The Bell Tolls for Thee

It was an end of an era last night in the Yerem household. 

Neil's been nurturing a snowball in the freezer since Jan. 2, 2011. We had a surprise bit of snow, and Neil made himself a good-sized snowball and stashed it in the freezer. "I'm going to keep it forever!"

Great.

Smack dab in the middle of the middle shelf of our freezer sat his snowball in a plastic container -- hand-packed snow and surrounding bits of grass that came with it. 

Neil would check on it, take it out and admire it and then put it back. January, February, March... I finally scooted it over so actual frozen food could fit on this shelf in the freezer. This is not some Sub Zero monstrosity. This is your average household kitchen freezer attached to a fridge. We needed the space.

April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January, February and into March... The snowball has lived behind frozen fish sticks, popsicles, Pizza Rolls, green beans and various other things for the past 14 1/2 months.

Last night, after being hit in the toe by a frozen block of something falling out of the freezer, I started rearranging shelves. The snowball container was there, but the last remnants of the snowball was only about the size of a marble...

The snowball's time had come.

Neil is a helper

So I'm working at the school book fair after school. The boys -- mine and their friend Travis -- are working on homework in a corner.

Within five minutes, Travis comes over and tells me he has finished all his homework. Now, Travis had a lot of work. The week's homework plus the work he missed in class yesterday when he was out. I'm pretty sure he hasn't finished his homework.

"Let me see it," I say and walk over to where they were working.

Neil sees me coming and proudly jumps up and shows me the pages he finished for Travis, "I did the squirrel pages!"

Great.

Today's life lesson is about cheating.

Cold is good

Five days after the last post, our fridge was back thanks to a very helpful repairman. I'm very please with myself for NOT trying to fix it ourselves. If I had followed the advice of the one guy who fixed his fridge, via Google, I would have ordered the wrong $200 part.

The control panel did go bad and now Neil has a nice, useless, hunk of electronics to add to his homemade Transformer costume he's been working on. Neil has been collecting boxes, plastic tubs, etc., and piecing together his best guess at what all the new Transformers are looking like. My contribution has been to cut finger holes and I believe I'm on the hook to paint it when he gets all the parts.

Early to school

A week home sick has given Neil a new appreciation for school. He's up early, dressed within minutes. He has his backpack, lunch pail and sweatshirt lined up and ready to go. And each morning he asks me if he is going to school, just to make sure. He does not want to miss it.

Vocabulary enrichment

Neil's new favorite word is "buttocks." Thank you iCarly. I appreciate it.

Neil loves the sound of it: "buttocks"-- "buuuuuttttocks"-- "buttoooooooocks"-- "buuuuttttttoooooccccckkksssss"

Try it. It is mildly entertaining.

Of course, for Neil it is massivly entertaining. I've caught him humming a little buttocks song as he plays a video game or as he's building a LEGO thingy.

I've even heard him sitting a Clone on another Star Wars-related character and saying, "How do you like my buttocks?"

The junior high years are going to be very long and very painful for mom.

Put down the scissors

Best moment working in the kindergarten class yesterday:

During a discussion of baby penguins and how they hatch from eggs, one little boy informed the class that "all babies come from seaweed." The teacher paused.... where to go with that one...

"My dad says you need seaweed to make babies..." the little boy repeated.

Teacher was not gonna go there.

Worst moment:

When the teacher tells me my son has used his child-safe scissors to cut the shirt on the little girl who sits next to him. Apparently she turned around and he went to work... She didn't even know until her mom saw it at home. Great.

Cutting is big with the K-boys. There's been pants, t-shirts and various degrees of cutting going on. Nice of Neil to kick it up a notch and help the girl next to him. Thankfully, her mother was kind and gracious and accepted our apologies.

But now my kid is the one who cut so-and-so's shirt in kindergarten... he's a keeper.

Neil shares his lunch

It's never good when the school office calls your cell phone.

It's worse when you get there and you see the custodian heading out of the office and he's wearing haz-mat gloves and carrying a bag of towels headed to the trash.

Oh please don't let that be my kid, I pray silently.

But you know it was my kid, right? He threw up all over the office. There was the lovely sent of hard-core sanitizer as I got to the front of the office.

Neil was wrapped up in a beach towel. His clothes were still on but were covered in orange bits and various other items from his stomach.

"I threw up." Really?

"Twice." Great.

Do I bring scented candles on Monday as a proper sorry-my-kid-threw-up-where-you-work gift?

On the way home Neil tells me he earned a Caught-Being-Good (It's a little ticket school staff hands out when kids are doing what they are supposed to be doing or if they go above that. The tickets go into a bin and at the end of the month names are drawn for prizes. One of the prizes is In-N-Out gift certificates. My kids will do most anything for those.).

Neil is really proud of that Caught-Being-Good. 

And what did he do to earn it?

"I was eating healthy. I ate all my carrots, as fast as I could. I wanted to be the first to get the Caught-Being-Good from the lunch lady," Neil explained.

Would those be the orange bits he just hurled all over the office?

Ice skating

I took the kids ice skating with friends today. I gave Jack the camera and told him to video Neil as he made his way around the rink. As you will see he took his job very seriously ...

Sing on little man

So be prepared. I'm uploading video. This one is of Neil singing "I'm gettin' 'Nuttin for Christmas." Thank you kindergarten program. I cannot get this out of my head.

Jokester

Neil: "Hey Mom! I've got a joke for you."

Me: "OK."

Neil: "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Me: "I don't know. Why?"

Neil: "To get to the other slide."

He then dissolves into laughter... "the other slide. He likes that one better. Don't you get it Mom?"

Oh, I get it. Wait till you're old enough to get it, my man.

Not quite a 100 bucks

I heard this strange noise in the middle of the night. I went to investigate.

It was a little boy digging through his bed trying to find the tooth fairy pillow. (It had fallen between the bed and the wall.)

He fished out the treasure the Tooth Fairy had left.

"Five dollars!" ...

"and GOLD!!" (a gold dollar coin)

He jumped up to get his wallet from his sock drawer (that's where all tycoons keep their money, I believe).

"Five bucks!"

He crawled back under the covers and was fast asleep, dreaming no doubt about how far those 5 bucks would go...

Neil's first tooth

You thought I wasn't going to make it today, didn't you?

Neil lost his first tooth this morning! He was sitting on the stairs right after he woke up. It's his sunny little spot where he can see downstairs, but he can take his time waking up before he joins us. 

Out fell his tooth, right into his hand.

He is very excited. He thinks the Tooth Fairy might leave 100 bucks.

If you're 5, you should dream big.