Fall premiere season is here

I unintentionally took a spring and summer hiatus, so it seems appropriate that today's post is a recap episode of what we did over the past two seasons. Our life isn't that exciting, but we did manage to fill our time with a fair amount of activity. Here's a short list of how we whiled away the hours, with details and pictures to follow later.

* We celebrated Easter with two Easter egg hunts, and egg coloring at our house.
* Justin had his first dentist appointment, and subsequently, his first filling.
* Justin had yet another surgery -- his 4th -- to have tubes put in his ears.
* We had our first family outing to King's Island.
* We got a new sprinkler ball, and hauled out the pool, and found out that Tyler thinks water activities are like bathing in acid.
* Tyler had more allergy testing done, with interesting results.
* We went to Coney Island for Balloon Glow, and didn't see any balloons.
* Tyler got stitches for the very first time.
* We celebrated Justin's 4th birthday.
* We visited the park several times.
* And finally, we went back to Coney on Labor Day and had a great time to end summer.

I promise to come back later and make some more posts on some of the more fun parts. :)

Confessions of a slacker mom

I read an excerpt from a new parenting book the other day. It's written by a pediatrician who's also a mom, named Meg Meeker. Her book is called, The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity.

The following is from the introduction of her book:
"We are a group that wants desperately to be good at what we do. We want to be good to our friends and husbands and we want to be great to our kids. We love intensely and we work hard. But we have a problem.......

.......We stress over how well we are parenting and if we are taking full advantage of other opportunities. But mostly, we worry about what we can do for our kids in order to make their lives better. We do this because we really want to be good at mothering. We want to get it right, just as we want to get our jobs right.

This need — to get parenting right — has become an obsession for many of us. It consumes our thinking, our energy, and our time. Let me be clear: Striving to be a great mom is a noble goal, and as a pediatrician, I applaud those who choose it. But that’s not what I’m referring to. I am talking about a full-blown obsession with getting mothering right. And it is taking many of us down.

We have become competitors. We have learned over the past twenty-five years to compete with other mothers and compete with ourselves. The problem is, none of us feels as though we’re winning."

When you hang out with other moms, it's nearly impossible not to enter the competition. You're always internally wondering how you measure up, whether your kids are as happy and well-adjusted as those of your friends, and whether you're making all the right choices when it comes to feeding and dressing and entertaining them.

I have a few confessions to make, just because I want to get them off my chest. I don't think any of these things make me a bad mom, but all the same, doubts creep in from time to time when I hear so many other people talking about the right things they do.

- We don't shop or eat organic. Or have a desire to.
- We don't eat enough vegetables.
- I feed my kids hot dogs and deli meat.
- I don't feel terribly bad about letting them have kids meals at fast food joints.
- I let Justin drink Sprite almost every time we go out to dinner as a family.
- We probably have too much TV time.
- I don't like to cook - heck, I don't even like being in the kitchen. So we have a lot of convenience foods instead of homemade goodness.
- I don't really read parenting books, mostly because I don't have time.

I really need to stop comparing myself to other moms. We're all unique and will do the things that we're comfortable doing. And I love my boys to pieces.

My boys are cute

This week I had Tyler's pictures taken for his 18 month milestone. He wore an outfit that Justin wore for Easter two years ago. I decided to compare them at the same age in the same clothes and here is the result:



I posted this online, and quite a few people commented on the resemblance between the two of them. I don't see it, except they have the same clothes on! But, they are cute, no matter what.

You'll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Justin's pants were starting to become a little short. They are not quite flood stage, but the size 4 that was too long on him just last fall are not going to last him through summer. It's not just one brand, either, so I can't say that they run small - he has at least 3 different brand names in his closet. And I wash everything in cold water and don't dry them dry -- so I've crossed shrinking off the list. No, my boy is just getting taller.

So yesterday, I decided I would compare a new size 4 with a new size 5 to see how they stack up, lengthwise and waist-wise. There was probably an inch of difference in the ones I looked at, and since they had an adjustable waist, I bought one pair of size 5. I put them on him this morning and they fit great. Just a smidge long, but they don't drag the ground. On one hand, I was really proud of that -- he's getting so big and tall and handsome. But tonight, as I held him in my lap to sing songs before bed, I realized he's not a toddler any more. He's a full-fledged kid. He's about 41 inches tall, according to the marks on the wall at preschool. Since I'm only 5'2" myself, that means he's a mere 20-ish inches away from catching me. That's the length he was at birth. SOB!

As we were singing, he stopped me and said, "Mommy, you didn't sit next to me while I was watching Clifford. I need you to sit next to me tomorrow while I watch my show." Wow, buddy, you bet I do. I can't miss any more seconds to quickly check Facebook, or send an email, or see what the headlines are. You're growing up too fast on me and I need to hold on to every possible moment.

