Anywhoo, yesterday I defrosted three packages of chicken legs with the intention of making this. Obviously, based on that sentence I didn’t do it. So I made it today. Let me preface, we’re not a strict paleo-eating household, but I can get behind the diet in theory. I <3 bread. And butter. And heavy whipping cream in my coffee. So full-on paleo is not going to happen.

So I set this up around 3 PM. I changed the recipe a bit. I left out the tomato paste. I used the greens from some leeks I chopped months ago and froze (and not enough). I used more chicken stock. The recipe in the iPad app did not call for white wine like the one on the webpage does.I used a little more fish sauce than it called for. I layered my chicken legs and turned on the crockpot and walked out the door.

But wait. We walked in the door around 6:45 and it smelled delicious. At seven I pulled the lid and it smelled better. I drained & removed the chicken to a container (less clean up as I knew I’d have leftovers) and put the leeks and broth and garlic into a pan and took my immersion blender to it. I boiled it a little more to thicken it a touch. I gave each of my kids two chicken legs, about 1/4 cup of the gravy and tossed a bowl of strawberries on the table. Dinner was devoured.

My oldest is making dessert smoothies now and looking for spinach to toss in there with it. I <3 my kids.

Malachai is verbal now (meaning we still have days we cannot understand him but they are few and far between and his teacher and classmates have no problem with him and he is no longer frustrated because he can communicate now), and is still in OT and takes Taekwondo (last year it was acro at my daughters dance studio – he was awesome! This is in lieu of PT) but has really come so far. He learned how to tie his shoes this year!

So our pediatrician (normal ped, not a specialized ped) throws out “like Tourette’s” yesterday. Wow. Really? Don’t just throw things like that out there and then gloss over it and move onto the next thing. Which is exactly what he did. So I put it to the back of my mind. Where it percolated. I ignored it. I did. I kept busy.

But then a siren named Google called to me. So I did it. I googled that shit.

And proceeded to GO, did not collect 200$ and freaked out. Because the first sign/symptom is excessive blinking. That I brought up to our ped a year ago. A year ago. I could have been on top of this shit for a year. Not now that it’s gotten to excessive that other people who aren’t his mother are noticing. I am not am alarmist. I don’t go to the doctor for every paper cut and bruise. In fact, I avoid the doctor like the plague,  because if I don’t already have it I don’t want to get it in the waiting room.

We immediately called around and now have to wait all summer to even start figuring this out. We got an appointment with a pediatric orthopedist in late June (for his in-toeing and femurs, which we were told last July are torsioned but only told they don’t do anything until age 14 or older and to get him better shoes from the running store. Which we did, which haven’t helped) and got an appointment with a new neurologist at the end of August.

Yes. The ass-end of August. So I have three more months (four, really) in which to freak out and imagine the worst things possible. Google can kiss my read end, I’m breaking up with it.

Malachai's Chart, click for larger view

They each have one customized to their needs, but they are all similar. I used her perpetual calendar to save myself some design time and just dropped in my own text. It was pretty easy and I guess I could have used any old calendar layout, but this had the “check boxes” (the date box) and everything already done.

Et voila! Print it out, stick it in a dollar store picture frame, hang it on the wall, give your kid a dry erase marker and it”s their new favorite way to keep track of their allowance!

Well, for my kids anyway. Their allowance is now 100% dependent on how filled out their chart is and how accurately it”s filled out. Mama isn’t stupid. She knows what you do all week long. She just wants to make sure you know what you do all week long.

Time with mom is scheduled, because our week is just that busy. I like to make sure I get one-on-one time with everyone, even if it”s just for an hour while we do something else. Dorian (11) makes dinner with me on Friday, so he is “excused” from tidying his bedroom that night. Mal gets me on Saturday, so he gets to skip tidying that night. Esh gets me on Sunday. It”s totally nice to catch up with my kids, find out what they are into this week and what they want to be into next week (or next month or next year).

Do I freak out if something doesn’t get done? Nope. Sometimes shit just happens, and that’s ok. It’s the beauty of being flexible, but the stuff in the boxes is the minimum expected stuff. The stuff under the boxes is mostly all extra.

Our group won gold for their age group (over all 5 – 8 ) and first place for their dance/size/age group, which is phenomenal considering most of our group is barely six (and a couple that are five, and a couple that are 7) and they were exhausted and it was the first time out for all but three of our eight. Phenom indeed. Oh, and they *might* make it onto the upcoming episode of Dance Moms. How exciting. Oh, did I mention we had to wait around till something like 7 PM for the awards ceremony? Oh yah. We played twister. We ate. We ran. We rested. We shopped. And then around 8/8:30 we packed it in and headed home. We dropped our passengers off at their home and I decided “daddy is still at work… work is on the way home… let”s visit daddy!” So little miss raccoon eyes and I swung by the shop and hung out for a bit. We made it home around 10 PM. Then we took off the make up, and fed the bellies and crawled into bed. I bet there was more, but really, who needs more?

It took me all weekend to recovered. Kudos to those who had to be there both days. I am decidedly not looking forward to then. Maybe E won”t be participating in Company by then… but I”m not holding my breathe.

