Fine Arts Day

This morning I chaperoned Brendan's class on a field trip downtown. We went to the Art Institute of Chicago. I spent the afternoon shepherding five fifth grade boys through as much of the museum as we could get to in an hour and a half, which wasn't very much. The best part of the trip actually came before the Art Institute. Brendan's school had been participating in a program called "Do Your P'Art," which encouraged environmentalism through art. The kids made box collages out of recycled materials. These boxes were displayed downtown. Here is Brendan showing off his box.

The kids' art was displayed at a building across the street from the Merchandise Mart. The building guard suggested we go over to the Mart and check out the display of canned food art. Someone had sponsored a sculpture contest to promote hunger awareness. The artists made sculptures entirely out of canned food and other non-persible food items. Here is the Cubs logo made entirely from cans. If you look to the left of the logo, the background is a train made out of cans. There were several clever sculptures in this exhibit, including a giant slice of pizza and a giant sombrero made of El Paso Refried Bean cans.

To round out my day of fine arts, the final band concert was this evening. This is the "All-Band Concert," where all four of our district bands perform. This was Theo's final band concert, as he is moving on to high school next year and couldn't fit band into his schedule. Theo had a solo in their last song. It made me to cry to think of how proud Tim would have been of his son at that moment.

Water, Water Everywhere

It rained Wednesday night. It rained a lot. I remember being awakened by thunder more than once. I didn't realize just how much rain we had gotten until Thursday morning, when Brendan came into my room to inform me that there was water in the basement. Sad to say, water in our basement is not uncommon. It seeps up through the floor and trickles in through cracks in the basement walls. At this point, everything in our basement is up on legs or stored in plastic bins. Except, of course, when the boys leave things on the floor, like pillows, blankets and toys. I spent most of Thursday morning and afternoon using the shop vac to suck up all the water in the basement. I spent most of this morning washing the floor with bleach then turned on every fan I have and opened the windows to finish drying out the basement. Not how I planned to spent the last couple days, but at least my basement is nice and clean now.

Happy Birthday, Brendan!

Today is Brendan's 11th birthday. Yes, just four days after having birthday cake for Theo we are having birthday cake for Brendan. When you add in leftover birthday treats from school and leftover cake from birthday parties, we consume a lot of birthday cake in the month of May. While I had wanted two spring babies, I hadn't planned on having my children quite so close together. I remember feeling more than a bit dismayed when my OB calculated Brendan's due date as May 6. At first, I worried about the possibility of having to celebrate Theo's birthday while recovering from delivering a baby. Then, as we approached Theo's birthday, I worried about how I would handle things if they shared a birthday. I was very relieved when Theo's birthday passed with no baby. After that, my internal debate ranged between wanting to have as many days as possible between Theo's birthday and the baby's birthday and wanting to have the baby because being pregnant was so uncomfortable. Brendan finally resolved this dilemma by arriving on the afternoon of May 12.

Celebrating Everything

Tonight the boys and I went out to dinner with Theo's godmother, Ardis. We went to Trattoria D.O.C. in Evanston. The boys like this restaurant because they do wood-fired pizza. I like it because they do other things as well. We had a lot to celebrate. Due to an over crowed calendar, we decided to combine a number of occasions into a single celebration. So tonight we celebrated: Theo's confirmation (April 30), Theo's birthday (May 8), Ardis' birthday (also May 8), Mother's Day (May 9) and Brendan's birthday (May 12). Whew!

My Mother's Day

My children were born on May 8 and May 12. That means that Mother's Day is sometimes lost in all the birthday hoopla. My boys would say that their birthdays are occasionally lost to Mother's Day. (Have you ever tried to celebrate a child's birthday on Mother's Day? I have. It's not easy.) I also live in Skokie, which has a large conservative and orthodox Jewish population. That means we play AYSO soccer on Sundays, not Saturdays. So I have actually spent every Mother's Day since Theo was in first grade on the soccer field. (That's eight years, including this one.) I don't mind when the weather is good, but this is Chicago and the weather is very iffy on Mother's Day. I'm usually freezing and often wet on the soccer sidelines in May. You may remember that Theo broke his foot a week ago. He inadvertently gave me a great Mother's Day present - less time on the soccer field.

Happy Birthday, Theo!

