It was delicious, but it was the same story…kids had no interest in anything but the ice cream.  I have decided that much like their mother, if it doesn’t have chocolate they are not interested!  It’s a good thing there’s such a thing as non-dairy chocolate!

Just before Drew turned two, we switched schools. The teachers he had at his first school were supposedly going to follow him to the upcoming year too. Our departure from that school was filled with tears and sadness of leaving teachers that had been so devoted to him and his education. We left that school feeling like we would never find teachers equivalent.

Last year was filled with lots of ups and downs. With a new baby in our midst – there were behavioral issues, transition problems and communication barriers. Plus, he became fully potty trained. It was a huge year in the spectrum of his life. His teachers were patient, understanding and we all learned together how to adjust to his needs. Upon the completion of the year, we felt that we could never find teachers that worked with us more!

This year, although we had some changes with our move and me being a stay at home mom, was a less drastic year for Drew. He is doing some key skills better, he has learned to overcome some social challenges, and his attention span is much better. But last year he legitimately went from baby to toddler.

The difference is that this year, he became a legitimate student. He has classroom responsibilities (jobs of the day), rituals when he comes into class (wash hands, sign it, etc), and his education follows more of a curriculum format. His day is matching a scholastic schedule more so than a babysitting one.

There are always a period of time when teachers must learn how much the parents need from them and parents must adjust to what the teachers expect from them. Now that we have made it through everything in this school year, I feel very uneasy about leaving these teachers who have merged to be apart of my support system for managing my son. I feel that I have grown with these teachers in ways that Drew has too. It’s a vulnerable feeling to have to start a school year all over again without my right hand men (Drew’s teachers).

If I’ve learned nothing from my years gone by, I seem to consistently fall for Drew’s teachers so I’m sure next year will be no different. But each year I go through the devastation over losing Drew’s…ours…my teachers. And this year is no different. How will I go on without Miss Nancy and Miss Amy?!?!

Clearly I have not been very private of my struggles with Drew. A lot of his challenges, although managed with certain tactics, I have chalked up to his personality. He is strong willed, opinionated and unfortunately very similar to me in a lot of ways that causes us to constantly butt heads.

Gabby, on the other hand, seems different. She is the one to concede – she gives Drew the toy when he has a fit, she is the affectionate one and at least by comparison she is the mild mannered one. To experience such defeat in a social peer setting, like the daycare, is so upsetting.

Some of you may be thinking it, it’s for surely haunting me, so I’m just gonna come right out and say it (with shame and definite humility)…what am I doing wrong? I raise my children in a household where voices are very infrequently raised. Once in my whole parenting career I spanked Drew for a safety reason (which is a whole conversation unto itself). I do have an aggressive personality, but an appropriately aggressive personality which is properly managed in social settings (I’m not having screaming fits at grocers or anything like that). So what am I doing wrong?

I have worked very hard to raise them in a loving atmosphere filled with praise and repercussions for bad behavior. Yet I now have two children who seem to have not absorbed any of the principles that I hold so dear. A parent’s job is to raise your children with values that they can then take forward to be a productive member of society. I have clearly failed. My children are going to be in JU-V before they turn five!

And the larger more pressing point is that mom is absolutely without a doubt not a happy camper to be pulled out of her class fifteen minutes mid-workout! This is not going to work for me one bit! How can I get my delinquent whipped into shape so I can get my butt whipped into shape for bathing suit season?!?!

Buying a foreclosure, although fiscally advantageous, comes with a slew of concerns. For one, walking into a disgusting pile of bricks and looking past the issues to see your dream house is difficult. You really must be a visionary. We brought many family members to give their opinions before we purchased it. Some were very encouraging of the potential. Others were not as optimistic.

There were times, even after the pile of bricks were ours, that I was doubtful it would ever feel like ours. With each improvement – a torn down wall here, a new wall and window there, paint, light fixtures, appliances, etc etc, it started to feel more like a possibility. Then came the personalization. It has been very exciting to decorate the bits and pieces, to beautify the joint.

There have definitely been upgrades we made that are strictly for the aesthetics and then there have been upgrades for the functionality of this house. This screen door has been an upgrade that seems like an obvious one but surprisingly took us WAY too long! To be able to vent out the house and not have the door constantly open with kids coming and going has become a luxury that reminds me this house is no longer a foreclosure.

