I want to apologize if I ever wasn’t patient enough when you had ear infections. I had no idea of how excruciatingly painful the pressure of an ear infection is. I now understand fully why you would cry for hours on end.

Love,
Your Mother

I have been sick for over a week now. What started as a cold is now a severe ear infection with a bulging eardrum that is terribly painful. I just want to feel better. I want to be able to hold my head up straight. I want to let my children know that I am sorry for the pain they experienced.

I am not sure if Kimberly tried it just to get Annie off her back or because she really thought now was the time to ride, but they asked to go out front and try. I humored them since Annie was willing to help Kimberly. (I am quite sick at the moment so running beside a new biker wouldn’t work.)

We went out to the middle of the street. Annie gave Kimberly a good hard push and off she went. Annie ran along side her and coached her on how to steer. She still hasn’t gotten the hang of steering but she is riding!

Way to go Kimmie!

Let me put the emphasis where I mean it: school can be boring. So can work. So can life.

I’m not going to say that the purpose of school is to be tedious. But learning and mastery aren’t supposed to be effortless. You have to learn things that maybe you don’t want to because they’re a) foundational and b) important. For a child, it’d be great to stick only to what interests you and skip the math drills. And it’s tempting to think that a child-centered education might result in more engagement and thus more learning.

But that’s not how life works. You can’t only work on the fun projects at your office; someone needs to wipe out the toilets; and there’s always paperwork to be filed. There’s going to be a boss and he’s going to tell you to do things. If you cut and run because man that guy’s always droning on about the proper sequence to assemble the widget, then you’re not going to be employed for long.

Knowing how to handle being bored and follow directions is a life skill. Finding the value in relationships with people unlike yourself (or maybe even beneath your level of intelligence) will serve you for the rest of your life. School is a great place to acquire and practice those skills. If you indulge your child’s self-absorption, you’re not doing him any favors and disappointment is going to be a theme throughout his life.

My Girls have grown and their taste in clothing is a different as their hair colors. I was shocked beyond belief today when we went shopping for dresses for the Father and Daughter dance. All three girls picked the exact same dress and they were all excited to be matching! I quickly paid and left the store before they had second thoughts.

Inside I was anxiously awaiting seeing all three of them in the matching dresses. The way the three of them looked was adorable and as expected I did have some heart melt.

“Mom, did you used to be a vet too before we were born?” ~ Kimberly
“No” ~ Mom
“How do you know how to give the cats medicine?” ~ Kimberly
“I know how to take care of you when you are sick too, and I am not a doctor, am I?” ~ Mom
“Yeah, I guess so.” ~ Kimberly

Kimmie is always so curious about life before she arrived. So cute.

I have not worked for 8 1/2 years because I believe that it was what was best for me and my children. Now faced with the facts of all of them going off to school I was concerned what I would do from 8:30-2:30 each day. I know many women continue to stay home when their kids all enter school but I wasn’t sure that would work for me, just as I wasn’t sure being a stay at home Mom would ever work for me.

As an isolated question I would love nothing more than to have a career again. I loved working and making a difference in the lives of children. If it was just my feelings I needed to take into account I would work in a heartbeat, heck I would never have stopped if this was all about me but, the facts are that it isn’t.

Can I balance work and still be on top of all the kids appointments and development? How will I do everything I do for the 6 hours a day after the workday? Is it the right choice for my kids to have me more distracted when they are home from school?

Last week I finally made a decision. I have decided that I could go back to work, if it is at the school where my kids go. I would be working while they were at school and I know I can adjust to grocery shopping in the evenings or making appointments on days off. I would still have summers off with the kids and they would have the advantage of having a Mother who is fulfilled.

I have spoken with the principal of the kids school and I have let him know that I would definitely be open to a full time position. It sounds like lots of changes are coming to the school so I am not holding my breath for a position. If I don’t get one, which is highly likely, I will continue volunteering and subbing.

It feels so good to have a game plan. I am excited to see what fate has in store for me.

Apparently he thought she was confused about what was wrong with him. I just had to laugh.

