I Think I Speak English

Last night, Seth and I were having a conversation about something that a kid in his class did that he didn't appreciate. I was trying to help him come up with a solution.

Me - "Why don't you tell him that you don't appreciate it when he does that and if he does it again you will tell the teacher?"

Seth - "I told him but I don't think he understands me. (Whispers) He only speaks English."

Me - "WE speak English."

Seth - "Yeah. But he ONLY speaks English."

Me - "But, we're speaking English RIGHT NOW."

Toby - "I know how to say something in English! 'I am English'."

Me - *blink, blink*

Wordless Wednesday

Um. Yeah.
(I blurred the names of his friends, he didn't put anything OBVIOUSLY inappropriate.)

N is for Ninja

Every week Seth has homework. He has to bring to school no more than three things that start with the letter of the week. When the letter of the week was P, he brought his sister (she goes to the same school).

Last week, the letter of the week was N. He brought a nut and a necklace and a

NINJA!

I'm sure his teacher thinks we're mad. I'm pretty sure she's right.

UN Day (Part 2)

So, all dressed up like Bree from Desperate Housewives (I SO want to be Bree, no matter how many people tell me that I don’t really. I do, I DO. You just have no idea how badly I want to have obsessive compulsive disorder and be a thin, gorgeous redhead. Anyway.), standing in my kitchen making pikelets ALL MORNING LONG. One of the things about UN day is that you must bring food for your child’s class. Well, that’s all well and good for people who have only 1 or 2 children in the school, but what about those of us with 4 (well, this hasn’t actually happened yet, but it’s so in my future – I’m going to become a short order cook on UN Day in years to come).

So I was flipping pikelets and the evil youngest one was home because he was ‘sick’. He was cooking next to me and I was trying to whip some cream for the pikelet topping, but the cream I had was too thin, so I set it aside. Blaise promptly dumped it all over the counter/himself/the floor. I stripped his clothes off and set him outside the kitchen.

As I got to the last pikelets, I went into the living room (where Little Einsteins was on television for the banished child) and Blaise was standing, naked in the middle of the living room swinging his poopy diaper around. He was covered in poo as was the living room.

I cleaned all that up, got him dressed, strapped him into the stroller and went to the school to drop off all the food.

Came back, got in the car to go get Toby.

Fed them lunch, put them back in the stroller to go see UN Day.

The epitome of UN Day. These four girls are all in their country's native costumes and they all interact daily. I love UN Day. It's kind of creepy, you know, with those weird faces, but you get used to it. The purple arrow shows where I work on Mondays.

Came back. Blaise dumped out the completely full bottle of floor cleaner in the bathroom.

Put him out of the bathroom to clean it up.

Came out. Blaise had dumped all the board games on to the floor.

Put Blaise down for a nap. Mommy had had enough.

UN Day 2008 was the longest day ever. But so worth it.

My UN Day

Yesterday was UN Day (It's not actually UN Day, that's just the day it was observed). This is a totally awesome “holiday” that my kids’ school pulls off every year. It’s a way to celebrate the diversity of the school and to gorge yourself on fabulous Asian food.

Some may argue that it's a way to promote your country through propaganda (my son came home with pens from 3 different nations, coins, and flag pins and last year he had nothing but good things to say about the country with the blue and white flag - a special prize for the first one who knows it), but I say diversity. We're celebrating our diversity! To say nothing of the pens I'm ordering for our table to give away next year. It's all about diversity.

When we awakened, Seth was so excited. “I have to wear a shirt with the flag of my country!” He says it this way because he really has no flipping idea what his country is. In school, they were making the hats to wear for UN Day to represent their countries and my son made a Polish flag hat. Yeah, we’re not Polish.

So, I dug through Seth's wardrobe thinking for sure that like all good Americans we have the Old Navy American flag T-shirts. Yeah, we do. For Toby and Blaise and Dylan and Pamela. Seth and I do not have these (and ironically we were the only ones born OUTSIDE the United States). So I dug through Pamela's wardrobe and found an old t-shirt that says “America” on it. Yeah, that’ll work.

So I sent my 5 year old BOY to school wearing a girl’s “America” T-shirt. Hey, at least it didn’t have sequins. Wait! No, it didn't have sequins. (Dodged that bullet)

I asked him, “Would you like me to paint a flag on your face?”

