Christmas Program

Maria has her Christmas program at school today, she's so cute.  My friend Marta gave me this gorgeous dress and Maria liked it, so off she went.  I curled her hair this morning, and she is a picky thing, she kept pointing out hair that wasn't curled, ha!  Here's her picture.

December

Next Sunday she makes her first Confession and in April she'll make her First Communion.  It's a super exciting time to be Maria Beck.

Isn't she so funny? She is also impossible and I don't know why people can't just be quiet and why they have to be so loud about all the time but whatever.  She is so cute and funny and she cracks me up.  Today she said Happy birthday! I said, it's not my birthday.  She said yes it is, Thanksgiving is every turkey's birthday!  My teacher told me that!  Ha!  I am grateful indeed, for old Maria, even if she does drive me nuts.  She is perfect with Anthony, she was trying to teach him the JOY of just petting Maggie and not pulling her dang tail.  She is - well, she is not perfect with the littler girls, she is a typical 7 or 8 year old, whatever.  She is one of the loves of my life.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Pictures and Catchup

Things are fine, moving right along.  Maria finished soccer, she is in Girl Scouts, she was St. Veronica for the All Saints Day Mass.  She wants an iPod touch for Christmas and I told her Mike and I were thinking about it and then she verified that fact every hour for two days until I told her she had to stop.  Situation normal.  Here's some pictures:

She got an excellent report card and I told her she could have whatever she wanted at the Ice Cream Shop, which was three scoops of cookies and cream.  Will I never learn?

They were going to church with Mike, so they were looking forward to it, ha! My schedule changed at work so I don't have to be there until 6:00 on Saturday so I've been going to 5:00 Mass so Mike can go to 10:30 on Sunday.

School Picture, second grade.  She told me she wanted me to curl her hair so I bought a curling iron and it came out great!  She has really perfected her smile.

Maria and Maggie, our dog.  Maria is probably the best with her.  Veronica and Felicity are always all up in her grill but Maria is really sweet and gentle with her.

Halloween, 2015.  Maria was a vampire.  She and Veronica really ran ahead of Laura and Felicity and me so I texted my neighbor, who was nice enough to keep an eye on them.  Every year I think maybe we'll all be on the same page but it wasn't this year!

With Anthony, before bed.

Saint Veronica.  Those little second grade kids all dressed up as their studied saint almost killed me, so cute.

So you're caught up!

Better

Don't things always get better?  They do.  Yesterday we went to the French Market at our church and Maria ran off with her friends, and ended up sleeping at one friend's house who lives super close to church.  So I picked her up this morning before Mass and I said that I had tried to find her the night before because I brought a bag with a toothbrush, a nightgown and clothes and Maria said, don't worry I didn't brush my teeth and I slept in my clothes!  Ha!  She had her first soccer game ever today, she did very well.  I am, as usual, bullish for the future.

Update

Maria is still as bad as ever, and maybe worse.  Mike took off work today because the girls' school has their festival tomorrow and they need to set up today and I had to work so anyway, he spent the day with them.  And they were just terrible.  I talked to him after I was finished teaching EIGHT CLASSES and he sounded more tired and wiped out than I was.  It's so, so so so so SOOOOO depressing and disheartening to take care of them and just get - I mean, it's not that you get nothing in return, it's that they are openly hostile and badly behaved for your trouble.