The last song I sing to him every night is "You Are My Sunshine". The words are just so appropriate for a parent to sing to a child:

You are my sunshine,
My only sunshine.
You make me happy,
When skies are gray.
You'll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don't take my sunshine away.

He's not my only sunshine, as I have two of them. But it's so true, I never knew how much my parents loved me until I became a parent myself. As I sang the verse to Justin tonight, my voice broke. I hope he didn't notice, but I did hug him just a little tighter. When I was finished singing, I just held him tight for a minute. He said, "Mommy, tell me I'm your good boy."

Oh sweetie, you are Mommy's good boy. And you will never know just how much I love you.

The Karate Kid

We've been planning for about 6 months to enroll Justin in a karate class, but we just never got around to actually doing it. The January doldrums and cabin fever were at a fever pitch this past week, so Tom finally called the place to ask about their program for preschoolers. It's called "Little Dragons", and is designed specifically for kids ages 3-4. There are 8 skills which are taught/learned as part of this class, but two of them specifically caught my attention: FOCUS and DISCIPLINE. Awesome. We can all use a little more of that.

So Wednesday was the big day. The day started out like any other, and I took Justin and Tyler out to meet our friends Jennifer and Logan for a playdate. Logan is Justin's best guy friend and he hadn't seen him in a while, so we were looking forward to it. We headed to the mall for some horsing around in their play area. All was well -- Justin was off and playing with Logan so I got down on the floor with Tyler. Jennifer stood up to take a picture of Tyler and I turned around to see what Justin was up to, and he was gone. I mean, poof, 10 seconds out of my sight, and he was gone. He was nowhere within the play area, and was nowhere in sight around the perimeter. I was positively frantic – he could seriously not have been out of my sight for more than 2 minutes yet there was no trace of him. I looked in the surrounding stores but it was obvious he was in none of them as they were really deserted. I called him, no answer. As I was trying to figure out what in the heck to do, Jennifer yells over to me, “Here he is!” I guess he and another boy (that we did not know) had climbed over the seats that surround the play area and had darted into JC Penney. I don’t know what made them decide to come back, but come back they did. Needless to say, this resulted in a stern discussion about never leaving Mommy without saying something, strangers, etc., etc. I’m not really sure how much of it got through to him – he was in no mood to listen.

So the FOCUS and DISCIPLINE that comes along with karate could not happen soon enough. We headed over there later in the day and Justin was excited, although he had no idea what he was excited about. As soon as we got there, he was given his own karate uniform and went with Daddy to change clothes. They had a short orientation for the 4 new boys (of which he was one), and then they got to join in the regular weekly class with the rest of the kids.

Justin is prone to not paying attention and frequently darting off to do his own thing, which he did several times throughout the orientation and class. The instructors are amazing with these young kids -- they just direct them back to the activity at hand with calm firmness and you can see that it really gets through to the kids.

One of the things he did during the orientation portion was run off and go slamming into a wall of mirrors, basically giving himself a big full-body hug and kiss in the mirror. The instructor addressed it immediately, and we managed to catch most of it on video.



Maybe I need to take a few karate classes and learn some things about calmness and self-discipline from these dudes. :) Behavior like that probably would not have been corrected that way at home.

Justin got to throw a few punches, a couple of kicks, yell a lot of "hi-YA's", and thoroughly enjoyed himself.








We are definitely looking forward to next week and hoping this reaps a lot of benefits for him.

And because we need equal time.....

Here is a snippet of Justin's first steps. He walked for the first time 6 days after his first birthday but was content not to take any more for another month after that. I love this little video; it's been a while since I watched it. It makes me a little misty to think that this little boy is now 3.5 years old and can run as fast as a cheetah.

Tyler walks

I'm far too late in sharing this news, clearly one of the biggest achievements in a child's life. I guess I could try to excuse my tardiness by saying I've been busy chasing after the little bugger, but that wouldn't really be true, either. Suffice it to say, sometimes it's just hard to get to the computer to write a coherent blog post when there are two little kids running around making you nuts.

At any rate, Tyler DID walk and is walking more now. He took his first steps on New Year's Eve, so it was a great way for us to end the year and start out 2011. While most kids walk somewhere near their first birthday, Tyler waited to dazzle us with his mad skills. We've known for a while now that he COULD walk -- he's demonstrated it by cruising along the furniture and kitchen cabinets, or pushing a clothes basket across a room, or walking behind a random push toy. But he never let go and tried walking unassisted until New Year's Eve. He did it two separate times, once in Daddy's presence and once in Mommy's, so no one missed it. Each time it was about 4 or 5 steps, enough to call it "walking".

Of course, we pulled out the video camera to record the momentous occasion, and like any child, he of course refused to cooperate fully. I think we did get a couple of steps on camera, but the scene was mostly stolen by his brother trying to get his share of attention.

Without further ado, I present the video evidence.



It's safe to say that life as we know it is irrevocably changed!