I haven’t posted just general updates in awhile….miss’d me??? 🙂

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Adoption Update

There isn’t one.?? Still waiting.?? We have had a couple of potential opportunities come up but so far nothing “real”.?? I hate this part.??

Tanner is still leaning towards wanting a boy and Ty a girl.?? Ty would like us to name a boy “Dexter” after the monkey in the Night at the Museum and a girl either “Dora the Explorer” or “Elasta Girl”.?? Either would be nice. :)?? I really need to firmly rule out Elasta Girl though because Ty is insisting he will one day marry Elasta Girl and I think it would be terribly confusing to have a wife and sister with the same unusual name.?? Don’t you think??? Let’s just all discourage talks of marriage at this point.?? Tanner doesn’t tend towards crushes but I am afraid Ty is going to be the little Romeo.?? His crush on Cat is just ridiculous.?? He looks at her and you see hearts flashing in his eyes.?? He talks to her, beams at her, gives her his sweet eye batting, and can’t resist hugging her every 2 minutes.?? He is truly in love with Cat.?? Poor Cat too.?? I have had to have talks with her about creating kid boundaries but she is so sweet natured she just can’t draw them and defend them to save her life.?? I have told her 100 times that I can’t be there to rescue her from 2 hour 4 year old conversations all the time and she is going to have to learn how to distract him and lovingly send him on his way but she hasn’t quite been up for the task yet.

Home School

I am pleased to report that Tanner did in fact get all his spelling words correct the last two weeks.?? Apparently he CAN indeed handle a 13 word list.?? Well let me correct that statement….he got his first pretest 100% correct but he missed one on the actual first test.?? He spelled “ball”, “boll”.?? I was actually quite pleased with this error though.?? It only proved that he was attempting phonetic spelling.?? I was quite proud.??

I think I am over my freak out.?? Carrie helped me quite a bit and my friend Debbie reminded me that most first graders don’t really start creative writing until the second half of first grade anyhow (and we are only on week 15 as we are schooling year round).???? He really is doing soooooo well.?? I am way more the problem than he is.?? Hopefully, I will learn what is best for Tanner and teach to Tanner’s style.?? I really think the learning curve may be bigger for me than him but I am slowly but surely coming along.

I bought a journal for “writing stories for Ty” and Tanner is using his spelling words to tell stories to Ty.?? He had to write 2 sentences today and they were “Ty drove the car to the store” and “Ty fed the duck corn”.?? He is finally exploring the “finks in his mind” for story ideas. 🙂

The Christmas Play

I can’t remember if I mentioned that Tanner was in an uproar about the Church Christmas play this year.?? He was selected for a non speaking part as a donkey and he was UPSET.?? He wanted NOTHING to do with this play AT ALL.?? I finally told him that he was doing it….period…and he better just adjust.?? Right wrong??? I don’t know.?? I just know that more often than not, if you bump birdy from his little nest he will fly and he will enjoy it but this little chickadee needs an awfully big push sometimes.?? I thought it was pretty funny when the night before the play he prayed this, “….and God, please help the play to be OVER with and help it be good!”?? LOL.?? He lived through it and it was cute.??

Roomates

We have been allowing Ty to sleep in Tanner’s room for a few weeks now and both boys seem to love it.?? Ty is great to snuggle with because he sleeps deeply and never moves.?? Tanner, on the other hand, talks in his sleep, and moves ALL night.?? I have been waiting for Ty to get tired of being beaten up in his sleep but so far no complaints.?? One night, Tanner’s pillow was overlapping his and he did scream his lungs out at 3:00 AM over that faux paux.?? Here is the particularly strange thing….remember all Ty’s little nuances about his bedroom??? Light must be on, room must be clean, no pillows or blankets in bed overnight…etc.??? He has none of those requirements for Tanner’s room.?? Short of that 3:00 AM pillow issue, he hasn’t muttered a word of frustration over less than ideal conditions.??:) Weird.??

I am still not invited to participate in story time though.?? I have tried to sneak in a few times and typically Ty will say “Mommy.?? Go get on your computer.”?? Which means “We are having male bonding time with Dad.?? Please go find something else to do.”?? One odd thing though is that Ty asks nearly every night if I am going to go get on my computer after he goes to bed.?? For some reason, he HATES it if I say I am going to bed when he is.?? I can’t figure out why he wants to fall asleep visualizing me on the computer instead of my bed.?? Makes no sense to me whatsoever.

The Difference Between the Sexes

Last month Zandi and Zane stayed the night over here.?? One thing that I noticed while they were here is how unemotional my children are.?? Zandi and Zane speak in sentences like this “Aunt Sissy Ty took my car AND THAT WAS NOT NICE.”?? or “Aunt Sissy I wanted the red one and he took the blue one AND THAT IS NOT FAIR” or “Aunt Sissy he won’t let me play with that toy AND I DON’T LIKE THAT.”

Here is how my kids talk.?? “Mommy Ty took my toy.”?? “Mommy I want the red one.?? Ty has it.”.?? “I want THAT game”.??

See the difference??? Being typical males, they don’t feel the need to elaborate.?? They get to their point and leave it to me to draw obvious conclusions about their displeasure.?? All I can figure with Zandi and Zane is that girls tend to tell you exactly how they feel about all the injustices of the world and Zane, being the younger, has picked up on that.??

You would think that at least one of my kids would speak with more sensitivity considering that I am very expressive.?? Nope.?? Both are seeming to take after Daddy’s communication style.?? Can you just imagine how hard it is for me to get into deep meaningful conversation with these three??? Ridiculous.