With each piece of customization we do to make this house more our own, its looking less and less like the nasty pile of bricks we once walked into. It’s hard to believe this is even the same place. Of course, in my mind, it still has a long way to go. But with each change it feels like we are out with the old, and in with the new. It’s so refreshing.

We were so lucky to move into new construction with our last home. Each thing in our house was new and we were the first people to ever use it. Walking into this house, every piece of it had been used and abused by countless people. This screen may just be a screen. For me, I think it represents so much more. It’s another addition that is original to our family. I hope we spend countless years here, customizing everything to our family. One screen at a time

I made my first attempt at gardening. As most homeowners know, and I’m learning, is that there is a never-ending list of “to-do” jobs. We have hired a landscaping company to do the extreme heavy lifting jobs like leveling off our yard, digging and disposing of our thirty tons of nasty rocks, and seeding grass. But the more moderate jobs (which are actually colossal jobs when discussing my green thumb) have fallen to Adam and me.

So I set out with my best attitude to the gardening center. I got flashbacks from picking out paint colors. The only difference with that was that I had some idea about paint (I mean what’s to know about paint). There are plants that need a certain amount of sunlight. There are plants that have already bloomed and died but will come back next year (which are cheapest). There are plants that currently have bloomed but have some life left (which are cheaper). There are plants that haven’t bloomed yet (which are the most expensive).

Cross referencing bloom status to sunlight exposure to visualizing a landscaping picture made my head spin. Managing children running around like madmen destroying plants and tempted to run into the parking lot while trying to focus on these crazy plants was enough to do me in. And as I was about done with my plans, I found a whole new slew of plants that I questioned I may be better off with! I am suddenly understanding why so many people I know use landscapers for it all!

Ok, I managed to finalize everything and make my way home. Now you want me to do what with these?!?! So I start digging and I guess I got the concept. But I’m pretty sure my thumb didn’t turn green or anything. That being said, I wouldn’t say it was the most miserable experience in my life either. So I guess I’ll consider it success, right?

Here’s the thing though – I bought the right plants, I successfully planted them, BUT it doesn’t have “the look.” Does it just mean that I’m anxious, per usual, and I have to wait it out? It will eventually grow and flourish into a beautiful piece of landscaping? Or I significantly missed something and need to do something differently that is significantly outside my current realm? I guess it’ll just be a work in progress…

I would almost like to say she has a hitting thing or a biting thing…a specific issue with a specific aggressive behavior. She seems to possess them all. She takes on kids small, medium and large pulling out a variety of black belt moves. Much like her four legged brother, she is attempting bites left and right. I’ve been warned several times that I will be instantly pulled from my exercise class if she actually catches some skin, who’s being punished then?

We most definitely have been through this with Drew. He did bite a handful of people but his weakness was always for hitting. I mostly attributed it to being in full day daycare. What’s Gabby’s excuse?

Last week both kids were sitting on the bed, Gabby started crying and Drew started laughing. When questioned about the incident, Gabby exclaimed “Drew, Drew.” Now I’m no investigator but if I had to piece together the evidence I would say Drew was behind the bruise above her eye. Two days ago, Drew stepped/applied force through the body weight of his foot to her back causing her chin to hit the ground resulting in yet another bruise. I can’t imagine where Gabby has learned how to be so aggressive?

This is getting serious though. If mama is pulled out of her exercise class due to Gabby having an altercation in the kids club, mama is going to be VERY unhappy. If this should happen during the two week break between school and camp, mama may go over the deep end. How do I keep the jaws of life shut so I can get in a workout?

When we were first looking into areas to move to, both my husband and I felt strongly that we didn’t want to move back to the town we grew up in. We couldn’t shake the feeling that we were small town people moving back to our small town. Having moved fifteen minutes away, I’m not sure we have made a tremendous move.

I’m not sure the aforementioned girl went away to college, but I’m also pretty sure that me going to a university where a quarter of my graduating class went doesn’t make me worldly. I did have the amazing opportunity to live in Spain for four months. I was able to study abroad because its popular to do and I found a reasonably priced program that sent me there. Although that allowed me to see more of the world than I would have otherwise, going to nightclubs with my American friends isn’t exactly an extreme cultural experience (that perhaps it should have been).