I got home and Maria asked if she could go to our neighbor's house.  Mike had JUST told her no because she WENT to the neighbor's house and she had to do her homework.  So I reiterated that, I said no, because she is doing homework and Maria started screaming, on and on, SHE IS DONE WITH HER HOMEWORK SHE IS DONE WHY CAN'T I GO WHY WHY WHY AHHHHHH YOU ARE RUINING MY LIFE! This is all done with her writhing around the floor, screaming and yelling and - when we are really lucky - pulling the collar of her shirt.  I am unimpressed and I tell her so, go to your room, I tell her and she screams MORE - SHE IS SCARED OF HER ROOM, AHHHHH THE LIGHT IS OFF (MEANWHILE - IT'S DAYTIME!) SHE CAN'T GO AHHHHHH SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM WRITHE WRITHE.  So I tell her listen - if you keep it up, you are not going to go to soccer practice tonight.  She screams and screams, I go and email her coach and say she is not going to soccer.  I feel awful about it because she is on a team, blah blah blah but TOO BAD.  I tell her I emailed him and she screams MORE.  She IS going to practice, she has a GAME on Sunday, she is going to email him back and say she is going!  I said good for you, good luck getting there, dummy.  I told her that she wasn't going to practice and that was a fact.  I said the next thing I'm going to do is say you can't go to the birthday party you are supposed to tomorrow.  The next thing is that I'm going to say you can't go to the French Market at school tomorrow.  Then I'm going to say you can't go to Chess on Wednesday and then NYO on Thursday.  Go ahead and test me, I said.  She has been quiet since but my GOD.

It's too hard, she is too bad.  Mike said half the time what she was screaming about was that Felicity was upset and screaming about something.  How is it fair to have a three year old being a jerk and so her seven year old sister joins in?  What the hell?

I wish things were different.  I wish she were - better?  Nicer?  Not a screaming lunatic?  I'm sure she is a monster I've created.  My brother Larry told me that I was not a good disciplinarian, and since he's never here to see whether I am or not, I assume my parents told him that.  It's disheartening, too, because I feel like I am doing the best I can.  But I am dealing with a lot of people, and Anthony has his own issues and that changes the way I discipline (or don't).  I think sometimes people who think I am not a good disciplinarian are using code for "she should spank them".  I don't know.  My point is Maria is making my life HORRIBLE.  She is good at school and ... that's it!  And she's not even THAT GOOD in school.  Morale is at an all time low, is what I am saying.

Second Grade

Maria started second grade last week, she is doing really well.  She got the teacher that I hoped she'd get, although that's kind of based on nothing except I used to work in the library across the hall from her classroom and I liked the sound of her.  She's great, so excited to see her friends, doing well in school, getting in a little trouble for talking but not too much.  She is going to go to Aftercare one day a week and she is more excited about that than anything.  I have been having some personal drama with getting them set up for Aftercare but I hope it's straightened out now.  I love their school but there is a real feeling that if you don't know about it, you are never going to find out.  This is our third year there and I've never used the aftercare before this year but man, it's nearly impossible to find out anything about it.  I finally gave up and just emailed the principal and said that they were starting this Thursday and that's that.

She is a real pain, getting back to Maria.  Every time we leave anywhere she screams and cries and throws herself to the floor.  If I pick her up at school and tell her no, we are not stopping for ice cream, she screams and cries.  If she is not ready to leave yet but I have to go because I have to get Anthony, she screams and cries.  Yesterday at Target I wouldn't buy her candy even though it was "only" 79 cents, she screams and cries.  I hate it, it's embarrassing and I can't make it stop.  I never do what she wants me to do when she screams and cries about it but I can't take everything away.  Shouldn't this be getting better and not worse?  She is worse than Felicity and she's so, so, SO loud.

Oh well, we will keep plugging away I guess, it's not like there are options.  Onward and upward!

Funny Story

So I never have any pictures of Maria because whenever we go to the pool or whatever, she immediately leaves me and then only appears when she needs money or is mad because I suggest leaving after four or five hours and who wants to see pictures of that?

But the other night I took Maria and Veronica to see Mary Poppins, a local production of a high school theater summer stock company, and I went with my friend Jill and two kids she was babysitting, who are Anthony and Maria's ages.  I was sitting far away from Maria so I couldn't shush her during Act 1 like I wanted to.  So at intermission, I said to Maria, listen - NO TALKING during Act 2.  She said, quick as a whip, "So what if someone says, hey cutie, you look really cute!, I can't even say thank you?"  Where does she get this?  Does she just keep this stuff in her head ready for me?  I do not even know.

