What Does B, B, S, T Spell?

My children are both sounding out words now.   They see letters around and want to know what they mean.  My daughter has a harder time seeing letters, but she can see them when they’re up close and she does know the alphabet.  

They’re each working on spelling words at school and one of their favorite games at home is to spell out random letter sounds, asking either my husband or me what word they spelled.    We try very hard to pronounce the unusual letter combinations they make up, which sometimes makes them laugh, followed by spelling an even longer and more crazy string of letters.

Tonight on the way home from dinner we were playing this game.   My son asked what B-B-S-T spelled and my husband and I made an attempt to pronounce it.   He asked what it meant and we said it wasn’t a real word that we knew of.   He turned around, looked and said, “but it says so on the building back there”.  

We looked back and saw the BB&T bank building sign behind us.   Oh, we explained, that was a real thing, only it wasn’t a word you pronounced, more like letters you said in a row and that ’S’ looking thing wasn’t an ’S’ but a symbol meaning ‘and’.    Can you imagine the questions we after that explanation?

The Big Boy Update:  My son was climbing all over the railings and stairs and columns at the restaurant tonight.  I need to look into a parkour class for him because I think he’d love it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter took her soccer ball into the back yard.  She took it to the top of the slide.   She slid it down the slide.  It rolled down the hill into the briars—like it always does.   She cried and wailed.   How is this still a surprise when it happens?

Head Rest

I was at a dinner tonight with some of the mothers from my son’s class at school.   We were all talking and enjoying the drinks and food but as I looked around I noticed something.   People were sitting back, they were leaning forward, but no one was doing what I was, which was putting my elbow on the table and resting my chin on it.  

I’ve been watching this behavior I do for a while now.   I realized I have a lot of strength in some muscles in my body because, well, marathon and other things.  But some places I’m weak.  My neck is one of those places.  Or maybe it’s not weak, but it’s easily strained.   There are some positions I can do without causing pain or muscle spasm backlash while other things I can’t do for even a few minutes with repercussions.

Resting my head on my hand takes just enough weight off my cervical spine to make leaning forward to talk to someone down the table comfortable as opposed to painful.    Fortunately these days putting your elbows on the table isn’t as much of a social faux pas as it was years ago.  Otherwise I’d have to be okay with being a rude dinner guest.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I had green beans on our plates the other night.  He wasn’t particularly interested in eating his until dad said, “who can eat the biggest bean the fastest?”  The race was on.   He was shoving the bean in his mouth as fast as he could.   He won, beating me by two whole seconds.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was lying on the ground yesterday and I was asking her to roll over so we could do drops.   As I said this I patted her bottom.   She said to me, “no tapping booty!”   I have no idea where she heard the phrase but I couldn’t help but laugh.

Not My Fitness Update:  My husband has been running lately.  He has a bad knee, but of late it hasn’t been bothering him like it used to.  Not too long ago (maybe last week?) he ran his first 5K distance without stopping.   And talking about not stopping, today he doubled that distance, running 10K or 6.2 miles without stopping.   Go dad.

Ask and Take

Our children have different personalities.   This is nothing unexpected, as anyone with more than one child will tell you.  Our children are different in many ways, some of which is based on both gender and nature, but some of the ways they’re different are just personality.

On the weekdays we typically don’t allow the children to have “screen time”.  This means television (for the one who can see the screen), video game systems or iPads.   They both have an iPads as my husband and I have upgraded ours over time and passed ours down to them.   There are lots of apps on their iPads and they can watch videos, movies and shows on them as well.   For a child who needs to have a screen two inches in front of her face to see anything, the iPad is a wonderful thing.

On the weekends or holidays our children are allowed to spend time on their iPads come Saturday morning.  They know this is coming and sometimes will even ask, “is tomorrow an iPad day?”  We pull them out on Friday nights, plug them and their headphones in at a certain spot in our bedroom so when they wake up they can come and get them.

This works out well for us as it gives us a chance to sleep a little later than normal and it works out for them because they can watch shows and spend a leisurely weekend morning around the house.   I remember when I was a child I looked forward to getting up on Saturday mornings and watching cartoons while my parents slept late.  

Our children are different though in that one child, my son, will come in, grab his iPad and headphones and head out of the room.  I don’t even have to open my eyes to know it’s him.  My daughter on the other hand comes in, stands next to the bed and says, “can I do iPad?”   We tell her yes and then she gets her iPad and quietly leaves the room.   She is the permission asker.

The Big Boy Update:  My son loves Legos.   Any time he gets something new he puts it together and then wants to keep it on the table to play with it for several days.  His latest is a Nexo Knights set.   I’m not sure what was happening in his mind this afternoon but he went upstairs and got the Daelek’s (bad guys) from my Dr. Who Lego set we had displayed in the craft room and brought them down to fight against the good guys:

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is a great helper.  She helped dad make donut holes this morning and the laundry with me this afternoon.   She helped me with lots of little things like cleaning up all day long.   She likes doing things together.

Lactic Acid

My best friend and I ran a marathon today in the park across the street where we regularly run.   We’d done a trial run, doing the full 26.2 mile distance.   We did a portion of the single track trails we’d be doing today and didn’t have much difficulty with the run.   We were ready.  We were trained up.  We were prepared.

Today the race started off well but a little over half-way through I started to have bad pains in my legs—in my entire legs.   It got worse and worse.   There was lactic acid building up in them and I couldn’t get the pain to abate.   I drank excessively at the water stations and ate food at every stop as well.   Nothing helped.

