Update on the Children

Patrick will be graduating from high school in mid-May.  I am not looking forward to it.  It is driving me nuts.  I want him to get a license.  I want him to apply to college.  Just *twitch* driving me nuts not knowing what will happen next and I'm always afraid he'll make good on his threat to become a hobo.  I am working very hard on respecting his adulthood and all that by NOT fixing everything for him/ filling out his applications/ generally making that roto-helicopter sound above his head at all times.  My parents were kind enough to enable and all that when I was his age.  All I had to do was sign my name on the college applications; they even wrote the essays for me!  My essay (I learnt later) was about my leadership skills.

Hey, shut up, I at least attended and graduated from college, mmkay??  So I can fairly claim to have pulled myself up by my bootstraps, shown initiative and leadership and... well, you know.  All righty, then.

G is going to be 17 soon!  He is playing tennis at school, but on Saturdays he likes to come to tournaments with us.  He got a new chess clock, tournament bag and triple-weighted chess set for his birthday.  He mows our yard for us and we pay him $5 for the front lawn and $7 for the back yard and we alternate weeks.  One unfortunate problem we are noticing after his ankle surgery last year is that his shoes wear out incredibly quickly; he must be walking just a little oddly.  But praise God he can walk and live a normal life.  :)

Elf is doing well in school and says that the teachers all help him but most people don't talk to him.  He is ok with that because he now has a friend to chat with at lunch.  I've noticed that his genuine straight-faced questions are just HILARIOUS to the other children at the chess club.  One little boy says he would like all of Elf's "jokes" to be put into a book.  This is a problem, Elf said, because he really doesn't know when he is so funny because he is just talking. 

Emperor has an interesting take on just about everything.  We were watching Pinocchio and he asked, "Why would anyone wish upon a star? It's just a ball of gas." 

"Come to think of it, wishes are just fiction anyway," he said. "That's what anyone who is thinking would think."  Note there were no questions about the talking cricket or the fairy.  Hm.

Woodjie is enjoying his last few weeks of preschool.  He enjoys blowing dandelions in our front yard, but he is scared of dandelions that have no puffy seeds on them.  He throws those away and jumps back at the same time.  I don't know why those are still so scary to him; but they've always been frightening.  G used to be scared of dandelions as well if they are yellow and blooming.  Patrick used to chase him around the yard holding the flower out in front of him.  (G would find ways of getting him back later, don't worry.)  I think G is still pretty scared of dandelions, but most people don't go around trying to scare each other with dandelions, so I think we're good.

My big fear?  Sunflowers.  They are like giant eyeballs, looking at me!  Eyeballs are ungodly awful and scary.  D thinks that's really funny.  He and Patrick made eyeballs out of paper plates and taped them up in my room once.  Thankfully the eyeballs were positioned in such a way that they would not see me round the corner when I went to sleep.  Otherwise, they would have realized they won and scared me and I would have had to deal with staring eyeballs all over the place or even had to touch them to tear them off the wall!  eeee.

Rose seems to think only "Miss Erin" from the preschool knows anything of substance.  I tell her it's April.  "OH!  Miss Ewin say it Apwil!!"  Yeahh.  "Miss Ewin say it Fursday." Ok, kid.  Miss Erin said it Fursday yesterday, which means it's Friday today. 

I get a rumpled face.  "Miss Ewin say it Fursday.  DEN a Fwiday.  DEN a Easter!"

Welp, I can't argue with that.  I got a little PEZ dispenser for Woodjie's Easter.  Really stinks that there are no chocolate bunnies for him because of his allergies.  BUT.  There are many extra PEZ packages and the dispenser is a little Hy-Vee truck.  It's pretty cool, I have to admit.  I am also not going to spend $50 on candy and the eggs the preschoolers picked up with candy in them on Thursday?  They each get one a day until they are gone.  I am rationing all the Easter fun.  :)