So today was very busy, but very fun and insightful.
First, I have to talk about Sunday morning, because Zak just cracked me up. We stayed up the night before very late. We have visitors from the Polish tennis team staying with us since they are playing in the ATP. Zak simply would not go to bed...he was having way too much fun with these guys, who adored him. Finally at 11:30 we went to bed. At 8:00, I got up and I checked on Zak. He was kind of awake and said "No Mommy, I don't want to get up!" Wow, that's a first :-) I guess we really wore him out.
We started the morning as normal, doing some light housework, hanging out together. He needed to go to the bathroom at some point, and usually I go help him reach the toilet. This time he told me "No Mommy, you stay here" and put out his hand to stop me. So I let him go on his own, peeking around the corner to see him standing up going to the bathroom on his own. They grow up to fast.
Then at 10:30 we biked up to Zak's school because a police officer was coming to talk and show them a police car. It was very cute to see the police officer trying to get 20 or so 3 year olds to listen to his lesson about how to shout out for help if someone they don't know asks them to go home with them. He gave them all police badges, and then they got to sit in the police car. So fun. Today at school, Zak pointed to where the police car was on Tuesday and said sadly, "Police Car all gone."
Then I decided to try out the Blue Ash rec center gym for a half an hour. They have a tot room for Zak, so we went there together and hung out for awhile, then I got a quick run in on the treadmill, it felt great! Zak did great too, so maybe we'll make it a tradition. I need to start getting more exercise in besides just tennis.
Anyway, then it was lunch time, so we ate at the Blue Ash Cafe, then went home for a nap. At 3:00 he woke up, and we went up to the ATP to watch Ala's practice match. The drive up there was what was so insightful.
As we started heading north on Kenwood Rd (just a couple blocks from our house)...Zak said, yeah, we're going to King's Island.! And sure enough, the ATP is right next to King's Island, and it's about the only time we take a left there on Kenwood. I know many adults who wouldn't make that connection (but I won't mention Jelica's name). Anyway, I explained to him that yes, this is the way to King's Island, but today we're going to watch Ala and Maciek play tennis. He said "Oh. Ok. Let's go watch tennis." Big Smile. THEN, as we are driving on 71 North, we go past Home Depot and Lowe's at Fields Ertel. Zak says, "Look down there....Tato's shopping." That man takes Zak shopping way too much apparently.
We park at the ATP, and it's like 100 degrees. I'm sweating just stepping out of the car. 5 minutes into our walk from the parking lot to the tournament, Zak asks me to carry him. I say "No Zak, why don't you walk." He stops and says "Mommy,carry me. It's too hot to walk." Really. Anyway, we get to the tournament, and we get to go through the players entrance because Maciek and Ala put us on the "Family list", so we have VIP passes for the whole event. Zak walks straight to the players lounge and is pretty adament he has no intention of going outside to watch any practice in 100 degrees. We did manage to go watch a half an hour or so (Ala always comes over during breaks and gives him things, so that kept his attention a bit)...but we pretty quickly had to give up and go back to the players lounge. Kuba joined us after work and we took turns watching some games and hanging in the loung with Zak (who loved the arcade inside.)
I love his new "Oh, ok" saying. Diane had asked for a couple pictures of Zak. He was upstairs with the printer, so I printed the pictures, and as he was coming down the stairs, I asked him to go to the printer and bring down the pictures. He stopped and said "Oh, ok. I'll get pictures." And he went back up and got them.
Anyway, a very nice day. I think I mentioned already that working Monday, Wed and Thurs doesn't feel as natural to me as working Monday, Tuesday and Thursday...and the interesting thing is my new team asked me today if I'd kill them if we switched back to Monday, Tuesday and Thursday as of Jan. :-) Cool. Still 5 months like this, but then back to something that feels a bit better to me. By then I'll probably be used to this way :-)
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
Day 39
Today was another rather lazy day, even though it started out looking very busy. We got up, and leisurely cleaned a bit. Zak loves mopping the floor and cleaning the windows. The only problem is the excess Windex and water he likes to leave behind. He went to cleaning the windows and floors (with me coming behind him every 5 minutes or so), and I did the dishes and laundry. We got dressed, and Zak was very opinionated about his clothes today. In the end, he picked out "Diane's shirt" (a tye dyed shirt Diane gave him), which I luckily found in the clean clothes basket, I just hadn't had a chance to fold them. At 9:00, we headed out, with the plan of going to the car shop to get our turn signal looked at, then up to King's Island for a couple hours, and then to meet my friend Melanie for lunch.
