A new year

Here we are, 2014. 

I entered the new year wondering if I should set any yearly goals and then quickly decided against it and here is why: I have to have a certain number of CLE hours to keep practicing law, 45 hours every three years to be exact. On December 27 I realized that my hours were due this year by December 31st and after further investigation, it became clear that I needed 31 hours of CLE in 5 days. Those 5 days were beyond sucky. 

So what does this have to do with a 2014 goal? Well, I envisioned myself cramming for my goals similarly to the mass watching of online CLE hours. I realized if I committed to running 4 5k races, I would be setting up a line and a cheering squad for myself outside my house. I would be handing out to myself a t-shirt that I made and pinning my homemade bib on. And not only would I do this, but I would do it 4 times- on December 31st. 

Or perhaps if I set a goal to learn 5 sentences in Spanish, I would be bunkered down with my Rosetta Stone and my headphones while the rest of the world gleefully screamed and shouted, Happy New Year!! 

I know myself. Year goals are not for me. I need something a little more attainable. I think I do better with monthly goals ( so what if I do those on the last day of the month all year). 

As of now, I plan to run a 5k per month (I dread that goal already, I mean, have you ever peed while you run? It is less than awesome and may be enough to cause me to abandon my goal. We shall see how things go early on). 

I plan to do another round of monthly adventures. 

I also plan to make sure I do at least 2 personal training sessions per month. 

If all goes well in January, I may even add something to that list.  I need to see if I can be trusted with these goals first. 

I may have to run to my personal training session on the last day of the month. 

Here's to a great year, procrastination and all!!!

A million tomorrows later

I made some lame declaration that the day following my last post there would be another post.  Whatever, I try. 

ANYWAY… the change I am seeing….

Owen’s school just implemented “table washers” during lunch.  Originally the kids ate lunch, cleaned up their own place, and went to line up for lunch; however, after many failed attempts at the clean up your own place part, it was time for official TABLE WASHERS.  The job description of a table washer is to wipe down the table after everyone else is done for one week before they change to someone else.  Owen is dreading the task because he says kids are gross when they eat and even went so far as to say that he often packs up his lunch early because too many kids have gross food and the way they eat it bothers him.  (I know, he could possibly need therapy in the future). 

Owen had told me about the table washers when they started and then he told me this:

O: “Mom, you will never believe this, the table washers get a cookie on Fridays!!!”

J: “How lame!!!”

O: “I know, they announced it today and everyone was like, whoooo, whoooo and started cheering.  Not me, I was like, boooo.”

J: “Really?”

O: “Yes, mom, I even went up to two of the recess teachers after and I told them that they should not be handing out cookies to the kids for washing the tables and they should give them Frog Prides instead (a frog pride is a ticket for doing something good, all of the staff at school hand them out and it enters the kids into a drawing for a weekly toy).

J: “You really did that? What did they say?”

O: “They said that I can have a Frog Pride when I am a table washer and they said they would take my concerns to Mr. Golden (the principal).” 

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I am still over the moon about this. 

I can’t believe how often our children are rewarding for doing something they should do anyway.  As parents, we are not doing our children any favors by constantly rewarding them to exist.  It makes it impossible for children to develop their own sense of accomplishment, learn what is important to them, and teach them to do a good job because it feels good.  We send them conflicting messages when we reward them after soccer games, baseball games or music class with a treat and this starts when they are really really young.  We assign them a job - give them a cookie for doing it; do a random desk check -  give them a jelly bean when it is clean; tell them to run around and exercise at T-ball in order to be healthy – follow it up with a pack of Oreos and a juice box; have your name forgotten by a teacher - get a Skittle.  The more I am aware of it, the more I notice it EVERYWHERE. 

Although, I do agree that if you have to wash gross food from gross kids off the tables you should get a reward, but it would be nice if the reward could be something more than another cookie. 

My neighbor said that she doesn’t know what Owen will do when he is older, but she feels that he will change something.  I hope she is right.   

Maddening

The votes are still being counted, but Initiative 522 is trailing. While I am not really surprised, I am dumbfounded that we are here. 

The cost of food will go up if we label foods that contain GMO ingredients. ....

How does this statement make any sense? Companies change labels ALL the time and there are no cost changes. 

I don't remember a major uprising when the FDA required foods to be labeled for trans fat in 2006. 

I definitely didn't read anything about energy drinks costing more when they changed their label a few months ago to replace the word supplement with nutrition. 

The same company that posted a $1.48 Billion profit this year, donated $6 million to defeat the initiative, and I am supposed to believe they are protecting the consumer from rising costs. I am quite sure they do not care about my costs. They care about their costs and how those bottom lines are affected if GMOs are labeled.  

It is actually a bit maddening. 

The only saving grace? My kids are learning and listening.  

(I would elaborate except I cannot trust what I might say if i drifted off to 

Sleep....and that is happening. )

Therefore, tomorrow's  post: How I am making a difference.

One Day

In the future, I am going to wish I had this blog to look back on to remember my life.  Owen asked me a question the other day about something he used to do as a baby, and I realized I have mom brain and could remember nothing.  If I spent half as much time writing about my life as I do reading about other people’s lives, I would have a pretty good history to look back on.   

The problem with getting behind on writing is that there is no good way to start again.  I have SO many pictures, SO many things to talk about, and SO many things going on in my head.  Where do I begin?

