2 Mommies and 2 Boys

I am pretty proud of myself for the shopping I’ve done so far. Unfortunately, I haven’t done much in the way of my family. But I scored last night getting stuff for my “adopted” kids from family services. I’m so excited to wrap everything tonight!

The Shmoo was poking in the bags this morning and I tried explaining to him that Christmas was about giving so we needed to make sure that other children get presents too. I don’t think he got it.

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For a totally random tidbit, I realize that I really haven’t updated much on how the Shmoo is talking. We still have a long, long way to go before we are actually communicating at a level we can call “talking.”

But last night, he crawled up onto the chair at the dining room table, pointed at the fruit basket and said “ba-na-na!” clear as day! Poor kid, we made him say it about 5 more times. Then we said, “can you say, PLEASE?” and he grinned, clasped his hands and said, “peeeeeese.”

Frickin’ adorable. How can you say no?!

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Because I’m a forgetful tool who never seems to be organized enough when it comes to money and everything else, I was just “surprised” by found money.

It’s not that much of a jackpot find because the money is mine. It’s just money that I forgot completely about. Money that will help us a teeny bit with Christmas but will basically pay our January 1st property tax bill.

I looked back at past paychecks recently, when everyone was bitched about the crappy raises here. I realized that my pay never went up from December 2007 to January 2008. I figured that I never got any raise at all.

Well….

Fast forward to 12 months later. I get an email from our accounting department.

They want to know if and when I am going to put in for any reimbursements for my Dependent Care/Child Care Flexible Spending Account.

Wait a second…

As the fuzzy memory starts coming back to me….

Wait…

Wait…

There it is.

In December, I decided to take the max amount allowable for child care out of my income pre-taxed. Of course, it is nowhere near covering what we actually spent on child care this year, but it’s more money than I currently have sitting in my savings account.

I rushed to print out a stack of cancelled checks to day care from my online banking site to submit to accounting ASAP for reimbursement!

I sent an email Lo. She was stuck between “what the hell?!!?” and “aren’t you the ass….”

Fair enough.

I’m currently waiting for my check.

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Last, but not least…I got stuck on the phone with my overly dramatic sister for about 45 minutes last night as I was trying to leave work. It’s becoming harder to talk to her lately. In the past, you could do other things while she was talking and every so often, just say “uh huh.” Unfortunately, she’s caught onto this and now poses questions through the conversation that are not answerable by yes or no.

I listened for a while something she said actually caught my attention. Now, I love my nephew dearly (her 13 year old son), but he definitely marches to the beat of his own drummer.

My sister tells me that his teacher is slightly concerned because when asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he responded, “A Marine sniper, so I can kill people.”

Hmmmm…..

I would be slightly concerned as well. Fortunately, they closely watch what he does and what he gets into. For example, like when he discovered that dryer lint is a good fire starter. (Caught that one before it turned ugly).

It makes me nervous that I will have a teenage boy some day that will have a mind completely of his own (damn it, why can’t we control their every thought and action?).

I guess all you can do is try to guide them to make some smart decisions every once in a while. I don’t have the answer.