7 Quick Takes, vol. 128

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Okay, this is just weird. What a way to open my Google reader this morning.

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Moms talk about getting “touched out.” I’m a touch person, so that doesn’t happen to me very often. At least, it didn’t before Nicholas. The other night after dinner, Nicholas got off the toilet and plastered himself against me until I finally couldn’t take the whining anymore, and I abandoned cleanup duty to pick him up. “Twenty years from now,” Christian said, “you’re going to tell him, ‘When you were a 2 year old naked kid, I couldn’t resist you!'”

My response: “You’d better be glad you didn’t say, ‘Twenty years from now you’re gonna miss this.’ Because I might’ve had to deck you.”

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Speaking of Nicholas, he’s the most hilarious mimic. He mimics things whether or not he understands what he’s doing. In our morning walks (well, we haven’t taken one in a while because it’s been raining every day!), he’s seen me picking dandelions and grinding them under my toe. Now, wherever we are, he runs over, picks it, and steps on it. (EVIL LAUGH!) One child is taught! Bwahaha!

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Last fall, Christian and Alex got stranded two hours from home when the (18-year-old) truck broke down on the way to a baseball game. When I arrived to pick them up, he shook his head and said, “It’s time to replace this car.” Naturally, then, 9 months later–yesterday–we test drove our first car.

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Alex was tested this week for the school district’s gifted program. I don’t know how much is par for the course among kindergarteners nowdays, but I’ve been amazed all year as I watch him absorb, process, and learn. The kid can read now. I mean, read. But that’s not what they’re looking for in the gifted program. They asked him questions like, “What is a flood?” and “Why does a police officer wear a uniform?” Things to gauge how he interacts with the world. (In case you’re interested, his answers: “A whole big pile of water” and “so that people will let the policeman get through the crowd”.)

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That was a crazy morning. Alex missed the very last pizza day at school to go be tested, so I promised to take him out for lunch on the way back to school. We went to DQ, but we were on a very tight schedule–we had to be home before Julianna’s bus arrived. So the boys ate ice cream in the car on the way back to school (imagine that mess), and when Alex walked into the school office, the secretary smiled and said, “Oh, Alex, do you need a new shirt?” By the time she came back from the uniform closet, Alex got it on, and we got him headed to his classroom, we were on the slimmest of margins. We topped the last hill headed to our house and saw the bus turning the corner onto our street. I gunned the engine and managed to get in the garage as the bus was pulling up. Couldn’t have cut that one any closer!

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Okay, I need help from you guys. It’s the last day of school. What do you do with kids all summer? Don’t tell me the pool, because I have to have a second adult; none of my kids are really safe in the water yet. How do you structure summer vacation? Field trips? Craft projects? I was thinking of making flash cards over the summer, and I have  a couple field trips in mind. But I know how bored Alex is going to be. How have you structured your days to make things run smoothly, so everyone knows what to expect (a la school year!!)?