Did you know...

That HAIRSPRAY will remove ball point pen from your sofa? 

It's true.

I can vouch for that.

So next time you're on the phone, and your toddler grabs a pen from your desk and proceeds to draw on every single cushion of your microfiber sofa, including the armrests....and you see it and immediately think "oh crap, there's no WAY that's coming out"...and you contemplate taking a picture and sending it to the website "Shit my kids have ruined"...
Take heart...and GOOGLE...you will discover there are people out there who have been in  your shoes and can tell you how to fix it.

Hairspray.  No lie...it works - my couch is now unscathed and smelling like the 80's.

So ummmm...

My 2 year old....that sweet little boy of mine...got kicked out of preschool last week.

Now, you may be wondering what on earth he could have possibly done   

am I right?

Well it involves teeth...specifically HIS teeth...on someone else's kid.

Yeah that.

He started going to this place back in March, and did really well

Except for puking on the teacher his first day because I left him and he was crying so hard

and except for that other time that he threw a matchbox car and it hit another kid in square in the noggin

that kind of sucked.

And then everything was fine for a while!

Until about a month ago, when I got a call in the middle of the day informing me

that Adam had BITTEN another little boy. 

I was shocked,

mortified

He's never done that before...what on earth?

It was just a nip on the arm, or so we thought

Until that little boy got home and his mom found an actual circle bite with teeth marks on his back

and when asked what happened he said "adam bit me"

I saw that circle bite 2 days later...a perfect little oval bruise of teeth marks on a tiny boy's back

I felt terrible

no matter what happened, or why adam was pissed off at this boy...

seeing that bite mark disturbed me

Teacher starts to observe more closely and keep a better eye on things

and thinks it's a problem strictly between adam and this one boy

boy being a bit on the aggressive side and not respecting adam's space

no problem with any of the other boys - but this one kid just sets him off somehow

We go a couple of weeks without incident

Until last Tuesday

I was there when it happened

This boy ran up to adam

grabbed his arm, ripped a toy out of his hand and ran off

adam FLIPPED

Shouted NO, chased after him

and chomped on his arm

just like that

I was shocked

tears

time out

other parents and kids observing

other boy was fine, just a red mark on his arm

but still...

to see my kid lose it like that just unnerved me

I contacted the parents, with apologies,

decided to call adam's doctor and seek advice

Later the next day I get an email asking for us to "remove adam from my care"

3 strikes and all

I'm not even gonna pretend that didn't hurt

I understand her position

I understand her need to protect her kids

I know she didn't want to do that

but I still cried

(also pmsing and overly emotional about it all)

Nobody ever wants to hear that their kid isn't welcome

He really is a sweet and hilarious little boy

it's a phase right?

Hubs seems to think it's from all those vampire books I read while I was pregnant

HAR-HAR.

I have to admit - the boy does have some fangs

Moving on

Adam is starting a new preschool in August, one he's been on a waiting list for since he was 15 months old

And both hubs and I felt we should do the right thing and tell this new teacher what happened

just in case

And today - she wrote us this long email

putting our hearts at ease

She gets it

she's dealt with this before

her own son did it

she knows how we feel

but also said in almost 20 years

she's never asked a child to leave

(although she HAS asked some parents to leave - hee!)

She's excited to get to know Adam

and reassured us he's just frustrated about not being able to communicate yet

AND she is fitting us in with a drop in spot

one day a week starting early July

So we don't have to wait until August

Yippee

Love her already

Relief

5 Reasons why I need to get a life...

1. I am unreasonably excited about the new season of Intervention and Obsessed starting tomorrow
2. I am also unreasonably excited about another season of Rescue Me FINALLY starting this week
3. I'm wondering, now that the 2nd season of 16 and pregnant is over, when does teen mom start?  HUH?
4. I spent a good 20 minutes googling trying to find out when the new Mad Men will be on
5. Real housewives...enough said

More Snow Adventures

Video's this time...
We desperately wanted to go sledding, but the snow was so powdery, it seemed impossible!  And we were practically the only ones on the mountain this time of year, so there was no designated "play area" with snow that had already been trampled down.  Sooo, we found a small hill by the lodge and tossed our snow discs down and proceeded to make our own very small sledding hill.   Here is me (totally out of breath from the altitude and snow packing exertion) and Adam taking a quick trip together:



Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

And here is Hubs and Adam - looking like weebles while sledding down the mountain


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Here we are on a walk - Adam insisted on bringing a little plastic hammer with him everywhere, and thought it was his "job" to hammer snow every few feet.  Cracked us up...



Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
All in all, it was a good trip - serene surroundings - no home stuff or work stuff to bother us - no puking down the mountain - yippeeee - and now we've vowed that we need to visit the snow at least once a year.  Agreed?

