halloween 2013 - so. much. rain.

oh. 
hey. 
so, it's halloween. 
(in case you somehow missed that fact today. my blog is super helpful like that.)
unfortunately, someone forgot to send the memo to Mother Nature. 
if i was supposed to have done that, my apologies. 
i totally dropped the ball.

for a brief moment today, anth had decided that he didn't want to trick-or-treat this year. 
it would be far too wet and rainy, and, according to him, "i mean, you bought a bunch of candy anyway, mom. i can just have some of that, right?"
this child is far too logical for his own good. 
benny, of course, would have non of that reasonable nonsense. 
he was determined to wander around the new neighborhood and ask random strangers for candy, and no weather would stop him. 

so, our two little ninjas suited up. 
yes, that's right. 
two little ninjas. 
when we walked into the Halloween store, benny wanted to be Hawkeye. 
unfortunately, benny likes the not-mass-produced Avenger. 
so, when anth picked out a costume that looked appealing, benny declared that he wanted to be the same thing. 
bernie and i paused. 
and waited for the, "but i picked it first."
and. 
it. 
never. 
came. 
it was a Halloween miracle. 
not wanting the good will to pass, we quickly cashed out and left the store. 

we had a really fun Halloween, rain and all. 
benny enjoyed being a ninja at kindergarten. 
(sorry. a "stealth ninja.")
anth had fun being in the halloween parade at his new school. 
and mom and dad both enjoyed trick-or-treating tonight. 
bernie got to take the boys out and meet people like the extrovert he is. 
and my little introverted self enjoyed being able to meet people while sitting on my own front porch. 

but first. . . it was time to come home and humor mom with a outdoor-yet-under-cover photo shoot. 
normally i do this about two weeks ahead and mail cards. 
oops. 
here's your card. 

backyard ninja. 
anthony actually had quite an impressive amount of poses for this costume. 
and, because i can't make up my mind/edit, here are 9 million (or 16) shots of our pre-candy-filled boys. 


unfortunately, i didn't notice that benny's mask was a little "Kilroy was here" at the time. 
oops. 
details. 

we started out on the back porch. 
because nothing says, "we are tough" like sitting on an orange couch with floral pillows. 

so mommy took the show out front. 

 this is benny being "tough."

this is mommy's request for "show me your really tough eyes"

this is mommy's request for, "show me your smiling eyes."
um. 
not exactly, ben. 
this looks a little more, "show me your surgeon-asking-a-question-mid-procedure eyes."
i mean, i totally know what that looks like. 
i've watched both E.R. and Grey's Anatomy in their entirety. 

bernie, who is eternally helpful in these situations, requested that benny show us his "hungry eyes."
benny, not having an appreciation for Dirty Dancing/80's music references quite yes, gave us this. 
which was more of an "exasperation that i was granted these humans as parents" eyes. 

it seemed like a good time to give anth a turn. 

he required no prompting. 

mommy loves a close-up. 

yep. 
i once again made the mistake of asking for "smiling eyes." 
which was just "frightening eyes."
mixed with "not looking in the right direction" eyes. 

there we go. 

win. 

Happy Halloween, friends!

so much for getting a craft room. . .

for the second time in our careers as parents, bernie and i had to stop and console a genuinely distraught child. 

wait. 
that sentence needs some specificity. 
this was not the second time we consoled one of our children. 
that would mean i was lying. 
or eternally ignoring my children.
either way, no good. 

clarification. 
for some reason i can't trace back in the conversation, while i was helping Benny get into his jammies after bath-time, he asked something like, "when do people have to move out?"
i asked what he meant, and he specified that he wanted to know how old people were when they usually moved out of the house. 

i told benny that his mommy and daddy both moved out of their parents' houses when they were 18 and went to live at college. 
benny literally burst into tears. 
i tried to explain that it is all very (mostly) fun and you get to live with a bunch of friends (or at least good roommates) and visit your family when you want to (admit you're out of socks.)
(the parentheticals were occurring in my brain, not out loud.)
this, for some reason, made him cry harder. 
so, i told him that we would let him make this decision when he was 17 or 18. 
nope. 
didn't help. 
still weeping. 

at this point, i just scooped him up and carried him downstairs. 
i needed reinforcements. 
so, bernie also joined the conversation, and we all eventually agreed that we could revisit this if he changed his mind. 
but that he could totally live with us. 
(i may have used the phrase, "let's always live close to each other," so i felt less like a liar.)
benny specified that he would like to live with us until he is 99. 

i'm fairly certain our little man will change his mind at some point in his teenage years. 
for now, i kind of have to wonder why two children of parents who have both been Residence Life professionals at some point in their careers are so averse to living on campus. 
perhaps they were listening a little more closely to all those late-night calls than we realized. 
oops. 


