Teenage Rejection

Poor Brantley. I picked him up from school yesterday, and he moped out to the car. When I asked what was wrong, he said he was about to throw up. Do you need to go to the doctor? I asked, no, it's not that. I proceed to ask jillions of questions, all with no answers. I tell him we aren't getting out of the car until he tells me, he replies - fine, we'll sit here all day. I start guessing things that could have made him like this. Finally, half jokingly, I say, well did some girl reject you? Bingo. The poor guy gets his nerve up to finally ask this girl out that he has apparently liked for a long time, and she tells him she likes him like a brother. Ouch! The look on his poor pitiful face broke my heart! I mean, he's only 12 for crying out loud, it's not like I want him to have a girlfriend or be girl crazy. But he is 12, after all, and gosh when I was in 7th grade, boys were about all we could think about! I remember being at that very school, walking down the halls with hopes of catching glimpes of certain 9th grade boys. It gave me butterflies! So I realize this is part of it, but then he gets rejected?? It's so easy when they are little, you can pretty much control the outcome of their life. If they are hungry, you feed them. If they are tired, you put them to sleep. If they want Santa to bring them a new train table, you work that out with him. Now all of a sudden, he has all these issues that break his heart, and I can't do anything about it!

We had a great time at Magic Springs over the weekend with Brantley's best friend and his mom. Poor Carson thinks he is 12, and wanted to ride everything those boys did. One of the pictures below is of Carson crying when he isn't tall enough to ride a certain roller coaster. He did qualify for two of the coasters, provided I rode with him. He loved it! We rode the pirate ship ride, you know the one at all theme parks, that's like a giant swing back and forth and if you sit in the very back seats, you come up out of your seat each time you go up. Carson rode that 7 times! He would laugh and put his arms up and say, "Mommy this is so FUN!" It was a treasured memory. Brantley had his last football game of the season, I am sad to see it go. I hope he will always play football, it has and always will be my favorite.

Dark Brown

The color of my hair today, dark brown. I got a wild hair last night and decided to do it. So far, my kids haven't even noticed, the people in Carson's school just looked at me like something was wrong, but they couldn't put their finger on it. One co-worker has commented, "Wow, that's dark." So, I'm guessing it doesn't look too good! And I didn't notice until I had squeezed the entire bottle on my head that the box was clearly labeled 'permanent haircolor'. Oh well, there are bigger problems in the world to worry about, right?

Rainy Mondays

One of my favorite photos from the recent county fair...

Well, it's pouring buckets of rain here today, and so very dark and dreary. I've been at work for 45 minutes now, and so far, haven't heard a word muttered in the building, the telephone has been silent, no one has come through the door. The entire world must be feeling the same as I do - wishing to crawl back under the covers.

It's funny, the day of college graduation, I thought my days of nail-biting study sessions, nervous stomachs over tests, annotated bibliographies and such were over. HA! Brantley has a nine-weeks test this morning, and bringing his grade up out of the trash dump depends on this test. We've spent hours on this thing...he answers every question correctly..surely, surely. I seriously wonder how our parents ever managed to get us through school without logging onto our assignment lists and grade postings every five minutes. Gosh, we didn't have product recalls then, either, so it's an absolute wonder we are even alive, much less made it through school.

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday, as I was reading the state Sunday paper, to discover Carson's name & photos of he and his preschool class visiting the county fair. Not sure how they managed that bit of press, but there's nothing like your first newspaper appearance being in the state Sunday paper! He was quite pleased; Brantley's only comment, "I didn't know he had a shirt like that." I was listening to him play yesterday, and noticed that his usual British accented Thomas-talk, is now sprinkled with a little of his new fave, Scooby Doo. He once said, "Like, Wow, Boco!" (Boco is an engine).

My mommy-guilt is in full swing today. This Saturday is the Race for the Cure in Little Rock, all of my female co-workers participate with the Independent Insurance Agents of Arkansas team, it's a big event each year. They go up on Friday, stay at the Peabody, etc. I didn't participate last year, out of, of course, mommy-guilt. They all twisted my arm this year, and when we signed up two months ago, I had no way of knowing this Saturday would be Brantley's last football game of the season. I keep telling myself, it's fine, it's fine, I'm at everything else. So, stay tuned to find out if I really go, or if I allow the guilt monster to take over once again...