Somehow she went from being born just moments ago to suddenly being five. I have a good chunk of her life documented here on the ol’ blog-er-oo, but it doesn’t seem like five years have passed. “They” weren’t lying about time flying.

Everyday she cracks me up with her goofy faces and her sense of humor. She is cuddly and kind-hearted, feisty, competitive, bossy, and still vocal, sassy, and tiny.

For her birthday today, I’ve played a very odd imaginative play scenario with dinosaurs, a Moxie girl, Spiderman (as the dad-OBVIOUSLY), and some construction trucks. She chose two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and goldfish crackers for lunch and for dinner she’d like to go out for sushi and ice cream. We had her birthday party on Saturday where she and her friends painted butterflies and ate A LOT of sugar. It was perfect.

In the fall, she’ll be a Kindergartener, which is like, WHOA. We had Kindergarten roundup last week. Please allow me a moment of bragging, but she scored a 92 on whatever test it was that they gave her. So I should add “smart” to the list of her traits above. I just can’t imagine that come August, I’ll be sending her to big school everyday, even though I’m a seasoned pro at sending kids off to Kindergarten and surviving.

Five years old is OLD for a baby. She’s still a baby, right? My baby, anyway.

Grade: Preschool

Favorite thing about school: “I have no idea.”

Favorite TV show: SpongeBob

Favorite food: Peanut Butter and jelly sandwiches

Favorite toy: horses

Best thing about being five: I’m getting bigger

Favorite book: SpongeBob

Favorite color: Pink

Favorite thing to do: play horses

Favorite song: God’s Not Dead

Favorite sport: soccer

What she wants to be when she grows up:  A mommy

Happy 5th birthday, sweet girl.

(Her party was hosted by a local company, Smock, Paper, Scissors. They did an AWESOME job. Read all about the party right here!

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

An artist at work.

Ella is adamant about two things. One, she really dislikes mornings, or being woken up in general. And two, when she grows up she wants to be a mommy.

“I want to be a mommy, like you,” she tells me, sentimental and teary eyed as if being a mom is the most beautiful thing in the world. (It is, by the way.) (Usually.)

Surely she’s not just saying this out of some human biological urge, but because she sees how awesome I’m doing as a mom and wants to emulate me, right? RIGHT?!

I always knew that I wanted to be a mom, too. So many of my childhood memories center around playing “house,” where I lived with my husband (Mark, then Robert) and our endless stream of babies (Melissa, Tracy, Lisa…). Even as I grew older and discovered that there was so much that I could do in life, I still wanted to be a mom, but I also wanted to go to college and study for a career.

Ella is painting her Hallmark Recordable Storybook Canvas.

While she is unwavering in her decision to be a mommy, she told me awhile ago that she was going to be a painter someday and the other day that she wants to be a “computer worker” when she “gets big.” The day after that when I asked her about being a computer worker, she sighed and said, “No Mommy, I’m going to be a ‘money lady.’”

Well, DUH, obviously. I don’t know what it means to be a computer worker or a money lady, but I’ll do whatever I can to help her. Maybe there’s a summer camp I could send her to for future money ladies?

Carson is adamant about A LOT of things. He loves cinnamon apples, he shouldn’t have to share the Wii with Ella, thunder and lightning are some of the worst things ever, and when he grows up, he’s going to drive monster trucks.

Hallmark's Kids Encouragement Greeting Card to Celebrate Another Great Report Card

We recently celebrated his fifth straight all E’s report card from Kindergarten. Learning comes easily for him and I think that he can be anything he wants to be when he grows up. Of course, I am at least 75% certain that he’ll become a engineer like Tate-I swear I can see those analytical wheels spinning in his little brain when he thinks. But like Ella, I will help him to grow up to be whatever he wants to be, whether it’s a monster truck driver, engineer, or even a rodeo clown, though I’m keeping my fingers crossed that being rodeo clown doesn’t turn out to be his life’s passion.

