bad dreams

Alarm clock read 7:00am.   Little man was already awake, but not out of bed yet.  Kisses and good morning hugs given, then he told me he'd had a bad dream.  When I questioned him about it, he told me that there were three 'bad guys' in the garage and he couldn't get away from them.  Their crime?   They "had written on Daddy's truck with a crayon".
  
He was very brave though, he said he'd kicked them in the face and then closed the garage door. 
When we told Daddy about the dream, he and Ben went out in the garage just to make sure they were gone for good.  Nope, no sign of them! Guess they knew not to mess with my little man anymore!

9/11

Earlier tonight just before little man's bedtime, as we were watching the beginning moments of a show remembering 9/11, the footage showed one of the poor souls who fell or leapt from one of the towers.  I quickly put my hand over Ben's eyes and ushered him out of the living room to his bedroom - all the while listening to: "What was it, Mom?", "What was that falling?"
I told him that there are some bad things in life that I feel like I have to protect him from, and at this point, I didn't think it was something he should see.  He's 7, I'm....um, not....and I have a hard time watching it and wrapping my brain around the horror - how is his little mind going to process something so terrible?  

My baby is still my baby - at least for another day.

First Day of School!!!

Today is the day.  I have your clothes all ready.  I've packed up your backpack with your bright, shiny new school supplies.  I'll pull the camera out in a few minutes so I'll be sure to have it for the required First Day of School Pictures.  After breakfast, we'll get ready and I'll take you to school. 

I'm going to walk with you down the long hallway and insist that you put your hand in mine.  When we get to the door of your new classroom,  I'm going to kneel down (not nearly as far as last year, you're getting so big) give you a big hug and a kiss...if you let me.  Be prepared:  I know I'll try to sneak in another hug before you escape.   Then, I'll tell you to have a great first day of school. And remind you to be good for your new teacher.  And I'll miss you!  Another hug?  Maybe. 

You'll go in to your new adventure.  I'll smile and turn away, but my heart will still be there.   My baby is in the second grade.  

Seven

Dear Ben,

You, my little man, are now seven years old.  Seven.  S-e-v-e-n!!  Oh dear. 

To top that off - in just a few short days, you will be finished with first grade!  Now wait just a dang minute.  There's no way you're already seven and finishing first grade?!  How is this possible?  

Your feet are almost as big as mine.  I know: I tried on your flip flops. 

You're getting taller by the minute!  All of your jeans have obviously been stolen and replaced with another child's much shorter jeans (who also have the propensity to rip the left and only the left knee....amazing coincidence, yes?)

You're getting stronger and faster every day.  We wrestle on the couch and I have to remind you that I'm a girl, and we're more gentle with girls!  Then you whack me on the head.

You have your own crazy sense of humor.  You kill me with your booty-shaking dance moves.  Everything is better loud and fast.   And loud. 

You're hungry ALL THE TIME.   My ears bleed from hearing, "Mama, can I have a snack?", or after supper: "I'm still hungry".  

You have amazed and astounded me with your mad baseball skillz this season.  To see the difference over such a short period of time - what a change!  All in stride for you though. (I love watching you play!!)

You're open and honest.  A true friend and social butterfly: you've never met a stranger.

Your laugh is still as infectious as ever.  Your energy is non-stop.  (And loud.)
You meet life head-on, and wide-open, bubba!  Your sweetness is over-powering.  You grow more beautiful each and every day.  You still allow me to hold you and snuggle from time to time;  these are among the minutes I treasure.  

You are and always will be a very special little boy.  You were my gift from heaven,  I am blessed beyond measure to be your Mom.   Happy Birthday, my sweet baby boy!

me:  "I love you."
you: "I love you more."
me: "I love you most."

