Settling in...

We are fairly well settled into the new digs. The kids are in school. We've met most of the neighbors. There are only a couple of boxes on the main floor that need to be unpacked.

It is so nice to be near our family. My parents have watched the kids several times over the last couple of months so that the hubby and I could do stuff around the house or do something together. But, I do miss our old life. I think the main difference is that although family wasn't nearby, I had a life. I had friends I could call up and do things with. I was in a neighborhood book club. There were moms of my kids' friends I could call up if in a bind. I know that will happen here eventually but it will take time. One of the best things about our previous home is that a friend I have known for nearly 15 years lived in the same community (less than a mile away). We had never lived in the same town before and we loved it. Practically every Friday night found us at their house or them at our house for dinner. The kids would play and the parents would hang out together. I miss that!

But, we have to focus on life here. There is the wee one ("Boo") arriving in a couple of months and lots to do before that time! Yes, during all of this I have been pregnant and it hasn't been pretty. Also, my oldest seems to be struggling to adjust to a new school. There have been several mornings where he's refused to get on the bus. I completely understand but it is so frustrating. He has special needs/learning disabilities/developmental delays....peg him how you will....and is leaving the "regular" classroom for much of the day to go into a small group setting for most of his learning. He also received occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy while at school. It is a busy day for him. While I hate that he has to be pulled out of the regular classroom I know this is best for his learning. Unfortunately his social skills aren't the best either and this doesn't help that.

Lots going on but I'm going to try to do a better job of "documenting" it.

I survived!

It's been a wild and crazy few months! But, I survived and I feel like dancing on the roof tops!

For the past 2+ months The Husband and I have lived in two different states. And I don't mean states of being, but US States. He has flown "home" every couple of weeks for a 3 or 4 day weekend but that is it. It's been particularly difficult because baby #3 is set to arrive in October. So, not only has there been a 6 year old and a 5 year old in the house, there has been a hormonal, fatigued pregnant woman!

But, it's over! The Husband flies in today, the movers arrive Monday and we're driving to our new house Friday and Saturday. (It's about a 15 hour jaunt)

I have put off several things I need to do to prepare and so now am feeling a bit stressed - not that I wasn't before!

Hmmmm

So, I'm not so good at this blogging thing. I started it to document our lives (sort of) but life keeps getting in the way of my documentation!

Since I last posted we have had two snow days, a bout of strep throat, an ear infection, a full body rash in reaction to the antibiotics for the ear infection, the official listing of our house, an average of 4 showings a week, 1 open house, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, an Easter Celebration at preschool and the start of The Girl's "spring break". Oh, and an emergency trip to the dentist for what amounted to be a very severely bitten inside cheek! (It could have been much worse!)

Whew!

Lots going on but it's been hard to write about any of it!

We're getting ready to leave for our house hunting trip. It will be nice to finally see some of the houses I've been looking at for the past 3 months on the Internet! I am not optimistic that we will find the house on this trip but we shall see. I think I am most looking forward to The Hubster and I having a couple of nights to ourselves at a hotel while the youngsters are with Grandma and Grandpa. Although I'll probably be so exhausted from looking at houses that I won't be able to enjoy it!

Oh, and of course, in the midst of all of that we will celebrate Easter.

Nothing gets past these two!

It all started innocently enough. In a rare moment of clarity in December, I distracted my kids from their backseat bickering by asking them to look out their car window for Christmas lights.

For some reason The Boy decided that we need to say "ding" when we saw lights or decorations. The Girl thought we needed to say "Christmas Tree".

So, for the next month anytime anyone saw decorations they shouted "Christmas Tree Ding!" The Hubster and I were laughing until we were crying at some points. (Guess you had to be there!)

As soon as Christmas was over, however, the grinches started yelling "take down your lights!"

Now, it's "Christmas Tree Ding, Take Down Your Lights!"

Maybe having two kids yelling at his house every day will get my neighbor to take his lights down before Easter this year!

How to feel like a bad parent in 8 easy steps

1. Send your child to school on Friday even though said child, who is usually in constant motion, has spent all morning laying on the couch. He doesn't have a fever and isn't throwing up, he should go to school! Besides, he threw a fit when it was mentioned that he should stay home.