I love their imaginations and certainty about their futures. While they’re little they can dream as big as they want to dream without life’s responsibilities making their career choices for them. It’s fun to imagine who they’ll turn out to be, but for now I just want to give them every opportunity to find out who they want to be.

::
I’m honored to be working with Hallmark this year for their Life is a Special Occasion campaign. Hallmark provided me with the Recordable Artwork and Kid’s Encouragement Greeting Cards and as always all opinions are my own. Ella was thrilled that I finally let her paint, it’s something I usually fear(!!), and Carson loved getting real mail!!

Sign up here for Hallmark’s e-newsletter to get special offers and discounts!

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Actually, that’s not really true, Silly! I think Carson is a bit too young and I’m a lot too old for a spring break filled with debauchery, don’t you think?

It has made me think back to my one and only wild spring break trip, way back in the 90?s. For all you youngsters out there, that’s what you might call the “olden days.” It just happened to be my 21st birthday and I may or may not have had a little fun.

Please enjoy this walk down memory lane to spring break 1996, as a single footloose and fancy free gal, compared and contrasted with spring break 2012, as a 36-year-old married mother of two.

Click on over to Southern By Proxy to read more (and see pictures of me bonging a beer in 1996!).

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

My kids went to school today with store bought SpongeBob Valentines and EVERYONE SURVIVED.

You’re welcome.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

We cleaned out the attic a few weeks ago and I found a Collector’s Tin of Crayola crayons that I’d kept from when I was a kid. It was something I’d forgotten all about, having received the tin as a gift when I was just a little too old to care about crayons anymore and so it was put away in a box and moved from apartment to apartment and house to house.

When I found it, I was sure that they’d all be melted since they’d been in a box in the attic for over a decade. Surprisingly when I opened the tin, the crayons were fine.

As a kid, one of my favorite things in the ENTIRE WORLD was a brand new box of crayons. Their smell!  Their newness! All in tact, their paper unripped. We’ve survived on remnants of restaurant crayons for all these years, with the exception of the box of 16 crayons that was on Carson’s Kindergarten school supply list.  My poor, deprived children.

Since Carson has recently started to be interested in drawing and coloring, I showed him what I found in the attic.

This box of 64 crayons, complete with built-in sharpener, and this kid! MAN! His mind was BLOWN!  He couldn’t get over 64 CRAYONS! In ONE box!  With a sharpener! He studied each and every crayon for a good half hour.

“Look, Mom!  This one says, ‘sky blue,’ and this one says, ‘salmon!’ Have you ever even HEARD of that?!”

He doesn’t want his sister to even look in the direction of the crayons, with her bull-in-a-china-shop ways.  He wants to avoid any risk of the 64 perfect crayons getting broken.

And when I was at the grocery store yesterday, I saw that they now sell boxes of 96 crayons.  I guess they’ve been selling these boxes for awhile, but I just discovered their existence.

Guess what he’s getting for Valentine’s Day? He is going to FLIP OUT!

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Tate and I had a date set up for last Friday night, so despite feeling like crud-o-la, we packed the kids off to the trusty Parent’s Night Out program at one of the local churches.  This was the first time we’d been able to do this since August, Carson was actually sent off with the big, elementary age kids for the first time ever and Ella stayed with the other preschoolers.  The church makes you take a card with your child’s information on it and it must be used to get your child back.  No card-no kid.  I guess they send those to the dungeon at the church if the parents don’t have their card at the end of the night. I don’t want to find out!

The older kids only get signed in, no card was given when Carson was dropped off, which made Tate very nervous.  I’m protective of the kids, sure, but Tate is even more protective and he didn’t feel at all comfortable with the way it didn’t seem as secure for the older kids.  I brushed it off and assured him that he was being a little anal and to relax because it DATE NIGHT WOO HOO! (Cough, snort, where’s my cold medicine?!?!)

