The Little Weekend That Could

Jacob is officially registered for kindergarten for fall. AHHH! He's so excited. And I'm so excited for him. Luckily, our school district has free all day kindergarten which will make our lives a little easier. I hope kindergarten teachers have enough patience and understanding to handle six year old boys who would rather be running around outside than sitting in a desk for an entire, full school day.

We are trying to get into a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) school that has a Montessori program. I don't know much about Montessori but I hear good things. And they require uniforms. I am very excited about this. I wish all public schools required uniforms.

This week was rough for me. I'm still recovering from my thrown out back- it's been brutal. I move slowly. I can't lift anything. I struggle to bend over to do necessary things like dishes, and wiping counters, and picking things up off the floor. This makes me very angry because I was just getting back into a regular running routine. Between my back and my all-day sickness, I feel like I haven't been the best mom. It was a nice sunny spring day and I felt too crummy to even take the kids to the park. As a result, they were cooped up inside all day, getting on each other's (and our) last nerves. There was more yelling than there should have been.

Silver lining re: all-day sickness....I've lost about four pounds. But don't worry, I'm sure to make it all up soon enough.

But this didn't stop Jacob from being awesome and Ryan from being adorable. Jacob passed the next level of his swim class. He was the only one of his class to move on to the next level. He is now an eel! When the instructor asked the kids to jump into the deep end and swim 15 feet out and back, Jacob nervously sat on the edge of the pool and slowly slid into the deep end. But he swam farther than he was required to do (overachiever!). Later today, Jacob told us that if we have a girl baby, we should name her Zoran. If we have a boy baby, we should name him Ryzan. I told him I would submit those named to the Naming Committee.

The adorableness of Ryan is just too difficult to put into words. It isn't anything in particular that he does, it's simply HOW he does things that has my husband and I catching each other's glances as if to say, "isn't he so freaking adorable?!" He insists on doing everything Jacob does. He also wants to do everything himself. From putting on his pants, to brushing his teeth. "I do it self," is a phrase we hear frequently. When my husband came inside today from working on his new motorcycle (ugh, don't ask), Ryan met him at the door and said repeatedly, "cycle too loud! Cycle too loud, daddy." When something startles Ryan, he will say very calmly in the most matter-of-fact and unconcerned voice, "care [scare] me. That 'care me."

So...hopefully next week will be better and we will actually leave the house. In fact, I'm planning an epic outing for the near future. I just discovered a museum nearby that has a dinosaur skeleton on display! I've lived here my whole life and never knew there was a dinosaur skeleton in all of Washington State, much less in my backyard. Jacob has been begging to see a dinosaur skeleton and I was afraid we would have to wait for a trip to Chicago before we could make that happen. (Living in Chicago, I took for granted that Sue the dinosaur was within miles of my apartment. I didn't realize that most people don't have easy access to full-scale T-rex fossils.) So, as soon as work slows down, I'm using all the comp-time I've earned to make a Thursday (free day!) trip to the museum to bring Jacob face to face with a dinosaur. I may be just as excited as he is....