Yesternight.

Yesternight is a beautiful word that rolled right out of Eva's mouth last night at bedtime when she was relating a story about the previous night. When she said it, I looked over at Tony who also heard it and I just closed my eyes and savored the sound of her four year old voice saying it. It was like she had said it a hundred times before, so matter-of-factly as if it were already part of all of our vocabulary. Well, I can assure you, it is now.

Eva was child of the week at her school and this is the board I made for her last year when she held the honor. My printer has been out of color ink for a while and I actually forgot that I could send photos out for printing so I didn't update her board from what it looked like last year. I liked it, I thought it turned out sweet.

It has hung in her room since April or May and we took it in again this past week. She had been expressing herself to me for several days that she intended to "share" her Snow White Bear with her classmates. So Monday morning we took it in to school and she shared her bear which by the way was a gift last Christmas from her Nana [my mother.]

So, last night when it was bedtime, and after we discussed the events of yesternight, she realized that we had left Snow White Bear at school. She was already tucked into bed with her bunny blanket [her most prized possession, used by baby Em, baby Sarah, and baby Wyatt before her] snugly around herself and her face became distorted and she cried such a painfully sweet cry. It completely tore me up. It was such an honest and transparent sadness that she experienced and it sat right there on top of her face. This is a kid who hardly ever gets upset, she can somehow make the best of any situation. She doesn't wail, she doesn't fuss much. And if she whines about something, I tell her that she is whining, and she repeats herself for me in the most calm and intentional way. She is a star.

Anyway. The first thing that popped into my head was Corduroy. So I reasoned with her that her bear was having a wonderful adventure like Corduroy in the department store. I also assured her that we would stop by and pick her bear up first thing in the morning and make sure she was alright. It worked. She smiled and laughed through the tears that were already there and turned over away from me and snuggled deep. But, even then I could see her fighting off the distress. Lights out, not another word heard.

We dropped off all the big kids at 8:30 and went straight to her school. She skipped up the sidewalk and happily proclaimed to me that her bear had such a great adventure in the night. We went in and looked in the cubbies and it wasn't anywhere. I started to panic a little and went over to her teachers and inquired. I was so relieved to hear that they had put it away in the adult storage area [aka: adult bathroom] on top of a stack of bins. As Eva bounced off to look for it, I told them the story of how I calmed her down at bedtime with a parallel of her bear and Corduroy.

Eva's teacher Julie's face lit up like a light. She told me to look in the bathroom and show Eva who her bear was sitting next to on that stack of bins. Well hold on to your socks people, it was Corduroy! Freakin' Corduroy the bear from the book! Eva was so beyond thrilled! I don't know if I have ever seen her with a bigger smile. It felt like a happy little miracle, I am not kidding.

I was the happiest momma in the world for a moment, I truly was. All the mysteries of the universe suddenly made sense to me. And then I receded to being just me, a very happy momma but probably not the happiest on the entire terrestrial ball.

So of course the first thing I did after arriving home was search out our copy of Corduroy and pose it with the sweet bear. The two adventurers reunited again!

A Few of the Things That Made This Week Great.

We finally rounded out the annual kid check-ups with Eva on Monday and Emily on Tuesday. All four of them received flu shots this week too. Imagine each one of them as they stepped up to the table, all watching one another, watching the nurse, watching me.

Emily, "the brave one" confidently went first and didn't flinch. Sarah, "the little trembling one" was second and choked back tight-faced tears. And my boy Wyatt, "little brave and trembling one" was last with a brave face and a trembling wince.

Eva watched it all, reliving the horror of the day before when she received hers. She actually received three of the five shots that she was due for. We decided to spare her the pain of all five in one go. It's definitely going to be hard to get her up on the table for the next round though.

You know, whenever I think of vaccinations, I always remember the scene in Raising Arizona where the wife of the swinger couple was talking about the "dip-tet." I'm pretty sure RA is at the summit of my funniest movie list and I can't even think of one that would top it.

Monday I made lasagna. I love my lasagna, Tony and the kids do too. Well, Eva is not much of an eater these days so I'm not counting her. She is more of a heavy drinker and a fruit eater.

Tuesday we ate leftover lasagna and it tasted better than on Monday.

Wednesday we were invited to Tony's cousin Ricky's birthday party, at dinnertime.

Thursday, Emily had her soccer team end-of-season pizza party.

Just merely having Friday in a week makes every week great. Tonight we went to astronomy night at the kids' school. We saw beautiful Jupiter and its four largest moons through the university's high powered telescopes. Our PTA sold tamales and we all ate them, even miss picky pants.

Notice I have not cooked a meal since Monday. *sigh* *smile* *contented feelings*

Tomorrow is the last day of soccer games. Three games and two pizza party's remain. One pizza party is at lunchtime. One is at dinnertime.

I will cook breakfast in the morning. *more contented feelings washing over me*

It was a really really good week.

Scooooooooorrrrrrrre!

Yep, Emily actually made this goal. She's a ninja, just like me.

The Very Tardy Halloween Post.

I love love love this: did you know that Halloween literally means "the eve of the holy day?" I am so over the top uber psyched by that fact.

From Wikipedia: The name 'Halloween' and many of its present-day traditions derive from the Old English era. The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scots variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even, that is, the night before All Hallows Day. Although the phrase All Hallows is found in Old English (ealra hálȝena mæssedæȝ, the feast of all saints)

[Don't tell the man who likes it the more gory-and-horrifying-the-better, aka my father whom I love and completely adore but] I am not into the gory part of Halloween and honestly am pretty much turned off by it. It's my day too, so this is a small consolation for me and I know I deserve it. I am though, totally in favor of the little kid-fun dress up part of it and definitely the candy part of it! Oh yeah, I also don't mind the Saturday night aspect that came with it this year with neighbors having parties with pit fires in their driveways in evening weather that didn't even require a light jacket. It was a pretty awesome night, not just because it was my birthday. But, I do have a cool birthday. [Thanks mom.]

We finally did this on Halloween morning:

After the carving I roasted seeds [yum] and we hit the soccer park for about four hours of three consecutive games. Next, it was dress up time [such a busy day] and we had so much fun with it this year. We made all the costumes except for Eva. I figured she had at least six princess dresses in her closet ready to choose from so I didn't even bother to ask her what she wanted to be for Halloween. So Friday morning when it was time to get dressed for her nursery school party and I asked her which did she want to put on, you can imagine my surprise when her reply was "Buzz Lightyear."

Luckily, Wyatt has a Buzz costume that we were able to find after looking for only about thirty minutes! She blasted off to infinity and beyond  [her party] and I picked up my little Buzz from school three wee hours later as happy as she could be.

Old habits die hard and as you might expect Eva once more donned the princess costume for the big night. Sleeping Beauty to be precise. My other three, home-made with ideas swiped straight from the good 'ol internet, were a pizza, a robot, and an ipod.

Lastly, but not leastly, my birthday booty looked very much like this:

My T in SWEET, also known as Tony, gave me my favorite See's dark chocolate truffles. One of my very best bff's Nena showed up on Sunday with goodies galore and generously included a homemade choco-donut cake! And the pièce de résistance, an unbelievable five pound bag of Sconza dark chocolate covered coffee beans was a gift from my sister-in-law Carmen [wow, she really likes me!] I think my exact words were O.M.G! when she presented me with the gargantuan load of these much coveted [by me] beans. It's such a big bag that if you come to visit me I will happily share and send you home with a to-go baggie of them [one per day only] just for stopping by. Really. Don't laugh, I can be unselfish with chocolate!

Thanks for all the facebook birthday messages people! That was so much fun! In the busy business of the eve of the holy day, it was so sweet and strangely satisfying to see a new message find it's way to my email/fb page every hour or so! I loved it, it made my day even better.