Friday, June 1, 2018

7 Quick Takes about Eight-Layer Cakes, Budding Gardeners Who Also Do Photography, and Why My Kids Will Probably Never Know What a Hexagon Is

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

1


For my birthday (which was technically last Tuesday but we celebrated this weekend), Phillip got me a new keyboard for my computer. It's a special ergonomic low-resistance one, meaning the keys push down easily.

Now, if you're a normal person you're probably confused. Who has ever complained that their keys were just SO HARD to press? Well, if you type a lot, it actually does make things go faster and cuts down on repetitive stress injuries like tendonitis.

But not nerd-itis. That's forever.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Phillip was right when he presented this to me by saying, "This will probably change your life."

Phillip also made me a beautiful cake with about a bizillion layers of deliciousness. I think next time I'd like to try it with mint ice cream.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Clearly, I'm very serious about dessert appreciation.

If only there were a diagram to show you how wonderful it tasted.

2


My daughter also presented me with a birthday card that said "thank you for being patient with us."

Which was very sweet, but honestly doesn't sound like me at all. I get stressed-out to the point of yelling virtually every day. So I asked her, "Do you really think I'm a patient mom?"

"Well..." she said, and then she explained that if you take my patience as compared to other moms as a ratio to the number of kids I have as compared to the number of kids other people have, then yeah, I'm pretty patient.

It's all relative, I guess.

3


At Zumba the other day my friend next to me stopped, pointed in my direction, and asked "What is that? Is that chewed-up gum?" What I did next proved that motherhood changes you in profound ways.

My first reaction was to look down at my clothes and examine them for smashed gum.

My second reaction was to spot the offending ABC gum on the floor and before anyone could step on it, immediately pick it up with my bare hands and throw it away. Even though I had no idea whose mouth it had been in or how it got there.

What's that saying, "you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy?" Motherhood is like that, but with tolerance for things other people would find disgusting.

4


Spring weather was slow to come but it's here now, so I put up some hanging baskets of flowers and the 4-year-old helped me plant some colorful blooms in the planter outside the garage.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
This is not a sponsored post for Miracle-Gro, although it kind of looks like it here.

We were only able to plant a few before some church ladies came over for a meeting so I told him we'd get to the rest of them later. He was really eager to do it, but one thing after another kept coming up and by the time I went to put the 2-year-old down for a nap, he'd had enough and just decided to do it himself.

I was pretty surprised when I came out to see the planter full of flowers, and he was very proud of his handiwork. I took his picture next to the planter, and then he said he wanted to take my picture next to the hanging basket.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Flowers not pictured. (They're just to the right of my head.)

At least he tried.

5


While my son was watching Ice Age: The Meltdown, I was looking at the back of the DVD case at the voice actors' names.

I saw that John Leguizamo was listed and his name sounded familiar but I couldn't place him, so I Googled it. But my phone wasn't getting reception and kept giving me an error message instead, which was just as well since it wasn't that pressing of a question.

I'd forgotten all about it until 10:30 that night, when my phone woke me up by dinging loudly and announcing that "one search result was ready for 'John Leguizamo.'"

What's that other saying, the one about curiosity killing the sleep-deprived mom?

6


On Wednesday there was a scheduled power outage while they worked on the electrical lines. Ordinarily this would have been an excuse to leave the house, but 5 preschoolers were coming over for our co-op pre-K that day so no such luck.

Luckily it was a sunny day and they actually played outside most of the time, so it was fine. We reviewed colors, shapes, and counting by making this shape pizza:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

It wasn't until we were all sitting around the table making our pizza that I realized I'd cut out big yellow octagons but wrote 'hexagons' on their worksheets. I thought briefly about fixing the worksheets and reprinting them, but then I realized: It's May, screw it.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Submitted as an attachment with my application for "Educator of the Year."

7


To be honest, at this point in the school year I'm less interested in making shape pizzas with construction paper and paper plates and more interested in doing this:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Cute shot of my two boys who may or may not be peeing in the water.

Our first beach day of the season was this week, and the water was cold but I am so ready. Have you been to the beach yet?

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5 comments:

Marcia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Marcia said...

Belated happy birthday :) Which did you enjoy more, the keyboard or the cake? Just lovin' your flowers! They should be beautiful whichever way they are hung.

AnneMarie said...

Happy belated birthday! Oh man, that cake looks awesome.
That's great that your 4 year old was so motivated and excited to plant those flowers! His camera skills may need work, but I'm actually pretty impressed that such a young kid was able to take a picture where you can actually tell what things are.

Jenny Evans said...

That's hard to say... you're asking me to compare two completely different kinds of enjoyment. But if it comes down to it I'd have to say the keyboard simply because it lasts longer.

Jenny Evans said...

He's a very independent young man. We were watching a friend's child at the time and my friend was so impressed when she pulled up in our driveway to see my 2-year-old out there gardening by himself!