I was recently talking to a friend of mine about how often I hide my inner geek. (Here I am just using the word geek to represent any sort of intellectual side.) She agreed and I wondered silently why I do it. Why do I hide my own brilliance and lessen theirs? Why is it easier for me to talk about my shortcomings than to talk about how I really enjoy historical fiction? When someone asks me the last movie I say I squirm in my seat a little when I say “Iron Lady”, which I throughly enjoyed.

I want my Girls to be confident and believe they can do anything and yet sometimes I think my actions speak louder than my words to them. How can they see an example of a strong woman when they hear me minimizing my accomplishments, and to a further extent theirs. I NEVER speak about some of them being gifted, but I am quick to talk about things we are working on. They can hear me! They need to know that being gifted is an important part of them. A friend of mine recently wrote a blog entry about this very situation in her own life.

Knowing that this is something that other parents of gifted children deal with gives me some comfort and causes me to ponder further how I should be responding to this. I know there are plenty who will just see me a “one-upper Mom” but honestly those people are probably responding from their own inferior feelings and not the words I am saying. (Yes, after historical fiction I love to read psychology books mainly related to child development. Which combines my love of teaching and rearing my children.)

I am going to start underreporting their brilliance. I am going to start speaking freely about how amazing my children are. Feel free to plug your ears or avert your eyes if it offends you.

She is determined to do a good job and is excited to be learning again.

We did the treatment, cleaned her bedding, vacuumed the couch and her mattress and are doing many more measures to ensure this doesn’t spread. It is exhausting! Aside from the fact that even though my mother checked my head for lice I feel like my skin is crawling!

Hopefully tomorrow morning when I comb through her hair in the morning light I won’t find any nits or lice.

You can see the tooth dangling in this photo.

And here is her most adorable grin with the tooth missing. I think I like this look much better.

Today she was saying how, while she thinks it is perfectly fine for me and Daddy, she doesn’t want to have a husband. She thinks it is just plain gross and not for her. I told her that she may change her mind on that one day. I also told her that when I was younger I had no plans to get married and have children, I was going to be a career girl, but then I met Daddy and my ideas changed. She said she didn’t think that would happen to her.

After the discussion of how she wasn’t going to have a husband she began talking about how she should probably get her one child a pet since she is only planning to adopt one child so that it won’t have anyone to fight with. Her reasoning: When she is at her sweet shop the child will have someone to keep her company. I told her that maybe the child could come hang out with her Grandmother while her Mother worked. She hadn’t really thought about that before but said, “maybe.” I just chuckled.

It will be so interesting to see what comes of my Girl and all her ideas.

Last night I throughly check through Annie and Kimberly’s hair for any trace of lice and didn’t find any. Today I went and bought some preventative shampoo just to give us another way to prevent it from attacking us. Along with that I told the girls how important it was for them to not share jackets and to not touch the hair of their classmates.

Hopefully all of this will work and we will be lucky enough to not become hosts to those little buggars.

Finally they are coming around to having me fix their hair in the mornings. This morning they asked me to do some braids and pony tails. It isn’t much but I welcome their desires. (On a side note: I can’t do fancy schmancy hair styles anyhow so pony tails and braids work for me.)

This morning I had to sit on my hands when I saw Mimi. Kimberly had done her hair for her and they were both so proud of it. Kimberly had pulled it back in a simple pony tail at the base of Mimi’s neck and had put a headband around her head to secure the extra little hairs. It was a cute hairstyle and wonderful that the two of them had worked together on the hair, but I would have loved to have been able to comb through it once and put it back. So many lumps and bumps in the pony tail.

It is nice to see them finally more concerned about the appearance of their hair.

Family budget: We have certainly paired down our spending a lot. We are living debt free and that is wonderful. Should we move to completely cash based? I don’t think we can especially with online shopping becoming even more prevalent. We can and will continue to be mindful of our spending habits.

Weight: Umm yeah, I worked on this on and off throughout the year but at the end of the year I weigh pretty much the same as I did last year. As I have said before I either need to focus hard on this one or accept that I am always going to be the size I am now.

Paint the House: We didn’t get to the one either, though we did get the staircase and loft painted, which is a huge part of our home. This year we MUST paint our bedroom and bathroom and the living room/kitchen. These areas really need the attention.

