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Last night GB went to his first sleep-over.

You will think I’m an over-controlling, compulsive, buttinski but I was terrified all night. I literally couldn’t sleep. Visions kept running through my head all night. I was worried about GB. And I was so concerned for the mom-in-charge. There was a total of seven boys with two other smaller children. And in my book that’s a lot of kids spending the night. It could be a recipe for chaos………. Not that I wanted to jinx the night.

My memories of sleep-overs are that someone always feels alienated, tempers flare, and I was always the last person still awake. It’s scary to be in a strange house and everyone is asleep, and there you lay. But the lasting impression was one of fun. I still wanted to go. I just didn’t want to be alienated, annoyed, or the last person awake. You know?

I was fully expecting a phone call all night to come and get him. And you may laugh, yes you may. But I’ve been through this before. When Aquagirl had her first sleep-over we got the phone call at 2:00 a.m. She was still awake and she was scared. She desperately wanted to come home. Luckily, we lived only three doors down, and it was an easy transition. I still felt terrible for the other parents, though.

Jabem never had qualms. He would go and have a blast, get no sleep, eat atrociously, and come home and grump for the rest of the day until he’d readjusted. He loved it! It gave him uninterrupted video game time with lots of friends. He’s almost 20 now, and when his friends come over, I still find some of them sacked out on the sofa in the mornings.

But I didn’t know what to expect with GB. He is my overly compulsive child. Everything must be the way it always has been. Here is another laughable tidbit; the child still insists on sleeping with his nursing pillow. He doesn’t know that that’s what it is, but he loves it, and he WILL NOT sleep with anything else. Trust me, I’ve tried. I have this image of him going off to college and dragging his ratty nursing pillow with him……………LOL! So I just wasn’t sure what his response to a sleep over was going to be.

Want to know how it went?

It went great! He had a blast. He ate terrible. He got no sleep. He played video games, had Nerf wars, and he introduced the other boys to his new passion; those teeny, tiny army men that you get 100 of them in a bag from the dollar store. This is not to say that they didn’t have drama, because they did. One of the birthday boys, they’re twins, was having too much birthday. And he experienced at least one, maybe more, of my fears. GB came through exhilarated and unscathed, but I can’t say the same for this birthday boy. His twin brother was having a high time, but I think the crowd was too much for poor W.

I think that *when* GB decides to have his own sleep over, I’m going to restrict the number of guests. Because I’m 44, I need my sleep, and more importantly - I’m not as brave as the twins’ mom. She gets big props from me!

I’ll bet GB sleeps well tonight!

***Edited the next morning: Just wanted to update you on GB’s sleep status. It is now 11:00 a.m. on the day after the sleep over, and GB is still asleep. It’s been 12 and 1/2 hours since he went to bed. Does it make me a bad parent that I’m letting him sleep? Too late now.

Look at our swing set. Do you notice what I noticed this afternoon?

It’s one of my sunflowers!! Right there on the top of the swing set!

I just have this hilarious vision of a squirrel running through my yard with a sunflower clenched between his teeth, climbing the swing set, and perching on the tip-top to enjoy his treasure. 

Today, GB decided to make his very first animated movie. Watch out Steven Spielberg!

My sunflowers are a big hit in the yard. All the critters seem to be enjoying them. As they die off and the heads get dried out, I notice bits and pieces of my flowers laying on the ground and the railing of my deck. This adorable goldfinch has been enjoying plucking the seeds right out of the center of the flower. Beautiful, isn’t it?

I think next year I’d like to try to build a  sunflower house that I had read about a long time ago in Family Fun magazine. I had no idea how easy it is to grow sunflowers. And I think it would be a cool project to try.

This weekend was the culmination of our summer swim league. We’ve been building up to it all week. We had intensive practices, a pasta supper to give added energy to our swimmers, and lots of pep talks……… all leading up to the most important swims of the season at the 2008 Summer Swim Championships. In the photo above, our coaches are leading a team chant with all the littles on our team. Next year, because GB will be 11, he will move into the older kid bracket and swim the next day.

Our *VERY* early morning began with a secret pal gift exchange. GB was very lucky to get one of his friends as a secret pal. Our bag for him held lots of things from the dollar store. Gotta love the dollar store! We had a bag of small soldiers, airheads, water footballs, two packs of playing cards, magical absorbent towels, and some sport balls filled with gum. In return, his secret pal gave him practically the same thing, except that he got skittles and starbursts for the candy.

Here, GB is waiting at the clerk of course, and trying to avoid my ever-present camera………….te he! ***notice the concrete blocks in the background as a visual for the following story.

