i posted my last post yesterday. even sent out a tweet about it, but it wasn’t there this morning.

so wordpress, you have ruined nablopomo for me.

good day, sir.

i said good day.

for all i have, even when i take it for granted, i am grateful.

i hope that i can remember that when i kibitz about the kids not listening, or another poopy diaper, or the fact that my garage has 40+ boxes of unpacked junk like my pie carrier that i need today, ’cause, hell, my kids are healthy, and i have a roof over my head, ya know?

*disclaimer*

*if you are my husband or my son do not read past this point*

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

ok. now that that’s out of the way…

one month from today and my boy can open this:

can you guess what scalawags arrived today from amazon canada??

is this what you guessed?

look at those hooligans!

kate writes here and here and if you are a fan of good writing, go there and there now.

kate is one of the few writers that i have to save for special times when i actually have time to focus on what i’m reading. i have to think when i read her posts. i want to chew on the letters and devour every single syllable so as not to miss a thing.

when i saw that she was sending out a book, about pirates, no less, i knew it would end up and my house some way, some how. and that way is via mimi & that how is from the dhl dude.

i expect to fully adore this book as much as i delight in what i read on an almost daily basis at her blogs. i also hope to tell you all how much the boy and i love the book in review form once he has been gifted the book on december the 25th. so look for that after the new year as i’m sure it will take us at least a few days to get through what will be his first chapter book.

i’m sure these 2 will be right perfect companions on that adventure.

i have:

-made and served banana bread french toast
-cleaned, dried, and put away all dishes from said breakfast
-wiped down the counters
-made coffee
-made lunches
-only sipped half a cup of coffee
-put away all laundry
-started a load of laundry
-cleaned up baby pee
-cleaned up baby poop
-showered with the baby who was playing with her poop
-diapered said baby
-made 4 beds (big ups to daddyjay for making ours)
-filled the butter bell (seriously folks. if you don’t have one, you NEED one.)

and i still have to:

-finish answering my questions for neil’s great big humongous gigantic interview experiment for -R-
-finalize questions to ask slouchy for the experiment
-pick up my in-laws from the airport
-sew the last 4 strips of sashing to the boy’s quilt
-clean the floors
-and all of this for dinner for 24 tonight (list from daddyjay)

9:00 – make shortbread. (oops! it’s 9:23 and i have no idea what shortbread i’m supposed to make.)
10:00 – take pork out of outside fridge
11:15 – start preheating oven, place pork in roasting pan, cover with layer of parchment and then seal pan with foil
11:45 – put pork in oven, set timer for 2.5 hours
12:00 – eat lunch
12:02 – make chocolate dulce de leche (thanks for all the time to eat, dude! what a taskmaster. he knows me so well. that’s about all the time it takes me to eat.)
2:00 – check beans. If not done, restart on low again. If done let the pot stay on warm. Most likely won’t be done.
2:15 – uncover pork add water (1/2 cup at a time) to prevent burning of drippings. Set timer for 30 minutes
2:45 – check water in bottom of pan. If low add another 1/2 cup. Set timer for 30 minutes.
3:15 – check water in bottom of pan. If low add another 1/2 cup. Set timer for 30 minutes.
3:45 – check water in bottom of pan. If low add another 1/2 cup. Set timer for 30 minutes.
4:15 – check water in bottom of pan. If low add another 1/2 cup. Check to see if pork is fork tender if yes remove from oven. Move pork to carving board located on top of cabinets with other broiler pan. if not, Set timer for 30 minutes. Repeat test at next interval.
4:30 – set up rice in cooker and get it going.
5:00 – chop and wash romaine lettuce in outside fridge. Wash radishes. Place sour cream in ramekins and set back in fridge. Slice limes into wedges. Chunk avocado.

i think i need to go take a nap first.

well, it’s not me singing this week, but there is a song here.

scout and jillianne had projects to turn in to today that expressed for what they were thankful. (that’s right, right? no preposition at the end and all.) i hope to show you jilly’s later this week, but only if she gets it back for school on wednesday.

scout made a movie. and it made me cry.

i helped her with imovie, and doing a little bit of the video, but she completely produced it. she picked the song, the pictures, wrote the script and of course, chose the things that she is glad to have around.

i hope you enjoy it as much as i do.

our family started trickling in this past weekend. aunt harr & uncle nom came in late friday night. it’s the first thanksgiving i’ve celebrated with them as they live in new jersey & we’ve just never been in the same place for turkey.

bubbe & zeyda come in on tuesday and are staying at our house. numerous others will end up here by thursday for a little bit of smoked bird & tons of fixins’. 24 total for thanksgiving dinner and i couldn’t be more excited. especially since it isn’t at my house!

we did cook for 12 tonight, though. chicken and dumplins’, mashed potatoes, green beans, wilted lettuce salad, and a ridiculous chocolate cake that has 5 3/4 sticks of butter. yum.

on tuesday night we will have all 24 at our house for dinner. should be interesting, to say the least. i’ll report back with my findings after the fact.

i hope everyone in the states has a great short week and i hope everyone else has a great regular-sized week.

justice adores this little friend. the feeling is apparently mutual.

the other day i was the helper in his class when she pointed to her shirt and said, “i have a heart,” then looked up at me and finished, “for love.”

i melted on the spot.