Fourteen years ago at a little after nine in the morning, Tim and I welcomed our first child, Theodore Patrick Ward. He was 19 inches long and weighed eight pounds twelve ounces. He is now five foot seven and weighs around 125 pounds, depending on how much pizza he's had lately. We had a terrible time deciding on a name. As a Jennifer, the most popular name the year I was born, I did not want to give my child a common name. So any name in the current top 25 was automatically out. We finally settled on Theodore, but planned to call him Theo. His middle name is his Dad's middle name, which means they share the same initials, handy for passing down monogrammed china. Of course, we don't have monogrammed china.

First Friday

I just couldn't resist the title as I seem to taking an alliterative angle with my posts this week. After all, it is the first Friday in May. I also attended my first political luncheon today. As a result of the political work that I did for the Illinois primary this year, I received an invitation to be a part of a friend's table at Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky's Ninth Annual Ultimate Women's Power Lunch. Don't be too impressed. The food wasn't that good and the crowd was huge. The only elected politician I even got close to was the 49th Ward Alderman for the City of Chicago. I only met him because he happened to be standing next to my friend the former candidate. Or, rather, my friend the former candidate was standing next to the 49th Ward Alderman of the City of Chicago. My biggest thrill was meeting Hecky of Hecky's Barbecue, my favorite barbecue place in Evanston. Actually, I had a very nice afternoon. I got a chance to catch up with a lot of friends from the campaign. I also got to hear speeches from all of the major Democratic candidates running for office this year in the state of Illinois. Well, except for the Governor. He was in Springfield dealing with a budget crisis.

Theo's Thursday

Theo went to his first real live rock concert tonight. A good friend had an extra ticket to the Paramore concert in Rockford tonight. I don't know a lot about the band. I knew that Theo liked them because I bought him a CD for Christmas. I have discovered that Theo and I fit the old cliche about parents and their children when it comes to music. I don't actually consider most of what he likes to be music. It's loud, with a lot of drums and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of melody and harmony. Brendan hasn't really developed his own tastes yet, so the jury is still out there. Anyway, the boys left for the concert an hour after school was out for the day and they didn't get home until almost midnight. So Theo went to his first rock concert and I experienced my first stay up until midnight waiting for my child to get home from a night out. I wasn't worried, as the boys were with an adult the whole time. It was just an interesting taste of things to come.

Time Warp Wednesday

I've had a couple people ask me about why my blog posts take a week or more to show up in their RSS feeds. The answer is that your feed isn't slow, the blogger is. I keep daily notes in a hand written journal but usually only sit down to my computer once a week or so. I didn't start out this way. I had intended to blog daily or almost daily, anyway. My life got in the way. The first time I sat down to write after missing several days, I decided to back date entries so that the post date matched the date events actually happened. I thought this was more aesthetically pleasing and it made for better reading. One side benefit is that time occasionally provides better perspective and what I write is better for stewing around in my brain for a few days.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Take this post, for example. I don't remember when I talked to folks about my magic post dates, but the notes for May 5 were a boring list of all the errands I ran that day. You really don't want to read about my trip to Menard's, Borders, Bed, Bath & Beyond, The Chalet and Macy's. You definitely don't want to read about how I managed to buy a pair of earrings before lunch and lose one of them before dinner.

Toe Tuesday

When Theo was treated for his broken toe four years ago, we actually got a film copy of his foot xray. Now, of course, the xrays are on the hospital network. If you doctor isn't on the hospital network, they copy the xray to disk and you take the disk to the doctor. I was very pleased with myself that not only was I able to find the film but I also remembered to take it with me to our appointment this morning. Thus, the doctor was able to tell us that this time Theo broke the bone on the tip of his toe, but last time he broke the bone just below the joint. So Theo has now broken both of the bones in his left big toe. We also learned that his toe should heal very quickly, probably within a month, which was a little faster than we thought. Basically, the doctor said to take it easy for the next two weeks and after that Theo could slowly return to normal activities. If it hurt, he should stop. If the toe still bothered him in a month, we should come back to the doctor, but other than that, we were good to go. So we went.

Medical Monday

Theo's toe still hurt when he woke up this morning. I decided to take him to the doctor for an xray. I've had a lot of practice with Theo and injury, so I like to think that I've gotten to be a pretty good judge of what warrants a trip to the ER and what doesn't. The toe looked fine and there was no blood, so it definitely didn't rate an immediate trip to the ER, but it hurt bad enough that it wasn't worth waiting around to see if it was sprained and would get better on its own.