Would I feel more worldly and less like this girl if I had picked up and moved across the country? Away from our friends and family? More worldly perhaps, but definitely not improve my quality of life. I wouldn’t change anything to have the opportunity to have our parents and grandparents as vital parts of our children’s lives

My mom grew up in a place that eventually changed so dramatically and all the people she knew that had lived there were forced out. I’m blessed that I have a place to go “home” to. Yet the familiarity of it is sometimes eerie. To have the chance to carve out my own path with new firsts for our family is exciting. And that’s why those fifteen minutes made a big difference for us. I am sometimes fearful that we chose the proximity because we’re scared of the unknown with other places and this fell in our “comfort zone.”

Is it ok to settle for your comfort zone when your comfort zone is a pretty nice place? Is it really fair to criticize my Craigslist friend for recreating the same life she grew up in? Maybe that’s the kind of life she dreamed of having? Or did she just settle for it because that’s all she knew? And could the same be applied to me?

I must be shopping at the wrong place because my quinoa alone was $5, but that’s besides the point. This recipe was worth every penny because we loved it! And when I say we…I mean ALL FOUR OF US!!!!!!!! Seconds were had by all!!!!!! SUCCESS!

Gabby idolizes her brother. She wants to play with him all the time. She wants to do everything he wants to do. She wants to wear the clothes he wants to wear. And with every passing day, I feel the pinkalicious slipping away. I even find her relating more to other boys because that’s what’s familiar to her.

I have tried infusing every bit of princess power, pink paraphernalia, and girly gear but I feel her slipping away. Today while walking through the Nordstrom’s shoe section, a section where most women find their female spirit, she was singing Bear Down! I feel as though I’m on an estrogen island all by myself in this house.

So this is my plea, frankly I’m downright begging…anyone who dare bring anything into my house, with Gabby in mind, please make sure it is girly and pink. It’s a requirement. The fact that she feels more comfortable handling a hockey stick than a purse is disturbing.

Ok, ok I may be exaggerating a bit. She does have a strong inclination for shoes, mainly BOOOOOOOOT. She does love all her baby dolls and her kitchen. All very promising facts to this sad story. But that just goes to show at what a critical place we are here. This story can go south so easily. I’m hanging on by a thread. I’m elevating this situation to a code pink emergency situation. Hopefully we will come out on the right side of the situation – the pink side!

Today I ran in our new neighborhood. Since we moved in the middle of winter, my running experience has been mostly confined to a few family runs sans mix. This time, however, I ran with my mix again. There were songs that played and I could visualize where in my old neighborhood I would be passing during that song. And of course it caused me to reflect…

As the run started, I felt slightly depressed. I had such fond memories of running past our old lake. I remembered running to a particular song and contemplating this very move. It was actually an “aha” moment. After that run I realized that although it was a tremendous risk, we had to move our life forward and that meant taking a leap faith.

As I continued to run, I started to feel invigorated. How many times do you commit yourself to a decision that has reaped such a positive outcome. We are in our great home, we have transformed it from what it once was and I’m still here to talk about it. (For Jewish neurotic freaks like me there is for surely a kehenahora knock on wood that needs to be inserted here!) And suddenly I found these familiar songs playing while taking new foreign twists and turns.

I found myself at a new park, with new people. I passed baseball fields that I could almost envision Drew playing at. I saw soccer fields that I could almost imagine Gabby running through. Low and behold, I remembered that this is now a community that I plan on growing with and that was exhilarating.

For so long in our old community, I knew that it was not the place for us long term. Therefore, there was something so unsettling about being “stuck” there. But there was also something to comforting in the familiarity of it. And when my run started, I was feeling overwhelmed by the unfamiliarity of this area. Once I embraced the excitement of the uncharted territory, I became so energized by the possibilities.

On the heels of our walk through with our tenants, I realized that, per usual, I over thought it. The place looked great and everything seemed fine. Yes, they had made changes but they made changes to a place I used to live. The changes they made had no effect on my memories or on my family.

I’m so happy with where I am. If I learned nothing from this run, it’s that I need to make a new mix