M's.   But I got a cool tshirt out of it and that lovely mud exfoliated my arm hair for the summer season. Win-win. 

This is turning into a weather blog

It's the first day of May and for the fourth week, we have had another snowstorm.  This one dropped between 10 and 13 inches, depending on which website you looked at.  Early this morning, I measured 10 inches in our yard but it kept snowing.  This was the view out of our front door.  Everything looked like it had been frosted.  That's the Positive Lucy talking. 

 

The other version of Lucy woke up at 5:00 a.m. to the sound of the phone ringing and thought, "Man, that alarm clock is loud."  Before he even answered the phone, Glenn said, "School's cancelled" and in my head (and maybe even out loud) I said "nooooooo!!"

I went out early-ish and tried to shovel which was an incredible exercise in futility because (a) it was still snowing, (b) NO ONE was outside and (c) the snow weighed eleventy hundred pounds. 

Reina was the only member of the Pauley household (besides T&T) to be excited about the no school day.  Even Will was bummed, but frankly he was more bummed by the snow and the fact that he won't be able to wear shorts to school tomorrow, or really anytime soon.  He was all serious with me today and said that he knows that it's important to get water for the plants but snow makes him a little bit angry.  I'm right there with ya buddy.   

 

I think poor Mr. Bent Limbs Tree would concur.  Although after I took this picture, I went out and lamely tried to get some of the snow off.  I was marginally successful. 

Thirteen inches of snow on May Day.  This is why we have places in Wyoming called "Crazy Woman Creek."