2. Pick said child up from school after he was sent to the nurse with a low-grade fever.

3. Continue on with normal weekend plans because child is acting completely "normal" and is not running a fever.

4. Notice an odd rash on your child Sunday morning but it goes away after a dose of Tylenol. Host a small Super Bowl Party with 6 children and 6 adults that evening.

5. Even though you had planned on keeping the child home from school to make sure rash hasn't returned, send him anyway because he got very upset at the idea of staying home. And, again, he does not have a fever.

6. After having spent all day at school, notice the return of the rash during bathtime that evening.

7. Call doctor's office and nurse suggests bringing the child in since it could be strep-throat.

8. Take said child to doctor who does indeed confirm that he has strep throat. Even though child has not complained once of a sore throat!

In just eight easy steps, you too can feel like a terrible parent. And, assure that your friends. as well as your child's classmates' parents, hate you because you exposed their precious peanuts to strep!

The case of the missing tooth!

The Boy lost his first tooth this summer. Literally lost it.

We were spending the day in Washington, DC before taking my sister-in-law to the airport. The entire time we are walking around he is working that tooth. A few minutes later we looked over and the tooth was gone. We looked down at the ground and laughed. We were on a sidewalk covered with little pebbles about the size of a baby tooth! After attempting to look for a few minutes we gave up and decided the tooth fairy would come anyway!

A few days later he practically pulled a second loose tooth out of his head! That one he was able to hang on to.

All was quiet on the tooth front for a while until a few days ago. When I picked him up from school I noticed right away something was missing! And, of course, it really is missing. It was lost on the bus, never to be found! Nothing a note to the tooth fairy couldn't fix...."Dear tooth fairy, I lost my tooth on the bus". Literally.

Oh, and you'd think by now the tooth fairy would realize this is going to be a common occurance at our house and have some funds at the ready.

New Year's Resolution

I did not make any resolutions this year.

Actually, I take that back. I made one. To use the auto feature on my coffee pot every day so that I wake up and the coffee is ready. I am 1 for 16.

That is part of the reason I did not make any resolutions. I can not keep them.

The other reason is that I know this year is going to be challenging enough as it is. My main resolution is going to be to make it through the year.

In '08 I know that we are moving half way across the country.

Which entails:
2. selling a house
3. searching for and buying a new house
4. packing
5. unpacking
6. finding new doctors, dentists, hairdressers, libraries, parks, kids places, stores, dry cleaners, babysitters, friends
7. saying goodbye to good friends
8. living within 45 minutes of most of our family for the first time ever

This year we will also send my youngest off to kindergarten and my oldest to a new school, again.

We have done this before. By the time we move we will have been in our house and in this community for just under 2 years. Prior to that we had a wonderful yet challenging opportunity to live overseas for two years.

Packing, unpacking, starting new schools and making new friends, we have become experts at that.

Hopefully this will be our last move for a long time. But you never know. That is why they say that life is full of surprises.

I know that once we are settled we will love living closer to our families. It is just that the road to that contentment that will be very bumpy.

Ahh, the weekend!

I am so glad it is here!

It is amazing to me how a couple weeks of holidays, school breaks, ect. can throw my entire family off track for so long.

The Boy's antics continued all week. Wednesday, I gave in. I figured a day at home wouldn't hurt him and I just did not have it in me to fight him. I was afraid by giving in that I would create a monster but what was done, was done. Well, by 8:45 a.m. (still time to be on time for school) he decides he wants to go (because he learned that by staying at home he would not be playing outside or doing anything else that resembled fun)! And things got a bit better after that.

Whew!

School Struggles

The Boy has been fighting practially every morning going to school. Last week I chalked it up to end of vacation blues but his stubborness was back this morning. It is about to wear me out. It has happened off and on throughout the year and I am at my wits end. He doesn't eat breakfast. I have to brush his teeth and put his shoes and coat on him. And even then he will kick me or kick his shoes off. I literally have to pull him down the driveway and then he will fight me when getting on the bus.

I am sure he is worn out....it is a long day for him. And, he struggles with most everything they do so I am sure he doesn't like that. But, if this is what life is going to be like for the next 12 years, I'm not sure I can handle it.

Uuuggggg!

Happy New Year!

It's all over! All of the parities and presents and food.

