It's my earwax, Mom!

Without going into the gory details, I have to tell you that we have to stay on top of Peter's personal hygiene habits. He's at that age where he can wipe himself, etc., but well, let's just leave it at that.
Anyway, he and I were just sitting here doing stuff on the computer together and I kept getting a whiff of something unpleasant. Finally, I said, "Peter, I think your bottom might stink."
He replied, "No, Mom, it's my earwax!"
AND, he was totally serious. I encouraged him to go into the bathroom and take advantage of the flushable wet wipes regardless of his earwax situation...

I Have a Website!

It is still under construction, but here is the address:
http://www.zumbanewjersey.com/

We're Going Out!

So I'm sitting here about to write this post...Caleb and Peter are riding their bikes outside, yes, in 31 degrees today. Anyway, I'm about to start and I think I hear someone crying outside so I go and look out the window. Sure enough, Peter is laying on the ground, his bike is splayed across the curb and he is tangled up with it...and with Caleb's bike, strangely. Neighbors are literally coming outside to see what the commotion is and one driver even stopped, turned around, and was coming back to check on him as I was walking out there. Apparently they collided together (the details on whose fault it was are kinda fuzzy) and Peter just lay motionless on the ground while wailing REALLY loud. I think it freaked the driver out, along with a few neighbors. All in a normal day for me.
ANYWAY, what I was going to say was that I got a sitter and Dave and I are going out to dinner tonight. Big deal, you say? Yeah, try this: we haven't been out together, alone, on a date, with NO kids since December 2006! I think I might actually go wash my hair.
I met this really nice lady at the Y who has a daughter who would love to babysit for us. She is almost 16 AND she's taken the Red Cross babysitting course. At this point I'd settle for anyone breathing so this is an added bonus!
Last month at one of my gyms, I won a $50 gift certificate to a fancy restaurant right here in town. It's called Restaurant L and I called to check if we needed a reservation and was told "No, you MUST have a reservation". My, my... Luckily, they had an opening for two at 7:30 tonight so I'm just hoping I can hold off my hunger 'til then.
AND, I looked at the menu online and it's obvious we won't get out of there for anything under $50, but that's OK. I'll just be glad to go somewhere alone with Dave and not be interrupted, hopefully! I'll just be happy if our service is better than this:

He can do it!

Despite it being 34 degrees outside, Peter and Caleb insist on riding their bikes. I don't let them go very far so they are fairly restricted to riding back and forth right in front of the house...Peter decided the other day to have his training wheels removed. Finally! He's been working on it a little each day. Sometimes he gets frustrated and gives up. Sometimes he just gets too cold and gives up. Today I glanced out and saw Caleb speedily riding by and then realized it wasn't Caleb. It was Peter! He can totally do it now!
I was so excited for him and he was so pleased with himself. Now we are trying to work on braking. Apparently his preferred method is dragging the tops of his shoes across the pavement. I think he knows how to brake but decides to drag his feet anyway. I'm guessing it's because he was upset with me last weekend for buying Sam and Caleb new tennis shoes and none for him. (His shoes fit fine)! This way they will be destroyed and I'll have to go buy him some new ones. But I digress...
I should also mention that he can only ride downhill so far. Our street is on a slight incline so he rides down to the left and then stops, gets off the bike, turns around and walks it back up and starts all over again. It's pathetically cute. I'm sure in a day or two he'll be able to do it both ways!

The hairy bottom

Here's a couple of pictures of Caleb "at play". The first two are with Legos. He designed a small laptop computer out of Legos. It even opens and closes just like a real one. Unfortunately it's NOT a real one; I've asked him to get busy with that. We could really use a laptop.The third photo is with this green squishy toy that he loves. I don't even know how to describe it; it looks like a green sea cucumber. Anyway, he can manipulate it in all kinds of ways and he came up with a new one he likes to call "the hairy bottom". So pretty, I know.
In case you're wondering, when he does stuff like this I'm not like, "Hold still! I've gotta snap a picture of that for my blog!"
It's more like he comes running into the room and says, "Mom! Look! A hairy bottom! Quick! Take a picture!" So we have lots of "interesting" pictures you guys have never even seen.

