Thursday, February 25, 2010

Hamster balls...

One day when I was at the mall I noticed that there was a large group gathering in this one area of the mall. It was a large pool with these three "hamster balls" in it. So this past weekend, we had a little time so I brought the boys over to try it out. They loved it so much that Tim used all the money he had left to buy himself more time :)



Friday, February 12, 2010

I love Crossfit

Ok, so a post that isn't about the boys, just about me for a bit.

Some of you know that I have started going to a new gym, Crossfit. And I have to say that I am absolutely loving it.

From the pictures on the website, everyone looks fabulous, thin, strong. I'm a newbie so don't know many people, but I can't begin to tell you how nice everyone is. They are all encouraging and friendly. And I'm shocked to see these women who, from looking at them, I think I could break them like a twig. And then I watch them lift 10s of pounds more than I am.

I am especially proud of myself today because I got my form down on the Clean and Jerk and lifted fairly well. I clean and jerked 70 pounds. Last week, I was struggling with my clean form with 35 pounds.

These are short, intense workouts and I can already tell how much stronger I'm getting... now I just need to get to more cardio so that I can work up to that half marathon that My aunt and I are going to run.

Here's a couple of shots of me that they put on the website: (these are different workouts, although I'm wearing similar clothes and making ugly faces in both :))


Thursday, February 11, 2010

sneaky boys?

So yesterday was a snow day for us, they announced it the night before. So I knew that I could sleep in. So in the morning, the boys stayed really quiet for me... in fact, I wouldn't have even known they were in the house.

SO I slept in a little and when I got up I went to praise them for being so quiet. To which Tim replied...

"Well, since there was no snow we tried not to wake you up. We didn't want you to make us go to school."

They figured, no snow, meant school was still on, and if mom wasn't awake to take them, they wouldn't have to go. They even had the TV volume down really low...

Monday, February 8, 2010

Good boys...

I have to say that the boys really are good boys. There was some story from the weekend that I thought I had to post and now I can't remember what it was, but here are these anyway.

This weekend Rich played in charity basketball game for his high school. It started at 8pm but we all decided to go watch daddy be the big man :) Max was really tired, so he spent much of the first half sitting on my lap laying on me. He was facing me though so I asked him if he was gonna cheer for daddy. He said, "Mommy, I'm tired. Just tell that Daddy that he's good." It was very cute.

During much of this time, we kept sending Timmy under the bleachers for the things that we dropped. Now we were sitting near a bunch of girls that were probably Sammy's age, but they had brought signs for the alumni playing. One of them dropped her sign and was totally bummed. I pointed it out to Tim and despite having been under there 3-4 times already, jumped up and went to get it for her. It was very nice.

So Max and I left at half time because he was all done. But the other two stayed and apparently on the way home were discussing the game. Tim suggested that this other guy Diego was really good and was the best one out there, to which Sam replied, "I think Daddy was the best one out there :)". Such a sweetie!

Although, that was the first of multiple nights in a row that the boys were up late (superbowl was great and we were at a party so they stayed up for that). Now Tim has a baseball game tonight... that kid is going to bed so early tomorrow night, whether he likes it or not!!

Back to work!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

bro-hugs...

funny story that I forgot to post last weekend...

Max and I went to a friend's birthday party at chuck e cheese. Max and his friend were playing a game where they could shoot spiders. At the end, Max was excited about the game and said, "Tiernan... bro-hug" and tried to give him a bro-hug (ya know, where you grab hands and kind of bump chests and pat each other on the back).

Tiernan looked at him like he was crazy, but Max persisted and taught Tiernan how to do a bro-hug. It was so cute!

Report Cards

Yesterday we got the boys report cards. Which is always interesting :)

Tim and Sam did very well. We rarely have concerns about their academics as they always do very well. It is more about the social skills that we look for the boys to work on. For Tim it is talking in class and respecting the rights and opinions of others (have we ever mentioned that Tim always needs to be right? :) ) But we saw that he had improved in some areas, so he was proud of that and knows what he needs to work on.

For Sam, it is about keeping himself from getting distracted. He does his work fabulously and he apparently even helps other kids with concepts in Math and Reading (instead of giving them the answer) but is easily distracted and silly at times. All in all, good reports for both.

Max on the other hand is our challenge. "Academically" he is just fine, he knows his numbers and letters and seems to be writing ok, but it is totally the social skills. He doesn't focus well on what he is working on and he just doesn't pay attention when he needs to be. I'm not surprised, these are things that we work on at home (this child takes forever to eat meals), but I'm not sure how to 'teach' him attentiveness and focus. SO I sent a note to the teacher for some suggestions.

I do think that karate will help as focus and paying attention are things that he works on there. We did talk about what it means to pay attention, look at the person, listen to what they are saying, and keep your body parts still :)

At some point I wonder when is this normal and when do you consider something like ADD or ADHD. I hate to go that route and don't think that we are at that point, but I do wonder about it.

Anyway, back to work!