Alexandra Quits School After 1st Grade

Last night Alexandra announced at dinner, "Mom, I've been thinking and I don't think I am going to go to school this year."

Kenneth looks at me with a look like, "so, what are you going to do with this one honey?"

Nicholas stops eating in mid bite and looks with wide eyes as if to say, "oh no Allie you have done it this time."

Without missing a beat (and you all would be so proud of me), I say, "okay, if you have really been thinking hard about this and you are serious about not going to school this year, then you don't have to go."

"Really? I can stay home?", she asks.

"No you can't stay home because you aren't allowed to stay by yourself yet, and since Daddy and I have to work you can go with Daddy to work everyday." Kenneth still keeps silent.

"Now of course, since you aren't going to be in school anymore then you will have to start paying rent here and helping out with the bills, so it will be important for you to work hard so you can earn enough money to help us out."

"Okay," she says, "I can work with Daddy."

Kenneth then says, "We will drop off Nicholas and Caroline at the bus stop in the mornings and the you and I can go right to work." (for those of you who don't know, Kenneth does lawn care and maintenance, so this isn't a desk job but manual labor mostly.)

And I add, "You don't have to wait for school to start to start working for Daddy. He has a job tomorrow and you can start then." She smiles and agrees.

This morning at the breakfast table, Kenneth reminds her that she is working with him today and she said she remembered. They, then worked out a fair payment schedule and an hourly rate.

Two hours after they left to trim some bushes at a customer's house they return. Allie walks in and gives me a big hug and says I am going back to school now. Nothing else was said.

We were willing to play this out, even though it didn't take us long to convince her that school was the best choice. We were even willing to go as far as not sending her to school on the first day of school and having her work with Kenneth, but luckily she saw the light early.

Baby Seals

I asked my sister to help me today to come up with a topic for a blog entry. I said anything and she gave me "baby seals". I said, "okay, baby seals it is."

This subject, I thought would be difficult for me as I don't live near a place where seals inhabit. I did go to San Francisco several years back and went shopping on a dock overlooking the harbor. It was a beautiful, yet windy day. We wore sweaters and were still a bit chilly but I didn't want to wear a jacket for fear of having to carry it around. The shops were nice but I don't remember anything special there, and I didn't buy anything. I do remember walking towards the water and letting the wind hit my face and enjoying the briskness of it. There were seals lounging on the floating docks around this shopping area. They were making these great noises and some of them were wrestling around with each other. It was fun to watch.

I usually don't think about this area much nor really the shopping on the dock, however it all came back to me two years ago when I heard a news story about a woman and her three young children. Apparently the children were missing and later they would be found and she would be arrested for murder. The story was so horrific to me that it brings me to tears just thinking about it.

On chilly, but sunny day this woman and her three babies, the oldest just 6 years old and the youngest just 9 months, were out on a dock similar to the one that I was on shopping. The woman stripped the children down to no clothes and one by one and tossed them in the water. She later states that they wanted to go swimming. She later is found to be mentally ill. Each child, though, stripped down and tossed in the 50 some degree water. There were other people on the dock that day but no one either saw her or for whatever reason stopped her.

I just don't understand how someone could hurt a child. I don't understand how a mother could toss her children in the cold water. I don't understand how no one saw her or stopped her. I read so many news articles of adults harming or killing children and in our times now it seems to be common. Even the TV dramas like ER, Law and Order, CSI, and such almost enjoy making a child injury, murder, abuse, etc, show because they know they will get the ratings as people will watch it. I had to stop watching ER because there were too many children on it. I can't watch Law and Order any more for the same reasons. I truly believe that if we allow our TV networks to air shows like this then we are only making these types of crimes "acceptable" and we are conditioning our children to not find it horrific and shocking when these types of things occur in our society.

It is just sick and sad.

Instant Messaging

Our first computer that was hooked up to the internet or had the capability was in 1992. I had bought a computer with graduation money from College. It had a 102 mb harddrive, and that was an upgrade. It had Windows 3.0. Then I upgraded to 3.1 when it came out. I was on AOL as soon as it came out and I was one of the ones who paid BY THE HOUR! There were months that my AOL bill was quite expensive. I want to say it was $9.95 for the first 5 hours or something like that and then you had to pay for anything over that. It was dial up and the internet was fairly safe. One of the fun things on AOL was the chat rooms and I would spend a lot of time there, just chatting away. Then we had Instant Messaging. Wow... what fun when my college friends also got on AOL and we could talk online!

I loved it when AOL went to just a monthly service charge and you could be online as much as you want. Well there wasn't much out there other than what AOL had on their servers. But as time went by more and more websites were being formed and you could truly start surfing the net.

When we moved into this house, my husband was now in the IT profession (before he was a tennis pro) and he set up our computer and internet to go straight out to the net using netscape. I literally went through AOL withdraw. I tried to set up an AIM account and it didn't do much for me and eventually I found that life without AOL was fine and I found other websites to surf. But I missed instant messaging.

Life goes on and a few upgrades to the computer, no more dial up but now a cable modem and DSL. I still find myself on the computer a lot and hadn't missed anything since blogging.

However, a friend of mine mentioned that we could instant message each other through MSN. We both have Hotmail and they have recently been doing some upgrades and boom there it was in my face yesterday. So I did what it said, followed the directions, and downloaded the necessary programs and BOOM I now have instant messaging capabilities.

Wow, I didn't realize I had missed it so much. It is a good thing that I can't access it at work (tried), because I wouldn't get anything done otherwise.

