all the news

It has been a little while since I last blogged. It has been a busy time around here the last couple of weeks. Work has been particularly bad lately and I have been going 4 days a week the last three weeks (which may not sound like a lot, but I am frequently working 10 to 12 hour days and I still bring work home). The boys aren't happy about this, but hopefully, it will ease up a bit soon. Also, our fridge broke and we have been dealing with that. A repairman came this morning to look at it and it is not worth fixing. I think it broke on Tuesday. By Wednesday night, it was clear that it was no good anymore and we had throw out everything in it. Ugh. We are all getting tired of eating cereal without milk and soup. I hate picking out new things like this but it must be done. Tomorrow, we will buy a new one for sure. Then we can buy groceries again. Hooray.
Also this week, we switched our gymnastics schedule. Porter has moved up to a new class, which makes him very nervous (the kids in his new class are very good, but he will come around). Now we go on Tuesday nights. Joe started playing indoor soccer and his games are right after gymnastics. We went to watch the first one on Tuesday. Porter and Dallin kept up constant noise while we watched. Sometimes they were jumping and yelling. Mostly they were commenting on the game. I know everyone around us was pretty amused to hear, "Dad isn't doing very good. He hasn't gotten any goals." and "Dad is wearing a red shirt and blue shorts." Dallin then announced really loudly that he had pooped in his diaper (if only I could get that child to use the potty). I took him to change his diaper and Porter came in every 30 seconds to give us an update, "Dad got kicked out of the game" . . . "Dad is just resting" . . . "someone else is resting now." Porter wants to play soccer now.
Porter had a field trip to the Museum of Natural History at the U on Monday. He has been there once before and so he considers himself something of an expert (the other kids had never been there before). Aside from his natural shyness, he said that he couldn't show the other kids around because they had to follow the teacher. He said that they drove by the courthouse on the way there and he told the kids sitting around him that it was my work. Unfortunately, someone else's mom works at Chuck-e-cheese and another one has a mom who purportly works at LegoLand (either there is a miscommunication or this mom doesn't live with her kids) and so Porter wins no coolness points with my lame job. I hadn't signed him up for the field trip (because I didn't know about it) so there was some concern that Porter wouldn't be able to go. Luckily, they called Joe and he gave permission (which was no small feat because the daycare people are afraid of Joe for some reason). After that near-miss, Porter makes me check at the front desk every morning when I drop them off to make sure that there aren't any field trips planned for that day.
Lately at daycare (and probably with kids everywhere), the mean thing to do is to tell someone that you are not their friend (it also happens at our house all the time. You know that someone is really upset with you when they are not your friend anymore). Porter's favorite little friend at daycare tells him this at least once a week. It kind of breaks my heart to think of someone hurting his feelings, especially when Porter tells me about these things and truly doesn't understand why his friend would say that to him.
Porter has been lucky in friendship thus far. When we first moved here, Vanessa lived across the street from us and she and Porter were the best of friends for about two years, until she moved away. Even though she sometimes bossed him around, etc. It was generally a good relationship for both of them. They consistently loved each other and wanted to play together. Meanwhile, at daycare, Porter started a friendship with one little girl named Marissa. At daycare, they were always together. Porter still remembers dancing around the classroom with her. As he got older, he got another friend named Gabriel. Again, it was a mutually beneficial relationship. When we would get to daycare in the morning, if Porter's class was outside, Gabriel would run to the fence and he and Porter would start whispering to each other and giggling. When Gabriel moved up to the four year old class before Porter, it broke Porter's heart. It apparently had the same affect on Gabriel. The staff had to bring them to play together for a little while everyday so that they would be okay. When Gabriel stopped coming to daycare (I don't know why), Porter was devastated. Even though it was more than a year ago, Porter still wishes that Gabriel would come back. He did find a new friend though, named Sage. Sage was also a sweet little boy, who was always excited to see Porter. If Porter was upset about coming to daycare, Sage would come up to him and try to hug him and see if he could make Porter feel better, he yelled at the other kids for laughing at Porter once when he fell out of his chair, etc.
But now, it seems that Porter has outgrown Sage and has moved to this new friend. I know the new friend is just a little boy and I shouldn't be upset. I also know that I am only hearing Porter's point of view and I know that he is pretty sensitive and can blow things out of proportion but I hate that he hurts Porter's feelings so often. I wish that Porter was the kind of kid who can handle more than one or two friends at a time so that he wouldn't take it so hard when this one little boy is tired of him or just doesn't want to play. This is part of the reason that I decided that Porter should go to school in our neighborhood and not at the daycare's kindergarten or at a charter school. There are a couple of kids that Porter plays with a bit in the neighborhood and I think they will be better friends for Porter than what he has right now at daycare. Plus, this will give him a chance to meet more kids who live nearby.
Dallin's age group is also not immune to this defriending business. I know that the kids all spend so much time together that they are often more like siblings than friends and so I understand that even the best of friends can have fights. Dallin has finally found a best friend all his own. Until recently, Porter was his best friend and Dallin considered Porter's friends his friends. Now Dallin has Koen. Dallin talks of nothing but Koen at home. About the things Koen wears, what Koen ate for lunch, Koen and Dallin's efforts to avoid someone at daycare who is mean to them, etc. Dallin has other friends too and he seems to like them and play with them but Koen is his favorite. Again, it is clearly mutual. Once, when I dropped Dallin off, several of the kids came over to talk to him and, like a little bodyguard, Koen shooed them all away, saying that Dallin was his friend. Anyway, the other day, Koen must have gotten mad at Dallin for something because he told Dallin that he was not his friend anymore. It hurt Dallin's feelings so much that he told Koen that he would have to have soap in his mouth for saying naughty things to him. Luckily, Dallin and Koen were reconciled by the next morning.