As we were driving to the car shop, Zak saw Toys-R-Us and asked to stop. So I told him sure, we could do it on the way up to King's Island. I wanted to buy him a pair of skates anyway, those Fisher Price kind that adjust over your shoes...they are so cool now, look like little roller blades :-) Anyway, we went there and I told him he could pick out one toy. I picked up the roller blades, and he kept telling me "No, put them back Mommy" because he thought those counted as his one :-) Eventually he picked an electric drum set (a cheap one), and we took it out of the box so he could play with it in the car. And that was it, he didn't want to go to King's Island anymore. He wanted to go home and play with his drums. I kept asking him, but he was adament to go home, so we did.
We hung out a bit at home, then went to meet Melanie for lunch. Zak was already a little tired, so I wouldn't say it was a relaxing lunch, but Melanie has 2 kids, so she understood :-) After lunch he asked me to lay down with him ("Want to lay down Mommy?") Of course I did :-) He's now got this thing where he WANTS me to sing...but only the "Rock a bye baby in the tree top"...except I always replace baby with Zakie, Katie, Ann...whoever. Now he tells me WHO he wants me to sing about...today we had to go through the whole list (Ethan, Logan, Ann, Dave, Tato, Mommy, Dana, Matt, Rowan, Katie, Jude, Chad, Maya, Paul, Grandma, Grandpa, Babcia...even more...I think Diane and Aiden his buddy from school, was even in there somewhere) At one point, I just wanted to see how asleep he was...and so I started the song with "Rock a bye Ethan in the tree top..." and ended with "and down will come Logan, cradle and all" and he laughed and said "NO!!!! Ethan!" He thought I was joking with him (I was)...unfortunately he was wide awake again :-)
Anyway, he slept for about 2 hours, so I quickly did the floors, called to make some dr. appts, finally had the guy come and estiate the cost to fix our roof over the porch, those normal things that I don't know how we ever got done when I worked full time.
Then Katie came over for an hour or so to visit before going off for her 10 year high school reunion, and Ann, Dave, Ethan and Logan came over and we had a great dinner with the kids. It's really nice having my sisters so close. The boys had a great time together.
As we were driving to the car shop, Zak saw Toys-R-Us and asked to stop. So I told him sure, we could do it on the way up to King's Island. I wanted to buy him a pair of skates anyway, those Fisher Price kind that adjust over your shoes...they are so cool now, look like little roller blades :-) Anyway, we went there and I told him he could pick out one toy. I picked up the roller blades, and he kept telling me "No, put them back Mommy" because he thought those counted as his one :-) Eventually he picked an electric drum set (a cheap one), and we took it out of the box so he could play with it in the car. And that was it, he didn't want to go to King's Island anymore. He wanted to go home and play with his drums. I kept asking him, but he was adament to go home, so we did.
We hung out a bit at home, then went to meet Melanie for lunch. Zak was already a little tired, so I wouldn't say it was a relaxing lunch, but Melanie has 2 kids, so she understood :-) After lunch he asked me to lay down with him ("Want to lay down Mommy?") Of course I did :-) He's now got this thing where he WANTS me to sing...but only the "Rock a bye baby in the tree top"...except I always replace baby with Zakie, Katie, Ann...whoever. Now he tells me WHO he wants me to sing about...today we had to go through the whole list (Ethan, Logan, Ann, Dave, Tato, Mommy, Dana, Matt, Rowan, Katie, Jude, Chad, Maya, Paul, Grandma, Grandpa, Babcia...even more...I think Diane and Aiden his buddy from school, was even in there somewhere) At one point, I just wanted to see how asleep he was...and so I started the song with "Rock a bye Ethan in the tree top..." and ended with "and down will come Logan, cradle and all" and he laughed and said "NO!!!! Ethan!" He thought I was joking with him (I was)...unfortunately he was wide awake again :-)
Anyway, he slept for about 2 hours, so I quickly did the floors, called to make some dr. appts, finally had the guy come and estiate the cost to fix our roof over the porch, those normal things that I don't know how we ever got done when I worked full time.
Then Katie came over for an hour or so to visit before going off for her 10 year high school reunion, and Ann, Dave, Ethan and Logan came over and we had a great dinner with the kids. It's really nice having my sisters so close. The boys had a great time together.
Day 38
Tuesday was kind of a weird day. Zak didn't get enough good sleep. At around 8 he said he wanted to go to King's Island. I told him we could when it opened. But then by 9:30, he said no, he didn't want to go to King's Island, he wanted to stay home. The whole day he didn't want to do anything (pool, library, toy store)...he just wanted to stay home. I'm one of these people that always wants to be on the go, but I decided if he didn't want to be, then I guess it was ok. So we had a very lazy day, a little on the boring side.
