An Author in our Midst

One of the most anticipated events of the year in first grade at Smunch's school is the Author's Breakfast. See, prior to this day, the kids work really hard to write a few stories. They outline, they write, they edit. When the story is approved by the teacher, it goes "to the publisher"...which is a really exciting way of saying that the teacher gives it to one of the moms to type up. Then it comes back from the publisher and needs to be illustrated and have a cover designed before the whole thing is bound.

Smunch wrote three "books". His first was called "How Martin Luther King, Jr. Changed America". Kinda serious stuff, that. He chose the topic himself. Huh. The second was called "Me and the Rocket Ship" (no accounting for grammar there) and the final story, which he chose to read during the Author's breakfast, was "The Little Boy and the Baseball Player".It was a short story, with an emphasis on short. But this was the first time he'd been asked to get up in front of an audience and read. It may not be that big a deal for a lot of kids, but for kids who stutter, it can be absolute torture. He did a great job! He started off nice and slowly, reading very clearly. Like most people who are a little nervous, he kind of rushed towards the end, but the stuttering was barely noticeable. We were such proud parents. The kids have to write a dedication page for each of their books. Smunch dedicated his book to his grandpa because he had helped coach his baseball team. So sweet. And my dad was even there to be appreciative. I was a little surprised that he came, so I was thrilled when he got sole billing in the dedication.

Smunch's time in the spotlight was short and he was first, we we still had to sit through the remaining 17 students' books. Turns out, the dedication surprises weren't over. It wasn't shocking to hear the girls dedicating their stories to all their friends "because they believe in fairies too" or whatever. And it wasn't unusual for a couple of kids to dedicate stories to their teacher or to to their siblings. But the boys generally didn't mention their friends. Only two of them did, including this one:and a second one from one of the more "popular" kids in class that said "This book is dedicated to my friend Gavin because he is nice to me." Geez. Who knew?

As much as I was proud of Smunch's reading job, I was thrilled to find out how well-liked he is. There are so, so many things about his personality that are really encouraging. Having seen how stuttering can make kids too scared to speak or turn them into social outcasts, I'm relieved and excited to see that he doesn't seem to be heading in that direction.

He may not be an angel at home, but apparently, we've actually managed to produce a nice kid!

First Grade Picnic

This year, the first grade at Smunch's school had the distinction of having the first end-of-year party. Traditionally, the kids all walk to a nearby park for food, fun and games and then walk back to school for popsicles. As one of the room parents this year, I had some responsibility for organizing this event. The other organizers must have recognized the dazed "overvolunteered" look on my face because the tasks that fell to me were...getting butcher paper from the work room and procuring some pens and crayons from the classroom. Despite the fact that these were ridiculously easy things to do, I still felt like maybe it was all too much for me to handle. Duh.

I ended up going to the park early to help set up. That meant I got to see the inordinately cute sight of a line of 80 first graders parading into the park with their teachers and chaperones. We were ready for them too. There were building materials, spin art, face painting, Wedgits, fishing, velcro darts, and, of course, drawing materials. Not to mention pizza, lemonade, fruit and Rice Krispie treats. There were also field games. Smunch participated in one or two of those before lunch, but seemed to prefer some of the other activities. After all, they saved the best for last! You might remember that last year, at the kindergarten picnic, they had this hilarious game of getting the kids to eat donuts hanging from strings, with their hands behind their backs. This year, that game was replaced with the Whipped Cream Relay.This game, which was clearly met with much enthusiasm, involved having the teacher sit at the far end of the field with a spray can of whipped cream...which she used to cover chocolate Hershey's Kisses on little plates. Each kid had to run down the field (see Smunch, above), dive into the plate with their hands behind their backs... (O.K., not quite behind his back, are they?) and eat through the whipped cream to get to the Kiss.I think Smunch took about four turns at this relay. Obviously, everyone won!

Just before leaving, the kids all played "Splash Ball"...getting as wet as they possibly could while soaking their classmates on the other side...or the parents running through the middle, whichever was available. Last, but not least...for me anyway...we made a presentation of the year-end gifts to Smunch's teacher. She was very pleased and loved the pot. After working my butt off to make sure everything was ready for giving the gift at the picnic, I realized just how ridiculous it had been for me to stick to that artificial date for gift giving. I think many of the classes waited until the last day of school rather than doing it at the picnic. And with the first grade picnic falling a whole week and a half before the last day of school, it was totally unnecessary to give the gifts there. But it was done and I was off the hook...at least until the Author's Breakfast at the end of the week!

