We Love You, Miss Hannigan...

Hannah riding her bike in front of the house.


The few, the proud, at the tee ball tournament.

Girls watching the tee ball tournament.

Making fruit salad with Hannah's class. Yum, yum!

This morning I told the kids that I was beginning to feel a little bit like Miss Hannigan. Every single day since the beginning of life with kids (or at least talking kids), the same conversations happen over and over and over. (They don't all speak or ask in unison, but it was just easier to type "kids" rather than their names. They are all about equally guilty in their lack of manners. However, Hannah, when she is fresh in the morning has the best manners. She will often times--without coercion--say, "Thank you, Mommy, for the lovely breakfast". She does get a heavy dose of manners from her teachers).

Mom: "What would you like for breakfast?"

Kids: "I want (fill in the blank for breakfast item of choice)".

Mom: "I would like or may I have (breakfast item), please".

Kids: "I would like (breakfast item), please".

Time passes. Breakfast items are passed out...

Mom: "What should you say now?"

Kids: "Thank you, Mommy".

Mom: "Your welcome".

Very similar conversations happen all day long. Not all of them pertain to food.

Kid: "I want my headband!"

Mom: "Can I have my headband, please?"

Kid: "Turn it louder, Mommy!"

Mom: "Can you turn the music up, please?"

Kid: (After a question I've asked) "Huh?"

Mom: "Excuse me? Not 'Huh?', please".

All day, every day. All of the time. It is so ingrained in my natural response to children that I do it to every child that comes to our house and with kids at school. It isn't all in vain. I have gotten complimented several times on the two big kids' manners when they are away from home. But there are times when I hear them conversing with friends at school that I cringe. They spend a lot of time at school and I know they are not going to speak in the same way to other kids as they do to adults (and I don't expect them to), but it feels like a huge obstacle in my quest to have good manners be a part of their nature. They often repeat what I ask them to in this little chorus that sounds vaguely Orphan Anniesque and I hope I'm not creating exactly the opposite of our goal. Are they just appeasing me? Probably. There are times when they are in such a bad mood that they do not want to use good manners and I am screaming at them "Say please!" (I'm thinking, "Right now, dammit!"). Yeah, in those moments I need to let it go.

After week 2 without Daddy, we are all tired. We are so ready for him to be home tonight and thankfully he is not far enough away to be jet lagged. After so much time without him traveling much, I am realizing that it wasn't just that he was gone a LOT and that the kids were younger that made all of his travel so challenging on us last year, but it was a combination of all of it. We are ready for summer and a break from the busy last few weeks of school. We are still saying goodbye to lots of friends and missing family so much. The weekend looks fairly quiet, which is good. Just two more weeks of school, 7 more weeks until we have some TSE visitors (yippee!), and (in a surprising twist) 3 1/2 more months until we make our first trip to Hong Kong as a family! We are so thankful that the plans we have been debating for months have worked out. So excited! It is so hard to believe that after all of the waiting and anticipating, we still have 6 more months before we head back to The States. We are so excited about everything, but we'll take one thing at a time. For now, we'll just look forward to the calm of summer (I'm intentionally foreshadowing calmness...I can will it to happen, right? No more spider bites requiring hospital and pharmacy visits too numerous to mention). Ahhhh, summer. An almost blank calendar makes me happy!

Daddy had the girls and a friend out riding bikes and gave a short motorcycle riding lesson to the youngest TSE. This motorcycle joined our family just before Nathan turned 3 when a neighbor passed it along.