Westwood, NJ

I stopped at a Walgreens the other day after I taught a Zumba class. (Did somebody say ZUMBA?!?) Anyhoo, it's in this cute little town near me called Westwood. I decided to take a couple of pictures so you could see for yourself how cute the towns are around here. The downside of this is that when you want to go to say, Walgreens, there is no parking lot. You have to drive around and pray that you can find a coveted empty space on the street. And then you have to feed the meter. Luckily I knew I wouldn't be in the store long and in this town the meter gives you a whole hour for a dime! Now that's what I'm talkin' about!
Speaking of Zumba, (hehe) the new Zumba dvds are on sale TODAY and the infomercials begin tomorrow (Sat. Jan. 19th 7am on CNBC). Unfortunately, Guthy-Renker owns the rights to the dvds for the time being so I have to buy them like everyone else. No discount or anything so if anyone wants to send a donation to support my addiction, that would be OK. Oh, and in case you haven't tuned in in the last year, that picture at the top right is of me and Beto in Rockefeller Center. (Just in case y'all thought Dave had had a latin makeover or something).

Long time, no post

I haven't forgotten about y'all, I just haven't had anything exciting to write about...what could top meeting Caiba and having my picture taken with him!
So really, I have nothing interesting to say so I will tell you what I just had for lunch. I had buffalo hot wings and melba toast. Weird combination, you say? The hot wings were in my freezer and I just wanted them so I threw a handful in the toaster oven (I love that thing!) but I always want something crunchy with my lunch so I grabbed a packet of melba toast that we previously stole from the last restaurant we visited. I washed it all down with some pretzels, Hershey kisses and M&M's. I know, weird again.
Here's what I do: you take the pretzels (they have to be small waffle shaped pretzels) and spread them on a cookie sheet. Then you unwrap the kisses and place one on top of each pretzel square. Stick 'em in the oven at low heat for just a few minutes to make the kisses soften up. After you take them out, plop an M&M on top of the kiss and squish it down a little bit. You can wait 'til they cool or just throw them in your mouth like me. If I hadn't eaten them all, I'd take a picture and post it for ya. This is something I make after a holiday when they are clearancing out the holiday kisses and M&Ms. Yesterday I bought Christmas M&M's and kisses for like 52 cents per big package. Luckily the pretzels were on sale, too! It's a great activity to do with the kids but then you have to share...
See, aren't you so glad you tuned in for this post?!?
We've been having trouble getting the kids down for bed at night. The other night Peter kept coming out, etc. I told him to lay down, close his eyes and count to 300. I promised him that he would be in Dreamland by the time he finished. (Unfortunately, though, instead of Dreamland the word that came out of my mouth was "Fantasyland"). Anyway, I guess Peter was really looking forward to visiting this place called Fantasyland so he got right to work. TWO minutes later he came back out and was VERY upset. He was in tears and told me that I was a big fat liar AND that I was a grown up. (Apparently grown ups are not supposed to be big fat liars). He was quite distraught so I asked him if he counted to 300. (How could a 6 yr. old count to 300 in less than 2 minutes)? He assured me that yes, he had counted to 300 and again, I am a big fat liar. I told him, "Oops, did I say 300? I meant to say 3,000!" So I told him to go back to bed and close his eyes and try counting to three thousand and surely it would work this time.
FIVE minutes later he comes back, all in tears again. He is really upset now that his mom, who is a grown up, is still a big fat liar. I asked him if he had counted to three thousand. He said yes and I said it's been less than 5 minutes so really, who's the big fat liar here? He was still so upset with me but somehow got himself to sleep after this. A few minutes later, Sam knocks on my door and comes in. He's overheard this whole thing and tells me he counted to 300 and it didn't work. I told him to continue to 3,000 and GO TO BED!
My kids are SO tired in the morning; I have to drag them out of bed and they tell me how they're too tired to get up, so why can't they just fall right to sleep at night?! I fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow. And why are they only tired on weekday mornings? Why do I have to DRAG them out of bed on weekdays but on weekENDS, they pop right up at 7am?!!!
Ironically, I'm off to take a nap now and let those hot wings settle...so don't anyone call and wake me up or I'll make you count to 3,000!