With all my love,

Mom

Unhappy Yellow Jackets

I don't think I've mentioned the fact that the little man started playing baseball in the spring,  if I have, I don't remember and I'm too sleepy to click over to check and then click back to come back here: it's 5:30 in the mornin' here, people.  I don't have near enough coffee in me yet to do a whole lot of serious thinking.  Forgive me.   
We've had maybe 4-5 games (again with the thinking problem...maybe I should wait to finish this post when I'm more awake) and, until last night, they've won every one!!
Some games were a little closer than others; had a couple of real nail-biters and a few down-right blow outs.
Last nights game was a wringing-hands-ulcer-inducing-pacing-the-fenceline-screaming"Yayyyy!!"  then groaning inside (and sometimes audibly) kind of game.  When the boys made a mistake or someone who normally can just about hit it out of the park struck out, the moms sitting near me in the crowd felt it as sure as if we were playing right alongside them.   Ben had a pretty good game, all in all.  He went 2 for 3; only had one ball get past him in centerfield and got to be catcher for one inning.  I lovelovelove to watch him play.  
We had a few tears from some of the players and even a couple of bad attitudes; Coach had to give them the post-game talk about being sore losers. 
We'll be back at practice on Thursday night, and we have another game on Saturday; we'll see how it goes.   I'll be watching from the fenceline, as always, cheering my little player on. 

silly tiger

A couple of weeks ago, the little man had a project to do for school.  This particular project was assigned by the Media Specialist.....um, for those who went to school (like me) prior to the super-secret-renaming of faculty-event,  that would be the Librarian.  Now, why and when the name changed, I don't know.  Remember we're late to this parenting a school-aged child thing.  Anyway....

So, this project was a research paper of sorts.  The librarian, oops,  media specialist (!) helped him research his subject:  tigers.  She had helped him write out several key points and then sent the information home for him to use to write his paper.   As we sat going through the information together, well....somewhat together....SOMEone wasn't too thrilled to be sitting at the table doing homework, when, quite possibly he might be missing his very favorite show that he's seen a thousand times and  ohmygoodness! I-just-can't-sit-here-any-longer-Mama-because-I'm-soooooo-tiiiiirrrrredddd-and-do-we-have-to-do-this-noooooowww?????

Around this time, the Daddy came in to save the day; my glaring and threatening of bodily harm obviously wasn't working.  He sat down at the table, reviewed the instructions for the paper and we all worked on it together. We had a pretty good system:  Ben would read the information, we'd discuss it and then we'd decide if it needed to be included in the report.   It only needed to be three paragraphs, so it wasn't all that detailed.  Our paragraphs were to include what tigers eat,  where do tigers live, and how many cubs do tigers usually have.  To make sure the finished product was as neat as could be, Ben dictated the information  - in his words -  to me,  as I wrote it onto a separate piece of paper.  

We'd finally finished gathering the information, so he started to transfer the information over in his handwriting.  Roles were reversed: I dictated, he wrote.   I allowed him to have some freedom with his spelling,  that is, unless he was really off on a particular word - I allowed a fair amount of mistakes,  planning to come back at the completion of the paper to make corrections.  

Minutes pass.  Time to proof-read and correct mistakes; more groaning and whining ensue.  Ok, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea to let him write everything out and then expect him to correct his mistakes afterward.  Whatever.

At the point in the paper covering what tigers eat, I observed the following portion of a sentence, as written by Ben:

   ".....a tigers diet can include beer, badgers, rabbits...." 

As I'm reading the sentence aloud to him,  I say,

     "...a tigers diet can include beer and pretzels...."  

By now, he's sitting on my lap, so he snapped his head around, giving me a surprised look  and tells me that's not what it says!  
I picked up the paper to peer at it closely and said,  "Oh! Just beer!  Ok, I see.  A tigers diet can include beer.  Hmm.  I didn't know that."

It takes a few minutes of giggling and me forcing him to re-read his sentence for him to see that he'd written beer instead of deer.    

Yes, we corrected it. 


Even though I do know a few Tigers whose diets consist of beer and pretzels.  Just sayin'.

Sweet dreams, little man

At some point last night as I sat on the couch, mindlessly watching Cupcake Wars on tv, I had a visitor make his way into my lap.  He didn't say a word, just walked over and crawled up and sat down.  I covered his legs up with the ever-present fleece blanket, but didn't say a word.  For once, he was being quiet and still, so I just sat there with my 50 lb baby in my lap and breathed him in. 

A little while later,  I whispered a "thank you for coming to sit with me" in his ear, to which I received a whispered, "you're welcome". 

A little while later than that, I noticed my visitors breathing had started to change.   I peeked around the head resting on my chest to see his eyelashes make one last effort to stay open and then close softly;  revealing the peaceful face of an angel. 

I could have gotten up at that point to carry him to bed, but I didn't.  These sweet moments are not as common any more.  No, I savored every minute of it.  My visitor stayed, sleeping peacefully on my lap.  My sweet baby boy, sweet dreams.