Rants and Raves

Rave: My friend, Laura, who is always so nice and supportive.

Rant: People who can't be bothered to return a phone call (or 10).

Rave: The pediatric optician who finally found frames that Julia would concede to consider wearing.

Rant: Not having her on our vision plan. Ouch!

Rave: My new Uppercase Living website, and people who are as into the product as I am!

Rant: Not being able to choose what goes on my wall next!

Rave: Mommy group therapy.

Rave: Mommy wars.

Rave: It's finally fall! Hooray for changing leaves and Halloween decorations.

Rant: The 30 degree difference in temperature from the morning to the afternoon. How am I supposed to dress my kids?

Rave: The election is less than 3 weeks away...the campaigning is about to end.

Rant: I'm not overly thrilled with our choices and the one proposition I feel strongly about has a good chance of losing.

Rave: Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Pumpkin Cream Cheese muffins are back at Starbucks!

Rant: Still no drive-through Starbucks anywhere near here.

Rave: The Amazing Race. How cute was Phil's dad?

Rant: Desperate Housewives. I need No-Doz just to get through an episode.

Rave: Being back in Mommy & Me with Brady, a few nice moms and an awesome teacher.

Rant: Listening to "I go to school today?" a thousand times each day that we don't go to school.

Rave: Julia's soccer team is doing great, they made the playoffs, she scored a goal last week (!!!!) and Ethan finally seemed to get it together in his last game.

Rant: Too many of their games are scheduled simultaneously and I hate missing one. Plus his games are WAY TOO EARLY.

Rave: Sweet 3rd grade girls who hold hands and giggle and don't even know why.

Rant: Mean 3rd graders who shove, threaten and bully, and then break the rules knowing that the other kids are too scared to tell. It's too early for this stuff.

4 Good Things

At the risk of sounding like Martha, here are 4 things that have made life a little bit better, easier, and/or happier around these parts lately:

• My new Halloween spatula, purchased today and waiting to go into my clean DONE kitchen tomorrow.

• Ice peas: what Ethan calls frozen peas, right out of the bag. My two older kids love them and I love a no-cook vegetable they'll actually eat. Tonight Ethan had 3 helpings (i.e. shakes of the bag into his plate). This is my kind of veggie. Here is my top secret recipe:

Remove bag of frozen peas from freezer. Dump on plate.

Gross? Sure (although I can usually stomach a few myself). Nutritious, absolutely!

• The gum ball jar. I brazenly stole this idea from Julia's brilliant teacher. She has a picture of a gum ball machine taped to the board and when the kids behave well, she sticks some colorful circle stickers on it. When the gum ball machine is "full," they get a pizza party. Well, we're planning on going to Disneyland in the next month or so. We decided to tie the trip to our own gum ball jar. The idea has worked wonders. I've caught Ethan being nicer to his brother, both kids are being more helpful and Julia, in particular, is being more responsible. Woo hoo! This is a no-brainer of an idea.
  

• The secret dot. After about the 14 millionth time of having Ethan ask if his shoes were on the right feet, I remembered an idea I read in a magazine once. With a permanent marker, I put a dot on the inside of each shoe and told him the dots need to kiss. Easy peasie lemon squeezie! This is one thing out of 11 million I no longer have to do every day and Ethan feels so smart and empowered.
  

Power to the Mommies!

Lucky 7

This is my second grader (!!!!) on the first day of school. She's wearing the shirt that she picked out herself, even though I liked the other choice better. She accessorized the outfit herself and I love that along with the big girl clothes is a Princess Jasmine necklace that tells me there's still a little girl wearing them. For the first time since she started elementary school, I am really excited about her teachers and so is she. I'm already seeing a big difference from last year, her class is filled with friends and I'm really optimistic that this will be a great year.


This is my soccer player at her first game. After our Parks and Rec experience last summer, I didn't think she'd want to play "real" soccer this year. Still, I encouraged her and it was her choice and she absolutely loves it. I couldn't be more surprised. As this is her first year playing - she's the only rookie on her team - everything is still new and fun. She works really hard (most of the time) and has a great time. The coaches are so positive and she loves her "highlighter green" uniform. Although her brother said today, "I wish there was no such thing as soccer practice," I think this will be a great experience for her.

The cutest part? She wanted to be #7 and she got it. Why? She says it's because she's 7 years old, of course. I say it's going to be a fantastic year.

Homework

It seems that these days, the parents get just about as much homework as the kids. Thankfully, my kid usually doesn't require me to sit there with her while she does her work. But occasionally, we do get our own parents-only assignments. This is how I completed the latest one. We had to decorate a heart for our little angels. This is far from my most imaginative creation. I found out about it kind of last minute...and I was having a rather challenging weekend with my precious little cherub. I stole the idea from this layout I did a while ago:


I did go around the edge with a glitter pen to add a little sparkle. The letters are made using an eons-old template. The heart is, in-fact, intact; the edge got cut off in the scan. I'm sure the other overachiever parents have come up with many more complex and elaborate creations. Hopefully, Julia won't notice how plain this one is and give me a passing grade.