Crafty Overload

In all the spare time I had during the cake planning and decorating process, I needed to put together a class gift for Smunch's first grade teacher. If I was better about delegating this sort of stuff...and if I'd really understood the convergence of all the activities at the end of the year...I might have tried to give this job to someone else. But I'm a little clueless about this stuff. I started soliciting donations from other class parents early on in the process, but didn't have much idea what I was going to do other than buy a gift card from a garden store.

I didn't do it at the holidays, but I wanted to try and get the kids to make something for their teacher. It would be a lot more personal (and cheap) than the gift card. But I didn't want to do anything that was too big a deal. After all, what would she want with this item in 5 years or 10 years when she barely remembers who these kids are? Here's what I came up with:This is a plain ol' $5 terra cotta pot. I borrowed some acrylic paints from a neighbor, painted a grassy background and some lettering, then had each of the kids pick what kind of bug they wanted to create. They did the fingerprints. I did the details...antennas, legs, eyes, etc. and wrote the name of each kid next to their creation.It took me showing up during lunch two days in a row to get most of the kids. The last one was conveniently a neighbor who could drop by for a minute. I sprayed the whole thing with a clear acrylic glaze and then went shopping for plants to put in it.While I was doing fingerprinting, I also had all the kids sign a card and make a few ink print bugs for decorations. Too bad I didn't take a picture of the inside of the card. It was really priceless!*Phew*! It was a cute little project, but more work than I was really up for with an impending school-wide event to coordinate.

Although I had some trouble finding enough volunteers to help out in the classroom during the year, the class parents are monetarily generous. I was able to get that gardening certificate, a gift card for a nice Italian dinner, a manicure/pedicure card, and a gift card for Borders. Then, of course, it was up to me to find some kind of ridiculous crafty way to present these cards. Why I have a problem with handing someone a gift card or even a pile of gift cards, I'm not sure. I decided it needed to be a folding card with pockets. And this is what I came up with...It was kinda cute and garden-y. I stitched the pages together with yarn and then designed the whole thing to be a brochure of suggestions for summer activities. Cute. Maybe too cute.I got all these things together in barely enough time to be presented at the 1st grade picnic on Monday. Yeah. That Monday after the Spring Celebration on Friday. Ugh. The picnic was great, but that'll save for another post...

Going Overboard on a Retirement Cake

It all started with a simple, but silly comment I made at a PTA board meeting. One of the other moms there mentioned ordering a bridge for our new teaching garden...right after my update on the "Spring Celebration", which was a low-key retirement party for our principal in addition to a garden dedication. I chirped up, "We could call it the Bridge to Retirement!" I was kinda kidding, but the PTA president loved the idea and so it happened.

Of course, being a cakey kind of person, I volunteered to make a cake for said Spring Celebration, which I was also co-chairing. Silly me. 'Cause you know what happened, right? Well, actually you probably couldn't imagine the insanity that occurred after that, which included having to reschedule the whole event because of the swine flu...rescheduling it to the weekend Daddy and I were supposed to go away without the children for the first time ever! For a minute, I was off the hook for the cake because suddenly no one was interested in eating home-baked goods. But that was when the swine flu panic was still going full force. If you didn't notice, it became a back-burner issue very quickly.

And then I made the mistake of suggesting that I make a replica of the Bridge to Retirement for the cake. Then I went and visited a bunch of aquarium stores hoping to make my job little easier. No simple aquarium bridges to be found. Turns out I should've gone this route to begin with:Not bad and not altogether difficult. It was a passable chocolate replica of the sturdy redwood bridge they'd installed.

Next, I needed to try and replicate the dry creek bed that runs under the bridge. A trip to my favorite cake supplies store provided not only some really killer cake mix for the 16" cake, but some fantastic "chocolate rocks" that were just what I needed.As soon as I got all the creekbed done, I knew I'd made a mistake frosting the whole thing white. It's a garden. It's dirt! Nothing a package of Oreos (stuffing removed) and a rolling pin couldn't handle!

I had a little bit of white fondant left over from Smunch's birthday cake and used that to fashion a green water pump. I also had some colored fondant I used to make more flowers to make everything more garden like.In a final act of decorating inspiration, I decided to try and make it look like water was coming out of the pump. To my astonishment, it worked...really well!I also used the green fondant for the stars on the side of the cake. I know they look kind of odd on this garden cake, but they are a take on the school logo and were actually more appropriate than you'd think.

