"Daddy" v. "Doggy"

Today the weather was awesome!! Beautiful blue sky...warm sunshine...perfect breeze...you get it, right?

So I get off work and go pick Dyl up at daycare. Nice hot day, windows down. We are sitting at a stop light and there is a man there waiting to cross the street. Sitting obediently at his side is a gorgeous black dog. Maybe a Newfie. Big anyhow. Dyl gets really excited (she LOVES dogs) and screams out "DAWDY! DAWDY! DAWDY!" She didn't just say it loudly. She didn't just yell. She SCREAMED AS LOUD AS SHE COULD!

To the untrained ear, this sounds exactly like "DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!" This poor guy is right flippin' next to us! And she's pointing. Not at the guy, but at his dog. But he got really, um, let's say uneasy with the whole thing (guilty conscious?!?) Now, instead of waiting to cross the street, he's urging the dog on down the sidewalk trying to get away from the screaming baby as fast as he can without looking super obvious and absolutely NOT looking over his shoulder.

The entire episode took only a few seconds, but it struck me as absolutely hilarious! To be the parent of a toddler is to learn to take the embarrassment dealt by the hand of your child with extreme grace!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms and Grandmas and everyone else who cares for a child!

It's been crazy busy around here lately. I've had plenty to talk about but not the time to sit down and write it out. I'll try to be better, but I'm not making promises!

Highlights of the past week:

Jay, after being particularly slow and argumentative in getting ready for school, looked into the bathroom mirror and declared, "Well, I guess I need to have shoes on to go to school, but I don't need nice hair."

That same morning Dyl's first (and second) word of the day was a resounding "NO" when I woke her up.

I guess neither of them was ready to get up that morning!

Jay got a "C" on his report on the Male Northern Cardinal. He was a little disappointed but shrugged it off saying it could have been worse. Such the optimist! He has a visual report (pictures of a thing or place with only short captions to tell the story) of Johnny Appleseed due this Friday.

Dyl's preschool class, with the help of their teachers, made a little Mother's Day card for each mom. It has a poem and a handprint and is cute as can be!

My kids gave me a little silver heart necklace that says MOM on one side and on the other, "In my heart, I remember every hug you ever gave me" and a couple of statues from the Willow Tree Collection, which I absolutely adore.

So with a promise that I will try to write more frequently next week, I'm done for now! It is SO bed time!!

Addendum: The Male Northern Cardinal

This morning, before I hauled Jay off to orchestra practice at the insanely early time of 6:30 (we left early and grabbed breakfast one the way - a rare treat) I was helping him get his things together and I looked in his bookbag.

Two guesses as to what I found in there...

No, not an actual (yet dead) Male Northern Cardinal. Though honestly, nothing about that would have surprised or shocked me!

The ORIGINAL report! It was in his bookbag the whole dang time that he was insisting that he left it at school!!! I'm confident that if Katie would have known about this she may have strangled him. I know I nearly did.

His blue eyes got huge and nearly lept out of his astonished little face!

His jaw dropped so far down that I could count all of the teeth in the bottom row! (He did a good job brushing!)

He was actually stunned to silence! For those of you who know him, you know just what a rare thing this was!!

But at the same time, his shoulders slumped and he let out this gaspy little noise that indicated that, by mysteriously producing the report folder and it's contents, I was a WAY better magician than that hack they used to have at Pizza Hut.

And I felt bad for him because in that fleeting instant of recognition he instantly knew that nearly everything he did last night was in vain. He could have gone to bed at the normal time and not have been so tired. He could have watched all of Survivor, not just the lame reward challenge.

The original was only a rough draft, but was done and he wouldn't have needed to start over. He would have only needed to type it all up. In the end, he just asked me to put the "new" report in the folder for him and stick it in his bag.

I hope he gets a good grade on it after all he put himself through. I may just slip the deduction I took from his allowance last night back in next week. He deserves it.