Scrapbooks: I wanted to get caught up on my scrapbooks but that wasn’t able to happen. In the last days of 2011 I did finish up my 2009 digital scrapbook and sent it off for printing. It should come in the mail this week and if I am satisfied with the results I will do 2010 and 2011 this year.

Sew for pleasure: I didn’t get much time in this area as well. I spent the majority of my sewing time this year creating snack bags and wraps. I have so many projects that I want to work on and I hope to have more time this year.

Write/Read more: Again this was a no go. (Gosh my resolutions from last year are getting kind of depressing.) I didn’t have time to work on my writing projects nor did I get a chance to read as often as I would have liked. I received a nook for Christmas and have already read 2 books on it this month. Hopefully this will help me to reach my goal of 2 books per month. As far as writing is concerned I think that I won’t have time to work on it until the fall when all 4 kids are in school full time.

Library for Sebeta: Finally a goal that was reached though not by myself alone. A library for Sebeta is such wonderful thing. It makes my heart happy.

Grocery shop once per week: I did this and it was very freeing. I cannot even imagine how I used to do it. If we don’t have it on hand we don’t eat it. We use a wipe off board on the fridge to list things that we need and when I create the list I start with those items. I go to Costco and the grocery store all in one day and I am much happier for doing it.

Looking to 2012 I am still going to work on those above goals because I had so many failures. I am also planning to work on a couple more things.

First and foremost I have to learn how to say “no”. Far too often I say I can help out and while each small thing is so tiny they all add up to me not being able to fulfill my own dreams. This is going to be a really hard thing for me. I always want to help others when I can. I stretch myself to thin and in the end it is my family and myself who makes the sacrifices. I can’t do that to them or to myself anymore.

I am not sure how to create these limits. I don’t want to say no to everything so this is going to be a really hard balance, one I expect that I will fail at sometimes. Hopefully in the end I will learn from that and know what to avoid the next time.

This year I want to listen more. This may sound crazy but for anyone who knows me they know I talk A LOT! I need to stop talking and questioning and listen. I have recently seen this behavior in my children and it has made me realize that I do it far too often (likely where they learned it).

Take a vacation with Bill and a family trip. This year we had some home improvements to do and so vacation funds were less. We took our week in Seal Beach and several trips to Sea World throughout the year but we didn’t do a couple trip. This is something that I would like for us to do this year.

Teach the kids to be more proficient in the kitchen. They already have a lot of skills in the kitchen but I want them to be able to move from helping me to actually preparing something on their own. I would like for each one to master at least one recipe. (With the except of Paul, he still needs to work on just helping out more.)

Make a conscious decision about working or not working. Since Paul will be enrolling in kindergarten in the fall I need to decide what I am going to do with myself. Subbing, full time work, no work, etsy shop, lay around eating bon bons, the options are limitless. I just have to figure out which one is best for myself and my family.

Cheers to 2012. Hopefully I can meet more of my resolutions at my 2013 review.

Annie got her rollerblades on in record time and kept them on practically all day!

Paul opened his skateboard and got right to skating around!

The kids took turns opening up all the other presents. Grammy and Aunt Steph stopped by in the middle of our present opening.

We had a wonderful breakfast after opening the gifts and enjoyed each others company.

Kimberly spent a lot of her day relaxing on her new HUGE pillow pet from Grammy playing her new DS.

Paul even found a way to enjoy his new DS games and his skateboard!

We had a nice family dinner and hung out together. It was a very nice and laid back kind of Christmas.

Christmas Eve began with Candlelight service. Such a wonderful way to start things off. The Girls were again in such awe of the candle and the light that was generate when everyone lit their candles. I took photos of them where their faces were illuminated from the candle light only. I love them!

We went to Grammy’s house for Christmas dinner and to open presents with the cousins. Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time and the meal was wonderful.

We got home late, put out the reindeer food, milk and cookies for Santa and the kids feel fast asleep. While they were sleeping Santa came to visit.

Paul’s is the mitten and aside from the idea of it I pretty much made it for him. The Girls sketched out their ideas. I helped them cut them out but they glued everything down and created them.

Kimberly made the present and Santa hat. Annie made the candy cane and snowflake. Madeline created the wreath and bell.

They are so sweet and adorable.