Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Day in the Life

It's time for another exciting installment of Day in the Life of Amy. It was a crazy, hectic, great day, full of surprises, and, in most ways, totally normal.

  • Woke up half hour late

  • Got dressed (no chance for shower), got Sam dressed, got Sam breakfast

  • Made and drank coffee - made some for Adam too because next I had to...

  • Put coffee maker in car to return to Bed, Bath and Beyond (this is our second Keurig that is defective) - the damn thing leaked water all over my floors and all over me - cleaned it up

  • Left to take Sam to school at 8:45am

  • Realized that I left my phone at home - ironic, given how much I ended up using it later, and also, that I thought my day was frantic now

  • When dropping Sammy off, confirmed the time for Mother’s Day Tea school event on Friday

  • Exchanged coffee maker at BBB and bought spoons (I think Sam has been throwing spoons in the trash can)

  • Stopped off at home to pick up phone (can't live without my Droid)

  • McDonalds for breakfast because it is fast and right next to my hair salon

  • Got my hair done from 10-11:15

  • While sitting under the dryer, read this article, Is This A Great Country or What?, which ended up partially inspiring this Day in the Life post by making me think about technology and Target and freeways and how much I was able to do thanks to all of that great stuff people have created

  • Phone message from car dealership (On Sunday, I put in 5 requests for quotes from local dealerships and they haven't stopped calling since)

  • Quick stop at supermarket for milk, tissue, sugar, salmon (we seriously could not wait one more day for more tissue)

  • Home to put groceries away - left phone in the car since I would only be inside for a few minutes

  • Let the dog out - still really loving my new deck with stairs so I can let him out and go do other things until he knocks on the door to come back in (he bangs the glass door with his claws - cute!)

  • 5 minutes until I have to leave to pick up Sam so I sit at my computer and see a phone message from Adam from just a moment ago (Google Voice is awesome - it transcribes messages and puts them in my email where I notice them before I would ever check the phone)

  • Went to the car and got my phone and called Adam back - he rode his new motorcycle to the mall to register it and it wouldn't start back up again - he might need me to pick him up but I need to hold tight until he figures out what he'll do next - luckily the mall is near Sam's school

  • Left to pick up Sam from school

  • Call from car dealership on the way to school - good price, do they have the color we want? They'll get back to me

  • On the way to school, called friend P. to see if she found a sitter for tomorrow night so we could go and see the Atlas Shrugged movie - she said she couldn't find one so I need to try to find one

  • In line to pick up Sam from school, called babysitter and left message

  • Right when Sam walks up to the car and I need to help her get in, got call from Adam - he is just waiting for a tow and do Sam and I want to bring him some lunch and we can picnic outside on the grass near the bike? Nice idea, but can't do it today

  • Off on to the next set of errands - on the way to get gas, got call back from babysitter: yes, she can do it, so now I have to get her the address of P.'s house and time she should come which I'm not sure about yet

  • Got gas (yikes, those prices!)

  • While pumping, got call from friend A. which I ignored for the moment due to complete overwhelmption (nice word, huh?)

  • Burger King for lunch, at Sam's request - it was near Target, our next stop

  • At the Burger King indoor playground, I met a mother with twin girls - she was told they would be a boy and girl at 15 weeks but only found out they were two girls when they were delivered, despite the fact that she had an ultrasound once a week throughout the last half of her pregnancy! They never figured it out because the babies were just too squished up in there to see! Holy shit! My only consolation is that all of that happened in Japan, where I'm going to assume they have their heads up their asses to retain my sanity. (Her husband was stationed there but they were evacuated because of the nuclear plant.) All in all, an interesting lunch.

  • On the 100 yard drive from Burger King to Target, got the call from Adam that I’d need to pick him up from the mechanic where they were towing the bike in about an hour - actually, I think it took 3 phone calls because he had to call me back once and because I had to pull the car over and get out of the car to hear him because Sam had decided to throw a tantrum because I locked the car doors - she said, "You locked me in!!!!!!!!" even though she is strapped down to that car seat with a gazillion buckles and belts - interesting, how a four-year-old mind works

  • Enjoyable trip to Target for a sleeping bag for Sam, which she needed by tomorrow if our Atlas movie plans work out - picked up new leotard and tights for Sam as long as we were there - that girl is growing!

  • On the way out, Sam says, "I'm hungry" even though we finished lunch less than 15 minutes earlier - I guess she really is growing - bought her a bag of chips - some days are just junk food days

  • In the car, called Adam to let him know we were on the way

  • Drove 11 miles to pick up Adam at the mechanic - luckily, no traffic, or this could have been an hour long event

  • Sam napped in car

  • Once we got to the mechanic, had to wait for Adam, so I napped in car

  • Came home with Adam and found that I had left the dog outside for over 3 hours - since I had left to pick up Sam from school - ooops, sorry to my neighbors for what I'm sure was a lot of barking

  • It's now 3pm and I remembered that phone call from friend A. and checked - she had left me a message about meeting at the park with the kids at 3:30 - and on this beautiful day, with Sam having already napped, that was a definite GO

  • While packing up gear for the park, heard the jingle of the ice cream truck - he usually comes at 8:30pm when kids should be in bed and I had promised Sam that if he came at a decent hour we would get ice cream - so we got ice cream!

  • While eating ice cream on the front porch, called friend P. to decide on logistics for movie and dinner tomorrow – she told me I should check with her husband, C. because he thinks we need to get to the theater early

  • Noticed that I had Burger King on my white shirt - went inside to change while Sam finished up her Bubble Gum Popsicle (when will she learn that the blue one is not always the yummiest one?)

