Tadpole Farmer

In a tragic accident over April vacation, all of Aliya’s classroom’s tadpoles expired, leaving a stinky brown soup of decomposing tadpoles in an inch of water. Oy. Aliya’s teacher cleaned the tank and gathered some tadpoles from each of the other classrooms, and asked me to help keep them alive. Oh the pressure!!!

This is what they looked like the first day I went in to clean the tank, armed with my internet research on the care and feeding of tadpoles. I need to take an updated photo because they are much bigger and happier now. None of them have sprouted anything yet…I thought I saw something one day but it was a hanging strand of poop. My procedure is to suck up the old food and poop off the bottom of the tank with my turkey baster, which I have permanently donated to the cause. Then I refill the water with tap water mixed with water conditioner to remove the chlorine. The school had been using distilled water, which apparently won’t support life because it has no minerals or ions. I also read that tadpoles need a rock so they can climb out of the water when they sprout legs, or they can drown from being forced to swim 24/7. Who knew? After a week of trying to get to the pond to find a suitable rock, I grabbed one from the yard and stuck it in Aliya’s backpack this morning. I hope it didn’t kill them off.

The sad thing is now that I’m fully committed to sustaining life and easing the little suckers’ way through metamorphosis, if they eventually turn into frogs they can’t be set free to go and frolic amongst the native pond inhabitants because they may be frogs that aren’t indigenous to Massachusetts. So now I need to research how to humanely kill them. WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
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Mystery Marks

I should post this photo as a little contest to see if anyone can guess what the heck you’re looking at. You should be able to tell by the spider veins and orange-peel texture that it’s my thigh, and I’ll give you a hint. It’s the reason I’m not getting my 5 hours of good sleep per night.

It’s a frickin’ footprint! Those are 5 little toes imprinted on my thigh! When I woke up early this morning I looked down and was momentarily flummoxed about the mystery marks, but that’s what they are. And not so shocking either, since I woke up (AGAIN!) with 3 kids in the bed. When will they stop liking me so much and become remote ornery pre-adolescents?! Go slam your door and crank up the tunes already! I’m old and uncool, and no fun in bed! GIT!!!
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Staff Appreciation Day

This photo seemed like a good idea at the time, probably because it hid most of our bodies and exposed only our heads. As you can’t see, all of the Zumba is really paying off.
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I co-chaired the staff luncheon at Aliya’s school and helped out with the one at Adlani’s school so I ended up taking 2 personal days. I usually work at night when I have something to do during the day that keeps me from working, but Wednesday night I was EXHAUSTED and Thursday night we went to the circus and then I met the ladies out at Samba, so I didn’t do my second shift. It was actually kind of nice to take the personal days…it took some of the pressure off even though the emails and voice mails were waiting for me today.
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The luncheons went really well and the teachers were all very appreciative. At Aliya’s school, the PTO bought a Cricut die-cut machine which is SO COOL. I am coveting it and it’s on sale at AC Moore for Mothers Day weekend. You can cut out letters, numbers, shapes – different sizes, different fonts – it’s so versatile. I’m going to sneak into the teachers’ lounge when I need to cut out something for Adlani’s school, because I guarantee I won’t be finding my own Cricut under the Mothers Day bush since Ben picks a fight with me on my birthday and Mothers Day every year so he can ignore those days again. Just wait and see.
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Visitors

Last week, Ben’s sister Bahija and niece Rasha, came to visit from Holland. We had a great time but the visit was too short and we only got to see them a few times during the week they were here. Bahija offered to give Ben a haircut on their last evening with us. When I acted surprised, she said she was a hairdresser. She only cuts women’s hair and this was apparently her first men’s cut, but she did a good job. Ben was wearing a shirt made out of a tall kitchen trash bag because he didn’t want his man-boobs to show in the photo. Thank you for that, Ben.


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The more kids you have in the photo, it’s exponentially harder to get a good shot:


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Big Apple Circus

We went to the circus last night which made for a late night and a bit of stress trying to get there on time but it was so great. I really love that circus and it’s the one event that we go to every year. The acts are so creative and they always tie in a musical theme. Grandma the clown was a favorite again this year, as well as the “Pound Puppies” dog act where all of the dogs came from the pound. I think my favorite was the Mannequin Man. He was so amazing…he really looked like a mechanical mannequin and a woman in the audience caught his eye and they brought her into the ring to dance with him. It was amazing and funny.

Aliya got to be part of the circus too:

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Hmmm…How’d they do that?

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Not a big fan of clowns.

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Viviana will be so proud when I tell her that Adlani saw this and screamed, “MOM!!! LA CLAVE DE SOL!!!” He asked me to take a picture for her. Norah recognized it too.

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