Best Work Bash

I'm going to try to have Charlie fail preschool because I'm 99.9% sure that he'll never have a better teacher than he does this year. Kindof sad to think that it may be all down hill from here....Ms Sadowsky is a Teach for America fellow which, unfortunately, means she may be gone before Diego can have her as a teacher. In addition to her weekly individual reports with photos and near weekly field trips, this week she organized a "best work bash" to show off the work of the students. Parents filed in to watch the students sing songs about...well, as far as I could understand the songs seemed to be about animals hibernating and birds migrating. She framed the best writing and painting samples from each child and some kids presented their work - of course Charlie stayed clear of the microphone. This was followed by a video montage of the kids throughout the year and then a pizza lunch for everyone. When I asked to get a copy of the video she said that she would do a dvd for each parent at the end of the year. Who is this woman and how do we clone her??! Unfortunately the rest of the school is not half as organized as she is -- all of the paperwork that I have submitted to the school has been lost and they still have the wrong birthdate for Charlie.

Diego loves going to Charlie's school as well. And the kids LOVE him. The poor kid gets mobbed and the three year olds (ok - only the girls) grab his cheeks and say funny adoring comments. I refuse to cut his hair so he does get quite a few girl comments, but I think it just makes him look even more angelic. He and Charlie are getting along slightly better and so we decided to move them back into the same room. We'll see how it goes, but I'm hoping that it will eventually make them closer. Diego doesn't talk, but he certainly lets his opinions be known with screeches, grunts and giggles. If we take something away from him he'll do his purring cry and melt onto the ground. I find it cute because I'm in denial of Diego ever doing anything wrong.

Here is Diego sending goodbye kisses to Sandra

Happy (Chinese) New Year!

We weren't organized enough to do a holiday party this year so we did a post-holiday party in celebration of Chinese New Year and the year of the dragon. As usual, I was up until 2am the night before getting ready because it's impossible to do anything once the kids are awake. I actually planned to have a babysitter here from 5pm on so that I would be able to finish cooking, but that was a disaster. Diego went BALLISTIC. He has never had a babysitter around while he is awake and clearly he didn't approve of the idea. I ended up carrying Diego and instructing her what to finish cooking! poor girl. Diego was fast asleep by the time people came over and Charlie was headed to bed, but just as we were saying goodnight his friend Ehren came over and sabotaged bedtime. They ended up running around upstairs until he decided he needed to go to bed and sent her away. Once things were settled upstairs, things deteriorated downstairs pretty quickly thanks to Carlos handing out shots early in the evening. That wasn't the only unfortunate news - it turns out that, according to the Chinese zodiac, Carlos and I (dog - dragon) combination are considered "a truly tumultous affair - not recommended for peace of mind." Oh well - I thought we were doing pretty well.

Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to take pictures, but we had fun decorating the house with chinese laterns, a long dragon along the ceiling and a chinese flag courtesy of our neighbors who used to live there. Charlie and I painted our toe nails red for the evening.

Despite people consuming a lot of food (including 150 fortune cookies!), we still have an absurd amount of Chinese left overs on my back porch.

On Sunday I took Charlie out while Diego and Carlos napped and was surprised how nice it was to just hang out with him. He is at the age that he is a fun companion even though we did boring routine things. After doing boring errands we both needed an afternoon treat so we went to a coffee shop and I got a latte and he got a muffin and we sat down to discuss life. It was so pleasant and fulfilling.

Charlie has been working on his writing and it's been so much fun to see his progress. Today I stayed at his school for morning meeting and group time where he wrote me a letter. Admittedly I suggested the content :) Clearly he needs to work on a few things, but I thought it was pretty cute.

Here is Diego playing with coffee beans with baby Emma at Kathleen's house.

Ode to Diego

Our friend Kathleen says that I don't profile Diego enough on the blog. The truth is that he is still my bag of sugar and so I feel like I don't have much to report. We think he is a little angel baby, but our neighbors said that he seemed like a handful and my aunt Mary said that he is a bag of sugar until he turns into a 'bottle of vinegar.' I think she was referring to Diego puking all over my mom's house....He is however starting to develop an attitude and has started to fight back against Charlie.

Diego loves to be outside, sleeps 12 hours at night and focuses on building and organizing things. I thought we were out of the woods with his health and development issues after his eye thing was cleared, but now I'm worried about his speech. He still grunts and points his way through life. He only says a few words and even when we repeat the words over and over he either shakes his head no or pronounces only part of the word. I was a late talker so I wasn't too worried about it until I saw how many words Charlie was saying by this same age.

Here is Diego organizing Carlos' clothes. He carefully empties the sock drawer then gets in and organizes the rest of the clothes...

