Just Heather
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And She’s Off!
Aug 18, 2005 | Filed Under: Living Montessori

Stacia just got on the bus for her first day of school. Ah, the first day of school—new clothes, new backpack, new lunchbox, more school supplies than half the school should need. I, of course, took lots of pictures.

I missed out on getting a picture of her climbing onto the bus this morning. We had a little accident on the sidewalk right about then. A little (hurt-free) antiseptic and an Elmo bandage, and all she could think about was the sucker she had tucked into her backpack. Yes, the little one got one too. She carries toys and diapers around in it everywhere we go.

The girls and I had a fun project this year, instead of buying expensive backpacks. They decorated cheap, solid color backpacks with appliques and ribbons. I’m not so sure how well it’s going to last. A few things already fell off of Stacia’s overstuffed backpack. Luckily, she didn’t seem too upset about it. I promised to help her fix it tonight. Maybe I need to dig out the sewing kit and pretend I know what I’m doing to reinforce the fabric glue we used.

Stacia feigned apprehension last night before bed and again this morning, but she took off for the bus before I could blink. Of course, I was busy trying to catch a two-year-old before she hit the concrete, but I still think she was in a pretty big hurry. When she returns, I’ll get barely a “fine” when I ask about her day. However, by dinner I’ll have heard everything about the day minute by minute.

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3
Selective Memory
Aug 16, 2005 | Filed Under: Busy Bees, Calendar Girl, Living Montessori, Scout Mom

Remember how excited I was that school was almost starting? Yeah, why didn’t someone remind me of the 50 million things to do, places to be, and meetings to attend. I completely blocked out a rather significant fact about the school year—we have about eleven hundred accompanying activities.

School starts in 2 days. I had my first meeting last night, the one for Girl Scout leaders. It brought everything back in stunning clarity. Free time? Right—the white spaces on my calendar are rapidly disappearing as activity schedules roll in.

  • Kids’ Church Choir—twice a month
  • Brownies—twice a month (being the leader did give me the opportunity to arrange the schedule so these two alternate)
  • Soccer—twice a week
  • PTO Meetings—once a month
  • PTO committees—I begged off this year (maternity leave?)
  • Brownie Leader Meetings—once a month
  • Bible Study—once a week (this one’s for me!)
  • Baby Doctor appointments—every two weeks for now; moves to weekly the last month (that doesn’t even account for the inevitable trips to the pediatrician now that everyone else’s germs will come home with my kid)

That works out to about 5 things each week. How ever did I manage to forget about that? For the foreseeable future my meeting notebook will be permanently grafted to my arm, my chauffer’s cap shall not be removed, and my bottom will be firmly planted in the doctor’s office waiting room. What idiot coined the term stay-at-home mom?

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1
I Miss You Too
Aug 13, 2005 | Filed Under: Family Ties, Quotable Kids

Conversation with my daughter on the phone last night:

Me: Hi, baby. How are you?
Brenia: I’m at Nama’s.
Me: I know you’re at Nama’s. Are you being a good girl?
Brenia: Do you wanna talk to Stacia?
Me: Are you being a good girl?
Brenia: Do you wanna talk to Stacia?
Me: Okay, baby. I’ll talk to Stacia. I love you!
Brenia: Bye!

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0
Doing the Goo
Aug 12, 2005 | Filed Under: Baby Making

I had my glucose test yesterday. I got to drink the orange goo. It may look like orange soda, but it tastes nothing like Sunkist. And everyone knows that’s the only orange soda worth drinking. Anything else is just vile.

With my first pregnancy I got addicted to Sunkist. I had to cut down on caffeine and there’s very little in orange soda. This time around I completely lost my taste for it. Instead, I started craving Mountain Dew. Luckily, I am allowed to have a bit. I have to keep it limited, but the only real side effect during pregnancy is low birth weight. I don’t think that will be too much of a problem, considering the 9 and 10 pound kids I tend to pop out.

Though baby’s size is down slightly. She’s only measuring 2 days ahead now, as opposed to 9. My doctor wants to do another ultrasound at 36 weeks so we can see just how early I can go. We are officially down to a double digit countdown!

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All Quiet on the Home Front
Aug 11, 2005 | Filed Under: Fashion Disaster, Household CEO, Living Inexpensively, Living Montessori

The girls’ week at Camp Grandma’s is almost over. It should feel weird here, I guess, but I’m so busy doing the things I never have time for that I barely notice the quiet. I’ve gotten our bedroom fairly organized in preparation for the office transition. We have no spare bedrooms so baby is taking over the office. He’ll just have to deal with a corner of our bedroom. Of course, that means I can no longer just shut the door on his noise. It’s bad enough I can feel the bass vibrate my bathtub each night when he plays City of Heroes—now I won’t even have an insulated wall between us.