The Pool

We recently joined the Knights of Columbus pool, although we all call it the K of C, but Maria thought it was KFC, but she told me today that Abby told her that it's K OF C, and that KFC stands for Confessional Fresh Chicken.  She kills me.  I corrected her, but really what does she know of Kentucky?  Or Fried Chicken, really?

Anyway, Maria loves the pool.  She is getting so grown up but she's also still a little kid.  She was on the diving board today and she drew my eye to her.  I could TELL that she didn't want to jump in (it's 11 feet deep by the diving board).  So I called her over and she cried and cried and said "I don't want to DO this!".  I said well, don't!  You are starting swimming lessons tomorrow and you will get more confidence and it will be fine.  I said Veronica is whooping it up there in the 3 and 4 feet deep area, play with her!  Kids are impossible, all I hear all day at the pool is "can you do this?" and "I can do this!".  Shut up, I think, none of you can even drive or vote and just a few years ago you were pooping in your drawers like everyone else.  Sheesh.

Anyway, it was prohibitively expensive to join the pool but it was worth it.  Maria is really having the best time and she's so cute, all freckled and tan.  She's sleeping well and being generally cute and fun.  I wish I had a good pool picture of her but she is always away from the me at the pool.  I have instead like 100 pictures a day of Felicity, who is right by my side, ha!

End of First Grade

Oh, Maria.  She is always so gone I don't even have pictures to post!  She loves to go out and be out and do stuff.  She is a genius, she is doing great at first grade, I have zero reasons to worry about her in second grade.  That's good, right?  She said two funny things tonight, let's see if I can remember them. We were on our way to Pat Flynn's, the restaurant where I used to work, so she could troll for donations for her walkathon which is tomorrow, and we were on our way there and she said to me "maybe if no one donates, we can just rob them.  KIDDING!.  Ha!  She is kidding.  Then she said another funny thing but I can't remember.  She is a joy and a terror to me.  Today Felicity was sick and I said I'd take her for a cookie after we picked up Maria and Veronica.  So we picked up the cookies and we were getting back in the afterward and I asked Maria to strap up Felicity and she moaned, ughhhhhh, and I said nevermind I will do it!  And she said no! I will do it and I said no!  You have to just DO IT you can't complain!  It's hard.  Sometimes she will say something mean and then say "just kidding" to Veronica or something and I tell her, you can't do that.  It's just as mean as if you *weren't kidding*.  She is trying.  Sometimes I think she has the weight of the world on her shoulders, my poor first neuro-typical baby nd sometimes I think oh the HELL with that.  She is fine.  Her teachers love her, she has one million friends, we are crazy about her, she is fine.  She is more than fine!  She is a genius almost second grade girl!

April 2015

Maria is losing teeth left and right!  She feels a tooth getting loose and then she talks about it incessantly until it gives up and falls out, ha!  She is doing very well in school, she has a lot of friends, she is practically perfect.  She is extremely dramatic and if something makes her mad, she drops to the floor and writhes around doing a St. Vitus Dance.  PS something makes her mad almost every day, usually by 6:45.

Day 24 of Lent

Maria marched in the St. Patrick's Day parade yesterday, Mike went to Party City and got her beads and a cute headband with shamrocks on it.  She had a great time, I am hoping that at some point I can find some pictures of it and I'll put them up.

She also finished Monarch Madness last night, which caused them to be up late, it was well after 9:00 when they went to sleep last night so she was super tired and grumpy this morning.  But she can be cajoled into feeling better, and once it occurs to her that she is going to get to go to school and see everyone, she's better.  Lately, I don't know, she just is getting super charming and sweet so even when she is grumpy I know it's not going to last and I can just wait for her to turn back into her great self.