 

fail photo: buckeye salutations

in order for this particular post to make sense, please allow me to first provide a bit of context. 

if you are not familiar with the culture around Ohio State football, you may not recognize the gestures i am trying to capture below. 

but, one of the many Buckeye traditions is that sections of the stadium will chant the letters O-H-I-O, while that entire section of the stadium throws up their arms in the shape of that letter. 

simple, yet quite effective in person. 

as a spin-off, it is common for folks to take pictures with four people/3 people and a conveniently shaped object to make a human O-H-I-O. 

see one of our family photos from 2011:

there is an entire page on the OSU website dedicated to this phenomenon. 

here is a random one including complete strangers that i enjoy:

anyway. 

you get the point. 

so. . . when we were at the recent Buckeye Kickoff event in August, and we were practicing our cheers along with 7,000 first-year-students, i was excited to capture benny in the act, as i thought it would be a cute little 4-part-series to use somewhere in the house. 

and, cute it very well could have been. 

if i had not, apparently, gotten distracted somewhere along the way. . .

O:

H:
 

I:

and. . . end scene. 
apparently, i forgot that there are 4 letters in "Ohio."
i find this particularly amusing, because i JUST came across this image and shared it with a friend today: 

anyway. 
before someone points out the SUPER obvious. . . 
i know that if i really wanted to cheat and repeat the "O," i totally could. 

but that would be kind of obvious. 
and would further emphasize my awesomeness.

so, instead, i have left myself with a lovely 3-shot series of benny. 

saying, "O, Hi."

so, friends. . .

hello. 

from benny. 

FYI: i'm no fun

as it turns out, i, apparently, am no fun. 
the source of this data? 
mr. benjamin savarese. 

the topic of conversation that spurred this fun fact? 
how to decorate the house for halloween. 

this, per usual, happened in the drive on the way in to work. 
we passed a house that had been "TP'd."
(although, i must say, back in the day we were not so bold as to write "UAGS"...which i imagine stands for Upper Arlington Girls Soccer, or something to that effect...ON THE LAWN when we did such things. we thought we were, somehow, anonymous.)
anyway, we passed a corner house with lovely tall trees dripping in toilet paper. 
benny assessed their work. 
and promptly asked if we, too, could dress our house as a mummy for halloween. 

i, of course, declined. 
thus making me "no fun."

so, thank you, local teenagers, for helping my children find new ways to find me boring and utterly unreasonable. 
greatly appreciated. 

Ho! Ho! Ho! (...No?)

Dear Colleagues,

Dear Friends and Family, 

Dear Everyone,

i must aplogize.
it seems i made an error in judgment on my way in to work on monday.
it started when benny asked, "can i pick the CD today, mommy?"
and ended when i replied, "sure!"

how was i to know that he had the wrong CD case?
and that when he said, "i want the green CD," and i okayed this, that he would pass the Glee Christmas CD up front?
(volume 2, in case you were wondering.)
(which, likely, you weren't.)

because i had already approved this choice, i put the CD in and let it go.
benny was instantly thrilled becuase he knew the songs.
the kid loves a sing-a-long.
who am i to get in the way of a 5-year-old and a hearty sing-a-long?
even if it is to Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. . .

if i was a less distracted person these days, i might have removed the CD by now.
evidently, i am not a less distracted person.
i know this, because it is now tuesday evening. 
and because the staff member getting out of car next to me this morning gave me a bit of a funny look when they realized that it was Do You Hear What I Hear flooding out of my car. 
but, come on. 
that's kind of hilarious. 
becuase that is exactly what they were doing in that moment. 
i smiled and shrugged and headed toward my office in Lincoln Tower. 
explaining just seemed kind of impossible at that moment.  
because, really, now that i have heard my favorite holiday song, River, i sort of want to keep listening to Christmas music. 
and decorate my house in white lights. 
and drink cocoa by the fire under snuggly blankets. 
Macy's would be proud of me. 

so, colleagues/friends/family/neighbors. . .i apologize. 
for singing christmas music. 
in mid-october. 

bernie - feel free to intervene at any time and swap out the CD in my car. 
you are much more likely to remember this than i am. 

Happy Holidays  
Happy Halloween!
Happy Tuesday!

love, 
krystyne