  • On the way to the park, called friend A. to let her know we were coming and received two calls from car dealerships which I didn’t answer

  • On the way to the park, called C. and decided on logistics for dinner and movie

  • At the park, learned that friend A. has recently begun to consider homeschooling - we had a lot to talk about!

  • Many bumps and bruises at the park today, for some reason - maybe the kids were having a frantic day, too

  • On the way home from the park, called babysitter but she couldn’t take the info because she was driving so I had to call later

  • Home at 5pm - set Sam up in front of the iPad so I could use my computer for a few minutes without distraction - hadn't sat at it all day, with the exception of that one quick check when I got the message from Adam about his motorcycle - thank god for the Droid, which kept me connected all that time

  • Wrote up most of this Day in the Life

  • Called babysitter and left a message

  • Went online to buy the tickets for Atlas and found out that I had the movie time wrong, but I figured a way to work it out and bought tickets anyway - but now I needed the babysitter at a different time

  • Called babysitter again and got her the correct time and location - finally!

  • Sent email to friends and Adam confirming plans for movie tomorrow

  • Spaced out in front of Facebook and email for 15 minutes

  • Took care of the one other thing on my calendar for the day – a minor financial transaction

  • Cooked dinner - it was relaxing, even though I had to work around a sink full of dirty dishes since I had never unloaded the washer from last night (and yes, there was a sink full of dirty dishes even though we ate fast food for breakfast and lunch because I was still catching up with the dishes from the weekend!)

  • Ate dinner - unfortunately, one of my failed experiments (salmon with grapes - yuck)

  • Put Sam to bed - she read 3 pages of one of her Little Bear Early Reader books to me - one of the highlights of my day

  • Unpacked and checked out the sleeping bag - it will work for tomorrow

  • Took tags off new leotard and tights and put them in the laundry basket

  • Adam set up the new coffee maker and did the dishes and brought all the clean laundry up from the basement, leaving me time to finish this blog post before I head off to watch last week's episode of Survivor and maybe read an interview or two in 100 Voices before I go to sleep

  • Really, really good day. Really, really tired.


 

 

 

 

 

 

8 comments:

  1. It's a good thing Michelle Obama doesn't know what you fed that kid today. She'd probably try to sic DCFS on you :-p

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  2. I'm trying to figure out how you had time to do anything, given how much you typed!

    Tom

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  3. Decided I was going to do a Day in the Life in pictures last night!
    Saw yours this morning. It made me laugh.
    Wanted to report that we set up our new coffee maker last night, too, but it didn't work! Darn it! Serious underwhelmption.
    Also decided that drinking cappuccino is like a little celebration, and that I must celebrate the start of every new day from now on.
    Well I will once the new cappuccino maker gets here.

    Have another really, really good day!

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  4. Lynne, I realized after I hit "post" that I had forgotten to link to you in the part about the dog.

    I might have to take up cappuccino, too. But only if it tastes here like it does in Rome. Let me know what you think when you get a working machine.

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  5. Hah! I trust they will talk to you before buying the ultrasonic birdhouse.

    I'll keep you posted on the cappuccino maker. I'm guessing for the paltry $100 we're willing to shell out on the experiment, reminiscences of Rome is not within its abilities.

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  6. Wow, what a day! I am impressed that Sam can read the Little Bear books. Those aren't very phonics friendly, are they? I have a few, but just like many of the other so-called readers, I find they can be confusing for very early readers. Do you pre-teach all the non-phonetic words, or has Sam mastered all the phonograms already?

    I've had more luck with the Books to Remember series from Flyleaf Publishing, to complement what K. does in Montessori school on early reading. In case you are interested in them, here's their web site: www.flyleafpublishing.com. (You have to order from them directly; they don't sell via Amazon.com.)

    These are 24-42 page paperback books, with beautiful art, good stories with about 1-3 sentences per page, and entirely phonics controlled. The books in the first series can be read without knowledge of phonograms ("ee", "a-e" and so on); the next two series introduce one or two phonograms per book. Each book also has a list of decodable and sight words.

    Of all the phonics-based book series I've tried (about a half dozen), these are THE best!

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  7. Busy, busy day. Planning for a dinner and movie out with friends will top off the week nicely. Enjoy!

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  8. Heike, I agree. I bought them because they were supposed to be a step up from the BOB books, and phonics friendly. (I think I got this from TWTM.) But they have tons of "puzzle words" and exceptions like "ow" sounding like a long "O" instead of the standard phonogram as in cow or bow. (Sam does know many, many phonograms.) They also have way too many sentences per page. If I had known, I probably would not have bought them.

    However, I'm glad I made the mistake because apparently, motivation is more important than clarity for Sam. She is in love with Little Bear and she wants to read these books. She never got through more than a couple of BOB books but these are interesting to her. So she is struggling through them, and learning her sight words, and learning about exceptions, and she seems to be doing fine.

    Reading three pages can take 10 minutes. I'm not saying she is reading fluently. But she can work out most of the words, and she actually allows me to help her when she can't figure one out, which is a great thing for her. Usually, with Sam, difficulty means frustration and giving up. But not with these books. She wants to know what they say and she puts out effort and accepts help. Yay!

    Also, after she reads a page a few times, she half-memorizes it, so she moves into trying to read the sentences as whole thoughts. She is picking up a lot of things about reading that you can't learn from reading single words or even super-simple books like the BOB books. She is also learning to use the context of the sentence to help her figure out a strange word. Like "someday" - ug, that's a tough one, but if she can pronounce it phonetically (with the long o because of the silent e which she knows) then she might guess, and I think that's ok.

    So, they work for her.

    I've heard about the Books to Remember (also from TWTM, I think). I'll check them out, too. It would be good for Sam to be able to read a whole book like that without help. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete