First Day of School

On Tuesday night, Penny made a special “ABC” dinner (apple pie, bread, chicken, and carrots) to help Ethan get excited for his first day of school ever—note the awesome crown—and then on Wednesday morning, Ethan, Penny, and I went to orientation. Which I’m pretty sure he loved. There were toys, kids, story time, and snack. What’s not to like? I left thinking orientation day was as much for the parents as it was for the kids.  

Today I dropped him off for his first full day. He did great, just ran right in and started playing. No hesitation whatsoever. What a big boy.

Special dinner on the night before school starts

Following the yellow footsteps into school

I don't remember school being this much fun

Celebratory cupcake at the Atomic Cafe after day one

Super excited for day two!

Seems like just yesterday...

Turf Wars

My lawn company, Prescription Turf Services, says "The lawn's looking great, keep watering!"

I am at war with my lawn. Well, with the nasty little grubs that have devoured my lawn from the roots up, anyway.

It started about three years ago with a little patch of dead grass in the back yard. Not knowing much about lawncare at the time, I didn’t think much of it.

Big mistake.

Three years on, it’s now a full-blown disaster. I’ve tried lawn companies who’ve promised to take care of the problem. Instead it’s only gotten worse.

About a month ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands. It’s too late in the season to apply GrubEx to kill the little buggers, but there’s still time to give the lawn a healthy head start over the winter.

So, step one was to dethatch the living grass and completely remove the dead stuff. That took a few weekends worth of work. Then over Labor Day I spread 25 bags of seeding soil over the bare spots and planted new grass seed over the entire lawn. Now it’s all about trying to foster a healthy green lawn before the leaves fall and everything goes dormant until spring.

Then, in April, I’ll go nuclear on the grubs and see what happens.

"Oh, that's just a little sun damage..."

Noodle

A few of the nicknames we’ve used with Madeleine over the first year or so of her life:

• Sprout
• Maddle
• Madzilla
• Magpie
• Mad Hatter
• Boodle
• Poodle
• Noodle

Yeah, they’re all a bit ridiculous. As a parent they just kind of come out of your mouth before you even realize what you’re saying, and then they take on a life of their own. It was the same way with Ethan. Sometimes you have to try a bunch of funny nicknames on before one of them sticks.

I’ve been calling her Noodle with some consistency for the past month or so, because she flops around like a wet noodle whenever you try to get her to do something she doesn’t want to do. The name just sort rolls off my tongue when I see her. She doesn’t seem to mind it right now.

We’ll see how she feels about it when she’s thirteen.