When we were about two-thirds through the race I’d slowed down a lot and had to walk from time to time.   We ran into one of the race volunteers who told us we were on the edge of being cut off due to slow pace so we’d better pick up the pace.

I tried.  I tried to run faster, not walk and keep a decent pace, but it was hard.    We came in at the end of the race just at the final time cut off, something I’m glad we were able to do.   But it was a painful race.

I’m not sure what the lactic acid buildup stemmed from.  I’ve run a good number of marathons now and I know how to fuel up and hydrate before a race, but this time something just didn’t work well.

I’m glad we made it.  I’m tired now and am thinking of going to bed at seven o’clock.   I’m looking forward to some sleep.

The Big Boy Update:  Uncle Jon came over with a new video game to show my husband and son.  They had a fun day trying out the new system together.   My son loves video games and was happy to have a chance to see Uncle Jonathan.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to dress me today after the marathon.   She went into the closet and picked out a dressy, polka dot shirt for summer weather.   I told her it was lovely and am wearing it now.  She also got me some shoes to match.  

Marathon Update:  I’ve run a marathon distance run fifteen times now, including today.   Today was one of the two most difficult runs I’ve had due to a buildup of lactic acid in my legs.   We finished though, although with a very slow pace.

Trails Marathon

Tomorrow morning my best friend and I are running the most challenging marathon we've done before. We did it last year and due to an unexpected issue with her children following us for a bit and then not wanting to go back alone, we ran an extra mile over the marathon distance.  This year, we're shooting for just the standard 26.2.

This marathon is in the park across from our neighborhood that is very hilly to start, but has added single track trails for approximately seven miles of the race over rocks, roots and pine straw, adding to the excitement, danger, fun and of cours exhaustion.

It's going to be freezing when the race starts, which won't be fun, but by the end we'll be in the fifties, although a twenty degree temperature swing will be challenging to dress for,   See you on the other side tomorrow as I try and hold my head up to write tomorrow night's post. 

The Big Boy Update:  my son still pronounces "little" as "yiddle". I pointed it out to him the other day and tonight he asked me which was was the correct way to pronounce the word.  All his cute little boy words will be gone soon. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  my daughter decided she wanted rainbow sherbet for dessert at the restaurant tonight.  She got most of it in her mouth. Watching her happily eat it was well worth it though. 

Mongolian Barbecue

When I was a child there was a restaurant in town that served Mongolian barbecue.   It was a fun experience for me because I got to pick out uncooked vegetables and meats, put them in a bowl and then watch as the chefs cooked mine and many other people’s meals on a huge flat, round cooking surface.

There were lots of flames as the cooks would move our meals slowly around the circular surface.  I would watch them put the flavorings on as the food began to cook.   There wasn’t a lot of choice flavor-wise: you could have sweet and sour, hot and spicy on a scale of one to ten and combination of the two.    I always got just the sweet and sour.

As I got older, I took friends to the restaurant.  It was terrible atmosphere, the tables were warped and the carpet seemed sticky and dirty, but none of us cared.   Over the years I found out more and more people had the same love of the restaurant and their food as I did, sometimes because I’d run into friends while we stood in line waiting to fill our bowls.

Then there was a hurricane and a flood and the restaurant from my childhood decided to close due to costs to repair and reopen.   Everyone talked about it.  We were all sad to have lost the restaurant due to finances.    Then, not that long ago, we heard they’d reopened.  It was another location across town but it was the same restaurant.   But was it really the same?

On our first visit we walked in to find the same ingredients, the same cooking surface and the same flavor choices and when the food arrived, it tasted just the same as we all remembered it.   Tonight, we’re going out with my parents who haven’t been there since they reopened.   My children are going too.  They didn’t know the old location as it closed before they were born, but they like the food, which is all that really matters.

The Big Boy Update:  My son ran into the bedroom in the middle of the night.  He said, “I had a nightmare, how do I make it go away?”  I told him we should talk about Nexo Knights (because he’s obsessed with them right now) and for the next few minutes he was distracted from the nightmare.   Then he suddenly said, “ghosts are real.”  Dad and I said we didn’t think they were but some people believed it.  My son replied, “scientists think they are.’   My husband realized what he was talking about and said, “Oh, from the show Cosmos?  What they said was the stars are like ghosts because the light comes to us long after the star has burned all its energy and died.”  After a few more star-based questions my son was ready to go back to bed, having gotten over his nightmare.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been a question monster lately.  You can hardly get one question answered before she launches into a second, third, twelfth one.  

Pepperoni and Butter Sandwich

My children bring their lunches to school.   I try to pack a variety of things, changing what they have to eat so they’re flexible and enjoy a variety of food choices.   Some of the things I put in every day such as a granola bar and yogurt, but the fruit, vegetables and protein ranges across a large spectrum of choices.

I’ve asked the children to be involved in helping make the lunches but it is more tedious and always takes longer than when I do it alone.   Sometimes through those helping sessions I learn something new.   For instance, yesterday I learned my children would prefer a whole orange be sent in as opposed to one sliced up.  

Tonight I was making sandwiches and querying the children on what they wanted on theirs.   My son walked over to the island where the ingredients were laying out, looked up at me and said, “I want a pepperoni and butter sandwich”.   And that is what’s in his lunchbox now.   We’ll see what comes home tomorrow after school.

The Big Boy Update:  My son looked up to see my husband kiss me in the kitchen.  He said, “are you guys kissie wissie?”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter at dinner, “I wish I could go back in time”.  Me, “why?”  My daughter, “to go to breakfast.”  Me, “why?”  My daughter, “so I could go to school again.”