If I could be a character in any book, it would definitely be this one…

So, yeah. Things look a little different around here. Yesterday I got a bee in my bonnet, deciding I needed to change the header to include Ezra. The thing is, because there is always a thing, Bill designed and built my blog back in 2010 having very little knowledge about blog coding and while he did a fabulous job, it was time-consuming and a giant pain in the ass. At the time it was worth it because I was blogging very regularly and had hopes in the future of putting work into promoting it and making it a bigger, maybe even income-generating thing.

After a little time and soul-searching, I decided that what I really wanted for the foreseeable future was a home to keep our family’s memories, nothing more. Not that you can tell from the posts I put up here but I’m actually somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to my writing so when I thought about being read on a wider scale I knew I would drive myself crazy during the editing process, because time? We just don’t have it at this point in our lives. Life morphs, evolves, in the nearly seven and a half years of being a parent, the shape of our family along with its dynamic has changed so many times. One day I might get to a place where I want to do more with this space but for now I scramble to document the big events and much of the minutiae of every day life is lost to these pages now.

At the point we’re at now, I just wanted to strip down what I had by choosing a basic wordpress theme, throw up a picture of the kids as the header and call it a day. Only neither of us could figure out how to add a picture to the header which seems like it should be the easiest thing in the world and it probably is but when you have two sleep-deprived parents of three small children, well, basically we’re idiots. So after playing around with themes and trying to get the fuuuuuureaking header image up, we broke the Internet and my blog {temporarily, obvs.} then gave up and went to bed because our brain cells were starting to jump ship out our earholes. Being a lazy asshole, I’m just leaving it bare-bones for now, but if we can’t figure out how to fix it, I’ll probably end up putting the old site back up until we figure it out, so bear with me as my super kaduper life is going to be a bit bi-polar for a while. UPDATED: Bill figured out the header! Yay Bill! {I’d say I’m sorry for publicly shaming you, but you know, shame gets shit DONE.}

Now! To distract you from these boring surroundings, I will share with you my very favorite Christmas gift. Rowan was very secretive about the gift she had made in school but she was super excited, downright giddy, to give it to us. The little stinker even sneaked out in the wee hours of Christmas morning and put it under the tree for us, right next to her own presents which I’m sure she thoroughly {illegally!} inspected. Truth is I sort of cheated because the evening after the last day of school I was going through her bag and in it was a rough draft of her present. I didn’t realize what it was at first, it was just a little stapled book, but I’m so glad I was able to read it first out of her presence because tears were just streaming down my face I was laughing so hard which probably would have insulted her had she witnessed it. Thankfully, I was much more composed on Christmas morning.

Here is her book. The harrowing story of her mother. A mother who, against all odds, takes naps, goes shopping and drinks…

I can’t decide if my favorite part is when I ditch everyone to take a nap or when I take my small child out on a shopping trip where I start drinking. A few people who read it tried to make me feel better by saying maybe I was just being mean and not letting her get a drink, that it didn’t necessarily mean it was alcoholic. So I asked Rowan why I wouldn’t let her have a drink in her story and she replied, “I can’t have those kinds of drinks mommy. They have booze in them.” You guys, I don’t even know what her teacher must think but for now I don’t care because despite the storyline, this was by far the best present I have ever received.

Also, just so we’re all up to speed, on the flip side was Bill’s story, in which he gave hugs, cooked her dinner and went to work like a responsible parent.

Now, Internet, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go make a martini, do some shopping and take a nap.

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First Day: 2012 edition

Can someone please explain how we went from this…

to this?

I mean, WHAT THE HELL, TIME? I know I have four years and over 25,000 photos that all indicated this was coming and I also know I’ve never been good at math {understatement!} but one 3 year old plus four years should not equal the sophisticated, independent First grader who hopped on the big giant bus this morning without so much as a look back at her mom.

Or maybe that’s exactly what that should equal, numbers are confusing, etc.

