D - It's Pajama Time - Hush, Hush!

One of Katie's favorite things to do is to "surprise" the rest of us by changing into her jammies every night. When it's time to get ready for bed I have to think of some way of NOT asking her to change clothes because if I come right out and say it, I've ruined her whole night. The funny thing is that it's so obvious what she is doing. She always goes into her room and either slams her door and yells at us all not to come in there, or she leaves the door open and loudly orders us NOT to look at her. And if you do happen to walk into her room while the surprise is in the works........Oh, my! It ain't pretty.

Here's an old, mostly unrelated picture for you to see. But she DOES have her jammies on!

D - The Boy Who Called Wolf

A little known part of this story is that the boy's name was Noah. Oh, yes. It's true. You can find that information in chapter two where the boy started first grade and, despite his having many friends and being very successful in his academic pursuits, he thought that a full day of school was entirely too long and repeatedly throughout the school year came down with ailments that were undetectable by the school nurse with a thermometer or any other outward display of symptoms and was forced to call his mom to come pick him up on Tuesdays and Thursdays when mom should have been enjoying a blissful day of mother's day outing.

Hmmmmmmmmm. Maybe that part is lesser known since it was written in such a long run-on sentence. Clearly not up to the literary standards of the rest of the story.

D - Attention Cable TV Lovers

I just wanted to clarify that in my previous post (and countless others) when I referenced those of you with cable tv, I was in no way judging the way you spend your hard-earned money. Judging, no. Sitting here green with envy, yes.

Every stinkin' night when I lie (again, looking this up) in bed with the choice of watching my thousandth episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, Frasier or According to Jim, rest assured, I'm thinking of you. And in NO way am I judging.

D - Word Up!

Yesterday when I woke Noah up for school, I walked him into the living room and we were snuggling on the couch as he was waking up. While we were lying there I heard the trash truck coming down the street. Here's our conversation.

Me: Oh, no! I hope Daddy remembered to take out the trash.

Noah: He probably did. He's pretty reliable.

Me (laughing): You're right, but where did you learn that word?

Noah: Word Girl.



Yet another benefit to not having cable tv. Your kids are forced to watch whatever educational show PBS has to offer!

PS - I just spent the last 5 minutes verifying that I correctly used the word "lying" (vs. "laying") in my first paragraph. Geek!

D - Katie's Turn

Since I posted one of Noah's pieces of artwork last, I wanted to share one of Katie's too. She has been working hard this year at home and at Sonshine School to learn all of her letters. She spends quite a bit of time these days with a notebook in hand writing out letter after letter after letter and filling up the whole page. It's really cute.

A couple of weeks ago she came in and asked me how to spell something for her so she could hang a sign on her door. It was a really long phrase for a 4 year old, but I couldn't talk her out of it. So I sat at the computer and typed the whole thing out and told her to copy the letters. I didn't think she would stick with it through the whole thing, but I was wrong.

It reads:

Top Line - "Everyone"

Bottom Line, starting 4 letters in: "Can Come In"

2nd line from bottom: "My Room"

3rd line from bottom: "Except For"

4th from bottom: "People I"

Left of picture working up: "Don't Know"

So, the moral of this story is that if you're over at our house hoping to see Katie's room and she doesn't know you, you're just outta luck!

D - Grounded

I briefly mentioned last week that Noah was grounded from the Wii while we were stranded inside during the ice storm. I left out the story behind the grounding though and really have to share it.


Now that I start this, I don't actually remember the original reason for the grounding. Whatever it was, though, he was grounded for a full day. That evening, however, his dad really wanted to play with him, so I made an exception and said Noah could choose to be grounded the following morning instead of that evening. This, of course, sounded great to him, so he went with that option.


When I got up the next morning (always after the children on snow days), I walked into the living room to find him playing the Wii!!! What? Through tears and many, many hugs, he told me how sorry he was and that Katie had just finished playing and he was turning it off for her and couldn't resist the temptation to play. And you know what? I really do believe him. He felt just awful. He never once begged for me to take back the punishment of not playing for another two days.


I went into the kitchen and fixed their breakfast and hollered for him to come eat. Nothing. So, I went looking for him. He was in my room just putting the finishing touches on making MY bed. Beautifully. Better than Mike could ever do. Also, he had put this sign on my pillow.

Isn't he sweet? It's impossible to stay mad at him when he feels guilty.