Lockdown Drill

Recently while driving home from Sunday dinner at my parent's house, Steve and I were asking Lyda about school. We asked what her favorite thing was about school. I knew the answer before she gave it. "Recess", she said. So we dug deeper. We asked her what she thought was the most interesting or amazing thing that she had learned up to that point. She really sat and gave it some good thought before finally announcing, "Lockdown Drill". Lockdown drill, eight months of sending her to school day after day and this has been the highlight of her learning experience? While I am glad that the schools practice in case of a lockdown, it sure made me wonder about the quality of my daughter's education. Yikes!

My Sweet Toothed Boy

Moments ago I watched my son wander down the sidewalk while I was cleaning out the car. He usually walks a little ways and then turns around and comes back. This time he disappeared. So I went into the neighbors backyard to see if he was back there, which is usually where my kids are when I can't find them anywhere else. He wasn't there so I knocked on the neighbor's door to see if he had gone inside of their house. Our neighbor is the nicest old man who always has candy on hand and lots of fun toys for his grandkids. Sure enough, Kode was in his house. He came around the corner with two suckers in his hands, one for him and Lyda. The neighbor said, "He said he was a little bit hungry for candy". We said thank you and I apologized for our interruption and lack of manners. On the walk back home I explained to Kode that we don't knock on people's doors asking for candy. Kode informed me that he didn't knock on the door but instead rang the doorbell. So I told him that we don't ring people's doorbells to ask for candy. He then said, "How do we get the candy then"? He just couldn't see any other way to get the neighbor's attention. So I had to go a step further to explain that we don't ask our neighbors for candy. I told him that next time he should ask me for candy. To which he replied, "But you will say no". Now how do you argue with that?

Peslie

I'm no blogger, but someone needs to post about Les after all those posts she wrote about the rest of us, yes?
Yes.

Leslie goes by a lot of names around our house...
"Smoosh" (a nickname we came up with to mock couples who call each other 'babe'.)
"The Hotness" (I would -so- be stalking her if she hadn't married me)
"The ice queen" (for when she turns the heat off in the middle of the gorram winter)
"Babe" ( ironically this name also exists only to make fun of couples who call each other 'babe'. It works, just trust me)
"Katara" (from Avatar compliments of kode and lyda)
"Penny" (from Bolt also compliments of the kids)
"Single Mom" (for when I get home from work post 9 p.m.)
"SpiderWoman" (for when Les totally reads the entire internet in one night)
"Martha Stewart" (for all the times I come home to find the house spotless, a piping hot dinner on the table, some newly completed craft on the counter-top, the laundry done, a stunning neo-classical painting on the easel and three clean, happy, well-dressed kids).

And the list goes on.
Anyway, call her what you want, this girl is everything she's cracked up to be.
Easily the nicest person I've ever met but also super fun, funny, spontaneous and wacky.

I love IM'ing with Les while I'm at work. Seems like there's a constant stream of hilarious stuff happening around the house while I'm gone and she keeps me up to speed on all of it. Sometimes, I just get an IM like
"I just cleaned throw-up off the tramp"
or
"Ya, so I just stuck my finger in poo on accident"
Makes me laugh so hard.

She puts up with so much but she always manages to keep things in perspective.
I think one of her many gifts is that perfect combination of tenacity to stick with the problem, and knowing when it's time to take a break.
Sometimes around 4 p.m. I get an IM like this:
"Ok, so when you get home, I need to get out of the house for a while"
When that happens, she goes out for an hour or two, grabs a jamba, or a treat with a friend and when she comes home she's a whole new person. Nothing seems to keep her down for long. The net result is a woman who has things supremely "together"

Even on the hard days, Les is an iconic example of a patient, loving mother.
If our kids were a football team, and Les and I were fans, you might call me fair-weather fan whereas Les is the die-hard, true-blue never-give-up, never-surrender kind of fan. She seems to have never ending patience for their constant requests for her attention. With three kids running around and only one mom to be the focal point of their universe, Leslie can end up feeling a lot like some starlet who is perpetually hounded by the paparazzi. I sometimes joke that she knows, in a way that even celebrities don't understand, what it truly means to be famous.

Les is always looking for ways to improve herself.
She mentioned wanting to give painting a try once, so we got an easel and some water paints.
So I'm thinking she's going to bust out some fugly stuff and I'm going to tell her it's good just cause I love her, right?
Wrong.
Guess what? She's really good!
She'll tell you it's terrible, or that she just copied someone else's panting, or a hundred other things but the fact is, her work is very clean, and very interesting to look at.

I love how well she uses the few moments of free time she gets. Just this morning I was taking my turn bathing the kids and suddenly there's beautiful music filling the house as she played and both she and Lyda sang. Don't get me wrong, she's got a couple TV shows she likes, and she'll watch them, but more often than not, given a moment to herself, she'll read, or paint, or play the piano or just have some one on one time with whichever of our kids needs her attention the most. Not too many people manage to live so well as that in 2009.

I'm also slowly realizing that Leslie is always planning something. In the last couple months she's totally redone a bathroom (and I do mean entirely) and had the entire house re floored. See she's always reading these magazines like "Martha Stewart" and I think she's just getting a kick out of the articles......but no. It's nothing short of recon. She's slowly and meticulously transforming the 1970's suckfest that our house has been into something pretty sweet. Can't wait to see my own house in 5 years.

Anyway I think this picture sums it all up.
A few days ago Kode wanted to try taking some pictures just like Mom and Dad do, so Leslie got him all set up with the camera and plopped right down on the kitchen floor so he could have someone at his level to take a picture of.
Take a look, what do you see?
Gorgeous green eyes?
Ok that's fair.
What else do you see?
I'll tell ya what I see.
I see love for the little boy behind the camera.
And that is Les to a tee.