My boob hurts.

I had a long post written the other day about how I got into a fight with my brother and sister-in-law over the "Mom on Facebook" issue, but the feeling is gone and I deleted the long and exhausting rant.  And that's a good thing.  The gist?  My aunt got on FB and they both became her friend and I threw a fit.  My argument of how can you give every family member that's on FB access to pictures of your cute kids but not let grandma in on the adorableness (which, although she wouldn't admit it, obviously made her feel sad by the way she brought it up - see earlier post) and my need to come to her defense fell on deaf and feisty ears.  Apparently, the sister-in-law felt that the FB etiquette of the "newbie" requesting friendship took precedence over just being a nice person.  Oh, and she didn't have time to "stalk" people on FB - even though she knew Mom was out there and she seems to have time to let us all know what they are having for dinner each night (I just checked and it's pepper cream penne tonight).  The dear brother is so popular that he doesn't request anyone's friendship - he just waits for the masses to flock to him.  Then, the 24 year old (13 years younger than me) SAHM who has only held a job in high school began to lecture ME about life lessons, such as how she never defends anyone because they might not want you to do so.  I said that it was nice to know who in my family has my back.  She thinks very highly of herself for raising a family of 4 kids and likes to let me know about all the things I should be doing because Oprah and Dr. Phil and the internet say so.  I'm not saying that being a SAHM is not hard work, especially when there are 4 little animals running around (and sometimes coloring in their testicles with blue marker), but working and raising kids is not a walk in the park either and I really don't need her to tell me how to raise my family or teach me life lessons.  But that will be another argument some other day when she catches me in a not so willing to ignore her mood.

We had parent-teacher conferences last night and, I must say, I left a very happy mommy.  I've been working closely with Henry's teacher on how to best make him successful and we seem to have found the right way to do it.  During those times of day when he seems to have the most problems (typically transitions), he earns blocks for expected behavior (not being disruptive during the morning meeting, being quiet in the halls).  His goal is to earn 5 blocks and, if he does, he gets to pick first during choice time.  Ever since, he's been sitting much more still and has had only one day where he earned 3 - the rest have been 4 or 5 block days.  His teacher is very pleased with how a little positive, rather than negative, reinforcement has modified his behavior.  Even better, academically, he's already beyond what is expected of him by the end of the year, in reading, writing and math.  He's pulling random books off the shelves and reading them to his teacher and has been given the 1st grade list of sight words, which he already knows half of.  She loves having him in her class and doesn't foresee any more problems with his behavior now that she's got it figured out.  YAY FOR HENRY!!!!  I'm going to bite the bullet and let him get a Jonas Brothers cd with his Christmas money.

I've managed to develop mastitis in my left boob.  After spending a few days trying to massage the blockage out, the throbbing extended into my armpit.  John slept an astounding 6 hours last night - good for Mom and Dad's sleep, but it left me with a very angry breast.  I started him on the sore side and, between my milk let down and John's need to push on it while he eats, I was in agony.  I wound up heading to the doctor this morning - antibiotics are now on the menu every 6 hours.  The challenge will be my other instructions: warm compresses for 15 minutes followed by 15 minutes of massage BEFORE I nurse Johnny.  I wonder if I'll be able to get him to give me a half hour warning?  "Mom, I'll be waking up at 4:30 this morning so if you could get up at 4:00 and start your thing, that would be great."

We have a weekend full of hockey ahead of us.  Practice tonight.  Practice tomorrow morning.  Rematch of last weekend's game against the evil Red A Mites Sunday morning.  The red team is the oldest group of A mites, ours being the youngest.  These kids should have been moved up to one of the B mite teams judging by the way they were skating circles around our little guys (and our guys aren't bad skaters, mind you).  Not only that, but they are rougher than they are supposed to be at this level, to the point that our coach was going to have a talk with the other coaches about it.  They were pushing our kids around and there were even a couple skirmishes, which, although sort of funny and cute, have no place in mite hockey.  One of our smallest players wound up pummeling one of their players after he got knocked down.  Usually, the games go back and forth - we score, the other team scores and everybody feels good and has fun.  We only got two goals last week and I know our kids were frustrated.  Come on - it was preschool and kindergartners against the first graders - not fair at all!  Coach Phil said there was no way he was going to let them get away with such physical play next time, so we'll see how it goes.