heyMamas

Twilight and then some

Every Sunday night our ultimate goal is to pull off a family movie night.   We aim to finish dinner and showers and the set up for the next day, early enough so that we can watch a movie and still get to bed by 8:30pm.  It doesn't always work out perfectly, but when it does it is such an absolute delight and  a perfect end to the weekend. 

We snuggle up on the couch with a giant vat of popcorn and we watch our movie. This weeks movie was the result of the girls constant begging to see Twilight  for the last few weeks.  They have been lobbying for this movie and laying on thick the stories about how every other kid at school has already seen it.  They knew main characters, story-lines and most of the movies events anyway, so we figured, ok why not?

I normally would not allow a PG-13 movie but figured if Drew and I were watching with them with the remote control held firmly in our hands, poised and ready should the need arise to fast forward quickly, what could be really be the harm.

I kept checking in with Belle as she has from time to time been prone to some minor flinching at  episodes of Grey's Anatomy.  She kept reassuring me that she was fine and just seemed very taken with the love story that was unfolding before us. 

There was a scary scene toward the end of the film or what I imagine was the end of the film which I don't know since we turned it off to get the girls to bed.  I am sure that I have mentioned it here before, but I freak out if we stay up past our bedtime.  I mostly freak out because every time I try to test the waters of a later bedtime, we totally pay for it.

We pay for it in different ways each time.  Sometimes it's the opening of the floodgates and out come simultaneously cries of how tired they are, or the next morning they wake up even earlier than normal when it should be later, or the whole day they are ridiculously grumpy...whatever the form it takes, if I keep them up past their normal bedtime everything falls to shit. 

Bedtime in our house is usually 8:30pm. Last night because they were well rested from the weekend I was willing to accept a 9pm bedtime.  So promptly at 9pm, we turned off the movie and made our way upstairs to brush our teeth and head to bed.

And sure enough that is when it ALL headed south. Belle started talking about this and that, all in an attempt to NOT go to bed. After many slammed doors because as I have already stated, I completely freak out when the clock strikes bedtime and my little angels are still running the nightly pea parade.  

We were now looking at 50 minutes past the already generous bedtime of 9pm. This is where we finally figure out that our little Belle who has been quite literally shitting in her pants running from her bed to the pot, was scared to death by that final scene in the movie, and oh my goodness, what have we done?

Drew takes Belle downstairs to have a snack as she can not get herself to stop shaking and we try to convince her that she probably just has low blood sugar because we ate an early dinner, IN PREPARATION for our big movie night of course.

As they make their way back upstairs at what is now 10:30pm and I take my turn of laying in bed with her and rubbing her head until she falls asleep, I realize I have learned a few things. 

I learned that as big as she thinks she is, I am bigger and as much as she thinks she knows, I know more.  I know that no matter what she tells me she is ready for, it is still my job to decide what I think she is ready for and not to rush it even if she wants me too.

Overheard and nothing I can do about it

The funny thing about a crowded subway car is that you are forced to be near people that you normally would never be near.  People that you wouldn't let within a ten mile radius of you in your normal life.  But here you are together on the subway, STUCK suspended in time, possibly with them even rubbing up against your leg.   

It may be someone coughing or sneezing or just plain reeking of garlic, which is personally my fan favorite, you are forced to be in the same proximity with LOTS of different types of people. 

Sometimes I overhear conversations that I would rather I had never heard, nor would ever have wanted to have known, about a particular subject. 

Like the other day when I overheard a conversation between two ex-convicts talking about some going-on's if you will, of a private nature, while in prison.  My mouth would have been hanging completely agape had I not been so terrified of being turned into mince meat right there on that very subway car at their discovery of me listening to their conversation. 

Tonight on the way home, I sat in front of two heavy set women who were just going off on some schlep at work and as their gums were a flapping, my fingers were a typing...

Women 1:  "Uh huh, oh no.  I don't play that.  Oh yeah, he is a snake in the grass, oh yeah."

Women 2:  "I spent fifteen years on Wall Street  and I don't play that game.  We are all the same.  We should all be treated with respect.  I put my pants on the very same damn way that you do.  I don't care if I make five dollars and you make a hundred dollars an hour.  No sir, pants on the same way, you are just a snake in the grass."

Women 1:  "Uh huuuhh, that's right.  I hear you, snake in the grass, just a snake in the grass."

Women 2:  "Oh yeah, he thinks he is so much better."

Women 1:  "Ain't 'nuthin but a sleazy Wall Street snake in the grass.  Uhh hhmm, I have seen them around before, no better than us, I don't play that game, oh no.  Snakes."  

They even look cool doing this

If you like U2 nearly as much as Drew does and you didn't happen to see their week long stint on Letterman, you will love the following clip.  And you are most welcome...particularly for number three.

The storyteller

Lily and her classmates each have a notebook and every night they have an assignment that involves using one of the words that they are learning in class.  My favorite assignment is the one where they have to write a sentence and then draw an illustration depicting their sentence.

Here are some of my favorites that Lily has done....

 

 

 

 

 

 

My two little leprechauns

The talk in my house for the last week and a half has been about catching leprechauns.  Lily's class set some kind of trap and today was the big unveiling to see if they actually caught one.  There were MANY tears this morning when we came to the realization that Lily was too sick to go to school. 

She was not only devastated that she was going to miss out on a dress-down day, but that she was not going to be able to see the leprechaun caught in the trap first hand.   The first question out of her mouth when we picked Belle up at school was, did she know anything about the kindergarten's leprechaun trap?   To which Belle nonchalantly replied, "don't worry you didn't miss anything, they didn't even catch it."

 

I want to wish my little fifty percent Irish leprechaun's a very happy Saint Patrick's Day and I leave you with this... 

"As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point in the wrong direction."

~Irish Blessing