when i grow up - part one

recently, benny's classroom has been exploring the concept of careers.

this mainly stemmed from the kids asking what exactly it was that their parents were doing all day.

the teachers have done a cute series exploring the careers of some of the classroom's parents, which evolved into the kids naming some careers of their own.

here is the career inspiration that benny has hanging on the wall:

totally respectable/commendable/responsible.

lofty.

ambitious.

all those things.

right?

right.

come back tomorrow to see the OTHER career choice benny explored on paper #2.

self-regulation update: Stairy Night

each day, anth has a blue folder that goes to and from school in his backpack.

notes to the teacher from bern and i, as well as completed homework, go to school via this folder. 

his day's classwork, as well as newsletters and homework come home with him. 

(and, most recently, a few hilarious "love notes" from his classmates.)

i have been saying that i need to share some of anth's classwork for a while now. 

but this one quickly rose to the top, due to it's relevancy to this recent post. 

"I said please when i wanted to get off the stairs."

now, we have always used the stairs as our time-out space. 

and, yes, he does often politely request to come off of the stairs before his time is complete. 

however, i don't know if this picture captures the spirit of all of that to a teacher new to our family. 

super.

mind boggling

so...bern and i recently fashioned a set of blank 3x5 cards into flash cards for anthony.
we use these some nights before bed.
per his request.
to help him "learn more about his numbers."

yes.
i am serious.

while working on flashcards recently, i started to explain that, in the case of some numbers, there are basic patterns that make it easy to quickly figure out the answer.
such as when adding 9 to a number, etc.

anth took in this information and we practiced a bit.
and he saw that the patterns were, in fact, consistent.

we were sitting in his bed together with our backs against his headboard.
anth, facing forward, reached out his hand and grabbed my knee.
"oh...mom. that just totally blew my mind!"

just imagine when he gets to F.O.I.L.

grad-dads and granddads

while i continue my committment to being a lazy poster while my parents are in town, i thought that a few quick photos of bern's big day were in order!

it all started here.

with this tree.

and me and my dad on our back porch.

testing out the zoom lens for my camera.

...we were curious how far it would actually zoom.

once again, i play the part of awkward neighbor as i aim my zoom lens into someone else's backyard.

 

a sea of silly hats.

and one, amidst the yellows, that i couldn't help but love.

it said "it's a girl!"

dear whoever you are, congrats!

bernie standing up to have his degree conferred by President Gee!

(you can actually see him about three folks in from the ramp, looking slighlty to his right in front of the folks with the yellow hoods.)

 

bern making his way down the ramp with degree in hand!

aside from looking up to see dad at the appropriate times, the gravity of the event was somewhat lost on our favorite kindergartener.

but, he was super excited to have 6 times his usual allotment of Nintendo DS time.

 

bern came to find us up in our seating area after the ceremony!

 

here are my folks with bern!

 

and 4 generations of savvy men back at our house after the ceremony to celebrate!

with a side of Wish Bear.

 

benny intently discusses something relating to the number four with uncle frank's fiancee, nicole.

 

and, after the party, my pops helped grab a photo of bern and i in the backyard.

this time there are people in front of the camera, pointing in the same direction as the morning's creep-zoom-photo

and, of course, anth's journal o' the day.

with a lovely depiction of bern's gown.

which, apparently, was mainly sleeves.

congrats again to our savvy daddy!

(he might have my hide for mentioning this, but bern was honored with the Weidler Scholars award for academic achievement in his program by the Fisher School of Business!

smart boys are sexy!)

i heart homework 6 - it's a wrap

this weekend was a little busy around the savvy abode.
so, we got a tad behind on our homework project.
hence, anth being the honest kid that he is, Friday/Saturday/Sunday are all labeled "Sunday" because that is when he completed them. 
always tell the truth...even if it busts your parents for falling behind on homework management.

but, sunday afternoon was highly productive.
anth completed mass amounts of valentines and his last three days of homework!

"winter makes me happy because you can have a snowball fight."

(i.e., throw snowballs at your little brother while he stands there and eats the landscape.)

 

"my mommy likes to take pictures of icicles."

(note: this is his bird's eye view depiction of mommy trying to take a picture of the trees covered in icicles while daddy was driving on the way in to work. haha.)

the other fun thing about honesty is this...

"when my daddy was walking up the driveway, he fell down."

i drive a Golf.

as demonstrated in earlier homework, it can't make it up the driveway when icy.

my sweet husband tried to get it up the driveway for me.

it protested for him as well.

on bern's way back up the driveway, it claimed another victim.