This is GB doing his freestyle event. He dropped time and swam his fastest freestyle ever!

It’s hard to tell from this photo, but GB is in agonizing pain. He’s getting ready to head off for his backstroke event. I’ll admit up front that prior to this picture being taken I was in the negligent mommy category. It was 12:10 and I figured we’d go eat lunch after this event. But I should have been thinking about GB’s problem with fluctuating blood sugar levels. He was too hungry (although he swears he wasn’t - he had to have been), it had been five hours since he had eaten breakfast. We brought him to the clerk of course in plenty of time for his event, but while he was waiting his turn, which can sometimes take between a half hour and three quarters of an hour because they call them so early, he injured the back of his ankle quite badly. There just happened to be a concrete block right there and he stepped up on it and his foot fell right through the hole on top. It scraped quite badly. When one of the clerks noticed all the blood, she told me that he wouldn’t be allowed to swim if I didn’t get a bandage on it soon. But as I was trying to help GB away to bandage him up, he got faint. Believe me, it runs in the family. When he said he couldn’t see and his hearing was wierd, I knew exactly what was going on. Luckily for us, there was a doctor walking by at that moment. She checked his pulse and his pupils and then she and I rushed off to look for bandages and water, leaving my dh with a distraught GB. I was quite annoyed that there was no first aid area anywhere, so I had to ask a bunch of parents. Eventually, I decided that he’d never make his event, so I was going to bring him some water to drink and bring him back to our tent. But when I got back to GB and my dh the doctor was also back and she had brought bandages, water and a magic pill (sweet tarts) to get his sugar back up. GB felt a lot better and was insisting that he HAD to go swim his backstroke. I thought it had taken us so long that he’d never make it, so I wasn’t rushing. But when we got up there, his heat was just going to the blocks to begin.

Here he is at the start. His ankle was throbbing at this point. But he had a lot of determination.

I can tell from this photo that he is in pain, because his form is way off. But look at the intensity in that face. I was super-proud of him for doing his event. He swam five seconds slower than he usually does, but to me that didn’t matter in the least. My heart still swells when I think of it.

After his backstroke we took him to McDonald’s for lunch because we had a three hour break. And it was just what GB needed to get back in the game. In this photo, he and his buddies are playing with their secret pal toys.

This was another proud moment in our day. GB’s relay team got the gold medal, in good part, because of GB’s efforts. I mean to tell you, the kid was on fire. The first kid led off and the team was in second place when GB jumped in next. By the end of his lap GB had brought them into first place by three body lengths. The next swimmer on the team lost a bit of ground and was barely ahead when our anchor jumped in. She’s a tiny little thing with lots of fire, and she finished our kids off as winners - gold medals all around. GB is showing his heat winner ribbon in the photo above.

GB and I think that Peatsy looks chubby in this picture:

But after a trim and a shampoo, he looks like he’s dropped a few pounds.

I cut, and GB shampooed. It was a co-effort. And GB insisted on me including this picture that he took of Peatsy.

As if you couldn’t tell, Peatsy is GB’s best buddy!

After watching the cute little chipmunk going after our sunflowers, GB and I got curious. We had never seen the inside of a sunflower. And we wanted to see how many seeds you get from one flower.

Now we realize that it depends on the size of the flower, so we checked several different sizes. We were surprised that even within the same size spectrum, there was still major differences.

We had five dead heads on our sunflower plants. One was only three quarters of an inch, two were one inch in diameter, one other one was one and a quarter inches, and the big one was three inches in diameter.

This is what it looks like on the inside of a sunflower. Can you see all the seeds?

This is what it looked like after we removed the seeds.

GB is cutting into the big mamba jamba flower. It was quite tough.

And here he is counting the seeds.

Here are our results:

3/4″ flower = 9 seeds

1″ flower = 18 seeds

1″ flower = 26 seeds  (See the difference in the same size flowers?)

1 1/4″ flower = 287 seeds

All in all, we ended with 380 seeds. That’s not too bad, considering we started those plants with *one* seed for each flower. Although, I have noticed that some of the stalks have more than one flower on them. So that’s even more seeds from the initial seed.

GB was having a good old time at the pool today. Little did he know that his mom was secretly photographing his daring escapades….. nyea, nyea, nyea!

He got some good height on this one!

A little fuzzy because I’m way across the deck of the pool. But I had to stay incognito. You know how bad his around a camera.

It sure was a good day to be at the pool. Man! It was so hot. It was 96 degrees when I came home from brunch today. So hot that even *I* got in the pool. You know it’s hot when I risk having to blow dry my hair twice in one day!