This weekend we went to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time in my life (Charlie went once in Reno). They had so much fun that I almost feel badly I've deprived them thus far. Admittedly it's not my favorite place, but Charlie and Brett had fun trying the games together as did Diego and I. I'm a big air hockey fan so I put Diego on the table in front of his goal to give me more of a challenge. He was pretty good!

I can't help but document some of Charlie's weird habits. My most recent favorite is that when he goes to the bathroom he removes ALL of his clothes, puts them in another bathroom and then comes back to actually go to the bathroom. It's bizarre. His sleep habits are equally bizarre, but not new...

Welcome 2012!

We were in Reno for the past 2 weeks with Carlos family and we had a lot of fun. Charlie left cookies and a note out for Santa and in return Santa treated him very well for Christmas! The note looks a little like a ransom note, but I think Santa appreciated it.

Charlie took advantage of Reno by going to the casinos for a show! Here he is at the slot machine before enjoying Peter Pan from box seats.

He LOVED the Peter Pan show and kept referring to "Mr. Catain Hook." He also got to try ice skating and rollerskating, went on a ferris wheel, rode a gondola (many times), went sledding and tried tubing. My big goal was skiing, but with only man-made icy snow we decided for sledding and tubing. The gondola and the ferris wheel were big hits while ice skating, roller skating and tubing weren't. We got to take 2 tubing rides before Charlie dug in his heels and refused to again. It was a little too fast for him...and me.

On the Ferris Wheel:

At the rollerskating rink - is was packed!

Tubing and Gondola Ride:

Eating "scapetti" - as Charlie refers to it...

Diego saying "cheese" for the camera:

Gingerbread Houses

The last week of school before winter break my mom came down to DC equipped with 18 home-made gingerbread (graham cracker) houses and an arsenal of decorations. She even made front doors with wreaths on them. It was a crazy fun activity for the kids. They used icing for 'glue' and everything from frosty the snowman peeps to candy I've never heard of for decorations. The kids were pretty good about not eating the decorations although one kid had a really hard time resisting them. With a pained look he told me "But these candies are making me REALLY hungry!" Charlie's girlfriend Cici didn't exactly eat the candies, but she did bend down and lick her house. One little boy Joseph couldn't stop decorating. He sat through two sessions and kept working hard until every surface was covered...and then he kept going. We were sure his house would collapse. The next day at circle time a little girl named Mira raised her hand and asked, as if she had been wondering all night, "what is inside my gingerbread house?"

The gingerbread houses were WAY more successful than Charlie's winter concert that week. It was the worst planned school event. They actually expected 30+ three year olds to actually stay by themselves and be still in front of 300+ people in the audience. By the time it was their class' turn to perform Charlie wouldn't even stand up and sing. It was tortuous and we were relieved to make a run for it after their portion was complete. I'm hoping they plan better next year...

Young Carlos

Carlos came back from Colombia with some fun gifts and a few memorabilia from his youth. My favorite is this school photo. The report cards were very cute too and he seemed to be a good student...for awhile at least...

We showed Charlie one picture that was brought back of a little Carlos and Charlie was convinced it was him. Here are Carlos and Charlie fighting over whether it is a photo of Charlie or Carlos.

Family Fun

I realized that I do a lot of forced family fun. Usually we do end up having fun, but often there is a fair amount of kicking and screaming before we get out the door or have any fun. For instance last weekend I wanted to take them to see the National Christmas tree with the train display and Santa workshop. Fun, right? Well we had all sorts of crying and screaming just getting out of the car! And, as always, I time our visit in line with Obama's commute so the whole area was closed off and we had to wait in the freezing cold with grumpy boys. Carlos and I were baffled why we put ourselves through this in the name of fun for the kids. Once we were actually able to enter we had a lot of fun and Charlie loved Santa's workshop. Diego was freaked out (hence the crying in the picture), but he loved the trains. Charlie told Santa he wanted a 'brown train' for Christmas. Random!

We did however have a great time hunting down our Christmas tree in Middleburg. It was a beautiful day and we hiked all over the farm in search of the perfect tree. Charlie liked finding and nominating potential trees while Diego was mainly taken by the cart. As Carlos cut the tree, Charlie 'helped' by holding Carlos' leg (though he admitted to being worried about getting 'bonked'). Typical Carlos was a little too zealous about the size of the tree we should get and so we ended up with a 10 foot tree that didn't fit in our car. And we still don't have a rack on the car so Carlos tied it on top in some elaborate manner that locked us all in the car. We stopped by Charlie's school to pick up stuff from their holiday sale and I had to exit through the window. Always a nice way to make an entrance...

We are glad to be going to Nevada to see Carlos' family this week for the holidays...and a break. Poor Carlos has had to deal with a lot of my work travel recently and I am exhausted from all the work and travel and guilty feelings about being gone from my kids.