My Little Trooper

Reposted blog entry from August 10, 2007

Asha fell and broke her arm on Monday.
She cried all the way to the hospital but then she ran around the ER like nothing happened. Both bones were broken and you could see her arm crooked but she kept taking the splint off so she could use her hand.
After all the doctors and nurses oohed and ahhed over how she didn't seem to be bothered by pain, they put her under anesthesia to pop the bones back into place and cast it. The cast is suppose to come off in about 5 weeks.
She woke up the next morning to go about her business as if she had only ever had one arm!
She's my little trooper.

Another entry from August 28, 2007

I promise not to believe what your kids say about you...

...if you promise not to believe what my kids say about me!

While I was reading Asha a bedtime story, she leans forward and then pops back and hit my neck so hard I yelled Awh!  Daniel asked me what happened and I told him that Asha hit me and it hurt.

After I tucked her in, I come into the living room to hear Daniel telling Dad, "Mom read Asha a story.  Then she hit her and then she put her in bed."

All I could think was 'What will people think when they hear that and then see Asha's cast?'  I just want to clarify for the record... -She hit me- and then I put her in bed.

TerraNova

Daniel is taking the TerraNova test with the Department of Defense school here in Korea this week.  We won't get the results for another couple of months and it will be hard for me to wait as I am super interested to see how he does on it.

Though he ended up returning to homeschool after the first couple of months, he started this school year out at the DoD school and I was impressed by his grades for the first quarter.  He got an A+ in Math and Science!  The reason this is so impressive to me is because he is 1 to 2 grades ahead of his age.  He just turned 8 on December 30th and he is in 4th grade this year.  He completed 3rd grade at home last year (skipping 2nd grade) and he did very well, but sometimes I have a nagging wonder if I think he's doing better than he actually is.  The grades from the public school were an encouragement that this is not true and that he is on the right track.

He woke up early this morning and after he ate breakfast we sat on the couch cuddled together under a blanket. He began to tell me all about how the 4 chambers of the human heart pump our blood.  This is not from his science class but from a detailed book about the human body he read on his own months ago.  We moved on to talking about the brain and then onto how gold is used in medicine and technology.  I love these talks and I'm always amazed by what he knows and understands.  I love that these are the things that he wants to talk about!

I am so proud of him.  Not because he's smart, but because he's just a great kid.  I am interested to see what this standardized test will tell me about this kid who is anything but standard.

*The results came in today.  His total score for Reading, Language and Math was a National Percentile of 96% for students grade 4.7!

Siblings

Reposted blog entry from July 7, 2007

So Daniel is sitting on Dad's knee.  Asha comes over and Dad scoops her onto his other knee.  Then Daniel turns to Dad and says, "Daddy, there's too many kids in here."

(Funny, that's what I was thinking yesterday ;)

Another entry from July 14, 2007

I ask Daniel why Asha is crying and he says, "She hurt her head all by herself."  Oh, really... so I ask 'how' and he clarifies, "I pushed her down, then she hit her head on the floor all by herself."

When It Rains It Pours

As I pulled out the mop yesterday, I did it dreadfully.  I had been sick for over a week and the floors had been neglected accordingly.  It's not the cleaning of the dirty floors that I dreaded though, it was the fact that I knew...as every mother does...that cleaning floors only makes them dirtier.

Washing floors is kinda like washing your car.  It pretty much guarantees that it will soon begin to rain.  After you wash your car, it will rain water from clouds in the sky.  After you wash your floor, it will rain milk, juice, soda, and pretty much anything except water, from various little people living in your house.   This phenomena is proportional too.  The deeper the clean, the stickier the rain.

This was in the back of my mind yesterday as I started cleaning, but I just couldn't stand the fingerprints and marks on the walls any longer so I crossed my fingers and scrubbed them off.  When I tucked the kids in last night and all the floors were still clean, I was tempted to think that maybe I had beaten the system.  But alas, gravity was just laying in wait for a more opportune food item.

I offer this for proof of my theory that cleaning floors only makes them dirtier: This morning Ethan dropped an applesauce cup.  It didn't just splatter across the floor and onto the baseboards, but you guessed it, all across the wall too.

No "I Love You's"!

My youngest child has aquired a very annoying habit of calling me back into his room 5 minutes after I have tucked him in for the night.

Mom!

Yes, Ethan?

Can you spread my blankets?

I already spread them.

Mo-om!

What, Ethan?

Where's my baby jaguar?

He's right next to you...

Oh.

Moooohommmmmmmmm!

Go to sleep, Ethan.

You forgot to give me a kiss!

No, I didn't.  GO to sleeeeep.

The list goes on night after night and he knows he's running out of options
so last night he went for one more that he just knew would work...

MOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!

Ethan!  Be quiet and GO to SLEEP!

Mom, I love you.

No!  Stop calling me and go to sleep!

...No "I love you's"?

NO!

I'm a terrible mother. 

I confess! I did it!

 Reposted blog entry from August 9, 2007

Of course, I don't remember doing it and it was my husband that confessed that I did!

Here's the story...
I took the car over to the new house to paint.  My husband called and asked me to come bring him the keys to the van so he could move some stuff. I hop into the car and spend the ride over chatting with Asha about how we are going to see Daddy and Daniel. She's so cute calling out, "Dadi, Danda, whey!" (Daddy, Daniel, we're coming!)

I get home and we all hop into the van and head over to the new house. At the security gate, the guard tells us that someone just ran the gate at our old house without stopping. (this is a big deal) He tells us it was a white car.  My husband  says "our car is white." The guard says they only got the last three of the license plate -XXX.  My husband  says, "That's our license plate." I say, "Are you sure its ours?" Surely I didn't run past two stop signs, the guard shack, and a guard and not know it! I can't remember doing it but it had to have been me. And it better be because my husband tells the guard it was me and we head back over there.

We sit at the guard shack while security forces (Military police) and a bunch of rent-a-cops chew me out, pour over all our ID's and talk to each other and other people on their walkies or whatever. Daniel, who is never at a loss for questions, fires one after another to rub it in. "Why did we come back here? Why are we stopped here? Why can't we go? What are they doing with your ID's? Who are they talking to? What are they talking about?" etc... My husband is just sure that they are going to impound our car and cart me away to jail in hand cuffs right in front of our kids. He also reminds me that if this were another base (and not East Housing) that I could have been shot at when I didn't stop. We sit in silence for a moment and I tell him that on the bright side, the paint will be dry by the time we get back home. :) I don't think he saw the humor in it that I did though because he wasn't amused...

In the end it was just a ticket for failure to stop at a stop sign -though I think I might have really enjoyed the quiet respite of a cell for the night. :)

Top Ten Tuesday: Things I love about you

I love your generosity.

I love your dependability.
I love your attentiveness.

I love your intelligence.
I love your initiative.

I love your strength. 

I love your leadership.

I love your sense of humor.

I love your perspective on life.

I love your way of loving me.

Happy Valentines Day, my Love