No photos please, my raccoon eyes aren't photogenic

Competition season has started and we are off to Hollywood Vibe tomorrow. Now, if you are unfamiliar with Hollywood Vibe, it’s a weekend long convention that runs classes and competitions. My little one is in the “mini” category, so she (thankfully!) only goes one day, but what a long day it is! We’ll be up no later than six tomorrow morning (no big deal some of you may say, but she has a hard time rolling out of bed by 7:45 most mornings… so do I!) and we won’t be home until probably close to ten at night.

Today my day will be filled with packing up her makeup case, costume, extra clothes, her dance bag, curling & cutting her hair piece, last-minute rehearsals, it just goes on and on and yes, on. It’s now hours after I started this post. I have a quick run to CVS to make. My hair piece will not curl. Hopefully they have something close to matching that will be good enough just for tomorrow. The suitcase is packed. It’s overkill for one costume *but* it’s also holding the makeup box, all the shoes, jacket &pants… everything really *and* it should free up an arm (or two is E can pull it!)

I don’t even want to think about it.

Have I mentioned I took one dance class in my entire life? When I was maybe four? So last year I was a hot lost mess. This year I’m on the ball. This year is going so much smoother. I love this year. My little one is taking four classes this year, which is no means a lot, really, considering some of those girls are there from nearly open to close four and five days a week. It’s a lot to me though. Some weeks I feel like I never see my boys, and part of me goes “better to not see them than to drag them all over creation attending dance things where they will be bored to death” and part of me goes “but… but… we miss them we does!” (part of me is Smeagol on occasion) I think Sunday will bring some intensive family time doing something or other. Well, in between Hebrew school & music classes.

I read this book for the first time probably around 1989/1990. I’ve reread it many times since then. I’ve gone so far as to push it on my kids, although none ever took a real interest. I decided tonight to start it, and lo and behold, all three listened with very few interruptions. I got through the authors preface and 25 pages before I called it a night and my nine year old told me he likes long books when he can listen to them. (which is funny only if you know him and know that he really does like to read on his own)

We learned about Sam Gribley’s first winter storm, and how he learned how to make a fire and caught fish and found his great-grandfathers nature-reclaimed farm.

My kids asked me to read more tomorrow night.

I have a hard time getting them interested in books I loved as a child. Perhaps due to some weird generation gap. Perhaps due to gender differences (I highly doubt this however). Perhaps it’s just that my kids have so much more going on electronically than I remember having and they just don’t read as much as I did. They certainly have an extensive library – full of my and my husbands beloved children’s books as well as brand new books. We can’t leave Barnes & Noble without dropping at least a hundred dollars. Books are definitely not in shortage around here. Yet, they seem to get left by the wayside and video games and the internet prevail.

I got off track there, sorry. I am super-excited to revisit this wonderful book with my kids and hopefully they will enjoy it as much as I remember enjoying it. A camping trip might have to be in the works once we finish it. I’ll let you know I’m a fairly suburban city girl at heart. I grew up in the burbs, but within fifteen minutes of a major city. The most “rustic” I ever really got was playing in the woods behind my house, which I suspect weren’t nearly as big as I thought they were and only divided our pre-planned neighborhood from some older houses on the other side. I went looking for a tree to live in though, just like Sam. My own children will have to make-do with their ready-built “tree” house that came with their swing set – South Florida isn’t really known for it’s old, or large trees. We’ve got Palm’s in the back yard. I loved the idea of running away to the woods as much as the main character of this book did though. A nice quiet, large, deserted forest still appeals to the curmudgeon in me.

Amazon.com Review

Every kid thinks about running away at one point or another; few get farther than the end of the block. Young Sam Gribley gets to the end of the block and keeps going–all the way to the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. There he sets up house in a huge hollowed-out tree, with a falcon and a weasel for companions and his wits as his tool for survival. In a spellbinding, touching, funny account, Sam learns to live off the land, and grows up a little in the process. Blizzards, hunters, loneliness, and fear all battle to drive Sam back to city life. But his desire for freedom, independence, and adventure is stronger. No reader will be immune to the compulsion to go right out and start whittling fishhooks and befriending raccoons.

Eshiva and her company group had their first competition on Saturday at Nexstar. They did amazing!

So, here is her *mumbles* freaking dollar company uniform tracksuit:

Super cute? Yes. Over priced? Yes. Will it fit next year, and the year after? It fucking better

Before they went on:

So, K’s mom was freaking out b/c she somehow got a hole in her *new* tights, but thankfully K and her tights are more or less the shame color and the hole was on the inner thigh, so she had the studio owner, the company coach, and the other two group parents telling her to calm herself down it’s not the end of the world. K’s mom was more nervous than K

Isn’t she cute??

and the trophy:

Her group won high gold for their category and age range, and won third over all for category. Not too bad for their first real time out, especially for the number of kids that were there.

Since she is a group, the trophy has to live at Mrs. P’s. She got to bring it home over the weekend (b/c the other two girls in her group had to split before awards were given out) and Michael and I went to a trophy store today and ordered her one that she can keep. I can’t see doing it every time, but this time was special. 15$ well spent, IMO. She’ll have it on Friday