A week in the life

I'm finally able to sit down to write, albeit at midnight. I have to add photos and will get to that tomorrow/wed.

Thursday Mateo had a great day at school even though he had a hard time saying goodbye. Friday we had no school so I was able to enjoy a day "off". I worked out and then took a nap. I realized the nap was more from a long week than it was b/c of the workout. Saturday was the last day of Mateo's sports class. As usual, no love for the Coach but he showed some serious love for mini-me Lacrosse:



I again took a nap and FINALLY felt rested like I haven't felt in years. I guess I need a couple of naps/week to recharge. That night we snuggled up in bed and watched James and the Giant Peach:



I fell asleep before the kids. I tried to keep Mateo in the bed with me (hey, I'm lonely!) but he decided to leave by saying, "ok mami, I take a nap", which meant he wanted to go back to his crib. Alone in my king-size bed.

Sunday Chayla went to an Orchid in MD and had a blast. She came back with caramel popcorn, pumpkins, a carving kit, and apple cider. Her friend's Dad is very generous. Mateo and I headed to VA to say goodbye and good luck to my dear friend Julia who was headed to Quantico for FBI training. Then we had a chance to play with Stacey & Clooney. They accompanied us to Target, where I was inspired by the cool displays so I bought some stuff to decorate the house. After work, I played with Mateo outside. I don't know how but many of the neighborhood kids ended up in our yard and a "leaf fight" ensued. We had a lot of fun gathering and throwing the beautiful leaves from the 2 huge trees in our yard. We then raked them up into bags that look like pumpkins; you'll never see kids work so fast to clean a yard(later that night I found lots of bits of leaves in Mateo's wild mane of hair, and even better, in his diaper & butt crack!) Then we took that spider web cotton to cover the bushes with, as Mateo calls it, "espider aweb":

Chayla turned in her 3rd Native American project. We battled it out with this one. It encompassed so much info that she didn't know how to categorize it all. Luckily for her, she's incredibly organized and creative so the end result was beautiful:

Mateo went to school today and didn't even look back to say goodbye. I think he has finally warmed up to his school. Although by the expression in his school pictures you'd think he was in prison. All the pics that were taken were the same, serious, I-look-just-like-my-dad face. This is what he wore the day after the last debate:



On our way to school I give him his usual pep talk and he was excited to start his day. When I paid attention to what he was saying as I drove, it turned out he was walking about Go, Diego, Go! He said, "Diego and Alicia. And baby jaguar. They find shark and octupus." They sure do. I was wowed by his summarizing skills. This evening I asked him to clean up his Mr. Potato Head a few times. He finally did. He quietly came over to me and said, "I'm sorry mom". I asked him what he was sorry for and he responded, "no clean Potato Head." Que lindo. On the flip side, when he doesn't get what he wants he says, or screams, "that's so mean!"

As for the house, the electricity is fixed and we have heat. We actually had the misfortune of spending the coldest night of the week w/o heat. The bathroom sink broke and I cut my finger but someone replaced it today. Tomorrow starts the renovation of the kitchen floor. I'm not excited about having our fridge in the dining room and limited access to the stove. The up-side to this issue is that I will have to cook much less - something I truly appreciate.