i hope this darlin’ doesn’t lose that sweet innocence.

so there’s this little tradition in my husband’s family that involves all people marrying into the family getting a nickname based on the letters H and R. it started when my father-in-law married my mother-in-law and her sister married her husband. they are the original H and R. and it all revolves around this wacky tie.

my mother-in-law’s mother, nana, bought it at an estate sale & wanted her sons-in-law to share the tie. it is actually a nice tie, save the kitschy pink screenprinted ‘ralph’ that is all over it. it’s chic, fashionable, skinny, has a fun ‘H’ on it, and is a beautiful charcoal silk. it would look great with a very nicely tailored suit, actually. it’s very madmen.

so it was all very silly & they played along. my father-in-law became ralph and my uncle-in-law became herb (silent ‘H’ thankyouverymuch. many years later (like, 20 years,) when their baby brother got married his new wife, aunt lou became ruby. i was next, 10 years later and chose hermione.

i got married in 2000 and found the name in my great-big-humongous-everything-by-and-about-shakespeare-ever book. i didn’t get it from harry potter fame, as i had no idea that harry potter existed then. hermione was the wife of leontes in the winter’s tale. she suffers as a result of his mistaken belief in her infidelity and at the end of the play she appears to return from the dead, having appeared as a statue. (from wikipedia) after reading that, i may want to change my H name to hippolyta, a leader of the amazons (i am tall,) who is the bride of theseus in a midsummer night’s dream and the two noble kinsmen. i like her story better.

anyhoo, we have this tie:

the guys started wearing it to all the holidays, trading off every year. they added aunt lou to the mix & then me.

(not the best picture, but here i am wearing it at passover 2004)

it’s my turn to pass it on. my sister-in-law needs to don it for a bit before she passes it on to uncle alice. in all honesty, i can’t remember the name she picked, but i have a feeling it was a town in massachussetts that starts with ‘R.’ maybe rehoboth on long island, like ronkonkoma.

uncle alice is nameless, but we’ll cut him some slack. he’s only been married a month.

anyone got any suggestions for him?

we need an ‘H.’

so i used to be a special education teacher. my last year, i taught 8th grade resource, which was reading, writing & math to kids with varied learning disabilities. a lot of my kids also used the speech and language pathologist (slp,) so i also worked with her on a regular basis. i know what it takes to get these kids the services they need. i also know how much paperwork is involved with being a special ed. teacher or slp.

BUT

this process for my jilly to get speech services is getting ridiculous.

2 months ago i asked for the slp to see jillianne because she can’t say /R/ correctly.

mark = mowk
dark = dowk
park = powk

age 7 is the time to finally start working on this phoneme since it is one of the last sounds that can be self-corrected, so we waited until now to do anything about it. i almost wish i would have paid the money to have a private slp help her 2 years ago so i didn’t have to deal with the sssslllloooowww response time of the public school slp.

here’s my timeline:

mid-spetember: initial call to slp

9/18: she observed her in class as well as her sister, since her sister has been stuttering just a bit lately.*

9/23: i sent the slp an email about a new way to administer speech therapy that my aunt told me about. (it’s articulation therapy that is for kids who only have ieps for speech and no other educational/behavior needs.)

9/28: i sent an email to the teacher that the slp had observed and would be getting back to me soon. (heh.)

10/23: i sent an email to the slp asking for some follow-up since she never did get back to me.

10/30: it took her a week to get back to me and let me know that she would be sending home the initialization paperwork to sign for permission to test jilly the following monday.

11/2 (the following monday): no paperwork.

11/4: i sent another email to the teacher and slp to ask if had been given to jillianne.

11/6: the teacher emailed me to say she’d check up with the slp. 15 minutes later i got an email from the slp that said to look for it that day. i got it and sent it back signed the following day.

fast-forward to today. i have asked jillianne if she’d been taken out of class to work with the slp at all and she said no, until yesterday. mind you, i gave the signed permission for back 11 days before. it’s been an extremely slow process and it’s frustrating for me as the parent.

as a teacher, i was constantly disappointed by my student’s parents and i try really hard not to be that parent that isn’t involved, doesn’t help out, doesn’t return paperwork, doesn’t do anything for my child to succeed. i’m now on the other side and i’ve become frustrated with the lack of communication from the school in the teacher and slp. i was expected to return emails and phone calls within 24 hours. daddyjay does the same thing at work. it’s common courtesy, i think. make your phone calls/write a quick email as soon as class gets out. i know they have to stay a bit after the last bell, so it makes sense to get as much done then as you can. i’m not sure if the teacher and slp are overwhelmed or lazy or forgetful or whatever, but it’s starting to bother me more than i’d like.

would this bother you?

has this happened to any of you?

should i say something to them?

what else should i do?

* scout’s stutter has been around for since summer. it seems like her mind is working faster than her mouth. it’s not the stuttering where one repeats a consonant over and over, but she gets caught in the middle of a thought & tries to breathlessly get to the next thought. she doesn’t do it all the time, but it is noticeable enough that her teacher mentioned it to the slp who agrees that we can wait on her since it may be due to the huge changes in her life recently with the move.

and the boy just came out of his room to pee in the middle of the hallway.

and he wasn’t even drunk.

i can’t even imagine what college will be like for him.

poor guy.