Day 19 of Lent

Maria was in the library when I got there today to volunteer.  She was with her friend Camille, and I was thinking about when school started this year.  Maria was with some kids from her kindergarten class, her friend Luke, and her friend Violet were both in her class the year before.  She told me there was a new girl and her name was Camille.  I said oh how nice, where did she go to school last year?  Maria said, like I was stupid, I don't know!  I didn't talk to her because I don't know her!  I said, Maria, because she is new is exactly WHY you should talk to her and be nice, maybe she's lonely and could use a friend.  That girl marched herself into that school the next day and started talking to Camille and hasn't stopped since, they are total BFF's, according to Maria.

I like her friendship with Camille because I think it shows that a) she listened to me about something and b) that she is a kind person, she has a good heart.  I'm so proud of her, every day.

Day 15 of Lent

Have I said how good Maria is at Math?  She is good at everything, school wise, so far, but she seems to have a great grasp of Math.  She is doing some kind of ca-razy math at school and it's driving Mike and me crazy but we have learned that we don't even really have to get involved.  It's so dumb, she is subtracting and adding by tens and she uses a CHART to figure out, like, 72-10.  If I were doing that, I'd put the 72 on to and a 10 beneath it and then I'd subtract 1 from 7 and 0 from 2 and get 62 but she has to check it on some chart to get to 62.  I don't really want to argue with anyone and as I told Mike, if she can learn it at seven years old, we can surely learn enough to help her with her homework.

Every day that she gets older gets better.  I am sick of so many things but I feel like I will never be sick of helping her with her homework, with listening to her read.  I consider it a miracle.

Day 11 of Lent

Tonight I am taking Maria and Veronica to school, they are doing a Monarch Madness thing.  Their school mascot is the Monarchs, and March Madness! is a thing for college basketball, so this is their school's take on it.  They had the choice of doing basketball, that is, being coached in basketball by older kids, or doing cheerleading and they both chose cheerleading.  I don't blame them, Marta's daughter Maddie is a cheerleader and she wears a super cute uniform and a giant bow in her hair and cheerleading at this level is pretty easy and they can succeed, so why not, right?  

Anyway, of course Maria wants to do it.  She will do anything!  I said do you want to audition for the musical and she said YES.  She told me a few weeks ago, Miss Scheidler said to raise our hand if we wanted to do something in the Mass that we are in charge of, so I raised my hand and now I'm TALKING!  After they rehearsed in the church, she said "we practiced our prayers today that we're doing with the Mass, we used the microphone, it was AWESOME!, I felt like Father Guy or something up there".  Ha!  I said do you want to do Monarch Madness and before I could get the words out of my mouth, she said YES!  Then Veronica said yes too and I think that's lucky.  Maybe Veronica wouldn't want to do things if it were just her but because Maria is there, just one grade ahead of her, she is happy to do it, too.  

Day 7 of Lent

Oh, Maria.  Last Friday she was supposed to be in Annie, her stage debut! at school.  On Thursday, Veronica was sick and stayed home, so she missed Maria and the rest of the cast doing the show for the whole school assembly.  Maria said it was "great!".  She said her friend Camille gave her TWO thumbs up and hugged her and even the boys hugged her and gave the thumbs up, TWO thumbs up, she kept saying, so cute.

So Friday Veronica stayed home too but she rallied and we all went to St. Joan of Arc for the show.  I had taken the night off work, we were meeting Laura there, everything was all set so of course Maria threw up on the way in to school.  I didn't know if it was nerves or what and she said she was okay but right before the play started Mike said "there's Maria" and I craned my neck to see the stage and he said, no THERE'S Maria, and she was coming toward us with her teacher.  I took her hand and we were walking out when bleeeeaaaaahhhh she threw up AGAIN.  Oh Lord it was a mess!  A nice mom friend of mine got me paper towels and cleaner and  I cleaned up while Mike got the car but by the time he got there Maria wanted to stay and see her number so he took Veronica and Felicity and Laura headed to our house while I waited with Maria so she could see her friends in Hard Knock Life.