He said, “Um, YEAH!”

So I painted a 10 striped, 15 starred American flag on his cheek. Don’t judge me.

That's a B'Merican flag, y'all.

I asked Pamela “Would you like a flag painted on your face?”

She said, “No, thanks. I’m good.”

Moody teenager.

Then, even though Toby doesn’t go to the same school, I asked Toby.

He responded, “you’re completely insane if you think I want that crap on my face No.” Toby’s not a big fan of the face paint.

So we have Seth, in his girls’ America shirt and blue jeans with a baseball cap and a flag painted on his face. How much do you want to bet he will tell people he’s from Poland?

And Pamela, who does have a flag t-shirt, comes down wearing a pink, white and blue striped shirt.

I said, “So you’re the pacifist American?”

I dressed in a red blouse (‘cause I have a kick ass red blouse) and a lapis and pearl necklace. ‘Cause I’m all about being patriotic (even though I can’t stand the way red and blue look together, can’t we change it to blue and orange?).

I realize I look totally creepy in this picture. You see, I'm taking this film class and right now we're studying German expressionism. Well, I'm German (1/4 anyway) and this is my expressionism. Not really, it's just the best I could do with available light and a mirror, but I had you going right?

The day got better,but I'm going to make you wait. I have to keep you coming back right?

Tossing Cookies

No, it's not what you think.

Yesterday, Dylan and I went to the big grocery store where the friendly cashier (anyone who knows Eastern Central Europe realizes that a friendly cashier is a rare find, and anyone who says otherwise is lying) took his money for a phone card and refused to ring up the rest of the groceries. At which point she turned to me and asked:

"Pani ma kartę punktowe?" - Do you have a point card?

"Nie, nie mam." - No, I don't have. (Although really my favorite thing is when I overhear others say "Nie będzie." - It will not be. Cracks me up every time!)

Then she proceeds to ring up the groceries, completely ignoring Dylan, who is the one with the credit card. Apparently he only wanted the phone card.

As she was ringing up the groceries, she got to a packet of cookies that Dylan had opened and had been eating in the store. As she scanned them, the cookies fell out of the package and Dylan reached across to grab them as the cashier threw them away. Dylan looked at me all hurt.

"She threw away my cookies."

The cashier starts speaking quickly and angrily to him.

"And now she's admonishing me for it."

At which point I burst into hysterical laughter. Which did not impress the cashier. She stared at me for the rest of the transaction, trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL I thought was so funny. If it had been a restaurant, we certainly would have gotten a spitter. I'm not entirely sure she didn't spit in our food anyway.

Let's Play Tag

So, in reference to yesterday's post where I'm going back through my archives because I have nothing to say, I've been tagged by Marinka. YAY! More useless stuff where I don't actually have to sit and come up with an amusing post all by myself.

So here they are, Six Odd Things About Me:

1) If I look at myself too long in a mirror it freaks me out. Seriously. I don't know why and when I was a teenager I covered all the mirrors in my room.

2) Doors that are meant to be open MUST be open and doors that are meant to be closed MUST be closed. How do I know which ones are which? I just know. And everyone else should know too. If you ever see me closing doors or opening doors (such as the cabinet doors at the PTO store) and think I'm a little bit crazy, it's 'cause I am.

3) When I see Africans outside of Africa, I smile at them like I know them. Because I think I'm African. (I mention this one because this morning at the gym there was a gentleman from Nigeria and I smiled and he walked up and started talking to me. Which was rather unfortunate, as I was trying to balance on a large ball while squeezing another ball between my legs.)

4) I have attended weddings in every country I have lived in except Ghana. I may have to go back just to attend a wedding.

5) I have panic disorder, but I stopped taking my medicine a long time ago. I didn't like the way it made me feel. But I get angry with other mentally ill people who stop taking their medication. As though I think I'm normal and they should know that they are not.

6) I was raised without religion. I usually say Atheist, but we were not the hardcore 'everyone else is wrong and there is obviously no god' kind of Atheists. And I now teach religion to teenagers.

I'm not going to tag anyone because that's too much pressure (did I mention panic disorder?). So if you want to play along, go ahead. If not, that's okay too.