We ate at one of those Brazilian restaurants where the men come by with hunks of meat that they carve off for you.  Our date included three other couples- there was lots of laughing and wine sipping and general merriment.  It’s all fun and games until the bill shows up, amirite?!  HOLY $126 DINNER.  I mean, it was fun to hang out with friends and eat a lot of carved meat, but it wasn’t $126 fun.  This part of the post has nothing to do with anything-really it’s just a public service announcement:  BEWARE OF BILLS AT BRAZILIAN STEAKHOUSES.

You’re welcome!

So if you’re one of those sleuth types, you may have already realized that when we went to pick up the kids, we learned that the night didn’t go so well for Carson.  Somehow, not too long before we came to pick him up, Carson got separated from his class as they were leaving the movie room. He says that he went straight back to his classroom, but nobody was there.  Somehow he managed to make it all the way upstairs, where a volunteer eventually found him sobbing.

I have no idea what the actual timeline of events really is, I have no idea if his teacher ever even knew he was missing.  I’m confused how a child could get separated from his class and manage to make it past where I would have assumed adults would have been monitoring doors and up a set of stairs before he was found.  I don’t want to be alarmist or make a mountain out of a molehill, but you know-when you trust people to watch your child-and that is basically their SOLE responsibility, it’s a bit disconcerting that something like this could happen.

I hardly slept that night, waffling between being utterly FURIOUS and grateful that he was smart enough not to go outside or get lost in the church. (It’s one of those mega churches with a school attached, so he could have easily gotten lost in the building.)

I should have called the director of the Parent’s Night Out Program, but I was afraid that I’d cry and sound either like a blubbering mom or a maniac.  I did email the director, though, so that she’ll at least be aware that they LOST MY CHILD last Friday.  Obviously they need to put into place a better system for keeping track of kids.

Unrelated to any of this, my cold is almost gone!  So that’s good, right?

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

I know that watching too much TV is bad, but I also know that movies and shows have inspired their love for not only reenacting the stories, but extending the stories with their own imaginations into epic adventures.

Our Saturday mornings are usually devoted to pajamas, waffle consumption, and cartoons. I somehow slept through the waffle portion of the morning and awoke to find Carson and Ella absorbed in the pages of a Tintin comic book instead of staring at the TV screen. While Ella and I enjoyed a girls weekend away several weeks ago, Carson and Tate had a boys weekend complete with pizza and a trip to the movie theater to see The Adventures of Tintin-where Carson has found new source of inspiration.

After school last week, I could hear them in the other room playing, caught up in an elaborate scheme to find the clues while getting away from the bad guys.

“Come on,” Carson yelled to Ella, “we can hide in here.”

“Tintin!” Ella called to Carson, “the bad guy has me!  Save me, Tintin!”

They went on like this, replaying scenes over and over, changing the details to include sword fights and capes. Running and hiding, they laughed and yelled and pretended to be in great distress.  I stealthily peeked in on them and they immediately froze when they spotted me, too shy to continue their acting.  I begged them to go on, to show me what it’s like to be the good guys.

But it’s not the same with someone watching, so I left them and listened around the corner as they picked up right where they left off in their Tintin adventure, defeating the bad guys with great gusto.

::

I’m so excited to be partnering with Hallmark for their Life is a Special Occasion campaign this year.  I will finally be forced to learn that there is only one “s” in “occasion!”  Of course, I am also so excited for the chance to share the stories from our life.

Hallmark is compensating me for participation in this campaign. As always-all opinions expressed are my own.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

“There’s not really enough snow for playing. It’s just a dusting. You can see most of the grass, for goodness sakes!”

“No, Mommy, see?” Carson pointed out the window. “There’s snow all over the driveway!”

Well, they did cancel school.  I guess it wouldn’t have been a real snow day if we hadn’t:

1. Taken 45 minutes to find all the hats, mittens, and boots.

2. Taken another 45 minutes to get dressed in double layers.

3. Made a snow angel in what little snow there was

4. Played for two minutes outside before:
a. Someone needed to pee
b. Someone complained of being freezing cold

5. Came inside and undressed, leaving a pile of wet clothes in a heap on the floor

6. Had hot chocolate:
a. With marshmallows

Truth? I love these days as much as they do.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

We received SEGA’s family friendly game, Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games (affiliate link) as part of a family game night package that also included popcorn, nuts, and candy for free.  I received no other compensation. All opinions are my own…and my children’s own. 