*note: to bern's credit, the driveway has a much greater incline than anth portrayed here.

anth turned in his packet of homework this morning.

i hope that his teachers enjoy this project as much as i have.

i heart homework 5 - slackers

sometime last week, anth went back and added a drawing to his first night's homework to represent the news that he had watched. 

fair enough. 

when i asked him to tell me about the drawing (always safer than guessing) he told me that this was the newsman on the TV pointing to the weather. 

"but i just drew a bunch of squiggles to show the map because that's all the news guys bother to do anyway.  i mean, they don't use words or shapes or anything."

i heart homework 4 - weather as food

while this did not actually happen on thursday, the sentiment expressed in anth's homework is correct. 

things happening in this drawing: 

- the orange guy is benny

- the device on his head is his "monkey hat"

- the line from hand to mouth is snow

- the right is the walkway at daycare, with the squiggles being the snow

if left to his own devices, benny would happily go outside and eat all the snow his little belly could handle. 

it would not, however, occur to him to play in it. 

for benny, winter is nothing more than an infinite syrup-free icee. 

our grocery bill totally goes down in the winter. 

below is some photographic and video evidence of this. 

as usual, from the phone so the quality is less than ideal. :)

benny, shoveling it in his face with hand. 

note, gloves had been removed. 

they complicate the snow-to-mouth motion.

good to the last drop. 

for those not familiar, ben is referencing the children's book The Gruffalo, when he states that he will bite the snow with his "terrible teeth and his terrible jaws." 

super cute. 

in the way that horrible monsters in children's stories can be cute. 

...?

i heart homework 2 - slippery when frozen

tuesday's homework was a bit more straightforward than monday night's.
the kids went outside on the playground at school.
it was still icy.
(not sure why they were out there, but ok.)

things to note in his artwork:

1. as evidenced by the right side and "tuesday" region of the paper, someone did not wash their hands thoroughly after dinner. 

2. anth's winter jacket is green.

3. apparently he was balancing a book on his head.

4. the other little person in the picture is one of his female playmates.

5. she is not this much taller than him in real life.

6. nor a zombie.

i heart homework - part 1

you can take the girl out of california. 

but, even after a decade of living in Ohio, you can't quite take all the california out of this girl.

especially when it comes to weather.

i still find a good thunder storm or display of lightning absolutely fascinating.

so, being in one of the many states being hit by the ice/other storm festivities of the last few days has been...special.

on one hand, i find the idea of driving on frozen water terrifying.

on the other, it's all really pretty and it makes me want to take pictures.

bernie lovingly told me, "you are such a californian," yesterday after i tromped around in front of our daycare taking pictures of ice-encased shrubs on my phone because i didn't have my camera handy.

i also took phone photos in front of the post office.

and then out on The Oval as i walked around campus.

but, i wanted my real camera.
and by real, i mean my old point and shoot, as i am still figuring out manual mode on the fun new camera.
it was dark by the time i got home, so the photos opps were limited.
this first one is low quality. 
because it is through my window, for fear of falling on said camera.
(dear neighbors who i don't really know across the street...if you saw me taking photos in the direction of your home through my window last night, i promise i was operating with good intentions.)
this is the end of my driveway leading into our street.
the rest of our driveway is basically an 89 degree angle.
fun.

then bernie humored me and gave me a few minutes to wander around on our deck in the back and take these pictures of icicles before he ran out the door to go study.
(note: he quickly came back in the door to study at home after finding out every good coffee shop was closing at 8pm.)

so, yes, i'm a nerd and like to take pictures of these things.

neither of these facts should surprise most folks.

but...i was going somewhere with all of this.

promise.

anth's teachers decided to capitalize on the weather and make it a learning experience.

on monday, they sent home a week-long project.

on monday night, anth was to watch the news and take note of what weather was being predicted.

then, over the week, he was asked to write/draw/note his experiences, thoughts, observations of the weather in his journal.

cute.

so far, the first two entries seemed like they were worth sharing widely.

the first one was the one about the forecast. 

"the news said it will be icy"

***important note: anthony's teachers have asked that the parents allow the kids to sound out their words and not correct their spelling for them. 

i clearly am willing to poke fun at much of the day to day portions of my kids' lives.

anth LOVES homework. 

mom and dad love that anth loves homework.

so homework is sacred.

make fun of his spelling and we have issues.

ok, protective mommy PSA over.

the second included his prediction of what an ice storm would look like.

seeing it made me think that maybe my verbalizations regarding the coming storm were, in fact, quite "californian."

