Easter

Busy weekend. Busy week, actually. Back to work last week and all, I was playing catchup for the first half. Then, wonder of wonders, I managed to get ALL caught up from a month and a half off of work PLUS get all my report cards done, all within 3 days. I kick ass, I'm not afraid to say it.

This past weekend Alex had a birthday party to go to, which just reminded me how much I don't like kids' birthday parties. Which reminded me that Emma's birthday is coming up. Dammit. I'm SO not in the frame of mind to do a big to-do, so I think this one will be a family gathering at our house.

Anyway, Alex's friend Geo turned 5 this weekend, and he had a mini carnival thing, with bowling, bobbing for frogs (they picked a frog our of the water and if they got the right number on the bottom of it they got a prize), beanbag toss, plus a clown doing face painting. They even rented a cotton candy machine. And I thought I was going all out by reserving Odyssey last year. Which we will be doing again for Alex this year - THAT was easy. Spend less than 100 bucks and you don't have to entertain OR clean up after a gaggle of little boys.

After the party we went to my parents' house and colored Easter eggs, which really involved Alex dropping one or two eggs into the dye, cracking another 4 or 5 "accidentally," and then getting bored and going off to do something else while Scott and I finished coloring. Which involved Scott writing dirty things on the eggs with the wax crayon. Typical.

Afterward (I told you it was a busy weekend, and this is only Saturday!) I took Alex to the Hannah Montana movie. It was awesome (the time with Alex, not the movie) because we went to a 7:00 movie, which is Alex's bedtime, so he was really tired and wanted to snuggle through the whole thing. And then we got an extra hour of sleep the next morning. WHEE! :-)

Due to my half-assery, the Easter bunny only visited Grandma and Grandpa's houses, so the kids didn't get anything from us. (Part of that stems from my being a regular Scrooge, but part of that has to do with my not wanting them to have more candy than they can choke on). On Sunday we went to my parents' to do an Easter egg hunt, then Scott's parents' to do dinner. Then we came home, put the kids to bed and passed out.

I've had my car for over a week now and I LURVVVVE it. She's so much fun to drive, and I haven't been able to find a thing that I DON'T like about her. I actually fight to drive down to Scott's parents' now, when before I wanted to avoid it if I could con Scott into it. And, as usual, when Scott gets off the laptop (whenever that might be, he's working nonstop overtime lately) I'll get the pics off my camera, onto the laptop, then move them over. Because the stupid USB port on the desktop computer isn't working, so I have to take an extra step to get pics on my blog. Bah.

In other news, Alex has finally started "getting" the whole letters/reading thing. You can tell he's going to be one of those nerdy kids who always has his head in a book. (Gee, I wonder where he gets that. It couldn't be the certifiable nerd and geek he has for parents.) He is always sitting there staring at books now and he is finally making headway with recognizing letters. He's even started forming letters on paper and can recognize a few (A, B, S and O mostly). He and I sat at the kitchen table for 20 minutes tonight, singing the ABC song back and forth so he could figure out which letter went in which box on this workbook maze we were working on. And the thing that really makes me proud? He ALWAYS goes back and checks to see what a letter should look like before he writes it. He even said, "Show me what that letter looks like" a few times. It's clicking. YAY!

Oh, and we were reading The Great Kapok Tree tonight, and his comprehension skills amaze me. There was a part of the book that talks about how, if the trees in the rainforest are chopped down, there will be nothing to hold the soil and the rain will wash it away. So we read the page and I asked him what would happen if they chopped the tree down. "The rains will come and wash away the soil," was his response. I only wish I had remembered to have a discussion on the word "erosion," because I guarantee he would have used that word in conversation at school tomorrow.

Speaking of school, he informed me that Nyomi was breaking up with him. Apparently he's been with other girls. And he hasn't decided who his next girlfriend is going to be, although he's interested in Alexandra. Hehehe...