I'm also not sure if my new Monday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule is working out as well as Mon, Tues, Thurs...but maybe I just need some time to get used to it. I feel like taking off already on Tuesday kind of breaks my stride. I had a lot of work on my mind Tuesday, which was probably also contributing to the feeling of not having the greatest of days.
On the other hand, going back through my notes (which I just jot down randomly throughout the day), he did crack me up quite a bit :-)
At one point, he took a gold pencil that his friend Chloe had given him. He came up to me and said "It's a magic wand" and then started waving it around in circles obviously trying to cast some kind of magic on me. At first I was shocked! But then I remembered they had a magician come to his daycare last week...so I quickly recovered and turned myself into a frog and started hopping around. I begged him to turn me back into a human, which he graciously did. But then for another 15 minutes he transformed me back and forth and insisted that I hop around at least a bit as a frog...my thighs were burning, geez I'm out of shape :-)
He has a Little Einstein globe that we were playing with, finding different parts of the world. He saw the Eiffel Tower on France and started exlaiming "King's Island! King's Island! With Ethan and Logan!" I tried to explain to him that King's Island's tower is a small version of the Eiffel tower, but I don't think he was listening. He was already imagining going up in the tower again with Ethan and Logan.
Dana called at some point during the day, she has a special ring tone...immediately Zak said "Dana's calling!" He's so observant. Dana and I finally got pedicures a couple of weeks ago...and I got a flower painted on my nails. Zak insists that now my toes look like Dana's toes, because she had a flower last time. We were at Michael's Crafts, he saw a small pig with flowers on it and wanted to buy it for Aunt Dana. I can't believe he associates flowers with Dana now because her toenails had flowers on them before mine.
Anyway, in the afternoon, since we were just hanging at home anyway, I decided to try to make a new enchilada recipe that my friend gave me. Zak helped and they turned out great! Then Aunt Katie joined us after work so Kuba and I could play some tennis.
Anyway, I didn't feel it was the best day, but maybe I just need to learn to relax and not have to be on the go all the time. I also think Zak was fighting some kind of sickness, because he was a little lazier than normal as well...so it was probably good that we could just take a day to fight it off. I'm hoping we have a more active day today though :-)
I'm also not sure if my new Monday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule is working out as well as Mon, Tues, Thurs...but maybe I just need some time to get used to it. I feel like taking off already on Tuesday kind of breaks my stride. I had a lot of work on my mind Tuesday, which was probably also contributing to the feeling of not having the greatest of days.
On the other hand, going back through my notes (which I just jot down randomly throughout the day), he did crack me up quite a bit :-)
At one point, he took a gold pencil that his friend Chloe had given him. He came up to me and said "It's a magic wand" and then started waving it around in circles obviously trying to cast some kind of magic on me. At first I was shocked! But then I remembered they had a magician come to his daycare last week...so I quickly recovered and turned myself into a frog and started hopping around. I begged him to turn me back into a human, which he graciously did. But then for another 15 minutes he transformed me back and forth and insisted that I hop around at least a bit as a frog...my thighs were burning, geez I'm out of shape :-)
He has a Little Einstein globe that we were playing with, finding different parts of the world. He saw the Eiffel Tower on France and started exlaiming "King's Island! King's Island! With Ethan and Logan!" I tried to explain to him that King's Island's tower is a small version of the Eiffel tower, but I don't think he was listening. He was already imagining going up in the tower again with Ethan and Logan.
Dana called at some point during the day, she has a special ring tone...immediately Zak said "Dana's calling!" He's so observant. Dana and I finally got pedicures a couple of weeks ago...and I got a flower painted on my nails. Zak insists that now my toes look like Dana's toes, because she had a flower last time. We were at Michael's Crafts, he saw a small pig with flowers on it and wanted to buy it for Aunt Dana. I can't believe he associates flowers with Dana now because her toenails had flowers on them before mine.
Anyway, in the afternoon, since we were just hanging at home anyway, I decided to try to make a new enchilada recipe that my friend gave me. Zak helped and they turned out great! Then Aunt Katie joined us after work so Kuba and I could play some tennis.
Anyway, I didn't feel it was the best day, but maybe I just need to learn to relax and not have to be on the go all the time. I also think Zak was fighting some kind of sickness, because he was a little lazier than normal as well...so it was probably good that we could just take a day to fight it off. I'm hoping we have a more active day today though :-)
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