Random Thoughts and Updates

Agreeing to have Ray go to Las Vegas this weekend (just one night) for his annual dork convention, also known as the Fantasy Football Draft, earned me a little bit of time this afternoon to sit, veg, and not think. First order of business is to blather on a bit about some random stuff:

• First Grade seems to be going just fine, just as I hoped it would. The offending kid apparently hates ALL girls, not just mine; all the moms tell me that they've heard great things about Julia's teacher (no idea how), and most importantly, Julia is perfectly happy in her class. So far, so good.
• Other than a discolored middle finger (the joke continues), my hand no longer bears any signs of the fnipple. After the whole slicing off bit the black skin eventually fell off and there's brand new normal skin underneath. My hand doctor was very happy, and almost seemed surprised, that the granuloma seems to be gone. There's a little bump where it was, but it doesn't seem to be coming back so far. Woo hoo!
• Potty training has begun anew, God help us. I'm trying to have a sense of humor about it, and am trying some new parenting techniques (more on that in a later post) that are hopefully making it easier on Ethan and less frustrating for me, although cleaning poop off carpet is inherently frustrating, no matter how it got there and whose it is. We're nowhere near done, especially since he can't figure out that underwear is not absorbent like diapers. Preschool starts tomorrow (you'll find me at the mall with JUST ONE KID!!!) and I'm hoping that a group trip to the bathroom will move things along a bit more quickly.
• Thanks to everyone who commented on the baby food issue. I appreciate knowing I'm not the only one out there who thinks homemade baby food is a good idea. Brady is doing great on it so far, although he doesn't love carrots. He does love slurping pears through his little mesh baggie and has almost mastered holding the contraption himself. What a great mom I am, training my 6 month old to feed himself.
  

That's a good rundown of what's been going on around here. I've also had to deal with a Bridezilla issue that is now resolved to my satisfaction by my not attending a wedding I thought I was going to. Just a note: if you're getting married, and your mom tells my mom that it's OK to bring my infant if I need to, and so I plan on it, and arrange a babysitter for the older kids, don't leave me a snooty message telling me that the hotel has some rooms blocked for my nanny to take the baby into. Nanny? Are you kidding? Honey, if I had a nanny you can bet that I'd be using her to go to someplace better than your dumb wedding. And on a similar note, if you promise your daughter at least a month ago that you'll babysit her kids so she can attend a work event with her husband, and then you get invited out to yet another dinner party, it's rude to ask your daughter what you should do. Either flake and own up to it and deal with your guilt, or do the right thing and skip the damn party for once. Better yet, if you're planning on having children and ever asking your parents to, God forbid, watch them for an evening, make sure their social life isn't way, way better than yours.

Attitude Problem

I know the first day of school is too soon to be one of those parents, and maybe you teacher types or those of you who have had more experience with kids in school can help me through this, but I'm pissy. I'm pissy that my kid, one of the two shyest in her kindergarten class last year, is now in a class with just one other girl from that class, and not even one of her close friends. What's more, the one boy that annoyed her all last year (most likely he annoyed all the girls, and there might be some mutual crushes involved but still...) is in her class. The latter problem isn't that big of a deal to me, but I do wish she had more friends in her class. We met her teacher for the first time this morning and I swear she doesn't look like she's old enough to drink legally. I'm not saying that she's not a great teacher, but I do know that this is her first year teaching so she's not experienced. This could prove to be an OK thing. Julia's kindergarten teacher was also in her first year and she was enthusiastic and wonderful and nowhere near burned out like a lot of overworked teachers, but a little experience would be nice too. Results remain to be seen on that front. So my attitude is lacking a little today.

My daughter, on the other hand, sailed through the morning like a champ. She got up without much fuss, ate her breakfast, got dressed and we all (including the brothers, one of whom is severely bummed that he doesn't get to go, too) got to school on time with a few minutes to spare for pictures. She did crawl into our bed somewhere around 3 a.m. but when it was time for me to leave her classroom, she just asked for a hug and off I went without any of last year's theatrics. Maybe I can take a lesson from her.

P.S. Is she not the cutest little first grader?????

The Doggie Mask

It's going to be great having a preschooler again!

This Is What She Does

just when I am at the end of my rope with her. We had a birthday party at Kindergarten today for all the kids with summer birthdays, including mine. Of course it's stressful for me to get there, with the boys and all. And of course, I volunteer to help plan it. She didn't ask for the brothers after all. She wasn't that into the party, but she did create this visor. Some of the kids decided not to decorate theirs. The others did all they could do spell out their names and add a couple of hearts or balloons. Mine did an entire sentence, "Julia Loves Mommy," surrounded by hearts. How can I not melt? It made the stress and the planning and all of it so worth it. I don't care how much stress there is, as long as it matters to her that I was there. And I guess it does. Makes it feel like Mother's Day all over again.


P.S. She complained about posing for this picture. I think we're starting "that age." Damn.