Today:

I spent the day cleaning the house.  I decided to let our housecleaner go at the beginning of the summer and I remembered quickly why we hired her.  But, with the kids getting a little older, it was harder to justify keeping her (well that and the fact that I owe Angie a ton of money and I am sure I am capable of cleaning my own house).  I cleaned for hours and didn’t even finish.  I am not sure if other people struggle so much with keeping a clean house or if I am just raising a bunch of baby pigs.  I think I have 4 pigs living here, and yes, I still have three kids and no, I do not include myself in that figure. 

We spent the night at a “trunk-or-treat” collecting a lot of crap.  There are a few times when I wish I could unlearn what I know about food.  Without a doubt, Halloween would be at the top.  I see them all with their little buckets full of candy and their little smiling faces and sparkling eyes, and I know that I have no choice other than to let them eat it.  I try to smile back and look excited, but it is really hard.  Luckily, for Halloween they are very excited to leave their candy out for the Great Pumpkin to take during the night in exchange for toys and presents the next day.  The Great Pumpkin will then store our candy until December when it is time to make gingerbread houses.  The only problem with this plan is their plan about the amazingness of what is coming.

Tonight:

The girls are upstairs asleep and Owen and Greg are watching football together.  I can only imagine how excited this makes Greg.  He is calm on the surface, the kind of calm where you act all cool and collected so as not to put any added pressure on the wonderfulness occurring in front of your eyes, but on the inside he is dancing, cheering, jumping, and most importantly: praying that this does not end.  Owen loves to use his imagination, he can’t have too many stuffed animals, he can often be found in a costume of some sort, he loves to play school, he says he is never playing baseball again, and he does not like football, that is, until a few weeks ago.  Owen just ran upstairs to put on a jersey, and now I hear him yelling at a player, asking questions, and has just informed me that the only thing better than watching Iowa football with his dad would be for me to join them and bring some popcorn with me. 

His newfound love for football stems from an amazing program Owen participated in this year.  Owen is a Bruin Buddy, a little buddy to one of the football players on the high school football team.  The school pairs up the football players with an elementary student, and the little buddy gets to run down on the field before the home games, join their buddy in the locker room after the games, join in one of the practices, have their buddy come to the school at recess and lunch, and attend classes at the high school with their buddy.  Greg is absolutely obsessed with the program, and I am sure even more now considering he is watching football with his son and they spent the night last night throwing the football and practicing tackling.  If we had a life savings, Greg would probably give it to Owen’s buddy to show his gratitude.  Good thing we don’t.

Tomorrow night the little buddies and their players are going roller-skating!

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There it is, candy and football, I guess that is where I start…..

That made a good day

Two things started this day right 

1. I put on a little orange dress for court today and Owen turned to me and said, "you do always look so good in that dress". Ha! Sweet little son. 

2. The carpool was looking very suspicious on the way to school today when suddenly they all started laughing. One of the twins announced that Owen and Jordyn were holding hands. They all screamed with laughter and became embarrassed. Jordyn declared Owen did it, to which I believe 100%. 

I will have to watch that boy. As an aside,  he went through the yearbook and found the cutest girl in every class the other night. Trouble in the making that one... He takes after his dad. 

Reasons to hide from school

School has arrived, and although I mostly like it, for three reasons I would consider homeschooling. Here they are in no particular order. 

1. Packing Owen's lunch. Honestly, it is horrible on so many levels. He barely likes anything, I try to limit his wheat intake, and add to that the poor child in his class with life threatening egg, dairy, and peanut allergies, leaving me to wonder if everything that is in his lunchbox could be dangerous. It is awful I tell you, and it just got more awful when I found out today that he needs a healthy snack everyday. The healthy snack is in his lunchbox!! 

2. Bedtime. Curse bedtime in fact. We barely have a routine, getting ready for bed around here mostly consists of me asking kids to get in their pajamas and those children laughing silently to themselves as they just don't. It is quite heroic if they are in bed by 9:30, and please take note I did not say asleep by 9:30 (that is another battle all together). 

3. Getting up.  That is all on that. It is self explanatory. 

Well, since homeschooling is not in the cards, I put the kids to bed last night,  got up this morning, and packed Owen a lunch.  

Not much else I can do I suppose. Carry on!!

Shopping girl

The girls and I went to buy toilet paper last night and accidentally decided to get Ivy school clothes. 

That girl loves to shop. She was so full of life and energy as she tried things on, looked for her size, and decided what she liked. She would have stayed there all night if I let her. In fact, the only way she was willing to leave was when I told her we could go to other stores today. 

We finally left the store at 10:00. The second we got home she started busily telling Greg about shopping and started to lay out all her clothes for the world to have a better look.  Once we had taken sufficient pictures to her liking of the line of clothes, she decided she would take a bag upstairs and clean out her drawers to make room for the new clothes. She left for a bit and came back down with two bags and declared she was giving all her old clothes away. I am quite sure what we bought last night does not have drawer filling ability and when I said we could look today, I meant another shirt or two.  I realize now she envisioned walking through the door looking like Pretty Woman, excessive bags in hand. 

When she woke up today, the first words out of her mouth related to shopping with a gentle reminder to make sure we went today. 

She is sitting next to me reciting over and over what we need to do today and the things we forgot to buy, including the tap shoes and ballet shoes for her new dance class. 

She is doing dance, gymnastics, and swimming. She has put in a request for soccer and T-ball. She is going to school everyday, including one full day and can't wait to eat lunch at school. Add all of that to her obsession for shopping and the fact that she just turned 4 two months ago, and I hope I can keep up with her as she gets older!

She is crazy, but truth be told, I am a little obsessed with her.