Basketball, Standing Up, and Juicy Stuff

It's been awhile since I updated on the kiddos and our family, so I will give it a shot, but the truth is so much has happened or is happening that I am guaranteed to miss something. The boys are playing basketball. In fact they have been playing for six weeks now. We have one game left and then we will start soccer and baseball (Mason is doing both and Connor is doing t-ball). Basketball is a new experience for us. Personally, I am not sure how smart or safe it is to put that many young children in a confined area with parents, add in a bunch of balls, and not expect the parents (not the children) to hurt someone. Mason has taken to the sport really well. He makes at least one basket each game with his personal high being 12 points in one game. Connor, bless his heart, begs to get out of the game each time the coach puts him in; however, it was worth the $75 we paid for him to play because the pictures are adorable.

Reagan, who recently started clapping and snapping, loves to watch her boys play basketball. Okay, maybe that is an exaggeration; she loves to watch the little cheerleaders who cheer at the basketball games. I love to torment Richard, who fully expects his daughter to be a soccer player, with the image of his daughter in a short skirt shaking her pom-pom (wink;, wink;). The clapping and snapping are just the tip of the iceberg of what she is doing. I feel like everytime we turn around she is doing something new. We are still not crawling - I think she feels getting her knees dirty is beneath her, but she is standing up while holding onto something. Also, the most amazing thing happened tonight. Tommy and April came over for dinner and as they were leaving we were all saying bye-bye to get Cheyanne to wave at us (so cute). All of a sudden it became really quiet and Reagan said, "Bye-bye." Not by, by, by, by, by, like she has been doing for a while and not the other babbling sounds she has been saying all the time (the child talks more than her mother and brothers put together), but "Bye-bye". I don't know what was funnier, the huge deal we all made at the same time or the look on her face. The look seemed to ask, "Are you seriously acting like that over bye-bye, what are you going to do when I say superfilious?" (My child will have words like that in her vocabulary).

Now to get to the juicy stuff - Mason has a girlfriend! Or, as I should probably say, Mason had a girlfriend. Got her the day before Valentine's Day and broke up with her the next Monday. It was the cutest thing ever. He wanted to buy her a present, so he asked Richard to take him to the store. He deliberated for thirty minutes and his side of the conversation sounded something like this, "It has to be something small so I can give it to her and she can hide it in her backpack, I don't know how to give it to her without everyone seeing it, I don't think she would like a stuffed animal, this is hard...". I think you get the idea. The hilarious part is the next morning he decided not to give it to her because he just couldn't figure out how to without someone else seeing it. He said he didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I think secretly he was embarassed - which is fine with me, his mom, who plans to be his only valentine for a few years to come. One thing I am proud of is the comment he made when he told me about her. He said that one reason she was his girlfriend was we went to church with her and he thought she was a good Christian and he didn't want to date a girl who didn't believe in God. I know he is extremely young, but I love the direction he seems to be heading in right now. I was worried when he was baptized in October that he was too young to really understand the decision he had made, but he seems to be taking steps everyday toward a stronger relationship with God. All in all, we are still maveling at and thanking God for our wonderful children and great lives.

Connor's Haircut

Last Thursday evening I decided I was tired of looking at Connor's hair sticking up all over his head (it truly looked as if he had stuck his finger in a light socket), so I got out the clippers and trimmed his hair. The entire time I was cutting his hair, he begged me to cut it all off like daddy's. (He has gotten really good at knowing when is just the right time to call Richard daddy to insure he gets what he wants.) Actually what he said was, "I need to be baud so I wook more wike daddy (thus the need for speech therapy)." I refused - we finished the hair cut - and I thought that was the end of it. The next day after we got home from school, he told me there were still some long hairs and we needed to go back over it - I fell for it and out came the clippers. I put the five guard on and start trimming the few long hairs which were really there. About that time, Mason comes into the bathroom and starts bothering me about wanting to play the Wii - I turn around to tell him to give me a minute to finish the haircut and - you guessed it - that's when Connor chose to make his move. He grabbed the clippers, knocked the guard off, and ran the clippers all the way across the top of his head. I screamed, he looked scared but pleased with himself, and Mason started laughing - which got Reagan who was observing from the bathroom floor to laughing also. I laughed, then cried, then laughed some more. I guess it justs goes to show that when he wants to "look kool wike daddy" - no one is going to stop him. By the way, the clippers are now on a high shelf in the linen closet because there is not a doubt in my mind that he now considers himself a licensed barber and wouldn't think twice about doing it again - he might even think about practicing on Reagan and the little hair she has managed to accumulate.

P.S. - Did I mention he had basketball pictures, Little Panther Pictures, his class picture, and his spring pictures all in the next two weeks? I am choosing to look at it as an opportunity to make wonderful memories for the future - rather than think about all his beautiful hair on the bathroom floor.

Once again - never a dull moment around the Meisel house.