French school is DANGEROUS, y’all.
Check out my latest post on the New Orleans Moms Blog and discover the pitfalls of an immersion education for your precious children!!!
Immersion Schools: A Dangerous Proposition | New Orleans Moms Blog.
The 12407 club
It’s very exclusive, this club.
Second grade!
Look at those shiny new sneakers! Oliver’s kill me. They’re so dang white. I kept thinking he only had socks on. Bless his heart, he’s super proud of them.
I walked them into school today, and Miles had kind of a hard time. It’s not even that he was scared of the unknown, he just didn’t want summer to end. I feel ya, buddy. I should be celebrating the start of school, but honestly, I’m not pumped about homework and the daily hour and a half commute across town to pick up the kids.
Oh, you want to see other first day of school posts? Sure!
(Wait, I just have to post this one pic, from their first day of prek-3, four years ago!)
My boys
Fun with friends
One of my coworkers, Deborah, came through New Orleans today with her family, and the boys and I met them all for an adventure. I haven’t seen her since we were in Barcelona, so it was exciting to see her again.
First, we braved the boiling heat to meet them at the streetcar stop on St. Charles. We stopped for fun pictures at the steps of One Shell Square first.
Then, we met up with them and made her daughter, Vera, take pics with the boys, since they were all wearing their Wapuu shirts. Meanwhile, her son Isaac closely scrutinized the boys to figure out how best to tell them apart. (I will be asking him for tips.)
We got on the streetcar and had a great ride down St. Charles.
Until they kicked us off and made us get on a bus. At first we were disappointed, but then we realized it was air conditioned, and the kids got to stand up, and hey, the bus is really better than the streetcar!
We got to the park where Deborah and I sat on a bench in the shade while the kids played. And she realized her hat was still on the bus. Ack!
If you look closely you can see Vera putting her stuffed animals in a swing. (Foreshadowing!)
We made them pose by a tree.
Got back on the streetcar and bus to go have lunch at Slice. Yum! I bought a Groupon on the way. Handy!
After we ordered, Vera inquired about the whereabouts of her stuffed animals. ACK! Still in the swing back at Audubon Park!
Deborah zoomed off in an Uber to retrieve the animals – luckily they were safe! while I hung out with the kids and stuffed ourselves with yummy pizza and salad.
After lunch, we headed back to the streetcar, and then to our car. I was sad our adventure had come to the end. I was very tempted to swipe Vera and take her home with me. She’s adorable and sassy. But I left her with her family, alas.
The end!
Say what you will
…but if buying a selfie stick means the boys not only sit still for pics but actually want to be in them, then it’s worth the embarrassment of admitting that I bought a selfie stick.
Another one bites the dust
The tooth fairy has been very busy this week. She needs to get some more golden dollars, stat!
I need to figure out how many teeth have been lost this summer. I’d guess ten, at least.
Just little things
I keep thinking of little things to say, then I forget. Let’s see if I can remember.
- Went swimming last night with the girls. Adults only, had festive beverages from the club’s bar. Too bad our membership runs out at the end of next week. There’s going to be a lot of evening swimming in the next two weeks, I hope!
- School starts Monday! Second grade. Nuts.
- The attic is getting insulated tomorrow, just in time, since it’s about a thousand degrees here.
- I started running again, even though I am still dealing with Achilles tendinitis. I’m trying to do my stretches, icing, and rolling my calf muscle in hopes that I’ll survive the Jazz Half Marathon at the end of October.
- Helpful hint: Don’t put the digital food scale too close to the hot element on your flat top stove. Unless you want a new digital food scale.
- Promised I’d take the boys to see Pixels while we have to be out of the house for the attic stuff. I am not optimistic about the quality.
- Took the boys to the dentist last week – no cavities!
Some pics ‘n’ stuff:
Oliver uses his head:
What is the deal with these? I have seen “Asia” like eight times, but never a Linus, Oliver, nor Miles. But I had to buy these when I saw them both at Target. Sucker.
Saying bye to friends
I went to a goodbye party last night for some friends who are leaving New Orleans. It was sad, of course, but also full of laughs.
Especially watching old people my age try to figure out selfie sticks.
Those are all triplet and quad mamas, giving Robin and Bryan a send off before they head out of town.
The Gates moved here about five years ago, as part of the Hornets/Pelicans coaching staff. Thanks to them, the boys got to attend a couple of NBA games, which was pretty awesome.
Their triplets were born quite prematurely, but they’re all healthy four year olds (what?) now, quite a bit bigger than when I photographed them.
Aw, squishes!
Anyway, they’re just great people and hopefully they’ll find themselves in New Orleans again one day.
Linus update
Linus decided that he actually didn’t want the Star Wars backpack and lunchbox he’d picked out last week. (Because the lunchbox wasn’t rectangular like his brothers’. Okay.) So we returned them to Toys R Us and headed to Target, since Toys R Us was pretty picked clean.
He ended up with…
A not-rectangular Mario lunchbox and backpack! Sigh. (Well, at least it’s more rectangular than Darth Vader’s head.)
We also went to the dentist so they could tell us how much it would cost to take care of his yellow tooth. Turns out it’s not as expensive as I’d thought it might be (I think it would be a veneer) so his smile won’t look like this for too much longer:
Well, it’ll still be goofy, just a bit whiter.
The 90s #tbt
In a few weeks, the New Orleans Moms Blog is throwing the annual Moms Night Out. It’s really fun, and this year’s theme is “90s Prom.”
As one of the organizers, I’ll be wearing a t-shirt, not a prom dress, but I’m making my outfit as authentically 90s as possible. Well, early 90s. High school.
But I’m somewhat pleased to see that my 90s style wasn’t all that bad. I mean, it could have been much worse.
Well, okay, I did have “the Rachel.” This is my first college apartment, 1994.
But other than that, I mean, okay, cut off jean shorts were a constant.
and Birkenstocks!
Sure, there was that ill-advised perm in 1993, but I learned my lesson.
But can you blame me? Obviously I could rock a perm, as evidenced by the bottom row of pics:
By the time the late 90s rolled around, we were living in London, my hair was long and straight (thank you, English dry air) and probably my glasses were the worst thing about me. Or those ubiquitous black slides. Hmm.
Well. I hope you enjoyed this short trip down memory lane. Just wait til you see my outfit for Mom’s Night Out!
It’s gone!
After 7.5 years (kind of a lie, we really put it up probably 6.5 years ago) we finally took down the baby gate.
I know it seems weird – do 7 year olds really need a baby gate? Well, our living room is upstairs, and the floors are wood. And at the bottom of the (hard, wooden) stairs is a ceramic tile floor.
And with the amount of running and wrestling and general tomfoolery that goes on upstairs, I just felt better having the gate there. But I’ve forbidden socks upstairs now, and the boys are a pretty cautious sort, so I feel okay about it.
Hopefully we won’t end up with any more fractured skulls.
pyjammy dot blog 