Emma is, well, Emma. Not much to report on her end, although she LOVES being sung to before bed. I always sing her a lullaby and rock her in the glider in her room after reading a story or two. She doesn't really like story time at this point - she would rather have the book in her hands and flip pages by herself, so she only has patience for one or two short books right now. But I make sure she's crawling around Alex's room when I read him stories so she at least hears it all. She officially said Mama and Dada. Once. And she makes animal sounds if you ask her what an animal says, and then say it yourself. SO different from Alex, who already had a 20-word vocabulary by now, including almost that many signs. But I keep telling myself that HE was the weirdo and that she's normal. 'Cause that's a healthy way to label your kids. ;-) She started differentiating her signs a little this week - now she does "more" AND "please" instead of just flapping her arms for all of her signs. Oh, and last night she started fussing because her toy wouldn't do what she wanted it to, and I told her, "Emma, stop it or you're going night-night." She stopped. It worked four times. Which I think is proof that she does understand us even if she isn't talking back, so all is well and good.

Anyway, it's late and I promised Scott some snuggle time. Sorry about the lack of updates for awhile, but it'll be a little sporadic for a bit. Night all!

Books

Speaking of books, I've had lots of time to read lately. Having a 4 year old who loves preschool and a 10 month old who loves to take 3 hour naps, plus LOTS of free time off work the past few weeks has been GREAT when it comes to consuming new reading material.

So I FINALLY (after, I swear, like 6 months) finished The Host, Stephenie Meyer's non-Twilight novel, which actually was pretty good and not as whiny as the Twilight series (although I never got past New Moon, and I hear the third book is better). Quick synopsis of The Host - humans are virtually extinct because "parasites" (think worm invading our brains) have enslaved us. Except these parasites are fundamentally good, and the one invading the main character, Melanie, begins realizing that not only is her host not gone, but it's really hard to WANT her gone. Once I had time to actually sit down with it, I really enjoyed getting through this one. This one seemed like Meyer was trying to reach a slightly older audience, although it still is a young adult novel (don't be expecting Faulkner, here).

Then I started the Marked series, by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast - another vampire story. I like the bloodsuckers, what can I say? This mother-daughter team seems to really understand teen minds (mainly because the daughter isn't much older than a teen herself and made sure that her mom didn't sound like a dork [her words] when she wrote the character). In an odd divergence from the Twilight series, this one seems like it's written to a younger audience but addresses issues like sexuality, language and overall bitchy teenagers in a more adult way. Twilight was definitely more tame and addressed sexuality just the way you'd think an LDS author would (Meyer is a card-carrying Mormon - went to BYU and everything). The Marked series begins with the main character witnessing an attempted blow job, so it kind of blows (hehe...no pun intended) the Twilight subtlety out of the water.

The main character, Zoey, lives in a universe where vampyres (the olde spellyng) are real and you don't change into one if you're bitten, you have to be chosen and Marked. And even then you might die while you're changing. But Zoey gets Marked and finds out that she's a special fledgling chosen by the Goddess Nyx (Night) to be her eyes and ears. And that doesn't cause her as much trouble as you might think, because her new friends accept her difference - it's just outside influences like her very religious stepfather and Stepford Wife mom that cause the problems.

Anyway, I just started the third book in the Marked series, and it's definitely something I'd recommend for light reading. A friend once told me she wouldn't let her daughter read it, but I think about what I was reading in 5th or 6th grade (right about the age that kids would start getting interested in these books)... Compared to some of those novels, most of which would definitely NOT be considered young adult, I would wholeheartedly endorse these for teens. A short list of books I read back then - I discovered V.C. Andrews, of Flowers in the Attic fame, as well as Dean Koontz, horror novelist (back then he was strictly horror, now he has really expanded his repertoire to the quantum-physical level). So compared to those two authors, yeah, Marked is tame.

I've been reading a lot of vampire books lately. Maybe someone should start checking Scott for bite marks. Hehehe...