Monday, November 28, 2011

Not sure who won this battle...

but, I'm pretty sure it wasn't me. Anthony has a love hate relationship with preschool. Every morning he fights me about going. He whines, he cries, he refuses to get dressed or take his backpack to the car. Once we're there he loves it. He warms up quickly, doesn't cry when I leave and doesn't have any major complaints about his day. He'd just rather stay at home with me, in his pajamas, watching cartoons. Ha. So his preschool is set up and paid for through the city we live in. The first few months they let 30 kids in, which was way more than they were set up to handle. After a few months the realized there was a limit of 20 for a reason, and dropped it down to 25. So each month there are 30 kids from the previous months, plus whoever finds out about the classes all trying to register for 25 spots. Kids already in the class don't get priority. You can tell where this is going can't you? I forgot to register Anthony for next month, and the class is full. His teacher apologized repeatedly, she's asked them over and over to stop opening the class up to online registrations but they do it anyway. So I guess he wins and he gets to stay home with me. You can bet I'm going to be one of the first parents registering for January though. It might be time to go back to playgroup for the next month, if we just stay home every day I'll go batty. And so will Anthony I think. He likes constant interaction, and that's hard for me. I've really gotten used to my 2.5 hours a morning of quiet time to clean or whatever.

Friday, November 04, 2011

He's four!

He wanted a Halloween Birthday Party.

He dressed up as a nocturnal firefighter and Grandma Toni came to visit.


Anthony got a ton of presents, a lot of cash, some gift cards and even some clothes.



We had a pinata in the park, crazy halloween cupcakes, and the kids dressed up (for a while, it got too hot for costumes.)


Lots of friends and half the kids in the neighborhood showed up. We do big birthday parties around here. People hang out all day. I think one friend was here for about 8 hours.


It was about 90 degrees that day, but it didn't stop anyone from having fun. The kids just drank extra Capri Suns and Green Slime Punch when they took breaks from the bouncer.

Jeff obviously had too much sugar.



Anthony thought it would be a good idea to show me his toes while I took a picture of him with the cupcakes. I swear there were no toes in the cupcakes!



In all it was a great day! Even though it's a lot of work, and I always spend too much money, I'm glad we do big parties for the kids.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

Happy Halloween!

The kids really got into Halloween this year. Anthony requested a Halloween birthday party ( I'll post those pics in a bit). Between parties at school, birthday parties, and the actual holiday it feels like we were celebrating Halloween for weeks. Amelia dressed up as Snow White and Anthony was a nocturnal firefighter, which happens to be what he wants to be when he grows up too. We went trick or treating for about half an hour; the neighbor child went with us. Then we hung out in the driveway and handed out candy. I think the kids had more fun handing out candy than they did trick or treating.

After handing out candy for a while, the neighbor child and Amelia went out trick or treating again with neighbor child's family. I've been working in Amelia's class for a while now, and it was funny to come across kids trick or treating who recognized me from the school. "Hey you're Amelia's mom! Where's Amelia?"

Because the girls were gone for another hour and a half or so, Anthony did the majority of the handing out of candy. I'd guess we probably had 150 kids. Lots of big groups, lots of tiny adorable kids, and a fair amount of high school kids. But the older kids were mostly all in costume and they were all polite, so I didn't have a problem with that. All in all it was a good night and I think we all had a good time. I love our neighborhood.