I have my fricking period and I almost ripped off the heads of all those unlucky enough to be standing near me in the faculty room when I saw that AGAIN someone had left a tiny bit of coffee in the pot and then put it back on the heated burner, resulting in THAT SMELL. That one that makes me want to rip off heads. DON'T DO THAT.

Ahem.

My basement is still full of water - one solid week now - and we have forgotten the time when we had solid chunks of free time in the evening, as our new life involves endless vacuuming and towel changing. The laundry is hopelessly backed up because doing a load of regular things throws off the towel rotation and makes me cross, so Wes has been banned from laundry-doing most of the time. We have also encountered our second cold virus in a two week span. And the teenager is home from college for the week and sleeping in the dank basement. And I had 150 student conference reports due last week.

All that said, we are doing fine.

- I won a birthday party for Beckett at the school auction. And I only had to stare daggers into one set of parents! No, really. I did chase them off, just a little, by helpfully pointing out that if they outbid me they would only be $50 under the actual value and that really wasn't such a great deal so they should probably let me go ahead and get the $100 under the value that I was getting. And they laughed and went away and I stalked the bid sheet even more crazily. And later found that the actual value was $150 more than I paid. So SCORE on that. It's at a popular cultural children's institution in our boro and provides food and cake. After last year's insanely perfect cupcakes and overstuffed house, I am thrilled by this, even if it means we will have to hash out a small guest list.

- Getting ready for the day and getting out of the house and going to school suddenly became easier again. Which brings me back around to the best parenting advice I know, from my college roommate and blog commenter, gertielover: WAIT A WEEK. Whatever it is, whether it's driving you crazy or making you ecstatic... it will change.

The sticker chart may be helping. Also that I am trying not to dig in my heels too crazily on anything, trying to be a little flexible when I can. It's not that we weren't giving him 5 and 1 minute warnings before. I would warn, he would agree and then when the time would come he would scream, NO! and I would insist because I WARNED YOU. So now I let HIM be the one to decide a little. I think before I used to think we would never get away from the TV/guitar/cookie or whatever if I let him bargain. But bargaining works well with him. So far he is true to his word and if he says he will take a bath after he plays guitar for one more minute, he usually comes along compliantly to the bath. Usually. Always with the CONTROL ISSUES, these toddlers.

Also trying REALLY hard to get him in bed earlier, since there is almost always a 1-2 hour chat/sing/read period before he falls asleep. We are also trying really hard not to go back in the room no matter how cutely he calls for more hugs and kisses. Unless we hear blood flowing, we don't go back upstairs. But I will admit we have weakened on this considerably during his latest cough.

I don't know why he is suddenly OK with going to school again. He gets a sticker for it at night, but I think it is more complex than that. He seems happy about it after several weeks of weeping about it. I think it's possible that he suddenly realized that full time school was happening all the time now (he was very part time all fall, just starting full time in January) and he missed all his home play time. He just so badly wanted to stay home. But I think we may have made it through that bit for now.

- I love Team Umizoomi. It is my new favorite show. I cannot understand why it is on regular Nick instead of Nick Jr. because my DVR catches all these teen-feeling commercials before and after that make me crazy. But I still love it. Deeply. A recent Times article pointed out that young children are more capable of learning elementary math than we give them credit for. We all push reading skills as the first big thing but really they can do math so much more easily. They can count objects, add and take away objects, etc. Really made us recognize all the ways that number excite Beck and how we can encourage that. This show does a GREAT job of this. I think of it as Super Why for math (there is a problem to solve, etc), but I find it possibly more awesome.

- The ballerina phase is hardcore at our house. Beck owns three tutus. Remind me to post more about my experiences with boy tutus in the near future.

If you haven't seen this, you should. Have I ever mentioned what a sucker I am for songs that tell me everything is going to be alright? I can't think of any now to explain what I mean. Um... like, Three Little Birds. "Every little thing gonna be alright." Music to my fricking ears. Tell me again. Modest Mouse, "Alright, already, we all float on, OK, don't worry, we all float on..." YES! This video is awesome all on its own but I love the song title (which flips down at the end) the most.