"this is what ice storm i thought it would be like"

apparently my  poor little man thought that an ice storm entailed people running around in the streets trying to avoid giant human-sized shards of ice. 

PMM: Proud Mommy Moment

so....here's the thing. 
this blog is, by and large, dedicated to the things that my boys do that make me smile. 
or giggle. 
or guffaw. 
depending.
mostly, because they are just good, old-fashioned, day-to-day interactions. 
with a little bit of flair. 


but, if i am painting an honest picture, it is not all hilarity ensuing in the savarese house. 
while i do find the humor in their antics, i also find my heart making room for both pride and, for those who know me well, the general sappiness that is always there under the sarcasm. 


so, if you are only here for the general mocking of small children, then:
1. you should probably take a minute to reflect on that, and 
2. this post probably isn't for you. 


so....last week. 
right. 
the backstory...
(which, PS, i have plans to make an "Our Story" page kind of like the family photos page...with words - because i feel like i am always drifting into some sort of backstory. leave a comment if that would be helpful/fun/something other than self-indulgent.)
but back to the background... 
my husband and i work full-time. 
he, bless his heart, has been going back to school for his second masters for the last two years. 
it is a working professional's MBA program and it requires that he be in class multiple nights a week. 
because we are academic nerds, he tends to study relatively late. 
we both kind of have a thing for good grades. 
and that whole learning the material part, too.
and, for doing an assignment, or task, well. 


so, last Tuesday, i received the following photo, via text, from my sweet husband. 
because he had realized he had taken anth's homework assignment with him when he dropped him off at school in the morning.
and we were likely to miss each other in the chaos of the day. 
the assignment itself was simple.
draw a map representing the shapes of the objects in your room. 

fair enough. 

because the assignment wasn't due the next day, we ended up working on it later in the week. 

(and by we, i mean anth and bern worked on the majority of it.)

i assumed anthony would spend a bit of time drawing some rectangles representing his bed, dresser, shelfs, etc...

instead, anth and his dad spent upwards of an hour and a half producing this: 

and, thus, i had one of those moments.

a Proud Mommy Moment. 

sitting there, watching bernie guide anth through the process. 

it hit me. 

anthony LOVES doing homework. 

seriously. 

at night, he asks to work on writing his numbers and letters, or reading, before he goes to bed. 

sometimes he forgoes the usual 10 pages of Harry Potter a night for the sake of more practice of his penmanship. 

my sweet boy loves to learn. 

merely for the sake of learning. 

and he has a good work ethic.

i guess this is not all that surprising.

but, still, it is encouraging. 

maybe anth would have been that kid regardless. 

or maybe, just maybe, bern and i have translated a couple of our values into this little gem of a person. 

being a parent is a big responsibility. 

...and sometimes it's kind of nice to have even the littlest proof that you're doing something right. 

back in the day . . .

grandma and grandpa welch are in town from California. (thus, posting may be a tad haphazard for the next two weeks...)


grandma put benny to bed tonight, and grandpa sat down on the couch with anth and i while we did a little "homework." note, this homework is not assigned by his teachers most days. it is generally an assignment du jour of anthony's choosing. today, he wanted to work on numbers.


we had made our way to "4" and anth was working on a line of them in his spiral notebook. i was curious if he had started associating months with numbers, so i asked him, "anth, what does the number four mean to you?"


"well, mom. to me, it means that i've been four once. but that was way in my past," said my 5-year old.

homework. . .

anth was working on one of his first kindergarten homework assignments tonight. the topic was measuring. he was asked to: 

1. find some household objects to measure
2. draw a picture of each item measured, and
3. find a way to show on paper the measurements taken and to what they correspond

fair enough. 

the first item anth chose to measure was a 3x3 inch Mickey Mouse board book of his brother's. 

he focused, measured it accurately, and then drew a picture in his notebook. 

then i reminded him that he needed to figure out a way to show his teachers what he found out on paper. 

he put his head down for a minute in thought. then he looked up at me and asked if i could help him spell "Dear Donna and Leann, you could probably already tell this by yourself but this book is 3 inches." 

(i normally allow him to stay his course, but seeing as he is new to this classroom, i thought perhaps this statement might be misconstrued in its sincerity. in the end we agreed on "this book is 3 inches.")