Voting, Part II

It's 7:37am. Kids are up, and I've herded them into the bathroom for tinkles before they get to the cereal cabinet.
J: "Are we going to school today?"
me: "No, not today."
J:"It's a special holiday?"
Me: "Yes, it's a holiday today, so no work and no school. I'll make pancakes later"
J:"It's Easter?"
Me: "No. It's President's Day."
J:"Santa's coming???"
Me: "No, honey, Santa's not coming!"
J:"But I voted for Santa...."
Me: entirely incoherent giggling sounds.
V:"J, Santa only comes on Christmas. And we can't listen to "Jingle Bells"until its Christmas time!"

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And a few pictures from Saturday. It's been a rough week, clearly.

February's Rituals: Voting and Valentine's Day

Mike has certainly done his part in instilling civic duty in the kids from an early age. The polling place for our area is in the high school which is literally down the street from us, and the kids always accompany Mike to all election-related events.
So Tuesday was DC-MD-VA's presidential primary. On the way over, Mike asks Justine: "Justine, who shall I vote for?" Justine: "Ummmmm... Mom!" That's my girl!!! Of course, once Mike and the kids were in the polling place, Vasco insisted that they vote for Santa. I should say that both Santa and I are pretty decent choices. Santa, however, may have a better chance, rosy cheeks, name recognition, reindeer and all. Not to mention his bribe potential is slightly superior than mine!


On to Thursday... Happy Valentine's Day to all! Mike and I decided to have a romantic dinner at home after the kids go to bed, complete with carry-out Indian food, wine, a real tablecloth and candles. So Mike drives off to pick up the food, while I am trying to set the table. I start pulling out the fancy dishes from the cabinet for the occasion, and see the kids carefully watching me, entirely puzzled. A few seconds pass, and Justine ventures: "Ummm, mommy what are you doing? Is the roof leaking again?" After I practically peed my pants laughing, I tried to explain that our roof was just fine. I think they ended up convinced that the roof was fine, but their mother needed a few shingles replaced.. (side note: our roof did develop a slight leak a few weeks ago, and it leaked directly into the dish cabinet. If you haven't figured it out by now, we did have to remove all dishes and glassware from the cabinet).

A New Low (for me, i.e. Ivanna)

I have officially reached a new low in my mother-dom...

So, its like 10:30 at night, I'm finishing up some work on the computer. Mike is searching for some information that is supposed to be on a back-up disk which is missing in action, and comes across an old stack of photos that were sent home with us from daycare once the kids moved to the pre-school classroom.

Looking at one particular picture, I say: "Hey Mike, Vasco really looks like Justine in this picture!"
Mike: "Ummm... that IS Justine."

Great! After being able to tell the kids apart in their NICU pictures, with nothing but a napkin-sized diaper, a CPAP in their nose and a feeding tube, I manage to mix them up in this picture. Now why would the daycare workers put Justine in a blue bib???! Really!

Here's a picture of the infamous picture: the eyes clearly say Justine, but the haircut and hair color really threw me off. (I'm fishing for excuses. Any further excuses that anyone is willing to provide me will be most welcome).
I will now go label the sleeping kids with permanent marker to avoid any further such embarrassment.