My Gamers??

…on second thought, Ty is actually very expresive as well – just different in his expression than mama.?? He doesn’t “talk” about how he feels but if you see him play an XBOX game it looks like high impact aerobics.?? He is jumping, kicking, yelling…looks like my dad at a Suns game (warning – do not ever go to a Suns game with my dad if you don’t want to attract attention LOL).?? I hope to get this on video soon and post it.?? It is pretty hysterical to watch.

One issue we have had though with these games is violent terminology.?? I don’t like hearing my boys saying “You killed me!?? I am going to kill you!”.?? I asked both of them to say “You got me.?? I am gonna get you” instead.?? Just sounds better.?? :)?? This is how it ended up.

Ty = “Mommy we are “get”.?? Those guys were grumpy.”?? 🙂

Ty = “Tanner you are going to get get.”?? LOL

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Last week Jim was sitting at the table looking through an Incredibles book with Ty.?? They came upon a scene in the book that Jim didn’t recognize.

Jim = I don’t remember this scene Ty.?? Where is it?

Ty = Oh that is in Chapter 17.?? Here I will show you.?? (In 3 seconds jumps to that chapter on his PSP and shows dad the clip).

How does he do that?

Or this one….

For his birthday, Jim bought a 4 gig memory stick for his PSP to put more movies on.?? I put Go Fish on there and Ty wanted a movie so I told him that maybe I would delete it off and replace it with a movie later.?? He say’s “I’ll do it”??and before I could stop him, he switched to the menu, found the memory stick menu, scrolled to the delete option and deleted it quick as a wink.?? Several strange things about this.

1.?? The speed in which he did this.

2.?? The speed in which he did this considering this was the first time he ever had a memory stick on his PSP so how did he know a delete option even existed??? He has never been able to delete anything else off his PSP.

3.?? He can’t read.

Stuff like this happens all the time and Jim and I can never figure out how he does it.

AND MY FAVORITE GAMING STORY AS OF LATE…

Last week we went to Fry’s Electronics because Jim needed to purchase a new computer for the church.?? My boys know where the XBox demos are in EVERY store and they begged to head for it.?? I thought I could stand there and read books while they played.?? When we got to the demos, teenagers were playing.?? On one particular demo, there was a Native American Indian kid playing.?? I would guess him to have been about 15.?? Now I am not trying to intentionally stereotype but from my observations, Indians are not often real expressive people.????If my observation is correct, this kid really fit that mold.?? Completely passive expression.?? As I write out what Ty had to say to him, keep in mind that this kid never ONCE looked at Ty or had any expression on his face whatsoever.?? How he managed to so thoroughly ignore a 3 year old pestering him I have no idea.

Here was Ty:

“Hey!?? Hey!?? Can I play that game??? Can I??? Can I play??? Hey!?? Can I play??? Hey is that Ghost Recon??? Is it??? That IS Ghost Recon!?? You are playing Ghost Recon!?? Hey your going to get shot!!!!!!?? Press A press A press A??press A!”

All the while, Ty is dancing around like he is at a sports game shouting all the above.?? The kid HAD to love it as Ty began instructing him how to play.?? People were walking down the isle cracking up watching a three year old harassing this kid.?? What kind of parent am I anyhow to allow this kind of abuse??? :)?? I couldn’t help myself.?? It was way too funny to intervene.

Funny Ty

“Whad jew said?” – He says this ALL the time.

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This past weekend Tanner stayed the night with Noah and Ty was home with us.?? At one point, I was reading my book and Ty came over and leaned his head on the arm of my chair and said, “I’m just lonely.?? Get me some Lucky Charms.”?? Looks like we have??a third generation comfort eater on our hands. 🙂

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Recently we stayed out past midnight at my parents home.?? When we got home with the kids, Ty said “Mommy I am tired.?? Put my jammies on.”?? I put his jammies on and told him and Tanner to go brush their teeth.?? While they were brushing, Jim and I began a conversation.?? The boys kept coming in and interrupting our discussion and I kept sending them out not paying attention to the time (and it was quickly pushing 1:00 AM).?? Ty finally comes back in and says “MOMMY!?? Am I going to bed TODAY?”?? LOL!?? Technically the answer to that was no.??:)??

Understanding Adoption

I am always open with adoption discussions with my children and they know their stories but frankly, the topic doesn’t get a lot of attention because it just doesn’t come up much.?? So you always wonder how much they actually understand.?? Tanner in one brief statement earlier this year, affirmed that he had a pretty good understanding.?? He never asks questions about it but if the topic comes up, he makes educated comments.?? Ty on the other hand has never stood still long enough to really digest it.?? Or so I thought.?? Check out this conversation that happened last week.

Doni = Ty when did mama first fall in love with you?

Ty = When I woke up!

Doni = No silly.?? I fell in love with you the moment you were born!?? Ty who gave you to me??? (I was fully expecting him to say “God” because I always tell both boys that they are God’s special gift to me).

Ty = (Big silly smile).?? Miss Amanda (said in a sing songy voice).

Doni – (uuuuuhhhhh….totally not expecting that comment).?? Uh true….you were in Amanda’s tummy.?? But God chose daddy and mommy for you and you for us.

Ty = Whose tummy were you in?

Doni = Sweetie’s

Ty – WHY???

“Why” as in “That doesn’t make any sense…didn’t you start somewhere else and then God gave you to Sweetie?”?? LOL.?? I remember Jamie telling me she was shocked in kindergarten because she thought everyone was adopted.?? :)??

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