Awesome

Thomas is very tired after a long, busy week, and he's super content to lie on our bed and read a book today, which I love. 

I walked in - to MY bedroom - and said, "Isn't reading awesome?"

He slowly lowered his book and said, "Yes, it is. You know what else is awesome? When you can read in silence and no one is trying to make conversation with you."

In case there was ever any doubt, he is most certainly a small version of his father. 

Happy Friday

It's summer, he's enjoying day camp and he's feeling good. Can't begrudge a guy for flexing in the mirror once in a while, right?

Honesty...is it the best policy?

While lying on our bed last night, both of us reading, Andrew did a double take looking at my legs.

"Mom, what are those lines all over your shins?

"They're called spider veins." 

"Why do you have them?"

"It's probably partly genetics and partly because I've had two babies."

"Oh. They don't look very good."

"I know, buddy. I'm actually pretty self-conscious about them."

"Well, your face is still really pretty."

"Thanks. That's a nice thing to say."

"Yeah, except for all the wrinkles on your forehead. Are those because of being pregnant too?"

"Yes, Andrew.  They are."

You can fool some of the people some of the time

Tonight at the dinner table, while discussing the fact that it's interesting to me that someone who isn't employed outside her home would be using Linkedin to connect via social media, Thomas said, "Well, mom, you're a stay-at-home mom, right? Except you just also have a job?"

Right, son. Something like that.

On days like this I don't know if I'm winning or losing or just simply drowning. But, hey, at least I'm snowing the eight-year-old.

Necessity?

There's that phrase about necessity being the mother of invention. I don't know that this is technically necessary, but I do have to applaud the ingenuity here. When you've outgrown your Little Tykes basketball goal and you can't play outside, a little duct tape and a storage bin will do. 

I think Andrew has taken a step toward earning his man card with this detailed use of duct tape. 

Ho hum

I'm a little under the weather which could possibly result in my patience being a little thinner than normal as well. The boys were running around in the basement this afternoon and the volume was just too high. 

I called Thomas upstairs and asked him to sit down next to me while I quietly explained that I really needed to not hear his voice so clearly and reminded him that he's got some big birthday plans brewing - in his own mind anyway - and that if he wanted me to put any of those into action I needed him to lower his perpetually broken volume button and prove he could have a group of boys around and not be out of control. He nodded solemnly, indicating he understood, and disappeared. 

A second later I hear him YELL, "Oh, it was just the 'bring it down talk' again! No big deal!"

I'm so good at this parenting thing. 

Obsessed much?

Someone living here at the House of Hondo is a tiny bit into basketball right now. This is on the kitchen counter to drive our television viewing for today. You'll notice that these aren't organized chronologically, but by AP ranking. He's also a tiny bit competitive. 

Go Jayhaws!

Iron Chef Henderson

I'm cooking chicken enchiladas for dinner. After pronouncing that gross, he decided to prepare his own dinner. 

 I'll let you be the judge of whether a chopped medley of pepperonis and string cheese in a tortilla is less or more disgusting. 

P.S. Yes. He's wearing pajama pants while preparing dinner. It was a busy Friday and Saturday and lazy Sundays are pretty difficult to come by around here. What can I say?

Flipping for the Olympics

Thomas has mastered the cartwheel. He cartwheels onto the couch and off of the couch. He cartwheels to the dinner table and to the shower. He has even perfected holding a ball while he cartwheels into a slam dunk on our much-loved Little Tykes basketball goal. Last night he was cartwheeling out of excitement overload from watching the giant slalom. He's a keeper.

New plan, for REAL

I never intentionally quit posting here, but it appears it happened unintentionally. That's at least in part because I have approached each post as a writing assignment, thinking it needed an introduction, body and conclusion with supporting graphics and a nice clean story all wrapped with a bow. Since that's not REAL life, and it takes more time, I've quit doing it.

In REAL life I don't seem to feel like anything is ever finished, some things never even get started, and the graphics are often unappealing.

I hope someday the boys will read this blog and be reminded of funny stories - or sometimes not so funny - and it will serve as a little record of pieces of our history. If that's to be, then it needs to be updated with REAL life, in REAL time.

Last night's REAL was a 5:30 p.m. basketball game which means every family involved scrambles to be there by 5:15 and everyone there is hungry because who eats dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon? Our REAL had included late-afternoon dentist appointments for the boys, which had already been rescheduled once because I had been out-of-town on the original date and I just couldn't push them back again. I sure wanted to reschedule them because it was annoying to rush from school to dentist to basketball, but I didn't.

At the dentist the hygienist called me back to look at Andrew's x-ray. She wanted to show me his five teeth that don't feel loose, but have permanent teeth clearly pushing up underneath and baby teeth roots are that are all but gone. She was just giving me a heads up that he's likely to lose five teeth in rapid succession. I felt like it was maybe more a metaphor for Andrew in general right now. He looks like a 10-year-old with baby teeth, but with lots swirling under the surface. And by lots I mean sometimes stinky attitude, usually stinky feet, immense knowledge of pop music and also moments of completely amazing.

Fast forward one hour, to when one of those baby teeth got knocked out by the elbow of an opponent on the basketball court, and it was good to know that the roots were gone anyway. That allowed us to focus on the blood and cut lip and not panic over the dangling tooth. REAL life.

REAL life was also that his team didn't play very well last night. After Mark helped him get cleaned up in the bathroom, Andrew re-entered the game and played angry. Like so angry he fouled out. REAL life.

The End.

p.s. All photo credits to Karen Burns, an amazing mom and photographer who shared them on facebook, from where I borrowed them. Just keeping it REAL.