Our first stop was the pediatrician. It's actually faster (and cheaper) to go to walk-in hours at the pediatrician and get an order for an xray than to go to the ER. That's one of the reasons we didn't get the xray yesterday afternoon right after Theo hurt himself. Theo's doctor actually had walk-in hours today, which was great. She knows all about Theo and his many injuries. She's the one that called Theo our family's "designated injured person." She put in the order for the xray, made the referral for the orthopedic specialist in case it was broken and wrote a note for me to give to the school nurse in under fifteen minutes.

Stop number two was across the street at the hospital. There's always a wait in radiology, particularly on Mondays. However, it didn't take too long for Theo to have his xray taken. Then we had to sit there and wait for the results. Of course the toe was broken. This actually isn't a big deal. Theo had broken this same toe almost exactly four years ago. If it's a minor break, there isn't much they can do. You tape the broken toe to the toe next to it for support, wear good shoes and give up soccer, running, rock climbing, etc. while the toe heals. A bummer for Theo, but more inconvenient than anything else.

Stop number three was the orthopedic specialist's office. It's in the same building as the pediatrician. I thought it'd be easier to make the appointment in person rather than do it over the phone. Boy, was I wrong. I was informed in no uncertain terms by the office staff that the doctor to whom we'd been referred did not do toes and could not possibly see Theo. Okay, who does do toes? Two doctors that are only in Evanston on Thursdays, but I could call Glenview and get an appointment. I call Glenview. Well, one toe doctor is out of town this week and the other was booked solid well into next week. Sorry, we can't help you. They told me to go back to the pediatrician and get a referral to another office.

Stop number four was back down in the pediatrician's office. Would the nice secretary please tell our doctor that we needed a new referral because the people upstairs wouldn't help us? My pediatrician comes out and gets the whole story from me. She tells me to let her make a few phone calls. She'll get us into the office with somebody. So we go home and wait for someone to call. Just before 5:00pm we finally get a call from the orthopedic office. They offer us an appointment with yet another doctor for 9:45am tomorrow morning. Of course I say yes.

I had hoped to have Theo's foot looked at and have him back in school by lunchtime, but by the time we finish, there's so little left of school. Since Theo's foot still hurt, I decided to let him miss the rest of the day. He'll probably miss most of tomorrow morning, too, by the time all is said and done, but what can you do?

Soccer Sunday

With both boys playing AYSO soccer, our Sunday afternoons in April and May are entirely devoted to soccer. Today, Brendan's game started at noon. Having the first game of the day used to mean going to mass, going to Sunday school, leaving Sunday school a little early and rushing like mad to get to the game a little late. Oh, yeah, and try to make sure that Brendan got something to eat somewhere along the way. As a single parent, I just can't do that anymore. I'm tired of running from one thing to another and always being in a hurry, so I've given up trying to do everything. I decided we would skip church and go straight to soccer. Sunday school is over for the year, which made the decision a little easier. Brendan had a great game. He scored his second goal of the season and this time I was actually there to see it - I missed the first one. I was so pleased for him.

Theo had the late afternoon game, which meant that I actually got to see all of Brendan's game and all of Theo's game. That doesn't happen too often. Usually, their games overlap at least a little and I miss all or part of someone's game. When the weather is bad, the overlapping games mean less time outside, which is great. Otherwise, it's just another single parent nightmare, trying to make sure that I get to see both boys play. I'm also usually begging rides for both of my boys either to the soccer field or home from the game. That's been made much easier by the fact that we've had neighbors and friends on both boys' teams, but it's still a drag and a hassle. Today I didn't have to worry about any of that. Brendan's game was over in plenty of time to get Theo to his game. Since I was there for the whole game, I was also there when Theo injured himself. He had a close run-in with the keeper and seemed okay, but a couple minutes later I noticed that he was limping. It turns out he somehow injured his toe. It hurt bad enough that Theo came out of the game early. We went home and iced his toe. We'll probably have to go get an xray tomorrow.

Breakfast and Dinner

The boys and I spent the morning at the Troop 72 Pancake Breakfast to raise funds for Central United Methodist Church, their sponsoring organization. Well, actually, I spent all morning at the church. Brendan served breakfast the first half of the morning, then spent the rest of the morning playing at a friend's house. Theo spent the first half of the morning sleeping and the second half cooking breakfast. Nobody sent their pancakes back, so I guess he did okay.

I had planned a nice dinner for the three of us: steak au poivre, Greek potatoes and green beans. Brendan got a better offer from a friend - burgers. Theo can't appreciate good food and preferred to eat frozen pizza. I still cooked my nice meal and ate in solitary splendor. I'll save the leftover steak for lunch next week.