Barbie Girl...

One of my favorite Mother/Daughter traditions is the Saturday afternoon manicure and pedicure. 

This week's theme is in celebration of every child's favorite candy-coated holiday -- Halloween!

It was a very ghoul date...

Each year Max and I attend our town's Mother/Son Halloween dance.  It is something he looks forward to as much as I do.  I dread when the day comes that he's "too cool" to attend lest he be seen in public with his mummy but thankfully that day has not yet arrived as a few of his friends were also at the event this evening with their mummies:

Here's some bonus footage of Max getting his groove on.  Love this kid!

Wordless Wednesday

Riding the Hogwarts Express

As I've previously shared, my daughter does not quite appreciate or understand my love of reading.  I could never figure out how to impart upon her how incredible it is to read typed words on a page and then feel them come to life in your mind.  It almost seemed like I was describing magic.  And then... it occurred to me...

 

MAGIC!

That's it!  I realized that rather than nudge her head into a book and force her to read like this:

I would instead let my children see the wonders inside of a book by reading them Harry Potter (they already love the movies and have previously asked if we could read the books).  And, so, last night it began and magical it was.

After over 30 minutes we only reached page 11 of the first book.  Why?  Well Mimi kept enthusiastically raising her hand to ask questions during breaking points as she began to recognize the characters based on the book's description.  At one point Max was leaning on me with his eyes closed and I thought I lost his interest until he started giggling over the stoic cat perched on the brick wall.  Mimi took hold of my wrist and asked "Can I read some out loud?"

Yes.

Yes. You can.

At the rate we're going it may take us a year to finish the series, but who cares.  We have plenty of time and if we happen to run out I'll use my time-turner necklace.

Heart Switch ON!!

The custody arrangement was negotiated to where the kids father and I have custody every other week with alternating Thursdays.

I cannot wait for Thursdays when it is my "off-week." I feel "off" without these two at home.

Wordless Wednesday

(Mimi at age 6)

Grounded!

My kids are amazingly sweet, funny, smart, kind, generous and thoughtful.  It's a shame that they have both been behaving in a manner that casts an unfortunate shadow over those lovely attributes and required extreme measures to be taken in the name of: Grounding. 

This weekend both of my children were subjected to the "in your room and don't come out" variety of punishment.  To be fair I did feed them and allowed them to use the facilities.  I also permitted them to watch TV ever so briefly to witness the Space Jump yesterday as I felt that was educational.  See?  I'm not THAT mean!

I did not even plan to have their friends come to ask them out to play just so that I could gleefully decline the invitation on their behalf.  It just worked out that this happened not once but twice.  These occurrences caused both of their faces to get stuck like this:

We did get a lot accomplished, though.  They had to do their requisite reading for school, complete workbooks at their grade level, clean out drawers and closets and organize toys.  Yesterday we made a quick trip to Target which may as well have been Disneyland as excited as they were to see civilization.

Finally, they heard me watching Iron Man in my bedroom.  They begged and pleaded with me to let them watch it and I said, "You know that Tony Stark is a genius, right?  Do you know WHY?  He is a genius because HE was a good listener and HE followed directions and HE took school seriously!  When you act like Tony Stark, you will be able to watch Iron Man again."  What I didn't count on was Max then moving around my bedroom a la Iron Man. 

Nice try, but .... Denied!