I also finished most of my baby shopping. The only thing left to buy is a crib mattress—seeing as how the old one is still being used on a toddler bed—and the bedding. After that it’s just clothes and diapers. For the rest of my natural life. Speaking of clothes, I also got most of Stacia’s school clothes bought. I discovered all of her skorts and shorts from the spring were still in great shape. Shirts she ruins with gusto, but the shorts seem to have survived. I took them to a few stores and bought some matching tops. I hate this time of year. She needs new school clothes because she destroyed all of last year’s, but I hate spending a lot of money. Because I’m cheap. And because she’ll just need all new clothes again when it cools.

School starts in one week, so it’s good I’m almost ready. Well, I’ve been ready for weeks, but now I almost have her ready too. Tonight I have to go to the Back to School Night. I promised I would go check the class list and see who she knew, since she couldn’t go herself. When I made the offer, I was thinking I’d just pop in and jot down the names I recognized. It occurred to me this morning that this could take a lot longer than I thought. I’m bound to run into everyone I haven’t seen all summer and spend a few minutes catching up with each of them. Such is life in a small town.

That’s all the time I have for catching up here. I’m sure I’ll be posting with more regularity once we get back to a daily schedule.

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0
Moving Right Along
Aug 05, 2005 | Filed Under: Baby Making

I haven’t updated in awhile, partly due to the blog upgrades, but mostly because it’s SSDD around here. If you want to know what I’ve been going through, read a list of “possible” pregnancy symptoms/side-effects. Check all of the above. I’m all over every, single disgusting, annoying pregnancy-related issue—most of which you don’t want to hear about, even if you did purposefully visit a pregnancy blog.

I always feel so guilty about how much I hate pregnancy, knowing as I do how many women would give anything to be in my shoes. I attempt to relish the moment, but I mostly find myself counting down the days. I couldn’t tell you what month I’m in, but I can tell you I have 15 weeks to go! Less, really, since at last measurement little Lorelai was looking about 9 days ahead of schedule. My doctor has promised to induce early and I’m going to hold her to it.

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Camp Grandma’s
Aug 05, 2005 | Filed Under: Dictated By..., Family Ties

I going Nama’s for a week—a whole week! We’re going to play, play my toys, go swimming…

I can’t wait!

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14 More Days
Aug 04, 2005 | Filed Under: Calendar Girl, Household CEO, Mommyhood

Oh, how I loathe summertime. I am just not cut out for warm weather. Today I had intended to beat the heat with an afternoon at a local water playground. It was not only so I could wear my new maternity bathing suit and even out those weird tan lines. It was also a bribe to get the girls (I don’t know why I still link to them every time—their blogs have not been updated since 1992!) to do their chores. All I wanted was the crap picked up off the living room floor so I could vacuum. Yes, I occasionally do that.

Instead, they chose to lay on the floor and whine about how it just isn’t fair. Why do I have to do all this? Um, maybe because you’re the ones who made the damn mess in the first place. Then my mom gets after me with her whole Cinderella-complex. I’m thinking it’s really not too much to expect a 7-year-old to clean her own messes. It’s not like I have her cooking my dinner or ironing my clothes. After 4 hours, the living room—which was really not that messy, by the way—doesn’t look much different then it did last night, except for the addition of breakfast crumbs.

I did manage to get them to pick up the eleventy hundred pairs of shoes they had strewn about the first floor on their way up for nap/quiet-time. Of course, that was met with huge sighs and groans about how it was just too hard to carry that many shoes at the same time. Then I mentioned that perhaps they had too many shoes to begin with and I should come visit the shoe rack with my donation box. Extra hands suddenly appeared and all shoes made it to the appropriate locations without any mishaps. It’s a miracle, I tell ya.

I feel sort of bad that I’m the one counting down the days until school starts. I’m sure that makes me a horrible mother in some eyes. I’m just so tired of breaking up fights, tearing down soda-bottle walls between lunch seats (at least they figured out how not to fight for one 20-minute period per day), and listening to whining about how unfair it is that they have to do something other than veg out in front of the television.

2 weeks. I can manage for 2 weeks. Besides, they are going to Camp Grandma’s for 1 of those weeks so I really only have 5 more days of this nonstop, in-your-face, what-can-we-do-now summer schedule.

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