Another milestone at the Bruno house yesterday. Xander was eating his cereal and his tooth popped right out! He was so excited!
It's not like I don't know how the book will end, they're all the same.
I certainly didn't need to stay up until after 1am to finish the darn thing. And on a school night!!
I suppose I should be thanking you for wiriting such compelling stories, even if most people pass them off as fluffy romance novels. Sure, the characters have a tendancy to fall in love instantaneously, and are of course complete opposites in almost every way. And your love scenes, while very exciting, have no basis in reality as far as I can tell. And yet...
The characters are fun, I love the mystery wound up with the romance, and I needed to see how the bad guy was dealt with and how the two main characters overcame their personal issues and hooked up. That's some tricky writing!
Darn you, Nora Roberts, for writing these novels! And since I started the next one this morning, I can look forward to another sleepless night tonight. Sigh.
Xander has been very challenging lately - lots of attitude, bad behavior at school - which made yesterday all the more sweet. It was like the perfect day. In the morning Xander helped me make pancakes. He mixed the batter, spooned it into the pan, put in the chocolate chips, and even flipped them over! But his helperness didn't stop there. While I washed dishes, he volunteered to clean the bathroom sink (between Xander and Joe, it's usually a wreck). And he did a bang-up job using just a few Lysol wipes to get everything clean and shiny. More chores followed, as I helped him sort and match his socks.
After the chores, we headed outside. It was snowing, but it wasn't very cold. And the snow was perfect packing snow. Xander showed me how to make a snowman, probably the first one I've done since I was a kid myself, and then we had a big snowball fight. Xander's favorite part was getting buried in the snow, and then busting out like the Hulk!
Nothing goes better after some snow play than hot cocoa, so that was next on our list. One of my co-workers had given me a gift set for Christmas, with two mugs, to packs of cocoa, and s'mores fixings. While we waited for the water to boil, Xander constructed uncooked s'mores for us to share with Daddy. He handed out the hot cocoa and we all had a snack and watched some Scooby Doo.
The Bruno family was hoppin' this weekend, let me tell you! It started on Friday, when we had Eli, Krissy and the kids over for dinner. When Xander wasn't getting in trouble for being too bossy or being mean, you could overhear the following type of conversation: "Come on, Sweetie. (Aislin) You know you have to do your homework." How cute!
Saturday we dropped Xander off for an overnight with Joe's folks. He was more than happy, since Grandma has so many toys. And they took him out to dinner at the Pizza Shack in Cobleskill, where he won $6 off his grandpa in a bet. Aww! Mommy's little gambler!
Joe and I spent Valentine's Day in Albany, where we foolishly decided we'd just eat wherever we got the notion to, very spontaneous. Forgetting, of course, that it was VALENTINE'S DAY. Every place we went was absolutely mobbed! The line at the Cheesecake Factory just for cheesecake takeout was about a half hour wait. Zoinks! We ended up dining at Houlihan's in the Crossgates Mall, which only had a twenty minute wait. The food was nothing too special, but by that point I was ready to gnaw my own limbs off.
On Sunday we had Joe's folks up for dinner, and to get our son back. Xander told me he had so much fun, he forgot he lived with us. Nice. I made my new favorite dish - BBQ beef cups - and it was a big hit. And my husband was feeling so mellow, he actually VOLUNTEERED to babysit Xander and Eli's kids on Monday. All day. While I was out grocery shopping. Krissy dropped the kids off at 9:30 and Eli picked them up at 3pm. They played together pretty well this time, and Aislin didn't want to leave.
That was our busy weekend. And this week is Winter Break at school, so work will be nice and relaxed for me. And Xander is spending his free time at daycare - hopefully not beating up all the little kids! Hope everyone else had a great three-day weekend!The last few weeks I have been filling my brain - and my flash drive - with all things 70s. It's my intent to create a scrapbook documenting both the decade at large and my family's place in it. At this point I have enough info for probably ten scrapbooks! But I can't stop researching.
And hey...how did we ever do research without the internet?? I've gotten tons of pictures, vintage advertisements, and info just from Wikipedia alone. (Yeah, probably not all of it is accurate, but I'm not sellin' the darn scrapbook!)
If you have any 70s memories to add to my collection, I'd sure like to hear them!
On Friday Xander brought home his first report card of the year. I'm happy - and proud! - to say that he got high marks mostly across the board. He's right at the top of things in Language and Literacy (just like his Mom!), and doing well in Math, Science & Technology.
Xander's Learning Behaviors are good - his teacher thinks he has a good attention span, which is shocking! No surprisingly, he got excellent marks for Art. Once we get into Group Participation, though, things downslide a bit. Here is the note his teacher added:
"Xander is excelling academically in Kindergarten. He understands the concepts we are learning and adds to the class conversation with things he knows. I expect Xander to sail into first grade with no problem.
His behavior issues have been a problem at different times througout the year. Xander likes to have things his way and often becomes negative about the activity we are doing if he doesn't get his way. We are continuing to work on this. When he does things well, he is very pleased with himself."
Yeah, behavior has been an issue with Xander at school. He fights, he says mean things, he ignores the rules. We've tried incentive charts, both home and at school, and the taking away of privileges. Basically it boils down to Xander being Xander, so all we can do is keep trying to get him to be the nice boy I know he can be.
If anyone has advice on that, I'd sure take it!
Xander was big into drawing monsters yesterday. And of course we had to 
hang them all on the wall in his bedroom. (And yes, I had to take them down at bedtime because they were too scary!)
It was very funny, actually, because once the pictures were up Xander quizzed me on monster knowledge, using one of his drumsticks as a pointer. What does fish man eat? Fish. Who has the pointiest teeth? Vampire. Who has the sharpest eyes? Orc. What an imagination!!
If you know, or have ever met, my husband, you know he's a tattoo person. He started getting them when he was in the Marine Corps and hasn't stopped. At one point he was getting one a year, but for a while had to put that on hold. I think he's making up for lost time, because he's gotten two so far this year. This is the new one:
It's a koi fish, kind of a memorial to the fish we lost during our two power outages this winter. Apparently the new plan now is to get a whole sleeve done. (For those not down with the lingo, it means he wants his whole arm to be tattooed.)
Joe consults me briefly about each tattoo, even though he knows I'm not a fan. One or two are okay, but he's got way too many! Still, he doesn't smoke (anymore), he doesn't drink (anymore), and he doesn't fool around (who has the energy?). I can't begrudge him the tattoos. Of course, that tune may change once he gets his whole arm covered!
Let's be clear about one thing right off the bat - Xander is a Momma's boy. He always has been. I'm the one he wants in most situations, be it for playing or crying about a boo-boo. His relationship with Joe tends to be more contentious. Xander pushes Joe's buttons, and my husband has hundreds of them! Joe also gets impatient, and when you're dealing with a slower-than-tar five year old you end up wanting to bang your head against the wall.
Back at home, Xander cuddled up next to Joe to watch him play Heroes on the computer, a game he's too little to play but is obsessed with. He must've sat there for an hour, watching Joe play.
I hope that as Xander gets older, he and Joe will find more common ground and have more days like this one.
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