Visit from an old friend (also titled, "The Bird Weekend")

My old friend from college came to see me. Well, there were two reasons she came, one was to see me and the second was to retrieve a theater chair that she won on ebay and had me pick up for her. So she arrives about 12:30 and I open the front door and she steps in to give me a hug. We are in mid-hug and all of the sudden I hear a flapping of something right by my ear and brushing my hair. I exclaim, "What was that?", loudly and slightly frightened.

She says, "It hit me. I felt it on my neck."

"Do you think it was a bat? It must have been a bat." Now I am becoming concerned. "Did it come in the house?"

Shakey voice, "I think so.", she says.

"KENNETH!!!", I scream, knowing that I could possibly wake the house up but now there is a bat in my house, and I am not sure I care.

Kenneth comes down the stairs a bit groggy from being asleep for the past hour. "What, oh hi Lel" he says.

We explain the story and at first he doesn't seem ready to believe us until Lella says it might be better if she stayed in a hotel. He goes and gets a flashlight, leaving the two ladies, trembling now in the hallway where this animal could very well be. He returns a few minutes later with a large flashlight and hands it to me and he closes the kitchen doors blocking off the rest of the house from the kitchen, or was it the kitchen from the rest of the house? Anyway, he then sends ME up to check out the kids rooms and close their doors. I look at him funny, ME? I wonder, and then exclaim "why me? I don't really want to find it and what do I do if I do find it?" He doesn't answer and pushes me up the steps.

I find nothing, thankfully. And when I return to the downstairs hallway he convinces us that it must have flown out and that it realized that it wasn't flying away and we must have deflected it from coming inside. There is nothing inside the house. We reluctantly, and may I repeat, reluctantly believe him. We want to believe him. But we also don't want to wake to a bat sucking our blood or hanging upside down in the morning from a curtain. Shivers run up my back and Kenneth heads back upstairs to bed.

I look at Lella and ask, "would you like a glass of wine?" She says something like "hell yeah".

I open the kitchen door and am greeted by a little bird standing on the floor in the kitchen. I let out a shreak and when I scream I startle the bird and he starts to fly and then I start screaming again. It was all I could do to get the door shut again. Thank goodness it wasn't a bat! But there is a bird in the house.

Kenneth returns with Caroline's butterfly net and her safari hat. (see picture) He devises a plan to trap the bird in our back hallway and catch it but the plan involves me too. I have to hold up a sheet in the doorway to the family room so he doesn't go in there. I hold the sheet he scares the bird, Lella sits quietly in the living room thinking of many excuses why she should go to a hotel. The bird flies down the hallway, flaps up against the sheet, I start screaming again because the sheet is now flapping on my head and face, and then "THWAP". Nothing, no sound, no flapping, no screaming.

"Got it." Kenneth says.

"Got what?", I ask.

"The bird. I got the bird. It's okay you can come out now."

"No way. Get it out of the house now!", I say.

"Really, Whitney, I've got it. I was a tennis pro you know. Come look at it."

"Tennis pro? What does that have to do with it?", still behind the sheet.

"I caught it in the net. Get out here and look at this thing. He is little." Reluctantly I pull down the sheet ever so slowly and there it was in the net.

Next thing to do, obviously was get the camera. We call Lella in and she responded something like, "I don't need to see it. I'm okay. Don't want to see it." But with more prodding she came in and checked it out too.

What an exciting entrance!

Happy Birthday Pop-Pop!

This past weekend we celebrated my grandfather's 90th birthday. He is doing well and had a great time having his family celebrate with him. He enjoys watching my kids play in the pool and he has a running joke with Caroline my youngest. He tries to kiss her and she likes to run away. At first she was a bit frightened of him but now it is a game. I am sure he will have many more birthdays.

More Bugs...This time not so happy ending

A few days ago my middle daughter Allie found this on our back door. Yes the door we all go in and out many times a day.

You guessed right, it is a Black Widow Spider. It had a nice web and had caught some dinner for it.

Alexandra guessed right away what it was and we were impressed that she identified it. It made for an easy learning lesson for the kids.

"Do not touch these spiders, Caroline. They will bite you and make you very, very sick. Do not squoosh these spiders, they may bite you before your squoosh them. Do not pick them up, do not catch them. Do not go near them!"




"Caroline, are you paying attention?"


This spider met his demise.

Of Bugs and Butterflies

This summer I have been battling with Caroline over bringing bugs into the house and then letting them out to "play" with her. Today, Alexandra caught a Monarch Butterfly in our yard and they put it in the butterfly cage. Caroline then, apparently took the cage to her room some time today and decided to let him out to play with her. A little while ago she came to me, "Mommy, I can't find my butterfly."

"What butterfly, honey?", I ask.

"The one we caught and put in the cage.", she says in her cute little voice.

"You caught a butterfly?"

"Allie did and we put it in the cage."

"Well, where is the cage?", I ask.

"In my room.", she says.

"Isn't the butterfly in the cage?", thinking uh-oh.

"No".

"Did you let him go outside?", I ask cautiously, knowing the answer already.

"No I let him in my room. He loves my room and so do I. He was flying around my room when I lost him." That is what I thought.

So we go to her room and start looking for the butterfly. The door to her bedroom was already open when we got there and I begin thinking this butterfly could be anywhere in our house. Thankfully after only 30 seconds I found the butterfly alive and well. I called to Allie to get the net and told Caroline to watch him and not open the door. Like a good Mommy, I ran to get the camera.

When I return to her room I find her showing the butterfly her bat that she made in bug camp! (first picture)

The last picture is her catching the butterfly in the net to return him to his cage. He is currently all snuggy in his cage with plenty of fresh flowers to eat and some grass on the bottom.

While this story is cute and has a happy ending, this summer we have been graced with sharing our home with "pincher bugs", ants, worms, and snails. Some we have found, some we haven't yet. Although each bug gets to play with Caroline in her room and with her toys.