On a TV fast with nowhere to go...

So here I sit. On a TV fast with nowhere to go, so I thought why not catchup on the doings of the Max, Clara and Zoe!

Max: Your my toothless boy darling. REcently you lost the 2 top teeth and it's the cutest look ever, just in time for your first grade pictures!
You don't care for school and dare I say I don't care for school? It takes you away from me at 8:35 a.m. and you don't return until 3:50 pm. It's too long of a day and at orientation I glazed over just hearing about your schedule and the news of the "working snack". Apparently I have to send you with a snack that you can hold in one hand so that your other hand is free to multitask and facilitate non-stop learning. This means the snack also has to be left hand appropriate and fairly uncomplicated so that your right hand can carry on. I sense "NO child left behind" is in full force with testing standards and pressure on teachers. I'm ready to propose the "No workbooks for 6 year old children" act but I'm not sure that will endear you or I to the elementary school staff so I'll wait a few months before I come visiting in a clown costume to brighten your day. Other than school, we've been having loads of fun playing tennis, skateboarding, mountain biking etc... You call every weekend a holiday and I try pack in as much fun as we can before 8:35 a.m. Monday morning rolls around.

Clara: I continue to speculate that at birth, a jewlers glass was inserted into your cornea just for the purpose of inspecting produce. You take great joy in pointing out the smallest imperfections in bananas and apples so then I have to perform produce imperfection extractions because really I have nothing better to do with my life. I guess it's better than fetching juice because a part of me feels like you have the motor skills to fetch your own juice and only spill it when doing so in order to keep me on retainer.
On other fronts, you've been very happy in school this year with the exception that there are now BOYS in your class. For the first 4 weeks, everytime I picked you up you told me that you don't care for boys and why do they have to be in your class? But now they are beginning to endear themselves to you and I sense some acceptance on the horizon. Of course that will turn into condemnation again at some point as you seem to enjoy exploring every possible emotion in relation to every possible subject. (reminds me of someone else I know... hee hee). We went to the beach every Thursday this summer and it still amazes me that your favorite beach day was the one when you were romping around on the beach in the freezing, pouring rain while the rest of us huddled under a canopy. WHy were we there you ask? I don't want weather to affect our actions so we stick with our plans unless there's a small craft advisory in effect. I need you to be hardy and willfull so that you will fit right in to our family dynamic. We are CAMPERS and I need you to be down with rain and bugs. So far it's working!

Zoe: My delicious baby. I think you believe your purpose, now that you have a robust vocabulary, is to talk all the live-long day. My favorite though is everytime I get off the phone or everytime a teller at the bank serves us or everytime someone gives me change at the Dunkin Donuts window you ask "Who is that Mommy?" If my answer is "someone serving us coffee" etc you start yelling at me, "Mommy who is it?" So sometimes I say Stella and that doesn't work either as we start to cycle in and out of conversations along the likes of the following:
"Mommy who's that lady"
"The lady serving us coffee"
"Mommy who is she?!!!"
(me thinking, OK she needs a name so I throw out:) "Stella"
"Who's Stella?"
"She's the lady serving us coffee?"
"BUT WHO IS SHE?"
"I don't know Zoe!"
CRIES CRIES CRIES
So then I try a different tact and throw out a name she knows. "Calm down Zoe, its just Damma..."
"NO ITS NOT DAMMA, ITS STELLA"
And I won't go on with this because I can't bear to think about this for another minute. Suffice to say this dialogue goes on a 2-3 times a day or anytime we have any type of human contact with someone she doesn't know. I'm going cast humanity aside any minute now just to avoid this unbearable dialogue.

So that's it for me right now. I'll write about more fun and sunshine tomorrow and all the wonderful traits you all have. The image of 5 loads of laundry left to be folded upstairs is burning a hole through my brain and casting a shadow over my typically sunny dispostion....