Yu-Gi-Oh Regional Tournament

**I forgot the camera so had to take pics with my phone. Sorry for the picture quality!

Saturday was a special day. Sam has been waiting months to go to and participate in a Yu-Gi-Oh regional tournament in Edison, NJ. Dave took him to a Yu-Gi-Oh event in Edison a few months ago and Sam really enjoyed himself but he's never been in any kind of tournament or anything. SO, he's been saving up (with the help of Christmas money, too) to enter the bi-annual regional tournament that was held on Saturday. It is about an hour away and it was always assumed that Dave would take him. UNTIL we remembered that Dave had a dentist appt. scheduled at the same time! SO, that left me to take him and, luckily, I found someone to watch Caleb and Peter while Dave was at the dentist.

We left bright and early at 8 a.m. I was looking forward to sleeping in this weekend, but hey, you win some you lose some. Some parents spend their Saturdays watching their kids play in basketball tournaments, tennis tournaments, whatever. Not us. We've never done anything like that!

Sam was excited but really nervous. I felt bad for him that he was so nervous but I guess that's part of the excitement, right? After we got registered and settle in, we met a nice 14 yr. old boy and his parents and sat and chatted with them. Sam and the boy practiced dueling, comparing cards, etc. They had driven 2 1/2 hrs. to get there! I guess I shouldn't have been complaining about the distance! I was really glad to meet these people there; I'll explain why shortly.

Sam had a great time. He played 5 rounds, winning only 1. It was a good learning experience for him, though. He was definitely one of the few young kids there. I'd say the average age was 16-17. Sam looked TINY sitting in between all those teenagers. Whenever I couldn't find him, I'd just scan the crowd and look for the "dip" in height and there he was. There were some 40-50 year old men playing, too. Some of them were with their kids and some of them weren't with anyone. Weird.

In between rounds, they could duel other players for fun, check out the vendors who were selling and trading cards, or go around and trade cards with other players. Although Sam is very quiet and soft spoken (in public), he went right up to complete strangers who were much older than him and ask them if they were interested in trading cards. Sometimes he made some good trades and sometimes it came to nothing. At one point he made a trade with someone and then took that card up to a vendor who paid him $5 for it! He had a good time, but after being there for seven, seven, that's SEVEN hours, I convinced him it was time to go. We still had an hour drive back home!

OK, so here's the scoop on MY experience. It was held in a church basement. It was a good sized room but get this, there were 400-500 people participating! Out of all the people there, there were maybe 10 women, including myself, in the whole room. Now the KIND of people who usually come to these events, I'd say are a cross between nerd/geeks and gothic/gangsta's from the Hood. And they wear mostly black or gray. And PLEASE, could they all just PLEASE PULL THEIR PANTS UP?!?? I am SO not into seeing their underwear. But I digress...

So here's why I said I was happy to meet this family. Their boy was really nice AND he was wearing a pink button down polo shirt AND his pants weren't falling down at all. I sat with his mom and we talked for hours (while I protectively clutched my purse to my chest...SHE was smart enough not to even bring her purse IN) and we helped each other keep track of our two boys. (Next time I will put Sam in a pink shirt. It was very easy to spot)! Alas, they left hours before us so I had to make new friends. Here's me with my new friend Caiba. That's not his real name, that's the alias he goes by. I don't know what his real name is. And no, I'm not kidding.

Here's Sam trading cards with his new friends from 'da hood. That's Caiba in the foreground.
Oh, I almost forgot. OK, so after about 6 hours, I start smelling B.O. Whenever I smell B.O. I automatically assume it's me. I'm a sweaty person, in general, and I have been known (though rarely) to forget to put on deodorant in my early morning bleary eyed state. So I'm sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, I stink! I forgot to put on my deodorant! And then I realize, I'm in a room full, FULL of teenage boys. Surely I'M not the one who is stinky! I had to focus on breathing through my mouth for the next hour until I convinced Sam to leave.

And speaking of being in a room full of young men. Not one of them hit on me or even looked at me the whole time I was there. Not that I wanted them to, EEEEeeeew! ...but it just goes to show how old and motherly I must look! You'll notice, even Caiba is averting his eyes away from me...