- Owen plays Cl@sh of Cl@ns.  He started his own clan and has 23 people in it, including some middle schoolers at his school, his friends in his class, and the neighbor down the street.  I find this very characteristic of Owen.

- I locked Hannah in the car last night.  It was only a matter of time- I know moms manage to do this all the time.  I am going to blame it on my clicker- the remote keeps locking automatically while I'm buckling Hannah's seat belt.  This has never happened to Aaron and he thinks it's my imagination or that I'm bumping it or something.
Anyhow, after Owen's soccer practice, I loaded her in the car.  I put the keys in the door pocket,  buckled her car seat up and then shut the door.  Immediately I tried to open the door back, realizing where my keys were, but it had locked.  SHOOT.  I immediately called AAA, but since my head was banging on the car window while I was moaning "nooo...", someone stopped to ask what my problem was.  As soon as word got out, we drew a crowd.  At this point, Hannah had been oblivious inside the car, but once the kids started crowding around her telling her to unlock her own door, she got flustered and started crying.
After 20 minutes or so, I had convinced an upset 3 year old to unbuckle the top part of her seat belt and wiggle one arm out of the strap.  Then I finally got her to grab the keys and push the button and WA LAH, the car was opened!  I let her out and she was the hero.  She saved the day and she was so proud.  They thought that deserved ice cream and I did too.
Is it bad that during this time I was thinking that homework was not going to get done that night?  I mean, it takes a whole night to get all the homework done and feed the kids and get them bathed and in bed (AP was out of town).  Soccer is already a chunk of our night gone.  But we managed.  All is well in the Peterson household.

Birthday Season

This one is 2 years old, was in my draft folder also, albeit unfinished.  Posting anyway. 6/22/14

We are at the tail end of birthday season.

Asher's party is in a few days and then it'll be over til next year.  Every year I love planning the details of the 3 birthdays, and this year was no exception.  Except everyone else was messing with my chi.    First we have the-man-who-is-never-home and his never-ending, always-changing schedule.  It was really hard to pin down when he would be in town to celebrate all 3 events.  Once I had some dates I started giving the kids options and it quickly became apparent that this would be a low-maintenance year.  Aaron decided he was going to return his father's day gift (clothes, admittedly very lame) and put the money towards a new tv for his birthday.  And he didn't want to have any friends over because it is a lot of work to have people over.  Fine, celebrate your own bad self then.  I planned a dinner and dessert (which he doesn't even like) for the night before his birthday, and then he wanted to go out to dinner with his friend.  Luckily his friend cancelled, and he was forced to sit in a chair and let us celebrate him.  Mmmmkay.

Next is Owen, who is so high-maintenance he just can't help himself.  He wanted a waterpark birthday with his best friend, we said ok.  It really wasn't in the budget however for Hannah and I to pay $80 to sit in the kiddy pool at the waterpark, so we decided it would be a guys outing.  But that left me out completely, and that was hard for me.  I spent his birthday shopping with Hannah, relaxing, cleaning.  She and I got into my bed to snuggle and read and watch tv that evening and when I got up later I saw I had missed some text messages.  Aaron told me they were at a restaurant and were going to have them bring out chocolate cake for him and that we should join them.  But I had missed it.  I turned and put away the birthday cake I had just put on the table.  I didn't even sing to him on his birthday.  He's growing up.

Somewhere in the weeks leading up to his birthday I realized his years at home were half over.  What the heck?  How is that possible?  It's painful.  9 summers gone, 9 summers left.  It dawned on me that if I would've held him back in kindergarten, I would have an extra year with him in our home.  Darn it, I sure thought of that one too late. Same with his brother. I look at pictures of them and the golden years of childhood are slipping by so quickly.  Their chubby cheeks are thinning out, their soft skin growing hairy and tough.  Their innocence has been captured the past year as I have had them at home. But even as I celebrated another year passing, I realized I was soon putting them back in school, and suddenly I needed to put the brakes on.  Ouch is about all I have to say about that.

Owen needed a new bike, and we promised Asher could have Owen's.  We knew his birthday was the time to get it, so we asked the grandparents to chip in and of course they took care of it.  Happy boy.

All this time Asher is building up to his golden birthday, God bless him.  Minnesota boys.  I had never heard of golden birthdays, but of course Aaron told him all about it and he was totally on that train. We gave him a few options and he voted for a party with friends.  So we scheduled it for when Aaron would be in town, which left us with a totally free day on his actual birthday. So we did what we have become good at- went to a waterpark.

Dreaming

So I thought I should get with the sports-loving program and get my kids to a tv to watch the World Cup, which meant going to a restaurant and buying a meal and eating bad food, which could've paid for my month of cable.  But oh look!  Friends are going too, so even better for me, we meet and watch a good game (until it was a bad game) and go home crushed. But I see my son in the backyard with the soccer ball and the trees are the goalposts and he is Zusi or Ronaldo or whoever with his arms up in the air, all by himself,  dreaming about his big moment and game-winning goal and time freezes and I wish his childhood would freeze too.  Worth it.  It always is.