Left to their own devices, my children, especially Carson, would love nothing more than to spend all day, every day playing Wii.  I’ve had to set limits on Wii play, they’re only allowed to play on the weekends and only for two hours.

Both kids love all things Mario. We are well stocked with Mario games, their favorites being Mario Sports Mix and Mario Kart. These games can easily be played by young kids, unlike several games in our library that cause nothing but screaming fits because they are so complicated.  I’d seen Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games advertised and had considered it for a Christmas gift for them, so I was VERY excited that I was contacted to review the game with the kids.  When it came in the mail I just couldn’t wait until Christmas to give it to them.

Luckily Carson, age six, and Ella, age four, both easily picked up on how to play Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Ella actually loses interest pretty quickly in playing Wii, but she loves to watch her brother battle it out as one of the characters in discus, swimming, volleyball, track, and gymnastics.

Carson loves the new-to-him characters like Sonic and Vector the Crocodile.  His favorite game to play is the 4 x 100 meter relay, with Sonic, Silver, Shadow, and Knuckles.

“Watch this cool trick, Mom,” he’ll say as one of the Sonic characters performs some cool stunt that puts them in the lead.

This game is apparently not just for kids. After Carson and Ella were carefully tucked in bed, I caught my husband picking up the Wii remote to play a little Mario & Sonic.  I keep catching him as Sonic on the parallel bars in the gymnastics game.

This game is available for Wii right now!  Which? Is perfect for Christmas!  It will be available for the Nintendo 3DS in February.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Thanks for your supportive comments.  And by supportive comments I mean, I could hear you sighing and shaking your head at me, but then gently smiling and telling me what I needed to hear.  You guys, we would so totally be friends in real life.

Okay, so let’s move on and pretend that I’m a totally normal, well adjusted human being that doesn’t project her feelings on unsuspecting bearded men wearing red suits!

Saturday night was my husband’s annual work Christmas party.  Since our babysitter was totally SELFISH and decided to go away to college (RUDE!), I had to find someone new to stay with Carson and Ella.

Let me back up a bit and tell you that both of my children had been sick, Carson especially so, but on Saturday they both seemed FINE.  Perfectly fine!  Healthy, even.  Carson seemed to be over his “puke in bed every night” illness, so I wasn’t worried about leaving him with a babysitter.  OH THE FORESHADOWING.

When the new babysitter arrived, Tate asked her about what she was studying in school.  Turns out that our new babysitter is training to be a paramedic, which fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) came in quite handy while she was on duty.

It was the pile of Carson’s sheets, his PJs, and Lou Bear by the laundry room that we found as soon as we got home that was the first clue.

I expected to find pure chaos when I found the babysitter and Carson. If I had ever had to deal with puke as a babysitter, I would have freaked the freak out! The babysitter, looking calm yet concerned, was just toweling off a freshly bathed and very pale Carson when I found them.  Apparently my poor little guy had puked in his bed and had some other “issues” of the bottom.  Super Paramedic Babysitter had already cleaned him AND his room up.

I apologized profusely to her for having left her with a sick kid and having to deal with vomit, etc.  She seemed completely unfazed.  “It’s just body fluids,” she said. “And it easier to deal with when it’s from a cute kid.”

“Just body fluids” that don’t belong to your own child, cute or not, are still BODY FLUIDS of the disgusting kind.

I felt like I should pay her double, no quadruple, and then offer to send her on an all expense paid trip to Jamaica or something.

And on top of all that, she’d cleaned up the kitchen after dinner. She wins at babysitting.

I’m not sure if I can ever call her again to babysit after all this.  I mean, can I?

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.