The worst part of this cake was trying to write on top of Oreo crumbs. They're somewhat loose, so it's crazy difficult to pipe letters onto the top and make them look neat. In a way, that was good. It meant I couldn't get too creative with the message. It had to be short and simple. Now you have to imagine that I took this giant cake to a school-wide event. The kids were very impressed...so impressed that I ended up having to post Daddy as a sentry to make sure no fingers ended up in the frosting before it was presented to the honoree. He fielded a number of questions. Who made that? Are those real rocks? Is that real dirt? What did you use for the water? And he did it all with good humor...especially considering we'd had to reschedule our trip for this shindig.I'd say it was a grand success. Of course, it wasn't big enough for everyone. And the potluck portion of the event didn't go particularly well. We totally ran out of food. I hid the cake away until the end and those whole helped out or stuck around for a long time got to eat it. That seemed fair, considering. I sent the bridge and a big chunk of cake home with Mr. Celeste. It was yummy...which was fortunate since I never got any dinner!

Meeting the Panda

I'm a sucker. That's not true about everything, but when it comes to my son and his unfathomable, boundless love of baseball, I'm just a big pushover. And that is how our whole family ended up traveling to a nearby city one Thursday evening to meet the San Francisco Giant's star known affectionately as "Kung Fu Panda".In reality, his name is Pablo Sandoval. He's a 22-year-old switch hitting infielder (sometimes first base, sometimes third base, sometimes catcher) from Venezuela and he now has a new biggest fan. Because no matter how diminutive my son is, I'd dare any seven-year-old to be a bigger fan. It's just not possible. Smunch skipped his way down this street after this meeting. And we had some cake at one of my favorite bakeries. Smunch probably didn't even notice the cake. He ate the frosting. And the frosting was what topped off his newly autographed baseball. Who cares about cake when you've got the Panda's signature right there on the table?(Soccer shirt aside, of course!)

Now, where was I?...

All I really know is that I had blog posts piling up in my mind, but I've forgotten what most of them were about. It's too bad too. I know there were some funny little tidbits in there. I made a lot of strawberry jam after the events of the previous post, for instance. It's yummy and I was happy not all the strawberries went to waste.

Then, we had the Peter Rabbit 1st grade play, in which I'm happy to report, we had our own adorable dancing carrot. Mam was ever so proud.Daddy and I were too, of course. I'd been told about these costumes...how they're just felt and slip right over the kids' clothing, but I was in no way prepared for how cute they were. Here's our Smunch carrot, right in there between the radishes and lettuces.I'm a little bummed that he didn't go for a speaking role. I think he would have done well and it really would have boosted his self-confidence, but to have missed out on the carrot costume??

Then there was the big evening Cub Scout Pack event where Smunch was awarded his badges and belt loops for the year. Such a farce. His den didn't even complete the requirements for their Tiger badge. But they got it anyway. I'm skeptical as to whether those boys will ever really finish those requirements, but I don't really care. Smunch didn't know any better, so whatever. And, as you can tell, he was really awfully happy!I was less enthusiastic, but still happy that he was thrilled.

It was such a crazy exciting week for our Smunch and there's more, but I think it deserves its own post after all. Stay tuned.

Strawberry Season

The end of May was extra super busy with the end of baseball season, my planning a big event at school and our myriad regular activities. When Memorial Day weekend came around, I was thrilled at the prospect of a three day weekend with little to do. Of course, there wasn't little to do. I don't strictly remember where Saturday and Sunday went, but we were busy. By Monday, I was dying to go do something fun and stop getting things done.

A friend had recently reminded me of a farm about an hour south of here where you can go to pick strawberries at this time of year. So, we piled in the mommymobile and headed down there. I was a little disappointed at the number of other people who'd had the same idea for Memorial Day. I thought the field might well be picked over. Happily, I couldn't have been more wrong.Not only were there plenty of berries, but there were lots of really BIG ones out there.Both Smunch and Mam had a great time picking berries. Daddy and I picked too. Daddy started complaining that the container was getting heavy. I didn't think he was wimpy, but I also didn't think we'd picked almost 12.5 pounds of strawberries!

We paid for our bushel and headed back to the mommymobile.We had a little picnic at the farm, including strawberries, of course! Did a little letterboxing...yay for letterboxes planted in places I was going anyway...and indulged in a little farm-fresh berry pie. Yummm! We did a little more letterboxing down that way before heading back up...but it mostly served to make the trip longer and slightly creepy. The second box we found was right next to a very elaborate makeshift shrine to the Virgin Mary. It had been built there in a county park after a woman claimed she saw the face of the blessed virgin in the bark of a tree.It was very strange in the middle of the woods by the lake. Lots of people paying their respects...none of them speaking in English. So much for stealth when hunting letterboxes. Our little family stuck out like a sore thumb!

