The Answer is: January 8th

If you've ever wondered how long a Halloween pumpkin might be able to last if you never carved it and just left it sitting on a bench outside of your house, my study shows it is roughly the beginning of January. I have no doubt it could have lasted much longer had the weather not gotten into the 70's this past week.

Now that it has begun melting into my bench, I think the time has finally come to say goodbye. Luckily garbage day is tomorrow.

I played my first game of Pokemon the other night. It was Mason's "special night" (meaning he got to stay up late and decide what we would do together). I'm not sure why I have such a physical aversion to it, but I had a hard time even saying the names of my victorious Pokemon without a little bit of sarcasm/derision/annoyance.

I have decided, though, that I need to have a better attitude since this is probably just the first of many times to come where I will need to learn to be interested in something my children care about. Even if this only lasts a few months, that's a pretty big chunk of time for me to be annoyed at the thing they love to do the most. So, viva la Pokemon.

I even tried playing it with Katie yesterday after she kept bugging me about it. It's a door I didn't want to open, since I'm very content playing UNO with her. But that's what she wanted to do, so I went along with it. What it taught me is that I need to learn the rules since I'm quite confident Katie was making up a decent percentage of the things she told me (mostly just because she really didn't know, but would confidently give it her best shot).

Mason came home from school yesterday saying that he had decided he wasn't going to suck his thumb anymore. Obviously this was good news, but also something I had heard before. He told me this time he really meant it, because of what his book buddy (an older student that comes in to read with him) told him. He let Mason know that he shouldn't do it because he would put germs in his body and DIE if he did. I've gone with the "crooked teeth" reasoning, and the "getting sick" reasoning, but "certain death" hadn't entered my mind. The fact that Mason has survived 7-years of this without death must not have occurred to him, nor did I point it out. If it takes lying to make it stop, I think I'm willing to give it a shot.

Andrew reminded me once again this morning of why I love hardwood floors so much. I heard Andrew start crying, and I came in to my living room to find strawberry/blueberry smoothie all over the floor. In my St Louis house with all of it's white carpet this would have been an all day cleanup. As it was, after 5 minutes and a roll of paper towels I was done. I've got to celebrate the little things in my life.