Friday, June 22, 2007

Essay

I'm a member at Work It, Mom!, which is a community for working moms.

Today, I recevied the following email:

Once a week, starting today, we will post a question or a topic on this blog and invite all of you to write your reactions to it by submitting it as a short article or essay to Work It, Mom! (Yes, you have to join the site, which will take just a few seconds, and our online article submission form is extremely simple. Plus you will have an article published with your own byline, which - ask any blogger or author - is a good thing.) Then post the link to your submission on your personal blog or email it to your friends and ask them to vote for your essay. The author of the essay on the weekly topic with the highest rating based on the highest number of votes will win a $50 gift certificate from Spafinder.com!

This week's question: If money was no issue, would you work and what would you do?

To read my essay, click the "Read More" below, and then go vote here. Thanks!

Read More...

Thursday, June 21, 2007

To my sweet son

Three years ago today, our lives were changed forever when you arrived.

It seems like this should be a long, loving, detailed entry about how wonderful you are and how enriched our lives are since you've been a part of them.

The truth is, I'm just speechless. You are the reason I have a slight taste of what God must have experienced when He sent Jesus to earth.

There truly aren't words to describe the depth of our love for you, or our unending gratitude to God for giving you to us. So, we'll do our best to show you for the rest of our lives.

I love you, little one. My prayer is for you to someday be excited to follow God and discover His plans and rewards for you.

Happy, happy third birthday, sweetie.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Someday

Remember the post I wrote about Planning for Jet's Birthday this week? I found an ABC article that illustrates perfectly the outrageous lengths people will go to in order to "celebrate" their child's birthday. I wonder how many of the people in that article can really afford those types of things, and how many are plunging themselves deeper into debt in an effort to keep up with the Joneses, as if the Joneses really care.

This makes me think of the date that Knight and I had this past weekend. I won a trivia contest on the radio a month or so ago, and the prize was lunch for two at Sullivan's Steakhouse, a ritzy place in downtown Austin. Since we live and work 30+ minutes away from said ritzy steakhouse, there was no way we could make it for lunch. I contacted the restaurant manager and he said he would give us credit for dinner.

We dropped off Jet at his Aunt Duh-Ahnna's (that's how he says it) house on Saturday night and headed out. We love to try new things together, espcially restaurants, so we were pretty excited. Knight, in particular, was looking forward to it because they have steaks.

We ended up late for our reservations because there was a bike race downtown, the path of which circled our restaurant, effectively blocking all vehicular access. We parked a couple of blocks away and walked, yielding for hordes of speeding bicyclists. Thank heavens for traffic directors. I had visions of trying to cross the street and getting run over, limbs and wheels and chains tangling... I was sure I would lose any battle between me and these Lance-wannabes.

Anyway, the moral of this story is coming up, I promise. As we were relishing cajun ribeye and crab-stuffed shrimp in a place where the cheapest entree is $30, I looked around to see who else was there with us. I wondered aloud to Knight about the financial status of everyone else. Who could afford it? Who couldn't? I've always harbored a bit of envy for people who had real money -- those who truly could afford to eat like this every weekend and not worry about what it was doing to their monthly budget.

There were a few families who had brought along their children (and this was not a place I would consider child-friendly). There were groups of college-age students, dressed to the nines. There were groups of older folks, dressed in business-casual. There were other couples like us, seemingly on a date.

We figured that the families with children were the ones who could really afford it. Someday, we'll be in that place, too. For now, we're working our way toward it by only going to places like that when we have gift certificates, instead of charging it on a credit card.

I just don't know if I'll ever be in a place where I don't automatically consider the budget when deciding whether or not to eat out. I don't think I'll ever spend $30,000 on a birthday party for a toddler. Maybe that's a good thing.

Rain, rain, go away

Doesn't the rain know that we have swim lessons this week? It could have at least waited until Friday. (We only have swim lessons Monday-Thursday.) It's supposed to rain tomorrow, too. I wonder if we get make-up days? I know they can't control the weather, but it bugs me that I paid for eight days of swim lessons, but might end up only getting six. I couldn't find any info on their website about it.

Other things, namely Jet's underwears, have been mostly dry all morning, except for the time that I sent him to the bathroom and realized I had to go, too. I went to the other bathroom and took care of things as quickly as possible. When I came around the corner to check on him, I arrived just in time to see him dunking his underwear up and down in the potty.

I was rendered momentarily speechless, with the thought of "Why on earth would anyone...???" running through my head. I quickly regained control before he could actually flush them.

In a flash of insanity, I questioned Jet about his antics.

Me: "Jet! What are you doing?"

Jet: ...??? *dunk, dunk, splash*

Me: "Well, stop it!"

Jet: *grin*, *dunk, dunk, splash* "Look what I could do!"

Fortunately, he hadn't done a Big Job, but may have tinkled in the potty. I couldn't tell.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Jet is doing, well, swimmingly (go ahead and groan, it's ok) in his swim class. For a kid who was terrified of water, he warmed up to it quickly.


On Monday, the first day, we arrived about 10 minutes early, and his teacher was with another class. The lifeguard said we could go try the kiddie pool. Jet wasn't too keen on it, what with about 8 other kids in it, splashing their little hearts out. He wanted to go to the "big boy pool", which surprised me.

We visited a little with kids and parents that were also there for our class. He is the oldest, by quite a bit. Most of them are in the 18-24 month range, and some of those seem to be born for the water!

When we first walked down the steps into the pool, Jet clung to me. As the teacher talked, he began to relax, and quit digging his nails into me each time I pretended to think about moving deeper into the water.

The point of that first class was just to get the kids used to being in the pool. Miss Anjie even had a bag of toys for them to play with. Jet was really excited about that -- he could hardly wait for Miss Anjie to stop talking so he could get to the toys. He ended up selecting a pink ring that was handy for throwing.

By the end of the class, we had a system down. He would throw the ring as far as he could, and then I would ask him to blow bubbles three times. Then he had to float on his tummy and kick his legs as we walked around looking for the ring (it sank to the bottom of the pool). I would scoop the ring toward the top with my foot, and he would reach down to grab it.

It was quite a transformation -- from screaming, "I wanna go HOME!" at about 10:30 a.m., to screaming, "I don't WANNA get out!!!" at 11:15.

Today, he was a little tense as we waded into the water, but quickly began asking about the ring. We added a new step to the routine because he wanted to climb the ladder at the side of the pool. So, he would throw the ring from the side of the pool, jump into my arms, blow bubbles three times, float on his tummy, and kick as we went looking for the ring. Then he'd kick back over to the ladder and do it all over again. Three hundred times.

I'm just so proud of him!!!

Bonus: two-and-a-half-hour naps both days. Yay!

Monday, June 18, 2007

Britain's Got Talent

Have you seen these? They're incredible. You have to watch them all the way through.

First, there's the completely adorable 6-year-old Connie singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It brings tears to my eyes to hear her, and you could have heard a pin drop in the audience. Listen to Simon at the end -- he really is human!

Then Paul Potts,a car phone salesman, blows away the judges with his opera singing. I don't know for sure, but from some of the comments I saw on YouTube, I think he may have won the whole competition.

There's also Craig and his baton twirling. His story is sad to me, because he hid his dream from his parents. At the end, one of the judges asks him how it makes him feel, and his reply is that when he's doing his baton twirling, he sort of shuts off the rest of the world. He says that he loves what he does. There's one really good close up of his face in the middle of his performance, and you can really see that he's loving it. Watch for it.

I just thought these were so cool -- I wanted to share!