9/17/07 The Child-free Morning

This morning, I dropped Katrina off at Melissa's house for the first of many MWF mornings. Getting there wasn't so bad, but getting back meant rush-hour traffic. It'll take some time to tweak the route. Then, Julian at Tonya's all day, Gabriel at school/CDC all day, meant Dave and I had the morning to ourselves for our annual anniversary day off together. We had a nice relaxed breakfast, then walked around downtown Menlo Park collecting business cards for restaurants for future dinners out. I counted no less than four, maybe five, upscale baby/kids' stores in downtown Menlo Park!

After picking up Katrina, we attemped one outing with her, to a kitchen remodeling place, to get an idea of what's available for countertop surfaces. She didn't last long, but I did see a desk area with a monitor that I can well envision in our new kitchen/family room, for "family central." I want that!

Gabriel got sent to his room for the rest of the night after dinner, for being excruciatingly rude ("You make my dinner RIGHT NOW Mommy") after being sent to the living room for hitting Julian. That didn't get him out of his homework though, so Dave set him up with his homework in his room, sitting on a laundry basket and leaning against a shelf.

An hour later, I checked on him, and he was just finishing up his homework -- the entire week's worth. He'd read the instructions on each page himself, and just plowed through and did it. It wasn't until I after I started telling him how great that was that I realized the danger: I hate to give him the impression that homework is a bad thing and that it's something to get over with! Well, he'll figure that out soon enough.

Unfortunately, his obnoxiousness continued into the bed-bath time. I don't even need to know what he did to deserve this, but he lost his bedtime story. While Dave was reading to Julian in another room, I heard impact noises from upstairs, and found Gabriel hysterical in his room, hurling sharp-cornered plastic grid pieces at his door, making numerous deep triangular gouges in the expensive new wood door. This is at least the third time he's done this, so you can well imagine that his rear end now has a few gouges in it too.

I tried making sour cream mashed red potatoes for dinner tonight, based on a watching a few minutes of Quick Fix Meals on Food network tonight. No one liked them except me, and I don't like mashed potatoes! They were actually really good, I thought. Sigh. Another cooking experiment down the drain. Well, Katrina might come through for me tomorrow, I saved some of them for her (she'd already had dinner and so didn't try them). Yesterday I tried making omelettes for the first time, with some success. Dave liked them, Julian tried them, Gabriel took a few bites, and Katrina finished the rest.

Tomorrow, back to the New Normal.

9/17/07