Countdown to Baby Robinson

Tomorrow morning I am heading to Boston for the arrival of my newest niece or nephew, scheduled to arrive via c-section on Tuesday morning. I have done all the laundry, packed the kids backpacks for Monday, and left a list of notes and reminders on the fridge for Joel of such things as 1) Ben's basketball league which starts tomorrow afternoon; 2) Joel's traffic court date/time Monday morning; 3) Ben's Tae Kwon Do schedule; 4) what time the school bus comes in the mornings, etc, etc, etc. Hopefully he will do okay! I am missing my babies already, but so excited to be on hand for the arrival of our newest family member!! YEAH! Abby has been having some contractions again today, I told her, CROSS YOUR LEGS! Don't have that baby before I get there!

I will try to update from the road, or if not, I'll be back home on Thursday night.

PS, Go Eagles.

Star of the Week

Ben is the "star of the week" for his kindergarten class next week, which involves making a poster to share with the class. He finished his poster today (with some help from Mom).

Was Ben Ever This Ornery? I Think Not

Rebecca's favorite phrase, which I hear literally 50 times a day (which is impressive considering she's at preschool during the week) is "NO! MY DO IT!" Or some variant thereof. When I try to help her down the stairs. Into her car seat. With her clothes. Her food. Her seat belt. Brushing her teeth, her hair. Even when I try to READ to her for crying out loud... She yells "MY SAY IT!", grabs the book away from me, looks at the page, and tries to repeat what I just said. It makes reading a book to her very difficult. In fact, it makes DOING EVERYTHING VERY DIFFICULT!

Family Game Night in the 21st Century

Ah, family togetherness... But is it bad that my two year old is yelling, "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" ?

Monday, Monday

Back to the grind after another long weekend... in addition to a lot of lazing around the house playing video games, watching football, etc, we did get out and about a little bit this weekend -- Thursday night we went to a kid-friendly New Year's Eve party at a friend's house (made it to about 9:15 before we decided that we needed to come home and get the kids, especially Rebecca, to bed); Friday afternoon we had friends over and went to Cantina 1511 for dinner; Saturday we went to the JCC and the kids ran around after a tennis ball in the upstairs dance studio while Joel worked out. There was a guide dog puppy-in-training watching them-- apparently watching little kids chase a tennis ball around is a PERFECT "exposure" for a guide dog in training... the kids did not mind, either, and Ben enjoyed petting her. After that we went to Saffron for dinner, our first visit there but definitely not our last! It was delicious.

Ben went back to school today, and he seemed to adjust much better than I did to getting up early to catch the bus again. The only problem this morning was that it was 20 degrees out and the bus was 20 minutes late. By the time the bus came Ben was whining, Rebecca was crying, and I was just about frozen solid, wearing only a sweatshirt.

Hopefully the rest of our first day back to "reality" will go more smoothly. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2010!

Couch Potato

Be Careful What You Wish For

For the last five and a half years I have been waiting for the day that Ben could occupy himself for a while without needing my constant attention. Well, that day has come to pass, and Joel and I are not quite sure what to do about it. Since I bought him a used copy of Lego Star Wars 2 for his Game Cube a week or so ago (was it only a week ago?) he has been playing it every spare moment of every day. It can easily go from 1 to 2 players, so sometimes he and Joel will play together, but he's also perfectly happy playing it by himself for HOURS.

Yesterday while he played and Becca napped, I got to watch like two hours of non-animated television, without interruption. It was truly miraculous. On the other hand, it was about 3 p.m. before I managed to coax Ben out of his pajamas, and that was only because we had company coming over and were going out to dinner.

Rebecca spent most of her waking moments yesterday either watching Ben play his star wars game or watching an endless loop of Backyardigans episodes on DVD. When the cycle began to repeat itself this morning, Joel and I decided we needed to get the kids out of the house so we wasted a couple of hours at Lowes looking at carpet and kitchen appliances. As soon as we returned home the kids resumed their usual positions on their respective couches in front of their respective television sets.

We tried, right? I don't want to force Ben to do something else just for the sake of doing something else... it is, after all, the next-to-last day of his winter vacation, so part of me thinks I should not feel guilty about it and just let him do what he wants to, since we haven't got any plans anyway and it's FREEZING out today! And he did spend his two weeks of winter vacation doing a lot of active and educational stuff at camp, such as several museum field trips, bowling, Monkey Joe's, swimming every day, tae kwon do lessons... I am going to keep justifying his video-game-playing quietly to myself now while I go see what's on the Food Network....