Still though. Not cool, Time. NOT. COOL.

The first day went great. No one was emotional or nervous~ it’s amazing how that works when you are confident your child is in the best possible place with the best possible teachers out there. After two years of Kindergarten, Rowan was really excited to finally be a first grader. The best part?

She gets her own desk, of course! First graders are important like that.

We have a bit of a hectic after school routine due to her school’s late schedule and dance {one ends when the other begins and they are nowhere near each other} so we are trying out a pick-up schedule that will allow us to leave a little early from school so we can be a little late instead of horrendously late to dance. It might take some tweaking the first couple of weeks but I hope it works out because Rowan worked really hard all summer to stay with her line and it would be sad to have to leave all that hard work behind over a timing issue.

On the first day when I picked her up she chatted nonstop during the 25 minute car ride to dance about new and old friends she played with, how she helped someone spell ‘like’, how she saw her good buddy from last year at lunch, what art project they did, how one boy did such a good job of being quiet in line that he got to pick a prize and on and on and on she went. The excited energy she had from her day was infectious and carried her all the way through two hours of dance, the ride home, dinner and right up until bedtime when suddenly things like brushing her teeth and climbing up to the top bunk got very hard and exhausting. The next morning she seemed pretty wiped out but went on to have a great second and third day at school so hopefully things continue to be this awesome in the coming weeks.

In other Giant Children news:

This tiny little thing started preschool 2 years ago.

And now he might as well climb down from a goddamn bean stock fee-fi-fo-fumming because he is HUMONGOUS in comparison.

Obligatory front of school photo.

And obligatory handsome fella photo.

I have to admit that at this point I’m sort of over preschool, or more aptly put, I have a small case of Preschool Fatigue as we embark on the fifth straight year in one preschool program or another. Because of his late fall birthday, this is Keaton’s third year, and while he is in no way ready for Kindergarten, I feel like preschool is kind of old hat. He’s going for three days a week this year and the days are a little bit longer with an added lunch bunch on Wednesdays, with the option for more, so I think that will definitely be a good thing for him.

{Plus he’s got his own busy dance schedule to keep up with as I somehow got talked into putting him in the baby comp line. I’ve just come to accept that I am really, really bad at breaking up with dance. Being that he’s only four though, he is just doing a month or two to see how it goes~ if it’s too intense or just not a good fit we’ll move him back to rec and I promise to send Bill to do that because clearly I can’t be trusted.}

The first day of school was a parent/child play day so today was the first day for drop-off. Similar to his sister, Keaton was super excited for the day and practically jumped on top of his teacher when she opened the car door to greet him. He was pretty quiet and wiped-out at pick up time, not really willing to share his day with me quite yet, but the class as a whole got a great report which is a huge relief because last year’s group had a rough go for much of the year. Keaton is definitely ready for more challenges in the writing and sight word department, so I’m optimistic that this is going to be a great year for learning and for having fun before his elementary education starts.

Based on how close his face is to the page I’d wonder if he needs glasses, but you know, he already has them, so we’ll just chalk this up to extreme intensity and concentration during journal time.

I’m so grateful for the month or so we’ll all have to get into the routine of the school year before Sammy Davis Jr Jr makes his entrance and shakes things up. Not to mention the month or so of quiet mornings three days a week. With the busy summer we had, I had honestly forgotten what it was like to sit my ass down on the couch and drink my whole cup of coffee, uninterrupted and while it was still hot even! I’m not gonna lie, Internet, it was pretty amazing. I just sat there, soaking in the silence and the stillness and the warm dog curled up next to me. Now, one of my major petty annoyances in life is the ridiculous overuse of the response “I know, right?” but when Luna lazily settled her head into my lap and let out a long, slow sigh of contentedness, FOR I COULD NOT HELP MYSELF, I gave that dog a very enthusiastic I KNOW, RIGHT? And we did know. And it was so, so right.

Happy school year, Internet.

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