More Baseball...and Less

Later in the week, after Smunch had recovered from the excitement of watching the Giants win at AT&T park, the Cardinals played their last game of the season. As usual, Smunch took it very seriously. Also, as usual, I was so busy trying to keep order on the bench that I didn't see a whole lot of the game. (Apparently, I was also too busy to notice that my white balance was off and my pictures were coming out blue.)I don't think it was one of his best, but he had a good time and although they don't technically keep score, he apparently emerged a winner. Maybe he was cheering because he made it to first base...or maybe it was because it was his last at-bat and the next stop was the pizza parlor.And the pizza parlor gets him one step closer to what? His trophy, of course! This is actually the first season when I could tell how much he loved the game and that he wasn't just playing for the end-of-season trophy. That doesn't mean he didn't have it on his mind though. Apparently, it wasn't really on my mind. I don't even have a photo of this year's offering.

The boys posed for one final photo... and then the season was over.

Baseball season is so much fun...and so much work and takes so much time. As sorry as I am that it's over, I'm glad to have our regular schedule back, even if we're headed into a really busy summer. And now? Now there's no keeping order on the bench. They're just a rowdy bunch of little boys again.

Bobblehead

I'm acutely aware of just how long has passed since my last post. It's distressing, mostly because there is so much post material piling up and I know the humor in much of it will be gone by the time I get to it. But, let's go back a couple of weeks, because here's a story that actually gets somewhat funnier, if less urgent, over time.

A while back, I heard that the San Francisco Giants would be having a bobblehead giveaway on May 17th in honor of their ace pitcher, and Smunch's baseball hero, Tim Lincecum. Naturally, I thought this would be the perfect game to take him to. When I checked the tickets, it looked like there were very few left and those were in the bleachers. I haven't sat in the bleachers in a while. I figured that'd be O.K. Of course, it was just some computer glitch. There were plenty of good seats to be had. But we sat in the bleachers anyway.Of course, that's not the story. The story is about this guy:Handsome devil, isn't he? Well, O.K., so he's got a great big ol' head and it doesn't seem attached altogether well. And he's got this puny little body. This, my friends, is the Tim Lincecum bobblehead. And if you're like me...I mean, the me that came to her senses while sitting in the bleachers...you wonder what in the world anyone would want with one of these things. Seriously, people! Who needs this kind of stuff in their house?

Well, we do, apparently. Suspecting some chaos in obtaining one of these rare creatures, we sent Daddy to the ballpark three hours before the game to get in line. And he did. And he had a perfectly good place in line. A line very much like this one:Smunch and I joined him about an hour later. Still seemed like a pretty good place in line, but as soon as the gates opened, there was absolute pandemonium, bringing out the ugliest and stupidest of human behavior. For this... Observing mob mentality is really an educational experience.

I got separated from Smunch and Daddy. I couldn't even see them anymore by the time I turned the corner to the gate. To his credit, Daddy was doing his best to make sure Smunch actually got the trinket he'd been standing in line 3 hours for. Before I made it to the turnstyles, I saw another fan give the axe sign to one of his friends in line. The bobbleheads...all 20,000 of them...were gone. I didn't get one. I didn't really care, except that I figured with three of them, Smunch would have one and we'd have a spare to put away until he could really appreciate it...long after he'd trashed his. Then, I'd planned to find a sad little kid who didn't get one and give the third away. Seemed like a cool thing to do. But there was no third. I held my breath when I saw Smunch and Daddy on the other side of the gate. Daddy held up two boxes. Turns out, they were the last two boxes at the gate. No one behind them got one.

And that's the end of the saga part of the story. The rest was about baseball. It was Smunch's favorite kind of baseball of course. He got to watch the Giants play the Mets on a lovely, if somewhat chilly, Sunday evening.They'd lost several games in a row prior to that night, but that night, they won.If I've learned anything about my son, it's that he'll live and die by the home team. And the Giants are his team. We edged towards the exits as Brian Wilson made the last three outs of the game. Smunch sat on Daddy's shoulders so he could see the action over the heads of the crowd.And after we braved the crush to exit the ballpark? One very happy Smunch skipped all the way back to the train station.