To the SNOW Jeeves...

Back in April, we took a little mini vacation to the Sequoia National Park.   We were supposed to go last November, but there were major snow storms going on and Adam spiked a fever the night before we were to head out there, so we decided we didn't want to risk getting stuck up in the mountains with a sick kid and the lodge allowed us to put off our reservation until April. 

Turns out the day we left, it was pouring rain here - and poured almost the entire trip over there too.  At one point I changed a diaper at a Sonic drive-in with rain dripping off the roof directly onto the back of my neck and down my shirt, ha!

We finally started driving through all the cute little towns heading into the mountains and the rain started to let up - I got excited because we could see all the snow covered peaks and it was so beautiful.  As we were almost to the entrance to the national park, we heard a familiar "BLORK" from the backseat, and our poor little man (who has a tendency to get carsick) threw up all over the place.  We stopped and did damage control, changed his clothes, got him some fresh air, cleaned out the car and the carseat, found the nearest dumpster and once again were on our way.  I sat in the backseat with him after that just in case it happened again, knowing we were about to be on a super twisty/curvy road for the next hour. 

A few miles up, it started raining again...and eventually as we climbed higher, the rain turned to snow.  I was even starting to feel a little blah because to the curvy road, and as I looked at Adam, he was really green and not looking so good.  He started throwing up again and luckily I had a big tall cup that I just held for him - poor guy - there simply was NO place to stop or pull over (anyone who's been on that little mountain road knows what I'm talking about) plus it was freaking SNOWING, so we didn't have a choice but to keep driving.  Poor hubs felt so bad, he had a hard time not being able to stop and help his boy, but we hung in there and opened all the windows for fresh air and I had blankets bundled up around him so he wouldn't freeze - it got better...and eventually he dozed off.  The snow was so thick coming down that we could only go about 20 miles per hour, so that just made it really slow going.  At one point, we passed a guy in a prius going the opposite direction who had pulled over and was standing just behind his car, and just around the corner from him, we came upon a BEAR - in the middle of the road, snowing like crazy and there's a freakin BEAR just cruising past us lumbering down the road.  I was GIDDY with excitement, but since I was in the backseat I didn't get a picture of the darn thing, and hubs was driving and going really slow trying not to hit the BEAR in the road - so we missed our opportunity.  Still really cool though!   

We momentarily wondered if we should go warn the guy in the Prius who was probably about to pee off the side of the mountain only to turn around and see a bear coming his way....ha!

(we didn't - and we never heard about a nerdy white guy in a prius getting eaten by a bear, so we called it good)

Anyhow - we FINALLY arrived and found our lodge.  The road was closed right at the road to the lodge, so it's a good thing we didn't need to go any further then that!  Oddly enough, we didn't need any chains that whole trip up either.  Despite all the snowing, the roads were good.

It was kind of a walk from the main lodge to where our room was, luckily they provided luggage carts for us, ha!

A car in the parking lot...

It was almost dark when we arrived, so once we carried our shivering boy up the hill to our room and got settled, we decided to go to the main lodge and have dinner at the restaurant (the ONLY place to eat up there, luckily we brought a ton of our own food).   It was still lightly snowing when we started our walk down there...

The restaurant was one of those fancy pants places that was really quiet and candlelit, except that we have a 2 year old who is not-so-quiet or fancy (I mean really, a wine GLASS of water for a 2 year old?) so we sort of ate and ran and ordered our meals take out after that.

The next day was clear and GORGEOUS - so we were snapping away!

He couldn't really put his arms all the way down we had him so stuffed in those clothes!

Hubs pulled on this tree branch and I snapped the picture right as a huge chunk of snow fell off...

We decided to head down to the General Sherman tree - which I've only seen during the spring/summer seasons.

There was a path cut out, but it was only about the width of our feet and definately a one person trail.  Adam was walking in front of me and took the lead - we weren't sure how he'd do in the snow, but he just trudged up the hill like it was nothing, we were AMAZED at how well he did on that hike

Let's just say he was not happy about being shoved into the carseat with all those layers on...

grumble, grumble, grumble

As the sun was going down that evening, the whole place just felt so magical - so quiet and serene - we were thrilled to just cruise around on the walking trails and enjoy the scenery with our boy

I kept calling these Dr. Seuss Trees

not so happy about being put into thigh deep snow...

To be continued....

Magic Eraser Kind of Morning...

This pretty much says it all...

(I took away the crayons and he was pitching a fit and then I grabbed the camera and said "say cheese!" and he shouted "NOOOOOO!" - and CLICK went the camera.  Needless to say, I was laughing)

It's a good thing he's cute

(wearing my shoes)

In other news, I made french bread...

Delish!