March Madness

Our little Audrey turned two years old this month! Sadly, my baby is not such a baby anymore. In fact, she sometimes refers to me as "Lisa". How do I stop time? She is so adorable to me at this age that when she does something cute, I can't stop squeezing her or nibbling her chubby cheeks. Sometimes I end up swallowing her whole and when Kwang comes home from work and asks, "Where's Audrey?" I have to confess, "I ate her."

But she has caught onto our weakness and whether it's for a sweet treat or a few extra waking minutes before bedtime, she knows she can use her cuteness very cleverly... as leverage. So by all indications we are slowly raising a hostage negotiator.

I met with Jude's kindergarten teacher for a parent-teacher conference last week and discovered that our Jude is a pretty bright kid. During testing week he was the only one in his class who answered all math questions correctly. If it weren't for his obnoxious ears, I'd question if he was really my son. I was a pretty mediocre student and am now a pretty mediocre mom. So you might say I have spent years perfecting my mediocrity. I now accept it and embrace it and snuggle with it under the covers. There were things I excelled in, but as my luck would have it I received awards for things like best handwriting, spelling, or most useful of all, poetry and creative writing. If you hadn't noticed, these are things that come in really handy now that I work in I.T. where I spend hours on the computer typing... with auto-spell checker... and nothing remotely related to poetry. All this to say, I attribute Jude's performance more to the unimpressive API of his school than anything else. In any event, I am thankful Jude is doing well academically.

There has been, however, one unfortunate situation that has occurred in the cold cruel world of kindergarten. While he is well liked in his class, there was a child on the kindergarten playground who for some reason wouldn't allow Jude to shoot the basketball around at recess. This kid Armando (a name to be uttered with a slightly disapproving tone) also told all the other boys that only he could decide who plays. Having been taught to respectfully ask others if he can play with them, Jude would ask Armando every day if he could shoot around with them only to be denied. Every. Single. Day. So my boy who loves playing ball was left to find other kids playing something else, all because of one unkind person. The sad thing is, Jude shared this with me only after I had asked him how he likes recess and he told this to me very matter of factly, as if it was simply a way of life. But being his mother, my heart broke thinking of him watching from the sidelines. Fortunately, Armando has since apologized and now plays ball together with Jude.

Although he may not be intimidating off the court, Jude will hopefully grow into a force to be reckoned with on. Not too bad for a 5 year old:

I don't think my Spanky will encounter these troubles on the playground, because c'mon... who can deny this face?

Yes, Eli. Yes, we do.