We walked out to the car and I said well, Maria, I'm glad you got to do the show yesterday and maybe you can do it tomorrow.  I said I'm glad you got to see your number, no one else did!  We got home and she threw up before we got into the house, even, and was sick all night, joined eventually by Felicity and Anthony, ugh.

But she was such a great sport about it.  She realized on Saturday that she wasn't going to be able to go that night and she was just very understanding and grown up about it.  I honestly feel like Mike and I were more disappointed for her than she was for herself, so we just went with her.  She is something else.  Here's what she wrote in her journal for school about it, it doesn't all fit in the picture, but it has a happy ending, where she felt better on Sunday! And went to the store!

Day 3 of Lent

Veronica is home sick and so I don't have much time but today is Day 3 of Lent, aka the first meatless Friday, aka, the third day where I talk about What's So Great About my kids and today is Maria's turn.  These are in no particular order, I am just starting with who is the least recently updated.

Anyway, here's What's So Great About Maria!

• I've said this but she is doing really well at school.  She has friends and she's doing well academically and she plays Chess and she is in the school play.  I am looking forward to her starting some athletics, they don't start until like third or fourth grade, which I like but won't it be fun if she plays kickball or something?  We don't play organized kickball in NJ, so it was a big surprise to me when I moved here and they have it as a regular sport.  I even know adults that play on leagues!  Anyway, she is a good and model student, so far, she seems to be having fun and doing well and I'll take it.  
• As I said, she is making her St. Joan of Arc Debut tonight!  She's one of the orphans in the Hard Knock Life chorus, which is all the first graders do.  She has done it for us a few times and it's super cute.  I can't wait to see it.  Yesterday they ran the whole show for the school and she was so funny about it.  She said, "Camille (her bff) was really nice about it, she made two thumbs up and hugged me.  But then some of the boys hugged me too!  Devon, and La Don and Henry ALL made two thumbs up and all hugged me and said 'good job'".  
• She can be quiet!  Last week she was invited to a friend's birthday party for Sunday afternoon from 3-5.  I was working at 5:00 and Mike wasn't too keen on picking her up with all the other kids in tow so I asked our neighbor if we could carpool.  Her son is in Maria's class and they live on our street.  She said yes so I went and picked up Luke and he and Maria and I drove to the party, about 15 minutes away.  And NOBODY said a word!  Ha, these kids go to school together every day, he was in her kindergarten class and is in her first grade class and she spoke not a SYLLABLE, I have never seen her that quiet.  It was interesting.  
• She's pretty flexible.  Yesterday I asked my friend Marta to pick her up because I didn't want to take sick Veronica out in the 5 degree temperatures and she said sure, so I emailed the school and asked to give Maria the message that she would be meeting Marta and she just - went, played at Marta's, played church, did her homework, and I picked her up after Mike got home with Anthony.  She makes my life easier and I am super grateful.  I knew it would happen, someday, ha!

LONG TIME NO HEAR

Man I can't believe it's been since just after Christmas since I wrote about Maria.  She is doing so great, it's wonderful.  I mean, I want to kill her twice a day because she is talking back so much but man, she is also just terrific.  She is doing so well in school, the top five percent for reading in the country of first graders (what a horrible country that would be, ha!) and the top eight percent for math.  I'm very proud of her and I have almost nothing to do with it.  She is naturally smart and competitive, which is a good description of Mike (smart) and me (competitive).  She turned seven on January 11, we had a big party here, just pizza and cake but her friends had fun.  I took this idea from Pinterest and it went over well.  We are going to Florida for Spring Break and she is excited.  Honestly she is behind the whole trip, I just wish she would be able to drive, ha!

Oh and she had strep throat!  She was the first to fall, then Felicity, and then Veronica.  She had a high, high fever two Fridays ago and I had to go get her from school.  She couldn't even sit up at the clinic but after a day or two of Penicillin she was much better.  She is a real tough guy.

Here's a cute picture: