How could you not?

OK, surely someone would comment on that last blog, I thought. Cute pictures of little children playing a game that Anne Marie in particular loved when she was in her youthful prime...Jennie actually admitting that she doesn't mind a sport...how could my family resist commenting? At least something like, "How can an armless kid be a goalie? Did she let any balls through?" or "You guys sit on a blanket when you watch the games? Really? Why don't you get regular folding chairs like all the other cool parents?" But nothing. Is anybody reading this?!
(dramatic pause for nose-blowing and pathetic sighing)
Boy, glad I got that off my chest.

Inga: "Are those bugs male or female that suck your blood?"
Me: "You mean mosquitoes? Female."
Inga: "So if they get some of my blood in them, that means we are half-sisters!"
Me: "Hmmm..."

Soccer!

Sometimes I forget how much I thought I would hate this part of life: the soccer mom part. Inga, Andrei, and Elena are all in soccer and they each have practice 1-2x per week and games on Saturdays. Each team requires each family to volunteer for snack shack or information booth, and each team requires each family to bring a snack to at least one game for the team. Oh, and you have to watch your kid play soccer out in the sun where there is no mercy from the heat and you have to somehow seem knowledgeable about what your kid is doing out there on the field while your other kids are driving you nuts with their antics. Of course I would hate this. But...amazingly...I don't. I love to see my kids working hard toward a goal with their team, I love to see them push themselves to keep going even when they are exhausted and I especially like it when they look like they actually know how to play this game. Because I never did. I remember going to Anne Marie's soccer practices (most memorable moment: I bit into a Star Crunch chocolate-y thing and got a mouthful of little worms and eggs and never ate another one again), and although I love Anne Marie (please let me make that clear), I hated watching her practices. Hated it. I recall thinking I must be receiving some sort of sisterhood points for caring and that is what helped me through it...but I swore I would never put myself through it again, so my children would just have to learn to live without sports. And then I married Dan. And found out that when it is your own kid out there, everything changes.


Oh. And it is really easy to get sunburned. (Like the shirt? It doesn't fit Dan, so he gets to enjoy it on me :)

Quotes from Petry dishes

Dan and the kids were driving home from Inga's soccer practice when Dan looked in the rearview mirror and saw a beautiful sunset in progress. "Look, kids," he said, "the sun is setting!" Elena had not heard him, but looked dutifully behind her along with the others. She turned back excitedly. "Look, Dad," she exclaimed, "a pink moon!"

"I...I...I Fuppaman!" --Sam, saying 'I'm Superman' (it sounds much cuter when you can actually hear it)

"Go tell Daddy he has good taste," said I.
--"But Daddy is not a hungry person," said Elena worriedly, "and we don't eat him!"

Elena is working on the alphabet. Because she is still transitioning to English (she was adopted shortly before she turned 4, so she is still working on it), she does not always hold onto concepts based in language very well. This means that anything to do with reading takes a little extra work. So we are starting with the names of the letters of the alphabet, and we are working on A and B. For some reason she cannot remember the name of the letter A, no matter what we do. After working on it for a few minutes today she looked up at me in exasperation and said, "Wow, Mommy, these are the hard letters!"

The fan in our bathroom stopped working today. Elena and Andrei were the ones to discover this, and they were very concerned about it. "Mom, the air in the bathroom is broken," Elena came running to tell me, "so we need to buy a new house!"

Bridge

We got together with some friends last night and played bridge. Actually, we taught them bridge. It seems like no one in our age group plays this game, but it is so great! So we are spreading it around in our generation. Or trying.
I'm sure you are not asking this, but I'll pretend that this is the question you asked: how did you get together with friends when you have five kids and no money in the bank because somebody at your husband's school decided teachers don't get paid over the summer and then wouldn't get their first paycheck for the new school year until the end of September? Well, we took our kids over to our friends' house and put them to bed there. Cheap. Easy. Fun. Not to mention our friends were impressed because they have three kids and they didn't feel like they could do that sort of thing if they came to our house because their kids just wouldn't be comfortable. So does the fact that my children will easily sleep anywhere mean that we are a flexible, fun-loving and easy-going bunch or does this mean that my children are rootless and adrift? I'll go for the former.
School starts on Tuesday, and when I read Jaime's post about her refrigerator being transformed by school lunch food I laughed because the same thing has happened over here! I am having the hardest time finding healthy enough food, though, because after going through the whole elimination diet thing I read labels on everything and then put it all back and you can't do that when you are trying to pack a lunch that must last safely through half a day AND doesn't break the bank.