Missing in Action

It's been a busy week and I've been neglecting the blog. If I'm being honest (tribute to Simon Cowell) I kind of wanted to prove to myself that I'm not addicted to blogging. If this past week is any indication, I'm clearly not addicted.

Here are a few highlights from the past week and a half:

Adam is a RAD kid and we witnessed his newly developed skills at a demonstration at the school on Wednesday night.

Yesterday we went shopping for a new refrigerator. While in the gigantic furniture store Adam discovered a cozy couch in front of a giant screen television that was playing the Chronicles of Narnia. When we needed to move on to the appliances, he didn't want to go and made a case for just waiting for us there. I had to explain to him that I wouldn't leave my purse sitting on that couch alone because it was valuable to me, and he was even more valuable to me so there is no way that I would leave him sitting alone on that couch. Somebody might take him after all. He then reminded me of his RAD kid training and assured us that he could handle himself just fine if somebody tried to take him. Needless to say, although I am happy that he graduated from the RAD kid program, I'm not convinced that Adam is ready to take on a child predator, so he accompanied us to the appliances.

Last Monday night we had a tooth pulling showdown. I was at wits end with that snaggle tooth that Adam was so afraid of losing. It was seriously turning colors because he hadn't touched it with a tooth brush for over a month so I decided that it needed to come out. On Sunday night Adam and I made a deal that we would pull the tooth on Monday. When Monday rolled around, Adam had a complete change of heart and mind and body and spirit. I amazed myself at how patient I was as we discussed it, but as time wore on and we all got crankier, the evening ended badly when Phil took a screaming, fit throwing Adam and deposited him on his bed with this declaration: "Adam, I have never been so mad in my life! Until that tooth comes out, you cannot do anything fun. No Pokemon. No TV. No GameCube. No Computer. No trampoline. No bike. You can read and draw and that's it!!" Adam seemed content with that arrangement until about Wednesday when he asked about the upcoming field trip to the dinosaur museum. Uh-oh. Dad said no fun, so I'm thinking no dinosaur museum. I have never seen Adam so sad - it actually made me tear up too. Long story short - after making a pros and cons list and extracting a promise out of me that if it was too painful I would stop pulling, Adam finally consented on Thursday morning to let me get the tooth. I knew I had one shot at it, so when he opened his mouth I basically just flicked his tooth from behind and it came right out. Happy day!!!! The dinosaur museum was back on and Adam realized that a loose tooth is not a death sentence - until the next loose tooth when I fear that we will have a repeat performance.

We sent a new record for the lowest high temperature on May 22 in Utah. The high for the day was 53 degrees. Sigh.

I went to the Dinosaur Museum with Adam's first grade class on the 23rd. I was responsible for keeping track of 3 six-year-olds, which doesn't seem like that tough of a task. However, as soon as my group was assigned, I realized what I was in for. Apparently the groups were created according to friendships. Adam's friends are a lot like Adam, and they were VERY excited to be going to the dinosaur museum. This mom was quickly outed as a complete field trip rookie. While at the dinosaur museum, I discovered that Adam is very capable of focusing on a task, if it's a task that he wants to focus on. Much to the dismay of one of the other boys in our group, Adam decided that he wanted to write down the names of every dinosaur on a certain display. There were probably 60 dinosaur names, and Adam meticulously copied each one of them. One of the other kids really wanted to move on, but Adam and the third kid were perfectly content in this one room so we stuck around. Adam copied names, Grant did puzzles, and Emmanuel did his best to not run away from me.

Pre-dinosaur museum. Can you see the anticipation on their faces? (Also notice Adam's toothless grin. Yipppeeeeee!!!)

Adam doing his transcription work.

The bus ride home. This was after we had been stuck on the freeway for a half hour while they were tyring to clear a tipped over motor home off of the freeway. We were all anxious to get off the bus.

This past week Noah decided that he is too easy to understand so he started this weird, nonsensical babbling. As far as we can tell, there really is no rhyme or reason to it, but he totally cracks himself up. Phil thinks he might just be regressing and trying to recapture some of the babyhood that he missed during his orphanage days. He loves to cuddle on my lap and he's decided that he has a strong preference for being fed rather than feeding himself. If he wants to stay a baby for a little longer, I'm all for it, as long as that doesn't preclude the potty training that we are gearing up for. Job number one in my SAHM career is to divest our house of all diapers. I'm seeing some potty training blog entries in our future.