We had a very nice Christmas. My parents arrived the Saturday before Christmas (after a 4 hour delay) and were here to celebrate with us. We went to Hershey, PA to the hotel for dessert and through their amazing light display. We went out for a lovely lunch on Christmas eve and then to a children's church service where the kids joined in as an angel and a sheep.

The kids were so excited on Christmas eve. They put out their reindeer food and left cookies out for Santa. Grandpa read "Twas the Night Before Christmas". When I put the girl to bed she said "Mommy, I can't sleep, I'm too excited" and 5 minutes later she was out. At 7:30 a.m. she woke me up and said, "Can I got knock on every one's doors and wake them up now?" We told them they couldn't go downstairs without all of us!

Oh, and their faces when they walked in and saw the tree and presents! Priceless!

After a marathon present opening session, we had breakfast and lingered in our pjs for a while before cleaning up and going to our friend's house for appetizers. We then came back for a nice dinner.

Friday we headed out of town to Williamsburg, Virginia. It was nice but the weather was awful...rain off and on all day Saturday and it poured on Sunday. The kids were a bit young for Colonial Williamsburg but they had some neat kids activities going on that they enjoyed.

After dropping my parents off in Baltimore on Sunday night we headed home. They had a flight out on the 31st but we decided we didn't need to stay - we wouldn't have done much if we had stayed.

Now, everyone is back to school and work. I have today to get myself in gear and then it's back to work for me too!

Yes, but do you like tinsel?

I've determined that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they like to decorate their tree.

The hubster is a colored lights kind of tree guy. I prefer white lights. If given his preference he would throw tinsel over the tree. Me, I think candy canes are a must.

So, we compromise. We have colored lights outside and on an artificial tree in the basement. Our main tree has white lights.

There isn't any tinsel anywhere.

Then there are the blinking light folks. I'm not sure about them!

Christmas

We finally got our tree yesterday. Actually, it doesn't seem that late but it seemed like we were a little behind the times.

We went to a big Christmas tree farms that had horse drawn wagons take you out to the fields.

Sounds pretty idyllic until you are in the moment. We had snow this week and it was about 40 degrees on Saturday so it all melted and left a lovely, muddy mess. It seemed to take a while to find a tree that interested us. Both kids chose the moment we were out in the field of trees to declare that they had to go to the bathroom. There were about a million people there....I guess we weren't the only ones to wait until this weekend to get our tree.

But, we found our tree and headed back to the "barn" for hot chocolate before heading home.

The most important aspect of all of this, the thing that saved our marriage and took all of the arguments out of Christmas? Last year we bought the tree stand with the spike up the middle. This year the farm shakes your tree out, bags it and drills a nice hole up the middle of the trunk for your stand.

We came home, carried the bagged tree inside, lined it up with the spike, and it was in!

There are still the lights to cause some arguments!

Snow Day!

We had our first snowfall of the season yesterday!

Only about 3 - 4 inches but it's is currently about 14 degrees Fahrenheit outside so everything looks beautiful.

The kids' schools are delayed today and that poses a problem. I have a feeling the boy's bus will arrive at our house at the same time that the girl has to be at school (a 15 minute drive away). Not to mention the fact that I am working in the 2 year old class today and need to be there 15 minutes before school starts.

But, we have snow!

The kids only had a little time to play in it yesterday before it got dark. The girl was done after about 15 minutes (too cold) but the boy could have stayed out all night I think!

On another note, this prevents us from putting up our Christmas lights. I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing!

Home again

We survived our trip and had a nice time. Hectic and a bit tiring but nice. The kiddos love, love, love the grandparents and it's nice to see them so happy. We made a trip into Chicago on Wednesday to see Christmas lights and have lunch. Everything took extra long but it was fun. The kids got to see Santa and we had lunch in the beautiful Walnut Room of Macy's (formerly Marshall Field's). At one point at lunch a "Princess" came up to us and asked the kids if they wanted to make a wish (I think she must have been a snow princess or some other Christmasy princess!) The Girl closed her eyes extremely tight and let the Princess sprinkle "fairy dust" on her head. She was so serious about making a wish. When we asked her what she wished for she said, "I wished for sparkles in my hair."

Turkey Day

We're leaving tomorrow to drive 11 hours to my parents for Thanksgiving. I am actually looking forward to it. The kids are pretty good in the car (thanks to numerous snacks and a built-in DVD player) and the Hubster drives most of the way.

There is a lot to do before we leave though and the kids' excitement level is already very high. They both have school tomorrow and the Girl has dance class. I have a feeling they are not going to get much out of the day tomorrow!

Life

I started this thinking I had lots to say. I wanted to have a place to record the kids' lives but also my thoughts. So far I seem at a loss for words. I think too much about what I should "post" about. So I don't end up posting at all.

So, I've decided I'm just going to write and see what develops. It doesn't have to be perfect. Hopefully it will evolve over time.

I have scrapbooks for each of the kiddos that I started when they were born. The boy's first few pages aren't as nice (in my opinion) as the girl's because I had more experience and practice by the time I started her book.

Hopefully this blog will be similar.

A Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst and Ray Cruz. It is one that my kids now enjoy as well.

I guess I liked the fact that this kid had a day that started off badly and continued that way until he went to bed. I remember days like that when I was a kid. I have days like that as an adult.

Yesterday was one of those days. It started off as any day I guess but by the time the Boy got home from school I was frazzled. Add to that the fact that the bus driver shared some recent antics of the Boy.

He has befriended a little girl who has some behavior problems. The difference is that this little girl doesn't really know any better. And the Boy does. So, he has taken to copying her and is getting into trouble.

I think he must have been upset that the bus driver shared is poor behavior with me because he was awful for the rest of the evening. I tried to help him with his "homework" and I was getting so frustrated I caught myself yelling at him. For doing his homework. He is in Kindergarten! But he was not paying attention and it was driving me insane.

Basically he just needed to go to bed but since the Hubster always puts him to bed and he wasn't home from work, that wasn't working.

The Girl was annoying me through all of this because she was trying to get involved and "help".

Once they were asleep I had an attack of the ever present guilt for having such a short fuse with them.

Let's hope today is a better day!

The Princess

The girl is 4 going on 16. She has become a snotty, back talking, impatient, diva! Just now she threw a fit because I happened to walk by the bathroom when she was in there. I apparently ruined her experience! And, I couldn't put the headband on the way she wanted it.

And she slept in today!

I am trying to focus on the little girl who still likes to cuddle and give me kisses. Because if she's driving me crazy now, I can't wait until she really is sixteen!

Lord be with me!

Trick or Treat

Sandy and Danny ready to hit the neighborhood

The month of October was a lot of fun this year. This marks only the second year that we've been able to trick or treat (that they recall). We were in France for two years and it's just not something that is done there. And, before we went to France they were too little to remember.

This year they knew what it was all about!

We took a hayride to a pumpkin patch and picked pumpkins. We carved our pumpkins and scooped out the "goo". We even toasted the seeds. We made a scarecrow at a local "fall celebration." And, we painted several pumpkins.

The 31st both kids had various celebrations. The girl's preschool had a costume parade and the boy's kindergarten had a "Fall Celebration" that I helped plan.

It was so wonderful to see their excitement.

A neighbor had several families over for pizza before trick or treating began. The kids made it around most of the neighborhood but weren't to the point where they had to go to every house. And, most surprising of all, didn't eat all that much candy. When they have had some of their stash they've actually chosen the "gummies", mini bags of teddy grams, etc. I am shocked! They certainly don't take after me. Which is a good thing!

Adventures of Buzzy the Bear

My daughter's preschool class has a bear that travels home with each of the students throughout the year. The adventures are recorded in a notebook that travels with Buzzy and the stories get shared with the students during circle time. My son was in this class last year and it seemed every time Buzzy visited us we had absolutely nothing going on. Well, things have changed a bit in a year.

The night Buzzy was with us recently Grandma was visiting from out of town so "the girls" went to lunch and did some shopping before going to the boy's school. We also had to pick up some bakery items to take to the school for a Fall Celebration later that night. It was at the store that we realized Buzzy was missing! We proceeded on to the boy's school, introduced Grandma to his teachers and saw some of the things he had been working on recently.

The entire time I'm panicked about this stuffed bear. What if someone took it? What if we left it somewhere? We would be responsible for ruining a tradition this preschool class has had for years and years!

After leaving the school we backtracked and at our third stop, we found him. We was sitting on the floor of a bookstore surrounded by books!

Needless to say I was very relieved. If this is what it takes for Buzzy to have a grand adventure, I'm not sure I am interested!